"What you say is not untrue; but for one good, ten thousand evils are wrought with the metal which the devil mixed in hell and poured through the veins of the earth." Estenega spent a half-hour representing in concrete and forcible images the debt which civilization owed to the fact and circulation of gold. The priest replied that California was a proof that commerce could exist by barter; the money in the country was not worth speaking of. "And no progress to speak of in a hundred years," retorted Estenega. Then he expatiated upon the unique future of California did she have gold to develop her wonderful resources. The priest said that to cut California from her Arcadian simplicity would be to start her on her journey to the devil along with the corrupt nations of the Old World. Estenega demonstrated that if there was vice in the older civilizations there was also a higher state of mental development, and that Religion held her own. He might as well have addressed the walls of the Mission. He tempted with the bait of one of the more central Missions. The priest had only the dust of ambition in the cellar of his brain. He lost his patience at last. "I must have gold," he said, shortly; "and you shall show me where to find it. You once betrayed to my father that you knew of its existence in these hills; and you shall give me the key." The priest looked into the eyes of steel and contemptuously determined face before him, and shut his lips. He was alone with a desperate man; he had not even a servant; he could be murdered, and his murderer go unsuspected; but the heart of the fanatic was in him. He made no reply. "You know me," said Estenega. "I owe half my power in California to the fact that I do not make a threat to-day and forget it to-morrow. You will show me where that gold is, or I shall kill you." "The servant of God dies when his hour comes. If I am to die by the hand of the assassin, so be it." Estenega leaned forward and placed his strong hand about the priest's baggy throat, pushing the table against his chest. He pressed his thumb against the throttle, his second finger hard against the jugular, and the tongue rolled over the teeth, the congested eyes bulged. "It may be that you scorn death, but may not fancy the mode of it. I have no desire to kill you. Alive or dead, your life is of no more value than that of a worm. But you shall die, and die with much discomfort, unless you do as I wish." His hand relaxed its grasp, but still pressed the rough dirty throat. "Accursed heretic!" said the priest. "Spare your curses for the superstitious." He saw a gleam of cunning come into the priest's eyes. "Very well; if I must I must. Let me rise, and I will conduct you."