r any more; she is old enough to remember. The
last time I was there, she demanded a papa!

"'I am making a great deal of money. Many of the rich men, whose Puritan
wives and daughters refused me honest work, are squandering lots of
their wealth in my houses. I am saving money, too; and propose, as soon
as I can get a neat fortune together to go away to the ends of the
earth, and have my little girl with me. I will raise her to know herself
and to know mankind.'

"'And what do you want me to do, madam?'

"'I want you to be that child's guardian; the honest man through whom
she will reach the outside of San Antonio and the world. Who will go
between her and me until a happier time.'

"'I am only a rough engineer; the child will be raised to consider
herself well off, perhaps rich.'

"'Adopt her. I will stay in the background; make her expenditures and
her education what you like. I will trust you.'

"'I can't do that.'

"'You are single; your life is hard; I have money enough for us all. Let
us go to the Sandwich islands, anywhere, and commence life anew. The
little one will know no other father, and all inquiry will be stopped.'

"'I couldn't think of it, my dear madam; it's too easy; it's like
pulling jerkwater passenger--I like through freight.'

"Well, John, to make a long story short, the interview ended about here,
and several more got to about the same place. There were a thousand
things I could not help but admire in that woman, and I liked her better
the more I knew her. But it wan't love; it was a sort of an admiration
for her love of the child, and the nerve she displayed in its behalf.
But I shrank from becoming her husband or companion, although I think
she loved me, in the end, better than she ever did anybody.

"However, I finally agreed to look after the little one, in case
anything happened to the mother, and commenced then to send the money
for her board and tuition, and the mother dropped out of all connection
with the child or those having her in charge.

"The mother made her pile and got out of the business, and at my
suggestion went down near Los Angeles and bought a nice country place,
to start respectable before she took the little one home. She left money
in Carson, subject to my check, for the little girl, and things slid
along for a year or so all smooth enough.

"I was out on a snow-bucking expedition one time the next winter,
sleeping in cars, shanties or on the engine, and I so