MRS. SKAGGS'S HUSBANDS.


PART I--WEST.


The sun was rising in the foot-hills. But for an hour the black mass
of Sierra eastward of Angel's had been outlined with fire, and the
conventional morning had come two hours before with the down coach from
Placerville. The dry, cold, dewless California night still lingered
in the long canyons and folded skirts of Table Mountain. Even on the
mountain road the air was still sharp, and that urgent necessity for
something to keep out the chill, which sent the barkeeper sleepily among
his bottles and wineglasses at the station, obtained all along the road.

Perhaps it might be said that the first stir of life was in the
bar-rooms. A few birds twittered in the sycamores at the roadside, but
long before that glasses had clicked and bottles gurgled in the saloon
of the Mansion House. This was still lit by a dissipated-looking
hanging-lamp, which was evidently the worse for having been up all
night, and bore a singular resemblance to a faded reveller of Angel's,
who even then sputtered and flickered in HIS socket in an arm-chair
below it,--a resemblance so plain that when the first level sunbeam
pierced the window-pane, the barkeeper, moved by a sentiment of
consistency and compassion, put them both out together.

Then the sun came up haughtily. When it had passed the eastern ridge it
began, after its habit, to lord it over Angel's, sending the thermometer
up twenty degrees in as many minutes, driving the mules to the sparse
shade of corrals and fences, making the red dust incandescent, and