Catherine! Bus to the hotel, sir?"
Other guests, more certain of their intentions, pushed impatiently
against him, and presently he found himself, wedged well toward the
middle of the long seat, chugging comfortably up the hill. Still
half-daunted, he gazed about him. It was all of it charming to be sure,
fascinating even; yet, could this festive summering place be the Avalon
of his dreams? Was this the quaint village of Spanish times, reaching
back still further through dimly remembered Indian lore to a world lost
now except to legend? Yet it was for the sake of a mere legend, a
fanciful tale handed down in his family through many a generation, that
he had made the long journey from New York to California, nor - and here
he set his lips with dogged determination, did he intend to return until
he had found that for which he searched.
It was now something over two years since Harrison Blair, then fresh
from Yale, had astonished both those who wished him well and those who,
for various envious reasons, did not, with the wholly unreasonable
success of his first book. For, to those who did not understand, his
sudden fame had seemed all the more surprising in that it rested upon
nothing more substantial than a slender volume of Indian verse.
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