The long, parched summer had drawn to its dusty close. Much of it was already blown abroad and dissipated on trail and turnpike, or crackled in harsh, unelastic fibres on hillside and meadow. Some of it had disappeared in the palpable smoke by day and fiery crests by night of burning forests. The besieging fogs on the Coast Range daily thinned their hosts, and at last vanished. The wind changed from northwest to southwest. The salt breath of the sea was on the summit. And then one day the staring, unchanged sky was faintly touched with remote mysterious clouds, and grew tremulous in expression. The next morning dawned upon a newer face in the heavens, on changed woods, on altered outlines, on vanished crests, on forgotten distances. It was raining! Four weeks of this change, with broken spaces of sunlight and intense blue aerial islands, and then a storm set in. All day the summit pines and redwoods rocked in the blast. At times the onset of the rain seemed to be held back by the fury of the gale, or was visibly seen in sharp waves on the hillside. Unknown and concealed watercourses suddenly overflowed the trails, pools became lakes and brooks rivers. Hidden from the storm, the sylvan silence of sheltered valleys was broken by the impetuous rush of waters; even the tiny streamlet that traversed Flip's retreat in the Gin and Ginger Woods became a cascade. The storm drove Fairley from his couch early. The falling of a large tree across the trail, and the sudden overflow of a small stream beside it, hastened his steps. But he was doomed to encounter what was to him a more disagreeable object--a human figure. By the bedraggled drapery that flapped and fluttered in the wind, by the long, unkempt hair that hid the face and eyes, and by the grotesquely misplaced bonnet, the old man recognized one of his old trespassers,--an Indian squaw. “Clear out 'er that! Come, make tracks, will ye?” the old man screamed; but here the wind stopped his voice, and drove him against a hazel bush. “Me heap sick,” answered the squaw, shivering through her muddy shawl. “I'll make ye a heap sicker if ye don't vamose the ranch,” continued Fairley, advancing. “Me wantee Wangee girl. Wangee girl give me heap grub,” said the squaw, without moving. “You bet your life,” groaned the old man to himself. Nevertheless an idea struck him. “Ye ain't brought no presents, hev ye?” he asked cautiously. “Ye ain't got no pooty things for poor Wangee girl?” he continued, insinuatingly. “Me got heap cache nuts and berries,” said the squaw. “Oh, in course! in course! That's just it,” screamed Fairley; “you've got 'em cached only two mile from yer, and you'll go and get 'em for a half dollar, cash down.” “Me bring Wangee girl to cache,” replied the Indian, pointing to the wood. “Honest Injin.”