d boughs had fallen, large enough to make the
passage difficult. But now we were hard by the summit. The road crosses
the ridge, just in the nick that Kelmar showed me from below, and then,
without pause, plunges down a deep, thickly wooded glen on the farther
side. At the highest point a trail strikes up the main hill to the
leftward; and that leads to Silverado. A hundred yards beyond, and in a
kind of elbow of the glen, stands the Toll House Hotel. We came up the
one side, were caught upon the summit by the whole weight of the wind as
it poured over into Napa Valley, and a minute after had drawn up in
shelter, but all buffeted and breathless, at the Toll House door.

A water-tank, and stables, and a grey house of two stories, with gable
ends and a veranda, are jammed hard against the hillside, just where a
stream has cut for itself a narrow canyon, filled with pines. The pines
go right up overhead; a little more and the stream might have played,
like a fire-hose, on the Toll House roof. In front the ground drops as
sharply as it rises behind. There is just room for the road and a sort
of promontory of croquet ground, and then you can lean over the edge and
look deep below you through the wood. I said croquet _ground_, not
_green_; for the surface was of brown, beaten earth. The toll-bar itself
was the only other note of originality: a long beam, turning on a post,
and kept slightly horizontal by a counterweight of stones. Regularly
about sundown this rude barrier was swung, like a derrick, across the
road and made fast, I think, to a tree upon the farther side.

On our arrival there followed a gay scene in the bar. I was presented to
Mr. Corwin, the landlord; to Mr. Jennings, the engineer, who lives
there for his health; to Mr. Hoddy, a most pleasant little gentleman,
once a member of the Ohio legislature, again the editor of a local
paper, and now, with undiminished dignity, keeping the Toll House bar. I
had a number of drinks and cigars bestowed on me, and enjoyed a famous
opportunity of seeing Kelmar in his glory, friendly, radiant, smiling,
steadily edging one of the ship's kettles on the reluctant Corwin.
Corwin, plainly aghast, resisted gallantly, and for that bout victory
crowned his arms.

At last we set forward for Silverado on foot. Kelmar and his jolly Jew
girls were full of the sentiment of Sunday outings, breathed geniality
and vagueness, and suffered a little vile boy from the hotel to lead
them here