s. One day's ride
takes you from the Comstock into the very fastnesses of the mountains.
There were five of us in the party. We went to Lake Tahoe, crossed the
lake, and kept on to a spring and stream of water beyond, a few miles.
We had a camping outfit, and determined to sleep in no house while
absent. We spread our beds in a little grassy glen; to the east there was
no forest, but on the north and south the trees were immense, and to the
west, a mile or two away, the mountains rose abruptly to a height which
held the snows in their arms all the summer long.

"The good-night hoot of an owl or some other sound awakened me just as
the first streaks of the dawn began to flush the face of the east.

"I sat up, and while my friends were sleeping around me, I watched
the transformation scene of that dawn. There were not many birds to
awake--our altitude was too high for them--and so the panorama moved
on almost in silence. But it was the more impressive because of its
stillness. The east grew warmer and warmer, and the solemn night began
to spread her black wings, under which she had brooded the world, in
preparation for flight. The shadows began to retreat from where they had
shrouded the nearest trees. The air grew softer; from it a noiseless
breeze just touched the great arms of the pines as though to waken them
and gave to them an almost imperceptible motion. The stars and planets
began to faint in the heavens. As the waves of light increased in the
east, the snow on the high mountains to the west took on the hue of the
opal, and when the last shadow fled away and the sun flashed gloriously
above the eastern horizon, and another day was born, I knew just how
the ancient Fire Worshipers felt when they bowed their heads in reverence
before the splendors of the rising sun."

* * * * *

It was a good while ago that the events out of which this story was woven
transpired.

Now, at different seasons of the year, these families, with two
gray-haired old ladies and a gray-haired old man with a sailor's rolling
walk, may be seen, sometimes in London, sometimes on a fair estate in
Devonshire, sometimes in a stately home in the Miami Valley, and again
down on the Brazos in Texas.

Around and among them are playing broods of little Jacks, Jims, Toms,
Roses, Graces, and Margarets, and older children are away at school. All
the children call the old ladies "Grandma" and the gray man with the
sail