sang like an angel, hushing the most hilarious and excited into sentimental and even maudlin silence; how, graceful as a nymph, she led with “Uncle Dick” a Virginia reel until the whole assembly joined, eager for a passing touch of her dainty hand in its changes; how, when two hours had passed,—­all too swiftly for the guests,—­they stood with bared heads and glistening eyes on the veranda to see the fairy coach whirl the fairy princess away!  How—­but this incident was never known to Rough and Ready.

It happened in the sacred dressing-room, where Mrs. Price was cloaking with her own hands the departing half-niece of Mr. Spindler.  Taking that opportunity to seize the lovely relative by the shoulders and shake her violently, she said:  “Oh, yes, and it’s all very well for you, Kate, you limb!  For you’re going away, and will never see Rough and Ready and poor Spindler again.  But what am I to do, miss?  How am I to face it out?  For you know I’ve got to tell him at least that you’re no half-niece of his!”

“Have you?” said the young lady.

“Have I?” repeated the widow impatiently.  “Have I?  Of course I have!  What are you thinking of?”

“I was thinking, aunty,” said the girl audaciously, “that from what I’ve seen and heard to-night, if I’m not his half-niece now, it’s only a question of time!  So you’d better wait.  Good-night, dear.”

And, really,—­it turned out that she was right!

WHEN THE WATERS WERE UP AT “JULES’”

When the waters were up at “Jules’” there was little else up on that monotonous level.  For the few inhabitants who calmly and methodically moved to higher ground, camping out in tents until the flood had subsided, left no distracting wreckage behind them.  A dozen half-submerged log cabins dotted the tranquil surface of the waters, without ripple or disturbance, looking in the moonlight more like the ruins of centuries than of a few days.  There was no current to sap their slight foundations or sweep them away; nothing stirred that silent lake but the occasional shot-like indentations of a passing raindrop, or, still more rarely, a raft, made of a single log, propelled by some citizen on a tour of inspection of his cabin roof-tree, where some of his goods were still stored.  There was no sense of terror in this bland obliteration of the little settlement; the ruins of a single burnt-up cabin would have been more impressive than this stupid and even grotesquely placid effect of the rival destroying element.  People took it naturally; the water went as it had come,—­slowly, impassively, noiselessly; a few days of fervid Californian sunshine dried the cabins, and in a week or two the red dust lay again as thickly before their doors as the winter mud had lain.  The waters of Rattlesnake Creek dropped below its banks, the stage-coach from Marysville no longer made a detour of the settlement.  There was even a singular compensation to this amicable invasion; the inhabitants sometimes found gold in those breaches in the banks made by the overflow.  To wait for the “old Rattlesnake sluicing” was a vernal hope of the trusting miner.