six-per-cent. grade to the crest of a ridge, rolled down into
another canon, climbed another ridge, and from the summit gazed down on
the San Gregorio in all the glory of her new April gown. Kay gasped
with the shock of such loveliness, and laid a detaining hand on the
chauffeur's arm. Instantly he stopped the car.

"I always get a kick out of the view from here, miss," he informed her.
"Can you beat it? You can't!"

The girl sat with parted lips.

"This--this is the California he loves," she thought.

She closed her eyes to keep back the tears, and the car rolled gently
down the grade into the valley. From the tonneau she could catch
snatches of the conversation between her father and the potato baron;
they were discussing the agricultural possibilities of the valley, and
she realized, with a little twinge of outrage, that its wonderful
pastoral beauty had been quite lost on them.

As they swept past the mission, Kay deliberately refrained from
ordering William to toss Don Mike's baggage off in front of the old
pile, for she knew now whither the latter was bound. She would save
him that added burden. Three miles from the mission, the road swung up
a gentle grade between two long rows of ancient and neglected palms.
The dead, withered fronds of a decade still clung to the corrugated
trunks. In the adjoining oaks vast flocks of crows perched and cawed
raucously. This avenue of palms presently debouched onto a little
mesa, oak-studded and covered with lush grass, which gave it a pretty,
parklike effect. In the center of this mesa stood the hacienda of the
Rancho Palomar.

Like all adobe dwellings of its class, it was not now, nor had it ever
been, architecturally beautiful. It was low, with a plain hip-roof
covered with ancient red tiles, many of which were missing. When the
house had first been built, it had been treated to a coat of excellent
plaster over the adobe, and this plaster had never been renewed. With
the attrition of time and the elements, it had worn away in spots,
through which the brown adobe bricks showed, like the bones in a
decaying corpse. The main building faced down the valley; from each
end out, an ell extended to form a patio in the rear, while a
seven-foot adobe wall, topped with short tile, connected with the ell
and formed a parallelogram.

"The old ruin doesn't look very impressive from the front, Kay," her
father explained, as he helped her out of the car, "but that wall