ared by her. Three
weeks had passed; the last of the winter's rains had gone. Spring was
stirring in underbrush and wildwood, in the pulse of the waters, in the
sap of the great pines, in the uplifting of flowers. Small wonder if
Prosper's boyish heart had stirred a little too.

In fact, he had been possessed by another luminous idea--a wild idea
that to him seemed almost as absurd as the one which had brought him
all this trouble. It had come to him like that one--out of a starlit
night--and he had risen one morning with a feverish intent to put it
into action! It brought him later to take an unprecedented walk alone
with Miss Pottinger, to linger under green leaves in unfrequented woods,
and at last seemed about to desert him as he stood in a little hollow
with her hand in his--their only listener an inquisitive squirrel. Yet
this was all the disappointed animal heard him stammer,--

"So you see, dear, it would THEN be no lie--for--don't you see?--she'd
be really MY mother as well as YOURS."

The marriage of Prosper Riggs and Miss Pottinger was quietly celebrated
at Sacramento, but Prossy's "old mother" did not return with the happy
pair.

Of Mrs. Pottinger's later career some idea may be gathered from a letter
which Prosper received a year after his marriage. "Circumstances," wrote
Mrs. Pottinger, "which had induced me to accept the offer of a widower
to take care of his motherless household, have since developed into a
more enduring matrimonial position, so that I can always offer my dear
Prosper a home with his mother, should he choose to visit this locality,
and a second father in Hiram W. Watergates, Esq., her husband."

THE CONVALESCENCE OF JACK HAMLIN

The habitually quiet, ascetic face of Seth Rivers was somewhat disturbed
and his brows were knitted as he climbed the long ascent of Windy Hill
to its summit and his own rancho. Perhaps it was the effect of the
characteristic wind, which that afternoon seemed to assault him from all
points at once and did not cease its battery even at his front door, but
hustled him into the passage, blew him into the sitting room, and then
celebrated its own exit from the long, rambling house by the banging
of doors throughout the halls and the slamming of windows in the remote
distance.

Mrs. Rivers looked up from her work at this abrupt onset of her
husband, but without changing her own expression of slightly fatigued
self-righteousness. Accustomed to these