and me outer his ranch first."

"Lord, ye ain't takin' no stock in that hogwash," responded the other.
"Why, everybody knows old man Jallinger pretended to be sick o' miners
and minin' camps, and couldn't bear to hev 'em near him, only jest
because he himself was all the while secretly prospectin' the whole lode
and didn't want no interlopers. It was only when Fleming nippled in by
gettin' hold o' the girl that Jallinger knew the secret was out, and
that's the way he bought him off. Why, Jack wasn't no miner--never
was--ye could see that. HE never struck anything. The only treasure he
found in the woods was Tinka Jallinger!"

A BELLE OF CANADA CITY

Cissy was tying her hat under her round chin before a small glass at
her window. The window gave upon a background of serrated mountain and
olive-shadowed canyon, with a faint additional outline of a higher snow
level--the only dreamy suggestion of the whole landscape. The foreground
was a glaringly fresh and unpicturesque mining town, whose irregular
attempts at regularity were set forth with all the cruel, uncompromising
clearness of the Californian atmosphere. There was the straight Main
Street with its new brick block of "stores," ending abruptly against a
tangled bluff; there was the ruthless clearing in the sedate pines where
the hideous spire of the new church imitated the soaring of the solemn
shafts it had displaced with almost irreligious mockery. Yet this
foreground was Cissy's world--her life, her sole girlish experience. She
did not, however, bother her pretty head with the view just then, but
moved her cheek up and down before the glass, the better to examine
by the merciless glare of the sunlight a few freckles that starred the
hollows of her temples. Like others of her sex, she was a poor critic
of what was her real beauty, and quarreled with that peculiar texture of
her healthy skin which made her face as eloquent in her sun-kissed cheek
as in her bright eyes and expression. Nevertheless, she was somewhat
consoled by the ravishing effect of the bowknot she had just tied, and
turned away not wholly dissatisfied. Indeed, as the acknowledged belle
of Canada City and the daughter of its principal banker, small wonder
that a certain frank vanity and childlike imperiousness were among her
faults--and her attractions.

She bounded down the stairs and into the front parlor, for their house
possessed the unheard-of luxury of a double drawing-room, albeit t