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Nasturtiums languished here and there, where some of the women had made an effort to fight the unresponsive red clay. Otherwise, even after two years, the power-house and its environs looked unfinished, crude, ugly. On all sides the mountains rose dark and steep, the pointed tops of the redwoods mounting evenly, tier on tier. Except for the lumber slide and the pole line, there was no break anywhere, not even a glimpse of the road that wound somehow out of the canyon–up, up, up, twelve long miles, to the top of the ridge.

And even at the top, Paul reflected bitterly, there was only an unpainted farm-house, where the stage stopped three times a week with mail. From there it was a fifty-mile drive to town–a California country town, asleep in the curve of two sluggish little rivers. And from “town” to San Francisco it was almost a day’s trip, and from San Francisco to the Grand Central Station at Forty-second Street it was nearly five days more.

Paul shoved his hands in his pockets and began again: “Light and Power Co.–GENTLEMEN.”

Night came swiftly to Kirkwood. For a few wonderful moments the last of the sunlight lingered, hot and gold, on the upper branches of the highest trees along the ridge; then suddenly the valley was plunged in soft twilight, and violet shadows began to tangle themselves about the great shafts of the redwoods. The heat of the day dropped from the air like a falling veil. A fine mist spun itself above the river; bats began to wheel on the edge of the clearing.

With the coming of darkness every window in the place was suddenly alight. The Company House blazed with it; the great power-house doorway sent a broad stream of yellow into the deepening shadows of the night; the “cook-house,” where Willy Chow Tong cooked for a score of “hands” and oilers, showed a thousand golden cracks in its rough walls. The little cottages on the hill were hidden by the glare from their dangling porch lights. Light was so plentiful, at this factory of light, that even the Hopps’ barnlike home blazed with a dozen “thirty-twos.”

“Nothing like having a little light on the subject, Mr. Fo’ster,” said Mrs. Tolley, coming out to the porch. The Vorses had small children that they could not leave very long alone; so, when Min and her mother had reduced the kitchen to orderly, warm, soap-scented darkness every night, and wound the clock, and hung up their aprons, they went up to the Vorses’ to play “five hundred.”

“Seems’s if I never could get enough light, myself,” the matron continued agreeably, descending the porch steps. “Before I come here I never had nothing in my kitchen but an oil lamp and a reflector. Jest as sure as I’d be dishing up dinner, hot nights, that lamp would begin to flicker and suck–well, shucks! I’d look up at it and I’d say, ‘Well, why don’t you go out? Go ahead!'” Mrs. Tolley laughed joyously. “Well, one night–George–” she was continuing with relish, when Min pulled at her sleeve and, with a sort of affectionate impatience, said, “Oh, f’ve’vens’ sakes ma!”

“Yes, I’m coming,” said Mrs. Tolley, recalled. “Wish’t you played ‘five hundred,’ Mr. Fo’ster,” she added politely.

“I don’t play either that or old maid,” said Paul, distinctly. This remark was taken in good part by the Tolleys.

“Old maid’s a real comical game,” Min conceded mildly.

“Well, you won’t be s’lunsum next week when the Chisholms get back,” said Mrs. Tolley, unaffectedly, gathering up the skirt of her starched gown to avoid contact with the sudden heavy dews. “He’s an awful nice feller, and she–she’s twenty-six, but she’s as jolly as a girl. I declare, I just love Patricia Chisholm.”

“Twenty-six, is she?” said Paul, disgustedly, to himself, when the Tolleys had gone. “Only one woman–of any class, that is–in this forsaken hole, and she twenty-six!” And he had been thinking of this Patricia with a good deal of interest, he admitted resentfully. Paul was twenty-four, and liked slender little girls well under twenty.