Hardly a day passed
that the Senora had not visitors. She was still a person of note; her
house the natural resting-place for all who journeyed through the
valley; and whoever came, spent all of his time, when not eating,
sleeping, or walking over the place, sitting with the Senora on the
sunny veranda. Few days in winter were cold enough, and in
summer the day must be hot indeed to drive the Senora and her
friends indoors. There stood on the veranda three carved oaken
chairs, and a carved bench, also of oak, which had been brought to
the Senora for safe keeping by the faithful old sacristan of San
Luis Rey, at the time of the occupation of that Mission by the
United States troops, soon after the conquest of California. Aghast
at the sacrilegious acts of the soldiers, who were quartered in the
very church itself, and amused themselves by making targets of the
eyes and noses of the saints' statues, the sacristan, stealthily, day by
day and night after night, bore out of the church all that he dared to
remove, burying some articles in cottonwood copses, hiding others
in his own poor little hovel, until he had wagon-loads of sacred
treasures.
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