In the barracks, where the serried battalions of crime loll away the garish day, silence discreetly rules. Sleep and rest mark the sunlit hours. The late afternoon parade is an excitant. All over San Francisco, in its queerly assorted tenancy, church and saloon, school and opium den, thieves' resort and budding home, are placed side by side. Vigorous elbowing of the criminal and base classes finally forces all that is decent into a semi-banishment. Decency is driven to the distant hills, crowned with their scrubby oaks. Vice needs the city centre. It always does. Philip Hardin is cynical and without family ties. Able by nature, skilled in books, and a master of human strategy he needs some broader field for the sweep of his splendid talents than the narrowed forum of the local courts. Ambition offers no immediate prize to struggle for. The busy present calls on him for daily professional effort. Political events point to an exciting struggle between North and South in the future; but the hour of fate is not yet on the dial. In the Southerner's dislike of the contact of others, looking to his place as a social leader of the political element, Philip Hardin lives alone; his temporary cottage is planted in a large lot removed from the immediate danger of fires. His quick wit tells him they will some day sweep the crowded houses in the eastern part of the city, as far as the bay. The larger native oaks still afford a genial shade. Their shadows give the tired lawyer a few square rods of breathing space. Books and all the implements of the scholar are his; the interior is crowded with those luxuries which Hardin enjoys as of right. Deeply drinking the cup of life, even in his social vices, Philip Hardin aims at a certain distinction. Around his table gather the choicest knights-errant of the golden quest. Maxime Valois here develops a social talent as a leader of men, guided by the sardonic Mephisto of his young life. Still the evening hours hang heavily on the hands of the two lawyers. When the rapidly arriving steamers bring friends, with letters or introductions, they have hospitality to dispense. The great leaders of the South are now systematically colonizing California. Guests abound at these times at Hardin's board. Travel, mining, exploration, and adventure carry them away soon; extensive tours on official duty draw them away. As occupations increase, men grow unmindful of each other and meet more rarely. For the saloons, rude hotels, gaming palaces, and resorts of covert pleasures are the usual rendezvous of the men of fortune and power. In such resorts grave intrigues are planned; future policies are mapped out; business goes on under the laughter of wild-eyed Maenads; secrets of state are whispered between glass and glass.