d any indiscriminate scalping that might turn up
hereafter. At supper, she timidly asked a question of Bridget. "Did
ye ever hear the loikes uv that, ma'am?" said the Irish handmaid with
affectionate pride. "Shure the darlint's head is filled noight and
day with ancient history. She's after asking me now if Queens ever run
away!" To Polly's remorseful confusion here her good father, equally
proud of her precocious interest and his own knowledge, at once
interfered with an unintelligible account of the abdication of various
queens in history until Polly's head ached again. Well meant as it was,
it only settled in the child's mind that she must keep the awful secret
to herself and that no one could understand her.

The eventful day dawned without any unusual sign of importance. It was
one of the cloudless summer days of the Californian foothills, bright,
dry, and, as the morning advanced, hot in the white sunshine. The
actual, prosaic house in which the Pirates apparently lived was a mile
from a mining settlement on a beautiful ridge of pine woods sloping
gently towards a valley on the one side, and on the other falling
abruptly into a dark deep olive gulf of pine-trees, rocks, and patches
of red soil. Beautiful as the slope was, looking over to the distant
snow peaks which seemed to be in another world than theirs, the children
found a greater attraction in the fascinating depths of a mysterious
gulf, or canyon, as it was called, whose very name filled their ears
with a weird music. To creep to the edge of the cliff, to sit upon
the brown branches of some fallen pine, and, putting aside the dried
tassels, to look down upon the backs of wheeling hawks that seemed to
hang in mid-air was a never-failing delight. Here Polly would try to
trace the winding red ribbon of road that was continually losing itself
among the dense pines of the opposite mountains; here she would listen
to the far-off strokes of a woodman's axe, or the rattle of some heavy
wagon, miles away, crossing the pebbles of a dried-up watercourse. Here,
too, the prevailing colors of the mountains, red and white and green,
most showed themselves. There were no frowning rocks to depress the
children's fancy, but everywhere along the ridge pure white quartz bared
itself through the red earth like smiling teeth; the very pebbles they
played with were streaked with shining mica like bits of looking-glass.
The distance was always green and summer-like, but the color