rom the latter they learned much of the
government land and how to get it. The week flew by; each day Saxon
sighed a farewell of happiness to the sun; each morning they greeted its
return with laughter of joy in that another happy day had begun. They
made no plans, but fished, gathered mussels and abalones, and climbed
among the rocks as the moment moved them. The abalone meat they pounded
religiously to a verse of doggerel improvised by Saxon. Billy prospered.
Saxon had never seen him at so keen a pitch of health. As for herself,
she scarcely needed the little hand-mirror to know that never, since
she was a young girl, had there been such color in her cheeks, such
spontaneity of vivacity.

"It's the first time in my life I ever had real play," Billy said. "An'
you an' me never played at all all the time we was married. This beats
bein' any kind of a millionaire."

"No seven o'clock whistle," Saxon exulted. "I'd lie abed in the mornings
on purpose, only everything is too good not to be up. And now you
just play at chopping some firewood and catching a nice big perch, Man
Friday, if you expect to get any dinner."

Billy got up, hatchet in hand, from where he had been lying prone,
digging holes in the sand with his bare toes.

"But it ain't goin' to last," he said, with a deep sigh of regret. "The
rains'll come any time now. The good weather's hangin' on something
wonderful."

On Saturday morning, returning from his run out the south wall, he
missed Saxon. After helloing for her without result, he climbed to the
road. Half a mile away, he saw her astride an unsaddled, unbridled horse
that moved unwillingly, at a slow walk, across the pasture.

"Lucky for you it was an old mare that had been used to ridin'--see them
saddle marks," he grumbled, when she at last drew to a halt beside him
and allowed him to help her down.

"Oh, Billy," she sparkled, "I was never on a horse before. It was
glorious! I felt so helpless, too, and so brave."

"I'm proud of you, just the same," he said, in more grumbling tones than
before. "'Tain't every married women'd tackle a strange horse that way,
especially if she'd never ben on one. An' I ain't forgot that you're
goin' to have a saddle animal all to yourself some day--a regular Joe
dandy."

The Abalone Eaters, in two rigs and on a number of horses, descended
in force on Bierce's Cove. There were half a score of men and almost as
many women. All were young, between the ages of twen