he old man claimed.

"Don't you see my patents are older than yours?"

"Looks so," said the old man, calmly. "But patents is somethin' like
folks: they may be too old."

The young man tried another line.

The land was of no special value, he told him; he only wanted to quiet
their titles, etc. But the squire not only refused to sell an acre at
the prices offered him, he would place no other price whatever on it.

In fact, he did not want to sell. He had bought the land for mountain
pasture, and he didn't know about these railroads and mines and such
like. Phrony would have it after his death, and she could do what she
wished with it after he was dead and gone.

"He is a fool!" thought Wickersham, and set Phrony to work on him; but
the old fellow was obdurate. He kissed Phrony for her wheedling, but
told her that women-folks didn't understand about business. So
Wickersham had to leave without getting the lands.

* * * * *

The influx of strangers was so great now at Gumbolt that there was a
stream of vehicles running between a point some miles beyond Eden, which
the railroad had reached, and Gumbolt. Wagons, ambulances, and other
vehicles of a nondescript character on good days crowded the road,
filling the mountain pass with the cries and oaths of their drivers and
the rumbling and rattling of their wheels, and filling Mr. Gilsey's soul
with disgust. But the vehicle of honor was still "Gilsey's stage." It
carried the mail and some of the express, had the best team in the
mountains, and was known as the "reg'lar." On bad nights the road was a
little less crowded. And it was a bad night that Ferdy Wickersham took
for his journey to Gumbolt.

Keith had been elected marshal, but had appointed Dave Dennison his
deputy, and on inclement nights Keith still occasionally relieved Tim
Gilsey, for in such weather the old man was sometimes too stiff to climb
up to his box.

"The way to know people," said the old driver to him, "is to travel on
the road with 'em. There is many a man decent enough to pass for a
church deacon; git him on the road, and you see he is a hog, and not of
no improved breed at that. He wants to gobble everything": an
observation that Keith had some opportunity to verify.

Terpsichore appeared suddenly to have a good deal of business over in
Eden, and had been on the stage several times of late when Keith was
driving it, and almost always took the box-seat. This had