The fires in the western sky burned low and finally faded out before Graham rose from his seat near the window and touched his lamp into flame. The searching light of the large astral revealed clearly the interior of the apartment in which the artist lived and worked. It was a square, high room, not very large, with a miscellaneous furnishing. One corner, half hidden by a large canvas, was devoted to his narrow wooden bed and dressing-table. Near a large casement stood his easel with palette and brushes. On the walls hung a pair of foils and masks and some boxing gloves. These, and a pair of Indian clubs in the corner, proved that the occupant of the tower was not careless of developing the splendid muscles with which he was endowed. Near the doorway hung a string of curious Japanese _netshukés_,--masks, monkeys, bears, men, women, and fruit, carefully carved in wood or ivory by the greatest artificers the world knows to-day. The walls were covered with pictures and sketches; the large table littered with books and tubes of paint. A group of deer antlers served as clothes-pegs, and the floor was strewn with the skins of these and many other animals. A quaint apartment, in which no attempts at the picturesque had been made, which the careless grouping together of many objects had nevertheless attained. John Graham had reclaimed the old tower from utter desolation two years before, when he took up his residence in the ruins of the Spanish Mission. The adobe building had fallen to decay, a thick cloak of ivy and flowering vines mercifully hiding from the light of day the desolate ruin of what had been the religious centre of the country of San Rosario. The church walls had fallen to the ground; but the reredos and deserted altar stood swept by the winds of heaven, and decked with climbing roses and clinging ferns. The tower, which had been built very substantially, and with a view to defence in case of danger, still stood stanch, gray and weather-beaten. A flight of steep wooden stairs leading from what had been the vestibule of the church gave access to the room. The tower stood within the limits of the San Rosario Ranch, the property of Mr. Ralph Almsford, which included twenty square miles of wooded country and arable land.