hand in hand they reached the house.

Mr. McClosky was awaiting them impatiently upon the veranda. When Miss
Jenny had slipped up stairs to replace a collar that stood somewhat
suspiciously awry, Mr. McClosky drew Ridgeway solemnly aside. He held a
large theatre poster in one hand, and an open newspaper in the other.

"I allus said," he remarked slowly, with the air of merely renewing a
suspended conversation,--"I allus said that riding three horses to onct
wasn't exactly in her line. It would seem that it ain't. From remarks in
this yer paper, it would appear that she tried it on at Marysville last
week, and broke her neck."

A PASSAGE IN THE LIFE OF MR. JOHN OAKHURST.

He always thought it must have been fate. Certainly nothing could have
been more inconsistent with his habits than to have been in the Plaza at
seven o'clock of that midsummer morning. The sight of his colorless
face in Sacramento was rare at that season, and, indeed, at any season,
anywhere publicly, before two o'clock in the afternoon. Looking back
upon it in after-years in the light of a chanceful life, he determined,
with the characteristic philosophy of his profession, that it must have
been fate.

Yet it is my duty, as a strict chronicler of facts, to state that Mr.
Oakhurst's presence there that morning was due to a very simple cause.
At exactly half-past six, the bank being then a winner to the amount of
twenty thousand dollars, he had risen from the faro-table, relinquished
his seat to an accomplished assistant, and withdrawn quietly, without
attracting a glance from the silent, anxious faces bowed over the table.
But when he entered his luxurious sleeping-room, across the passage-way,
he was a little shocked at finding the sun streaming through an
inadvertently opened window. Something in the rare beauty of the
morning, perhaps something in the novelty of the idea, struck him as he
was about to close the blinds; and he hesitated. Then, taking his hat
from the table, he stepped down a private staircase into the street.

The people who were abroad at that early hour were of a class quite
unknown to Mr. Oakhurst. There were milkmen and hucksters delivering
their wares, small tradespeople opening their shops, housemaids sweeping
doorsteps, and occasionally a child. These Mr. Oakhurst regarded with
a certain cold curiosity, perhaps quite free from the cynical disfavor
with which he generally looked upon the more pretentious of his
ra