guished him, that his coat was tightly buttoned and
his boots tightly fitting, and that his cane, hooked over his arm,
swung jauntily, was not entirely at his ease. Mrs. Tretherick, however,
vouchsafed him a gracious smile and a glance of her dangerous eyes;
and the colonel, with an embarrassed cough and a slight strut, took his
place at her side.

"The coast is clear," said the colonel, "and Tretherick is over at Dutch
Flat on a spree. There is no one in the house but a Chinaman; and you
need fear no trouble from him. I," he continued, with a slight inflation
of the chest that imperiled the security of his button, "I will see that
you are protected in the removal of your property."

"I'm sure it's very kind of you, and so disinterested!" simpered the
lady as they walked along. "It's so pleasant to meet someone who
has soul--someone to sympathize with in a community so hardened and
heartless as this." And Mrs. Tretherick cast down her eyes, but not
until they wrought their perfect and accepted work upon her companion.

"Yes, certainly, of course," said the colonel, glancing nervously up and
down the street--"yes, certainly." Perceiving, however, that there
was no one in sight or hearing, he proceeded at once to inform Mrs.
Tretherick that the great trouble of his life, in fact, had been the
possession of too much soul. That many women--as a gentleman she would
excuse him, of course, from mentioning names--but many beautiful women
had often sought his society, but being deficient, madam, absolutely
deficient, in this quality, he could not reciprocate. But when two
natures thoroughly in sympathy, despising alike the sordid trammels of
a low and vulgar community and the conventional restraints of a
hypocritical society--when two souls in perfect accord met and mingled
in poetical union, then--but here the colonel's speech, which had been
remarkable for a certain whisky-and-watery fluency, grew husky, almost
inaudible, and decidedly incoherent. Possibly Mrs. Tretherick may have
heard something like it before, and was enabled to fill the hiatus.
Nevertheless, the cheek that was on the side of the colonel was quite
virginal and bashfully conscious until they reached their destination.

It was a pretty little cottage, quite fresh and warm with paint, very
pleasantly relieved against a platoon of pines, some of whose foremost
files had been displaced to give freedom to the fenced enclosure in
which it sat. In the vivid sunli