to Donald, calling his attention
to a lawn almost covered with red-winged blackbirds. "Four hundred and
twenty might be baked in that pie," she laughed.

Then a subtle change began to creep over the world. The sun peered over
the mountains inquiringly, a timid young thing, as if she were asking
what degree of light and warmth they would like for the day. A new
brilliancy tinged every flower face in this light, a throbbing ecstasy
mellowed every bird note; the orchards dropped farther apart, meadows
filled with grazing cattle flashed past them, the earthy scent of
freshly turned fields mingled with flower perfume, and on their right
came drifting in a cool salt breath from the sea. At mid-forenoon, as
they neared Laguna, they ran past great hills, untouched since the days
when David cried: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence
cometh my help." At one particularly beautiful range, draped with the
flowing emerald of spring, decorated with beds of gold poppy, set with
flowering madrona and manzanita, with the gold of yellow monkey flower
or the rich red of the related species, with specimens of lupin growing
in small trees, here and there adventurous streams singing and flashing
their unexpected way to the mother breast of the waiting ocean very
near to the road which at one surprising turn carried them to the
never-ending wonder of the troubled sea, they drove as slowly as
the Bear Cat would consent to travel, so that they might study great
boulders, huge as many of the buildings they had passed, their faces
scarred by the wrack of ages. Studying their ancient records one
could see that they had been familiar with the star that rested over
Bethlehem. On their faces had shone the same moon that opened the
highways Journeying into Damascus. They had stood the storms that had
beaten upon the world since the days when the floods subsided, the
land lifted above the face of the waters in gigantic upheavals that had
ripped the surface of the globe from north to south and forced up the
hills, the foothills, and the mountains of the Coast Range. They had
been born then, they had first seen the light of day, in glowing,
molten, red-hot, high-piled streams of lava that had gushed forth in
that awful evolution of birth.

Sometimes Linda stopped the car, they left it, and climbed over the
faces of these mighty upheavals. Once Linda reached her hand to Donald
and cried, half laughingly, half in tense earnest: "Oh, kid, w