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Updated: May 12, 2025
But to-night Father Zalvidea decided to put the box in a safer place. Going to the window, and drawing aside the curtain, he opened it. Listening intently for a moment, and hearing nothing, he returned to the table, lighted a small dark lantern, extinguished the candle, and taking up the box after closing and locking it, he left the room, and walked softly through the passage out into the patio.
At this time, and since 1806, Padre José María Zalvidea, that strict martinet of padres, was in charge, and he brought the Mission up to its highest state of efficiency. He it was who began the erection of the stone church that now remains, and the whole precinct, during his rule, rang with the busy hammer, clatter, chatter, and movement of a large number of active workers.
But Dolores's father was rich, and looked with disfavor upon poor Jose Zalvidea, and at length forced his daughter to marry a suitor he had chosen for her a man three times her age, but with a fortune equal to that which was to be hers at her father's death; for she was his only child.
On the day of Diego's departure, Father Zalvidea had made her relate to him every detail of her episode in the canyon. He feared the worst, but made light of it to her. At the same time he told her she might stay at the mission if she feared to be alone, until such time as the danger should be past.
It was not as though he were going to a poor and mean mission, as were some of those in Nueva California. Father Zalvidea had been more than once to San Juan Capistrano, fifty miles south of San Gabriel, and knew well that it was large, although not as rich as it had been at one time; but his was the nature of the cat, which always returns to its old home.
It was the habit of Padre Zalvidea to send certain of his most trusted neophytes over to the islands of San Clemente and Catalina with a "bolt" or two of woven serge, made at the Mission San Gabriel, to exchange with the island Indians for their soapstone cooking vessels, mortars, etc. These traders embarked from a point where Redondo now is, and started always at midnight.
A week later saw him leaving the mission with his personal belongings, the most valuable of which appeared to be a heavy wooden box, about the size and shape of a brick, and which he would not allow out of his own hands, but carried with him, fastened to the pommel of his saddle. What was in this box no one knew but the Father himself. Behold Father Zalvidea at Mission San Juan Capistrano!
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