The sun shone out of a cloudless sky. Close at the zenith rode the
belated moon, still clearly visible, and, along one margin, even
bright. The wind blew a gale from the north; the trees roared; the
corn and the deep grass in the valley fled in whitening surges; the
dust towered into the air along the road and dispersed like the
smoke of battle. It was clear in our teeth from the first, and for
all the windings of the road it managed to keep clear in our teeth
until the end.

For some two miles we rattled through the valley, skirting the
eastern foothills; then we struck off to the right, through haugh-
land, and presently, crossing a dry water-course, entered the Toll
road, or, to be more local, entered on "the grade." The road
mounts the near shoulder of Mount Saint Helena, bound northward
into Lake County. In one place it skirts along the edge of a
narrow and deep canyon, filled with trees, and I was glad, indeed,
not to be driven at this point by the dashing Foss. Kelmar, with
his unvarying smile, jogging to the motion of the trap, drove for
all the world like a good, plain, country clergyman at home; and I
profess I blessed him unawares for his timidity.

Vineyards and deep meadows, islanded and framed with thicket, gave
place more and more as we ascended to woods of oak and madrona,
dotted with enormous pines. It was these pines, as they shot above
the lower wood, that produced that pencilling of single trees I had
so often remarked from the valley. Thence, looking up and from
however far, each fir stands separate against the sky no bigger
than an eyelash; and all together lend a quaint, fringed aspect to
the hills. The oak is no baby; even the madrona, upon these spurs