“I just rested and basked,” said Dean Wolcott, gratefully, “but I must be off now, for I won’t make Post’s before nine o’clock and--” he stopped aghast--“good heavens, my horse! I’ve left him standing in the fog, when he was--” “Oh, but I put him up, directly I went out,” said his hostess, easily. “Of course you’re going to stop the night with us. What do you suppose Mateo--with his traditions of Spanish hospitality--would say to me if I confessed to having you here and letting you go? We can put you up quite nicely, and you can fancy what it means to us to have a house guest! Should you like to go to your room, now?” She did not wait for him to answer but stepped briskly toward another door. “This way--and a step down! My funny little house is on four different levels, but I like it. Some day, when our ship comes in, we mean to have sleeping porches--but it takes a long time for a ship to come in, on this foggy coast--and to come ashore as high as this!” She laughed with entire contentment. “Hot water in the pitcher, and towels there, do you see? Perhaps I’d better light your candle--these tiny windows let in very little light after the sun sets.” She lighted a candle in a satiny brass candlestick and went away, and left him to the comfort of hot water and rough, clean towels, and presently he heard a hail from without and her glad answer, and then exchange of rippling Spanish. Mateo Golinda was a rather small, middle-aged Spaniard with piercing eyes and a fine aquiline nose, and his welcome was as picturesque and colorful as if it had been given in his father’s native _Valencia_. Dean Wolcott remembered now, the things the doctor had told him of this household, and he drank the wine of astonishment. Margaret Burton had come into the Big Sur country on a sketching trip; she had left it only long enough to go home and tell her aghast and staggered family that she was to marry a Spanish rancher who spoke almost no English, to live with him on his difficult ranch, fifteen high and winding miles from a telephone. The young man had seen a generous portion of the world considering his years, and he came to regard this as the most remarkable marriage he had ever known; it could not, he felt, have succeeded so signally if either Margaret Burton or Mateo Golinda had brought less to it. They worked out-of-doors like peasants, both of them, like pioneers, but when they came into the silver-gray house they left the toil behind them; they came into a gentle world of candlelight and firelight, of shining brass and thin, old silver spoons, of limber-covered ancient Spanish books; probably nothing else would so have completed the picture for Dean Wolcott as to find the current number of the _Atlantic Monthly_ in one of the Chinese chairs. The supper was excellent and a beautiful and dignified dog sat a little withdrawn, watching his master worshipfully.