The next ten years brought an improvement to Mr. Starleigh’s fortunes.  Johnny Starleigh, then a student at San Jose, one morning found a newspaper clipping in a letter from Miss Amelia Stryker.  It read as follows:  “The excavators in the new tunnel in Heavystone Ridge lately discovered the skeletons of two unknown men, who had evidently been crushed and entombed some years previously, by the falling of a large tree over the mouth of their temporary refuge.  From some river gold found with them, they were supposed to be part of the gang of sluice robbers who infested the locality some years ago, and were hiding from the Vigilants.”

For a few days thereafter Johnny Starleigh was thoughtful and reserved, but he did not refer to the paragraph in answering the letter.  He decided to keep it for later confidences, when Miss Stryker should become Mrs. Starleigh.

MISS PEGGY’S PROTEGES

The string of Peggy’s sunbonnet had become untied—­so had her right shoe.  These were not unusual accidents to a country girl of ten, but as both of her hands were full she felt obliged to put down what she was carrying.  This was further complicated by the nature of her burden—­a half-fledged shrike and a baby gopher—­picked up in her walk.  It was impossible to wrap them both in her apron without serious peril to one or the other; she could not put either down without the chance of its escaping.  “It’s like that dreadful riddle of the ferryman who had to take the wolf and the sheep in his boat,” said Peggy to herself, “though I don’t believe anybody was ever so silly as to want to take a wolf across the river.”  But, looking up, she beheld the approach of Sam Bedell, a six-foot tunnelman of the “Blue Cement Lead,” and, hailing him, begged him to hold one of her captives.  The giant, loathing the little mouse-like ball of fur, chose the shrike.  “Hold him by the feet, for he bites awful,” said Peggy, as the bird regarded Sam with the diabolically intense frown of his species.  Then, dropping the gopher unconcernedly in her pocket, she proceeded to rearrange her toilet.  The tunnelman waited patiently until Peggy had secured the nankeen sunbonnet around her fresh but freckled cheeks, and, with a reckless display of yellow flannel petticoat and stockings like peppermint sticks, had double-knotted her shoestrings viciously when he ventured to speak.

“Same old game, Peggy?  Thought you’d got rather discouraged with your ‘happy family,’ arter that new owl o’ yours had gathered ’em in.”

Peggy’s cheek flushed slightly at this ungracious allusion to a former collection of hers, which had totally disappeared one evening after the introduction of a new member in the shape of a singularly venerable and peaceful-looking horned owl.

“I could have tamed him, too,” said Peggy indignantly, “if Ned Myers, who gave him to me, hadn’t been training him to ketch things, and never let on anything about it to me.  He was a reg’lar game owl!”