"It's just this, Mr. Gwynne," began Boutts, in his suave even tones. "We have seen your ads. We know that you contemplate selling off a good part of your ranch--Well, there was a buzz round town when those ads were read, and I was not long passing the word that there would be a mass-meeting that night in Armory Hall. That's where we thresh things out, and in this case there was no time to lose. We had a pretty full meeting. Judge Leslie took the chair, and I opened with some of the most pointed remarks I ever made. I was followed with more unanimity than usually falls to my lot. The upshot was that resolutions were passed before nine o'clock, and a committee of four was appointed to wait upon you to-day--and endeavor to win you to our point of view," he continued, suddenly lame, for by this time Gwynne, forgetting Isabel and his good resolutions, was staring at the common little man with all the arrogance of his nature in arms, and the color rising in his cheeks. Mr. Boutts's hands gripped his knees as if for anchorage, and he proceeded, firmly: "No offence, sir, I assure you. This is a free country. The man who tells another man what he'd orter do should be called down good and hard. Nothing could be further from our intention. The meeting was called only in the cause of what you might call both self-defence and patriotic local sentiment, although it's a sentiment that's local to about two-thirds of California--only we do more acting and less talking than most. It's now some weeks since we adopted resolutions in a still bigger mass-meeting and got the best part of the county to subscribe to them; on the ground that an ounce of prevention and so forth. So we just hoped that as you have come to live among us you could be brought to see things from our point of view." He scraped his chair forward and dropped his voice confidentially, at the same time darting a sharp glance through the open window beside him. "It's this Japanese business. The Chinese, back in the Seventies, was not a patch on it, because the Chinee never aspired to be anything but house servants, fruit pickers, vegetable raisers and vendors on a small scale, and the like. The agitation against them which led to the exclusion bill was wholly Irish; that is to say it was entirely a working-class political agitation, because the Chinee was doing better work for less money than the white man. The better class liked the Chinee and have always regretted the loss of them; and to-day those who are left, particularly cooks and workers on those big reclaimed islands of the San Joaquin River, where they raise the best asparagus in the world--yes, in the world, sir--get higher wages than any white man or woman in the State.