"I reckon school ain't out yet," he said to himself, and was about to lie down again, when a face suddenly appeared at the grating of the narrow window. Mr. Hamlin as suddenly became breathless, and the colour rose to his pale face. He was very susceptible to female beauty, and the face that appeared at the grating was that of a very beautiful Indian girl. He thought, and was ready to swear, that he had never seen anything half so lovely. Framed in the recess of the embrasure as a shrine, it might have been a shadowed devotional image, but that the face was not so angelically beautiful as it was femininely fascinating, and that the large deeply fringed eyes had an expression of bright impatience and human curiosity. From his secure vantage behind the curtain Mr. Hamlin knew that he could not be seen, and so lay and absorbed this lovely bronze apparition which his voice seemed to have evoked from the cold bronze adobe wall. And then, as suddenly, she was gone, and the staring sunlight and glittering sea beyond seemed to Mr. Hamlin to have gone too. When Pete returned at sunset, he was amazed and alarmed to find his master dressed and sitting by the window. There was a certain brightness in his eye and an unwonted colour in his cheek that alarmed him still more. "You ain't bin and gone done nuffin' agin de doctor's orders, Mahs Jack?" he began. "You'll find the whisky flask all right, unless you've been dippin' into it, you infernal old hypocrite," responded Jack, cheerfully, accepting the implied suspicion of his servant. "I've dressed myself because I'm goin' to church to-night, to find out where you get your liquor. I'm happy because I'm virtuous. Trot out that Volney's 'Ruins,' and wade in. You're gettin' out o' practice, Pete. Stop. Because you're religious, do you expect me to starve? Go and order supper first! Stop. Where in blank are you going? Here, you've been gone three hours on an errand for me, and if you ain't runnin' off without a word about it." "Gone on an errand foh you, sah?" gasped the astonished Pete. "Yes! Didn't I tell you to go round and see what was the kind of religious dispensation here?" continued Jack, with an unmoved face. "Didn't I charge you particularly to observe if the Catholic Church was such as a professing Christian and the former organist of the Second Presbyterian Church of Sacramento could attend? And now I suppose I've got to find out myself. I'd bet ten to one you ain't been there at all!" In sheer embarrassment Pete began to brush his master's clothes with ostentatious and apologetic diligence, and said-- "I'se no Papist, Mahs Jack, but if I'd thought"---- "Do you suppose I'm going to sit here without my supper while you abuse the Catholic Church--the only church that a gentlemen"----but the frightened Pete was gone.