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Big, soft, handsome handsome Timoteo sulked on the edge of his serapecovered cot. The brown Apollo and his jealous lady-love were both drift from the tide of cheap Mexican labor brought to Los Angeles by the railroads, a tide which seeps continually through the ruinous adobe ments of "Senoratown."

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The man's lumbering brain sought a more discreet basis for his illhumor than the fling at his ancestral deity. Maura was a Mexican Pegotty, and her laughter had caused another button to fly from the front of her blue calico gown, allowing a fresh billow of chemise to appear.

"You made that dress too tight," he growled.

"I did not! It shrunk in washing," she retorted with spirit.

"Why didn't you shrink the cloth before you sewed it?"

"Idiot! Then there wouldn't have been enough. What do you know of women's garments? Would you have me dress like your god?" she inquired mockingly.

As the idol was carved with no other clothing than earrings, sandals and a few chronographic signs, the query was irritating, if not actually indelicate. Moreover it dragged the conversation back to their chronic quarrel, and Timoteo's slow mentality was not equal to another diversion.

"I hate him!" resumed Maura.

"That is not well. When my grandfathers neglected to visit him in the mountain cave where he lived after the Spaniards and the saints came to Mexico, their corn withered on the stalk and their babies in the cradle.”

"My father was the last to know his prayer in the old tongue, and he dared not leave him. Curses can travel without tickets. He taught me the prayer the night before he died."

"But the priest-if he knew" "Woman, I always confess having fallen into idolatry. He tells me it is a grievous sin and bids me finger my rosary three times round."

"But, Timoteo, he thinks you mean the idolatry in the prayer book. If he saw

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"It is not for a simple man like me to read the thoughts of a priest, and I am very careful to get clear round the third time," answered the self-righteous Timoteo.

Maura was baffled by these theological subtleties, and so, womanlike, she slid away from them to attack elsewhere.

"I'll never come into this house to live until he goes out," she declared passionately.

"Concha Sanchez thinks he is handsome," answered the badgered lover sullenly. "She wants me to teach her the prayer to see if it won't cure her mother's toothache."

Maura sprang to her feet so vigorously that half the potatoes rattled out of her basket and rolled about the floor.

"I'll knock her head against the god's," she shrieked. "The horrid little tabby cat! Her mouth is big, and her teeth are crooked."

Timoteo's face relaxed into a slow, teasing smile.

"She has a gentle disposition, which is far more important in a wife."

The girl rushed for the idol, tore her finger-nails on his rough cheeks and caused him to rock angrily on his soap-box pedestal.

Timoteo was readier at physical contention than at the light and puzzling fencing of the wits, and no fantastical gallantry restrained him

from actively defending the god of his fathers. Seizing Maura by her sharp ttle shoulders, he shook her until the remaining potatoes danced out of the basket, dragged her to the doorway and pushed her roughly down the steps. She rushed away past the queer little shops with Spanish signs, while sobs and halfarticulate threats floated back in her wake until she turned the corner.

It was a fortnight before the street of San Fernando and the house of Timoteo knew Maura again. The yellow glare of early afternoon lay on the squat, monotonous white adobes. With drooping head and one end of the blue cotton rebozo dragging unheeded in the dust, she crept along, crowding herself almost against the whitewashed walls.

At the foot of Timoteo's steps she paused irresolutely, ascended listlessly, set the door ajar, and listened again. From somewhere in the back came the soft, cool splash of rinsing clothes; Timoteo's aunt was therefore safely occupied and out of the way. Near at hand sounded the heavy, regular breathing of a man asleep. Maura slipped into the room, glided across the creaking boards, and hung over Timoteo, bending again and again to brush her cheek against his hand and lifting herself to just stir the lightest fingertips and heavy black locks on his forehead.

Suddenly she stood erect.

"You've lost that fine,steady job in the brickyard," she murmured, "or you wouldn't be here asleep at this time of day."

She left the cot and walked over to the idol, towering above him with folded arms and her rebozo, slipping from her thin little shoulders. The blue calico hung in limp, wrinkled folds; some past stress of emotion had swept off more buttons, and through the gaps the escaped chemise drooped in greasy dejection. The whole contour of the face had

changed. The cheek-bones had sprung into prominence, while the eyes had retreated into hollows, from whose depths, however, they shone with more than their old, defiant fire.

"Shameless one!" She hissed the words through her clenched teeth. see how you have done him wrong though he took your part even against me!" The brave voice faltered a little over those last three words.

"Of course it's no more than might be expected of you that my father should hurt his foot and my mother have the wash of the American lady stolen from the line, but I can't see why you made the street car run over our poor little yellow dog-he never barked at you. And all the nights I've gone to bed hungry- Oh, yes, I understand that it's thanks to you there are no frijoles in the pot. I've dreamed that you were sitting on my body crushing the life out of me. You won't come to me any more, old red stone Pig-face, for I have come to you.”

In her excitement the last tones had become hoarsely vocal, and she looked about to see if she had been discovered. Timoteo had not stirred. The cool splashing still rippled in from the courtyard with a gurgling accompaniment of women's voices. The street door was open and the sunshine had tried to follow her in.

The idol was no larger than a small child, but heavy as a man. Hate gave those thin little arms the strength to lower the image from the soapbox to an ignominious reclining position on the floor with hands reaching beseechingly upward. In swift, silent, breathless fury, she half dragged, half rolled the idol to the open door.

There she braced her knees behind him, ready to pitch him headlong down the steps to the cement sidewalk below, the same humiliating descent to which she had been

forced a fortnight before. She was only pausing until an elderly, stoopshouldered American in black broadcloth should have passed by.

