Their road led always upward, with a gradual, easy grade; and by noon they had left the cultivated section of the lower valley for the higher, untilled lands.  The dark, glossy-green of the orange and the lighter shining tints of the lemon groves, with the rich, satiny-gray tones of the olive-trees, were replaced now by the softer grays, greens, yellows, and browns of the chaparral.  The air was no longer heavy with the perfume of roses and orange-blossoms, but came to their nostrils laden with the pungent odors of yerba santa and greasewood and sage.  Looking back, they could see the valley—­marked off by its roads into many squares of green, and dotted here and there by small towns and cities—­stretching away toward the western ocean until it was lost in a gray-blue haze out of which the distant San Gabriels, beyond Cajon Pass, lifted into the clear sky above, like the shore-line of dreamland rising out of a dream sea.  Before them, the San Bernardinos drew ever nearer and more intimate—­silently inviting them; patiently, with a world old patience, bidding them come; in the majestic humbleness of their lofty spirit, offering themselves and the wealth of their teaching.

So they came, in the late afternoon, to that spot where the road for the first time crosses the alder and cottonwood bordered stream that, before it reaches the valley, is drawn from its natural course by the irrigation flumes and pipes.

The sound of the mountain waters leaping down their granite-bouldered way reached the men while they were yet some distance.  Croesus pointed his long ears forward in burro anticipation—­his experience telling him that the day’s work was about to end.  Czar was already ranging along the side of the creek—­sending a colony of squirrels scampering to the tree tops, and a bevy of quail whirring to the chaparral in frightened flight.  The artist greeted the waters with a schoolboy shout of gladness.  Conrad Lagrange, with the smile and the voice of a man miraculously recreated, said quietly, “This is the place where we stop for the night.”

Their camp was a simple matter.  Croesus asked nothing but to be released from his burden—­being quite capable of caring for himself.  A wash in the clear, cold water of the brook; a simple meal, prepared by Conrad Lagrange over a small fire made of sticks gathered by the artist; their tarpaulin and blankets spread within sound of the music of the stream; a watching of the sun’s glorious going down; a quiet pipe in the hush of the mysterious twilight; a “good night” in the soft darkness, when the myriad stars looked down upon the dull red glow of their camp-fire embers; with the guarding spirit of the mighty hills to give them peace—­and they lay down to sleep at the mountain’s feet.

There is no sleeping late in the morning when one sleeps in the open, under the stars.  After breakfast, the artist received another lesson in packing, and they moved on toward the world that already seemed to dwarf that other world which they had left, by one day’s walking, so far below.  A heavy fog, rolling in from the ocean in the night, submerged the valley in its dull, gray depths—­leaving to the eye no view but the view of the mountains before them, and forcing upon the artist’s mind the weird impression that the life he had always known was a fantastically unreal dream.