ed early in February and the day chanced to be a warm one, so
that Jim's window was open. He was sitting there, gazing abstractedly at
the Peak which rose, a great snowy dome, above Tang Ling's shop across
the way. Jim seldom spoke of the mountains, nor was he aware of paying
any special attention to them. "I ain't much on Nature," he had always
maintained; and since Marietta admitted the same lack in herself there
seemed to be nothing in that to regret. Yet it is nevertheless true that
Jim had his thoughts, as he sat, abstractedly gazing at those shining
heights, thoughts of high and solemn things which his condition brought
near to him, thoughts which he rarely said anything about. To-day, as he
watched the deep blue shadows brooding upon the Peak, he was wondering
in a child-like way what Heaven would be like. Suddenly the musical
clink of silver chains struck his ear, and the look of abstraction
vanished. He had never heard those bridle chains before. Somebody had
got something new! A moment more, and, with a fine rush and jingle, and
a clear blast from the horn, the four-in-hand dashed by.

"Hurrah!" Jim cried huskily, as Marietta's foot trod the stair.

"I say, Jim! You seen 'em?"

She came up panting, for the stairs were very steep and narrow.

"Seen 'em? I rather guess! Wasn't it bully? Do you reckon they'll come
back this way?"

"Course they will! Don't you s'pose they like to show themselves off?
And the horn! did you hear the horn, Jim? I wonder if that's the way
they sound in Switzerland!"

She came up and stood with her hand on Jim's shoulder, looking down into
the street.

"And just to think of it, Jim!" she said, a moment later. "They say he's
made lots of money right here in mines! If we was in mines we might have
made some."

"More likely to lose it," Jim answered. He was not of the stuff that
speculators are made of.

The shop-bell rang, and Marietta hurried downstairs, to spend ten
minutes in selling a ten-cent Easter card; while Jim sat on, forgetting
his burden of weakness and pain, and all his far-away dreams, in
anticipation of the returning four-in-hand.

In Marietta, too, the jingle of the four-in-hand had struck a new
key-note; her thoughts had taken a new turn. If Mr. Dayton had made
money in mines why should not she and Jim do the same? They needed it
far more than he did. To him it only meant driving four horses instead
of one; to them it might mean driving one horse once in a wh