owing a stream that
sang under maples and alders. The sunset fires, refracted from the
cloud-driftage of the autumn sky, bathed the canyon with crimson,
in which ruddy-limbed madronos and wine-wooded manzanitas burned and
smoldered. The air was aromatic with laurel. Wild grape vines bridged
the stream from tree to tree. Oaks of many sorts were veiled in lacy
Spanish moss. Ferns and brakes grew lush beside the stream. From
somewhere came the plaint of a mourning dove. Fifty feet above the
ground, almost over their heads, a Douglas squirrel crossed the road--a
flash of gray between two trees; and they marked the continuance of its
aerial passage by the bending of the boughs.

"I've got a hunch," said Billy.

"Let me say it first," Saxon begged.

He waited, his eyes on her face as she gazed about her in rapture.

"We've found our valley," she whispered. "Was that it?"

He nodded, but checked speech at sight of a small boy driving a cow
up the road, a preposterously big shotgun in one hand, in the other as
preposterously big a jackrabbit. "How far to Glen Ellen?" Billy asked.

"Mile an' a half," was the answer.

"What creek is this?" inquired Saxon.

"Wild Water. It empties into Sonoma Creek half a mile down."

"Trout?"--this from Billy.

"If you know how to catch 'em," grinned the boy.

"Deer up the mountain?"

"It ain't open season," the boy evaded.

"I guess you never shot a deer," Billy slyly baited, and was rewarded
with:

"I got the horns to show."

"Deer shed their horns," Billy teased on. "Anybody can find 'em."

"I got the meat on mine. It ain't dry yet--"

The boy broke off, gazing with shocked eyes into the pit Billy had dug
for him.

"It's all right, sonny," Billy laughed, as he drove on. "I ain't the
game warden. I 'm buyin' horses."

More leaping tree squirrels, more ruddy madronos and majestic oaks, more
fairy circles of redwoods, and, still beside the singing stream, they
passed a gate by the roadside. Before it stood a rural mail box, on
which was lettered "Edmund Hale." Standing under the rustic arch,
leaning upon the gate, a man and woman composed a pieture so arresting
and beautiful that Saxon caught her breath. They were side by side, the
delicate hand of the woman curled in the hand of the man, which looked
as if made to confer benedictions. His face bore out this impression--a
beautiful-browed countenance, with large, benevolent gray eyes under a
wealth of white hair that shon