ncis of Assisi, now named Dolores for the vanished lake. It was the
last reminder of the work of the Spanish fathers, and looked
indescribably ancient in the midst of that busy and densely populated
district. At night Isabel watched the lights of the electric cars
flashing about that old monument of an almost forgotten conquest--like
the angry haunted eyes of the padres that had labored in the wilderness
for naught. But although this old church and the Presidio, which still
retained its quadrangle and a few of the original adobe houses, appealed
deeply to Isabel on account of the romance of Rezanov and Concha
Argueello that distinguished her family, her more personal sympathies
were with the streets just below her hill-top, packed as they were with
memories, tragic, humorous, gay, pathetic, of a people that had made the
city great.

Even the dilapidated houses, with their sixty steps or more toppling
above the cut that had widened and levelled the street, had been very
hospitable in their time, and Isabel knew that her mother and
grandmother had toiled up those perpendicular flights in satin slippers
and ballooning skirts on many a rainy night. Mrs. Otis had told her
little girls stories of all those old houses, fine and simple, more
particularly of the fortunate mansions on Nob Hill's brief level. Isabel
longed for the time when she should enter them and pick up the threads
dropped from her mother's nerveless fingers. The Belmont house was
closed, the still restless Helena occupying a palace in Rome at the
moment. The Polk house had been sold to the energetic son of one of the
plodding old money-makers that had fought shy of stock gambling and
railroads. Nicolas Hofer belonged to the latest type the prolific city
had bred: the son of a millionaire, but a keen man of business, whom the
wildness of the city had never tempted, highly educated, honorable, and
an ardent reformer.

Magdalena Yorba--Mrs. Trennahan--like most of her old neighbors, still
dwelt in the ancestral mansion, although she had given it a stucco
facade and shaved off the bow-windows. In each, Isabel was sure of
welcome, and she longed particularly to wander through the old Polk
house, where one of her Spanish great-aunts had reigned for a time. Like
all San Franciscans of family, she took more pride in her young-old city
than a Roman in his Rome. Its forty-two square miles had seen so many
changes, its story was so romantic and unique, that its age was