One side of the street was still unbuilt upon; on the southern side stood three houses, each upon its fifty-vara lot, comfortably filling the short block. That occupied by the Paysons was an old frame structure of two stories, without attempt at ornamentation, except for its quaint, Tudoresque pointed windows and a machicolated wooden battlement round the flat roof. It stood on a gentle slope, surrounded by an old-fashioned garden, which was hedged in, on either side, by rows of cypress and eucalyptus trees, protecting it from the trade winds, which here blow unhampered across the water. In front, a scene ever-changing in color as the atmospheric conditions changed, was ranged in a semi-circular pageant, the wild panorama of San Francisco Bay, from Point Bonita and Golden Gate in the west, past the Marin County shore with Sausalito twinkling under the long, beautiful profile of Mount Tamalpais, past Belvedere with its white villas, Alcatraz and Goat Island floating in the harbor, to the foot-hills behind Oakland and Berkeley, where, in the east, Mount Diablo’s pointed peak shimmered in the blue distance. In the second story of this house Clytie had a bookbinding room, where she spent most of her spare time. It was large, bare, sunny, impregnated with the odor of leather skins, clean and orderly. A sewing frame and a heavy press stood behind her bench and upon a table were neatly arranged the pages of a book upon which she was working. Carefully placed in workmanlike precision were her knives, shears, glue pot and gas heater and a case of stamping irons in pigeonholes. She was, this afternoon, in a brown gingham pinafore, with her sleeves rolled up, seated before the table, her sensitive hands moving deftly at the most delicate operation connected with her craft. Upon a square of heavy plate glass, she laid a torn, ragged page, and, from several old fly leaves, selected one that matched it in color. She cut a piece of paper slightly larger than the missing portion, skived the edges, and pasted it over the hole or along the frayed margin. The work was absorbing and exacting to her eyes; to rest them, she went, from time to time, to the window and looked out upon the bay. The water was gray-green streaked with a deeper blue. In the "north harbor" two barks lay at anchor in the stream and ferry-boats plied the fairway. In and out of the Gate there passed, at intervals, tugs with sailing ships bound out with lumber or in with nitrates, steamers to coast ports, or liners from overseas, rusty, weather-beaten tramps, strings of heavy-going barges, lusty little tugs, lumber schooners wallowing through the tide rip, Italian fishing smacks, lateen-rigged with russet sails, saucy launches, and, at last, the magnificent bulk of a white battleship sliding imperiously into the roadstead along the waterfront.