should meet him at the big corral. I wanted a rest anyway, and it was perfectly plain that Billy was beyond his depth in love with the girl at first sight; so we were not hard to persuade when she added her voice to her father's.

Early in September Billy and I dropped off No. 1 with our guns and "plunder," as baggage is called there, and a couple of the old Don's men met us with saddle and pack animals. I never spent a pleasanter two weeks in my life. The quiet, almost gloomy, old Don and I became fast friends, and the hunting was good. The Don was a Spaniard, but Josephine's mother had been a Mexican woman, and one noted for her beauty. She had been dead some years at the time of our visit. Billy devoted most of his time to the girl. They were a fine looking young couple,

he being strong and broad-shouldered, with laughing blue eyes and light curly hair, she slender and perfect in outline, with a typical Southern complexion, black eyes-and such eyes they were and hair and eyebrows like the raven's wing.

A few days before Billy and I were booked to resume our duties on the deck of the " Mary Ann," Miss Josephine took my arm and walked me down the yard and pumped me quietly about "Mr. Howell," as she called Billy. She went into details a little, and I answered all questions as best I could. All I said was in the young man's favor it could not, in truth, be otherwise. Josephine seemed satisfied and pleased.

When we got back to headquarters, I was given the care of a cold-water Hinkley, with a row of varnished cars behind her, and Billy fell heir to the rudder of the "Mary Ann." We still roomed together. Billy put in most of his lay-over time writing long letters to somebody, and every Thursday, as regular as a clock, one came for him, with a censor's mark on it. Often after reading the letter, Billy would say: "That girl has more horse sense than the rest of the whole female race she don't slop over worth a cent." He invariably spoke of her as "my Mexican girl," and often asked my opinion about white men intermarrying with that mongrel race. Sometimes he said that his mother would go crazy if he married a Mexican, his

father would disown him, and his brother Henry-well, Billy did not like to think just what revenge Henry would take. Billy's father was manager of an Eastern road, and his brother was assistant to the first vice-president, and Billy looked up to the latter as a great man and a sage. He himself was in the West for practical experience in the machinery department, and to get rid of a slight tendency to asthma. He could have gone East any time and been "somebody" on the road under his father.

Finally, Billy missed a week in writing. At once there was a cog gone from the answering wheel to match. Billy shortened his letters; the answers were shortened. Then he quit writing, and his Thursday letter ceased to come. He had thought the matter all over, and decided, no doubt, that he was doing what was best-both

Early in the winter the old Don wrote, urging us to come down and hunt antelope, but Billy declined to go said that the road needed him, and that Josephine might come home from school and this would make them both uncomfortable. But Henry, his older brother, was visiting him, and he suggested that I take Henry; he would enjoy the hunt, and it would help him drown his sorrow over the loss of his aristocratic young wife, who had died a year or two before. So Henry went with me, and we hunted antelope until we tired of the slaughter. Then the old Don planned a deer-hunting trip in the mountains, but I had to go back to work, and left Henry and the old Don to take the trip without me. While they were in the mountains, Josephine came home, and Henry Howell's stay lengthened out to a month. But I did. not know until long afterward that the two had met.

Billy was pretty quiet all winter, worked hard and went out but little he was thinking about something. One day I came home and found him writing a letter. "What now, Billy?" I asked.

"Writing to my Mexican girl," said he. "I thought you had got over that a long time ago?"

"So did I, but I hadn't. I've been trying to please somebody else besides myself in this matter, and I'm done. I'm going to work for Bill now."

"Take an old man's advice, Billy, and don't write that girl a line go and see

her."

"Oh, I can fix it all right by letter, and

then run down there and see her."

"Don't do it."

"I'll risk it."

He read its single page with manifest interest, and when his eyes reached the last line they went straight on, and looked at the ground, and continued to do so for fully five minutes. Without looking up, he said: "John, I want you to do me two favors." "All right," said I.

Still keeping his eyes on the ground, he said, slowly, as if measuring everything well: "I'm going up and draw my time, and will leave for Old Mexico on No. 4 to-night. I want you to write to both these parties and tell them that I have gone there and that you have forwarded both these letters. Don't tell 'em that I went after reading 'em."

"And the other favor, Billy?"

"Read this letter, and see me off tonight."

The letter read:

PHILADELPHIA, May 1, 1879. Dear Brother Will: I want you and Mr. A. to go down to Don Juan Arboles's by the first of June. I will be there then. You must be my best man, as I stand up to marry the sweetest, dearest wild-flower of a woman that ever bloomed in a land of beauty. Don't fail me. Josephine will like you for my sake, and you will love her for your brother. HENRY.

full of accident and incident, and having my Most engineers' lives are busy ones and full share of both, I had almost forgotten all these points about Billy Howell and his Mexican girl, when they were all recalled by was a photograph of a family group-a bea letter from Billy himself. With his letter whiskered man of thirty-five, a good-looking woman of twenty, but undoubtedly a Mexi

CITY OF MEXICO, July 21, 1890. Dear Old John: I had lost you, and thought that perhaps you had gone over to the majority, until I saw your name and recognized your quill in a story. Write there are of the Howell outfit. No half-breeds for your to me; am doing well. I send you a photograph of all uncle this time.

WM. HOWELL.

little craft cut her way smoothly outward through the phosphorescent sea with the stars of an unfamiliar sky shining above us. About three o'clock in the morning, I crawled under the seat among the ballast bowlders and went to sleep. When I awakened, the sun was shining hotly over the gunwale. The Cubans showed their white teeth with a "Buenos dias, Meester Rowan," and we began another day of converting time into distance.

opinion; and I slept as soundly as any of the others.

With the coming of daylight I found that we were in a moon-shaped inlet between two small headlands in the district of Portillo. Above, the sun was rising gloriously behind El Turquino-the highest peak in all Cubaand below, near the shore, rose a riotous wall of tangled grape, mangrove, and cactus,

defended from the

sea by a sandy rampart against which the water broke in long, lapping swells. In all probability I never shall look on a scene of more entrancing beauty.

A ragged Cuban appeared presently on shore, and faces could be seen peering from the jungle. Signals passed back and forth. We pressed forward until the keel of our boat snubbed in the sand, and then I rode ashore on my sailor's shoulders. A half naked Cuban lad, with two terrible scars in his breast, the marks of Spanish Mauser bullets, led the way into the thicket. Here I saw some interesting salinas, crude arrangements for obtaining salt by the evaporation of sea water. Cut off from supplies from the outside world, the Cuban army has been provided with salt in this poor way for years.

horizon for the sight of a sail. A coral reef here parallels the shore, but with the pirate at the helm and full sail set we swept in upon a long roller from the open sea, leaped it gracefully, and dropped into the quiet water beyond.

Within our reef-protected bay we felt quite secure from any Spanish lancha. Indeed, so confident was our commander that he drew up within fifty yards of the shore and dropped anchor for the night. This arrangement was scarcely to my liking. I deemed it dangerous, but I risked no expression of

Such a spot as this offered no pleasant landing nor camping ground for an invading army. The coast is fringed with a marshlike coral reef of variable width, averaging probably three miles. This is pitted with small holes and marked with sharp hummocks, making traveling slow and difficult. Upon the porous coral grows an almost impenetrable tangle of small hard-wood trees, infinite in variety and rooted in an inch or two of vegetable mold. Through this jungle