My "Pardner" and I. Emerson Willis George

was a perfect Cupid’s bow, with lips like two red cherries. As Vance conversed with her that afternoon, he forgot the hair, forgot the delicately formed, rosy lips, forgot even the glow of pink which came and went over her fair cheeks, in looking into her talking eyes – so clear, so blue, and yet to trustful; even forgot the long brown lashes that fringed them with gentle protection. Her eyes were the crowning feature of her expressive face, which may not have been a beautiful one in the parlance of fashion, yet it was one that a student of human nature would term a face of intelligence; and after all, to the cultured, is there aught more beautiful?

      As Vance sat with the old miner and his daughter on the porch of their cozy dwelling that afternoon, he forgot time. The sun went down behind the western mountains, leaving the beauty of an afterglow reflected on the waters of the mountain brooklet. The moon that was climbing up over the eastern hills threw its rays aslant through the clinging roses that grew in profusion about the porch. A feeling of peace, and possibly a dangerous contentment, stole into his heart, and he murmured a thanksgiving to the fates. The unseen, potent force that binds us all, sooner or later, with a silken cord, was thonging him to a future destiny.

      CHAPTER IX. – THE STAGE DRIVER

      FROM Gold Bluff Vance sent to the Banner one of his strongest descriptive letters. The inspiration of the new west, with its gorges, mountains, beautiful valleys and gurgling streams abounding with trout, tinged its every sentence.

      His vivacious style, which had won for him the place he occupied on the Banner, was reinforced with the new and intoxicating sights of the picturesque. For two weeks he did little else than tramp through valleys, following up mountain streams on fishing jaunts, and felt that he was “roughing it” in a most delightful fashion. One night, coming in from a long tramp far up in the mountains, he found a large bundle of mail awaiting him that had been forwarded from Butte Citv. Among his letters was one from the chief, which read as follows: