children love to prowl, about the neglected house and orchard, they
left long, dusty wakes in the crushed weeds. Further up than the
children usually ventured, there was an old bridge across the Lobos,
Captain Holly's private road to the mill town; but it was boarded
across now, and hundreds of chipmunks nested in it, and whisked
about it undisturbed. The great stables and barns stood empty; the
fountains were long gone dry. Only the orchard continued to bear
heavily.

The Holly estate ran up into the hill behind it, one of the wooded
foothills that encircled all Santa Paloma, as they encircle so many
California towns. Already turning brown, and crowned with dense, low
groves of oak, and bay, and madrona trees, they shut off the world
outside; although sometimes on a still day the solemn booming of the
ocean could be heard beyond them, and a hundred times a year the
Pacific fogs came creeping over them long before dawn, and Santa
Paloma awakened in an enveloping cloud of soft mist. Here and there
the slopes of these hills were checkered with the sharp oblongs and
angles of young vineyards, and hidden by the thickening green of
peach and apple orchards. A few low, brown dairy ranch-houses were
perched high on the ridges; the red-brown moving stream of the
cattle home-coming in mid-afternoon could be seen from the village
on a clear day. And over hill and valley, on this wonderful
afternoon in late spring, the most generous sunlight in the world
lay warm and golden, and across them the shadows of high clouds--for
there had been rain in the night--traveled slowly.

"I declare," said little Mrs. Carew lazily, "I could go to sleep!"