ching of forbidden cakes and apples in his own room, or the
hidden presence of some still in his pocket.

The Mayor explained the case briefly, but with business-like precision.
"Your duty, Mr. Hathaway," he concluded, "at present will be merely
nominal and, above all, confidential. Colonel Pendleton and myself
will set the thing going." As the youth--who had apparently taken in
and "illuminated" the whole subject with a single bright-eyed
glance--bowed and was about to retire, as if to relieve himself of his
real feelings behind the door, the woman stopped him with a gesture.

"Let's have this thing over now," she said to the Mayor. "You draw up
something that we can all sign at once." She fixed her eyes on Paul,
partly to satisfy her curiosity and justify her predilection for him,
and partly to detect him in any overt act of boyishness. But the youth
simply returned her glance with a cheerful, easy prescience, as if her
past lay clearly open before him. For some minutes there was only the
rapid scratching of the Mayor's pen over the paper. Suddenly he
stopped and looked up.

"What's her name?"

"She mustn't have mine," said the woman quickly. "That's a part of my
idea. I give that up with the rest. She must take a new name that
gives no hint of me. Think of one, can't you, you two men? Something
that would kind of show that she was the daughter of the city, you
know."

"You couldn't call her 'Santa Francisca,' eh?" said Colonel Pendleton,
doubtingly.

"Not much," said the woman, with a seriousness that defied any ulterior
insinuation.

"Nor Chrysopolinia?" said the Mayor, musingly.

"But that's only a FIRST name. She must have a family name," said the
woman impatiently.

"Can YOU think of something, Paul?" said the Mayor, appealing to
Hathaway. "You're a great reader, and later from your classics than I
am." The Mayor, albeit practical and Western, liked to be
ostentatiously forgetful of his old Alma Mater, Harvard, on occasions.

"How would YERBA BUENA do, sir?" responded the youth gravely. "It's the
old Spanish title of the first settlement here. It comes from the name
that Father Junipero Serra gave to the pretty little vine that grows
wild over the sandhills, and means 'good herb.' He called it 'A balm
for the wounded and sore.'"

"For the wounded and sore?" repeated the woman slowly.

"That's what they say," responded Hathaway.

"You ain't playing us, eh?" she said, with a half lau