such as negro women wear on their heads, containing a small
quantity of silver tied up in a hard knot, and a boy's purse. This
he emptied on the table with his own money.

They were the only rents of Colonel Henry Pendleton! They were
contributed by "George Washington Thomson;" his wife, otherwise
known as "Aunt Dinah," washerwoman; and "Scipio Thomson," their
son, aged fourteen, bootblack. It did not amount to much. But in
that happy moisture that dimmed the old man's eyes, God knows it
looked large enough.


CHAPTER III.


Although the rays of an unclouded sun were hot in the Santa Clara
roads and byways, and the dry, bleached dust had become an
impalpable powder, the perspiring and parched pedestrian who rashly
sought relief in the shade of the wayside oak was speedily chilled
to the bone by the northwest trade-winds that on those August
afternoons swept through the defiles of the Coast Range, and even
penetrated the pastoral valley of San Jose. The anomaly of straw
hats and overcoats with the occupants of buggies and station wagons
was thus accounted for, and even in the sheltered garden of "El
Rosario" two young girls in light summer dresses had thrown wraps
over their shoulders as they lounged down a broad rose-alley at
right angles with the deep, long veranda of the casa. Yet, in
spite of the chill, the old Spanish house and gardens presented a
luxurious, almost tropical, picture from the roadside. Banks,
beds, and bowers of roses lent their name and color to the grounds;