side, extending from Clay to what is now Commercial Street, were the public hostelries next in importance to the Parker House. Both were adobes, and a lower class frequented them. In the City Hotel, "Maltese" was a conspicuous figure among the gambling crowd. He was a native of the famous island from which he took the name he was commonly called by, and report credited him with having been a Mediterranean pirate. His general appearance, and a "very bad eye" particularly-an eye wrenched from its propriety by some terrible violence-gave strength to the report. Anything bad and little of good would have found ready belief in respect to a man with such an eye; but in all he did and said, "Maltese" encouraged the belief. But one day he found his anger and rage beyond his powers of expression. He had seen a miserable-looking man, spare and cadaverous, with little more than rags upon him, and the man walked and moved as if he sought the nearest graveyard to lie down and comfortably give up the ghost. But in the rent pocket of one side of his tattered coat he held something with the clutch of a miser upon a bag of gold. "Maltese" spied this, and instantly applied himself to court the straggler. He treated him, he gave him a fine cigar; treated him again; had two hard-boiled eggs cooked for him, and then led him around to look at the gaming at a monte table. It was "Maltese's" own table, but he did not let his gaunt customer know it. He put down an ounce: it won; he played again and again, each time winning. At last the stranger expressed his desire to bet and try his luck; but he whispered to "Maltese" that he had only his sack of just exactly fifty-two ounces of dust, which he had dug in the mines and intended for his home trip to Missouri by next steamer. "Maltese" instantly fixed matters for him. He took the bag of dust, passed it to the dealer, and took gold ounces from the pile. These were soon lost. The wretched fellow had taken two or three more drinks, and became wild. He drew twenty ounces more. Suddenly he made a plea to be

gone just a minute. He never returned. "Maltese" became suspicious. He took the sack and opened it. There was nothing in it but shot and sand. And twenty of his golden ounces gone, to say nothing of the time and treats he had spent upon that lean, lank, rueful-looking greenhorn from Pike. "Swore like a pirate" is an apt figure by which to describe the sputtering, foaming, diabolical wrath of "Maltese." It was a game that was afterwards frequently attempted upon monte dealers, and sometimes it won. On a few occasions it cost the shot-and-sand player his life.

The streets of '49 were a scene and a study. Charley Case-of an old and noted New York family, one of them of high naval name-afterwards of the firm of French, Case & Heiser, was the superintendent of streets. The greater want was a superintendent for Charley. The streets were all right; it was the abominable use made of them by any who had refuse stuff to cast into them. "But the afternoon winds will carry all that away," was Charley's way of responding to complaints. In the rainy season there was no dust, nor such high winds. With the dry season out went Charley Case, and with the wet season came in Arenson-"Captain Arenson of Baltimore, sir." Planking was not to be thought of: lumber was still too costly; cobbles there were none; and figs of thistles and grapes of thorns were as procurable as hard paving rock. The rains were deluging, and the mud became deeper. To cross a street was to wade it Something had to be done. Captain Arenson was fertile of expedients. He had walked logs when a boy; he would bring the San Franciscans to leap bushes. Loads of chaparral were cut from the Clay Street and Russian hills, and tossed into the muddy streets. Given a fair start, a firm ankle, a boot that would not slip easily, and ample agility, and the hop, skip, and jump across the street was as easy as the transit of the tight-rope dancer from brace to brace without a balancing pole; but with the least lack in any of these qualities, it was like crossing a wide creek on a small log that wobbles.

To drop was to drip; and the narrow planks which constituted the sidewalks then, longitudinally laid, were the stamping grounds for drips and ooze from emerged humanity as it rose from Arenson's brushy lair, where it had fallen and floundered amidst the intricacies of the mud-sunk shrub, and brought with it so much of the free-soil element as would have entitled it to fellowship in the Lacustrian Age. At a few of the most traveled thoroughfares narrow crossings of soft rock were reared above the expanse of mud and slush, to enable passers to walk in single file, and comparatively dry-footed, from corner to corner. One of these stretched from side to side of Clay Street, on the line of Kearny. It required fair precision of step in daylight. During the night it was a treacherous passage. There were no street lamps, and the glare of the brilliantly lighted gambling saloons opposite the Plaza on Kearny Street caused the eye to observe objects less distinctly in the sudden darkness of the crossing. A stout pile had been driven into the ground at the corner of the California Exchange, to keep vehicles from encroaching upon the raised sidewalk.

dressed in handsome broadcloth suit, and wore a stove-pipe hat, then a novelty in San Francisco. He carried a stout gold-headed cane. With this he sounded his way at the corner to guide his step or leap upon the raised crossing, on either side of which the watery mud was two or three feet deep. The hard rap of the cane assured him that he had struck the rock, and he sprung for it. Slump he went, nearly waist-deep in the horrible muck. His cane had struck the misguiding pile, not the crossing rocks. He looked like a gentleman: his prodigious discharge of roaring, seething, practiced profanity plainly enough revealed that he was not a clergyman. As the few upon the corner who witnessed his plunge laughed at his plight and badgered him with mocking sympathy and absurd counsel, he swore more terribly. But he waded through to the other side, surveyed himself, and disappeared in the bronzed halo of his own mud coating, as a pillar of moving real estate with downward tendency.

James O'Meara.

John Thorpe.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A FEW rapid paces carried Cleon so far down the descent that the swelling brow of the mountain shut out the sight and tumult of the camp, and prevented any immediate chance of discovery, unless his departure had been marked by some one interested in making quick pursuit. Then, slackening his pace so as the better to husband his strength, he proceeded more leisurely, aiming only to reach Pompeii by the time morning broke.

