as a picture for an artist.

No wonder Mat should have grown confidential and talked about his
personal history--which was usually bad form in California, where
present fortune counted for everything and family history was regarded
as ancient history. He told her how in boyhood he came to California
from Virginia with his parents. That was back in the fifties, when
respectable women were so rare in the gold fields that their arrival was
hailed by the rough miners with a sort of religious fervor. One of Mat's
earliest recollections was a scene with emigrant wagon and camp-fire in
the background, and in the foreground his mother, clasping him by the
hand and greeting a score of bearded men, who, with hats off, were
paying her homage.

He could remember, too, how they had come over the mountains through
Emigrant Gap, passing the graves of the Donner party. The tragedy of the
snow-bound emigrants had made a deep impression upon his imagination. He
spoke of it to Mamie, and she rather saucily inquired what he would do
with her if they, too, were caught in a severe snowstorm.

"In the first place," said Mat, "I wouldn't let you start out in a
snowstorm. And in the second place, if we should get caught, on the
return trip, we would make for the nearest shelter and stay there till
traveling was safe again."

"Oh, dear, what a stupid adventure that would be! There's very little
excitement in this civilized country."

Mat laughed. "So this is what you call a civilized country? I don't see
any signs of civilization except this road and the water ditch yonder."

Mat was quite right. In every direction the frost-king held sway over an
unbroken wilderness. The massive ranges of the Sierras, clothed all in
white, were as majestic and as untamed as when Fremont and Kit Carson
gazed down upon them from their snowy summit. To cross that mountain
barrier, ninety-three hundred feet above the level of the sea, would
require as much heroism as ever. The wise old Indians knew better than
to attempt it; and so did the miners. Only a Fremont or a Kit Carson
might pass over that awful divide in safety, pushing on through the deep
drifts, half their mules and horses dead, and their comrades staggering
with exhaustion. How absolutely essential was that stage-road, winding
over the snow fields!

Soon Mat perceived signs that made him anxious. They would reach
Graniteville without mishap. But the return trip to-morrow? A falling
barometer co