Mariquita's honest face was grave and important. "There is news, señorita," she said. "What is it?" The washing-women had dropped back from the tubs and were listening intently. "Ay!" The oracle drew a long breath. "There is war over there, you know, señorita," she said, making a vague gesture toward the Atlantic states. "Yes, I know. Is it decided? Is the North or the South victorious? I am glad that the wash-tub mail has not--" "It is not that, señorita." "Then what?" "The Lieutenant--he is a great general now." "Ay!" "He has won a great battle--And--they speak of his wife, señorita." Doña Herminia closed her eyes for a moment. Then she opened them and glanced slowly about her. The blue bay, the solemn pines, the golden atmosphere, the cemetery on the hill, the women washing at the stone tubs--all was unchanged. Only the flimsy wooden houses of the Americans scattered among the adobes of the town and the aging faces of the women who had been young in her brief girlhood marked the lapse of years. There was a smile on her lips. Her monotonous life must have given her insanity or infinite peace, and peace had been her portion. In a few minutes she said good-by to the women and went home. She never went to the tubs again. THE CONQUEST OF DOÑA JACOBA I A forest of willows cut by a forking creek, and held apart here and there by fields of yellow mustard blossoms fluttering in their pale green nests, or meadows carpeted with the tiny white and yellow flowers of early summer. Wide patches of blue where the willows ended, and immense banks of daisies bordering fields of golden grain, bending and shimmering in the wind with the deep even sweep of rising tide. Then the lake, long, irregular, half choked with tules, closed by a marsh. The valley framed by mountains of purplish gray, dull brown, with patches of vivid green and yellow; a solitary gray peak, barren and rocky, in sharp contrast to the rich Californian hills; on one side fawn-coloured slopes, and slopes with groves of crouching oaks in their hollows; opposite and beyond the cold peak, a golden hill rising to a mount of earthy green; still lower, another peak, red and green, mulberry and mould; between and afar, closing the valley, a line of pink-brown mountains splashed with blue. Such was a fragment of Don Roberto Duncan's vast rancho, Los Quervos, and on a plateau above the willows stood the adobe house, white and red-tiled, shaped like a solid letter H. On the deep veranda, sunken between the short forearms of the H, Doña Jacoba could stand and issue commands in her harsh imperious voice to the Indians in the rancheria among the willows, whilst the long sala behind overflowed with the gay company her famous hospitality had summoned, the bare floor and ugly velvet furniture swept out of thought by beautiful faces and flowered silken gowns.