at's our City of the Angels!
The city where we shall find justice and honor."

"Oh, shall we be there to-night?"

"No. We might have been days ago if we'd ridden across country and
struck the railway lines, but I wanted to do just as we have done. I
knew you'd hear so much about your father it would do you good forever.
We can go home the quicker way if we think best; and if we have good news
to take will, likely, so think, I--I'm almost sorry we're so near the
end."

"In one way so am I. Not in another. I long to begin to hunt for that
money and the men who have it."

Ephraim sighed. Now that he was thus far on his mission he began to
think it, indeed, as Joe Dean had said, "A good deal of the needle and
haymow style." But he rallied at once and answered, cheerfully:

"There's a house I know, or used to, at the foot of this slope. I
planned to sleep there to-night, make an early start in the morning, and
ride the fifteen miles left so as to get to the town in time for the
churches. To think you're eleven years old, Lady Jess, yet have never
been inside any church except the rickety old mission."

"Do you like churches, Ephraim?"

"Yes. I do now, child. I didn't care so much about 'em when I lived
nigh 'em. But they're right. There's a good many kinds of 'em
and they get me a little mixed, arguing. But they're right; and the
bell----It'll be a good beginning of this present job to go to meeting
the first thing."

"Oh! this wonderful world and the wonderful things I'm learning! What
a lot I shall have to tell the folks when I get home. Seems as if I
couldn't wait."

They found the little lodging-house, as Ephraim had hoped, though
now kept by a stranger to him. However, the new landlord made them
comfortable, charged them an exorbitant price--having caught sight of
his guest's fat purse--and set them early on their way. "Forty-niner"
did not complain. Their next and final stop would be with an old
fellow-miner who, at Ephraim's last visit to Los Angeles, five years
before, had kept a tidy little inn on one of the city's central
streets. If this old friend were still living he would give them hearty
welcome, the best entertainment possible, and what was more to the
purpose--practical advice as to their business.

"The bells! The bells! Oh! they are what you said, the sweetest things
I ever heard!" cried Lady Jess, in delight, as over the miles of
distance there floated to them on the clear air, the chimes and