s refined and
gentle, a neglect that was graceful, met the eye; the sharp exterior and
reentering angles were softly rounded and obliterated by overgrowths
of semitropical creepers; the abatis was filled by a natural brake of
scrub-oak and manzanita; the clematis flung its long scaling ladders
over the escarpment, until Nature, slowly but securely investing
the doomed fortress, had lifted a victorious banner of palm from the
conquered summit of the citadel! Some strange convulsions of the earth
had completed the victory; the barbette guns of carved and antique
bronze commemorating fruitless and long-forgotten triumphs were
dismounted; one turned in the cheeks of its carriage had a trunnion
raised piteously in the air like an amputated stump; another, sinking
through its rotting chassis, had buried itself to its chase in the
crumbling adobe wall. But above and beyond this gentle chaos of defense
stretched the real ramparts and escarpments of Todos Santos--the
impenetrable and unassailable fog! Corroding its brass and iron with
saline breath, rotting its wood with unending shadow, sapping its
adobe walls with perpetual moisture, and nourishing the obliterating
vegetation with its quickening blood, as if laughing to scorn the puny
embattlements of men--it still bent around the crumbling ruins the
tender grace of an invisible but all-encompassing arm.

Senor Perkins, who had acted as cicerone to the party, pointed out these
various mutations with no change from his usual optimism.

"Protected by their peculiar isolation during the late war, there was
no necessity for any real fortification of the place. Nevertheless, it
affords some occupation and position for our kind friend, Don Miguel,
and so serves a beneficial purpose. This little gun," he continued,
stopping to attentively examine a small but beautifully carved bronze
six-pounder, which showed indications of better care than the others,
"seems to be the saluting-gun Don Miguel spoke of. For the last fifty
years it has spoken only the language of politeness and courtesy, and
yet through want of care the tampion, as you see, has become swollen and
choked in its mouth."

"How true in a larger sense," murmured Mrs. Markham, "the habit of
courtesy alone preserves the fluency of the heart."

"I know you two are saying something very clever," said Mrs. Brimmer,
whose small French slippers and silk stockings were beginning to show
their inadequacy to a twilight ramble in