poured over into Napa Valley, and a minute after had drawn up in
shelter, but all buffetted and breathless, at the Toll House door.

A water-tank, and stables, and a gray house of two stories, with
gable ends and a verandah, are jammed hard against the hillside,
just where a stream has cut for itself a narrow canyon, filled with
pines. The pines go right up overhead; a little more and the
stream might have played, like a fire-hose, on the Toll House roof.
In front the ground drops as sharply as it rises behind. There is
just room for the road and a sort of promontory of croquet ground,
and then you can lean over the edge and look deep below you through
the wood. I said croquet GROUND, not GREEN; for the surface was of
brown, beaten earth. The toll-bar itself was the only other note
of originality: a long beam, turning on a post, and kept slightly
horizontal by a counterweight of stones. Regularly about sundown
this rude barrier was swung, like a derrick, across the road and
made fast, I think, to a tree upon the farther side.

On our arrival there followed a gay scene in the bar. I was
presented to Mr. Corwin, the landlord; to Mr. Jennings, the
engineer, who lives there for his health; to Mr. Hoddy, a most
pleasant little gentleman, once a member of the Ohio legislature,
again the editor of a local paper, and now, with undiminished
dignity, keeping the Toll House bar. I had a number of drinks and
cigars bestowed on me, and enjoyed a famous opportunity of seeing
Kelmar in his glory, friendly, radiant, smiling, steadily edging
one of the ship's kettles on the reluctant Corwin.

Corwin, plainly aghast, resisted gallantly, and for that bout
victory crowned his arms.