ard the north, bear their rich gifts of longed-for rain to the brown
meadows, filling the heavens from east to west with graceful lines and
swelling bosoms, save, just at the horizon where the sun descended
paints a broad, lurid streak of crimson, glowing amid the deepening
shadows, a coal in dead, gray ashes.

Darker grows the streak, as a stain of blood, while the clouds about it
now assume a purple tinge with gloomier shadings; suddenly in the centre
of the lurid field starts out as if that moment born to Earth, with
clear, silver light, the Evening Star. The colour slowly fades till all
is dead and ashy, and the silver star drops down below the purpled
hills, leaving for a moment a soft, trembling twilight; the dense clouds
then rolling in between, blot out the last sign of departed day and
night is come.

It was Christmas Eve. The winter was late, and rain had fallen during
the last few weeks only, so that the fields were just assuming the fresh
pea-green colour of their new life, and the long, dead grass still
standing above the recent growth gave that odd smokey appearance to the
hills and mesas, so familiar to all us Californians also in our olive
groves. The night, however, was dark and nothing of hills, or mesas, or
gray fields, could be seen as the hurrying bands of clouds joined
together in one great company, overspreading the whole sky and clothing
all in a dreary shroud of blackness.

The little arroyo, which was dry in the summertime, had now risen,
increased by last week's tribute to be quite a large stream, tearing
noisely among the rocks and over its old courses, giving friendly
greetings of recognition to the old water-marks and dashing a playful
wave now and then about the worn roots of the enormous laurel tree whose
branches reached high above and far around.

Beneath the tree's protecting limbs, a little cabin, of roughest
workmanship, found shelter from the wind, or shade from the intense heat
of summer; the house was built almost entirely of logs, excepting the
upper part where boards had been used and through which were cut the
three windows which served to light the single room it contained.

This Christmas Eve, only the dark form of the cabin was to be seen with
the tall adobe chimney built up the outside; the smoke blew, beaten here
and there, about the roof till it finally disappeared, a cloud of
ghosts, among the swaying branches of the laurel tree.

By day in the sunshine, no pleasan