"It is of twenty-four year I have first time the Amencano of your beautiful country known. He have buy the hides and horns of the cattle--for his ship--here." "Here?" echoed Brace. "I thought no American ship--no ship at all--had been in here for fifty years." Ruiz shrugged his shoulders, and cast a glance at his friend Martinez, lowered his voice and lifted his eyelashes at the same moment, and, jerking his yellow, tobacco-stained thumb over his arm, said,-- "Ah--of a verity--on the beach--two leagues away." "Do you hear that?" said Winslow, turning complacently to Brace and rising to his feet. "Don't you see now what hogwash the Commander, Alcalde, and the priest have been cramming down our throats about this place being sealed up for fifty years. What he says is all Gospel truth. That's what I wanted you fellows to hear, and you might have heard before, only you were afraid of compromising yourselves by talking with the people. You get it into your heads--and the Comandante helped you to get it there--that Todos Santos was a sort of Sleepy Hollow, and that no one knew anything of the political changes for the last fifty years. Well, what's the fact? Ask Ruiz there, and Martinez, and they'll both tell you they know that Mexico got her independence in 1826, and that the Council keep it dark that they may perpetuate themselves. They know," he continued, lowering his voice, "that the Commander's commission from the old Viceroy isn't worth the paper it is stamped upon." "But what about the Church?" asked Brace hesitatingly, remembering Banks' theory. "The Church--caramba! the priests were ever with the Escossas, the aristocrats, and against the Yorkenos, the men of the Republic--the people," interrupted Martinez vehemently; "they will not accept, they will not proclaim the Republic to the people. They shut their eyes, so--. They fold their hands, so--. They say, 'Sicut era principio et nunc et semper in secula seculorum!' Look you, Senor, I am not of the Church--no, caramba! I snap my fingers at the priests. Ah! what they give one is food for the bull's horns, believe me--I have read 'Tompano,' the American 'Tompano.'" "Who's he?" asked Brace. "He means Tom Paine! 'The Age of Reason'--you know," said Winslow, gazing with a mixture of delight and patronizing pride at the Radicals of Todos Santos. "Oh! he's no fool--is Martinez, nor Ruiz either! And while you've been flirting with Dona Isabel, and Banks has been trying to log-roll the Padre, and Crosby going in for siestas, I'VE found them out. And there are a few more--aren't there, Ruiz?" Ruiz darted a mysterious glance at Brace, and apparently not trusting himself to speak, checked off his ten fingers dramatically in the air thrice. "As many of a surety! God and liberty!" "But, if this is so, why haven't they DONE something?" Senor Martinez glanced at Senor Ruiz. "Hasta manana!" he said slowly. "Oh, this is a case of 'Hasta manana!'" said Brace, somewhat relieved.