. . . . .

Mr. Carstone's prophecy was but half realized. At the end of six
months Herbert Bly's discretion and devotion were duly rewarded by
Cherry's hand. But Tappington did NOT give her away. That saintly
prodigal passed his period of probation with exemplary rectitude, but,
either from a dread of old temptation, or some unexplained reason, he
preferred to remain in Portland, and his fastidious nest on Telegraph
Hill knew him no more. The key of the little door on the side street
passed, naturally, into the keeping of Mrs. Bly.

Whether the secret of Tappington's double life was ever revealed to the
two women is not known to the chronicler. Mrs. Bly is reported to have
said that the climate of Oregon was more suited to her brother's
delicate constitution than the damp fogs of San Francisco, and that his
tastes were always opposed to the mere frivolity of metropolitan
society. The only possible reason for supposing that the mother may
have become cognizant of her son's youthful errors was in the
occasional visits to the house of the handsome George Dornton, who, in
the social revolution that followed the brief reign of the Vigilance
Committee, characteristically returned as a dashing stockbroker, and
the fact that Mrs. Brooks seemed to have discarded her ascetic shawl
forever. But as all this was contemporaneous with the absurd rumor,
that owing to the loneliness induced by the marriage of her daughter
she contemplated a similar change in her own condition, it is deemed
unworthy the serious consideration of this veracious chronicle.

CAPTAIN JIM'S FRIEND.

I.

Hardly one of us, I think, really believed in the auriferous
probabilities of Eureka Gulch. Following a little stream, we had one
day drifted into it, very much as we imagined the river gold might have
done in remoter ages, with the difference that WE remained there, while
the river gold to all appearances had not. At first it was tacitly
agreed to ignore this fact, and we made the most of the charming
locality, with its rare watercourse that lost itself in tangled depths
of manzanita and alder, its laurel-choked pass, its flower-strewn
hillside, and its summit crested with rocking pines.

"You see," said the optimistic Rowley, "water's the main thing after
all. If we happen to strike river gold, thar's the stream for washing
it; if we happen to drop into quartz--and that thar rock looks mighty
likely--thar a