"You have been engaged?”

"Bless you, a dozen times. Soberly speaking, I ought to settle down. I'm not getting any younger, or jollier, or better looking. I really feel like marrying, and being a good boy for the balance of my days."

Arthur writhed in spirit, but said nothing. Mr. Remmington, who liked the sound of his own voice, continued:

"I've had splendid chances and let 'em slide. I never could resist a pretty face, and the ugly ones who have the cold cash are so damnably particular. That fiddle-headed Porter girl gave me the sack because she caught me kissing her French maid. But speaking of pretty faces, I've seen nothing to compare with Antonia Fawcett; 'Matre pulchra filia pulchrior.' And she's the most affectionate little thing on earth. Watch her with horses and dogs. Any fool can see with half an eye that she has a superfluity of the milk of human kindness and Fawcett is a regular clam. He can shut the child up with one look, damn him! How cheery this fire is. That and your sober old phiz inspire confidence. I'm going to tell you something. I'm head over ears in love with Antonia."

It was out at last. Arthur sighed. He considered himself under great personal obligations to this man. Making allow ance for a streak of levity in his character, he gave him (had always given him) credit for many excellent qualities. During the past three months he had proved

himself a comrade in the French sense of the word. Shooting, fishing, sketching, or card-playing, he had been invariably the best of company, a prince of good fellows.

"And she?" said Little quietly. "Does she care for you?"

Jack stroked his blonde mustache. "Well, yes, she does. And that 's the devil of it, for of course I can't marry on my present income."

"Not marry!" cried Little indignantly. "You don't tell me, you don't dare to tell me that in your disgusting selfishness. you have engaged this girl's affections only to trifle with her!"

"Why, how hot you are, old chap! Anyone would suppose you were in love with Antonia yourself. I never saw you so excited. But you put the case too harshly: I never intended to trifle with her."

"You never intended! Good God! He says he never intended! You are a scoundrel, John Remmington, and you have done a scoundrelly thing!"

Remmington's florid face grew very

white.

"Keep a civil tongue in your mouth, Arthur, till I explain. You force my hand. When I asked Antonia to become my wife, I thought-damn it all, how can I put it? It sounds brutal, but I thought you were dying. The doctor that fellow in San Lorenzo · told me so. Then we came on here and you said, sitting in that very chair, the day you had that bad coughing spell, that that-er you had willed me the bulk of your fortune. The next morning I met Antonia. After that we were together a good deal. Fawcett and you seemed to pair off, and I well, I'm not made of stone I found out that she liked me. We became engaged. I begged Antonia not to speak to the old man. She agreed readily enough. It appears he had

already warned her to beware of me, but she confessed that she 'd loved me from the time she found my footprint at the willow spring. I told her that I was expecting a great deal of money from a relative and that we must wait patiently till I was in a position to approach her father. Then you began to mend and my bubbles of romance burst. We kept our secret jealously, but the cat's out of the bag now. I love her, better than all the others put together. I feel a better man. in her presence,-but marriage! How can I marry on nothing a year?"

Now,

Little

He stared moodily into the crimson ashes of the cones. They had blazed up bravely for a few minutes, giving forth great heat, light, and perfume. practically, the fire was out. called to mind the sacred flame of love which burns eternally in the hearts of some, but in general glows fiercely for a brief season, with exceeding radiance, and then dies.

"I beg your pardon," he said slowly. "I see my responsibility and will shoulder ། it. I'll give you an income, - no, don't thank me! if you really love Antonia.

"I swear that I can make her happy. "That is the right key. I expected to hear you say that she could make you happy, which we will take for granted. Take care of her, Jack. She is a sensitive plant. You pride yourself on doing things well, better than other men. Apply that principle to marriage. Begin by considering and pleasing your wife, and you will end by pleasing yourself. Tomorrow we will discuss this in detail. I am tired tonight, and am going to bed. Good night and God bless you.

They shook hands and Arthur retired. But Remmington threw a log on the expiring embers and sat-thinking of the future - for a couple of hours.

"Queer chap Arthur." he mused.

"Generous as a caliph and true as steel, but cold cold as charity. I don't sup pose he could fall in love to save his life!"

Ten months later the screws of the Cunard Company's Steamship Umbria were churning into yellow foam the waters of the Hudson. A few more minutes and the great ship would be in dock and her cargo scattered broadcast over the city. The Remmingtons - Jack and his wife-were pacing slowly up and down the hurricane deck.

