gress, and was soon well on his way
toward the distant ridge.

But Flip's return had not been as rapid. When she reached the wood she
crept to its beetling verge, and, looking across the canyon, watched
Lance's figure as it vanished and reappeared in the shadows and
sinuosities of the ascent. When he reached the ridge the outlying fog
crept across the summit, caught him in its embrace, and wrapped him
from her gaze. Flip sighed, raised herself, put her alternate foot on
a stump, and took a long pull at her too-brief stockings. When she had
pulled down her skirt and endeavored once more to renew the intimacy
that had existed in previous years between the edge of her petticoat and
the top of her stockings, she sighed again, and went home.

CHAPTER III.

For six months the sea fogs monotonously came and went along the
Monterey coast; for six months they beleaguered the Coast Range with
afternoon sorties of white hosts that regularly swept over the mountain
crest, and were as regularly beaten back again by the leveled lances of
the morning sun. For six months that white veil which had once hidden
Lance Harriott in its folds returned without him. For that amiable
outlaw no longer needed disguise or hiding-place. The swift wave of
pursuit that had dashed him on the summit had fallen back, and the next
day was broken and scattered. Before the week had passed, a regular
judicial inquiry relieved his crime of premeditation, and showed it to
be a rude duel of two armed and equally desperate men. From a secure
vantage in a seacoast town Lance challenged a trial by his peers, and,
as an already prejudged man escaping from his executioners, obtained a
change of venue. Regular justice, seated by the calm Pacific, found
the action of an interior, irregular jury rash and hasty. Lance was
liberated on bail.

The Postmaster at Fisher's Crossing had just received the weekly mail
and express from San Francisco, and was engaged in examining it. It
consisted of five letters and two parcels. Of these, three of the
letters and the two parcels were directed to Flip. It was not the
first time during the last six months that this extraordinary event had
occurred, and the curiosity of the Crossing was duly excited. As Flip
had never called personally for the letters or parcels, but had sent one
of her wild, irregular scouts or henchmen to bring them, and as she was
seldom seen at the Crossing or on the stage road, that curiosity was
n