Mariposa leaned against a convenient wall top and looked down. The city lay clear-edged and gray in the cup made by its encircling hills. It had not yet thrown out feelers toward the Mission hills, and they rose above the varied sweep of roof and chimney, in undulating greenness, flecked here and there by the white dot of a cottage. The girdle of the bay shone sapphire-blue on this day of still sunshine. From its farther side other hills were revealed, each peak and shoulder clear cut against its neighbor and defining themselves in a crumpled, cobalt line against the faint sky. Over all Mount Diavolo rose, a purple point, pricking up above the green of newly grassed hills, about whose feet hung a white fringe of little towns.
Turning her eyes again on the descending walls and roofs, the watcher saw a long cortège passing soberly between the gray house-fronts on a street a few blocks below her. As she looked the boom of solemn music rose to her. It was a funeral, and one of unusual length, she thought, as her eyes caught the slow line of carriages far back through breaks in the houses. Presently, in the opening where two streets crossed, the hearse came into view, black and gloomy, with its nodding tufts of feathers and somberly caparisoned horses. Men walked behind it, and the measured music swelled louder, melancholy and yet inspiring.
Suddenly she realized whose it was. The rich man was going splendidly to his rest.
“My father!” she whispered to herself. “My father! How strange! how strange!”
The cortège passed on, the music swelling grandiosely and then dying down into fitful snatches of sweetness. The long line of carriages moved slowly forward, at a crawling foot-pace.
The daughter leaned on the coping of the wall, watching this last passage through the city of the father she had known so slightly and toward whom she felt a bitter and silent resentment.
She watched the nodding plumes till they were out of sight. How strangely death had drawn together the three that life had separated! In six months the woman and two men, tied together by a twist of the hand of Fate, had been summoned, one after the other, into the darkness beyond. Would they meet there? Mariposa shuddered and turned away. The black plumes had disappeared, but the music still boomed fitfully in measured majesty.
The whistles were blowing for midday when she retraced her steps to the Garcia house. As she mounted the stairs to the front door she became aware that there were several people grouped on the balcony, their forms dimly visible through the grimy glass and behind the rampart of long-stemmed geraniums that grew there in straggling neglect. The opening of the outer door let her in on them. She started and slightly changed color when she saw that one of the figures was that of Gamaliel Barron. He was sitting on the arm of a dilapidated rocker, frowningly staring at Benito, the younger Garcia boy, against whom, it appeared, a charge of some moment had just been brought. The case was being placed before Barron, who evidently acted as judge, by a person Mariposa had not seen before—a tall, thin young man of some thirty years, with a stoop in the shoulders, a shock of fine black hair, and a pair of very soft and beautiful blue eyes.
They were so preoccupied in the matter before them that no effort was made to introduce the stranger to Mariposa, though Barron offered her his armchair, retiring to a seat on the balcony railing, whence he loomed darkly severe, from among the straggling geraniums. Benito, in his sailor collar and wispy curls, maintained an air of smiling innocence, but Miguel, the elder boy, who was an interested witness, bore evidence of uneasiness of mind in the strained attention of the face turned toward Barron.
Mariposa paused, her hand on the back of the rocking-chair. Benito had already inserted himself into her affections. She looked from one to the other to ascertain his offense. Both men were regarding the culprit, Barron with frowning disapproval, the other with eyes full of amusement. It was he who proceeded to state the case against the accused: