allowing his bare feet to dangle over the
dizzy depths, and critically examined his questioner. Jack had on this
occasion modified his usual correct conventional attire by a tasteful
combination of a vaquero's costume, and, in loose white bullion-fringed
trousers, red sash, jacket, and sombrero, looked infinitely more dashing
and picturesque than his original. Nevertheless, the boy did not reply.
Mr. Hamlin's pride in his usual ascendency over women, children, horses,
and all unreasoning animals was deeply nettled. He smiled, however, and
said, quietly,--

"Come here, George Washington. I want to talk to you."

Without rejecting this august yet impossible title, the boy presently
lifted his feet, and carelessly resumed his passage across the
chasm until, reaching the sycamore, he began to let himself down
squirrel-wise, leap by leap, with an occasional trapeze swinging from
bough to bough, dropping at last easily to the ground. Here he appeared
to be rather good-looking, albeit the sun and air had worked a miracle
of brown tan and freckles on his exposed surfaces, until the mottling of
his oval cheeks looked like a polished bird's egg. Indeed, it struck Mr.
Hamlin that he was as intensely a part of that sylvan seclusion as
the hidden brook that murmured, the brown velvet shadows that lay like
trappings on the white flanks of his horse, the quivering heat, and the
stinging spice of bay. Mr. Hamlin had vague ideas of dryads and fauns,
but at that moment would have bet something on the chances of their
survival.

"I did not hear what you said just now, general," he remarked, with
great elegance of manner, "but I know from your reputation that it could
not be a lie. I therefore gather that there IS another way across."

The boy smiled; rather, his very short upper lip apparently vanished
completely over his white teeth, and his very black eyes, which showed a
great deal of the white around them, danced in their orbits.

"But YOU couldn't find it," he said, slyly.

"No more could you find the half-dollar I dropped just now, unless I
helped you."

Mr. Hamlin, by way of illustration, leaned deeply over his left stirrup,
and pointed to the ground. At the same moment a bright half-dollar
absolutely appeared to glitter in the herbage at the point of his
finger. It was a trick that had always brought great pleasure and profit
to his young friends, and some loss and discomfiture of wager to his
older ones.

The boy picked