e like spun glass. He was fair and large;
the little woman beside him was daintily wrought. She was saffron-brown,
as a woman of the white race can well be, with smiling eyes of bluest
blue. In quaint sage-green draperies, she seemed a flower, with
her small vivid face irresistibly reminding Saxon of a springtime
wake-robin.

Perhaps the picture made by Saxon and Billy was equally arresting and
beautiful, as they drove down through the golden end of day. The two
couples had eyes only for each other. The little woman beamed joyously.
The man's face glowed into the benediction that had trembled there.
To Saxon, like the field up the mountain, like the mountain itself, it
seemed that she had always known this adorable pair. She knew that she
loved them.

"How d'ye do," said Billy.

"You blessed children," said the man. "I wonder if you know how dear you
look sitting there."

That was all. The wagon had passed by, rustling down the road, which was
carpeted with fallen leaves of maple, oak, and alder. Then they came to
the meeting of the two creeks.

"Oh, what a place for a home," Saxon cried, pointing across Wild Water.
"See, Billy, on that bench there above the meadow."

"It's a rich bottom, Saxon; and so is the bench rich. Look at the big
trees on it. An' they's sure to be springs."

"Drive over," she said.

Forsaking the main road, they crossed Wild Water on a narrow bridge
and continued along an ancient, rutted road that ran beside an equally
ancient worm-fence of split redwood rails. They came to a gate, open and
off its hinges, through which the road led out on the bench.

"This is it--I know it," Saxon said with conviction. "Drive in, Billy."

A small, whitewashed farmhouse with broken windows showed through the
trees.

"Talk about your madronos--"

Billy pointed to the father of all madronos, six feet in diameter at its
base, sturdy and sound, which stood before the house.

They spoke in low tones as they passed around the house under great
oak trees and came to a stop before a small barn. They did not wait to
unharness. Tying the horses, they started to explore. The pitch from
the bench to the meadow was steep yet thickly wooded with oaks and
manzanita. As they crashed through the underbrush they startled a score
of quail into flight.

"How about game?" Saxon queried.

Billy grinned, and fell to examining a spring which bubbled a clear
stream into the meadow. Here the ground was sunbaked and wid