Mr. Tarbox accompanied him to the door. "And now--ez
everything is settled and in order, Mr. Brice, and ef you should be
wantin' to say anything about it to your bosses at the office, ye may
mention MY name ez Flo Dimwood's second cousin, and say I'm a depositor
in their bank. And," with greater deliberation, "ef anything at any time
should be thrown up at ye for marryin' a niece o' Snapshot Harry's, ye
might mention, keerless like, that Snapshot Harry, under the name o'
Henry J. Dimwood, has held shares in their old bank for years!"

A TREASURE OF THE REDWOODS

PART I

Mr. Jack Fleming stopped suddenly before a lifeless and decaying
redwood-tree with an expression of disgust and impatience. It was the
very tree he had passed only an hour before, and he now knew he had been
describing that mysterious and hopeless circle familiar enough to those
lost in the woods.

There was no mistaking the tree, with its one broken branch which
depended at an angle like the arm of a semaphore; nor did it relieve
his mind to reflect that his mishap was partly due to his own foolish
abstraction. He was returning to camp from a neighboring mining town,
and while indulging in the usual day-dreams of a youthful prospector,
had deviated from his path in attempting to make a short cut through the
forest. He had lost the sun, his only guide, in the thickly interlaced
boughs above him, which suffused though the long columnar vault only
a vague, melancholy twilight. He had evidently penetrated some unknown
seclusion, absolutely primeval and untrodden. The thick layers of
decaying bark and the desiccated dust of ages deadened his footfall and
invested the gloom with a profound silence.

As he stood for a moment or two, irresolute, his ear, by this time
attuned to the stillness, caught the faint but distinct lap and trickle
of water. He was hot and thirsty, and turned instinctively in that
direction. A very few paces brought him to a fallen tree; at the foot of
its upturned roots gurgled the spring whose upwelling stream had slowly
but persistently loosened their hold on the soil, and worked their ruin.
A pool of cool and clear water, formed by the disruption of the soil,
overflowed, and after a few yards sank again in the sodden floor.

As he drank and bathed his head and hands in this sylvan basin, he
noticed the white glitter of a quartz ledge in its depths, and was
considerably surprised and relieved to find, hard by, an actual o