She leaned back against the broken ground behind her and looked sleepily about. The parched sward was lined by little paths that seemed to cross and recross each other in purposeless wanderings. Some led to the edge of a quarry that had torn away a huge chunk of the hill as though a giant lion had struck down and ripped off a piece of its flank. Below her were the roofs and chimneys of houses on the face of the slope. Smoke came from the chimneys and went up straight, and here and there the ragged foliage of eucalyptus-trees that had grown sere and scant in the turmoil of wintry gales hung motionless, resting on this day of grace. It must be near midday, Viola thought, and, even as the thought formed in her mind, all the whistles of the city below seemed to suddenly open their throats and blow together--a long, mellifluous, fluent sound. Then there was a pause, and odd ones, late but determined, took up the cry and poured out their hollow, reverberant roar. From the water-front louder ones came, hoarse, harsh, dominant, riding the tumult like strident talkers, and others, shrill-toned, broke in, high and protesting, and the note of distant whistles, away in the Mission and the Potrero, answered again, faint, thin, and far. It was twelve o'clock. Viola gathered herself up from her relaxed attitude. She had been hunting now for two hours, and felt tired and discouraged. She wished she could live here, since one must live somewhere--just here, she thought, as she rose stiffly to her feet and dusted her dress. No one would ever find her, and there was something at once inspiring and soothing in all this vast panorama of sea and mountain and this wash of living air. She looked back at the house the woman with the shoe had come from, and wondered if even there they would take her in. The woman had come to a doorway now, and stood there, eying her, it seemed to Viola, with suspicious disfavor; and even as she looked, the dogs, grown brave again, made a spirited rally round the corner, and came yapping about her heels. She turned and, selecting the first path that she saw, walked down over the forward face of the hill. The fall of the land was so abrupt here that the few householders had had to build steps from the street below to their gates. Some had even gone to the extravagance of a handrail. Viola, making a chary descent, was attracted to glance about her by a sweet, pungent fragrance, and looking to locate its source, found herself at the gate of a house, low, long, and narrow, with a garden on the outward side, terraced to keep the soil from sliding bodily down into the back yard of the house below. From this garden rose the scent that had attracted her. It was the soft, illusive perfume of mignonette, of which the little inclosure, sheltered from the winds by a lattice-work fence, held a goodly store.