On the very day which opens this story, one might have stood upon the bridge and watched the lazy flowing of the river on whose dull green surface all the spans and bars were shadowed, and on the buttress seen the sunshine in ever changing, trembling glints of gold. Dead thistles were on the bank rustling in the breeze and the long tules by the water-side, some broken, others upright, waved gracefully, moved by both wind and current. To the left hand on both sides of the arroyo which here joined the river, one could have seen Crescimir's fields and the vegetable garden with its whitey-green cabbages, the rich brown heaps of manure and straw, and the beds of beets all crimson and green, then the borders of oaks and the far, blue hills, while myriads of little gray-winged moths hovered over the masses of tangled blackberry vines and giant dock. To the southward rose, far away, the peak of glorious Tamalpais, a dark blue dash without a shadow. There were the black, ploughed fields, steaming in the sunshine, larks springing up from the glittering leaves, and noisy squirrels in the bay tree laying away their stores of nuts and maize in its hundred hollows. Leaning upon the rail and watching the river, rippled in the centre but calm and glassy near the banks, one could have seen the silver fish springing from the water for the insects playing about the surface, and could have breathed the rich perfume of growing onions and the sweet, fresh, green life. On the hillside Crescimir had planted grape vines, but they were young yet and bore no fruit, still, had they borne the heaviest of clusters there was no one to eat them then for there were but few settlers in the valley and Crescimir had no neighbours, but the Rancho Tulucay, nearer than the little village three miles distant. Thus Crescimir the Illyrian lived alone improving his lands and selling vegetables to the Yankee traders who came up the river in their little schooners; he was always busy ploughing and dressing the gardens or clearing away the chaparral. Two years had been spent here since he had left his fatherland, amid the wild scenes of the Julian Alps. It was on a Christmas Eve that he had bidden his old friends good bye and at each return of the day he thought more sadly of his lonely life, sighing for the old mountain village where he had so often made merry with his comrades. There was one bright spot in Crescimir's daily routine and he prized that above all the day, for it showed to him that there was one person who did think of him, though who he could never learn. For a year or more he had found each day at his cabin door a bunch of garden flowers and in their place he daily left a bunch of his sweetest onions or some rare vegetable, which were always taken away.