"Jimmie, dear," sobbed Edna, "if you'll promise me not to die, I'll never speak to Mr. Greenberg again!"

* * * * *

At about six the next morning Pete Holloway woke up. He opened his eyes, groaned deeply, and closed them again.

"How are you feeling, Pete?" said I.

Pete groaned again, for memory of all that had passed came to him. With a tremendous effort he said—

"I'm dyin'!"

And he looked it.

In Miss Parkinson's bower, Jimmie Barker was saying faintly: "Kiss me good-bye, Edna; the hour has come!"

Shortly before, Mamie had whispered to Dan: "Darling, can you forgive me?" And he had replied fervently: "Mame, if Jack Rice kin make you happy, you take him."

Greiffenhagen had tried to administer more medicine. The boys refused to touch it. Pete expressed the feelings of the others when he muttered: "I ain't goin' to cross the Jordan drunk!"

It seemed to me that the three men were sinking. Mrs. Greiffenhagen, an impassioned pessimist, was of opinion that they couldn't last another hour!

At nine, when our nerves had been strained to breaking-point, Ajax and a big-bearded stranger galloped up to Greiffenhagen's house.

"It's Doc. Elkins, of San Lorenzy," said a hired man.

"The boys are sinking!" sobbed Mrs. Greiffenhagen. "Where is the Professor?"

"I left him in San Lorenzo."

Elkins and Ajax rushed upstairs and into the Greiffenhagen bedroom. Elkins glanced at Pete, felt his pulse, and then said deliberately—

"My man, you're dying of sheer funk! You've poisoned yourself with nothing more deadly than good Kentucky whisky! In six hours you'll be perfectly well again."

Pete heard, and pulled himself together. It struck him that this was not the first time that he had felt nearly dead after imbibing much whisky.

"But the Perfessor?" he asked feebly.

"Professor Adam Chawner," said Elkins in a clear voice, "is in a strait-waistcoat at the County Hospital. He will get over this, but not so quickly as you will. He is quite mad for the moment about a deadly microbe which only exists in his imagination."

The partitions in most Californian houses are indecently thin. As Elkins's voice died away—and Pete said afterwards it was like a strain of heavenly music—a feeble cheer was heard from the chamber usually occupied by Miss Mary Willing.

"Jimmie," cried Dan, "air you dead yet?"

"Not quite," came an attenuated whisper from the other side of the passage.

"We'll live to be married, old socks," continued Dan in a robuster voice, "but I've got the worst dose o' prickly heat you ever saw."

The following day our three friends were riding the range. Six months afterwards, Professor Adam Chawner resumed his work at the Smithsonian Institute.



XII

THE BABE

One of the Britishers who came to Paradise was an Irishman, the son of an archdeacon with a large family and a small income. He was a strapping fellow, strong and sturdy as a camel—and quite as obstinate. He always spoke affectionately of his people, but I fancy they were not deeply grieved when he left England. I dare say he was troublesome at home; you know what that means. However, he was warmly welcomed in Paradise, for he brought with him two hundred pounds in cash, and a disposition to spend it as quickly as possible. Ajax christened him The Babe, because he had a milk-and-roses complexion, and a babe's capacity for, and love of, liquid refreshment. Perhaps the archdeacon thought that the West was a sort of kindergarten, where children like The Babe are given, at small expense, object-lessons and exercises peculiarly adapted to young and plastic minds. In Central America certain tribes living by the seaboard throw their children into the surf, wherein they sink or learn to swim, as the Fates decree. Some sink.

When The Babe's two hundred pounds were spent, he came to us and asked for a job. He said, I remember, that he was the son of an archdeacon, and that he could trust us to bear that in mind. We were so impressed by his guileless face and cock-a-hoop assurance, that we had not the heart to turn him away.

At the end of a fortnight Ajax took pencil and paper, and computed what The Babe had cost us. He had staked a valuable horse; he had smashed a patent reaper; he had set fire to the ranch, and burnt up five hundred acres of bunch grass; and he had turned some of our quiet domestic cows into wild beasts, because—as he put it—he wished to become a vaquero. He said that the billet of foreman would just suit his father's son.

"The equivalent of what The Babe has destroyed," said my brother Ajax, "if put out at compound interest, five per cent., would in a hundred years amount to more than fifty thousand pounds."

"I'm awfully sorry," murmured The Babe.

"I fear," observed Ajax to me later, "that we cannot afford to nurse this infant."

I was of the same opinion; so The Babe departed, and for a season we saw his chubby face no more. Then one day, like a bolt from the blue, came an unstamped letter from San Francisco. The Babe wrote to ask for money. Such letters, as a rule, may be left unanswered, but not always. Ajax and I read The Babe's ill-written lines, and filled in the gaps in the text. Connoted and collated, it became a manuscript of extraordinary interest and significance. We inferred that if the sum demanded were not sent, the writer might be constrained to cast himself as rubbish to the void. Now The Babe had his little failings, but cowardice was not one of them. Indeed, his physical courage redeemed in a sense his moral and intellectual weakness.

"There is only one thing to do," said Ajax; "we must rescue The Babe. We'll spin a dollar to determine who goes to the city to-morrow morning."

I nodded, for I was smelling the letter; the taint of opium was on it.

"Awful—isn't it?" murmured Ajax. "Do you remember those loathsome dens in Chinatown? And the creatures on the mats, and in the bunks! And that missionary chap, who said how hard it was to reclaim them. Poor Babe!"

Then we filled our pipes and smoked them slowly. We had plenty to think about, for rescuing an opium-fiend is no easy job, and reclaiming him afterwards is as hard again. But The Babe's blue eyes and his pink skin—what did they look like now?—were pleading on his behalf, and we remembered that he had played in his school eleven, and could run a quarter-mile in fifty-eight seconds, and was always cheery and good-tempered. The woods of the Colonies and the West are full of such Babes; and they all like to play with edged tools.

Next day we both went north. Ajax said that two heads were better than one, and that it was not wise to trust oneself alone in the stews of San Francisco. The police will not tell you how many white men are annually lost in those festering alleys that lie north of Kearney Street, but if you are interested in such matters, I can refer you to a certain grim-faced guide, who has spent nearly twenty years in Chinatown, and you can implicitly believe one quarter of what he says: that quarter will strain your credulity not a little.

We walked to the address given in the letter—a low dive—not a stone's-throw from one of the biggest hotels west of the Rocky Mountains. The man behind the bar said that he knew The Babe well, that he was a perfect gentleman, and a personal friend of his. The fellow's glassy eyes and his grey-green skin told their own story. A more villainous or crafty-looking scoundrel it has been my good fortune not to see.

"Where is your friend?" said Ajax.

The man behind the bar protested ignorance. Then my brother laid a five-dollar gold piece upon the country, and repeated the question. The man's yellow fingers began to tremble. Gold to him was opium, and opium held all his world and the glory thereof.

"I can't take you to him—now," he muttered sullenly.

"You can," replied Ajax, "and you must."

The man glared at us. Doubtless he guessed the nature of our errand, and wished to protect his friend from the interference of Philistines, Then he smiled evilly, and laughed.

"All right; come on. I ain't goin' to take yer to the Palace Hotel."

He opened the till and slipped some money into his pocket. Then he put on a ragged overcoat, and a hat which he drew down over his eyes with a furtive jerk of his yellow fingers. Then he went behind the bar and swallowed something; it was not whisky, but it brought a faint tinge of colour into his cheek, and seemed to stiffen his knees.

"Shall we walk, boys, or shall I send for my carriage?"

"Your carriage," repeated Ajax. "Are you speaking of the patrol- waggon? It is just round the corner."

This allusion to the police was not wasted upon The Babe's friend, who scowled and retorted glibly—

"There's better men than you, mister, who ride in that."

After this exchange of pleasantries we took the road, and followed our guide across a great thorough-fare and into Kearney Street. Thence into the labyrinth of Chinatown.

"Think ye could find yer way out of this?" asked our guide presently.

We had passed through an abominable rookery, and were walking down a narrow alley, seemingly deserted. Yet I was sensible that eyes were furtively watching us from behind barred windows, and I fancied that I heard whispers—mere guttural sounds, that conveyed nothing to the ear, save, perhaps, a warning that we were on unholy ground. The path we trod was foul with refuse; the stench was sickening; the most forlorn cur would surely have slunk from such a kennel; and here, here, to this lazar-house of all that was unclean and infamous, came of his own free-will—The Babe!

"My God!" exclaimed Ajax, in reply. "How can any man find his way into it? And, hark ye, my friend, for reasons that we won't trouble you with, we have not asked the police to accompany us, but if we are not back at our hotel in two hours' time, the clerk has instructions to send a constable to your saloon."

"Here we air," said our guide. "Duck yer heads."

We stooped beneath a low arch, and entered a dark passage. At the end was a rickety staircase; and already we could smell the pungent fumes of the opium, and taste its bitterness. As I groped my way down the stairs I was conscious of an uncanny silence, a silence eloquent of a sleep that is as death, a sleep that always ends in death. It was easy to conceive death as a hideous personality lurking at the bottom of those rotten stairs, waiting patiently for his victims; not constrained to go abroad for them, knowing that they were creeping to him, creeping and crawling, unassoiled by priest, hindered by no physician, unredeemed by love, deaf, and blind, and dumb!

* * * * *

At the foot of the stairs was another passage, darker and filthier than the one above; the walls were streaming with moisture, and the atmosphere almost unendurable. At that time the traffic in opium was receiving the serious attention of the authorities. Certain scandalous cases of bribery at the Custom House had stirred the public mind, and the police were instructed to raid all opium dens, and arrest whomsoever might be found in them. The devotees of the "pipe" were accordingly compelled to lie snug in places without the pale of police supervision: and this awful den was one of them.

