yin' a good deal."

And with this ample though somewhat novel declaration of freedom from
marital compulsion the notary was quite willing to consider the majesty
of the law satisfied, and proceeded to affix his seal on its imposing
star of gilded paper, a process which drew the children about him in a
rapidly narrowing circle from which he was glad to escape.

"Damn it," he said, as he climbed into the road-wagon and tucked the
robe about his legs,--"damn it, Colonel, I thought you were popular
with the gentler sex; but there certainly seems to be a coolness between
you and the old lady," and the two men drove off, laughing as they went.

The document they had left behind them, which made Mrs. Withrow the
owner of Flutterwheel Spring, "being the most southerly spring on the
west side of Sawpit Canon," had lain untouched upon the table until
Lysander had taken it in charge, and it was this lofty indifference on
the part of his mother-in-law that had justified her in the frequent
boast that, "whatever she'd done, she hadn't stirred out of her tracks,
nohow."

So at last the stillness of Sawpit Canon was invaded. Poindexter had
come from San Gabriel Mission, and with him a young engineer from Los
Angeles,--a straight, well-made young fellow, whose blue flannel shirt
was not close enough at the collar to hide the line of white that
betokened his recent escape from civilization. There were half a dozen
workmen besides, and the muffled boom of blasting was heard all day
among the boulders. At night, the touch of a banjo and the sound of
men's voices singing floated down from the camp among the sycamores.

This camp was a bewildering revelation to Melissa, who carried milk to
the occupants every evening. The Chinese cook, who came to meet her and
emptied her pail, trotting hither and thither, and swearing all the time
with a cheerful confidence in the purity of his pigeon English, was not
to her half so much a foreigner and an alien as was either of the two
men who occupied the engineer's tent. They raised their hats when she
appeared among the mottled trunks of the sycamores. One of them--the
younger, no doubt--sprang to help her when her foot slipped in crossing
the shallow stream, and the generous concern he manifested for her
safety, and which was to him the merest commonplace of politeness, was
to Melissa a glimpse into Paradise.

"By Jove, she's pretty, Poindexter," he had said, as he came back and
picked up his ba