d both ends of it. I'll show you
construction as well as destruction. When you find a farm doomed to be
gutted anyway, why jump in and do it yourself."

"Yes, and he mortgaged himself to the eyes," laughed Mrs. Hastings,
"to keep five hundred acres of woods out of the hands of the charcoal
burners."

Ahead, on the left bank of the Sacramento, just at the fading end of
the Montezuma Hills, Rio Vista appeared. The Roamer slipped through the
smooth water, past steamboat wharves, landing stages, and warehouses.
The two Japanese went for'ard on deck. At command of Hastings, the jib
ran down, and he shot the Roomer into the wind, losing way, until he
called, "Let go the hook!" The anchor went down, and the yacht swung to
it, so close to shore that the skiff lay under overhanging willows.

"Farther up the river we tie to the bank," Mrs. Hastings said, "so that
when you wake in the morning you find the branches of trees sticking
down into the cabin."

"Ooh!" Saxon murmured, pointing to a lump on her wrist. "Look at that. A
mosquito."

"Pretty early for them," Hastings said. "But later on they're terrible.
I've seen them so thick I couldn't back the jib against them."

Saxon was not nautical enough to appreciate his hyperbole, though Billy
grinned.

"There are no mosquitoes in the valley of the moon," she said.

"No, never," said Mrs. Hastings, whose husband began immediately to
regret the smallness of the cabin which prevented him from offering
sleeping accommodations.

An automobile bumped along on top of the levee, and the young boys and
girls in it cried, "Oh, you kid!" to Saxon and Billy, and Hastings, who
was rowing them ashore in the skiff. Hastings called, "Oh, you kid!"
back to them; and Saxon, pleasuring in the boyishness of his sunburned
face, was reminded of the boyishness of Mark Hall and his Carmel crowd.

CHAPTER XII

Crossing the Sacramento on an old-fashioned ferry a short distance above
Rio Vista, Saxon and Billy entered the river country. From the top
of the levee she got her revelation. Beneath, lower than the river,
stretched broad, flat land, far as the eye could see. Roads ran in
every direction, and she saw countless farmhouses of which she had never
dreamed when sailing on the lonely river a few feet the other side of
the willowy fringe.

Three weeks they spent among the rich farm islands, which heaped up
levees and pumped day and night to keep afloat. It was a monotonous
land, with a