ers' signatures.

"There was a big fire up-town," said August secretly to Willis
afterwards. "I stopped to see it before delivering my parcels. You
just ought to have been there!"

"How long did you stay?" asked Willis, gravely.

"Oh, I don't know!" returned August. "Three-quarters of an hour,
maybe. I delivered my parcels all right afterwards."

Willis did not tell anybody about August's actions.

"I wish he wouldn't tell me about them, either," thought Willis,
uncomfortably.

That week August was discharged.

"I happened to be at the fire myself, and saw you," said one of the
store's proprietors to August. "The next time you stop to see a
fire, you will not have a chance to keep one of our delivery carts
waiting an hour while you waste your employer's time watching the
firemen. It didn't look well to see our firm's name on that white
cart standing idle, just as if we hadn't many customers."

"And you were seen once," added the other proprietor, "with one of
our carts standing beside an open block, while a ball game was being
played there last week."

As Willis regretfully saw his companion turned away, there came back
to him the scene in the semi-darkness under the wharf, when his
father said, "A Christian ought to give an honest day's work." "And
I will," he muttered.

TIMOTEO

Two white jaw-bones of a whale stood upright in the sunshine, their
surfaces showing to a near observer numerous small indentations that
caught the dust. The jaw-bones were relics from a little whaling
station that had once been in business near the town. Even now
whales occasionally wander from the great Pacific into the blue bay
on which this old, partly Spanish, California town was situated.

The two white jaw-bones now served the purpose of gate-posts, and
stood some six feet high beside the front gate that opened into a
garden where red hollyhocks rose higher than the humbled jaw-bones.
Inside the gate, the front walk had long been paved with the
vertebrae of whales, each vertebra being laid separately.

No one who had not seen such a walk would realize how well whales'
vertebrae will answer for paving. Some of the old vertebrae had now
sunk below the original level of the walk, so that the path by which
a person went to the old adobe house beyond the red hollyhocks was
somewhat uneven as to surface.

The long, low house was partly roofed with tiles, and the adobe
walls of the dwelling were a yard thick, as any