With that I had to be satisfied, both then and now. Matters of more personal importance soon pushed the problem into the back of my mind. Once, indeed, chancing on a copy of the torn inscription, I spent an idle hour in trying to fashion the oddments into a possible connected whole. In case the reader should be interested in such exercises, I will give my tentative solution. I take the writing, as far as the signature, to have been in Latin, and this is my guesswork rendering: the reader may perhaps improve upon it:-- In hac arca depositi sunt nummi tria millia et quingenti qui pertinent ad hanc Missionem de Sancto Fernando, in cujus finibus ad cautelam ob latrocinia hoc litore a piratis commissa haec arca abscondita est. Francisco Ybarra. Oct. 1824. My chain of guesses, then, is that the old chest that I saw in that house in the Sim' Hills may have once been the personal property of Fray Francisco Ybarra, sometime priest in charge of the Mission of San Fernando. That he, on the approach of some marauders, buried the chest, with the stated sum of money in silver pesos of Carlos III, in some hiding-place about the Mission precincts. That for some unguessable reason the chest was never taken up by the priest or his successors; but that long years afterwards, probably not less than fifty, some party of treasure-seekers (of whom there are evidences of there having been many at that Mission) came upon the buried chest. That it was transported by them to the lonely house in the mountains, some twenty miles distant. That there, a quarrel occurred over the booty, and that the survivor or survivors of the fatal affray, if any there were, did not, for some reason, carry off in their flight all the treasure. The rest of my theory is embodied in the foregoing narrative. But after all, as to the whole matter, probably there is little to be said that is more to the point than the all-embracing phrase of Leandro, and of Spain and Mexico in general--Quien sabe? Who knows? SANTA BARBARA--LOVE IN THE PADRE'S GARDEN It was five years since I had seen my old chum, Dick Trevgern, back in Boston, while Mrs. Trevgern I had never seen at all. So when, last winter, I found myself at Santa Barbara, where they lived, one of the first things I did was to trace them in the telephone book and call up Dick. The result was an urgent invitation to dinner that evening. I was quite keen to meet my friend's wife, and all the more so, since Dick, who is one of the finest fellows in the world, is, or used to be, also one of the oldest-fashioned, and had seemed to be destined for bachelor joys; so I wondered what could be the special charms that had subjugated him.