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 plus flour at good advantage, adding greatly to the revenues of the mission. You can see what a business we have here, Juan Molinero; from this elevation you can sweep our valley by a shift of the eye."

Juan Molinero had been shifting his eye, requiring no prompting to that purpose. His long experience in surroundings where lapse of care and vigilance for a moment might cost his life had trained him to acquaint himself with what lay about him, leaving no mysteries unexplored that the eye could pierce. He stood on the dam, a tall, a lean and hardy man, viewing what lay before him with wonder and admiration which grew as the details of the vast enterprise were gathered.

Padre Mateo, a little distance away, and lower by some feet in the station that he occupied, having spared himself the trouble to mount the dam to survey a scene sufficiently well known, looked up at Juan Molinero with eyes made narrow, watching for the effect their great possessions would show upon this man.

Not so clumsy, nor of such stolid strength as he appeared in his dress of hairy skins, was this Juan today, thought Padre Mateo. An admirable man, of balance like a fine rifle, thought this padre, who knew the use of a gun very well, indeed, although arms were prohibited men of his holy calling by the express decree of the king; a man of vast endurance, plain in the length of his muscular limbs, the breadth of his shoulders. Not the burly, deep