citement of a new sensation gripped me. I
had a taste of it when I opened your safe. It seized me again,
relentlessly. If I were successful, I might begin again; if I failed,
I could shoot myself without imposing an atrocious remorse upon you.
Well, the pluck of that driver upset my plans--the plans of an
amateur. I ought to have held them up on the upgrade."

"And after you failed----"

"Ah! after I failed I had a lucid interval. Don't laugh! I was hungry
and thirsty. The most pressing need of my nature at that moment was a
square meal. I walked to a hotel, and was nailed. Your brother's
letter to the cashier saved me. I realised dimly that I had become
respectable, that I looked--for the deputy sheriff told me so--an
English gentleman--Mr. Johnson, your friend. That's about all."

"All?" I echoed, in dismay.

"The rest is so commonplace. I got a small job as clerk in a fruit-
packing house. It led to better things. I suppose I am my father's
son. I failed to make a living, spoiling canvas, but as a business man
I have been a mild success."

"And what are you doing now?"

"I buy and sell claret. Any other question?"

"Yes. How did you open our burglar-proof safe?"

Johnson laughed.

"My father was a manufacturer of safes," he answered. "I know the
tricks of my trade."

IX

UNCLE JAP'S LILY

Jaspar Panel owned a section of rough, hilly land to the north-east of
Paradise. Everybody called him Uncle Jap. He was very tall, very thin,
with a face burnt a brick red by exposure to sun and wind, and, born
in Massachusetts, he had marched as a youth with Sherman to the sea.
After the war he married, crossed the plains in a "prairie schooner,"
and, eventually, took up six hundred and forty acres of Government
land in San Lorenzo County. With incredible labour, inspired and
sustained by his natural acuteness, he wrought a miracle upon a
singularly arid and sterile soil. I have been told that he was the
first of the foothill settlers to irrigate abundantly, the first to
plant out an orchard and vineyard, the first, certainly, to create a
garden out of a sage-brush desert. Teamsters hauling wheat from the
Carisa plains used to stop to shake the white alkaline dust from their
overalls under Uncle Jap's fig trees. They and the cowboys were always
made welcome. To such guests Uncle Jap would offer figs, water-melons,
peaches, a square meal at noon, and exact nothing in return except
appreciation. If a man fail