It was now so dark that I could barely distinguish the outlines of our guide, who walked ahead of me. Suddenly he stopped and asked me if I had any matches. I handed him my box, which he dropped, and the matches were scattered about in the mud at our feet. He gave me back my box, and asked Ajax for his matches. I dare say older and wiser men would have apprehended mischief, but we were still in our salad days. Ajax gave up his box without a protest; the man struck a match, after some fumbling lit a piece of candle, and returned to my brother his box. It was empty—for he had cleverly transferred the matches to his own pocket—but we did not know that then. By the light of the candle I was able to take stock of my surroundings. We were facing a stout door: a door that without doubt had been constructed for purposes of defence, and upon the centre of this our guide tapped softly—three times. It opened at once, revealing the big body of a Celestial, evidently the Cerberus of the establishment. Upon his fat impassive face lay the seal of an unctuous secrecy, nothing more. Out of his obliquely-set eyes he regarded us indifferently, but he nodded to our guide, who returned the salutation with a sly laugh. For some inexplicable reason that laugh fired my suspicions. It was—so to speak—an open sesame to a chamber of horrors, the more horrible because intangible and indescribable. Ajax said afterwards that he was similarly affected. The contagion of fear is a very remarkable thing, and one little understood by the physiologists. I remember I put my hand into my pocket, because it began to tremble, and I was ashamed of it. And then, as I still stared at the fat Chinaman, his smooth mask seemed to drop from his face, and treachery, cunning, greed, hatred of the "white devil" were revealed to me.

I was now convinced we had come on a fool's errand that was like to end evilly for us, but, being a fool, I held my peace and said nothing to Ajax, who confessed later that if I had spoken he would have seconded a motion to retreat. We advanced, sensible that we were being trapped: a psychological fact not without interest.

Opposite the door through which we had just passed was another door as stout as the first. The Chinaman unlocked this with a small key, and allowed us to enter, the guide with the candle leading the way. And then, in a jiffy, before we had time to glance round us, the candle was extinguished; the door was closed; we heard the click of a patent lock; and we knew that we were alone and in darkness.

The first thing that Ajax said, and his voice was not pleasant to hear, was: "This serves us right. Of all the confounded fools who meddle with what does not concern them, we are the greatest."

Then I heard him fumbling for his matchbox, and then, when he discovered that it was empty, he made some more remarks not flattering to himself or me. I was more frightened than angry; with him rage and disgust were paramount.

We stood there in that squalid darkness for about a hundred years (it was really ten minutes), and then the voice of our guide seemed to float to us, as if from an immeasurable distance.

"Boys," he said. "How air ye makin' it?"

Ajax answered him quite coolly—

"What do you want? Our money of course. What else?"

The fellow did not reply at once. These opium fiends have no bowels of compassion. He was doubtless chuckling to himself at his own guile. When he did speak, the malice behind his words lent them point.

"Your money? The five you gave me'll keep me a week, and after that I'll come for more."

With that the voice died away, and Ajax muttered: "It looks to me as if this were a case of putting up the shutters."

We had forgotten all about The Babe, which is not surprising under the circumstances.

"Putting up the shutters? Pulling them down, you mean! there must be a window of sorts in this room."

But after careful search we came to the conclusion that we were directly under the road-bed, and that the only opening of any kind was the door through which we had passed. I thought of that door and the face of the man behind it. For what purpose save robbery and murder was such a room designed? I could not confront the certainty of violence with a jest, as Ajax did, but I was of his opinion otherwise expressed: we had been trapped like rats in a blind drain, and would be knocked on the head—presently.

The uncertainty began to gnaw at our vitals. We did not speak, for darkness is the twin of silence, but our thoughts ran riot. I remember that I almost screamed when Ajax laid his hand on my shoulder, and yet I knew that he was standing by my side.

"I shall try the heathen Chinee," he whispered. So we felt our way to the door and tapped three times, very softly, on the centre panel. To the Oriental mind those taps spell bribery, but the door remained shut.

"What have you been thinking about?" said Ajax, after another silence.

"My God—don't ask me."

"Brace up!" said my brother. I confess that he has steadier nerves than mine, but then, you see, he has not my imagination. I put my hand into his, and the grip he gave me was reassuring. I reflected that men built upon the lines of Ajax are not easily knocked on the head.

"It's a tight place," he continued. "But we've been in tight places before, although none that smells as close as this infernal hole. Now listen: I'm prepared to lay odds that The Babe is not an opium fiend at all, and has never been near this den. He wrote that letter at the saloon, didn't he? And ten to one he borrowed the paper from the bar- tender. That's why it smelled of opium. The handwriting was very shaky. Why? because The Babe was only half alive after a prolonged spree. That accounted for the tone of the letter. The Babe was thinking of the parsonage, and his mother's knee, and all that. You follow me—eh? Now then, I think it barely possible that instead of our rescuing The Babe, he will rescue us. We got in late last night, but our names were chronicled in the morning papers, for I saw them there. If The Babe sees a paper he will go to our hotel, and——"

"If we're hanging by that thread to eternity, God help us," I replied bitterly, for the grim humour of my brother's speech chilled my marrow.

"It is a slim chance, but—hang it—a slim chance is better than none."

So we hugged that sorry comfort to our hearts and fell again into silence.

* * * * *

I remember that the folly, the fatuity of what we had done, oppressed me like an iron band around the skull. Common sense told me that the man who had decoyed us into Chinatown would not be satisfied with robbery. And what were the lives of two "white devils" to the owner of this den? Suffered to escape, we might inform the police. The logical conclusion of my reflections is not worth recording.

"When that scoundrel emptied the till into his pocket he made up his mind there and then never to come back," said Ajax in my ear. His thoughts had been travelling along the same lines as mine, and at about the same pace. I was convinced of this when he added slowly: "Starvation may be their game. It would be the safest to play."

Then the mad, riotous desire to fight got hold of both of us. We began to search for a weapon: anything—a stick, a stone, a bit of iron. But we found nothing.

We had never carried pistols, and our pocket knives were hardly keen or strong enough to sharpen a pencil.

Despair was again gripping me when Ajax touched my arm. We had examined the filthy floor of the room very systematically, kneeling side by side in the darkness and groping with eager fingers in the dirty sand, for there was no floor.

"I have something," he murmured. Then he seized my right hand in his left and guided it to some solid object lying deep in the sand.

The object proved to be a log. San Francisco is built on sand dunes, and in early days the houses were log-cabins for the most part, constructed of logs that two stout men could handle. After many minutes of silent but most vigorous excavation we joyfully decided that one of these very logs had come into our possession.

We worked steadily for about half an hour, pausing now and again to listen. We were practically certain that the opium fiend had gone to his pipe, and it was more than probable that the fat Mongol was no longer on guard, knowing that we were safe in a strong-box to which he alone held the key. Events proved we were wrong in both conjectures.

When the log was ready for use as a battering-ram we held a council of war, which lasted about half a minute. If there is obviously only one thing to be done, the sooner it is done the better. I grasped the forward end of our weapon, Ajax, being the heavier, took the other, and we charged that door with such hearty goodwill that at the first assault it yielded, lock and hinges being torn from the woodwork, and the door itself falling flat with a crash like the crack o' doom. Ajax, the log, and I rolled into the next room, and as we were grovelling on the floor I saw that the room was full of Chinamen, and that our late guide was in the middle of them. The light was so bad that I was unable to see more than this. It was plain that we had to deal with an organised gang of criminals. Thugs who practised their trade as a fine art. Despite all proverbs the foreseen is what generally happens; and our amazing advent in their midst created a sort of panic whereby we took advantage. The Celestials carried knives, but they dared not use them, because the light was so dim and the room so crowded. The first thing that I saw when I scrambled to my feet was the fat dull face of the guard shining like a harvest moon, and presenting a mark for my fist as round and big as a punching-bag. I hit him once—and that was enough. Then I began to hear the measured thud of my brother's blows, the blows of a workman who knows how to strike and where to strike.

At first they took their medicine without a whimper. Then they began to squeal and chatter as the fear of the "white devils" got hold of them. Very soon I saw "red," as our Tommies say, and remembered nothing till I came to myself in the passage at the foot of the rotten stairs. We scurried up these and through the warren above like rabbits when the pole-cat pursueth, and finally found ourselves in the alley, where we called a halt.

"By Jove!" said Ajax, "that was a ruction."

I looked at him and burst out laughing: then he looked at me and laughed louder than I. Our clothes were in rags; our faces were red and black with blood and grime; every bone and sinew and muscle in our bodies ached and ached from the strain of strife.

"It is not time to laugh yet," said my brother; and we ran on down the alley, out into a small by-street, and straight into the arms of a policeman, who promptly arrested us.

* * * * *

The rest of the story was in the newspapers next day, although there was no mention of our names. When the police reached the battlefield they found one dead man—the opium-eating and smoking bar-tender. He had died—so said the doctor—of heart failure. Few whites can smoke the "pipe" with impunity, and he was not of their number. The wounded had been carried away, and, despite the strenuous endeavours of the police, not one was arrested, which proves that there is honour amongst these yellow-faced thieves, for a handful of gold-pieces and "no questions asked" was well known in Chinatown to be the price offered for any information that would lead to the capture of one or more of the gang.

When we reached our hotel we found The Babe patiently awaiting us. His complexion was slightly the worse for wear, but his eyes were as blue as ever and almost as guileless. How wide they opened when he listened to our story! How indignant he waxed when he learned that we had condemned him, the son of an archdeacon, as an opium fiend. However, he was very penitent, and returned with us to the ranch, where he dug post-holes for a couple of months, and behaved like a model babe. Ajax wrote to the archdeacon, and in due season The Babe returned to England, where he wisely enlisted as a trooper in a smart cavalry regiment, a corps that his grandfather had commanded. The pipeclay was in his marrow, and he became in time rough-riding sergeant of the regiment. I am told that soon he will be offered a commission.

This story contains two morals: both so obvious that they need not be recorded.



