n the loose straw, restless and uncomforted.

"When's the trial, Lysander?" she asked, after a little pause, during
which her companion resumed his encounter with the rusty wire he was
straightening.

"The trial, M'lissy, is set for tuhmorruh," Lysander replied, a trifle
oracularly. "I'm a-goin' down because they've sent fer me; if they
hadn't 'a' sent, I wouldn't 'a' gone. I don't know nothin' exceptin'
that yer paw had one of his spells,"--inebriety was always thus
decorously cloaked in Lysander's domestic conversation,--"an' went off
up the canon that mornin' r'arin' mad about the spring. Of course they
don't know that's all I know,--if they knowed it, perhaps they wouldn't
want me; but if they hadn't sent fer me, you can bet I'd stick at home
closer'n a scale-bug to an orange-tree, Melissy, perticular if I was a
young girl, an' didn't know nothin' whatever about the hull fracas. An'
young girls ain't expected to know about such things; it ain't proper
fer 'em, especially when they're members of the fam'ly."

This piece of highly involved wisdom quieted Melissa very much as a
handkerchief stuffed into a sufferer's mouth allays his pain. She went
about the rest of the day silent and distressed.

At daybreak the next morning, Lysander harnessed the dun-colored mules
and drove to Los Angeles.

The sun rose higher, and the warm dullness of a California summer day
settled down upon the little mountain ranch. Heat seemed to rise in
shimmering waves from the yellow barley stubble. The orange-trees cast
dense shadows with no coolness in them, and along the edge of the
orchard the broad leaves of the squash-vines hung in limp dejection upon
their stalks. The heated air was full of pungent odors: tar and honey
and spice from the sage and eucalyptus, with now and then a warmer puff
of some new wild fragrance from far up the mountain-side.

"We're a-goin' to have three hot days," said Mrs. Sproul, looking
anxiously over the valley from the shelter of her husband's hat.
"Sandy'll swelter, bein' dressed up so. I do hope they won't keep him
long. He don't know nothin' about it, noway. Seems to me they might 'a'
believed him, when he said so."

Mother Withrow had fallen into a silence full of the eloquence of
offended dignity, when Lysander disappeared. Like all tyrannical souls,
she was beginning to feel a bitterness worse than that of
opposition,--the bitterness of deceit. She knew that Lysander had
deceived her, and the k