by the plunging hoofs of passing teams, dispersed in a grimy shower upon
the recumbent man. The sun sank lower and lower; and still Sandy stirred
not. And then the repose of this philosopher was disturbed, as other
philosophers have been, by the intrusion of an unphilosophical sex.

"Miss Mary," as she was known to the little flock that she had just
dismissed from the log schoolhouse beyond the pines, was taking her
afternoon walk. Observing an unusually fine cluster of blossoms on the
azalea bush opposite, she crossed the road to pluck it--picking her
way through the red dust, not without certain fierce little shivers of
disgust and some feline circumlocution. And then she came suddenly upon
Sandy!

Of course she uttered the little staccato cry of her sex. But when she
had paid that tribute to her physical weakness she became overbold, and
halted for a moment--at least six feet from this prostrate monster--with
her white skirts gathered in her hand, ready for flight. But neither
sound nor motion came from the bush. With one little foot she then
overturned the satirical headboard, and muttered "Beasts!"--an epithet
which probably, at that moment, conveniently classified in her mind the
entire male population of Red Gulch. For Miss Mary, being possessed of
certain rigid notions of her own, had not, perhaps, properly appreciated
the demonstrative gallantry for which the Californian has been so justly
celebrated by his brother Californians, and had, as a newcomer, perhaps
fairly earned the reputation of being "stuck-up."

As she stood there she noticed, also, that the slant sunbeams were
heating Sandy's head to what she judged to be an unhealthy temperature,
and that his hat was lying uselessly at his side. To pick it up and to
place it over his face was a work requiring some courage, particularly