It was a different side of the mountain from that which he had ridden up two days ago, in the pomp and pride of command, with his cohorts at his back; and the path was more narrow and winding, as though in consonance with his changed fortunes. At times the route seemed blocked with the thickly planted olive groves; then, as he proceeded, the apparent obstacles would part from before him, and a splendid vista of bay and landscape would be presented far down below, already changing its dull hues to pleasant tints of green and sapphire in the reflected light of the advancing sun. Would it so prove with his own fate-the shadows of despair gaining unexpected alleviation, and giving place once more to bright prosperity? It was difficult now to conceive of this. Better to trust nothing to imagination, but rather let him hasten forward, revolving for the present only the actual miseries which oppressed him, and applying all his thoughts and ingenuity to the composition of those words of mingled confession and extenuation which he must be prepared to pour out before the Cæsar.

The descent was longer than he had supposed, and unanticipated delays constantly beset him. Once, hearing in advance the loud talking of three of the legionaries returning from an unsuccessful pursuit, and not wishing to be recognized by them, he

hid himself in some bordering vines until they might pass. But the men chanced to pause opposite him, and there sat down for a moment to rest; and for several minutes Cleon was obliged to remain with half-suspended breath, listening to their muttered complaints, mingled now and then with a bitter curse upon himself. A little while after that, he distinguished in front of him the measured tramp of many men; and turning aside as before, he watched the upward passage of a cohort from some more distant town. The soldiers knew that they were arriving too late to participate in the battle or to share the spoils; but none the less could they congratulate their more fortunate comrades, and join in the revels which should end the short campaign, and so they now moved onward with merry laugh and talk, occasionally bursting forth into a fragment of some well-known drinking song. It was many minutes before they had so completely passed out of sight that Cleon could venture to emerge from his place of concealment; and when at last he did so, the sun had arisen, and the whole view below view below was gleaming in gold and purple.

But now his journey seemed coming to an end, for already the road was lined with the cottages and villas which betokened the city's neighborhood, and in a few minutes he might be in Pompeii itself. His present design, however, was not to advance as far as that on foot, a course which seemingly would too greatly protract his time, but to engage timely help. Therefore he now looked cautiously and inquiringly around, and at length, arresting his steps before a little low house with a wooden bench in front, there threw himself down and called aloud.

At the summons there emerged from within a thin, stooping, care-worn man, whom Cleon dimly recollected having seen

animal, in which Alexander himself, with Bucephalus standing by, might take pride; an animal which—"

"It is well. And what now is the hour?" "Did I do wrong in not wishing to arouse you?" was the man's somewhat faltering response, as he marked the vehemence of the question. "So calmly did you sleep that I did not care to break in upon you; and therefore, awaiting your natural awakening, and taking my chisel in hand, I have as softly as possible—”

"The hour, knave! The hour, I say!" "The afternoon wears on apace," the poor artist answered, his voice sinking yet lower with fear. "So sweetly did you—”

But with a bound Cleon had sprung up from the low pallet, and for a moment stood as though he would grasp the other in his hands and strangle him. Was it from simple ignorance or treachery that the man had acted thus towards him? The morning already gone and the evening drawing near -why, Baie should have been reached before now. What terrible consequences may have already ensued from this delay! Was his remorseless fate still pursuing him, and were those pleasant fancies that had tinged his rest and cheated him into this prolonged slumber merely new and more cunning instruments of destruction?

"I have no time to punish you as you deserve," he exclaimed, in another instant lowering his outstretched arms and striding to the door. "Show me this beast of yours, that I may be gone, if happily it be not yet too late."

"A noble beast!" enthusiastically exclaimed the artist, not sorry to have the conversation take a different course, and following Cleon outside. "See! would not even the leader of a full legion rejoice to own a steed so marked with rare excellences? Behold that arched neck, those-" "Peace, wretch!" cried Cleon, throwing himself with a bound across the poor weak animal, which almost bent beneath his weight, and with its filmy eye and projecting ribs gave little evidence of grace and "I knew of a certainty when I

power.

gave you gold enough for a steed of proper merit that you would rob me, though not perhaps to this extent. Had I the time I would even now chastise you. But if this beast can only carry me—”

Not finishing the sentence, he drew the rein and set off, urging the animal to its full capacity of speed, and a little comforted to find that, despite appearances, it developed some unexpected power. How long it might endure was a grave question of the future. At the present all went well; and Cleon began with some self-encouragement to calculate the probable hour of his arrival at Baix, when, at a turn of the road leading around the bay, there came a new interruption.

It was a traveling litter, borne upon the shoulders of four slaves, who staggered beneath the remorseless burden, while four other slaves with gilded staves ran in couples before and behind. The wellknown colors of the tunics, and the unusual bending of the poles by reason of the intolerable weight within, would of themselves have indicated who was the owner of the equipage, even had not the curtains been looped up on either side, so as to show him lying at full length, his rounded figure shaking at each motion of the bearAnd seeing him, Cleon would have passed by without recognition; but for the moment the senator was too watchful, and at once stopping his own litter, called out:

ers.

"Whither away, my own Cleon? And why hurrying along in this strange guise? That sorry steed-no sword at your sideand with the dress almost of a private soldier: how happens it all? This truly should not be the condition of one who, as rumor has it, has just now crushed, with such honor to himself, a formidable insurrection."

"Matters of pomp and state and gay equipment must stay behind when other more important interests need attention," responded Cleon, impatiently, and with a sidelong glance of keen suspicion, to mark, if possible, whether Vortilian spoke in satirical vein or was really repeating some vague utterances of the public. "An accident