rnal had ridden up that
morning to give orders about the coal.

"None of it is to be sent down to the ranch, he said, no matter who
calls for it, till he comes back. He was going away for a time and----How
will you get on at Sobrante without him, Lady Jess?"

"Wolfgang, better than with him. Listen. Look at me. I'm the
'manager' now. The captain. The 'boys' all elected me or made me,
whatever way they fixed it. I'm to be the master. I, just Jessica.
Guess I'm proud? Guess I'll do the very, very best ever a girl can
do? Nobody is to be any different, though. You're to go on mining
just the same and John Benton says, quite often, it's high time you
had another hand to help up here. He says with coal fifteen dollars a
ton there's money in it, even if it is a weeny little mine. So, if you
want a man, any time, just let me know. Ha!"

With an amusing little strut that was mostly affectation the girl passed
up and down before the miner, and ended her performance by a hearty
hug. It was impossible for her to withhold her caresses from anybody who
loved her; and who did not, at Sobrante, save Antonio and Ferd, the
dwarf? But she sobered quickly enough and at Wolfgang's petition to
"Tell me all about it already," gave him a vivid picture of the changes
at her home.

"But now Antonio has gone for a month, things will get straightened
all out again. When he comes back I'll have that deed to show him, and
once he gets it out of his vain head that he is owner and not my mother,
he'll get sensible and good again, as he used to be. I wish I liked him
better. That would make it easier for me to give up being 'captain'
when the time comes. What makes one love some people and not others,
Wolfgang? You ought to know, you've lived a long time."

"The good God."

"He wouldn't make us dislike anybody. That can't be the right reason."

"Then I know not. Though I am getting old I'm not so wise, little one.
But--ought I? Ought I not?"

"What?"

"Now you hark me. This Ephraim--guess you what that Antonio said of
him?"

"How should I? Yes, that's not the truth. But what he said was so
dreadful I wouldn't even tell my mother."

"Ach! A child should tell the mother all things. Heed that. It is so we
train our Otto."

Jessica laughed.

"Otto is no child. He is a grown man. He is bigger than you. You should
not shame him by keeping him a boy always."

"Pst! girl! I would not he heard you, for my life."

"He'll not hear. Elsa is t