laborious trot out of sight of human habitation. What happened
then was never clearly known. In a few moments the camp would be
aroused by shouts and execrations, and the spectacle of Jinny
tearing by at a frightful pace, with the stranger clinging with his
arms around her neck, afraid to slip off, from terror of her
circumvolving heels, and vainly imploring assistance. Again and
again she would dash by the applauding groups, adding the
aggravation of her voice to the danger of her heels, until suddenly
wheeling, she would gallop to Carter's Pond, and deposit her
luckless freight in the muddy ditch. This practical joke was
repeated until one Sunday she was approached by Juan Ramirez, a
Mexican vaquero, booted and spurred, and carrying a riata. A crowd
was assembled to see her discomfiture. But, to the intense
disappointment of the camp, Jinny, after quietly surveying the
stranger, uttered a sardonic bray, and ambled away to the little
cemetery on the hill, whose tangled chapparal effectually prevented
all pursuit by her skilled antagonist. From that day she forsook
the camp, and spent her Sabbaths in mortuary reflections among the
pine head-boards and cold "hic jacets" of the dead.

Happy would it have been if this circumstance, which resulted in
the one poetic episode of her life, had occurred earlier; for the
cemetery was the favorite resort of Miss Jessie Lawton, a gentle
invalid from San Francisco, who had sought the foot-hills for the
balsam of pine and fir, and in the faint hope that the freshness of
the wild roses might call back her own. The extended views from
the cemetery satisfied Miss Lawton's artistic taste, and here
frequently, with her sketch-book in hand, she indulged that taste
and a certain shy reserve which kept her from contact with
strangers. On one of the leaves of that sketch-book appears a