ve had got away. Then she took the astonished and still
motionless lizard from her pocket, and proceeded to restore the broken
coops and cages to the empty stockade.

But she never reconstructed her menagerie nor renewed her collection.
People said she had tired of her whim, and that really she was getting
too old for such things. Perhaps she was. But she never got old enough
to reveal her story of the last wild animal she had tamed by kindness.
Nor was she quite sure of it herself, until a few years afterwards on
Commencement Day at a boarding-school at San Jose, when they pointed out
to her one of the most respectable trustees. But they said he was once
a gambler, who had shot a man with whom he had quarreled, and was nearly
caught and lynched by a Vigilance Committee.

THE GODDESS OF EXCELSIOR

When the two isolated mining companies encamped on Sycamore Creek
discovered on the same day the great "Excelsior Lead," they met around
a neutral camp fire with that grave and almost troubled demeanor which
distinguished the successful prospector in those days. Perhaps the term
"prospectors" could hardly be used for men who had labored patiently
and light-heartedly in the one spot for over three years to gain a daily
yield from the soil which gave them barely the necessaries of life.
Perhaps this was why, now that their reward was beyond their most
sanguine hopes, they mingled with this characteristic gravity an
ambition and resolve peculiarly their own. Unlike most successful
miners, they had no idea of simply realizing their wealth and departing
to invest or spend it elsewhere, as was the common custom. On the
contrary, that night they formed a high resolve to stand or fall by
their claims, to develop the resources of the locality, to build up a
town, and to devote themselves to its growth and welfare. And to this
purpose they bound themselves that night by a solemn and legal compact.

Many circumstances lent themselves to so original a determination. The
locality was healthful, picturesque, and fertile. Sycamore Creek, a
considerable tributary of the Sacramento, furnished them a generous
water supply at all seasons; its banks were well wooded and
interspersed with undulating meadow land. Its distance from stage-coach
communication--nine miles--could easily be abridged by a wagon road over
a practically level country. Indeed, all the conditions for a thriving
settlement were already there. It was natural, therefo