boots as if they were in a sort of diving-bell.

So the Judge went away from the Howling Wilderness. There was no man to
be found who had time to talk, and so he sought a woman.

Captain Tommy stood in the door of her cabin all untroubled. She had
seen the little Judge approach, but she was too happy drinking in the
great summer's day that filled all things with peace and a calm delight,
and she did not stir.

There are days and occasions when even the most plain women are
positively beautiful; and when a plain woman is beautiful she is the
most beautiful thing in the world.

This was Captain Tommy's day to be beautiful, and perhaps she felt it,
for there she stood, really playing the coquette, hardly turning her
eyes to look on the little Alcalde, although she knew he was mad in love
with her.

He stood before her in the sun with his hat in his hand. Then she looked
into the polished mirror which he humbly bowed before her, and she saw
that she was really beautiful.

"Captain," said the mirror, and it bowed still lower. "Lady, in this
glorious climate of Californy, I have snatched a few moments from my
professional duties to come to you, to say to you--to--to beg of you
that you will--will you--in this glorious climate of Californy this
morning?"

The mirror was close up under her eyes. She smiled, and then she lifted
her two hands and began to wind herself up as fast as possible, so that
she could answer the eager and earnest little man before her.

The Judge waited in an ecstacy of delight, for he knew by the twinkle in
her eye that he should have to send for the black-clad man with the
white necktie, who had so terrified the Parson, and he was very happy.

CHAPTER XXV.

AFTER THE DELUGE--WHAT THEN?

By slow degrees, no one knew just when or how, the boy-poet began to
find his way back after a year or two to the Widow's cabin. The miners
wondered that Sandy did not protest. They saw, with some alarm, that the
Widow was even more kind to him than before. Was it the pale pleading
face of the consumptive boy that moved her?

Years went by, and the chronicler stood again in the Forks. The town was
gone; the miners had uprooted its very foundations. Then came floods and
buried the boulders and the banks of the stream, and widened it out and
made it even as a new-plowed field.

Then a man, the Hon. Mr. Sandy, who had sat down with his family quite
satisfied in the Sierras, extended a fence around t