XIII

THE BARON

Of the many queer characters who took up land in the brush hills near our ranch none excited greater tongue-wagging than the Baron. The squatters called him the Baron. He signed his name—I had to witness his signature—Rene Bourgueil.

The Baron built himself a bungalow on a small hill overlooking a pretty lake which dried up in summer and smelled evilly. Also, he spent money in planting out a vineyard and orchard, and in making a garden. What he did not know about ranching in Southern California would have filled an encyclopaedia, but what he did know about nearly everything else filled us and our neighbours with an ever-increasing amazement and curiosity.

Why did such a man bury himself in the brush hills of San Lorenzo County?

More, he was past middle-age: sixty-five at least, not a sportsman, nor a naturalist, but obviously a gentilhomme, with the manners of one accustomed to the best society.

Of society, however, he spoke mordant words—

"Soziety in Europe, to-day," he said to me, shortly after his arrival, "ees a big monkey-house, and all ze monkeys are pulling each ozer's tails. I pull no tails, moi, and I allow no liberties to be taken wiz my person."

About a month later the Baron was dining with us, and I reminded him of what he had said. He laughed, shrugging his shoulders.

"Mon cher, ze monkeys in your backwoods are more— diable!—moch more aggr-r-ressive zan ze monkeys in ze old world."

"They pull tails there," said Ajax, "but here they pull legs as well— eh?"

The Baron smiled ruefully, sticking out a slender, delicately formed foot and ankle.

"Yes," he said thoughtfully, "old man Dumble, he pull my leg."

The Dumbles were neighbours of the Baron, and their sterile acres marched with his. John Jacob Dumble's word might be as good or better than his bond, but neither was taken at par. It was said of him that he preferred to take cash for telling a lie rather than credit for telling the truth. Dumble, as we knew, had sold the Baron one horse and saddle, one Frisian-Holstein cow, and an incubator. The saddle gave the horse a sore back, the horse fell down and broke its knees, the cow dried up in a fortnight, and the incubator cooked eggs to perfection, but it wouldn't incubate them.

"I use it as a stove," said the Baron.

Next summer, when the pretty lake dried up and began to smell, we advised the Baron to take a holiday. We told him of pleasant, hospitable people in San Francisco, in Menlo, and at Del Monte, who would be charmed to make his acquaintance.

"San Francisco? Jamais, jamais de la vie!"

"Come with us to Del Monte?"

"Del Monte?"

We explained that Del Monte was a huge hotel standing in lovely gardens which ran down to the sea.

"Jamais—jamais," repeated the Baron.

"We don't like to leave you at the mercy of John Jacob Dumble," said Ajax.

"You have right. I make not harmony wiz ze old man Dumble."

We went home sorely puzzled. Obviously the Baron had private reasons, and strong ones, for keeping out of San Francisco and Del Monte. And it was significant—as Ajax said to me—that a man who could talk so admirably upon art, politics, and literature never spoke a word concerning himself.

At Del Monte we happened to meet the French Consul. From him we learned that there was a certain Rene, Comte de Bourgueil-Crotanoy. The Chateau Bourgueil-Crotanoy in Morbihan is nearly as famous as Chaumont or Chenonceau. The Consul possessed an Almanack de Gotha. From this we gleaned two more facts. Rene, Comte de Bourgueil, had two sons, and no kinsmen whatever.

"Your man," said the Consul discreetly, "must be somebody—you say he is somebody—well, somebody else!"

"Another Wilkins," said I.

"Pooh!" ejaculated Ajax.

"No Frenchman of the Comte de Bourgueil's position and rank—he is a godson, you know, of the Comte de Chambord—would come to California without my knowledge," said the Consul.

The day after our return to the ranch we rode over to see how the Baron fared. We found him in a tent pitched as far as possible from the evil-smelling lake. Passing the bungalow, we had noted that six weeks' uninterrupted sunshine had played havoc with the Baron's garden. The man himself, moreover, seemed to have wilted. The sun had sucked the colour from his eyes and cheeks. Of a sudden, old age had overtaken him.

He greeted us with his usual courtesy, and asked if we had enjoyed our holiday. We told him many things about Del Monte, but we didn't mention the French Consul. Then, in our turn, we begged for such news as he might have. He replied solemnly—

"I speak no more wiz ze Dumbles. Old man Dumble ees a fraud. Moi, I abominate frauds—hein? He obtain my money onder false pretences, is it not so? Ah, yes; but I forgive 'im, because he is poor. But also, since you go, he obtain my secret—I haf a secret— under false pretences. Oh, ze canaille! I tell 'im that if 'e were my equal I would wiz my sword s-spit 'im. Because 'e is canaille I s-s-spit at 'im. Voila!"

The old fellow was trembling with rage and indignation. Ajax said gravely—

"We foreigners mustn't spit at free-born American citizens. What spitting is done here, they do themselves."

"You have right. Ze canaille say to me, to me, 'Come,' he say, 'come, Baron, I have one six-shooter, one shot-gun, two pitchfork, three spade, and one mowing-machine. Take your choice,' he say, 'and we can fight till ze cows come home!' He use zose words, mes amis, 'till ze cows come home!' Tiens! Ze Frisian- Holstein cows, who go dry when zey do come home—hein?"

He was so furiously angry that we dared not laugh, but we were consumed with curiosity to know what secret Dumble had stolen. The Baron did not inform us.

Fortunately for our peace of mind, Dumble came to us early next morning. He went to the marrow of the matter at once.

"Boys," said he, "I want you to fix up things between me an' that crazy Frenchman. How's that? Your friend. Wal, he is a Frenchy, an' he's crazy, as I'm prepared to prove. But I don't want no trouble with him. He's my neighbour, and there ought to be nothin' between me an' him."

"There'll always be a barbed wire fence," said Ajax.

"Boys, when that ther' pond o' the Baron's tuk to smellin' like dead cats, he come to me and asks me to find someone to take keer o' the bungalow. I undertook the job myself. I was to water them foreign plants o' his, do odd chores, and sleep in the house nights. He offered good pay, and I got a few dollars on account. I aimed to treat the Baron right, as I treat all my neighbours. I meant to do more, more than was agreed on. That's the right sperit—ain't it? Yas. An' so, when I found out that there was a room in that ther' bungalow locked up, by mistake as I presoomed, and that the key o' the little parlour opened it, why, naterally, boys, I jest peaked in to see if everything was O.K. As for pryin' and spyin', why sech an idee never entered my head. Wal, I peaked in an' I saw——"

"Hold on," said Ajax. "What you saw is something which the Baron wished to be kept secret."

"I reckon so, though why in thunder——"

"Then keep it secret——"

"But, mercy sakes! I saw nothing, not a thing, boys, save two picters and a few old sticks of furniture. An' seeing that things was O.K., I shet the door, but doggone it! the cussed key wouldn't lock it. Nex' morning the Baron found it open, and, Jeeroosalem! I never seen a man git so mad."

"And that's all?"

"That's all, but me an' the Baron ain't speakin'."

We promised to do what we could, more, it must be confessed, on the Baron's account than for the sake of old man Dumble. Accordingly, we tried to persuade the Baron that his secret at any rate was still inviolate. He listened incredulously.

"He says he saw nothing—but some pictures and old furniture."

"Mon Dieu! an' zey tell 'im nossing. Saperlipopette! Come wiz me. I can trust you. You shall know my secret, too."

We followed him in silence up the path which led to the bungalow, and into the house. The Baron unlocked a door and unbolted some shutters. We saw two portraits, splendid portraits of two handsome young men in uniform. Above the mantelpiece hung an emblazoned pedigree: the family tree of the Bourgueil-Crotanoy, peers of France. The Baron laid a lean finger upon one of the names.

"I am Rene de Bourgueil-Crotanoy," he said.

We waited. When he spoke again his voice had changed. It was the voice of a very old man, tired out, indifferent, poignantly feeble.

"My boys," said he, indicating the two young men, "zey are dead; no one of ze old Bourgueil-Crotanoy is left except me—and I, as you see, am half dead. Perhaps I was too proud; my confessor tell me so, always. I was—I am still—proud of my race, of my chateau. I was not permitted to serve Republican France, but I gave her my boys. They went to Tonquin; I remained at home, thinking of ze day when zey would return, and marry, and give me handsome grandchildren. Zey did—not— return. Zey died. One in battle, one of fever in ze hospital. What was left for me, mes amis? Could I live on in ze place where I had seen my children and my children's children? No. Could I meet in Paris ze pitying eyes of friends?"

* * * * *

Years afterwards, Ajax and I found ourselves in Morbihan. We paid a pilgrimage to the Chateau de Bourgueil-Crotanoy, and entered the chapel where the last of the Bourgueil-Crotanoy is buried. A mural tablet records the names, and the manner of death, of the two sons. Also a line in Latin:

"'Tis better to die young than to live on to behold the misfortunes and emptiness of an ancient house."



XIV

JIM'S PUP

Jim Misterton was a quiet, reserved fellow, who had come straight to Paradise from a desk in some dingy London counting-house. He told us that something was wrong with his lungs, and that the simple life had been prescribed. He was very green, very sanguine, and engaged to be married—a secret confided to us later, when acquaintance had ripened into friendship. Every Sunday Jim would ride down to our ranch, sup with us, and smoke three pipes upon the verandah, describing at great length the process of transmuting the wilderness into a garden. He built a small board-and-batten house, planted a vineyard and orchard, bought a couple of cows and an incubator. Reserved about matters personal to himself, he never grew tired of describing his possessions, nor of speculating in regard to their possibilities. If ever a man counted his chickens before the eggs had been placed in the incubator, Jim Misterton was he.

Ajax and I listened in silence to these outpourings. Ajax contended— perhaps rightly—that Misterton's optimism was part of the "cure." He bade me remark the young fellow's sparkling eyes and ruddy cheeks.

