ugh the rifted sunshine and shadow; in
the blue jays that flashed in splashes of gorgeous color across the
forest aisles; in the tiny birds, like wrens, that hopped among the
bushes and imitated certain minor quail-calls; and in the
crimson-crested woodpecker that ceased its knocking and cocked its head
on one side to survey him. Crossing the stream, he struck faint
vestiges of a wood-road, used, evidently, a generation back, when the
meadow had been cleared of its oaks. He found a hawk's nest on the
lightning-shattered tipmost top of a six-foot redwood. And to complete
it all his horse stumbled upon several large broods of half-grown
quail, and the air was filled with the thrum of their flight. He
halted and watched the young ones "petrifying" and disappearing on the
ground before his eyes, and listening to the anxious calls of the old
ones hidden in the thickets.

"It sure beats country places and bungalows at Menlo Park," he communed
aloud; "and if ever I get the hankering for country life, it's me for
this every time."

The old wood-road led him to a clearing, where a dozen acres of grapes
grew on wine-red soil. A cow-path, more trees and thickets, and he
dropped down a hillside to the southeast exposure. Here, poised above
a big forested canon, and looking out upon Sonoma Valley, was a small
farm-house. With its barn and outhouses it snuggled into a nook in the
hillside, which protected it from west and north. It was the erosion
from this hillside, he judged, that had formed the little level stretch
of vegetable garden. The soil was fat and black, and there was water
in plenty, for he saw several faucets running wide open.

Forgotten was the brickyard. Nobody was at home, but Daylight
dismounted and ranged the vegetable garden, eating strawberries and
green peas, inspecting the old adobe barn and the rusty plough and
harrow, and rolling and smoking cigarettes while he watched the antics
of several broods of young chickens and the mother hens. A foottrail
that led down the wall of the big canyon invited him, and he proceeded
to follow it. A water-pipe, usually above ground, paralleled the
trail, which he concluded led upstream to the bed of the creek. The
wall of the canon was several hundred feet from top to bottom, and
magnificent were the untouched trees that the place was plunged in
perpetual shade. He measured with his eye spruces five and six feet in
diameter and redwoods even larger. One suc