tiful eyes; pensive young girls
in pink gowns, with flowing yellow hair, drooping over golden harps; a
coloured reproduction of "Rouget de Lisle, Singing the Marseillaise,"
and two "pieces" of wood carving, representing a quail and a wild duck,
hung by one leg in the midst of game bags and powder horns,--quite
masterpieces, both.

At last everything had been bought, all arrangements made, Hilma's
trunks packed with her new dresses, and the tickets to Bonneville
bought.

"We'll go by the Overland, by Jingo," declared Annixter across the
table to his wife, at their last meal in the hotel where they had been
stopping; "no way trains or locals for us, hey?"

"But we reach Bonneville at SUCH an hour," protested Hilma. "Five in the
morning!"

"Never mind," he declared, "we'll go home in PULLMAN'S, Hilma. I'm not
going to have any of those slobs in Bonneville say I didn't know how to
do the thing in style, and we'll have Vacca meet us with the team. No,
sir, it is Pullman's or nothing. When it comes to buying furniture, I
don't shine, perhaps, but I know what's due my wife."

He was obdurate, and late one afternoon the couple boarded the
Transcontinental (the crack Overland Flyer of the Pacific and
Southwestern) at the Oakland mole. Only Hilma's parents were there to
say good-bye. Annixter knew that Magnus and Osterman were in the city,
but he had laid his plans to elude them. Magnus, he could trust to be
dignified, but that goat Osterman, one could never tell what he would do
next. He did not propose to start his journey home in a shower of rice.
Annixter marched down the line of cars, his hands encumbered with wicker
telescope baskets, satchels, and valises, his tickets in his mouth, his
hat on wrong side foremost, Hilma and her parents hurrying on behind
him, trying to keep up. Annixter was in a turmoil of nerves lest
something should go wrong; catching a train was always for him a little
crisis. He rushed ahead so furiously that when he had found his Pullman
he had lost his party. He set down his valises to mark the place and
charged back along the platform, waving his arms.

"Come on," he cried, when, at length, he espied the others. "We've no
more time."

He shouldered and urged them forward to where he had set his valises,
only to find one of them gone. Instantly he raised an outcry. Aha, a
fine way to treat passengers! There was P. and S. W. management for
you. He would, by the Lord, he would--but the porter a