rs had gone away into the world. The house, furnished
just as they had left it, was for sale, but the years went by, and no
buyer appeared; and meantime the garden flowers ran wild, the lawns
were dry and brown, and the fence was smothered in coarse rose vines
and rampant wild blackberry vines. Dry grass and yarrow and hollow
milkweed grew high in the gateways, and when the village children went
through them to prowl, as children love to prowl, about the neglected
house and orchard, they left long, dusty wakes in the crushed weeds.
Further up than the children usually ventured, there was an old bridge
across the Lobos, Captain Holly's private road to the mill town; but it
was boarded across now, and hundreds of chipmunks nested in it, and
whisked about it undisturbed. The great stables and barns stood empty;
the fountains were long gone dry. Only the orchard continued to bear
heavily.

The Holly estate ran up into the hill behind it, one of the wooded
foothills that encircled all Santa Paloma, as they encircle so many
California towns. Already turning brown, and crowned with dense, low
groves of oak, and bay, and madrona trees, they shut off the world
outside; although sometimes on a still day the solemn booming of the
ocean could be heard beyond them, and a hundred times a year the
Pacific fogs came creeping over them long before dawn, and Santa Paloma
awakened in an enveloping cloud of soft mist. Here and there the slopes
of these hills were checkered with the sharp oblongs and angles of
young vineyards, and hidden by the thickening green of peach and apple
orchards. A few low, brown dairy ranch-houses were perched high on the
ridges; the red-brown moving stream of the cattle home-coming in
mid-afternoon could be seen from the village on a clear day. And over
hill and valley, on this wonderful afternoon in late spring, the most
generous sunlight in the world lay warm and golden, and across them the
shadows of high clouds--for there had been rain in the night--traveled
slowly.

"I declare," said little Mrs. Carew lazily, "I could go to sleep!"

CHAPTER II

A moment later when a tall man came up the path and dropped on the top
porch step with an air of being entirely at home, Mrs. Carew was still
dreaming, half-awake and half-asleep.

"Hello, Jeanette!" said the newcomer. "What's new with thee, coz?"

"Don't smoke there, Barry, and get things mussy!" said Mrs. Carew in
return, smiling to soften the command,