k his head with dogged hopelessness. "It's no use, Mr.
Grey. I oughter guessed it was a hoss then--thar was nothin' else in
that corral. No! Cota's already gone away back to San Jose, and I reckon
the Ramierez has got scared of her and packed her off. So, on account
of its bein' HER hoss, and what happened betwixt me and her, you see my
mouth is shut."

"And the columns of the 'Clarion' too," said the editor, with a sigh.

"I know it's hard, sir, but it's better so. I've reckoned mebbe she was
a little crazy, and since you've told me that Spanish yarn, it mout
be that she was sort o' playin' she was that priest, and trained that
mustang ez she did."

After a pause, something of his old self came back into his blue eyes as
he sadly hitched up his braces and passed them over his broad shoulders.
"Yes, sir, I was a fool, for we've lost the only bit of real sensation
news that ever came in the way of the 'Clarion.'"

A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIERRAS

It was four o'clock in the afternoon, and the hottest hour of the day
on that Sierran foothill. The western sun, streaming down the mile-long
slope of close-set pine crests, had been caught on an outlying ledge of
glaring white quartz, covered with mining tools and debris, and
seemed to have been thrown into an incandescent rage. The air above it
shimmered and became visible. A white canvas tent on it was an object
not to be borne; the steel-tipped picks and shovels, intolerable to
touch and eyesight, and a tilted tin prospecting pan, falling over,
flashed out as another sun of insufferable effulgence. At such moments
the five members of the "Eureka Mining Company" prudently withdrew to
the nearest pine-tree, which cast a shadow so sharply defined on the
glistening sand that the impingement of a hand or finger beyond that
line cut like a knife. The men lay, or squatted, in this shadow,
feverishly puffing their pipes and waiting for the sun to slip beyond
the burning ledge. Yet so irritating was the dry air, fragrant with the
aroma of the heated pines, that occasionally one would start up and walk
about until he had brought on that profuse perspiration which gave
a momentary relief, and, as he believed, saved him from sunstroke.
Suddenly a voice exclaimed querulously:--

"Derned if the blasted bucket ain't empty ag'in! Not a drop left, by
Jimminy!"

A stare of helpless disgust was exchanged by the momentarily uplifted
heads; then every man lay down again, as if try