year round, and the herds of boys that gave them chase, especially of a
holiday. The Hill was crowned by a shanty that had seen its best days.
It had been the lookout from the time when the Forty-Niners began to
watch for fresh arrivals. From the observatory on its roof--a primitive
affair--all ships were sighted as they neared the Golden Gate, and the
glad news was telegraphed by a system of signals to the citizens below.
Not a day, not an hour, but watchful eyes sought that signal in the hope
of reading there the glad tidings that their ship had come.

The Hill sloped suddenly, from the signal station, on every side. On the
north and east it terminated abruptly in artificial cliffs of a dizzy
height. The rocks had been blasted from their bases to make room for a
steadily increasing commerce, and the débris was shipped away as ballast
in the vessels that were chartered to bring passengers and provision to
the coast, and found nothing in the line of freight to carry from it.

Upon those northern and eastern slopes of the Hill a few venturesome
cottagers had built their nests. The cottages were indeed nestlike: they
were so small, so compact, so cosy, so overrun with vines and flowering
foliage. Usually of one story, or of a story and a half at most, they
clung to the hillside facing the water, and looking out upon its noble
expanse from tiny balconies as delicate and dainty as toys. Their
garden-plots were set on end; they must needs adapt themselves to the
angle of demarkation; they loomed above their front-yards while their
back-yards lorded it over their roofs. Indeed they were usually
approached by ascending or descending stairways, or perchance by airy
bridges that spanned little gullies where ran rivulets in the winter
season; and they were a trifle dangerous to encounter after dark. There
were parrots on perches at the doorways of those cottages; and
song-birds in cages that were hidden away in vines. There were pet