Raquel walked through the little hall of the Mission into what had once been the garden of the padres, the little enclosed bit at the back of the belfry built after the falling of the tower. It was the one little corner from which the world seemed shut out. Under the carved doorway she passed into the old domed vestry with its stone centre cut, or worn by the dripping water, into the semblance of a leering face; "the devil's face," it was called, and people looked from its queer smile to the twisted serpent-like carving over what had once been the arch to the church itself, and wondered what the strange carvings meant, and found no one to answer. They were only a sign left by an unknown Mexican sculptor a half-century ago. Raquel glanced at them and shuddered, and passed out into the great unroofed, beautiful place of fluted pillars and carven cornices. The pink reflection of the sunset yet lingered on the mesa and the highlands above the sea. The world of the strange new town to the north was left behind. Here among the ruins consecrated, she breathed the air of home-coming, and paced the old altar-place with noiseless step, and with closed eyes and hands clasped she murmured prayers not in the book, taught by the good nuns; and she drew great breaths of strength from the wine-like air, and knew that somewhere, riding the mesa, a man was remembering this hour of the rosary. Ana found her later on the altar steps, with head bowed over her knees. Gaining no reply to questions, Ana felt that she had been weeping. She undressed her and put her to bed in the little chamber of the barred window facing the sea, and gave her all the care a devoted friend could in the grim isolation of the old walls. And that was the home-coming of Raquel after her half-royal reception in the City of the Angels. [Illustration: "HERE AMONG THE RUINS CONSECRATED"] [Music: _El Capotin._] Con el capotin, tin, tin, tin, que es ta noche va llover. Con el capotin, tin, tin, tin, que sera al amanecer! CHAPTER XV When Andres Pico and his men rode into San Juan with the doubtful decoration of necklaces of human ears strung on rawhide strings, there was a breath of relief from the natives: it meant that the bandits had been "confessed," according to the General's naive explanation of the absence of prisoners they knew he had taken; the backbone of the bandit gang was broken.