the sand-hill, and connected by a half-dozen distinct zigzag
flights of wooden staircase. Stimulated, however, by the thought
that the view from the top would be a fine one, and that existence
there would have all the quaint originality of Robinson Crusoe's
tree-dwelling, Mr. Bly began cheerfully to mount the steps. It
should be premised that, although a recently appointed clerk in a
large banking house, Mr. Bly was somewhat youthful and imaginative,
and regarded the ascent as part of that "Excelsior" climbing
pointed out by a great poet as a praiseworthy function of ambitious
youth.

Reaching at last the level of the veranda, he turned to the view.
The distant wooded shore of Contra Costa, the tossing white-caps
and dancing sails of the bay between, and the foreground at his
feet of wharves and piers, with their reed-like jungles of masts
and cordage, made up a bright, if somewhat material, picture. To
his right rose the crest of the hill, historic and memorable as the
site of the old semaphoric telegraph, the tossing of whose gaunt
arms formerly thrilled the citizens with tidings from the sea.
Turning to the house, he recognized the prevailing style of light
cottage architecture, although incongruously confined to narrow
building plots and the civic regularity of a precise street
frontage. Thus a dozen other villas, formerly scattered over the
slope, had been laboriously displaced and moved to the rigorous
parade line drawn by the street surveyor, no matter how irregular
and independent their design and structure. Happily, the few
scrub-oaks and low bushes which formed the scant vegetation of this
vast sand dune offered no obstacle and suggested no incongruity.
Beside the house before which Mr. Bly now stood, a prolific Madeira
vine, quickened by the six months' sunshine, had alone survived the