it, dashed across the line the
victor, while the mob yelled and Dan hugged Bess and the waiter
offered a free treat to the whole crowd. Job Malden had won the race,
the gold nugget was his, but oh, how much he had lost!

CHAPTER IV.

JANE.

"Wait till the clouds roll by, Jennie,
Wait till the clouds roll by."

It was the clear, high voice of a rosy-cheeked, black-eyed,
short-skirted, barefooted maiden that sang, who, with her long black
tresses blowing in the afternoon breeze, and a pail on her arm, was
gayly skipping down the narrow road that separated the fence of Pine
Tree Ranch from the endless forest that stretched away towards the big
trees and Yosemite. "'Wait till the clouds'--gracious sakes, boy! what
did you scare me for?" Jane Reed cried, as out of the dark woods,
around a sugar pine, a tall, tanned lad strode, with gun over his
shoulder, and a long-eared dog at his heels.

"Oh, just for ducks!" said Job Malden, who, after a celebration of his
sixteenth birthday, was returning from one of his favorite quail hunts
with "Shot," his only playmate on Pine Tree Ranch.

"Where did you get those shoes, sissy?" said the boy, looking at her
bare, bronzed feet.

"From the Lord," quietly answered the girl.

"Humph!" said Job with a sneer, "the only lord I know is the one of
Pine Tree Mountain, and the one that is to be--that's myself--and I'm
mighty sure he or I never made such looking things."

At this, the girl made an unsuccessful attempt to run past him, then
sank down on the ground in a big cry.

With the heartless, contemptuous air of a boy who scorns tears and
girls, Job stood there; and, posing dramatically, sang in a falsetto
voice:

"Wait till the clouds roll by, Jennie,
Wait till the clouds roll by."

I wonder, if his mother could have come back from her far-off grave by
the Sacramento, whether she would have known that insolent, rude
fellow standing there as her pretty, blue-eyed boy whom she had so
tenderly loved.

How quickly, when a fellow starts down hill, he gets under way! That
first Sunday picnic had borne its fruit. The Sunday-school at Frost
Creek never knew him now. That little Testament was at the bottom of
his trunk. Fear of the old man had saved him from an open life of
wrong, and a certain pride made him disdain to be on a level with Dan
Dean and the Gold City gang. Andrew Malden saw the change and yet did
not understand it. He never talked with people