Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley.

Judge Miller's place, it wascalled. It stood back from the road, half hidden among the trees, through which glimpsescould be caught of the wide cool veranda that ran around its four sides.

The house wasapproached by gravelled driveways which wound about through wide-spreading lawns andunder the interlacing boughs of tall poplars.

At the rear things were on even a morespacious scale than at the front.

There were great stables, where a dozen grooms and boysheld forth, rows of vine-clad servants' cottages, an endless and orderly array of outhouses,long grape arbors, green pastures, orchards, and berry patches.

Then there was thepumping plant for the artesian well, and the big cement tank where Judge Miller's boystook their morning plunge and kept cool in the hot afternoon