grew lighter then, and sometimes the potatoes fed pitiful pale youths who brought no store of gold-dust to pay for them. Patrick Shallop, living in the most magnificent dwelling in the whole length and breadth of California, was sometimes moved to tell of the little cabin where he had brought home his bride on a wet night, borrowing an umbrella to place over the bed to keep the rain from wetting her to the skin. There had been times when things had gone badly with the inmates of the little cabin, and days had passed when the mother’s ears were torn with the cries of children hungry for bread. It was at this time that Barbara’s father had known the Shallops. Mr. Deering was a delicately bred, handsome young man, who had come with the eager crowd of men all pushing ruthlessly forward to the golden goal, sometimes trampling to death the weaker brothers who fell by the wayside. Sick of a fever, faint and dying, he was plundered of his hard-earned store of gold-dust, and would have been murdered by his robber but for the interposition of Shallop, who stood by to see fair play, and carried the sick man home to his shanty, where the tender nursing of the busy wife saved his life a second time. Adversity makes strange companionships between men; and the friendship between the saloon-keeper and the delicately nurtured youth with the blood of a Puritan ancestry in his veins, was one which lasted through both their lives. By some mining exploits which would hardly bear the light of day, but which were, alas! not more uncommon at that time than at the present day, the Irishman had made a colossal fortune which placed him among the richest men in the world. There could be little sympathy between the two men whom the chances of that wild time had thrown together for the moment, but a cordiality was always felt; and after Mr. Deering’s death frequent visits were exchanged between the dwellers of the San Rosario Ranch and the inmates of the most celebrated house on the borders of the Pacific Ocean.