lain.
It was thickly bordered with willows and alders, that made an arbored
and feasible path through the dense woods and undergrowth. He
continued along it as if aimlessly; stopping from time to time to look
at different objects in a dull mechanical fashion, as if rather to
prolong his useless hours, than from any curious instinct, and to
occasionally dip in the unfrequent pools of water the few crusts of
bread he had taken from his pocket. Even this appeared to be suggested
more by coincidence of material in the bread and water, than from the
promptings of hunger. At last he reached a cup-like hollow in the
hills lined with wild clover and thick with resinous odors. Here he
crept under a manzanita-bush and disposed himself to sleep. The act
showed he was already familiar with the local habits of his class, who
used the unfailing dry starlit nights for their wanderings, and spent
the hours of glaring sunshine asleep or resting in some wayside shadow.

Meanwhile the light quickened, and gradually disclosed the form and
outline of the adjacent domain. An avenue cut through a park-like
wood, carefully cleared of the undergrowth of gigantic ferns peculiar
to the locality, led to the entrance of the canada. Here began a vast
terrace of lawn, broken up by enormous bouquets of flower-beds
bewildering in color and profusion, from which again rose the flowering
vines and trailing shrubs that hid pillars, veranda, and even the long
facade of a great and dominant mansion. But the delicacy of floral
outlines running to the capitals of columns and at times mounting to
the pediment of the roof, the opulence of flashing color or the massing
of tropical foliage, could not deprive it of the imperious dignity of
size and space. Much of this was due to the fact that the original
casa--an adobe house of no mean pretensions, dating back to the early
Spanish occupation--had been kept intact, sheathed in a shell of
dark-red wood, and still retaining its patio; or inner court-yard,
surrounded by low galleries, while additions, greater in extent than
the main building, had been erected--not as wings and projections, but
massed upon it on either side, changing its rigid square outlines to a
vague parallelogram. While the patio retained the Spanish conception
of al fresco seclusion, a vast colonnade of veranda on the southern
side was a concession to American taste, and its breadth gave that
depth of shadow to the inner rooms which had be