Finally, on the crest of the hill, where California Street runs between its palaces, the girl paused and looked about her. The great buildings were new, and stood, vast, awe-compelling monuments to California’s material glory. Their owners were still trying to make themselves comfortable in them. There were sons and daughters to be married from them. Perched high above the city, in these many-windowed aeries, they could look down on the town they had seen grow from a village in the days when they, too, had been young, poor and struggling. What memories must have crowded their minds as they thought of the San Francisco they had first seen, and the San Francisco they saw now; of themselves as they had been then, and as they were now! Mariposa leaned against a convenient wall top and looked down. The city lay clear-edged and gray in the cup made by its encircling hills. It had not yet thrown out feelers toward the Mission hills, and they rose above the varied sweep of roof and chimney, in undulating greenness, flecked here and there by the white dot of a cottage. The girdle of the bay shone sapphire-blue on this day of still sunshine. From its farther side other hills were revealed, each peak and shoulder clear cut against its neighbor and defining themselves in a crumpled, cobalt line against the faint sky. Over all Mount Diavolo rose, a purple point, pricking up above the green of newly grassed hills, about whose feet hung a white fringe of little towns. Turning her eyes again on the descending walls and roofs, the watcher saw a long cortège passing soberly between the gray house-fronts on a street a few blocks below her. As she looked the boom of solemn music rose to her. It was a funeral, and one of unusual length, she thought, as her eyes caught the slow line of carriages far back through breaks in the houses. Presently, in the opening where two streets crossed, the hearse came into view, black and gloomy, with its nodding tufts of feathers and somberly caparisoned horses. Men walked behind it, and the measured music swelled louder, melancholy and yet inspiring. Suddenly she realized whose it was. The rich man was going splendidly to his rest. “My father!” she whispered to herself. “My father! How strange! how strange!” The cortège passed on, the music swelling grandiosely and then dying down into fitful snatches of sweetness. The long line of carriages moved slowly forward, at a crawling foot-pace. The daughter leaned on the coping of the wall, watching this last passage through the city of the father she had known so slightly and toward whom she felt a bitter and silent resentment.