"It's all right, sonny," Billy laughed, as he drove on. "I ain't
the game warden. I 'm buyin' horses."
More leaping tree squirrels, more ruddy madronos and majestic
oaks, more fairy circles of redwoods, and, still beside the
singing stream, they passed a gate by the roadside. Before it
stood a rural mail box, on which was lettered "Edmund Hale."
Standing under the rustic arch, leaning upon the gate, a man and
woman composed a pieture so arresting and beautiful that Saxon
caught her breath. They were side by side, the delicate hand of
the woman curled in the hand of the man, which looked as if made
to confer benedictions. His face bore out this impression--a
beautiful-browed countenance, with large, benevolent gray eyes
under a wealth of white hair that shone like spun glass. He was
fair and large; the little woman beside him was daintily wrought.
She was saffron-brown, as a woman of the white race can well be,
with smiling eyes of bluest blue. In quaint sage-green draperies,
she seemed a flower, with her small vivid face irresistibly
reminding Saxon of a springtime wake-robin.
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