he occupation of Tasajara;
but it is presumed that it was at the instigation of his daughters, and
there was no one to oppose it. Harcourt was a pretty name for a street,
a square, or a hotel; even the few in Sidon who had called it Harkutt
admitted that it was an improvement quite consistent with the change
from the fever-haunted tules and sedges of the creek to the broad,
level, and handsome squares of Tasajara City.

This might have been the opinion of a visitor at the Harcourt House, who
arrived one summer afternoon from the Stockton boat, but whose shrewd,
half-critical, half-professional eyes and quiet questionings betrayed
some previous knowledge of the locality. Seated on the broad veranda
of the Harcourt House, and gazing out on the well-kept green and young
eucalyptus trees of the Harcourt Square or Plaza, he had elicited a
counter question from a prosperous-looking citizen who had been lounging
at his side.

"I reckon you look ez if you might have been here before, stranger."

"Yes," said the stranger quietly, "I have been. But it was when the
tules grew in the square opposite, and the tide of the creek washed
them."

"Well," said the Tasajaran, looking curiously at the stranger, "I call
myself a pioneer of Tasajara. My name's Peters,--of Peters and Co.,--and
those warehouses along the wharf, where you landed just now, are mine;
but I was the first settler on Harcourt's land, and built the next cabin
after him. I helped to clear out them tules and dredged the channels
yonder. I took the contract with Harcourt to build the last fifteen
miles o' railroad, and put up that depot for the company. Perhaps you
were here before that?"

"I was," returned the stranger quietly.

"I say," said Peters, hitching his chair a little nearer to his
companion, "you never knew a kind of broken-down feller, called
Curtis--'Lige Curtis--who once squatted here and sold his right to
Harkutt? He disappeared; it was allowed he killed hisself, but they
never found his body, and, between you and me, I never took stock in
that story. You know Harcourt holds under him, and all Tasajara rests on
that title."

"I've heard so," assented the stranger carelessly, "but I never knew the
original settler. Then Harcourt has been lucky?"

"You bet. He's got three millions right about HERE, or within this
quarter section, to say nothing of his outside speculations."

"And lives here?"

"Not for two years. That's his old house across the