Mrs. Sharpe was a washed-out woman. Many of the natural and laudable instincts remained, perhaps being fast colors; but a horror of the class to which she now supposed Marian to belong was one which had faded out of her nature. She gave a slightly supercilious look, which fell upon the woman like moonlight on ice, and pursued her inquiries. "Came from 'Frisco?" "I came through there. I didn't see anything of the place." "Whar _did_ yer come from?" "Philadelphia." The tone was changed. She evidently felt the impalpable rudeness of the faded woman, and knew how to resent it in the same way. More conversation ensued, in the course of which Mrs. Sharpe discovered that Marian had a little money--enough to pay her board for a few months--and that she had come there to find "James Courtney Wilmer." Mrs. Sharpe had information to give as well as to take, for she knew something of Jim. "_We_ called him _Jim_," she said, a little scornfully. "He didn't git no 'Courting' from _we_." Poor Marian gave a faint smile. "There might be other James Wilmers," she said. "I wanted to be sure." Mrs. Sharpe didn't think this could be the one. "He's a rough, ragged creeter," she said, "and 's had the snakes fur weeks at a time." Marian shrank and cowered at this, with a pitiful look of pain on her beautiful face. "Hed money left him?" asked Mrs. Sharpe. Marian nodded. "'Twon't do him no good. Soon as he hearns of it, he'll drink himself into snakes. Allers did when they struck a good lead on the Banderita. Circus Jack, he loses all hisn's at poker; so thar they go." In the course of an hour Circus Jack, scrubbed and "fixed up" to a degree which made him almost unrecognizable by his comrades, appeared, escorted by Scotty, also prepared by a choice toilet to enter the presence of "the ladies." "'Scuse my not comin' afore," said Scotty. "Hosses must be 'tended to, and them of mine wus about dead beat." Marian smiled graciously, if absently, and turned her clear, hazel eyes to Circus Jack, who, with many excuses, circumlocutions, and profane epithets, most of which he apologized for instantly, and some of which he was evidently unconscious of, gave her all the information in his power in regard to the man she had come to find. No one in Mariposa knew him better. As "Jim" he was almost an integral part of the city of "Butterflies." The butterflies, by the by, for which the town is named, are not those which soar in the air, but "Mariposas," fastened by long, tough filaments to the ground. Many a night had Jim Wilmer crushed his swollen face into them, and slept a drunken sleep with their soft wings folded sorrowfully above him.