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 him and Don Geronimo, or gaining a revocation of the edict which sent him forth like one disowned.

The trail led across the little river which came down from San Fernando, several miles below the mission. From that point it bore toward the pass leading across into the valley of San Gabriel, but a considerable distance to the eastward of the king's road which Juan had traversed with Padre Mateo on the journey to the harbor to fetch Gertudis Sinova. It was plain going here; the mayordomo's captors were carrying him toward a mountain that flanked the pass on the east.

This mountain rose out of the valley abruptly, without the gradation of preliminary hills, almost precipitous on the side which Juan was approaching. It was an ill-shaped eminence, its sides dark with the greenery of laurel and sage and chaparral, its summit divided into two knobs, standing perhaps half a mile apart. These topmost heights were rocky and bare, although almost daily refreshed by the fogs which swathed the valley at this time of the year, drenching tree and shrub with their distillations, keeping the northern slopes of the mountains green.

Juan drew rein as he came clear of the tall, wide-spreading oaks which grew in luxuriance close against the foot of this mountain, standing in a little open space from which he had a clear view of the forbidding dark mountain's double hump. The rising sun was routing the fog out of the valley; the shrubbery around him was dripping as from a