calico, falling in a straight line from the neck; eagle-beaked old
crones with black shawls over their heads; children wearing only a smock
twisted about their little waists and tied in a knot behind; a few
American residents, glancing triumphantly at each other; caballeros,
gay in the silken attire of summer, sitting in angry disdain upon their
plunging, superbly trapped horses; last of all, the elegant women in
their lace mantillas and flowered rebosas, weeping and clinging to each
other. Few gave ear to the reading of Sloat's proclamation.

Benicia, the daughter of Doña Eustaquia, raised her clasped hands, the
tears streaming from her eyes. "Oh, these Americans! How I hate them!"
she cried, a reflection of her mother's violent spirit on her sweet
face.

Doña Eustaquia caught the girl's hands and flung herself upon her neck.
"Ay! California! California!" she cried wildly. "My country is flung to
its knees in the dirt."

A rose from the upper corridor of the Custom-house struck her daughter
full in the face.


II

The same afternoon Benicia ran into the sala where her mother was lying
on a sofa, and exclaimed excitedly: "My mother! My mother! It is not
so bad. The Americans are not so wicked as we have thought. The
proclamation of the Commodore Sloat has been pasted on all the walls of
the town and promises that our grants shall be secured to us under the
new government, that we shall elect our own alcaldes, that we shall