The old-fashioned Union Street cable car, with its low, comfortable outside seats, put Blix and Condy down just inside the Presidio Government Reservation.

Condy asked a direction of a sentry nursing his Krag-Jorgensen at the terminus of the track, and then with Blix set off down the long board walk through the tunnel of overhanging evergreens.
The day could not have been more desirable.

It was a little after ten of a Monday morning, Condy's weekly holiday.

The air was neither cool nor warm, effervescent merely, brisk and full of the smell of grass and of the sea.

The sky was a speckless sheen of pale blue.