" as well as of the plots of the English,
and the future of my beloved California was dark enough to cast my life
in shadow.

One day, however, I broke away. Gentle breezes from the purple canons
floated by me laden with the scent of redwoods, and by the roadside the
clumps of laurel gave out their vigourous perfume as their branches were
stirred; then in the quietness of the air between these breaths, the
steaming earth yielded to my grateful sense its own peculiar and rich
odour. Few wild flowers were out, but on the gay manzanitas hung
millions of little pink and white bells, so delicate that they seemed
more like the bloom of some rare exotic than the winter gift of so hardy
and rugged a shrub.

I did not stop to rest until I had reached a high point of the path
where a sudden turn along the edge of a precipice threw open the whole
view of the valley. It was yet early morning, and I watched the floating
bits of mist drifting above the dark canons, canons so narrow that the
sun never reached their beds. Through clumps of leafless oaks the noisy
arroyo could be seen hidden here and there by the thick foliage of some
glistening madrono, with its red branches, or by dark, lustrous laurels.
Bunches of mistletoe upon the dry branches of the oaks smiled fresh and
green from their stolen perches like little oases in a desert of gray.
Sometimes an early bee flew by me with hungry humming, and the sharp
call of the jay would rise from the depths to mingle with the steady
sighing of the wind through the giant redwoods. I had taken my favourite
little mare, who never needed the bridle, being guided by my voice or
slightest motion, and as I sat with arms akimbo under my poncho I felt
as I were free again from all the trouble of life and could not but
halloa for very exuberance of joy. Presently there came an answer from
the cliffs above, and looking up I beheld Ysidria, mounted on the black
horse I had some months before given to Madre Moreno, to be used by her
niece, who was not so strong as she had been, and unable to walk so much
as formerly.

"Wait, and I will come down," she called and disappeared among the
shrubs.

Ysidria was much changed, she had grown thin and nervous during the
year; yet, failing as she did in body, her eyes seemed every day to
become more beautiful, as if they absorbed all her life. With the
growing brilliancy of her eyes, increased also their defective sight,
and she was quite unable to read, ye