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It was the second day after Pesquiera's challenge that his rival was called to Santa Fé, the capital of the State, to hold a conference with his lawyers about the progress of the suit of ouster against those living on the Moreño grant Gordon kne acute was the feeling of the residents of the valley against him The Corbetts, whose hoinal Valdés or Moreño grant, reported daily to him whatever ca a the Mexicans that their champion, Doña Maria as they called her, would be worsted in the courts if the issue ever came to final trial

To live under the constant menace of an attack from ambush is a strain upon the best of nerves Dick and his friend Davis rode out of the valley to e with a very sensible relief For a few days, anyhow, they would be back where they could see the old Stars and Stripes flutter, where feudal retainers and sprouts of Spanish aristocracy were not lying in ith fiery zeal to destroy the American interloper

They reached the little city late, but soon after sunup Gordon rose, took a bath, dressed, and strolled out into the quaint old tohich lays clai the earliest permanent European settlement in the country It was his first visit to the place, and as he poked his nose into out of the way corners Dick found every step of his walk interesting

Through narroisted streets he sauntered, along unpaved roads bounded by century-old adobe houses His walk took hiuel Church, said to be the oldest in Aeraniu the door of the church with one of a bunch of large keys which hung suspended froh the usual patter of the guide with the facility of long practice

The church was built, he said, in 1540, though Bandelier inaccurately sets the date much later The roof was destroyed by the Pueblo Indians in 1680 during an attack upon the settlee within the mission walls These are from three to five feet thick The arrows of the natives poured through the s The señor could still see the holes in the pictures, could he not? Penuelo restored the church in 1710, as could be read by the inscription carved upon the gallery beam It would no doubt interest the señor to know that one of the paintings was by Cimabue, done in 1287, and that the seven hundred pound bell was cast in Spain during the year 1356 and had been dragged a thousand miles across the deserts of the neorld by the devoted pioneer priests who carried the Cross to the siion