urns,--and more than once the broken heads and bandaged arms
that coincided so oddly with some new tale of a daring hold-up that
he was sure to hear of, the next time that he chanced to ride into
Monterey. For three years, young Ramerrez had known that sooner or later
he would be facing such a moment as this, called upon to make the choice
that should make or mar him for life. And now, for the first time he
realised why he had never voiced his suspicions, never questioned, never
hastened the time of decision,--it was because even now he did not know
which way he wished to decide! He knew only that he was torn and racked
by terrible emotions, that on one side was a mighty impulse to disregard
the oath he had blindly taken and refuse to do his father's bidding;
and on the other, some new and unguessed craving for excitement and
danger, some inherited lawlessness in his blood, something akin to the
intoxication of the arena, when the thunder of the bull's hoofs rang in
his ears. And so, when the old man's lips opened once more, and shaped,
almost inaudibly, the solemn words:

"You have sworn,--" the scales were turned and the son bowed his head in
silence.

A moment later and the room was filled with men who fell on their knees.
On every face, save one, there was an expression of overwhelming grief
and despair; but on that one, ashen grey as it was with the agony of
approaching death, there was a look of contentment as he made a sign to
the padre that he was now ready for him to administer the last rites of
his church.

III.

The Polka Saloon!

How the name stirs the blood and rouses the imagination!

No need to be a Forty-Niner to picture it all as if there that night:
the great high and square room lighted by candles and the warm, yellow
light of kerosene lamps; the fireplace with its huge logs blazing and
roaring; the faro tables with the little rings of miners around them;
and the long, pine bar behind which a typical barkeeper of the period
was busily engaged in passing the bottle to the men clamorous for whisky
in which to drink the health of the Girl.

And the spirit of the place! When and where was there ever such a fine
fellowship--transforming as it unquestionably did an ordinary saloon
into a veritable haven of good cheer for miners weary after a long and
often discouraging day in the gulches?

In a word, the Polka was a marvellous tribute to its girl-proprietor's
sense of domesticity. Nothing