Clarence halted before it, perplexed and astonished.  Scarcely two weeks had elapsed since he had last visited it and sat beneath its roof with Jim, and already its few ruins had taken upon themselves the look of years of abandonment and decay.  The wild land seemed to have thrown off its yoke of cultivation in a night, and nature rioted again with all its primal forces over the freed soil.  Wild oats and mustard were springing already in the broken furrows, and lank vines were slimily spreading over a few scattered but still unseasoned and sappy shingles.  Some battered tin cans and fragments of old clothing looked as remote as if they had been relics of the earliest immigration.

Clarence turned inquiringly towards the Hopkins farmhouse across the road.  His arrival, however, had already been noticed, as the door of the kitchen opened in an anticipatory fashion, and he could see the slight figure of Phoebe Hopkins in the doorway, backed by the overlooking heads and shoulders of her parents.  The face of the young girl was pale and drawn with anxiety, at which Clarence’s simple astonishment took a shade of concern.

“I am looking for Mr. Hooker,” he said uneasily.  “And I don’t seem to be able to find either him or his house.”

“And you don’t know what’s gone of him?” said the girl quickly.

“No; I haven’t seen him for two weeks.”

“There, I told you so!” said the girl, turning nervously to her parents.  “I knew it.  He hasn’t seen him for two weeks.”  Then, looking almost tearfully at Clarence’s face, she said, “No more have we.”

“But,” said Clarence impatiently, “something must have happened.  Where is his house?”

“Taken away by them jumpers,” interrupted the old farmer; “a lot of roughs that pulled it down and carted it off in a jiffy before our very eyes without answerin’ a civil question to me or her.  But he wasn’t there, nor before, nor since.”

“No,” added the old woman, with flashing eyes, “or he’d let ’em have what ther’ was in his six-shooters.”

“No, he wouldn’t, mother,” said the girl impatiently, “he’d changed, and was agin all them ideas of force and riotin’.  He was for peace and law all the time.  Why, the day before we missed him he was tellin’ me California never would be decent until people obeyed the laws and the titles were settled.  And for that reason, because he wouldn’t fight agin the law, or without the consent of the law, they’ve killed him, or kidnapped him away.”

The girl’s lips quivered, and her small brown hands twisted the edges of her blue checked apron.  Although this new picture of Jim’s peacefulness was as astounding and unsatisfactory as his own disappearance, there was no doubt of the sincerity of poor Phoebe’s impression.