many people--oh! if they'd
stop going by for just one minute, till I could think."

The passing crowd that had so interested now terrified her. Among all
the changing faces not one she knew, not one that more than glanced her
way, and was gone on, indifferent. The memory of a time in her early
childhood when she had strayed into the canyon and became bewildered
flashed through her mind. Was she to suffer again the misery of that
dreadful day? But the day had ended in a father's rescuing arms, and
now----

"I remember he told me then that if ever I were lost again I was to
keep perfectly still for a time and think over all the things I'd seen
by the way. After awhile I might feel sure enough to go slowly back and
guide myself by them. But I can't think here. It's so noisy and thick
with men and women. And I'm getting so hungry. Ephraim said we would
have the best dinner his friend could give us. If he'd told me that
friend's name or where he lived. Well, I'll mind my father in one
thing; I'll keep still. Then if Ephraim should happen to come this
way he'd find me sooner. But--he won't. Something has happened, or
he'd never let me out of sight. If I didn't know the bigness of a
city he did and would have taken care."

So she dismounted and led Scruff back beside the telegraph post, against
which the weary animal calmly leaned his shoulder and went to sleep.
Jessica threw her arm over the burro's neck and, standing so, scanned
every passing pedestrian and peered into every whirling vehicle.

Something of her first terror left her. She was foolish to think anything
harmful could have happened to "Forty-niner" so quickly after she
had run away from him. She wished she had called and explained to him,
but she had had no time if she would catch up to that gray-coated
gentleman. After all they were still in the same city and all she
needed was patience.

"That's what I have so little of, too. Maybe this is a lesson to me.
Mother says impatient people always find life harder than the quiet
kind. I wonder what she's doing now! and oh! I'm glad she can't see
me. She'd suffer more than I do. It's queer how that man, in a fancy
coat, with so many brass buttons, keeps looking at me. He's walked
by this place on one side the street or the other ever so many times. I
wonder if he owns this post. Maybe it's his and he doesn't like us to
stand here, yet is too polite to say so. Come, Scruff, let's walk a
little further along. Then