Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/79

 Mateo said. "Even these poor daughters of savages shout with joy as they tread out the wine."

Padre Ignacio knew there would be no scarcity of eager feet for his wine press now.

The chief ceremony, so Padre Mateo said, was to be the drawing off of the first juice from the press. Padre Ignacio himself was to do this; no other hand was worthy the distinction of that long-waited day. At the very bottom of the wine press, in the gloom at the foot of the cellar stairs, a half cask stood under the spiggot, which was itself made of a small cedar log with the heart hollowed out, the end closed with a plug. Padre Ignacio now descended to drain off the first juice trampled out in a wine press in California.

Magdalena came from her kitchen, which opened through a narrow door into this cellar way, to see this ceremony; the young men who carried in the grapes stood with empty baskets; the girls in the wine press, their dark faces spattered with stains, leaned along the edge, looking down on Padre Ignacio's fringe of snow-white hair as he went, gown gathered between his knees, to remove the plug. Borromeo Cambon, the blacksmith, was in the door.

They gasped in pleasurable exclamation when the thick stream of dark juice poured into the deep tub. Padre Ignacio let it run until the tub was full; the juice was running strong when he replaced the plug.

"It is a fruitful year; the grape skins are stored with wine. We shall have plenty at last," he said.