For twenty years he had striven with the weeds in the Mission garden, and no man during that time dared say which had had the best of it, Ignacio Chavez or the interloping alfileria and purslane. In the matters of a vast leisureliness and tumbling along the easiest way they resembled each other, these two avowed enemies. For twenty years he had looked upon the bells as his own, had filled his eye with them day after day, had thought the first thing in the morning to see that they were there, regarding them as solicitously in the rare rainy weather as his old mother regarded her few mongrel chicks. Twenty full years, and yet Ignacio Chavez was not more than thirty years old, or thirty-five, perhaps. He did not know, no one cared. He was on his way to attack with his bare brown hands some of the weeds which were spilling over into the walk which led through the garden and to the priest's house. As a matter of fact he had awakened with this purpose in mind, had gone his lazy way all day fully purposing to give it his attention, and had at last arrived upon the scene. The front gate had finally broken, the upper hinge worn out; Ignacio carefully set the ramshackly wooden affair back against the fence, thinking how one of these days he would repair it. Then he went between the bigger pear-tree and the _lluvia de oro_ which his own hands had planted here, and stood with legs well apart considering the three bells upon the easterly arch. "_Que hay, amigos_?" he greeted them. "Do you know what I am going to do for you some fine day? I will build a little roof over you that runs down both ways to shut out the water when it rains. It will make you hoarse, too much wet." That was one of the few dreams of Ignacio's life; one day he was going to make a little roof over each arch. But to-day he merely regarded affectionately the Captain . . . that was the biggest of the bells . . . the Dancer, second in size, and Lolita, the smallest upon this arch. Then he sighed and turned toward the other arch across the garden to see how it was with the Little One, La Golondrina, and Ignacio Chavez. For it was only fair that at least one of the six should bear his name. Changing his direction thus, moving directly toward the dropping sun, he shifted his hat well over his eyes and so was constrained to note how the weeds were asserting themselves with renewed insolence. He muttered a soft "_maldito_!" at them which might have been mistaken for a caress and determined upon a merciless campaign of extermination just as soon as he could have fitted a new handle to his hoe. Then he paused in front of the Mission steps and lifted his hat, made an elegant bow, and smiled in his own inimitable, remarkably fascinating way. For, under the ragged brim, his eyes had caught a glimpse of a pretty pair of patent-leather slippers, a prettier pair of black-stockinged ankles, and the hem of a white starched skirt.