cumbent weight, regained the branch with
his prize. Here, by one of those delicious vagaries of animal nature,
he apparently at once discharged his mind of the whole affair, became
utterly oblivious of it, allowed it to drop without the least concern,
and eventually flew away with an abstracted air, as if he had been
another bird entirely. The paper got into a manzanita bush, where it
remained suspended until the evening, when, being dislodged by a
passing wild-cat on its way to Mulrady's hen-roost, it gave that
delicately sensitive marauder such a turn that she fled into the
adjacent county.

But the troubles of the squirrel were not yet over. On the following
day the young man who had accompanied the young woman returned to the
trunk, and the squirrel had barely time to make his escape before the
impatient visitor approached the opening of the cavity, peered into it,
and even passed his hand through its recesses. The delight visible
upon his anxious and serious face at the disappearance of the letter,
and the apparent proof that it had been called for, showed him to have
been its original depositor, and probably awakened a remorseful
recollection in the dark bosom of the omnipresent crow, who uttered a
conscious-stricken croak from the bough above him. But the young man
quickly disappeared again, and the squirrel was once more left in
undisputed possession.

A week passed. A weary, anxious interval to Don Caesar, who had
neither seen nor heard from Mamie since their last meeting. Too
conscious of his own self-respect to call at the house after the
equivocal conduct of Mrs. Mulrady, and too proud to haunt the lanes and
approaches in the hope of meeting her daughter, like an ordinary lover,
he hid his gloomy thoughts in the monastic shadows of the courtyard at
Los Gatos, or found relief in furious riding at night and early morning
on the highway. Once or twice the up-stage had been overtaken and
passed by a rushing figure as shadowy as a phantom horseman, with only
the star-like point of a cigarette to indicate its humanity. It was in
one of these fierce recreations that he was obliged to stop in early
morning at the blacksmith's shop at Rough-and-Ready, to have a loosened
horseshoe replaced, and while waiting picked up a newspaper. Don
Caesar seldom read the papers, but noticing that this was the "Record,"
he glanced at its columns. A familiar name suddenly flashed out of the
dark type like a spark from th