ld pass over the sandy roads with almost as little
noise as any spectral steed. It was easy to bribe and terrify two
small boys into securing and restoring to him the pointed wand, even
if by their effort to obtain it they might happen to fall and break
it. That mattered little, however, since the point was all that he
wanted; but it was just as well to have that money he had seen through
the window, that night of his first appearance on Sobrante grounds.
That, too, was easy to get if one watched his opportunity in that
cactus tunnel Ferd had scooped for his brother's convenience. An
unsuspecting, busy household left many chances for entering an
open-windowed room, and who had ever been so familiar as he with the
supposed safety secret place in which the key was kept? With the money
he had found also the bit of copper Pedro had procured; and he knew
enough of mining matters to rejoice, indeed. He had meant to do great
things. He would prosecute his land claim to the uttermost; and there
were plenty of unscrupulous men who would undertake his cause for a
share in the profits of a copper mine. This very mesa would have been
the scene of their first operations. Here the mill would have been
built, and here----

"But what the use? The hand of punishment is upon me, yes. The money,
it is there. Ferd shall tell of all the rest that he has put
somewhere, I know not. His poor brain cannot carry out the plan, and
to me it avails no more. Ay de mi! But Solano--beware. Of some things
he knows, and of more he suspects, is it not? Ah! I weary, I languish,
I die, I, Antonio Bernal, heir to wealth so boundless. It was so fine
a plan--so most wonderful and simple. The fools, how they feared! Oh!
the laughter I had! and the wild, rides on my so splendid ghost horse,
yes. But I die--I die; and the great big plan for the copper turned to
gold--I--who else will have the so great intellect, you call it, to
make it real? Well, I have done. The staff I return--useless, save to
me. The money--I cannot carry whither I must ride on the white horse
of death--whiter than--the pity! The pity! Poor Antonio! Poor, poor
Antonio!"

His long talk had, indeed, wearied him to faintness; but while his own
tears rained down his cheeks in his self-pity, even as Jessica's in
sympathetic sorrow, a cheerful and hearty voice cried through the
window:

"Don't fret yourself, top-lofty! There's one or two other smart men
left, my friend, to carry out that noble