She caught her skirts close to her body and walked rapidly to the brow of the hill. The twinkling lights were all below. The wrack of cloud torn by the wind into a thousand flapping sails skurried across a sky which the hidden moon patched with a hard angry silver. Far away and high in the storm the great cross on Calvary seemed dancing an inebriated jig above the ghostly tombs of Lone Mountain. Magdalena walked rapidly down the hill. Once or twice she paused before a house and stared at it. What secrets did it hold? What skeletons? Were any within so desperate as she? Why did they not come out and shriek with the storm? She pictured a sudden obsession of San Francisco: every door simultaneously flung open, every wretched inmate rushing forth to scream his protest against the injustice of life into the ecstatic fury of the elements. High on a terrace, or rather an unlevelled angle of the hill, and reached by a long rickety flight of steps, was an old ugly wooden house. It was unpainted; the shutters were shaking on their rusty hinges; the chimneys had been blown off long since; but it had cost much gold in its time. It had been the home of a "Forty-niner," and he was dead and forgotten, his dust as easily accounted for as his winged gold. Doubtless every room had its patient skeleton, grinning eternally at the yellow lust of man. As she passed Dupont Street, she paused again and regarded it steadily. Sheltered in the steep hillside, it took no note of the storm; its sidewalks were not empty, and its windows were broken bars of light. Magdalena wondered if the painted creatures talking volubly behind the shutters were not happier and more normal than she. They were the rejected of their native boulevards, beyond a doubt, but they were free in their way, and they certainly were alive. I am nothing, she thought; neither to myself, nor to any one else. I wonder will the wind blow me in there some night? What if it does? But when a man started toward her with manifest intent to speak, she fled down the hill. When she reached Kearney Street she turned without hesitation to the left, and walked toward those regions which are associated in the minds of every San Franciscan with lawlessness and crime. She had given a swift glance to the right before turning; the region of respectable shops and fashionable promenade was as black as a tunnel; the eccentric economy of the city forbade the light of street lamps when the moon was out, whether clouds accompanied her or not. Ahead was a line of lights twisting and leaping in the wind,--the vagrant gas-jets before the row of cheap shops on the east side of the Plaza. Magdalena hardly glanced at the medley of curious wares and faces as she hurried past; the wind was roaring about the open square, interfering with sight and hearing and headway. And beyond--her blood leaped to that mysterious disreputable region.