"He calls that forsaken claim of his Eden," said my brother. "Shall we tell him what sort of a Hades it really is?"

One day, some months after this, we rode up to Eden. It presented the usual heart-breaking appearance so familiar to men who have lived in a wild country and witnessed, year after year, the furious struggle between Man and Nature. Misterton had cleared and planted about forty acres, enclosed with a barb-wire fence. Riding along this, we saw that many of his fruit trees had been barked and ruined by jack-rabbits. The month was September. A rainless summer had dried up a spring near his house, which, against our advice, he had attempted to develop by tunnelling. The new chicken-yards held no chickens.

Nevertheless, Jim welcomed us with a cheery smile. He had made mistakes, of course—who didn't? But he intended to come out on top, you bet your life! Western slang flowed freely from his lips. The blazing sun, which already had cracked the unpainted shingles on his roof, had bleached the crude blue of his jumper and overalls. His sombrero might have belonged to a veteran cowboy. Jim wore it with a rakish list to port, and round his neck fluttered a small, white silk handkerchief. He looked askance at our English breeches and saddles. Then he said pleasantly, "I've taken out my naturalisation papers."

After lunch, he told us about his Angela, and displayed her photograph.

"She's coming out," he added shyly, "as soon as I've got things fixed."

"Coming out?" we repeated in amazement.

"It's all settled," said Jim. "I'm to meet her in 'Frisco; we shall be married, and then I'm going to bring her here for the honeymoon. Won't it be larks?"

Ajax answered, without any enthusiasm, "Won't it?" and stared at the young, pretty face smiling up at him.

"Angela is as keen about this place as I am," continued the fond and beaming Jim. "It's going to be Eden for her too, God bless her!"

Ajax said thoughtfully, "Misterton, you're a lucky devil!"

We gleaned a few more details. Angela was the daughter of a doctor at Surbiton, and apparently a damsel of accomplishments. She could punt, play tennis, dance, sing, and make her own blouses; in a word, a "ripper," "top-hole," and no mistake! Ajax slightly raised his brows when we learned that the course of true love had run smooth; but the doctor's blessing was adequately accounted for—Angela had five sisters.

"But when your lungs went wrong——?"

Misterton laughed.

"Being a doctor, you see—and a devilish clever chap—he knew that I'd be as right as rain out here. 'If you want Angela,' he said, 'you must go full steam for fresh air and sunshine.'"

Riding home through the cactus and manzanita Ajax said irritably, "Is there any Paradise on earth without a fool in it?"

* * * * *

The following spring, Angela came out. We attended the wedding, Ajax assisting as best man. Afterwards, somewhat reluctantly, we agreed that Angela's photograph had aroused expectations not quite satisfied. She was very pretty, but her manners were neither of the town nor of the country. Ajax said, "There must be hundreds like her in Upper Tooting; that's where she ought to live."

Because I was more than half assured of this, I made a point of disputing it.

"She's plastic, anyway; a nice little thing."

"Is a nice little thing the right sort of a wife for a squatter?"

"If she loves him—"

"Of course she loves him—now."

"Look at her pluck in coming out!"

"Pluck? She has five sisters in Upper Tooting."

"Surbiton."

"I'm sure it's Upper Tooting."

"And she can make her own blouses."

"Can she cook, can she milk a cow, can she keep a house clean?"

"Give her time!"

"Time? I'd like to give her father six months. What's the use of jawing? We've been aiding and abetting a crime. We might have prevented this slaughter of the innocents. What will that skin be like in one year from now?"

"If she were sallow, you would be less excited."

We spent a few days in San Francisco; and then we returned to the ranch to give a luncheon in the bride's honour. The table was set under some splendid live-oaks in the home-pasture, which, in May, presents the appearance of a fine English park. A creek tinkled at our feet, and beyond, out of the soft, lavender-coloured haze, rose the blue peaks of the Santa Lucia mountains.

"Reminds one a little of the Old Country," I remarked to Angela, who was all smiles and quite conscious of being the most interesting object in the landscape.

"Oh, please, don't speak of England!"

Her pretty forehead puckered, and her mouth drooped piteously. Then she laughed, as she launched into a vivid description of her first attempt to bake bread. Whenever she spoke, I saw Jim's large, slightly prominent eyes fix themselves upon her face. His beaming satisfaction in everything she did or said would have been delightful had I been able to wean my thoughts from the place which he still believed to be —Eden. At intervals I heard him murmur, "This is rippin'!"

After luncheon, Angela asked to see the ranch-house, and almost as soon as we were out of hearing, she said with disconcerting abruptness—

"Does your ranch pay?" She added half-apologetically, "I do so want to know."

"It doesn't pay," I answered grimly.

"You are not going—behind?" she faltered, using the familiar phrase of the country in which she had spent as yet but three weeks.

"We are going behind," I answered, angry with her curiosity: not old enough or experienced enough to see beneath it fear and misery. Angela said nothing more till we passed into the house. Then, with lack- lustre eyes, she surveyed our belongings, murmuring endless commonplace phrases. Presently she stopped opposite a photograph of a girl in Court dress.

"What a lovely frock!" she exclaimed, with real interest. "I do wish I'd been presented at Court. Who is she? Oh, a cousin. I wonder you can bear to look at her."

Without another word she burst into tears, heart-breaking sobs, the more vehement because obviously she was trying to suppress them. I stared at her, helpless with dismay, confronted for the first time with an emergency which seemed to paralyse rather than stimulate action. Had I sympathised, had I presented any aspect other than that of the confounded idiot, she might have become hysterical. Without doubt, my impassivity pulled her together. The sobs ceased, and she said with a certain calmness—

"I couldn't help it. You and your brother have this splendid ranch; you have experience, capital, everything looks so prosperous, and yet you are going—behind. And if that is the case, what is to become of us?"

"I dare say things will brighten up a bit."

"Brighten up?" She laughed derisively.

"That's the worst of it. The brightness is appalling. These hard, blue skies without a cloud in them, this everlasting sunshine—how I loathe it!"

Again I became tongue-tied.

"Jim thinks it is Eden. When he showed me that ugly hut, and his sickly fruit trees, and that terrible little garden where every flower seemed to be protesting against its existence, I had to make- believe that it was Eden to me. Each day he goes off to his work, and he always asks the same question: 'You won't be lonesome, little woman, will you?' and I answer, 'No.' But I am lonesome, so lonesome that I should have gone mad if I hadn't found someone—you—to whom I could speak out."

"I'm frightfully sorry," I stammered.

"Thanks. I know you are. And your brother is sorry, and everybody else, too. The women, my neighbours in the brush-hills, look at me with the same question in their eyes: 'What are you doing here?' they say.

"How impertinent!"

"Pertinent, I call it."

From that moment I regarded her with different eyes. If she had brains to measure obstacles, she might surmount them, for brains in a new country are the one possession which adversity increases.

"Mrs. Misterton," I said slowly, "you are in a tight place, and I won't insult your intelligence by calling it by a prettier name; but you can pull yourself and Jim out of it, and I believe you will."

"Thanks," she said soberly.

For some weeks after this we saw little of the Mistertons. Then Jim rode down to the ranch with an exciting piece of news.

"I've got a pup coming out."

A "pup" in California means a young English gentleman, generally the fool of the family, who pays a premium to some fellow-countryman in return for board and lodging and the privilege of learning not so much how to do things as how not to do them—the latter being the more common object-lesson afforded him. Ajax and I had gleaned experience with pups, and we had long ago determined that no premium was adequate compensation for the task and responsibility of breaking them in. Jim went into details.

"It's Tomlinson-Thorpe. You fellows have heard of him, of course?"

"Never," said Ajax.

"The International! You ought to see him go through a scrum with half a dozen fellows on his back."

"A footballer," said my brother thoughtfully.

"One of the best. Naturally he puts on a little side. He has money, and I told him he could double it in a year or two."

"You told him that? Have you doubled your capital, Jim?"

"Well—er—no. But I'm rather a Juggins. Thorpe is as 'cute as they make 'em."

"A man of mind and muscle," murmured Ajax.

"And my greatest pal," added the enthusiastic James.

* * * * *

Both Ajax and I took a profound dislike to Tomlinson-Thorpe the moment we set eyes upon him. He presented what is worst in the Briton abroad —a complacent aggressiveness tempered by a condescension which nothing but a bullet can lay low. But undeniably he was specially designed to go through scrums or Kitchen Lancers, the admired of all beholders.

"A schoolgirl's darling," growled the injudicious Ajax.

"Nothing of the sort," retorted Jim. "I mean," he added, "that Thorpe appeals to—er—mature women. I know for a fact that the wife of a baronet is head over ears in love with him."

"I hope he didn't tell you so," said Ajax.

"I should think not. First and last he's a gentleman."

During the next few weeks we had abundant opportunity of testing this assertion, for Thorpe was kind enough to consume much of our time and provisions. He bought himself a smart pony, and, very accurately turned out, would canter down to the ranch-house three or four times a week.

"There's nothing to learn up there," he explained.

It is fair to add that he helped us on the range, and exhibited aptitude in the handling of cattle and horses.

Meanwhile, his advent had made an enormous difference to the Mistertons. Jim fetched a hired girl from town, and Angela was relieved, during a scorching summer, of a housewife's most intolerable duties. Also, when Jim was hard at work clearing his brush-hills, wrestling with refractory roots of chaparral and manzanita, his greatest pal was kind enough to undertake the entertainment of Angela. The pair rode about together, and Jim told us that it did his heart good to see how the little woman had brightened up. Thorpe, for his part, admitted with becoming modesty that he was most awfully sorry for his friend's wife.

"My heart bleeds for her," he told Ajax.

"The bounder with the bleeding heart," said Ajax to me that same evening.

"We don't know that he is a bounder," I objected.

"He bounds, and he is as unconscious of his bounds as a kangaroo. As for Jim, he is the apex of the world's pyramid of fools."

