"Oh, that'll be all right," said Pancha confidently, "I'm going to take care of her and cure her, and when she's good and ready she'll tell me." They moved on for quieter surroundings and to find a doctor. This was a hopeless quest. Every house that bore a sign was tried, and at each one the answer was the same: the doctor was out; went right after the quake to be back no one knew when. Some were at the Mechanics' Pavilion, where the injured had been gathered, and which had to be vacated later in the day; others at work in the hospitals being cleared before the fire's advance. Late in the afternoon Mrs. Meeker left them to go to her cousin's, who had a cottage up beyond Van Ness Avenue. Prince and the cart she gave over to them; they'd need it to get the woman away out of all this noise and excitement. Tears were in her eyes as she bade farewell to the old horse, giving Garland an address that would find her later--"unless it goes with the rest of the town"--she added resignedly. In the first shadowing of twilight, illumined with the fire's high glow, they watched her trudge off, the bird cage in one hand, the portrait in the other, the teapot tucked under her arm. It was night when they came to a final halt--a night horribly bright, the sky a blazing splendor defying the darkness. The place was an open space on the first rise of the Mission Hills. There were houses about, here and there ascending the slope in an abortive attempt at a street which, halfway up, abandoned the effort and lapsed into a sprinkling of one-story cottages. Above them, on the naked hillside, the first wave of refugees had broken and scattered. Under the fiery radiance they sat, dumb with fatigue, some sleeping curled up among their bundles, some clustered about little cores of fire over which they cooked food brought out to them from the houses. A large tree stretched its limbs over a plateau in the hill's flank and here the cart was brought to a stop. Prince, loosed from the shafts, cropped a supper from the grass, and the unknown woman lay on her mattress under the red-laced shade. A girl from a cottage down the slope brought them coffee, bread and fruit, and sitting side by side they ate, looking out over the sea of roofs to where the ragged flame tongues leaped and dropped, and the smoke mountains rolled sullenly over the faint, obscured stars. They spoke little, aware for the first time of a great exhaustion, hearing strangely the sounds of a life that went on as if unchanged and uninterrupted--the clinking of china, the fitful cries of children sinking to sleep, the barking of dogs, a voice crooning a song, and laughter, low-voiced and sweet.