quiet."
The doctor was finding the simplicity and trustfulness of her gaze very
trying. "Lola," he continued, desperately, "I--you must listen to me."
Just at this point something struck against his arm, and turning
irritably, he saw Jane.

"What's all this?" said she, placidly. "What are you saying to make my
little girl so wide-eyed? Remember, she has a fierce old guardian--one
that expects every one to 'tend to his own affairs!" Jane spoke
jestingly, but the doctor knew he was worsted. Jane had been watching
him.

"But, _tia_!" interposed Lola, "the doctor was just going to tell me
something very important!"

"He was maybe going to tell you that you are going to Pueblo next fall!
Yes, honey, it's all fixed!" She turned a joyous, defiant face on the
doctor, who cast his hands abroad as if he washed them of the whole
affair; while Lola, beaming with pleasure, rushed off to tell the news
to Senor Juarez.

"You'll regret this!" said the doctor, somehow feeling glad of his own
failure.

"Well, _she_ won't!" cried Jane, watching Lola's flight with tender
eyes.

"Sometime she is going to find out all this deceit!" he added.

"I know," said Jane. "I know. And then she'll quit trusting me forever.
But if I'm willing to stand it, nobody else need to worry." With this
tacit rebuke she left him, and thereafter the doctor respected her
wishes.

A month or so after Lola's departure northward, Jane's solicitude was
enlivened by an event of startling importance. She was notified by the
Dauntless Company that two entries, the fourth and fifth east, had
entered her property, in which she had never suspected the presence of
coal, and that the owners were prepared to negotiate with her suitable
terms for the right of working the vein in question.

When the matter of royalties was settled and several hundred dollars
paid to Jane's account for coal already taken out, she had a sudden
rush of almost tearful joy. Every month would come to her, while the
coal lasted, a determinate sum of money. She regarded the fact in a
sort of ecstasy, and resolved upon many things.

First she banished from her house the shadow of the mortgage. Then,
glowing with enterprise, she proceeded to extend and embellish her
property in a way which speedily set the town by the ears, and aroused
every one to dark prophecies as to what must happen when her money
should all be gone, and nothing left her but to face poverty in the
palatial five-room dwel