each arm the moment an earthquake began, and in the first seconds even this was not so bad. The wall about the Presidio was fourteen feet high and seven feet thick and there were solid trunks of trees crossed inside the adobe. It looked like a heap of dirt, nothing more. Luis was riding up from the Battery of Yerba Buena and his horse was flung down and he saw the sand-dunes heaving toward him like waves in a storm and shiver like quicksilver. And there was a roar as if the earth had dropped and the sea gone after. Ay California! And to think that when Luis wrote a bitter letter to Governor Arillaga in Monterey, the old Mexican wrote back that he had felt earthquakes himself and sent him a box of dates for consolation! Well—we slept on the ground for two months and cooked out-of-doors, for we would not go even into the Mission—which had not suffered—until the earthquakes were over; and if the worst comes first there are plenty after—and, somehow, harder to bear. Perhaps to Concha that terrible time was a God-send, for she thought no more of Rezánov for a while. If the earthquake does not swallow your body it swallows your little self. You are a flea. Just that and nothing more.

"But after a time all was quiet again; the houses were rebuilt and Concha went back to Santa Barbara. By that time she knew that Rezánov would never come, although it was several years before she had a word. Such stories have been told that she did not know of his death for thirty years! Did not Baránhov, Chief-manager of the Russian-Alaskan Company up there at Sitka, send Koskov—that name was so like!—to Bodega Bay in 1812, and would he fail to send such news with him? Was not Dr. Langsdorff's book published in 1814? Did not Kotzbue, who was on his excellency's staff during the embassy to Japan, come to us in 1816, and did we not talk with him every day for a month? Did not Rezánov's death spoil all Russia's plans in this part of the world—perhaps, who knows? alter the course of her history? It is likely we were long without hearing the talk of the North! Such nonsense! Yes, she knew it soon enough, but as that good Padre Abella once said to us, she had the making of the saint and the martyr in her, and even when she could hope no more she did not die, nor marry some one else, nor wither up and spit at the world. Long before the news came, indeed, she carried out a plan she had conceived, so Padre Abella told us, even while Rezánov was yet here. There were no convents in California in those days—you may know what a stranded handful we were—but she joined the Tertiary or Third Order of Franciscans, and wore always the grey habit, the girdle, and the cross. She went among the Indians christianizing them, remaining a long while at Soledad, a bleak and cheerless place, where she was also a great solace to the wives of the soldiers and settlers, whose children she taught. The Indians called her 'La Beata,' and by that name she was known in all California until she took the veil, and that was more than forty years later. And she was worshipped, no less. So beautiful she was, so humble, so sweet, and at the same time so practical; she had what the Americans call 'hard sense,' and something of Rezánov's own way of managing people. When she made up her mind to bring a sinner or a savage into the Church she did it. You know.

"But do not think she had her way in other things without a struggle. Don José and Doña Ignacia—her mother—permitted her to enter upon the religious life, for they understood; and Luis and Santiago made no protest either, for they understood also and had loved Rezánov. But the rest of her family, the relations, the friends, the young men—the caballeros! They went in a body you might say to Don José and demanded that Concha, the most beautiful and fascinating and clever girl in New Spain, should come back to the world where she belonged,—be given in marriage. But Concha had always ruled Don José, and all the protests went to the winds. And William Sturgis—the young Bostonian who lived with us for so many years? I have not told you of him, and your mother was too young to remember. Well, never mind. He would have taken Concha from California, given her just a little of what she would have had as the wife of Rezánov—not in himself; he was as ugly as my whiskers; but enough of the great world to satisfy many women, and no one could deny that he was good and very clever. But to Concha he was a brother—no more. Perhaps she did not even take the trouble to refuse him. It was a way she had. After a while he went home to Boston and died of the climate. I was very sorry. He was one of us.

"And her intellect? Concha put it to sleep forever. She never read another book of travel, of history, biography, memoirs, essays, poetry—romance she had never read, and although some novels came to California in time she never opened them. It was peace she wanted, not the growing mind and the roving imagination. She brought her conversation down to the level of the humblest, and perhaps—who knows?—her thoughts. At all events, although the time came when she smiled again, and was often gay when we were all together in the family—particularly with the children, who came very fast, of course—well, she was then another Concha, not that brilliant dissatisfied ambitious girl we had all known, who had thought the greatest gentleman from the Viceroy's court not good enough to throw gold at her feet when she danced El Son.

"There were changes in her life. In 1814 Don José was made Gobernador Propietario of Lower California. He took all of his unmarried children with him, and Concha thought it her duty to go. They lived in Loreto until 1821. But Concha never ceased to pray that she might return to California—we never looked upon that withered tongue of Mexico as California; and when Don José died soon after his resignation, and her mother went to live with her married daughters, Concha returned with the greatest happiness she had known, I think, since Rezánov went. Was not California all that was left her?

"She lived in Santa Barbara for many years, in the house of Don José de la Guerra—in that end room of the east wing. She had many relations, it is true, but Concha was always human and liked relations better when she was not surrounded by them. Although she never joined in any of the festivities of that gay time she was often with the Guerra family and seemed happy enough to take up her old position as Beata among the Indians and children, until they built a school for her in Monterey. How we used to wonder if she ever thought of Rezánov any more. From the day the two years were over she never mentioned his name, and everybody respected her reserve, even her parents. And she grew more and more reserved with the years, never speaking of herself at all, except just after her return from Mexico. But somehow we knew. And did not the very life she had chosen express it? Even the Church may not reach the secret places of the soul, and who knows what heaven she may have found in hers? And now? I think purgatory is not for Concha, and he was not bad as men go, and has had time to do his penance. It is true the Church tells us there is no marrying in heaven—but, well, perhaps there is a union for mated spirits of which the Church knows nothing. You saw her expression in her coffin.

"Well! The time arrived when we had a convent. Bishop Alemany came in 1850, and in the first sermon he preached in Santa Barbara—I think it was his first in California—he announced that he wished to found a convent. He was a Dominican, but one order was as another to Concha; she had never been narrow in anything. As soon as the service was over, before he had time to leave the church, she went to him and asked to be the first to join. He was glad enough, for he knew of her and that no one could fill his convent as rapidly as she. Therefore was she the first nun, the first to take holy vows, in our California. For a little, the convent was in the old Hartnell house in Monterey, but Don Manuel Ximéno had