Mary Baldwin College - Bluestocking Yearbook (Staunton, VA)

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only broken by the three liquid notes of a meadow lark repeated over and over again. But the young man at the gate saw none of these things. He stood with bowed head, looking unseeingly at his clinched hands on the gate in front of him. For many weeks he had been trying to persuade him- self that it was not his duty to give up his life and all it held for him. Only yesterday evening Margarita had confessed that she loved him. He had overheard her talking to her mother and a strange, sweet madness had seized him. He would go and clasp her close in his arms and never, never let her go. But even as the thought crossed his mind he knew it could not be, for Margarita the gay, Margarita the fun-loving, would never help him in the life of severe religion to which he had determined to devote himself. Through the long night he had struggled and now he had finally reached the gate on his way to tell the padre of his determination. He had reached that point so many times before and always the vision of Margarita ' s dark eyes and sweet wayward face had driven him back. But this morning, with the sound of her words in his ears, he knew that it was now or never. He couldn ' t give her up ; she was so adorable with her willful ways. No, he had been mad to have ever dreamed of doing such a thing ; he never could live without her. As he started to go back, the rising sun shining in long slanting beams across the mountains brought the tall yucca into sharp relief and threw strange shadows across the earth. Just as he turned his startled eyes fell full on The Shadow of the Cross. The next minute the gate clicked after him. He had gone in, leaving behind him Margarita and life. The world was sleeping in the heat of a summer noon ; the hot air shimmered over the dry brown fields and dusty road; a veil of heat hung over the mountains, behind which they appeared high and dim and far away.

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®1|£ a mu of % tons (Pro torg) MURIEL FISHER T WAS spring in Cal- ifornia, away back in 1829, when the dusky Spanish Senor and the dark-eyed Senorita still held sway over the land ; long before the hustling Ameri- cano came to waken them f r o m their peaceful dream of life ; where nothing was done to-day, where everything was put off until manana. In the grey light of the early dawn, when everything was still quiet, a young man stood before the gate of a low wall surrounding one of the old Missions for which California is still famous. It was a quaint old church in a quaint old town nestled away at the foot of the Sierra Madre Mountains, in a spot from where you might look out over the San Gabriel Valley down to the sea. The almond orchard at the back of the Mission was in full bloom, the faint pink of the blossoms contrasting with the brown adobe of the building. The wild mustard covering the foot-hills looked at a little distance like soft yellow velvet. The white orange blossoms set in dark foliage filled the air with perfume and the stillness was

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The only thing awake in the whole drowsy land were the poppies. With their deep yellow petals opened wide under the blazing sun they looked fearlessly back as if defying its power. In a narrow cell by the side of a cot knelt a middle- aged man. For months, it seemed to him for years, he had struggled with an all-absorbing desire to go out into the world and be in it and of it ; a desire that had seemed at times as if it would master him. He thought he had conquered it long ago, though, but this morning one of his friends whom he had known in the days before he had become a padre, had come to visit the Mission. He had been a quiet young man in the old days. None had known much about him, but now he was a man of great influence and to stand well in his eyes meant much. When the monk had looked at his former friend and noted his air of quiet ease which spoke of prosperity, the old longing had come over him again, only infinitely stronger. He knew that out there in the world he could have been great, for he had been gifted by nature with a strange power over man. Even here in the monastery, this was shown by the devotion of the other monks to him. Wouldn ' t it be better for him to go away from the Mission? Better to commit one great sin, that he might do more good in the end ? It would be so easy to slip out and away some night, down the white road into the valley that lay so fair before him. Why not to-night? It seemed to him such a use- less life he was leading here, for deeds are so much stronger than prayers. Why should this other man who had given up noth- ing have everything ; while for him, for him who had given up everything, there was nothing but — he lifted his eyes blindly as if looking for help and saw with wonder and almost fear that the sun shining on the bars of his window had thrown over his cot and over his hands clasped in agony — The Shadow of the Cross. At the close of an autumn day an old white-haired