thy happen at the grove, he complained that it shut off
his view and kept away the breeze from the ocean! I was too much taken
by surprise to apologize for my trees, but felt reproached; unwittingly
I had destroyed the old captain's choicest pleasure. He had spoken in an
impersonal way that I quite understood,--he had been taken
unawares,--but the next time I rode past, as if to make up for any
apparent rudeness, he came hurrying down the walk to tell me of a crow's
nest he had seen in the grove. To mark it he had fastened a piece of
paper to the wire fence by the road, and another paper to the nest tree,
binding it on with a eucalyptus twig in true sailor fashion.

It was always a relief to leave the hot beating sun and the glare of the
yellow fields and enter the cool shade of the quiet grove. I could let
down the fence and put it up behind me; thus having my small forest all
to myself; and used to enjoy riding up and down the fragrant blue
avenues. The eucalyptus-trees, although thirty or forty feet high, were
lithe and slender; some of them could be spanned by the hands. The rows
were planted ten feet apart, but the long branches interlaced, so one
had to be on the alert, in riding down the lines, to bend low on the
saddle or push aside the branches that obstructed the way. The limbs
were so slender and flexible that a touch was enough to bend back a
green gate fifteen to twenty feet long, and Billy often pushed a branch
aside with his nose. In places, fallen trees barred our path, but Billy
used to step carefully over them.

The eucalyptus-trees change very curiously as they grow old. When young
they are covered with branches low to the ground, and their aromatic
tender leaves are light bluish green; afterwards they lose their lower
branches, while their leaves become stiff and sickle-shaped, dull green
and almost odorless. The same changes are seen in the bark: first the
trunks are smooth and green; then they are hung with shaggy shreds of
bark; this in turn drops off so that the old trees are smooth again.
Some of the young shoots have almost white stems, and their leaves have
a pinkish tinge. Indeed, a young blue gum is as pretty a sight as one
often sees; it is a tree of exquisite delicacy of coloring.

[Illustration: EUCALYPTUS WOOD STORED FOR MARKET, IN A EUCALYPTUS GROVE
NEAR LOS ANGELES]

Mountain Billy and I both liked to wander among the blue gums. Billy
liked it, perhaps, for association's sake, for w