handy if the big rains catch us.
An'--Oh! that's what I was drivin' at. He said he had a little shack he
lived in while the house was buildin'. The Iron Man's livin' in it now,
but he's goin' away to some Catholic college to study to be a priest,
an' Hall said the shack'd be ours as long as we wanted to use it. An' he
said I could do what the Iron Man was doin' to make a livin'. Hall was
kind of bashful when he was offerin' me work. Said it'd be only odd
jobs, but that we'd make out. I could help'm plant potatoes, he said;
an' he got half savage when he said I couldn't chop wood. That was his
job, he said; an' you could see he was actually jealous over it."

"And Mrs. Hall said just about the same to me, Billy. Carmel wouldn't be
so bad to pass the rainy season in. And then, too, you could go swimming
with Mr. Hazard."

"Seems as if we could settle down wherever we've a mind to," Billy
assented. "Carmel's the third place now that's offered. Well, after
this, no man need be afraid of makin' a go in the country."

"No good man," Saxon corrected.

"I guess you're right." Billy thought for a moment. "Just the same a
dub, too, has a better chance in the country than in the city."

"Who'd have ever thought that such fine people existed?" Saxon pondered.
"It's just wonderful, when you come to think of it."

"It's only what you'd expect from a rich poet that'd trip up a
foot-racer at an Irish picnic," Billy exposited.

"The only crowd such a guy'd run with would be like himself, or he'd
make a crowd that was. I wouldn't wonder that he'd make this crowd. Say,
he's got some sister, if anybody'd ride up on a sea-lion an' ask you.
She's got that Indian wrestlin' down pat, an' she's built for it. An'
say, ain't his wife a beaut?"

A little longer they lay in the warm sand. It was Billy who broke the
silence, and what he said seemed to proceed out of profound meditation.

"Say, Saxon, d'ye know I don't care if I never see movie pictures
again."

CHAPTER IX

Saxon and Billy were gone weeks on the trip south, but in the end they
came back to Carmel. They had stopped with Hafler, the poets in the
Marble House, which he had built with his own hands. This queer dwelling
was all in one room, built almost entirely of white marble. Hailer
cooked, as over a campfire, in the huge marble fireplace, which he used
in all ways as a kitchen. There were divers shelves of books, and the
massive furniture he had made from redwood, as