day out at Marysville. Looks as if they were playing it rather low down,
don't it? Coming down to hardpan and the bed rock--eh?"

The Expressman's face was turned anxiously towards Bill, who, after a
hurried gulp of his remaining liquor, still stood staring at the window.
Then he slowly drew on one of his large gloves. "Ye didn't," he said,
with a slow, drawling, but perfectly distinct, articulation, "happen to
know old 'Skinner' Hemmings when you were over there?"

"Yes."

"And his daughter?"

"He hasn't got any."

"A sort o' mild, innocent, guileless child of nature?" persisted Bill,
with a yellow face, a deadly calm and Satanic deliberation.

"No. I tell you he HASN'T any daughter. Old man Hemmings is a confirmed
old bachelor. He's too mean to support more than one."

"And you didn't happen to know any o' that gang, did ye?" continued
Bill, with infinite protraction.

"Yes. Knew 'em all. There was French Pete, Cherokee Bob, Kanaka
Joe, One-eyed Stillson, Softy Brown, Spanish Jack, and two or three
Greasers."

"And ye didn't know a man by the name of Charley Byng?"

"No," returned the Superintendent, with a slight suggestion of weariness
and a distraught glance towards the door.

"A dark, stylish chap, with shifty black eyes and a curled-up
merstache?" continued Bill, with dry, colorless persistence.

"No. Look here, Bill, I'm in a little bit of a hurry--but I suppose
you must have your little joke before we part. Now, what is your little
game?"

"Wot you mean?" demanded Bill, with sudden brusqueness.

"Mean? Well, old man, you know as well as I do. You're giving me the
very description of Ramon Martinez himself, ha! ha! No--Bill! you didn't
play me this time. You're mighty spry and clever, but you didn't catch
on just then."

He nodded and moved away with a light laugh. Bill turned a stony face to
the Expressman. Suddenly a gleam of mirth came into his gloomy eyes. He
bent over the young man, and said in a hoarse, chuckling whisper:--

"But I got even after all!"

"How?"

"He's tied up to that lying little she-devil, hard and fast!"

THE REFORMATION OF JAMES REDDY.

I.

It was a freshly furrowed field, so large that the eye at first
scarcely took in its magnitude. The irregular surface of upturned, oily,
wave-shaped clods took the appearance of a vast, black, chopping sea,
that reached from the actual shore of San Francisco Bay to the low hills
of the Coast Range. The sea-breeze