"Your work is short by many inches of what it should be. If your chili con carne and meal were to be as short to-day you would go hungry, and deserve it too. I have a mind to tell the padre how shiftless you all are, and that unless I stand over you, not one of you will work." "She's willing enough for us to stop work if she has some tale to tell us about what Modesto heard; but if we stop a minute to breathe, at any other time, it's different," whispered one to her nearest companion, when Marta's face was in another direction. The noon Angelus commenced ringing. The looms were at once deserted. In the neophyte house lived over two hundred Indian girls who were taught to read Spanish, together with such housecraft as a peona should know, while the music of the church occupied no small part in the daily curriculum. In addition, the neophytes were instructed in weaving, in embroidery, drawn work, lace-making; and from among them came the seamstresses who made elaborate gowns for the ladies of the Spanish gentry. Talking was not allowed during meals. A book, generally the life of some saint, was read aloud by a matrona, or by some girl who was capable. To-day the book had been finished early. There was not time to begin another, so the rule of silence was dispensed with during the remainder of dinner. The girls proceeded to enjoy the unwonted privilege, their zest for eating, however, in no wise diminished. Suddenly, pandemonium burst over the place. Indian warwhoops were mingled with the crash of musket-firing. Yelling and shouting were punctuated with pistol shots. The tawny mastiffs, night guardians of the patio, now confined in a rear yard, howled a vicious protest against this noonday interruption of their sleep. Indian horsemen hurled themselves down the hills. Indian forms arose from the ground where they had hidden in shelter of vineyard and olive grove, and avalanched on the Mission. Mounted renegades whirled around the buildings, cutting off avenues of escape for those within. Men on foot forced the porter's lodge in front, while others rushed through the artisans' shops in the rear. Padre Osuna, Juan Antonio, major-domo, and nearly every able-bodied peon of the Mission were busy with the trading ships lying at the Embarcadero two leagues away, on the south arm of San Francisco Bay. The institution was defenseless before the invaders, who were under the capable command of a stocky, strongly built aborigine who sat on his horse in the road which ran alongside of the house of the girl neophytes. "Bring up the led horses," the chief had ordered when the uproar was greatest. The screaming of frightened women broke out in shrill notes, accompanied by the furious baying of the mastiffs straining at their chains. A shot or two sounded in the patio. "Some of the women have got behind the gratings and are shooting at their wooers," half laughed, half grunted the leader.