But at that moment he felt both. He drew
a long breath. He could catch the next train to the Three Boulders and
ride thence to San Felipe. He hurriedly left the room, settled with the
landlord, and galloped to the station. By the irony of circumstances the
only horse available for that purpose was Mr. Hamlin's own.
By two o'clock he was at the Three Boulders, where he got a fast horse
and galloped into San Felipe by four. As he descended the last slope
through the fastnesses of pines towards the little valley overlooked
in its remoteness and purely pastoral simplicity by the gold-seeking
immigrants,--its seclusion as one of the furthest northern Californian
missions still preserved through its insignificance and the efforts of
the remaining Brotherhood, who used it as an infirmary and a school for
the few remaining Spanish families,--he remembered how he once blundered
upon it with the boy while hotly pursued by a hue and cry from one of
the larger towns, and how he found sanctuary there. He remembered how,
when the pursuit was over, he had placed the boy there under the padre's
charge. He had lied to his wife regarding the whereabouts of her son,
but he had spoken truly regarding his free expenditure for the boy's
maintenance, and the good fathers had accepted, equally for the child's
sake as for the Church's sake, the generous "restitution" which this
coarse, powerful, ruffianly looking father was apparently seeking to
make.
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