THEIR UNCLE FROM CALIFORNIA.


PART I.


It was bitterly cold. When night fell over Lakeville, Wisconsin, the
sunset, which had flickered rather than glowed in the western sky, took
upon itself a still more boreal tremulousness, until at last it seemed
to fade away in cold blue shivers to the zenith. Nothing else stirred;
in the crisp still air the evening smoke of chimneys rose threadlike
and vanished. The stars were early, pale, and pitiless; when the later
moonlight fell, it appeared only to whiten the stiffened earth like
snow, except where it made a dull, pewter-like film over the three
frozen lakes which encompassed the town.

The site of the town itself was rarely beautiful, and its pioneers
and founders had carried out the suggestions they had found there with
loving taste and intelligence.

Themselves old voyageurs, trappers, and traders, they still loved Nature
too well to exclude her from the restful homes they had achieved after
years of toiling face to face with her. So a strip of primeval forest on
the one side, and rolling level prairie on the other, still came up to
the base of the hill, whereon they had built certain solid houses, which
a second generation had beautified and improved with modern taste,
but which still retained their old honesty of foundation and wholesome
rustic space. These yet stood among the old trees, military squares,
and broad sloping avenues of the town. Seen from the railway by day, the
regularity of streets and blocks was hidden by environing trees; there