its middle, like a crater, struck across the path. Some
called this depression Thieves Hollow, for in it deserting sailors,
ticket-of-leave men from Botany Bay prison colony and all manner of
human riff-raff consorted for nefarious intrigue.

Benito, mounting the slope, looked down at a welter of tents, shacks,
deck houses and galleys of wrecked ships. He had expected their
occupants to be asleep, for they were nighthawks who reversed man's
usual order in the prosecution of nocturnal and ill-favored trades. He
was astonished to note a general activity. At the portholes of dwellings
retrieved from the wreck of the sea, unkempt bearded faces stared; smoke
leaped from a dozen rickety, unstable chimneys, and in the open several
groups of men and women plied frying pans and coffee pots over
driftwood fires.

Benito observed them with a covert interest. A black-browed man with a
shaggy beard and something leonine about him, seemed the master of the
chief of this godless band. He moved among them, giving orders, and with
two companions finally ascended to the top. Benito, concealing himself
behind a scrub oak, watched them, animatedly conversing, as they
descended and picked their way inland toward the Square. So swift their
movements and so low their tones he could not make out the tenor of
their discourse. He caught the words, "like tow," but that was all.
Musingly, he went on.

Up the broad and muddy path to Market street, thence west again to
Third, he made his way. Now south to Mission and once more west, a
favored route for caballeros. Benito had never traveled it before afoot.
But his horse had succumbed to the rigors of that frantic ride in
pursuit of Alice and McTurpin several months ago. Mounts were a
luxury now.

He skirted the edge of a lagoon that stretched from Sixth to Eighth
streets and on the ascent beyond observed a tiny box-like habitation,
brightly painted, ringed with flowers and crowned with an imposing
flagpole from which floated the Star-Spangled Banner. It was a note of
gay melody struck athwart the discordant monotony of soiled tent houses,
tumble-down huts and oblong, flat-roofed buildings stretching their
disorderly array along the road. Coming closer he saw the name,
"Pipesville," printed on the door, and knew that this must be the
"summer home," as it was called, of San Francisco's beloved minstrel,
Stephen Massett, otherwise "Jeems Pipes of Pipesville," singer, player,
essayist and creator