"You're as good as him!" ejaculated Olly, hastily, whose parts of speech were less accurately placed than her feelings, "and I reckon she loves you a heap better, Gabe. But you ain't quite lovin' enough," she added, as Gabriel started. "Why, thar was thet young couple thet came up from Simpson's last week, and stayed over at Mrs. Markle's. Thar was no end of the attentions thet thet man paid to thet thar woman--fixin' her shawl, histin' the winder and puttin' it down, and askin' after her health every five minnits--and they'd sit and sit, just like this,"----here Olly, in the interests of domestic felicity, improvised the favourite attitude of the bridegroom, as far as the great girth of Gabriel's waist and chest could be "clipped" by her small arms. "Wot! afore folks?" asked Gabriel, looking down a little shamefully on the twining arms of his sister. "Yes--in course--afore folks. Why, they want it to be known thet they're married." "Olly," broke out Gabriel desperately, "your sister-in-law ain't thet kind of woman. She'd reckon thet kind o' thing was low." But Olly only replied by casting a mischievous look at her brother, shaking her curls, and with the mysterious admonition, "Try it!" left him, and went back to Mrs. Conroy. Happily for Gabriel, Mrs. Conroy did not offer an opportunity for the exhibition of any tenderness on Gabriel's part. Although she did not make any allusion to the past, and even utterly ignored any previous quarrel, she still preserved a certain coy demeanour toward him, that, while it relieved him of an onerous duty, very greatly weakened his faith in the infallibility of Olly's judgment. When, out of respect to that judgment, he went so far as to throw his arms ostentatiously around his wife's waist one Sunday, while perambulating the single long public street of One Horse Gulch, and that lady, with great decision, quietly slipped out of his embrace, he doubted still more. "I did it on account o' what you said, Olly, and darn my skin if she seemed to like it at all, and even the boys hangin' around seemed to think it was queer. Jo Hobson snickered right out." "When was it?" said Olly. "Sunday." Olly, sharply--"Where?" Gabriel--"On Main Street." Olly, apostrophising heaven with her blue eyes--"Ef thar ever was a blunderin' mule, Gabe, it's YOU!" Gabriel, mildly and thoughtfully--"Thet's so." Howbeit, some kind of a hollow truce was patched up between these three belligerents, and Mrs. Conroy did not go to San Francisco on business. It is presumed that the urgency of her affairs there was relieved by correspondence, for during the next two weeks she expressed much anxiety on the arrival of the regular tri-weekly mails. And one day it brought her not only a letter, but an individual of some importance in this history.