, plenty of sunshine,
and cold enough at night to need blankets, and not only pines but plenty
of other kinds of trees, with open spaces to pasture Billy's horses
and cattle, and deer and rabbits for him to shoot, and lots and lots
of redwood trees, and... and... well, and no fog," Saxon concluded the
description of the farm she and Billy sought.

Mark Hall laughed delightedly.

"And nightingales roosting in all the trees," he cried; "flowers that
neither fail nor fade, bees without stings, honey dew every morning,
showers of manna betweenwhiles, fountains of youth and quarries of
philosopher's stones--why, I know the very place. Let me show you."

She waited while he pored over road-maps of the state. Failing in them,
he got out a big atlas, and, though all the countries of the world were
in it, he could not find what he was after.

"Never mind," he said. "Come over to-night and I'll be able to show
you."

That evening he led her out on the veranda to the telescope, and she
found herself looking through it at the full moon.

"Somewhere up there in some valley you'll find that farm," he teased.

Mrs. Hall looked inquiringly at them as they returned inside.

"I've been showing her a valley in the moon where she expects to go
farming," he laughed.

"We started out prepared to go any distance," Saxon said. "And if it's
to the moon, I expect we can make it."

"But my dear child, you can't expect to find such a paradise on the
earth," Hall continued. "For instance, you can't have redwoods without
fog. They go together. The redwoods grow only in the fog belt."

Saxon debated a while.

"Well, we could put up with a little fog," she conceded, "--almost
anything to have redwoods. I don't know what a quarry of philosopher's
stones is like, but if it's anything like Mr. Hafler's marble quarry,
and there's a railroad handy, I guess we could manage to worry along.
And you don't have to go to the moon for honey dew. They scrape it off
of the leaves of the bushes up in Nevada County. I know that for a fact,
because my father told my mother about it, and she told me."

A little later in the evening, the subject of farming having remained
uppermost, Hall swept off into a diatribe against the "gambler's
paradise," which was his epithet for the United States.

"When you think of the glorious chance," he said. "A new country,
bounded by the oceans, situated just right in latitude, with the richest
land and vastest natural