Returning to the barn we were rather glad to roll the big door to, and close it fast. We crept into our makeshift beds and were asleep before long. But we were awakened with a disagreeable start, hearing right inside the barn a strange cry, which, in our sleepiness and ignorance, might well have been the call of a Red Indian, straight from the Mexican Cañon, intent on securing the scalps of us “tenderfeet.” The cry was repeated, as we sat up listening eagerly, and then we all laughed to see a little squatty figure sitting on one of the open windows, and recognised a harmless little brown owl. In the morning we made some kind of order and comfort around us. The one large room in the barn (viz., the hayloft) we had divided into two with a temporary screen, one half for our bedroom, the other for sitting- and dining-room. A small shanty had been added outside for kitchen, and a shed which was to receive the cow, when we had one, served meanwhile as bedroom for our “coloured lady.” There was a lower floor which was divided into stalls for the horses, and which was entered by a lower road, as the barn stood on a steep slope. The fifty cases of furniture, which had been stored at San Francisco till we sent for them, were strewn all about the hill top on which the barn stood, and our first task was to open most of these, take a few things out, and pack away all the rest safely before the rains came. For days and days we worked away busily at this, my husband and I, and our boys, standing out in that hot glaring Californian sun, with the dry dust of the soil getting into our shoes and stockings and soaking all our clothes. Our ranchman was busy with the trees, and the coloured lady looked on when she was not cooking; looked on with a disdainful air, showing by many signs a great contempt for people who could be so foolish as to carry about such quantities of “stuff,” as she called it. To English eyes many Californian houses look very empty, and no doubt our possessions did seem ridiculously unnecessary to this darky, who thought only of the bother they would be to keep clean. As we packed away case after case into every available corner, stringing up chairs and sofas, and all manner of things on to the rafters, we began to wonder where we ourselves were to be housed. We have always since considered that it was a proof positive of great sweetness of temper that we got through a time of such terribly close quarters without doing any violence to each other.