Arizona republican., 1898-09-09
age, and the ill-kept road full of heav,


 age, and the ill-kept road full of heavy
 grades, by walking over the now al-
 most obliterated pathway which formed wavering hypothenuse across tEe angle made by the junction of the trail with the county road. A fond
 ness for. flowers led tho young man to
 stop to pluck one of the great creamy 1 blossoms that fingered on the rubus
 bush; and then, idly beating with his
 heel at the unnoticed rock below while
 he waited for his companions to over take him, lie laid bare the secret which
 had been hidden from the beginning of the world. A bit of the stone crumble'l away under his foot; idly glancin, down, his eyes were caught by the shim-
 mer of free gold; and the Mascot mine, as he chose to call it, was discovered. Harvey Neil was type of adventurer by no means uncommon in the west. His father had been large woolen nan- ufacturer ill Connecticut, who had , failed in business and died of heart failure-of a broken heart, his widow
 always contended-just at the close of , the boys college course. It had always been tacitly accepted in the family that Harvey, the only son, should eventual ly devote himself to the mills, as his father. and his grandfather had done
 before him; but now, ha1npered by lack of both capital and experience, this course appeared scarcely practicable, while his mother, moreover, evinced a q for she charged his fathers untimely death. What with the mischieyous tinkering with the tariff which was forever a menace to the business, and the labor troubles to contribute endless turmoil, she would have her son look to some 1 other field for the success which she could lot doubt must ultimately be his whichever way he turned. And the lad, full of youths longing for adventure, was only too glad to leave the hackneyed paths he had known all his life, electing to go west and grow up with the coun- try.
 It was something of a shock to him to find the country rather more grown up, and the opportunities for profitable adventure decidedly more meager, than his dreams had pictured. He had chosen Colorado as his field of operations, and i'll his eagerness to attain riches he turned naturally to mining, where in a few brief months the little money he had brought with him had gone in allur- : ing ventures which returned him noth- ing beyond the experience he so surely needed, but for which he was anything
 but grateful. And now, wholly un- equipped by education or training for any labor open to him here, knowing no more than q pampered child of any principle of economy, Harvey Neil ex- perienced few years of very hard times indeed. The insurance on his fathers life had placed his mother in compara- tive comfort; but, after the luxuries by which he had always seen her surround ed, it seemed to the son so near to the borderland of poverty that not for the world would he allow her to con tribute another dollar to the undertak- ings in which he had come to feel him. self fairly predestined to failure. He would rot even grieve her by telling of the ill-luck which had pursued him; and more than one letter he wrote dilating upon the glorious chances which the great west offered, chances which he led her to infer he held in his grasp-when he had to wait for days merely to com | pass the purchase of a postage stamp to send the letter. To her, if somewhat vague as to his doings, he was always gay and hopeful. When he went to work as a harvest hand in the summer, such work as blistered his untried hands and brought strange aches to every bone in his body, he only told her that he had been invited to stay on a ranch for awhile, and amused her with his droll accounts of the primitive ways Of living affected by the natives to no manners born; and never was she ;l- lowed to know that lie left the ranch like common tramp at last, having been cheated out of every dollar of the wages due him. He sent her a merry description of sheep-herding, which ne tried later, as it would seem. simply for the fun of it; while few months after that, when he had found job shoveling coal in one of the Denver smelters, re- duced to such living as must have wrung the mothers heart could sine have known. the gentle lady was moved to innocent remonstrance for the wan dering life he was leading. She feared he was having too good q time, she wrote, sugar-coating the pill of protest with many 8. tender phrase; she liked to know that he was enjoying himself, but, since his future depended so wholly upon himself, his life could rot well be all holiday. Was it not true, she gently asked, that he should put his shoulder to the wheel and go to work in earnest? His shoulder to the wheel! Well that the good lady could never know what tears blotted the adnoni- tions it had cost her such pains to pen.
 (Continued Tomorrow)
 WANTED-Ten or twelve girls or wo- men to sort olives in PhOenix Ap-