The Valley of the Moon

e upon them without any fore-glimmerings of its beauty. Dropping down through the pungent pines, they passed woods-embowered cottages, quaint and rus

peacock-blue of a breaker, shot through with golden sunlight, overfalling in a mile-long s

p and wind-capped sea to froth and thunder at their feet, Saxon did not know. She was recal

goin' to stop a while," he said. "

thought the surf at the Cliff House was wonderful, but it gave no idea of this.-Oh! Look! LOOK! D

cock-blue and piled with cloud-masses, at the curve of the beach south to the jagged point of

y," Billy indulged her. "This is too go

began immediately

y asked in surprised delight

ful thing attracted their attention. Down from the dark pines and across the sandhills ran a man, naked save for narrow trunks.

dow," Billy mutte

in her mother's scrapbook and of the

t at least, upreared a wall of overtopping water. Huge and powerful as his body had seemed, it was now white and fragile in the face of that

This was the battle-to win seaward against the sweep of the shoreward hastening sea. Each time he dived and was lost to view Saxon caught her breath and clenched her hands. Sometimes, after the passage of a breaker, they could not find him, and when they did he would be scores of feet away, flung there like a chip by a smoke-bearded breaker. Often it seemed he must fail and

e within forty feet of me. Why, Saxon, honest to God, I'd sooner do what he done than own a thousan' farms. Oh, I can swim, too, I'm tellin' you, like a fish-I swum, one Sunday, from the Narrow Gauge Pier to Sessions' Basin, an' tha

r an hour. It was not until they were putting on their shoes that they sighted the yellow head bearing shoreward. Billy was at the edge

t to hand it to you," Billy gre

" the young man replied, w

heard of?" Billy queried, striving to get some

of a 'Varsity Eleven, and incidentally the father of a family and the author of many books

u'd strip with the best of them. Am I right in g

d. "My name

with a futile effo

berts," Billy

nary to Eddie Hanlon and some other fellow. You're a two-handed fighter, I remember that, with an awful wallop, but slow

was, a couple of years ago, I've read

l beside the two young giants, and very proud, withal, that she belonge

y for half an hour," Hazard said. "You could tea

nd. Just the same, I could teach you a few, and th

offered. He turned to Saxon. "Why don't you

ut-" She turned and pointed to their packs on the edge of the

. "Well, I've got to run along and get some clothes on. If you come ba

ved, he departed, crossin

ed him with

e in the papers once, I've seen it a thousand times. An' he ain't a bit stuck on

vegetables, and half a dozen eggs. Billy had to drag Saxon away from the windo

st," Billy assured her; "an' I'll get

" she said. "They were set in pure, soft gold. I haven't th

pretty houses of the artist folk, and they were not prepared, where t

. It's the Carmel Mission, of course. That's the way the Spaniards came u

an' Indians, whole kit an' caboodle,"

g, half-ruined adobe structure. "There is the Mission Dolores,

hey walked softly, speaking in whispers, almost afraid to go in through the open ports. There was neither priest nor worshiper, yet they found all the evidences of use, by a congregation which Billy judged must be small from the number of the benches. Later they climbed the earthquake-racked belfry, notin

oll, While the tempest still is nigh. Hide me, O my Saviour, hide, Till the

loved her with his eyes, and, when she had

r face when you sang. It was as beautiful as your voice. Ain't

nemones, and, once, in a rock-pool, a small devilfish that chilled their blood when it cast the hooded net of its body around the small crabs they tossed to it. As the tide grew lower, they gathered a mess of mussels-huge fellows, five and six inches long and bearded like patriarchs. Then, while Billy wandered in a vain search for abalones, Saxon

had never lived such a wonderful day. It was as if all old dreams were coming true. Such beaut

of?" he asked, as the

at it was better, one day like this,