"we

"In half an hour," said Jack, shall be shaking hands with old Arthur. How glad he will be to see us."

"And how glad we shall be to see him," suggested Antonia. "Do you

know, Jack, I once fancied he cared for me. I was thinking of you and blind to everybody else, but still I fancy-"

"Of course," replied her husband, "he was a victim. You women are all savages at heart. Your favorite amusement is counting scalps. But, my dear child, in this case you are vastly mistaken. Arthur is the best fellow in the world but he has spent his life taking care of himself and thinking of that one lung."

"O Jack! How can you say such things! After all he has done for us. It sounds so ungrateful."

She looked wistfully into his handsome face, tanned by wind and sun. How strong he was! What a man! And yet of late certain misgivings had assailed her. Jack was very loving, very attentive, very jolly, but Antonia had begun to realize his limitations. He was so exacting, so intolerant of feminine weakness. A headache, lassitude, any trifling ailment, annoyed him.

"When I married you," he had said more than once "I gave you credit for perfect health. A sickly woman is an awful nuisance

He expected her to be always tirée à quatre epingles, or as he phrased it, "on deck." She remembered, with a pang, how-shortly after their marriage — she had been unable to attend a great ball at Delmonico's. Jack had been absurdly angry, and finally had gone alone, leaving her in tears, the bitterest she had ever shed.

"Ungrateful," he repeated, pulling his long mustache, "well, I'm hanged! Did n't I give up six months of my life to Arthur Little? He repaid me royally, true. But all said and done, the income he allows me is a mere flea bite to him. He admitted to me that I saved his life. I'm his next of kin and-er-"

"Don't," said Antonia, wincing. "Don't finish the sentence, Jack."

The huge vessel was majestically approaching her moorings. The crowd on the wharf could be distinctly seen: handkerchiefs fluttered and hoarse cries were borne across the shimmering water. Nothing in life yields more pleasure to the second than the meeting of those we love after long absence. The recognition, first of voice, then of form, and lastly feature. But the Remmingtons were denied this pleasure. To their great disappointment, Little's frail figure and kindly face were not to be seen.

As they went down the gangway a tall thin man with very white whiskers and very pale face touched Jack upon the arm, and leading him aside, whispered a few words.

Antonia listened, trembling, to the end. Her husband kissed her, but she drew away from him, sobbing bitterly. So uncontrollable was her grief, so irrepressible her emotion, that he became peevish.

"Come, come," he said, frowning. "That will do, Antonia. It's bad form to make such a scene as this. Confound it the hotel people will think I'm beating you. Poor Arthur is better off where he is. There is, really, a fate in these things. When a man survives his usefulness and what can a one-lunged man do? Providence generally takes him off. Think of the good use we shall make of his millions!"'

"I mean," she said quietly, putting her hand to her throat, "that I know now, now that he is dead, that Arthur loved me. And I might have loved him, but instead I loved you. Do you know how a child of seventeen can love? No, - you don't! But I think he did. There lies the difference between him and you; and today, hearing you speak as you have just spoken, and knowing, as I know, that you are thinking, not of your friend, but of the money he left. behind him, I ask myself - have I made a mistake!"

Her husband laid his heavy hand upon her shoulder.

"I can answer the question," he said

brutally. "We've got to live out our lives together, and as we're both of us remarkably healthy persons, the odds are we shall spend some forty or fifty

years together. You ask, 'Have I made a mistake?' The woman who frames that question in regard to her husband has already answered it!"

Horace Annesley Vachell.

THIS month of July, 1895, makes the twenty-seventh anniversary of the birth of the OVERLAND.

In this period of over a quarter of a century, which covers more thau half the history of the State, the common

wealth and the magazine have seen good seasons and bad. There was a time when the OVERLAND was first published, in 1868-69, when Bret Harte was its editor and was just realizing fame and money on his "Luck of Roaring Camp" stories, that the OVERLAND felt sure of its existence and free to boast, but for the past twenty years for one reason and another it has always been thankful to see its birthdays safely behind it with a half uttered prayer that it would reach another one. But in spite of hard times, rich rivals, and small bank accounts, it has always kept steadily forward, the one true, unswerving mirror of all that was best and most praiseworthy in Californian life and story. If the present writer might be allowed to both criticise and praise the management of the magazine during this time, he would say that its business end had been sacrificed to its editorial and literary ideals.

