Whistling to Shot, he and the dog stole upstairs to Job's little bare
room, where a few wood-cuts hung on the wall, and a long, narrow
bedstead, a chair, and a box that served for table, were the only
furniture. He took the little Testament from under his pillow and
lovingly kissed it; then turning, he read for his good-night lesson
from his new-found divine Friend: "Let not your heart be troubled,
neither let it be afraid. Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end
of the world."

Kneeling a moment for a good-night prayer, he was soon in bed and
asleep, with Shot curled up on the covers at his feet, while through
the open window the sound of a guitar came where one of the mill hands
was playing the tune of

"Hush, my child, lie still and slumber,
Holy angels guard thy bed."

CHAPTER VIII.

OFF TO THE BIG TREES.

The radical change that had come into Job's life cut him off from the
companions of other days and left him without a chum. It showed the
manliness of his nature that as he started out in the new life,
seeing quickly that he must part company with the old companions who
had nearly wrecked his life, he acted on the conviction at once.

Perhaps it was this, perhaps the fact that his life was now almost
altogether on the ranch, that made Job and Bess boon companions. Many
a mountain trip they took together. It was on one of these that they
went to the Big Trees. That bright September morning, gayly attired
with new sombrero and red bandanna above his white outing-shirt,
astride Bess, Job rode slowly up the Chichilla mountain on his way to
visit those giant trees. Up by "Doc" Trainer's place, over the smooth,
hard county turnpike, where the toll-road, ever winding round and
round the mountain-side, climbs on through the passes of the live-oak
belt to the scraggly pines of the low hills, on to the endless giant
forests of the cloud-kissed summits, the young horseman made his way.
Now and then the road descended to a little ravine, where a mountain
torrent had torn a path to the deep canyons below: again it stretched
through a dim, royal archway of green where the great trees linked
branches as over a king's pathway; and then it turned a bend where the
steep sides sank so suddenly that even the trees had no foothold and
the bare space disclosed a view over boundless forests of dark green,
and the vast, yawning canyons and distant rolling hills, to where,
far-off, like some dream of the pa