"Reverend padre, you hear the work Indians returning with their farm animals from the irrigated ground near the great spring. It is the noon hour." The first speaker was the friar, Lusciano Osuna, spiritual head of the Mission San José. He was temporal head also of the Mission grounds and buildings, together with a wide strip of country reaching over rolling land, hills and mountains, away east to the San Joaquin River. The padre was ill. His parched lips and flushed forehead showed him to be in the grip of fever. Restlessly he tossed from side to side of his bed. It was an unusual-appearing bed. Hewn redwood logs of goodly dimension had been made in a frame held together by mortising at the corners. Strips of rawhide ran across the frame from side to side, another layer from end to end. A pallet of straw was the mattress; the covering was lambskin tanned without removing the wool. "Open the window and the door, Juan Antonio. My blood boils away in this heat, and my strength ebbs out." The hot north wind, which for days had been scorching the valley of Santa Clara, rolled into the room. "It is little avail, dear father, to seek or avoid draughts when the San Joaquin fever possesses one. Its nature is to burn till the body seems a crisp, then to freeze till the flesh is like damp clay." "Juan Antonio, you are right. Still, it is a satisfaction to feel the living air whether it touches one's ailment or not." The light from the open window shone on the friar's face. He was nervously pulling his heavy black beard through his fingers. The features thus brought into relief were those of the hidalgo, bold and strong, and were illuminated by keen intelligence within. The skin showed another strain darker than Caucasian. "Antonio, did all the Indians attend chapel this morning? Have you heard of any further evidences of lapse into paganism anywhere in the valley?" "Our Indians, men, women and children, are faithful in their attendance, since the day you quenched the evil spirit in them. To-morrow we conclude the Novena--nine days' prayer--for you. All are praying most fervently that our Lady and Saint Francis, yes, and San José, will favor us and you with speedy and complete recovery." "You are good, very good, my major-domo." "To-day at morning meal were some Indians from the San Blas just in at Monterey. At once I dispatched thither the peon, Pedro Carrasca, the best rider in the valley. Six hours' journey it is to Monterey, six hours' rest, and six returning, makes eighteen. Pedro Carrasca rests not if among the ship's goods is numbered Jesuit bark, but he presses homeward with the medicine. For each hour less than twelve that he consumes in rounding Monterey from here I have promised him five and twenty pesos." "You have done well. My illness possesses me, Juan Antonio. Not that I resist suffering. Did not my great master, Saint Francis of Assisi, bear the sacred stigmata on side and hands and feet?"