No sooner had he raked in his last pool and refused his friend’s appeal for a trifling loan wherewith to pay for breakfast than he bought a check on the Bank of California, enclosed it in a letter containing merely the words “Bi Saly Meker,” and dispatched it by mail to the only clergyman in San Francisco whose name he knew.  Mr. Stenner had a vague notion that all kinds of business requiring strict honesty and fidelity might be profitably intrusted to the clergy; otherwise what was the use of religion?  I hope I shall not be accused of disrespect to the cloth in thus bluntly setting forth Mr. Stenner’s estimate of the parsons, inasmuch as I do not share it.

This business off his mind, Mr. Stenner unbent in a week’s revelry; at the end of which he worked his passage down to San Francisco to secure his winnings on the race, and take charge of his peerless mare.  It will be observed that his notions concerning races were somewhat confused; his experience of them had hitherto been confined to that branch of the business requiring, not technical knowledge but manual dexterity.  In short, he had done no more than pick the pockets of the spectators.  Arrived at San Francisco he was hastening to the dwelling of his clerical agent, when he met an acquaintance, to whom he put the triumphant question, “How about Sally Meeker?”

“Sally Meeker?  Sally Meeker?” was the reply.  “Oh, you mean the hoss?  Why she’s gone up the flume.  Broke her neck the first heat.  But ole Sim Salper is never a-goin’ to fret hisself to a shadder about it.  He struck it pizen in the mine she was named a’ter and the stock’s gone up from nothin’ out o’ sight.  You couldn’t tech that stock with a ten-foot pole!”

Which was a blow to Mr. Stenner.  He saw his error; the message in the coat had evidently been sent to a broker, and referred to the stock of the “Sally Meeker” mine.  And he, Stenner, was a ruined man!

Suddenly a great, monstrous, misbegotten and unmentionable oath rolled from Mr. Stenner’s tongue like a cannon shot hurled along an uneven floor!  Might it not be that the Rev. Mr. Boltright had also misunderstood the message, and had bought, not the mare, but the stock?  The thought was electrical:  Mr. Stenner ran—­he flew!  He tarried not at walls and the smaller sort of houses, but went through or over them!  In five minutes he stood before the good clergyman—­and in one more had asked, in a hoarse whisper, if he had bought any “Sally Meeker.”

“My good friend,” was the bland reply—­“my fellow traveler to the bar of God, it would better comport with your spiritual needs to inquire what you should do to be saved.  But since you ask me, I will confess that having received what I am compelled to regard as a Providential intimation, accompanied with the secular means of obedience, I did put up a small margin and purchase largely of the stock you mention.  The venture, I am constrained to state, was not wholly unprofitable.”