"Gooda-nighta," repeated the stranger.

"Oh, good-night," returned Clarence. They passed him. Their spurs
tinkled twice or thrice, their mustangs sprang forward, and the next
moment the loose folds of their serapes were fluttering at their sides
like wings in their flight.




CHAPTER IV.


After the chill of a dewless night the morning sun was apt to look
ardently upon the Robles Rancho, if so strong an expression could
describe the dry, oven-like heat of a Californian coast-range valley.
Before ten o'clock the adobe wall of the patio was warm enough to permit
lingering vacqueros and idle peons to lean against it, and the exposed
annexe was filled with sharp, resinous odors from the oozing sap of
unseasoned "redwood" boards, warped and drying in the hot sunshine. Even
at that early hour the climbing Castilian roses were drooping against
the wooden columns of the new veranda, scarcely older than themselves,
and mingling an already faded spice with the aroma of baking wood and
the more material fragrance of steaming coffee, that seemed dominant
everywhere.

In fact, the pretty breakfast-room, whose three broad windows, always
open to the veranda, gave an al fresco effect to every meal, was a
pathetic endeavor of the Southern-bred Peyton to emulate the soft,