ined the mighty change that
would take place; who even guided and directed the feeble means employed
to work it; whose spirit moved, as in still older days of which they had
read, over the face of the stagnant waters? Perhaps they had. Who then
was the real pioneer of Tasajara,--back of the Harcourts, the Peterses,
the Billingses, and Wingates? The reverend gentleman gently paused for
a reply. It was given in the clear but startled accents of the half
frightened, half-fascinated Johnny Billings, in three words:--

"'Lige Curtis, sir!"

CHAPER VI

The trade wind, that, blowing directly from the Golden Gate, seemed to
concentrate its full force upon the western slope of Russian Hill,
might have dismayed any climber less hopeful and sanguine than that most
imaginative of newspaper reporters and most youthful of husbands, John
Milton Harcourt. But for all that it was an honest wind, and its dry,
practical energy and salt-pervading breath only seemed to sting him to
greater and more enthusiastic exertions, until, quite at the summit of
the hill and last of a straggling line of little cottages half submerged
in drifting sand, he stood upon his own humble porch.

"I was thinking, coming up the hill, Loo," he said, bursting into the
sitting-room, pantingly, "of writing something about the future of the
hill! How it will look fifty years from now, all terraced with houses
and gardens!--and right up here a kind of Acropolis, don't you know. I
had quite a picture of it in my mind just now."

A plainly-dressed young woman with a pretty face, that, however, looked
as if it had been prematurely sapped of color and vitality, here laid
aside some white sewing she had in her lap, and said:--

"But you did that once before, Milty, and you know the 'Herald' wouldn't
take it because they said it was a free notice of Mr. Boorem's building
lots, and he didn't advertise in the 'Herald.' I always told you that
you ought to have seen Boorem first."

The young fellow blinked his eyes with a momentary arrest of that
buoyant hopefulness which was their peculiar characteristic, but
nevertheless replied with undaunted cheerfulness, "I forgot. Anyhow,
it's all the same, for I worked it into that 'Sunday Walk.' And it's
just as easy to write it the other way, you see,--looking back, DOWN THE
HILL, you know. Something about the old Padres toiling through the sand
just before the Angelus; or as far back as Sir Francis Drake's time,
and h