XVI. 



f^ancft h\fe. 



IGNOR X., an Italian some sixty years old, had been 

 a successful merchant in San Francisco. He had a 

 son named Pedro, who married a native heiress. 

 This lady inherited a tract of one thousand six hundred 

 acres in Sonoma County, and thinking a fortune might be 

 made in farming, the whole party, father, mother, son and his 

 wife and baby left San Francisco and moved to this ranch, 

 on which had previously been built a house and barn. 

 With them were transported all manner of farming imple- 

 ments; among them a subsoil plow for delving in a soil which 

 hardly knew a bottom, some of which was composed of an 

 adobe clay so hard that the coulter point would hardly scratch 

 it. Though Pedro and his wife owned the property they 

 were looked upon as children by the old gentleman, who was 

 the controlling power on the ranch. He scolded his son as 

 if he were a boy in roundabouts, and he in his turn, as if he 

 found consolation in the humiliation of so doing, unnecessarily 

 scolded his employees. Inez, the young wife, was as much of 

 a plaything as was the baby, Ana, or as she was called in 

 the diminuendos of the Spanish language, Anita, and, as far 

 as assisting at household affairs was concerned, was of no 

 more account than the baby. Signor X. did the cooking. He 

 was a singular genius, and cut an odd figure as with head 



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