The garden was part of a fifty vara lot of land, on which I was simultaneously erecting a house.  But the garden was finished before the house was, through certain circumstances very characteristic of that epoch and civilization.  I had purchased the Spanish title, the only legal one, to the land, which, however, had been in possession of a “squatter.”  But he had been unable to hold that possession against a “jumper,”—­another kind of squatter who had entered upon it covertly, fenced it in, and marked it out in building sites.  Neither having legal rights, they could not invoke the law; the last man held possession.  There was no doubt that in due course of litigation and time both these ingenuous gentlemen would have been dispossessed in favor of the real owner,—­myself,—­but that course would be a protracted one.  Following the usual custom of the locality, I paid a certain sum to the jumper to yield up peaceably his possession of the land, and began to build upon it.  It might be reasonably supposed that the question was settled.  But it was not.  The house was nearly finished when, one morning, I was called out of my editorial sanctum by a pallid painter, looking even more white-leaded than usual, who informed me that my house was in the possession of five armed men!  The entry had been made peaceably during the painters’ absence to dinner under a wayside tree.  When they returned, they had found their pots and brushes in the road, and an intimation from the windows that their reentrance would be forcibly resisted as a trespass.

I honestly believe that Rutli was more concerned than myself over this dispossession.  While he loyally believed that I would get back my property, he was dreadfully grieved over the inevitable damage that would be done to the garden during this interval of neglect and carelessness.  I even think he would have made a truce with my enemies, if they would only have let him look after his beloved plants.  As it was, he kept a passing but melancholy surveillance of them, and was indeed a better spy of the actions of the intruders than any I could have employed.  One day, to my astonishment, he brought me a moss-rose bud from a bush which had been trained against a column of the veranda.  It appeared that he had called, from over the fence, the attention of one of the men to the neglected condition of the plant, and had obtained permission to “come in and tie it up.”  The men, being merely hirelings of the chief squatter, had no personal feeling, and I was not therefore surprised to hear that they presently allowed Rutli to come in occasionally and look after his precious “slips.”  If they had any suspicions of his great strength, it was probably offset by his peaceful avocation and his bland, childlike face.  Meantime, I had begun the usual useless legal proceeding, but had also engaged a few rascals of my own to be ready to take advantage of any want of vigilance on the part of my adversaries.  I never thought of Rutli in that connection any more than they had.