enough to hear the
rumors afloat of the Sunday horse-races, or of the midnight revel on
the Fourth of July at the Yellow Jacket. The night that Bess came home
saddleless and riderless, with the white foam on her, and when he
searched till near morning, to at last find Job stretched in a stupor
by the wayside down the Chichilla road, he thought the boy's after
story was true--that story of a frightened runaway--and little knew it
was Pete Wilkins' whisky that had thrown him.

Ah! it was only yesterday the old man had said, "She was a traitor,
and so is the boy. I have loved him, fed him, sheltered him, and yet
all he cares for is to get my money some day. The world's all alike!"
And Andrew Malden shut the door of his heart, which, a few short years
ago, had swung open for the homeless lad.

It was this boy, touched, alas! not alone by the beauty and grandeur
of the mountains, but by the shame and sin of the men who dwelt among
them, that now laughed at a poor girl's feeble wrath. He laughed, and
then a spark of innate good-nature and manhood touched him, and,
picking up the pail, he muttered an apology and offered to escort the
maiden home.

Very soon the clouds did roll by, and under the sky of twilight the
pair walked leisurely along the trail that passed out of the main
road, up across Sugar Pine Hill and down towards Blackberry Valley and
old Tom Reed's cabin, where Jane was both daughter and mistress.

This girl was so different from the crowd he had seen at Wilkins' barn
and down at Mike's, that he could not joke her; he could only play the
gallant, and he rather liked it.

It was a long way over the hill and many stops to rest--at Deer
Spring, Squirrel Run and the Summit--and the picking up cones made it
longer. It was just as they crossed the hill that they heard a
crackling of the branches above them, and both looked up to be struck
with terror. Climbing from one great tree to another was the low, dark
form of a mountain lion. He did not notice them. Job motioned silence
and shrunk into the bushes. The girl instinctively followed and drew
up close to him. With gun cocked and bated breath, they waited and
waited; but whether the wind was away from them, or the vicious animal
had something else in view, he slunk away in the trees and out toward
the Gulch, where he made his lair.

For a half hour Jane and Job sat with hearts beating fast, while both
tried to make a show of being brave. How strange it seemed