Jack made a grimace, and cast a glance around the walls of the tunnel. The luxurious scamp missed his usual comfortable surroundings. "Well," he assented, with a sigh, "I suppose the game's made anyway! and we've got to stick here like snails on a rock for an hour yet. Well," he continued, impatiently, as Gabriel, after improvising a rude couch for him with some withered pine tassels gathered at the mouth of the tunnel, sat down beside him, "are you goin' to bore me to death, now that you've got me here--sittin' there like an owl? Why don't you say something?" "Say what?" asked Gabriel, simply. "Anything! Lie if you want to; only talk!" "I'd like to put a question to ye, Mr. Hamlin," said Gabriel, with great gentleness,--"allowin' in course, ye'll answer or no jest ez as is agree'ble to ye--reckonin' it's no business o' mine nor pryin' into secrets, ony jess to pass away the time ontil sundown. When you was tuk bad a spell ago, unloosin' yer shirt thar, I got to see a pictur that ye hev around yer neck. I ain't askin' who nor which it is--but ony this--ez thet--thet--thet young woman dark complected ez that picter allows her to be?" Jack's face had recovered its colour by the time that Gabriel had finished, and he answered promptly, "A d--d sight more so! Why, that picture's fair alongside of her!" Gabriel looked a little disappointed, Hamlin was instantly up in arms. "Yes, sir--and when I say that," he returned, "I mean, by thunder, that the whitest faced woman in the world don't begin to be as handsome. Thar ain't an angel that she couldn't give points to and beat! That's _her_ style! It don't," continued Mr. Hamlin, taking the picture from his breast, and wiping its face with his handkerchief--"it don't begin to do her justice. What," he asked suddenly and aggressively, "have _you_ got to say about it, anyway?" "I reckoned it kinder favoured my sister Grace," said Gabriel, submissively. "Ye didn't know her, Mr. Hamlin? She was lost sence '49--thet's all!" Mr. Hamlin measured Gabriel with a contempt that was delicious in its sublime audacity and unconsciousness. "Your sister?" he repeated, "that's a healthy lookin' _sister_ of such a man as you--ain't it? Why, look at it," roared Jack, thrusting the picture under Gabriel's nose. "Why, it's--it's a _lady_!" "Ye musn't jedge Gracey by me, nor even Olly," interposed Gabriel, gently, evading Mr. Hamlin's contempt. But Jack was not to be appeased, "Does your sister sing like an angel, and talk Spanish like Governor Alvarado: is she connected with one of the oldest Spanish families in the state; does she run a rancho and thirty square leagues of land, and is Dolores Salvatierra her nickname? Is her complexion like the young bark of the madroño--the most beautiful thing ever seen--did every other woman look chalky beside her, eh?" "No!" said Gabriel, with a sigh--"it was just my foolishness, Mr. Hamlin. But seein' that picter, kinder"----