Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/263

Rh and fingers busy, through the long gray afternoons till the dark fell and the early night was spangled with garlands of lamps.

In the off hours, when her plants did not need her attention and there was no work for her at the store, she took long walks. That portion of the city where she had hidden herself grew as familiar to her as the old one on the other side of town. Its charm of a ruinous picturesqueness, of a careless intermingling of alien races, of a sprawling, slovenly serenity through days drenched by sun and swept by rain, was slowly revealed to her. Aspects of it grew to have expressions of almost human attraction or repulsion. This little blue glimpse of sea invited her, with its suggestion of freedom and space. That lowering alley, dark and furtive, with reluctant rays of sunshine slanting down its walls, and the gleam of eyes watching from behind its stealthy shutters, inspired her imagination to strange, soaring flights.

From the summit of the hill she looked down on the crowding, dun-colored city, cut cleanly with streets and decked with feathers of smoke, and tried to reconstruct the village of '49 [sic] Here, far back, was the curve of the shore; there, up the California Street incline, tents and shanties were dotted through the chaparral; and below, an open sand-space marked