Mrs. Panel sprang to her feet.  Her face was scarlet; her pale eyes snapped; the nostrils of her thin nose were dilated.

“Susan Jane Fullalove,” she cried shrilly, “how dare you?”

Mrs. Fullalove remained calm.

“It’s so, Lily.  Yer so thin, I didn’t see ye sittin’ edgeways, but ye needn’t to ramp an’ roar.  Yer ranch is flyin’ to flinders because Mr. Panel’s tuk a notion that it’s a-floatin’ on a lake of ile.”

“An’ mebbe it is,” replied Mrs. Panel, subsiding.

Shortly afterwards we heard that Uncle Jap was frequenting saloons, hanging about the hotels in the county town, hunting, of course, for a capitalist who would bore for oil on shares, seeking the “angel” with the dollars who would transport him and his Lily into the empyrean of millionaires.  When he confided as much to us, my brother Ajax remarked—­

“Hang it all, Uncle Jap, you’ve got all you want.”

“That’s so.  I hev.  But Lily——­Boys, I don’t like ter give her away—­ this is between me an’ you—­she’s the finest in the land, ain’t she?  Yas.  An’ work?  Great Minneapolis!  Why, work come mighty near robbin’ her of her looks.  It did, fer a fact.  An’ now, she’d ought ter take things easy, an’ hev a good time.”

“She does have a good time.”

“Ajax, yer talkin’ through yer hat.  What do you know of wimmenfolk?  Not a derned thing.  They’re great at pretendin’.  I dessay you, bein’ a bachelor, think that my Lily kind o’ wallers in washin’ my ole duds, an’ cookin’ the beans and bacon when the thermometer’s up to a hundred in the shade, and doin’ chores around the hog pens an’ chicken yards?  Wal—­she don’t.  She pretends, fer my sake, but bein’ a lady born an’ bred, her mind’s naterally set on—­silks an’ satins, gems, a pianner—­ an’ statooary.”

“I can’t believe it,” said my brother.  “Mrs. Panel has always seemed to me the most sensible woman——­”

“Lady, if you please.”

“I beg pardon—­the most sensible lady of my acquaintance, and the most contented with the little home you’ve made for her.”

“She helped make it.  O’ course, it’s nateral, you bein’ so young an’ innercent, that you should think you know more about Mis’ Panel’s inside than I do, but take it from me that she’s pined in secret for what I’m a-goin’ ter give her before I turn up my toes.”

With that he rode away on his old pinto horse, smiling softly and nodding his grizzled head.

Later, he travelled to San Francisco, where he interviewed presidents of banks and other magnates.  All and sundry were civil to Uncle Jap, but they refused to look for a needle in a haystack.  Uncle Jap confessed, later, that he was beginning to get “cold feet,” as he expressed it, when he happened to meet an out-of-elbows individual who claimed positively that he could discover water, gold, or oil, with no tools or instruments other than a hazel twig.  Uncle Jap, who forgot