CHAPTER III 



Happy Valley 



The little valley was about half a mile wide and 

 nearly circular in shape, with a rim of steep rocks 

 hemming it in on the front and sides, while the rug- 

 ged face of the mountain, covered with a splendid for- 

 est, loomed up almost perpendicular behind it. 

 Along the stream, which tumbled in many small cas- 

 cades from the mountain wall and rested on the 

 west side of the valley for its final leap to the ocean, 

 the forest had been thinned out and the underbrush 

 cut away to form a beautiful grove of various in- 

 teresting trees, all in full foliage. At the edge of 

 this grove, almost at the center of the valley, stood 

 the house, while adjoining it on the east was a large 

 garden and beyond it several cultivated fields. 



The valley was really one of the old craters of the 

 volcano, which accounted for its circular shape and 

 the wall of rocks around it, through which the stream 

 had worn its way after thousands of years. It was 

 this rim of old lava which had turned aside the 

 stream of fresh lava and saved the valley from de- 

 struction; while a peculiar suction of air through the 



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