dacity; and
affecting to recognize in Mr. Brace's curiosity a not unnatural excuse
for toying with her charming fingers, she hid them in chaste and
virginal seclusion in her lap, until she could recover the ring and
resume her glove.

A week passed--a week of peculiar and desiccating heat for even those
dry Sierra table-lands. The long days were filled with impalpable dust
and acrid haze suspended in the motionless air; the nights were
breathless and dewless; the cold wind which usually swept down from the
snow line was laid to sleep over a dark monotonous level, whose horizon
was pricked with the eating fires of burning forest crests. The lagging
coach of Indian Spring drove up at Excelsior, and precipitated its
passengers with an accompanying cloud of dust before the Excelsior
Hotel. As they emerged from the coach, Mr. Brace, standing in the
doorway, closely scanned their begrimed and almost unrecognizable
faces. They were the usual type of travelers: a single professional man
in dusty black, a few traders in tweeds and flannels, a sprinkling of
miners in red and gray shirts, a Chinaman, a negro, and a Mexican
packer or muleteer. This latter for a moment mingled with the crowd in
the bar-room, and even penetrated the corridor and dining-room of the
hotel, as if impelled by a certain semi-civilized curiosity, and then
strolled with a lazy, dragging step--half impeded by the enormous
leather leggings, chains, and spurs, peculiar to his class--down the
main street. The darkness was gathering, but the muleteer indulged in
the same childish scrutiny of the dimly lighted shops, magazines, and
saloons, and even of the occasional groups of citizens at the street
corners. Apparently young, as far as the outlines of his figure could
be seen, he seemed to show even more than the usual concern of
masculine Excelsior in the charms of womankind. The few female figures
about at that hour, or visible at window or veranda, received his
marked attention; he respectfully followed the two auburn-haired
daughters of Deacon Johnson on their way to choir meeting to the door
of the church. Not content with that act of discreet gallantry, after
they had entered he managed to slip in unperceived behind them.

The memorial of the Excelsior gamblers' generosity was a modern
building, large and pretentious for even Mr. Wynn's popularity, and had
been good-humoredly known, in the characteristic language of the
generous donors, as one of the "big