It was a wild and beautiful valley, some hundreds of feet higher than St.
Helen's, and seemed the very home of peace.

A Sunday-like quiet pervaded the place, whose stillness was never broken except by bird-songs and the rustle of the pine branches.
The sides of the valley near its opening were dotted here and there with huts and cabins belonging to parties who had fled from the heat of the plains for the summer.

At the upper end stood the ranch house,--a large, rather rudely built structure,--and about it were a number of cabins and cottages, in which two, four, or six people could be accommodated.

Clover and Phil were lodged in one of these.

The tiny structure contained only a sitting and two sleeping rooms, and was very plain and bare.