not evade the ever watchful but cold attention that seemed to pursue them.  The children of the Presidio school smirched their copybooks under the awful supervision, and poor Paquita, the prize pupil, failed utterly in that marvelous upstroke when her patron stood beside her.  Gradually distrust, suspicion, self-accusation, and timidity took the place of trust, confidence, and security throughout San Carlos.  Whenever the Right Eye of the Commander fell, a shadow fell with it.

Nor was Salvatierra entirely free from the baleful influence of his miraculous acquisition.  Unconscious of its effect upon others, he only saw in their actions evidence of certain things that the crafty Peleg had hinted on that eventful New Year’s eve.  His most trusty retainers stammered, blushed, and faltered before him.  Self-accusations, confessions of minor faults and delinquencies, or extravagant excuses and apologies met his mildest inquiries.  The very children that he loved—­his pet pupil, Paquita—­seemed to be conscious of some hidden sin.  The result of this constant irritation showed itself more plainly.  For the first half-year the Commander’s voice and eye were at variance.  He was still kind, tender, and thoughtful in speech.  Gradually, however, his voice took upon itself the hardness of his glance and its skeptical, impassive quality, and as the year again neared its close it was plain that the Commander had fitted himself to the eye, and not the eye to the Commander.

It may be surmised that these changes did not escape the watchful solicitude of the Fathers.  Indeed, the few who were first to ascribe the right eye of Salvatierra to miraculous origin and the special grace of the blessed San Carlos, now talked openly of witchcraft and the agency of Luzbel, the evil one.  It would have fared ill with Hermenegildo Salvatierra had he been aught but Commander or amenable to local authority.  But the reverend father, Friar Manuel de Cortes, had no power over the political executive, and all attempts at spiritual advice failed signally.  He retired baffled and confused from his first interview with the Commander, who seemed now to take a grim satisfaction in the fateful power of his glance.  The holy Father contradicted himself, exposed the fallacies of his own arguments, and even, it is asserted, committed himself to several undoubted heresies.  When the Commander stood up at mass, if the officiating priest caught that skeptical and searching eye, the service was inevitably ruined.  Even the power of the Holy Church seemed to be lost, and the last hold upon the affections of the people and the good order of the settlement departed from San Carlos.

As the long dry summer passed, the low hills that surrounded the white walls of the Presidio grew more and more to resemble in hue the leathern jacket of the Commander, and Nature herself seemed to have borrowed his dry, hard glare.  The earth was cracked and seamed with drought; a blight had fallen upon the orchards and vineyards, and the rain, long-delayed and ardently prayed for, came not.  The sky was as tearless as the right eye of the Commander.  Murmurs of discontent, insubordination, and plotting among the Indians reached his ears; he only set his teeth the more firmly, tightened the knot of his black-silk handkerchief, and looked up his Toledo.