Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/51

 The mayordomo then directed Henderson to hasten to the kitchen where he had received his supper the evening before, get his breakfast and report back for duty.

It was a dun, melancholy morning. The lissom branches of the pepper trees drooped under the weight of clinging rain like weeping willow, the pleasant scent of their red berries strong in the moist air. The oaks showered sudden shakings of accumulated rain upon him as he passed under their far-spread, age-gray limbs.

The hills, which had stood forth with shrub and crumbling ledge, tawny brown blotch of barrenness, soft green of fresh leaf, bright quickening of winter flowers, in the sunlight of yesterday evening, were now hidden almost entirely in low-dragging clouds. Only the base of them could be seen, dark, drenched, forbidding, where the cloud-line reached, purled and dipped into canyon, swathed headland, changing the cheerful hacienda of yesterday into a sad and gloomy place. It seemed a lonely and unfriendly land.

Several men were at breakfast in the kitchen, among them Simon, the teamster, all of whom, with the exception of Simon alone, seemed to Henderson borne down by some trouble or tragedy that had left a cloud upon their spirits. They greeted the stranger kindly, Simon himself making room for him at his side with an air of protectorship that had a bit of haughty condescension about it. Henderson soon found that the teamster's design, and