*****
Liberty Jones had been a year at the cabin. In that time she had learned
that her employer's name was Doctor Ruysdael, that he had a lucrative
practice in San Jose, but had also "taken up" a league or two of wild
forest land in the Santa Cruz range, which he preserved and held after
a fashion of his own, which gave him the reputation of being a "crank"
among the very few neighbors his vast possessions permitted, and the
equally few friends his singular tastes allowed him. It was believed
that a man owning such an enormous quantity of timber land, who should
refuse to set up a sawmill and absolutely forbid the felling of trees;
who should decline to connect it with the highway to Santa Cruz, and
close it against improvement and speculation, had given sufficient
evidence of his insanity; but when to this was added the rumor that he
himself was not only devoid of the human instinct of hunting the wild
animals with which his domain abounded, but that he held it so sacred to
their use as to forbid the firing of a gun within his limits, and that
these restrictions were further preserved and "policed" by the scattered
remnants of a band of aborigines,--known as "digger Injins,"--it was
seriously hinted that his eccentricity had acquired a political and
moral significance, and demanded legislative interference.
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