After luncheon the red lacquer cabinet went away. She watched it off as the last remnant of the old life. She felt strangely indifferent to what yesterday she thought would be so many unbearable wrenches. Finally nothing was left but her own few possessions, gathered together in a corner of the front room--two trunks, a screen, a table, a long, old-fashioned mirror and some pictures. Yesterday morning she had bargained with a cheap carter, picked up on the street corner, to take them for a dollar, and now she sat waiting for him, while the day grew duller outside, and the fog began to sift itself into fine rain. The servant, who was to close and lock the cottage, begged her to go, promising to see to the shipping of the last load. Mariposa needed no special urging. She felt that an afternoon spent in that dim little parlor, looking out through the bay window at the fine slant of the rain would drive her mad. There was no promise of cheer at the Garcia boarding-house, but it was, at least, not haunted with memories. A half-hour later, with the precious desk, containing the marriage certificates and Shackleton’s gift of money, under her arm, she was climbing the hills from Sutter Street to that part of Hyde Street in which the Garcia house stood. She eyed it with deepening gloom as it revealed itself through the thin rain. It was a house which even then was getting old, standing back from the street on top of a bank, which was held in place by a wooden bulk-head, surmounted by a low balustrade. A gate gave access through this, and a flight of rotting wooden steps led by zigzags to the house. The lower story was skirted in front by a balcony, which, after the fashion of early San Francisco architecture, was encased in glass. Its roof above slanted up to the two long windows of the front bedroom. The pepper-tree, of which Mariposa had spoken to Essex, was sufficient to tell of the age of the property and to give beauty and picturesqueness to the ramshackle old place. It had reached an unusual growth and threw a fountain of drooping foliage over the balustrade and one long limb upon the balcony roof. To-day it dripped with the rest of the world. As Mariposa let the gate bang the impact shook a shower from the tree, which fell on her as she passed beneath. It seemed to her a bad omen and added to the almost terrifying sensation of gloom that was invading her.