"Angela can take care of herself."

"Can she?"

At our fall round-up, Ajax's question was answered. Conspicuously Angela attached herself to Tomlinson-Thorpe, regardless of the gaping eyes and mouths of neighbours, Puritan to the backbone in everything except the stealing of unbranded calves.

Most unfortunately, Thorpe—I think more kindly of him when I don't give him his double-barrelled name—was daily exhibiting those qualities which had carried him through scrums. In a bar-room brawl with two pot-valiant cowboys, he had come out supremely "on top." They had jeered at his riding-breeches, at his bob-tailed cob, at his English accent, and Thorpe had suffered them gladly. Then, quite suddenly, Angela's name fell upon a silence. As suddenly Thorpe seized both men, one in each hand, and brought their heads together with a crash which the barkeeper described afterwards as "splendiferous." With an amazing display of physical violence, he flung them apart, each falling in a crumpled heap of profanity upon the floor.

"Don't fool with that feller," was the verdict in the foothills.

The affair would have been of no consequence had not Jim been present when the row took place. Jim might have played the beau role had he carried a pistol. Admittedly he would have been licked in a fight with either cowboy singly. Thorpe, so I was told, entreated Jim to keep the story from his wife. Angela had it, with slight exaggeration, from the hero-worshipper's lips within an hour. "It brought her heart into her mouth, I tell you," the simple fellow told Ajax, and later Ajax murmured to me: "I wonder whether it struck Angela that Jim would have tackled both of 'em, if Thorpe had not interfered."

A dozen trifles hardly worth recording emphasised the difference between Jim and his greatest pal. Thorpe mastered the colt which had thrown Jim; Thorpe, when fresh meat was wanted, killed handsomely the fat buck missed by the over-eager James; Thorpe made a pretty profit over a hog deal at the psychological moment when poor Misterton allowed three Poland-China sows to escape through an improperly constructed fence!

Thorpe was a man. Did Angela think of Jim as a mouse?

* * * * *

After the fall round-up, Ajax and I spent a month fishing in British Columbia. When we got back to the ranch, one of the first to greet us happened to be Jim Misterton. He looked so pale and thin that I thought for a moment his old enemy had attacked him. However, he assured us that he was perfectly well, but unable to sleep properly. We asked him to stay to supper, rather as a matter of form, for he had always refused our invitations unless Angela were included. To our surprise he accepted.

"He'll uncork himself after the second pipe," said the sage Ajax.

He did. And, oddly enough, our cousin's photograph in Court dress moved him as it had moved his wife.

"Boys," he said, "I'm the biggest fool that ever came to this burnt-up wilderness; and I'm a knave because I persuaded the sweetest girl in England to join me."

Oil may calm troubled waters, but it feeds flames. We said something, nothing worth repeating; then Jim stood up, trembling with agitation, waving his briar pipe (which had gone out), cursing himself and the brazen skies, and the sterile soil, and the jack-rabbits, and barb- wire, and his spring, now a pool of stagnant mud. When he had finished—and how his tongue must have ached!—Ajax said quietly—

"Were you any good as a clerk?"

Jim nodded sullenly.

"I knew my business, of course. Heavens! what a soft job that was compared to what I've tackled out here!"

"It might be possible to find another such job in California. You never thought of that?"

Jim's face brightened.

"Never," he declared. "Fresh air and exercise was the prescription— and I'm fed up on both. If I could get a billet as clerk in San Lorenzo, if——" He clenched his fists, unable to articulate another word, then, very slowly, he went on: "Boys, I'd give my life to get Angela away from Paradise."

"We'll help you," said Ajax.

"Mrs. Misterton would be much happier in San Lorenzo," I added.

Jim flushed scarlet.

"Angela married the wrong man," he said deliberately.

Ajax interrupted.

"Jim, fill your pipe!"

He held out his pouch, which Jim waved aside.

"She married the wrong man," he repeated, "and that is what is keeping me awake nights. She'd have been happy with Thorpe. He could have given her all the little things women value."

"And how about the great things?"

"The little things are great things—to her. Good-night, boys." We shook hands and he went to the door. On the threshold he turned a tired face towards us. "I hope I haven't given you fellows the idea that Angela isn't the best little woman on earth. She never complains. And Thorpe has been a pal in ten thousand. His heart simply bleeds for Angela. So long!"

Ajax mixed a stiff tumbler. Before he put it to his lips he looked at me. "If that bounder's heart would bleed and bleed and bleed to death, I should not cross the road to fetch a doctor."

* * * * *

About a fortnight later the annual County Fair was held outside San Lorenzo. We drove to the Buena Vista Hotel, and, to our surprise, upon the broad verandah we discovered Angela, in the last of her pretty dresses, and Thorpe. Angela explained matters. Jim and she were Thorpe's guests for the week. They were going to the races, to the ball, to all the shows. She finished breathlessly—

"And there's a captive balloon!"

Thorpe added, "Jim is rather blue, you know." As soon as we were alone, Ajax said savagely—

"Do you think Jim understands?"

"Understands what?"

"Oh, don't pretend! We know our Thorpe by this time. He's a cutlet- for-a-cutlet fellow. What do I say? A cutlet-for-a-baron-of-beef gentleman. Hang him!"

"But Angela——"

"Angela is a reckless little idiot. She's been starving for a lark, and she's swallowed it without counting the cost."

"But I trust her," said I; "and Jim is here."

Ajax shrugged his shoulders and walked away.

Next day, at the races, Jim attached himself to us, while aloft in the grand-stand Angela sat with Thorpe: the handsomest couple at the Fair. For the moment, at any rate, Angela was enjoying herself; Jim, on the other hand, looked miserable. Contrast had discoloured the good time. He couldn't snatch pleasure out of the present because he saw so plainly the future.

"I'm a wet blanket," he said dolefully. "Every time Angela laughs I want to cry, and yet I ought to be thankful that old Thorpe can give her what I can't."

"He's doing the thing well," said Ajax meaningly.

"He has been left a bit more money. Didn't he tell you? No? And he's going to buy that big tract to the north-west of us. Mum's the word, but—between ourselves—the agreement is signed."

"Oh!" said Ajax.

The big tract in question belonged to a bank, whose president, a very good fellow, was our particular friend. Early next morning I paid him a visit. Almost immediately he asked me questions about Thorpe, which I was able to answer satisfactorily from a business point of view.

"Mr. Thorpe struck me as a very shrewd young man. He'll get there."

"He played football for England."

"Ah! Well, indirectly, I suppose, we can thank you for this deal."

"You can thank Jim Misterton and his wife."

"I have not the pleasure of knowing them. They had something to do with this, eh?"

"Everything."

The president frowned; his voice was not quite so pleasant as he said—

"Are they likely to claim a commission?"

"Certainly not. All the same, something is due. Without the Mistertons you would never have sold this ranch to Thorpe. One moment. It is in your power to do these people a service, and it will cost you nothing. Jim Misterton was a clerk in London, and a capable one, but his health broke down. He came out here to the brush-hills. He got back his health, but he's lost everything else. Give him a place in this bank. He's straight as a string, and he knows his work."

Before I left the bank it was understood that Jim was to call upon the president and submit his credentials. Humanly speaking, the billet was secured. Nothing remained but to find Jim. To my surprise, however, Ajax urged me to wait a few hours.

"I want to see Jim's honest grin again as much as you do, but we must tell him before Thorpe When I upset an apple-cart, I like to see the apple rolling about, don't you?"

"We'll tell 'em after dinner to-night."

That afternoon we forgathered in the Fair Grounds. The racing was uninteresting, and presently Angela suggested that we should go up in the captive balloon. We had watched it ascending and descending with interest. Some of our friends bored us by describing at too great length the panoramic splendour of the view. Angela and Ajax wanted to soar, Thorpe and I preferred Mother Earth; to Jim was offered the casting vote. He spun a dollar to decide, and within a few minutes the five of us were seated in the wicker-car. I remember that our aeronaut inspired confidence in Angela because he wore the Grand Army medal. A windlass and a donkey-engine controlled the big rope which held us captive. We went aloft in a series of disagreeable and upsetting jerks. This may be an unusual experience, but it was ours. I am a bad sailor, and so is Ajax. Neither of us smiled when Thorpe addressed the veteran as—"Steward!"

Suddenly there came a still sharper jerk, and the cable split. The balloon seemed to leap upwards, swerved like a frightened bird, and then, caught by the wind, sailed upward and seaward, swooping on with a paradoxically smooth yet uneven flight.

"Jeeroosalem!" ejaculated our aeronaut. Then he added coolly enough: "Sit tight; you'll none of you be the worse for this little trip."

His confidence diffused itself agreeably. Angela laughed, Thorpe's face relaxed, Jim peered over the edge of the car.

"Gad!" said he, "we seem to be going a tremendous pace."

The veteran took a squint alow and aloft as he fingered the rope that opened the valve. Next time he spoke the confidence had leaked from his voice, leaving behind a nervous squeak.

"This yere valve won't work!"

"Oh!" said Angela.

She looked at Thorpe as if seeking from him some word, some sign, of comfort and encouragement. At the same moment she made an instinctive movement towards him. Jim was staring at her, very pale. I saw him half-open his lips and then close them. Frightened as I was, I can swear that Jim was thinking only of his wife and what he could read upon her face. Thorpe was quite impassive, but his fingers were twitching. Then I heard Jim's voice curiously distinct—

"What are you going to do?"

"The valve may work loose. Anyways, she leaks a bit. Guess we're all right."

Once more his confidence diffused itself subtly, and again a phrase shattered it.

"How far is San Lorenzy from the ocean?"

"Eleven miles," said Ajax.

"We're sailin' plumb into the fog."

