udge me. When a man has
his coat pretty well wadded with greenbacks, he can stand a good deal o'
thumpin'."

The ascent was growing rougher and more mountainous. Lysander put on the
brake and stopped "to blow" his team. Whiffs of honey-laden air came
from the stretch of chaparral on the slope behind him. He turned on the
high spring-seat, and, dangling his long legs over the wagon-box, sent a
far-reaching, indefinite gaze across the valley. There were broad acres
of yellowing vineyard, fields of velvety young barley, orange-trees in
dark orderly ranks, and here and there a peach orchard robbed of its
leaves,--a cloud of tender maroon upon the landscape. Lysander collected
his wandering glance and fixed it upon one of the pale-green
barley-fields.

"It's about there, I reckon. Of course the old woman'll kick; but if the
Colonel has laid out to do it he'll do it, kickin' or no kickin'. If he
can't buy her out or trade her out, he'll freeze her out. Well, well, I
ain't a-carin'; she can do as she pleases."

The man turned and took off the brake, and the mules, without further
signal, resumed their journey. Boulders began to thicken by the
roadside. The sun went down, and the air grew heavy with the soft,
resinous mountain odors. Some one stepped from the shadow of a scraggy
buckthorn in front of the team.

"Is that you, Sandy?"

It was a woman's voice, but it came from a figure wearing a man's hat
and coat. Lysander stopped the mules.

"Why, Minervy! what's up?"

"Oh, nothin'. I just walked a ways to meet you." The woman climbed up
beside her husband. "You're later 'n I 'lowed you'd be. Something must
'a' kep' you."

"Yes, I come around by the winery. I saw Poindexter over t' the Mission,
an' he said the old Colonel wanted to see me."

"The old Colonel wanted to see _you_, Sandy?" The woman turned upon him
anxiously in the yellow twilight. The rakishness of her attire was
grotesquely at variance with her troubled voice and small, freckled
face. "What did he want with you?"

"Well, he _said_ he wanted me to help him make a trade with the old
man,"--Lysander sent a short, explosive laugh through his nostrils; "an'
I told 'im I reckoned he knowed that the old woman was the old man, up
our way."

"Oh, I'm glad you give it to 'im that way, Sandy," said the woman
earnestly, rising to her habiliments. "Mother'll be prouder 'n a peacock
of you. I hope you held your head high and sassed him right and left."
Mrs. Spr