ng season.

"It is even worse than I thought," grumbled Gwynne. "I wonder if Tom
Colton could be induced to put in a bill at the next legislature. It
would be a good opportunity for him to make a promise with some hope of
fulfilment."

"The trouble is the farmers don't care," said Isabel, shrugging her
shoulders. "There are only a few of them in the mountains and they have
jogged up and down these bad roads so many years that they accept them
as a matter of course. I don't know that I mind this, myself. It
certainly is more picturesque than if it had become popular with
automobilists of much influence in legislative councils."

"At present you have to ride with your eyes on the road to make sure it
is there."

"We can take turns, and it certainly is beautiful."

"Oh, beautiful!"

But when the road improved for quite half a mile, he too gave himself up
to the sensation of being lost in the heart of a mountain. The valley
was far behind them and out of sight. There were groves of ancient oaks
in the hollows, turbulent streams foaming over masses of rocks that had
fallen from the cliffs above. Sometimes they looked down a thousand
sheer feet into a bit of wilderness as unbroken as if on each side of
the range man had not snatched the fertile lands from the savage a
century before.

The air grew colder and Isabel put on her covert coat. But it was a
clear sparkling day, and when they reached the summit they could see San
Francisco, a smoky mirage forty miles to the south, the ferry-boats
crawling like beetles across the bay, the surf of the ocean on the rocks
beyond the Golden Gate, a vast sweep of gray ocean; and the bulk of
Tamalpais, that from this high point looked as if it had heaved itself
free of the mass of mountains and forests about it. Two thousand feet
below, their own valley, with its marsh and fertile ranches, looked like
a dark ribbon between the hills, Rosewater like a toy village.

They trotted their horses for a few moments on the level and then rode
down into the little valley where an unsuccessful farmer of solitary
habit had some time since rented the few acres of land surrounding
Mountain House, with the understanding that the best rooms were to be at
the disposal of the lord of Lumalitas during the fishing and hunting
seasons. The log-house, or "camp," was very solid and had been built by
the first James Otis, who was a mighty hunter; and the salmon-fishing in
the creek, at present containin