pegging away at your sand lots. Some day you'll be a millionaire."

"But half of these people are homeless. And every day they come faster.
In our neighborhood are a dozen ramshackle tents where these poor devils
keep 'bachelors' hall' with little more than a skillet and a coffee pot.
They call it 'ranching.'" He laughed. "What would our old land barons
have thought of a rancho four by six feet, which the first of our trade
winds will blow into the bay?"

"The Lord," said Lick, devoutly, "tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.
And also to the homeless squatter on our sandy shores."

"I hope you're right," responded Stanley. "It does me good to hear
someone speak of God in this godless place. It is full of thieves and
cut-throats; they've a settlement at the base of the hill overlooking
Clark's Point. No man's life is safe, they tell me, over there."

Lick frowned. "They call it Sydney Town because so many Australian
convicts have settled in it. Some day we'll form a citizens' committee
and run them off."

"Which reminds me," Lick retorted, "that McTurpin came to town this
morning. With a veiled woman ... or girl. She looks little more than
a child."

Adrian surveyed the other, startled. "Child?" His mind was full of vague
suspicions.

"Well, she didn't weigh more than a hundred. Yes, they came--both on one
horse, and the fellow's companion none too well pleased, I should say.
Frightened, perhaps, though why she should be is a puzzle." Lick
shrugged his shoulders.

"Has he taken the girl to his--the ranch?" asked Adrian.

"Don't know. I reckon not," Lick answered. "They ate at the City Hotel.
He'd a bag full of dust, so he'll gamble and guzzle till morning most
likely." He regarded his friend keenly, a trifle uneasily. "Come, Adrian
... I'll walk past your door with you."

"I'm not going home just yet, thanks," Stanley's tone was nervously
evasive.

"Well, good-night, then," said the other with reluctance. He turned
south on Kearny street toward his home. Stanley, looking after him,
stood for a moment as if undetermined. Then he took his way across the
Plaza toward the City Hotel.

In the bar, a long and low-ceiling room, talk buzzed and smoke from many
pipes made a bluish, acrid fog through which, Adrian, standing in the
doorway, saw, imperfectly, a long line of men at the bar. Others sat at
tables playing poker and drinking incessantly, men in red-flannel
shirts, blue denim trousers tucked into high, wrinkl