valley. It came fresh and inspiring, with the scent of breaching seas, appealing to the sailor as he rode like a call from home.
"Where you see that sycamore," said Felipe, pointing, "there we stop."
The sycamore was a tree of great girth, its bole knotted, its branches distorted in grotesque twistings, angular elbows, as if it had grown in slow torture through its two hundred years and more. It was the largest tree of any species whatever that Henderson had seen in California, its branches covering not less than a hundred feet.
Close by in a little ravine a strong spring issued from the bank; a little way from this precious vein of water a small adobe house seemed to shrink and hide among fig and almond trees. An adobe wall could be seen through the intervening growth of cacti and chaparral, behind which maize was growing tall.
An old man was sitting in the sun near the spring, apparently indifferent to the passing of the two riders, no more concerned when they left the road at the sycamore as if to seek the refreshment of his spring. He was the framework only of what had been a magnificent man, bony now and dry, his tattered shirt of some once gay material loose on his gaunt shoulders, his thin, short beard as white as the ash of seasoned oak.
He sat with hands clasped around his updrawn knees, a man without a thought, it seemed, one who had lived his apportioned years and had crept