In late October the sea fog generally begins to roll up about four o'clock. If the breeze is from the land, the fog is kept at bay for an hour or two. As a rule, the breeze fails, and then the fog asserts its dominion over all things on land and sea. Without knowing much of aerial navigation, I grasped the fact that we were being swept into the fog, and that if we intended to descend on land there was not a minute to be lost. Thorpe, I fancy, had arrived at the same conclusion. He said in a queer, high-pitched tone—

"Can't you stick a knife into the balloon?"

"It ain't easy, and it's mighty risky."

Jerking at the two ropes in his hands, he spoke collectedly, in an indifferent tone—the tone of a man who has confronted death often, who realises his impotence, who submits apathetically to impending fate, whether good or ill.

"It's very cold," said Angela. Jim began to unbutton his jacket. "Don't," she said sharply; "all the coats in the world wouldn't warm me."

"Stick a knife into the confounded thing," repeated Thorpe.

"S'pose you do it," said the veteran snappishly.

Thorpe stood up at once, staggered, and fell upon the floor of the car. He could master a broncho, but he had never attempted to boss a balloon. The old man smiled.

"A man," said he, "may be mighty smart on land and behave like a baby in a balloon. You sit tight, mister."

The balloon was now careening like a racing-yacht in a squall. We had met opposing currents of air in the debatable area where wind and fog struggled for the mastery. The fog had the mighty trade wind behind it, forcing it landward. Already we were approaching the sand-dunes, the very spot for an easy descent if we could descend.

"Gosh, I've done it!"

Above I could hear the soft, sibilant sound of the escaping gas, not unlike the hiss of a snake. I was also sensible that my heart, not to mention other important organs, was trying to get into my throat.

"Valve must ha' bust," said the old man. "Stand by to throw out ballast."

The bottom of the car was covered with sacks of sand. Ordinarily one unties the sacks and the sand is allowed to trickle out in a harmless stream. I peered over the side. The balloon was now, so to speak, on an even keel, falling almost perpendicularly. I saw, far down, a flash of blue.

"Chuck 'em out, boys!"

Several sacks went overboard, and at once my solar plexus felt easier. Again I peered down and saw nothing. The fog had engulfed us, but I could hear the crash of the big combers as they broke upon the rocks to the north of Avila.

What followed took place within a few seconds. We were encompassed by thick dank fog. The balloon was perfectly steady, descending less quickly, but with inexorable certainty, into the ocean. Around, an uncanny silence encompassed us; above, we could hear the hiss of the serpent; below, the menacing roar of the breakers. Then the old man said curtly—

"Hurry up, boys. If we can get her up again, we may just strike the dunes. What wind there is blows from the west."

We threw out the rest of the sacks. The balloon rose and slowly sank again. The old man took off his coat.

"I can't swim worth a cent," he muttered grimly, "but I'm a-going to try. If she tumbles quietly into the water, the wind may blow us ashore."

A few more seconds passed. I heard a queer noise and discovered that my teeth were chattering. Thorpe was taking off his boots.

The next moment the balloon gave a tremendous bound. I know that I nearly fell upon my face, and Angela was thrown violently into the bottom of the car. For an appreciable interval not one of us realised that Jim had slipped overboard.

"The trade's got us," said the old man. "We shall just make them dunes."

"Oh, thank God!" exclaimed Angela.

By the tone of her voice, by the smile parting her lips, I could see that she did not know what had happened. Terror had dulled all faculties save the one overmastering instinct of self-preservation. Thorpe was about to speak, but Ajax caught his eye and with a gesture silenced him. Once more the balloon began to fall——

* * * * *

We were thrown out upon the dunes. Some of us were badly bruised. When we staggered to our feet, Angela said quickly—

"Why, where's Jim?"

Thorpe told her; let us give him credit for that. When he had finished, he put out his hand, but she turned from him to Ajax.

"Come," she said.

She ran past us towards the beach, instinctively taking the right direction. As she ran she called shrilly: "Jim—Jim!"

Ajax followed. For an instant Thorpe and I were alone, face to face.

"Why did he do it?" he asked.

"Because he thought that Angela had married the wrong man; but she— didn't."

When I caught Ajax up, Angela was still ahead, running like a mad creature.

"Jim never took off his boots," said Ajax.

"Nor his coat."

"All the same, the love of life is strong."

"We don't know how far he was from the water; the fall may have killed him."

"I feel in my bones that he is not dead, and that Angela will find him."

We pressed on, unwilling to be outstripped by a woman, but sensible that we were running ourselves to a standstill. The fog was thicker near the water's edge, and Angela's figure loomed through the mist like that of a wraith, but we still heard her piteous cry: "Jim—Jim!"

We were nearly spent when we overtook her. She had stopped where the foam from the breakers lay thick upon the sand.

"Listen!" she said.

We heard nothing but our thumping hearts and the raucous note of some sea-bird.

"He answered me!" she asserted with conviction. "There!"

Certainly my ears caught a faint cry to the left. We ran on, forgetting our bruises. Again Angela called, and out of the mist beyond the breakers came an answering voice. We shouted back and plunged into the surf. Angela knelt down upon the sand.

Afterwards we admitted that Angela had saved his life, although Jim could not have fought his way through the breakers without our help. Indeed, when we got him ashore, I made certain that he was dead. Had Angela's instinct or intuition failed, had she hesitated for a few minutes, Jim would have drowned within a few hundred yards of the spot where the balloon struck. Since, Jim has maintained that he was sinking when he heard her voice; her faint, attenuated tones infused strength into his limbs and hope into his heart.

We dined together, and I delivered the president's message in Thorpe's presence. He shook hands with Jim, and said quietly—

"I am happier to-night than I ever expected to be again."

Bounder or not, he meant it.

Only the other day I received a letter from Angela. She wrote at length concerning her eldest child, my godson, and she mentioned incidentally that Jim was now cashier of the San Lorenzo Bank.



XV

MARY

His real name was Quong Wo, but my brother Ajax always called him Mary, because the boy's round, childish face had a singular smoothness and delicacy. A good and faithful servant he proved during three years. Then he ran away at the time of the anti-Chinese riots, despite our assurance that we wished to keep him and protect him.

"Me no likee Coon Dogs," said he, with a shiver.

The Coon Dogs were a pack of cowboys engaged in hunting Chinamen out of the peaceful, but sometimes ill-smelling, places which, by thrift, patience, and unremitting labour, they had made peculiarly their own. From the Coon Dogs Ajax and I received a letter commanding us to discharge Mary. A skull and cross-bones, and a motto, "Beware the bite of the Coon Dogs!" embellished this billet, which was written in red ink. Courtesy constrained us to acknowledge the receipt of it. Next day we put up a sign by the corral gate—

NO HUNTING ALLOWED ON THIS RANCH!

In the afternoon Mary disappeared.

Uncle Jake was of opinion that Mary had divined the meaning of our sign. He had said to Uncle Jake: "I go. Me makee heap trouble for boss."

Later, upon the same day, we learned from a neighbour that the Coon Dogs had tarred and feathered one poor wretch; another had been stripped and whipped; a third was found half-strangled by his own queue; the market-gardens near San Lorenzo, miracles of industry, had been ravaged and destroyed. Before taking leave our neighbour mentioned the sign.

"Boys," said he, "take that down—and ship Mary. I'm mighty glad," he added reflectively, "that my ole woman does the cookin."

"Mary skedaddled after dinner," said Ajax, frowning, "but I'm going into town to-morrow to bring him back."

However, Mary brought himself back that same night. We were smoking our second pipes after supper, when Ajax, pointing an expressive finger at the window, exclaimed sharply: "Great Scot! What's that?"

Pressed against the pane, glaring in at us, was a face—a face so blanched and twisted by terror and pain that it seemed scarcely human. We hurried out. Mary staggered towards us. In his face were the cruel, venomous spines of the prickly pear. The tough boughs of the manzanita thickets through which he had plunged had scourged him like a cat-o'- nine tails. What clothes he wore were dripping with mud and slime.

"Coon Dogs come," he gasped. "I tellee you."

Then he bolted into the shadows of the oaks and sage brush. We pursued, but he ran fast, dodging like a rabbit, till he tumbled over and over—paralysed by fear and fatigue. We carried him back to the ranch-house, propped him up in a chair, and despatched Uncle Jake for a doctor. Before midnight we learned what little there was to know. Mary had been chased by the Coon Dogs. He, of course, was a-foot; the cowboys were mounted. A couple of barbed-wire fences had saved him from capture. We had listened, that afternoon, too coolly, perhaps, to a tale of many outrages, but the horror and infamy of them were not brought home to us till we saw Mary, tattered scarred, bedraggled, lying crumpled up against the gay chintz of the arm-chair. The poor fellow kept muttering: "Coon Dogs come. I know. Killee you, killee me. Heap bad men!"

Next morning Uncle Jake and the doctor rode up.

"I can do nothing," said the latter, presently. "It's a case of shock. He may get over it; he may not. Another shock would kill him. I'll leave some medicine."

Upon further consultation we put Mary into Ajax's bed. The Chinaman's bunk-house was isolated, and the vaqueroes slept near the horse corral, a couple of hundred yards away. Mary feebly protested: "No likee. Coon Dogs—allee same debils—killee you, killee me. Heap bad men!"

We tried to assure him that the Coon Dogs were at heart rank curs. Mary shook his head: "I know. You see."

The day passed. Night set in. About ten, Mary said, convincingly—

"Coon Dogs coming! Coon Dogs coming!"

"No, no," said Ajax.

I slipped out of the house. From the marsh beyond the creek came the familiar croaking of the frogs; from the foothills in the cow-pasture came the shrilling of the crickets. A coyote was yapping far down the valley.

"It's all right, Mary," said I.

"Boss, Coon Dogs come, velly quick. I know."

Did he really know? What subtle instinct warned him of the approach of danger? Who can answer such questions? It is a fact that the Coon Dogs were on the road to our ranch, and that they arrived just one hour later. We heard them yelling and shouting at the big gate. Then the popping of pistols told us that the sign, clearly to be seen in the moonlight, was being riddled with bullets.

