Bernardo bobbed his head again.
"As for myself, I am in a pretty pickle," Don Diego went on. "My father has ordered that I get me a wife, and the señorita I selected will have none of me. I shall have my father taking me by the ear in short order.
"Bernardo, it is time for me to leave this pueblo for a few days. I shall go to the hacienda of my father, to tell him I have got no woman to wed me yet, and ask his indulgence. And there, on the wide hills behind his house, may I hope to find some spot where I may rest and consult the poets for one entire day without highwaymen and sergeants and unjust magistrados bothering me. And you, Bernardo, shall accompany me, of course. I can talk to you without your taking the words out of my mouth."
Bernardo bobbed his head again. He guessed what was to come. It was a habit of Don Diego's to talk to him thus for a long time, and always there was a journey afterward. Bernardo liked that, because he worshiped Don Diego, and because he liked to visit the hacienda of Don Diego's father, where he always was treated with kindness.
The despensero had been listening in the other room and had heard what was said, and now he gave orders for Don Diego's horse to be made ready, and prepared a bottle of wine and water for the master to take with him.
Within a short time Don Diego set out, Bernardo riding a mule a short distance behind him. They hurried along the highroad, and presently caught up with a small carreta, beside which walked two robed Franciscans, and in which was Fray Felipe, trying to keep back moans of pain.
Don Diego dismounted beside the carreta as it stopped. He went over to it and clasped Fray Felipe's hands in his own.
"My poor friend!" he said.
"It is but another instance of injustice," Fray Felipe said. "For twenty years we, of the missions, have been subjected to it, and it grows. The sainted Junipero Serra invaded this land when other men feared, and at San Diego de Alcála he built the first mission of what became a chain, thus giving an empire to the world. Our mistake was that we prospered. We did the work, and others reap the advantages."