as the crow flies from the sea, and
if possible near a fir wood."

In April they left the Alps and ventured back to their misty island,
where they spent an unsatisfactory summer, moving from place to place
in a fruitless search for better weather. Several hemorrhages forced
them to the conclusion that they must be once more on the wing, and as
both felt an unconquerable repugnance to spending another winter at
bleak Davos, it was finally decided to go where their hearts led them,
and seek a suitable place in the south of France. As Mrs. Stevenson
was too ill just then to travel, the invalid, accompanied by his
cousin, Mr. R. A. M. Stevenson, started about the middle of September,
1882, for Marseilles. The wife's anxiety, however, gave her little
rest, and almost before she was able to stand she set out after him,
arriving in an alarmed and fatigued condition, of which he wrote to
his mother in his humourous way: "The wreck was towed into port
yesterday evening at seven P.M. She bore the reversed ensign in
every feature; the population of Marseilles, who were already vastly
exercised, wept when they beheld her jury masts and helpless hull."

To her mother-in-law she wrote from here: "This is a lovely spot, and
I cannot tell you how my heart goes out to it. It is so like Indiana
that it would not surprise me to hear my father or mother speak to me
at any moment, and yet it is not like home either. The houses and the
ships look foreign, but the color of the sky and the quality of the
air, the corn, the grapes, the yellow pumpkins, the flowers, and the
trees, are the same. Everything seems as it is at home, steeped in
sunshine."

In a few days they found a house, the Campagne Defli, in the suburbs
of St. Marcel, "in a lovely spot, among lovely wooded and cliffy
hills," where they fondly hoped their pursuing fate would forget them
for a time. Of Campagne Defli she joyfully writes to her
mother-in-law: "Of all the houses in the world I think I should choose
this one. It is a garden of paradise, and I cannot tell you how I long
to have you here to enjoy things with me. It is such happiness to be
in a place that combines the features of the land where I was born and
California, where I have spent the best years of my life."

She set eagerly to work to turn this charming but neglected place into
a pleasant home, directing servants in the cleaning and scrubbing,
hanging curtains over draughty doors, repapering walls, putting