In any case we can find a better place to watch and to prepare tea."

At the present time on each side the road the mustard plants were blooming, making a broad field of the cloth of gold broken only by the long trail.

Further along down the slope of a hillside a miniature orange grove had been planted with trees no larger than would have comfortably shaded dolls' houses.

Then, as they rode on, the Camp Fire girls drew nearer to the fine of the coast. A fog was blowing in from the sea.

Finally, standing up in her stirrups for an instant, Peggy Webster pointed ahead.

"See those three rocks down there that look like 'the Big Bear, the Middle-Sized Bear and the Little Bear,' in the fairy story! Don't you think they would form a comfortable background for our tea party? At least they will be a protection from the wind. If we go on and the fog grows much thicker we shall not be able even to see each other."

Soon after the horses and the wagon halted and Dan Webster climbed down, bearing the tea basket. Mr. Simpson, who was continuing to act as guide, took charge of the horses.

The coast looked bare and wind-swept. There were no trees nearby and no driftwood along the shore.

However, nearly two hundred years before, when Father Juniper Serra founded and built the Spanish missions of California, he and his brother monks left behind them a golden harvest. In all their pilgrimages from land's end to land's end they flung the seed of the mustard plant along their route.

Leaving the other girls to unpack the tea basket, Marta Clark and Bettina walked quickly back along the road until not a quarter of a mile away they discovered another field of the omnipresent mustard.

Then the two girls began searching for the dried stems of the mustard plant in order to start their camp fire.

Bettina was standing with her arms filled with the long stems when Marta Clark came close up beside her. Both of the girls were knee deep among the golden flowers.

"You look like Ruth among the corn, Bettina," Marta remarked, surveying the other girl with generous admiration.

"Do you remember the story of Ruth in the Bible? 'So she gleaned in the field until even, and beat out that she had gleaned. And she took it up and went into the 

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