Farrel nodded his understanding.  “Thank you for your advice, sir.  When I am ready will your bank be good enough to arrange the purchase of the South Coast bonds for me?”

“Certainly.  Happy to oblige you, Farrel.  But do not be in too great a hurry.  You may lose more in the shrinkages of values if you buy now than you would make in interest.”

“I shall be guided by your advice, sir.  You are very kind.”

“By the way,” Parker continued, with a deprecatory smile, “I haven’t entered suit against you in the matter of that foreclosure.  I didn’t desire to annoy you while you were in hospital and you’ve been busy on the range ever since.  When can I induce you to submit to a process-server?”

“This afternoon will suit me, Mr. Parker.”

“I’ll gladly wait awhile longer, if you can give me any tangible assurance of your ability to meet the mortgage.”

“I cannot do that to-day, sir, although I may be able to do so if you will defer action for three days.”

Parker nodded and the conversation languished.  The car had climbed out of the San Gregorio and was mounting swiftly along the route to La Questa, affording to the Parkers a panorama of mountain, hill, valley and sea so startling in its vastness and its rugged beauty that Don Mike realized his guests had been silenced as much by awe as by their desire to avoid a painful and unprofitable conversation.

Suddenly they swung wide around a turn and saw, two thousand feet below them, La Questa Valley.  The chauffeur parked the car on the outside of the turn to give his passengers a long, unobstructed view.

“Looks like a green checker-board with tiny squares,” Parker remarked presently.

“Little Japanese farms.”

“There must be a thousand of them, Farrel.”

“That means not less than five thousand Japanese, Mr. Parker.  It means that literally a slice of Japan has been transplanted in La Questa Valley, perhaps the fairest and most fruitful valley in the fairest and most fruitful state in the fairest and most fruitful country God ever made.  And it is lost to white men!”

“Serves them right.  Why didn’t they retain their lands?”

“Why doesn’t water run up hill?  A few Japs came in and leased or bought lands long before we Californians suspected a ‘yellow peril.’  They paid good prices to inefficient white farmers who were glad to get out at a price in excess of what any white man could afford to pay.  After we passed our land law in 1913, white men continued to buy the lands for a corporation owned by Japanese with white dummy directors, or a majority of the stock of the corporation ostensibly owned by white men.  Thousands of patriotic Californians have sold their farms to Japanese without knowing it.  The law provides that a Japanese cannot lease land longer than three years, so when their leases expire they conform to our foolish law by merely shifting the tenants from