It was perhaps too proud of being known as the Atlantic Monthly of the Pacific Coast. It honestly earned the title, but in so doing it lost its own peculiar individuality. The American in the libraries and club rooms of New York, Boston, London, and Hong Kong, takes up the OVERLAND to read of California and the Pacific Coast of its history and romance: he does not care for an essay on Socialism, a dissertation University Extension, or a New York or Paris drawing room story of love and intrigue. He can get all of this done to his own taste in his own magazine. The OVERLAND has its own field and he expects it to fill it and not invade that of another.

There are plenty of reasons why the OVERLAND or any like magazine on this Coast cannot own its own publishing house and pay small fortunes for lives of dead heroes or the work of world famous novelists. There are only one and a half million people on this Coast. Of that million and a half the majority are in one way and another readers of the OVERLAND, - in school libraries, reading rooms, clubs, etc., which fact, while it is gratifying to the editor, is not always quite satisfactory to the manager. He often remarks of his magazine as he sees the letters of commendation and approval pour into the editorial department, that he realizes what Bill Nye so graphically said of the Platte River, that it had a tremendous influence but small

circulation. We are not apologizing for the OVERLAND or its field, but when you stop to consider that in and around New York there are three millions of people as a basis for the circulation of a New York magazine, you cannot wonder that the OVERLAND and its managers, past and present, feel like crowing a little on every birthday. When the managers, editorial or business, are mentioned, it must not be forgotten that there has always been a corporal's guard of prominent Californians who have stood back of and under the magazine, always ready and willing to help it over every seemingly unsurmountable obstacle. They certainly should not feel angered if their names are entered here as deserving the thanks of all who are jealous of the good name of State and Coast. Judge John H. Boalt, Mr. Irving M. Scott, Mr. Henry J. Crocker, Mr. Wakefield Baker, Captain J. M. McDonald, and Hon. W. W. Foote are the present directory. And there are others who either as directors or stockholders have been and are deserving of all the gratitude that will ever be awarded them for their unfailing interest. But the list is too long to chronicle. They themselves know and they know that we know and are grateful.

The Overland's Birthday.

IT CAN do no harm thus to talk freely of the hopes, aspirations, and successes, of the magazine to friends and well wishers on this, its natal day. We are constantly doing it verbally and by letter in in answer to direct questions. Never in the past twenty years has the magazine been in a position to talk with better grace. We have not reached the 50,000 new subscriptions that we boasted we would have by July; but we have done so well that we have no fault to find with the hard times or indifference of the few.

It is almost foolish to state figures and facts regarding circulation in these days when competitors boast of 250,000 and 400,000 circulations; but it can be said, and said truthfully, that the OVERLAND has within the past year, the hardest this Coast has ever seen, more than doubled its Coast circulation, and added one third to its Eastern and foreign circulation. Now, from the nature of things we cannot invite you to a birthday party, but we are in a position to receive congratulations and presents. Let the presents be subscriptions, and remember in this case it will be more blessed for you to receive your own magazine than to give the small subscription. Who will be the first?

DENVER, Col., June 12.-An alarming state of affairs exists in Coeur 'd Aléne, Northern Idaho. News received here today indicates that serious trouble is likely to break out there at any time between the Miners' Union and the law and order men who have organized to protect laborers in their right to work and the mine-owners in their right to employ whom they please.

A man who incurred the enmity of the Miners' Union was killed there recently, murdered with an ax, which was found buried in his skull, and the Coroner's jury returned a verdict of suicide.

Governor McConnell has made a requisition on the Government for arms and has obtained several hundred stand. Over 200 volunteers are drilling here tonight to prepare for the coming conflict, which seems imminent. Idaho has no State militia.

NO CHANGE AT COEUR 'D ALENE. Trouble is Feared, However, When Work is Resumed at the Mines.

SPOKANE, Wash, June 13. There is no change in the labor situation it the Coeur 'd Aléne mines. The Bunker Hill and the Sullivan people are preparing to resume work on a basis of $3 a day for miners and $2.50 a day for carmen and shovelers, a requisite number of citizens having signed a petition pledging them support.

What the result will be is a matter of conjecture. The Miners' Union declares that there will be no lawlessness, but that the companies will not be able to secure men at the cut wages. Men well informed respecting the situation, however, fear trouble and violence.