opportunity to seize the lovely relative by the shoulders and shake her
violently, she said: "Oh, yes, and it's all very well for you, Kate, you
limb! For you're going away, and will never see Rough and Ready and poor
Spindler again. But what am I to do, miss? How am I to face it out?
For you know I've got to tell him at least that you're no half-niece of
his!"
"Have you?" said the young lady.
"Have I?" repeated the widow impatiently. "Have I? Of course I have!
What are you thinking of?"
"I was thinking, aunty," said the girl audaciously, "that from what
I've seen and heard to-night, if I'm not his half-niece now, it's only a
question of time! So you'd better wait. Good-night, dear."
And, really,--it turned out that she was right!
WHEN THE WATERS WERE UP AT "JULES'"
When the waters were up at "Jules'" there was little else up on that
monotonous level. For the few inhabitants who calmly and methodically
moved to higher ground, camping out in tents until the flood
had subsided, left no distracting wreckage behind them. A dozen
half-submerged log cabins dotted the tranquil surface of the waters,
without ripple or disturbance, looking in the moonlight more like the
ruins of centuries than of a few days. There was no current to sap their
slight foundations or sweep them away; nothing stirred that silent lake
but the occasional shot-like indentations of a passing raindrop, or,
still more rarely, a raft, made of a single log, propelled by some
citizen on a tour of inspection of his cabin roof-tree, where some of
his goods were still stored. There was no sense of terror in this bland
obliteration of the little settlement; the ruins of a single burnt-up
cabin would have been more impressive than this stupid and even
grotesquely placid effect of the rival destroying element. People took
it naturally; the water went as it had come,--slowly, impassively,
noiselessly; a few days of fervid Californian sunshine dried the cabins,
and in a week or two the red dust lay again as thickly before their
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