It would be useless to speculate concerning what manner of magic the Aztec god exercised to bring Professor Winters down that particular street far away from his accustomed haunts at an hour when he was usually at his private office in the college museum poring over the materials for his great work on the hieroglyphics of the native the native tribes of of Mexico and Central America. He was an archaeologist

of the old school, happy in the musty chill of a museum as a bat in a grange.

When his eyes fell upon the idol, they lighted as other men's for a familiar friend. He started up the steps to examine the curio just as Maura, after a backward glance at Timoteo, which she supposed had consumed the time necessary for the American to pass by, gave her enemy the fateful shove and started him bumping wildly down the rickety steps.

The dismayed Professor met him half way, wrestled with him bravely and succeeded in bringing him to

acquaintance had made him oblivious for the moment of the accidental circumstances surrounding the meeting. Maura was glaring at him vindictively from above, determined that his unmannerly interference should not save her foe. The American drew an immaculate cambric square from his coat pocket and dusted his knees and the idol's head impartially.

"Madam, does this valuable antique statue belong to you?" he inquired respectfully.

The girl made no response, for the good reason that she did not understand English.

"I desire to purchase it for the museum," continued the Professor. "Would you consider this a fair compensation?"

The shining ten dollar gold piece on the Professor's palm needed no interpreter. At this juncture, Timoteo, yawning and stretching from his siesta, appeared beside the girl in the doorway.

"Maura!"

he exclaimed, "how came the god on the steps and what does the American want?"

"The god was just starting out for a walk when he met the American, who seems to want to buy him. I suppose he has had much ill-luck and so wishes to change his religion."

"See, they are like brothers already," observed Timoteo wonderingly, for the Professor, in order not to disturb their conference, had seated himself on the step with his arm resting absently about the idol.

"Do sell him to this good man, dear Timoteo, and let there be peace between us."

"Sell!" cried the Mexican in loud, declamatory tones. "Sell the god of my grandfathers! Woman, you are crazy! Rather let me sell my aunt, my grandmother, and all my female relations!"

The Professor rose and tendered him a gold double eagle. Timoteo

regarded it with a hypnotized stare.

"We could be as happy as the blessed angels in Heaven if only that hateful one were sent out of the house," pleaded Maura.

Timoteo shook her off, and descending the steps, took his stand by the idol.

"I see," observed the Professor courteously, "that your wife clings to the statue-some woman's whim, I suppose-while you are inclined. to be reasonable. Out of consideration for her feelings, I will give both gold pieces."

The Mexican stepped back so that the Professor's gold-laden palm was extended behind Izcozauhqui's back where it was emptied and the coins noiselessly transferred to the pocket of the hypocritical Timoteo, who immediately stepped forward again to bid farewell to his ancestral deity.

"You can see for yourself," he wheedled, "what a devil of a temper she has, and that she is determined to marry me. You are not safe with her, and I cannot ask you to remain and share my misery."

She flung herself down the steps and pushed Timoteo aside.

"Red stone Pig-face!" she cried. "We are selling you to this American for gold enough to make such a wedding feast as you never dreamed of, and won't be here to spoil with your ugly face and uglier tricks. I dare you to do us any more wrong! I dare you! I dare you!"

"I'm sorry," said the Professor, apologetically to the sullen, discomfited Timoteo, "that she takes losing him so hard. I'll get him out of her sight as soon as possible."

The contagion of emotional excitement increased his mental vibrations to such a rate that he perceived instantly a harmonious relation between the weighty fire-god and a passing express wagon drawn by a lame horse and driven by a swarthy Mexican.

In this manner did Izcozauhqui leave the house of Timoteo forever.

J

AMIE was all alone in the world with little Jean. Little Jean had fallen months before, so long that the day, so much like every other day, was but an indistinct memory, and had shattered his hips. Things had been well with the two waifs until then; as well as things could be with two orphans of nine and eleven in a mining camp in '51. The men saw to it that the Doys fared well; but somewhere down in Jamie's heart was a strange, burning resentment; a faded shadow of the pride of some proud ancestral Scot, that bade him scorn the charitable offerings of the big-hearted miners. He would take what work they would give; that was proper, and he could say to himself that what he received was what he earned. But as for charity-Jamie would rather die; strange, wistfullipped, bright-eyed little Jamie.

And little Jean, lying on his back, would bravely fight back the tears which someway would come as he passed the days in solitude, save when a brawny prospector would steal away from his work for a space, and come up and try to amuse him. Try-that was all. It was only with Uncle Jimmy and their own selves that the lads were comrades. Not a grizzled, uncouth man

in that rough camp, but suptly felt, before the little Scots, in every line and curve in Jeanie's face and every action of Jamie, the refinement of the true born patrician. They were waiting, waiting for their father to come back and take them away. He had gone on a long journey, the miners said, and some day he would come back and take them away. And then the men would shuffle from the sight of the clear little eyes, and softly curse in their beards and furtively wipe their eyes.

It had to be done; he had slipped his bowie into the back of old Peter Neilsen for his little hoard, the little hoard that was to have brought out the wife and the little flaxen haired lassies from far off Denmark; it was the Western way-it had to be done. Yet, for the boys' sake, they had hesitatetd between that and turning him out of camp.

Long, and very soberly, they had debated the issue, and at last they had quietly filed up into the canyon and buried him deep when the deed was done.

That was why, when Christmas drew near, and there were no women there, and little Jean was hurt unto death that the men gathered together and sat around silently. Bill Carson, "Uncle Jimmy," at last