"Circuit-riders get higher than that, sometimes," said the preacher, leading his prisoner toward old Wardelow's cabin; "they get as high as heaven!" "Oh!" remarked the sheriff, and gave up the contest. Both men accompanied the prisoner toward his father's house. The preacher began to deliver some cautionary remarks, but the young man burst from him, threw open the door, and shouted: "Father!" The old man started from his bed, shaded his eyes, and exclaimed: "Stevie!" The father and son embraced, seeing which the sheriff proved that even sheriffs are human by snatching the circuit-rider in his arms and giving him a mighty hug. * * * * * The father recovered and lived happily. The son and the preacher fulfilled their respective promises, and the sheriff, always, on meeting either of them, so abounded in genial winks and effusive handshakings, that he nearly lost his next election by being suspected of having become religious himself. [Illustration] TOM CHAFFLIN'S LUCK. "Luck? Why, I never seed anything like it! Yer might give him the sweepin's of a saloon to wash, an' he'd pan out a nugget ev'ry time--do it ez shure as shootin'!" This rather emphatic speech proceeded one day from the lips of Cairo Jake, an industrious washer of the golden sands of California; but it was evident to all intelligent observers that even language so strong as to seem almost figurative did not fully express Cairo Jake's conviction, for he shook his head so positively that his hat fell off into the stream, which found a level only an inch or two below Jacob's boottops, and he stamped his right foot so vigorously as to endanger his equilibrium. "Well," sighed a discontented miner from New Jersey, "Providence knows His own bizness best, I s'pose; but I could have found him a feller that could have made a darn sight better use of his good luck--ef he'd had any--than Tom Chafflin. _He_ don't know nothin' 'bout the worth of money--never seed him drunk in my life, an' he don't seem to get no fun out of keerds." "Providence'll hev a season's job a-satisfyin' _you_, old Redbank," replied Cairo Jake; "but it's all-fired queer, for all that. Ef a feller could only learn how he done it, 'twouldn't seem so funny; but he don't seem to have no way in p'tickler about him that a feller ken find out." "Fact," said Redbank, with a solemn groan. "I've studied his face--why, ef I'd studied half ez hard at school I'd be a president, or missionary, or somethin' now--but I don't make it out. Once I 'llowed 'twas cos he didn't keer, an' was kind o' reckless--sort o' went it blind. So I tried it on a-playin' monte." "Well, how did it work?" asked the gentleman from Cairo. "Work?" echoed the Jerseyman, with the air of an unsuccessful candidate musing over the "saddest words of thought or pen;" "I started with thirteen ounces, an' in twenty minutes I was borryin' the price of a drink from the dealer. _That's_ how it worked."