e proprietor of a
stage-coach route, moved away to Sacramento; Medliker's Ranch became a
station for changing horses, and, as the new railway in time superseded
even that, sank into a blacksmith's shop on the outskirts of the new
town of Burnt Spring. And then one day, six years after, news fell as a
bolt from the blue!

It was thus recorded in the county paper: "A piece of rare good fortune,
involving, it is said, the development of a lead of extraordinary
value, has lately fallen to the lot of Mr. John Silsbee, the popular
blacksmith, on the site of the old Medliker Ranch. In clearing out the
failing water-course known as Burnt Spring, Mr. Silsbee came upon a rich
ledge or pocket at the actual source of the spring,--a fissure in the
ground a few rods from the road. The present yield has been estimated
to be from eight to ten thousand dollars. But the event is considered
as one of the most remarkable instances of the vagaries of 'prospecting'
ever known, as this valuable 'pot-hole' existed undisturbed for EIGHT
YEARS not FIFTY YARDS from the old cabin that was in former times the
residence of J. Medliker, Esq., and the station of the Pioneer Stage
Company, and was utterly unknown and unsuspected by the previous
inhabitants! Verily truth is stranger than fiction!"

A TALE OF THREE TRUANTS

The schoolmaster at Hemlock Hill was troubled that morning. Three of his
boys were missing. This was not only a notable deficit in a roll-call of
twenty, but the absentees were his three most original and distinctive
scholars. He had received no preliminary warning or excuse. Nor could he
attribute their absence to any common local detention or difficulty of
travel. They lived widely apart and in different directions. Neither
were they generally known as "chums," or comrades, who might have
entered into an unhallowed combination to "play hookey."

He looked at the vacant places before him with a concern which his other
scholars little shared, having, after their first lively curiosity, not
unmixed with some envy of the derelicts, apparently forgotten them. He
missed the cropped head and inquisitive glances of Jackson Tribbs on
the third bench, the red hair and brown eyes of Providence Smith in
the corner, and there was a blank space in the first bench where Julian
Fleming, a lanky giant of seventeen, had sat. Still, it would not do
to show his concern openly, and, as became a man who was at least three
years the senior of