The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls

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their cabin and cared for him until he partly recovered.

"Here is another curious start in my life," he wrote to Sidney Colvin.
"I am living at an Angora goat-ranch, in the Coast Line Mountains,
eighteen miles from Monterey. I was camping out, but got so sick that
the two rancheros took me in and tended me. One is an old bear hunter,
seventy-two years old, and a captain from the Mexican War; the other a
pilgrim, and one who was out with the bear flag and under Fremont when
California was taken by the States. They are both true frontiersmen, and
most kind and pleasant. Captain Smith, the bear hunter, is my physician,
and I obey him like an oracle....

"I am now lying in an upper chamber, with the clinking of goat bells in
my ears, which proves to me that the goats are come home and it will
soon be time to eat. The old bear hunter is doubtless now infusing tea;
and Tom the Indian will come in with his gun in a few moments....