s pouring whiskey from a bottle into a glass, preparatory to
serving himself, when the new comer walked--she walked like an
angel--straight up to him and said, "Is this the landlord?"

Cutey was so astonished by the apparition that he dropped the glass--he
called it a glass; it was in reality a stone-china cup about half an
inch thick--and wasted the whiskey; it was only by the greatest
presence of mind that he succeeded in saving the bottle.

"Ma-a-a'm?" he stammered, clutching at his bald head to see if there
was a hat there.

The woman repeated her question; the crowd by the doorway, headed by
the Doctor, strained their ears to listen. She had a low voice,
tolerably sweet. Such music had never before been heard within those
low walls, perhaps. They wished she would say more. Old "Punks"
muttered that she 'minded him of his Lyddy--"jest sech a voice!" which
remark brought down upon him much contumely afterward, and a threat
from the Doctor to "put daylight through him." After a helpless look
around him, Cutey admitted that he _was_ the landlord, with the air of
a cornered scoundrel confessing a crime.

"Then perhaps you can tell me what I wish to know," said the woman,
fixing her clear, sweet eyes upon him. "I want to find a man named
Wilmer--James Courtney Wilmer."

Cutey shook his head sorrowfully.

"Thar be so many names," said he: "skurce any man goes by his own name.
Be he livin' in Mariposa, ma'am?"

"I do not know," was the reply, with a suggestion of tears in the
voice, at which every heart in the crowd by the door was touched and
unhappy.

Punks nudged Scotty with his elbow.

"What's that fellow's name that wus partners with Circus Jack in the
Banderita?" he whispered.

Scotty rapped his forehead with his horny hand, and ran his fingers
into his bushy, tow-colored hair, with a clutch of desperation.

"Punks," he whispered, "I allers counted you a fool, but you ain't; you
air a shinin' light! His name _wus_ Jim Wilmer."

Then, coloring up to the roots of his hair, he advanced and said:

"If you please, ma'am."

The woman turned at this, meeting a whole battery of eyes without any
seeming consciousness of it.

"There wus a feller named Jim Wilmer here--wus partners in the
Banderita, with a feller named Circ--leastways, I don't know his name,
but we called him Circus Jack, ma'am."

The woman's face--her beautiful face--turned as white as the collar at
her throat; she leaned against the bar a