notice of a race which was to come off the following week; and, sure
enough, there it was:

"Budd Doble enters g.g. Clipper; Bob Scotty enters b.g. Lightnin';
Staley Tupper enters s.s. Upandust; Sim Salper enters b.m. Sally
Meeker."

It was clear now; the sender of the dispatch was "in the know." Sally
Meeker was to win, and her owner, who did not know it, had offered her
for sale. At that supreme moment Mr. Stenner would willingly have been a
rich man! In fact he resolved to be. He at once betook him to Vallejo,
where he had lived until invited away by some influential citizens of
the place. There he immediately sought out an industrious friend who had
an amiable weakness for draw poker, and in whom Mr. Stenner regularly
encouraged that passion by going up against him every payday and
despoiling him of his hard earnings. He did so this time, to the sum of
one hundred dollars.

No sooner had he raked in his last pool and refused his friend's appeal
for a trifling loan wherewith to pay for breakfast than he bought a
check on the Bank of California, enclosed it in a letter containing
merely the words "Bi Saly Meker," and dispatched it by mail to the only
clergyman in San Francisco whose name he knew. Mr. Stenner had a vague
notion that all kinds of business requiring strict honesty and fidelity
might be profitably intrusted to the clergy; otherwise what was the use
of religion? I hope I shall not be accused of disrespect to the cloth in
thus bluntly setting forth Mr. Stenner's estimate of the parsons,
inasmuch as I do not share it.

This business off his mind, Mr. Stenner unbent in a week's revelry; at