"We must face the music," said Ajax grimly. "Come on!"

Mary lay back on the pillow, senseless. Passing through the sitting- room, I reminded Ajax that my duck-gun, an eight-bore, could carry two ounces of buck-shot about one hundred yards.

"We mustn't fight 'em with their own weapons," he answered curtly.

The popping ceased suddenly; silence succeeded.

"They're having their bad time, too," said Ajax. "They are hitching their plugs to the fence. Hullo!"

Uncle Jake slipped on to the verandah, six-shooter in hand. Before he spoke, he spat contemptuously; then he drawled out: "Our boys say it's none o' their doggoned business; they won't interfere."

"Good," said Ajax cheerfully. "Nip back, Uncle; we can play this hand alone."

"Sure?" The old man's voice expressed doubt.

"Quite sure. Shush-h-h!"

Uncle Jake slid off the verandah, but he retired—so we discovered later—no farther than the water-butt behind it. Ajax and I went into the sitting-room. From the bed-room beyond came no sound whatever. Through the windows the pack was seen—slowly advancing.

"Come in, gentlemen," said Ajax loudly.

He stood in the doorway, an unarmed man confronting a dozen desperadoes.

"Wheer's the Chinaman—Quong?"

I recognised the voice of a cowboy whom we had employed: a man known in the foothills as Cock-a-whoop Charlie.

"He's here," Ajax answered quietly.

A tall, gaunt Missourian, also well known to us as a daring bull- puncher, laughed derisively.

"Here—is he? Wal, we want him, but we don't want no fuss with you, boys. Yer—white, but he's yaller, and he must go."

"He is going," said Ajax. "He's going fast."

"How's that?"

"Come in," retorted my brother impatiently. "It's cold out there and dark. You're not scared of two unarmed men—are you?"

They filed into the house, looking very sheepish.

"I'm glad you've come, even at this late hour," said Ajax, "for I want to have a quiet word with you."

The psychological characteristics of a crowd are receiving attention at the hands of a French philosopher. M. Gustave Le Bon tells us that the crowd is always intellectually inferior to the isolated individual of average brains.

"You have a nerve," remarked Cock-a-whoop Charlie.

"You Coon Dogs," continued my brother, "are making this county too hot for the Chinese—eh?"

"You bet yer life!"

"But won't you make it too hot for yourselves?"

The pack growled, inarticulate with astonishment and curiosity.

"Some of you," said Ajax, "have wives and children. What will they do when the Sheriff is hunting—you? You call this the Land of the Free, the Home of the Brave. So it is. And do you think that the Free and the Brave will suffer you to destroy property and life without calling you to account?"

"We ain't destroying life."

"And a heathen Chinee ain't a man."

"Quong," said Ajax, in his deep voice, "is hardly a man yet. We call him Mary, because he looks like a girl. You want him—eh? You are not satisfied with what you did yesterday? You want him? But—do you want him dying?"

The pack cowered.

"He is dying," said Ajax. "No matter how they live, and a wiser Judge than any of us will pronounce on that, no matter how they live—are your own lives clean?—the meanest of these Chinese knows how to die. One moment, please."

He entered the room where Mary lay blind and deaf to the terror which had come at last. When Ajax returned, he said quietly: "Come and see the end of what you began. What? You hang back? By God!—you shall come."

Dominated by his eye and voice, the pack slunk into the bed-room. Upon Mary's once comely face the purple weals were criss-crossed; and sores had broken out wherever the cactus spines had pierced the flesh. A groan escaped the men who had wrought this evil, and glancing at each in turn, I caught a glimpse of a quickening remorse, of a horror about to assume colossal dimensions. The Cock-a-whoop cowboy was seized with a palsy; great tears rolled down the cheeks of the gaunt Missourian; one man began to swear incoherently, cursing himself and his fellows; another prayed aloud.

"He's dead!" shrieked Charlie.

At the grim word, moved by a common impulse, whipped to unreasonable panic as they had been whipped to unreasoning cruelty, the pack broke headlong from the room—and fled!

Long after they had gone, Mary opened his eyes.

"Coon Dogs coming?" he muttered. "Heap bad men!"

"They have come and gone," said Ajax. "They'll never come again, Mary. It's all right. Go to sleep."

Mary obediently closed his eyes.

"He'll recover," Ajax said. And he did.



XVI

OLD MAN BOBO'S MANDY

Old man Bobo was the sole survivor of a once famous trio. Two out of the three, Doc Dickson and Pap Spooner, had passed to the shades, and the legend ran that when their disembodied spirits reached the banks of Styx, the ruling passion of their lives asserted itself for the last time. They demurred loudly, impatiently, at the exorbitant fee, ten cents, demanded by Charon.

"We weigh light," said Pap Spooner, "awful light! Call it, mister, fifteen cents for the two!"

"Ten cents apiece," replied the ferryman, "or three for a quarter."

Thereupon the worthy couple seated themselves in Cimmerian darkness, and vowed their intention of awaiting old man Bobo.

"He'll soon be along," they remarked. "He must be awful lonesome."

But the old gentleman kept them out of Hades for full five years.

He lived alone with his grand-daughter and a stable helper in the tumble-down adobe just to the left of the San Lorenzo race track. The girl cooked, baked, and washed for him. Twice a week she peddled fruit and garden stuff in San Lorenzo. Of these sales her grandsire exacted the most rigorous accounting, and occasionally, in recognition of her services, would fling her a nickel. The old man himself rarely left home, and might be seen at all hours hobbling around his garden and corrals, keenly interested in his own belongings, halter-breaking his colts, anxiously watching the growth of his lettuce, counting the oranges, and beguiling the fruitful hours with delightful calculation.

"It's all profit," he has often said to me. "We buy nothin' an' we sell every durned thing we raise."

Then he would chuckle and rub together his yellow, wrinkled hands. Ajax said that whenever Mr. Bobo laughed it behooved other folk to look grave.

"Mandy's dress costs something," I observed.

"Considerable,—I'd misremembered that. Her rig-out las' fall cost me the vally o' three boxes o' apples—winter pearmains!"

"She will marry soon, Mr. Bobo."

"An' leave me?" he cried shrilly. "I'd like to see a man prowlin' around my Mandy—I'd stimilate him. Besides, mister, Mandy ain't the marryin' kind. She's homely as a mud fence, is Mandy. She ain't put up right for huggin' and kissin'."

"But she is your heiress, Mr. Bobo."

"Heiress," he repeated with a cunning leer. "I'm poor, mister, poor. The tax collector has eat me up—eat me up, I say, eat me up!"

He looked such an indigestible morsel, so obviously unfit for the maw of even a tax collector, that I laughed and took my leave. He was worth, I had reason to know, at least fifty thousand dollars.

* * * * *

"Say, Mandy, I like ye awful well! D'ye know it?"

The speaker, Mr. Rinaldo Roberts, trainer and driver of horses, was sitting upon the top rail of the fence that divided the land of old man Bobo from the property of the Race Track Association.

Mandy, freckled, long-legged, and tow-headed, balanced herself easily upon one ill-shod foot and rubbed herself softly with the other. The action to those who knew her ways denoted mental perplexity and embarrassment. This assignation was bristling with peril as well as charm. Her grandfather had the eyes of a turkey-buzzard, eyes which she contrasted involuntarily with the soft, kindly orbs now bent upon her. She decided instantly that blue was a prettier colour than yellow. Rinaldo's skin, too, commended itself. She had never seen so white a forehead, such ruddy cheeks. David, she reflected, must have been such a man; but Rinaldo was a nicer name than David, ever so much nicer.

"Shakespeare never repeats," observed Mr. Roberts, "but I'll tell ye again, Mandy, that I like ye awful well."

"Pshaw!" she replied.

"Honest, Mandy, I ain't lyin'."

He smoothed his hair, well oiled by the barber an hour before, wiped his hand upon his brown overalls, and laughed. The overalls were worn so as to expose four inches of black trouser.

"Ye think more of your sorrel than ye do of me, Nal."

"I do?"

"Yes, indeed, you do. You know you do."

"I know I don't! Say—I've gone an' christened the cuss."

"You have?" said Mandy, in a tone of intense interest. "Tell me its name."

"It's a her, Mandy, an' me an' Pete fixed on By-Jo. That's French, Mandy," he added triumphantly, "an' it means a gem, a jool, an' that's what she is—a regler ruby!"

"It don't sound like French," said Amanda doubtfully.

"That French feller," replied Nal, with the fine scorn of the Anglo- Saxon, "him as keeps the 'Last Chance' saloon, pronounces it By-Jew, but he's as ignorant as a fool, an' By-Jo seems to come kind o' nateral."

"Ye might ha' called the filly, Amandy, Nal."

The honest face of Rinaldo flushed scarlet. He squirmed—I use the word advisedly—and nearly fell off the fence.

"If there was a nickel-in-the-slot kickin' machine around San Lorenzy," he cried, "I'd take a dollar dose right now! Gosh! What a clam I am! I give ye my word, Mandy, that the notion o' callin' the filly after you never entered my silly head. Never onst! Jeewhillikins! this makes me feel awful bad."

He wiped his broad forehead with a large white silk pocket- handkerchief, horribly scented with patchouli. His distress was quite painful to witness.

"Never mind," said Amanda softly. "I was only joking, Nal. It's all right."

Looking at her now, what son of Adam could call her homely? Her slender figure, the head well poised upon shapely shoulders, suddenly straightened itself; her red lips parted, revealing a row of small, white teeth; her eyes were uplifted to meet the glance of her lover; her bosom rose and fell as Nal sprang from the fence and seized her hand.

A simple courtship truly! Love had written in plain characters upon their radiant faces an artless tale. With fingers interlaced they gazed tranquilly at each other, eloquently silent.

Then the man bent his head and kissed her.

