Shrugging her shoulders, Mrs. Burton smiled a little ruefully.

"You are determined to dwell upon our great age tonight, aren't you, Mollie mine? Please remember that your daughter Peggy bestowed her affections upon Ralph Marshall last summer when we were at the Grand Canyon and not in southern California. Yet I do feel that with the possibility of young soldiers and officers turning up at any moment in our midst, you and I will have to be unusually vigilant chaperons.

"But do let us go now and find what has become of the girls. We have had a long journey and should soon be in bed."

Mrs. Burton slipped her arm inside her sister's and drew her away from the old hotel garden across the gleaming road.

To the right of them, bathed in the half-tropic moonlight, was the old Spanish mission of San Juan Capistrano, named in honor of a warrior-saint of the Crusades. It was the loveliest place in all California.

As they walked slowly on Mrs. Burton recited in an undertone, and with the emotional sweetness which had captivated countless audiences and which never failed to thrill her sister:

"Up from the south slow filed a train,

Priests and soldiers of old Spain,

Who through the sunlit country wound

With cross and lance, intent to found

A mission in that wild to John,

Soldier saint of Capistran."

They stopped a moment as if to let the beauty sink deep, and then the two women entered the gate of the old mission grounds.

Early in the afternoon the Sunrise Camp Fire party had arrived at the little half-foreign town of Capistrano, set midway, like a link with the past, between the two modern cities of San Diego and Los Angeles. For hours they had been exploring the old mission. Then, after dinner, the Camp Fire girls, with Dan and Billy Webster to act as escorts had asked the privilege of returning to remain in the old mission garden until bedtime.

Tonight, to Mrs. Burton's eyes at least, the 

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