He ran down the long hill, and came presently to the mission. In the
grass beside the white road, he searched for his straw suitcase, his
gas-mask, and the helmet, but failing to find them, he concluded the
girl had neglected to remind her father's chauffeur to throw them off
in front of the mission, as promised. So he passed along the front of
the ancient pile and let himself in through a wooden door in the high
adobe wall that surrounded the churchyard immediately adjacent to the
mission. With the assurance of one who treads familiar ground, he
strode rapidly up a weed-grown path to a spot where a tall
black-granite monument proclaimed that here rested the clay of one
superior to his peon and Indian neighbors. And this was so, for the
shaft marked the grave of the original Michael Joseph Farrel, the
adventurer the sea had cast up on the shore of San Marcos County.
Immediately to the left of this monument, Don Mike saw a grave that had
not been there when he left the Palomar. At the head of it stood a
tile taken from the ruin of the mission roof, and on this brown tile
some one had printed in rude lettering with white paint:
Fallecio
Don Miguel Jose Noriaga Farrel
Nacio, Junio 3, 1841
Muerto, Deciembre 29, 1919.
The last scion of that ancient house knelt in the mold of his father's
grave and made the sign of the cross.
V
The tears which Don Mike Farrel had descried in the eyes of his
acquaintance on the train were, as he came to realize when he climbed
the steep cattle-trail from Sespe, the tribute of a gentle heart moved
to quick and uncontrollable sympathy.
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