* * * * *

"Marry my Mandy!" cried old man Bobo, a few hours later. "Why, Nal, ye must be crazy! Ye're both children."

"I'm twenty-two," said Mr. Roberts, expanding his broad chest, and towering six inches at least above his companion, "an' Mandy will be eighteen next December, and," he added with dignity, "I love Mandy an' Mandy loves me."

"Now, I ain't a goin' to git mad," said Mr. Bobo, stamping upon the ground and gnashing his teeth, "but I'll give ye a pointer, Nal Roberts; you go right home an' stay there! I need Mandy the worst kind, an' ye know it. I couldn't spare the girl nohow. An' there's another thing; I won't have no sparkin' aroun' this place. No huggin' an' kissin'. There's none for me an' there'll be none for you. Love, pah! I reckon that's all ye've got. Love! Ye make me sick to my stomach, Nal Roberts. Ye've bin readin' dime novels, that's what ails ye. Love! There ain't no dividen's in love."

"Naterally," observed Mr. Roberts, "ye know nothin' of love, Mister Bobo, an' ye never will. I'm sorry for ye, too. Life without love is like eatin' bull-beef jerky without salsa!"

"I've raised Mandy," continued Mr. Bobo, ignoring this interruption, "very keerful. I give her good schoolin', victuals, an' a heap o' clothes. I've knocked some horse sense into the child. There ain't no nonsense in Mandy, an' ye won't find her equal in the land for peddlin' fruit an' sech. I've kep' her rustlin' from morn till night. When a woman idles, the ole Nick gits away with her mighty quick. I've salted that down many a long year. No, sir, Mandy is mine, an' Mandy will do jest as I say. She minds me well, does Mandy. She won't marry till I give the word—an' I ain't agoin' to give the word."

He snapped his lantern jaws, and grinned in Nal's face. The selfishness which rated its sordid interest paramount to any consideration for others appalled the young man. How could he stem this tide of avarice, this torrent of egoism?

"So love don't go?" said Nal shortly.

"No, sonny, love don't go—leastways not with me."

"Mebbe you think I'm after the grease," remarked Nal with deliberation, "but I ain't. Folks say ye're rich, Mr. Bobo, but I don't keer for that. I'm after Mandy, an' I'll take her in her chimmy."

"I'll be damned if ye will, Nal! Ye won't take Mandy at all, an' that's all there is about it."

"Say," said Mr. Roberts, his fine eyes aglow with inspiration, "say, I'll make ye a cold business proposition, fair an' square betwixt man an' man. I'll buy Mandy from ye, at the market price—there!"

From beneath his penthouse brows Mr. Bobo peered curiously at this singular youth.

"Buy her!" he repeated scornfully. "With what? Ye've got nothin', Nal Roberts—that is, nothin' but yer sorrel filly and a measly two, or three mebbe, hundred dollars. I vally Mandy at twenty dollars a month. At one per cent.—I allus git one per cent. a month—that makes two thousand dollars. Have ye got the cold cash, Nal?"

Honest Nal hung his head.

"Not the half of it, but I earn a hundred a month at the track."

"Bring me two thousand dollars, gold coin o' the United States, no foolin', an' I'll give ye Mandy."

"Ye mean that, Mr. Bobo?"

The old man hesitated.

"I was kind o' bluffin'," he admitted reluctantly, "but I'll stand by my words. Bring me the cash, an' I'll give ye Mandy."

"I'll guess I'll go," said Mr. Roberts.

"Yes, Nal, ye'd better go, an' sonny, ye needn't to come back; I like ye first rate, but ye needn't to come back!"

Rinaldo walked home to the race track, and as he walked, cursed old man Bobo, cursed him heartily, in copious Western vernacular, from the peaky crown of his bald head to the tip of his ill-shaped, sockless toe. When, however, he had fed the filly and bedded her down in cool, fresh straw, he felt easier in his mind. Running his hand down her iron forelegs, he reflected hopefully that a few hundred dollars were easily picked up on a race track. Bijou was a well-bred beast, with a marvellous turn of speed. For half-a-mile she was a wonder, a record breaker—so Nal thought. Presently he pulled a list of entries from his pocket and scanned it closely. Old man Bobo had a bay gelding in training for the half-mile race, Comet, out of Shooting Star, by Meteor. Nal had taken the measure of the other horses and feared none of them; but Comet, he admitted ruefully to be a dangerous colt. He was stabled at home, and the small boy that exercised him was both deaf and dumb.

"If I could hold my watch on him," said Nal to himself, "I'd give a hundred dollars."

A smile illumined his pleasant features as he remembered that Mr. Bobo, like himself, was sitting upon the anxious seat. That same afternoon he had tried, in vain, to extract from Nal some information about the filly's speed. The old man's weakness, if he had one, was betting heavily upon a certainty.

"By Jimminy," mused Mr. Roberts, patting affectionately the satin neck of Bijou, "it would be a nice howdy-do to win a thousand off the old son of a gun! Gosh, Mandy! how ye startled me."

Amanda, out of breath and scarlet of face, slipped quietly into the loose box and sat down in the straw.

"Hush," she said, panting, "grandfather would take a quirt to me if he knew I was here, but, Nal dear, I jest had to come. I've been talkin' with the old man, an' he won't let me leave him, but I'll be true to you, Nal, true as steel, an' you'll be true to me, won't you? Grandfather won't last long, he's——"

"Tough," said Mr. Roberts, "tough as abalone, tough as the hondo of my lariat. I suspicioned he'd peter out when Pap Spooner died, but he fooled us the worst kind. No, Mandy, the old gentleman ain't a-goin', as he says, till he gits ready. He told me that to-day, an' he ain't a liar. He's close as a clam, is Mr. Bobo, but he ain't no liar. As for bein' true to you, Mandy—why—dern it—my heart's jest froze to yours, it don't belong to Nal Roberts no longer."

The girl blushed with pleasure and rose to her feet.

"You won't quarrel, Nal," she said anxiously, "you an' grandfather. He gets awful hot at times, but your head is level. He's comin' down to the track to-morrow morning at five to work out Comet, an' you might have words about me."

"To work out Comet?" said Nal, pricking up his ears.

"Mercy!—" cried Amanda, "I've given it away, an' it's a deathly secret."

"It's safe enough with me," replied the young man carelessly. None the less his eyes brightened and he smiled beneath his blonde mustache. "An', Mandy, don't worry, I wouldn't touch the old gentleman with a pair o' tongs."

"Well, good night, Nal—no, you mustn't—somebody might see. Only one then! Let me go, let me go!—Good night, Nal."

She ran swiftly away, holding high her skirts on account of the sticker grass. Nal watched her retreating figure admiringly.

"A good gait," he murmured critically, "no interferin' an' nothin' gummy about the pastern!"

He then squatted down, cowboy fashion, upon his hams, and smoothing carefully a piece of level ground, began to—what he called "figger." He wrote with a pointed stick and presently broke into a loud laugh.

"A low down trick," he muttered, "to play upon a white man, but Mr. Bobo ain't a white man, an' mustn't be treated as sech."

He erased his hieroglyphics, and proceeded leisurely to prepare his simple supper. He ate his bacon and beans with even more than usual relish, laughing softly to himself repeatedly, and when he had finished and the dishes were washed and put away, he selected, still laughing, a spade and crowbar from a heap of tools in the corner of his shanty. These he shouldered and then strode out into the night.

* * * * *

The crowd at the race track upon the opening afternoon of the fair was beginning to assume colossal proportions—colossal, that is to say, for San Lorenzo. Beneath the grand stand, where the pools are always sold, the motley throng surged thickest. Jew and gentile, greaser and dude, tin-horn gamblers and tenderfeet, hayseeds and merchants, jostled each other good humouredly. In the pool box were two men. One —the auctioneer—a perfect specimen of the "sport"; a ponderous individual, brazen of face and voice, who presented to the crowd an amazing front of mottled face, diamond stud, bulging shirt sleeves, and a bull-neck encircled by a soiled eighteen-and-a-half inch paper collar. The other gentleman, who handled the tickets, was unclean, unshorn, and cadaverous-looking, with a black cigar, unlighted, stuck aggressively into the corner of his mouth.

"Once more," yelled the pool-selling person, in raucous tones. "Once more, boys! I'm sellin' once more the half-mile dash! I've one hundred dollars for Comet; how much fer second choice? Be lively there. Sixty dollars!!! Go the five, five, five! Thank ye, sir, you're a dead game sport. Bijou fer sixty-five dollars. How much am I bid fer the field?"

The field sold for fifty, and the auctioneer glanced at Mr. Bobo, who shook his head and shuffled away. Ten consecutive times he had bought pools. Ten consecutive times Mr. Rinaldo Roberts had paid, by proxy, sixty-five dollars for the privilege of naming By-Jo as second choice to the son of Meteor.

"Fifteen hunderd," mumbled the old man to himself. "Five las' night an' ten to-day. It's a sure shot, that's what it is, a sure shot. I worked him out in fifty-one seconds. Oh, Lord, what a clip! in fifty- one," he repeated with his abominable chuckle, "an' Nal's filly has never done better than fifty-two. Nal didn't buy no pools. He knows better."

By a queer coincidence Mr. Roberts was also indulging in pleasing introspection.

"The old cuss," he mused, "is blooded. I'll allow he's blooded, but he thinks this a dead cert. Lemme see, fifty-one an' two make fifty- three. No clip at all. Gosh! what a game, what a game! Why, there's Mandy a-sittin' up with Mis' Root. I'll jest sashay acrost the track an' give 'em my regards."

Mandy was atop a red-wheeled spring wagon. A sailor hat—price, trimmed, forty-five cents—overshadowed her smiling face, and a new dress cleverly fashioned out of white cheese cloth, embellished her person. She had been watching her lover closely for upwards of an hour, but expressed superlative surprise at seeing him.