r ever.
And, considering our narrow escape, and how it happened, I don't think
we're very gentlemanly to sit here bemoaning our luck. Mr. Crewne,"
continued Matalette, crossing to the yellow-haired figure in front of
the fire, "you've saved me--what can I give you?"

The young preacher recovered himself, and replied, briefly:

"Your soul."

Matalette winced, and, in a weak voice, asked:

"Anything else?"

Crewne looked toward Helen; Helen blushed, and looked a little
frightened; Crewne blushed, too, and seemed to be clearing his throat;
then, with a mighty effort, he said:

"Yes--Helen."

The counterfeiter looked at his daughter for an instant, and then failed
to see her partly because something marred the clearness of his vision
just then, and partly because Crewne, interpreting the father's silence
as consent, took possession of the reward he had named, and almost hid
her from her father's view.

Matalette's section was finally sold for taxes, and was never reclaimed,
but the excitement relating to its former occupants was for years so
great that the purchasers of the estate found it worldly wisdom to
dispense refreshments on the ground.

As for Crewne--a few months after the occurrences mentioned above there
appeared, in the wilds of Missouri, a young preacher with unusual zeal,
and a handsome wife. And about the same time four men entered a
quarter-section of prairie-land near the young preacher's station, and
appeared then and evermore to be the most ardent and faithful of the
young man's admirers.

[Illustration]

A STORY OF TEN MILE GULCH.

I.

The horse which Mr. Tom Ruger rode kept the path, steep and rugged
though it was, without any guidance from him, and its mate followed
demurely. They were accustomed to it; and many a mile had they traversed
in this way, taking turns at carrying their owner and master. Indeed,
the trio seemed inseparable, and "as happy as Tom Ruger and his horses"
was a phrase that was very often heard in every mining camp and
settlement.

As for Mr. Tom Ruger himself, very little was known of him save what had
been learned during the two years that he had sojourned among them.
Where he came from never was known, nor asked but once by the same
person. All that could be said of him might be summed up in the
following statement:

"The finest-looking, the best-dressed, and the best-mannered man on the
Pacific coast, and the best horseman."

These were the words