Maruja

ffering as it did a secure retreat from temptations for the carnal eye, and affording every

er residential mansion nor farmhouse offered any nucleus of rural comfort or civilization in the midst of this wild expanse of earth and sky. The simplest adjuncts of country life were unknown: milk and butter were brought from the nearest town; weekly supplies of fresh meat and vegetables came from the same place; in the harvest season, the laborers and harvesters lodged and boarded in the adjacent settlement and walked to their work. No cultivated flower bloomed beside the unpainted tenement, thoug

unqualified commercial success crowned and dignified his method. A few survivors of the old native families came to see his strange machinery, that did the work of so many idle men and horses. It is said that he offered to "run" the distant estate of Joaquin Padilla from his little office amidst

rupulously brushed, and his linen spotless. A slightly professional and somewhat old-fashioned respectability in his black clothes was also characteristic. His one concession to the customs of his neighbors was the possession of two or three of the half-broken and spirited mustangs of the country, which he rode with the fearlessness, if not the perfect security and ease,

et, in the faint afterglow of the western sky, which flooded the floor through the open door. H

West's foreman app

t you're t

mp,

about his business. Don

eek or a day. He says he'll do an odd job f

... Stay....

'em, only a little

Fetch h

me air of sullen indifference, occasionally broken by furtive observation. His laziness-or weariness-if the term could describe the lassitude of perfect physical condition, seemed to have increased; and

en born tired," said

es

u got to say

d towards the foreman, "what I'd do for a sup

nt on your own conditions, what'l

G

id you c

ate

are you

O

. West to his foreman. The

t-stalk that had sprung up near the doorstep, and slowly nibbled it. He did not raise his eyes to the Doctor, but sat, a famil

e turned a page of his ledger, "and on the shelf you'll find s

passage, and stopped. "It's for the

b," answere

and a pair of boots and socks in his hand. The Doctor had put aside his pen. "Now go i

sky. When he turned again he noticed that the door of the bath-room was opened, and the tramp, who had changed

th your foot?"[1] he

rn

nd toe were joined

e?" asked

oung man, exhibit

ou say your

t's Henry Guest, sa

were yo

Pike Count

your mothe

ng, I r

e your pa

down South, somewhere. Father left home twenty years

sn't

o you

, and, shading his eyes with his hand as he deliberately

ng man put down the boot he had t

on to San Jose, and stay there until I look into this thing. You haven

ttle," returne

w m

ast, and drew out a piece of folded

month; it doesn't cost much to

em to be a fool; so I needn't tell you that if you expect anything from me, you must leave this matter in my hands. I have chosen to acknowledge you

N

Before you go, you must ans

e down the answers. The young man, finding the only chair thus occupied

nedly, as if the subject was not worth the trouble of invention or evasion. It was difficult to say whether questioner or answerer took least pleasure in the interrogatio

lly rising. "You can stop at the fonda, about two miles

ut his hands in his pockets and followed him. The young man, as if in uncon

said Dr. West, looking past him into the grain, with

m both. They would have shaken hands if either had offered the initiative. A sullen consciousness of gratuitous rectitude in the selfish mind of the father; an equall

e memoranda he had just written and placed it in his pocket. Then he summoned his foreman. The

e men to bring

ated. "Going to r

altonstall's. If I do, you needn

larly bucked his saddle clean off an hour ag

le off with me on it," said the

"You found the tramp p

lves smart," said Dr. West, unconsciously setting up an i

to let it go. And there's that same d-d sullen dirty pride of his mother, for all he doesn't cotton to her. Wonder I didn't recognize it at first. And hoarding up that five dollars! That's Jane's brat, all over! And, of course," he added, bitterly, "nothing of ME in him. No; nothing! Well, well, what's the difference?" He turned towards the door, with a certain sullen defiance in his face so like the man he believed he did not resemble, that his foreman, coming upon him suddenly, might have been startled at the likeness. Fortunately, however, Harrison was too much engrossed with the antics of the irrepressible Buckeye, which the ostler had just brought to the d

ning; fearless as he was, his strength was no longer equal when measured with the untiring youthful malevolence of his unbroken mustang. For a moment he dwelt regretfully on the lazy half-developed sinews of his son; for a briefer instant there flashed across him the thought that those sinews ought to replace his own; ought to be HIS to lean upon-that thus, and thus only, could he achieve the old miracle of restoring his lost youth by perpetuating his own power in his own blood; and he, whose profound belief in personality had rejected all hereditary principle, felt this with a sudden exquisite pain. But his horse

record in the California Law Reports. It is therefore unnecessary for me to a