It seemed to be a consistent part of the dream or vision when he rode—or rather as it seemed to him, was borne by the fog—into the outlying fields and lanes of the Mission. A few lights, with a nimbus of fog around them, made the narrow street of the town appear still more ghostly and unreal as he plunged through its obscurity towards the plaza and church. Even by the dim grey light he could see that one of the towers had fallen, and that the eastern wing and Refectory were a mass of shapeless ruin. And what would at another time have excited his surprise now only struck him as a natural part of his dream,—the church a blaze of light and filled with thronging worshippers! Still possessed by his strange fancy, Arthur Poinsett dismounted, led his horse beneath the shed beside the remaining tower, and entered the building. The body and nave of the church were intact; the outlandish paintings still hung from the walls; the waxen effigies of the Blessed Virgin and the saints still leaned from their niches, yellow and lank, and at the high altar Father Felipe was officiating. As he entered a dirge broke from the choir; he saw that the altar and its offerings were draped in black, and in the first words uttered by the priest Arthur recognised the mass for the dead! The feverish impatience that had filled his breast and heightened the colour of his cheeks for the last hour was gone. He sunk upon a bench beside one of the worshippers and buried his face in his hands. The voice of the organ rose again faintly; the quaint-voiced choir awoke, the fumes of incense filled the church, and the monotonous accents of the priest fell soothingly upon his ear, and Arthur seemed to sleep. I say seemed to sleep, for ten minutes later he came to himself with a start as if awakening from a troubled dream, with the voice of Padre Felipe in his ear, and the soft, caressing touch of Padre Felipe on his shoulder. The worshippers had dispersed, the church was dark save a few candles still burning on the high altar, and for an instant he could not recall himself.
"I knew you would come, son," said Padre Felipe; "but where is she? Did you bring her with you?"
"Who?" asked Arthur, striving to recall his scattered senses.
"Who? Saints preserve us, Don Arturo! She who sent for you—Donna Maria! Did you not get her message?"
Arthur replied that he had only just arrived, and had at once hastened to the Mission. For some reason that he was ashamed to confess he did not say that he had tried to reach the Rancho of the Blessed Trinity, nor did he admit that he had forgotten for the last two hours even the existence of Donna Maria. "You were having a mass for the dead, Father Felipe?—you have then suffered here?"
He paused anxiously, for in his then confused state of mind he doubted how much of his late consciousness had been real or visionary.
"Mother of God," said Father Felipe, eyeing Arthur curiously. "You know not then for whom was this mass? You know not that a saint has gone—that Donna Dolores has at last met her reward?"
"I have heard—that is, Donna Maria's despatch said—that she was missing," stammered Arthur, feeling, with a new and unsupportable disbelief in himself, that his face was very pale and his voice uncertain.
"Missing!" echoed Father Felipe, with the least trace of impatience in his voice. "Missing! She will be found when the Rancho of the Blessed Trinity is restored—when the ruins of the casa, sunk fifty feet below the surface, are brought again to the level of the plain. Missing, Don Arturo!—ah!—missing indeed!—for ever! always, entirely!"
Moved perhaps by something in Arthur's face, Padre Felipe sketched in a few graphic pictures the details of the catastrophe already forecast by Arthur. It was a repetition of the story of the sunken corral. The earthquake had not only levelled the walls of the Rancho of the Blessed Trinity, but had opened a grave-like chasm fifty feet below it, and none had escaped to tell the tale. The faithful vaqueros had rushed from the trembling and undulating plain to the Rancho, only to see it topple into a yawning abyss that opened to receive it. Don Juan, Donna Dolores, the faithful Manuela, and Alejandro, the major domo, with a dozen peons and retainers, went down with the crumbling walls. No one had escaped. Was it not possible to dig in the ruins for the bodies? Mother of God! had not Don Arturo been told that the earth at the second shock had closed over the sunken ruins, burying beyond mortal resurrection all that the Rancho contained? They were digging, but hopelessly—a dozen men. They might—weeks hence—discover the bodies—but who knows?