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CORNELL
UNIVERSITY
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BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME
OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT
FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY
HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE

 

 

 

 
Cornell University Library

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THE LUCK OF ROARING
CAMP

IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

AND OTHER STORIES AND SKETCHES

BY

Hret Harte

 

 

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
Che Riverside Press Cambridge
1921

 

 

 
COPYRIGHT, 1878, BY HOUGHTON, OSGOOD & CO.
COPYRIGHT, 1883, 1896, AND 1906, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN * CO.
COPYRIGHT, 1884, BY BRET HAKTE
COPYRIGHT, I9II AND 1912, BY ANNA GRISWOLD HARTE

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY ANNA BRET HARTE

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

AOGLS Sa 7
THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP
AND OTHER STORIES AND SKETCHES
CONTENTS

GunrrAL INTRODUCTION . - ‘ ‘ & * * ° . x
Tue Luck or Roartnc CAMP AND OTHER SKETCHES.
THE Luck or Roaring Camr . "i : . : Fi 1

Tue Outcasts oF Poker FuaTr. ‘ . % i * 14
MIGGLES . : x 5 ‘ * * ‘ ‘ « Q7
TENNESSKE’S PARTNER. : ‘ ‘ e . ° ‘ 1
Tur Ipryyt or Rep GULCH .« . a ® . ‘< . - 53
Brown oF CALAVERAS . - x ‘ ‘ « . ‘ 65

ConpensED Nove .s.
Mvuck-a-Mucx: A Mopern Inprian Nove. : . - 78

SELINA SEDILIA . ‘ i 6 3 _ . . . 386
Tue NineTY-NINE GUARDSMEN . ‘ . ‘ * » Vd
Miss Mix. : i r 5 “ ‘ ‘ P 303

Mr. Mipsyieman Breezy: A NAVAL OFFICER .« ' - 113
Guy HEAvVYSTONE ; or, “ EntTiIre:’’ A Muscunar Nove. . 122
JOHN JENKINS ; oR, THE SMOKER REFORMED . fi . . 130

FANTINE. AFTER THE FRENCH oF VicTtok Hugo . o 36
“La Femnue.”? AFTER THE FRENCH oF M. MICHELET . 142
Tue DWELLER OF THE TItRESHOLD ‘ : , ‘ . 147
N N.: perne A NOVEL IN THE FRENCH PARAGRAPHIC STYL» 153
No Tit.e a 5 ‘ i . ‘ ‘ » 158
HANDSOME IS AS HANDSOME DOES 2 ‘ ‘ 167
LoTHAw ; or, THE ADVENTURES OF A YOUNG GENTLEMAN sN
SEearcu oF A RELIGION . ‘ : % i e . 178
THe HauntTeED Man: a CHRISTMAS STORY . a 5 3 188
TERENCE DENVILLE . ~ i ri . * ‘ . 197

Mary McGitiup : eH er ee eo oa 204
Tur Hooptum Banp; or, THE Boy CHieF, THE INFANT

POLITICIAN, AND THE PIRATE PRODIGY . . . a 213
EARLIER SKETCHES. l
M’uiss: AN Ipyt or RED Mountain. a

I. Smrru’s Pocker 5 x é . 2 ‘ ‘ ‘ 234

II. WHicH CONTAINS 4 DREAM OF THE JusT ARISTIDES. 243
viii CONTENTS

TI]. Unper THE GREENWOOD TREE .« ‘ ‘ x 252
IV. Wuicn was 4 Goop MorRAL TENDENCY . ‘ . 260
V. “Oprn SESAME”. . : ‘ ‘ ‘ 7 270
VI. Tue Trtats or Mrs. MorPHER .« . . . e (278
VIL. Tue Peorzx vs. Jounn Dou WATERS ‘ % ‘ 287
VII. Tue Aurnor To tHe READER — EXPLANATORY - 298
IX. Cueanine Up “ ‘ Z . é 5 5 ‘ 301
X. Tur Rep Rock i . < ‘ a ‘ F - 311
Hicu-Watrer Mark . ; ‘ f ‘“ a = é % 322
A Lonety Ripe. ‘ . . . . ‘ . . - 332
Tue Man or No Account... ee ee BBN
Notres ny FLroop anp Firtp. s 5 is < . . 384
WAITING FUR THE Suip: A Fort Pornt Ipyut . e . 371
A Nicut at WINGDAM . ‘ 3 ‘ z 7 « 874

SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS.
THE Lecenp or Monte pet DiaBLo . 3 H . 382

Tue lueut Eyr or tHE COMMANDER. . . % - 3898

Tue LecGenpr oF Devit’s Pont ‘ ¥ z ‘i ‘ 408

Tae ADVENTURE Or PaApRE VicENTIO! A LEGEND OF SAN
FRANCISCO . ‘ " - 417

Tue DeEvIL AND THE BrokER: A MepiavAL LeGEnD  . 425

Tue Ocress or Sinver Lanp; or, Tue Diverrine His-
TORY OF PRINCE BADFELLAH AND PRINCE BULLEBOYE . 430

Tye CHRISTMAS GIFT THAT CAME TO RUPERT: A STORY
wor LiTrLe SOLDIERS r ‘ 5 . . . < 437
GENERAL INTRODUCTION

TuE opportunity here offered? to give some account of
the genesis of these Californian sketches, and the condi-
tions under which they were conceived, is peculiarly tempt-
ing to an author who has been obliged to retain a decent
professional reticence under a cloud of ingenious surmise,
theory, and misinterpretation. He very gladly seizes this
opportunity to establish the chronology of the sketches,
and incidentally to show that what are considered the
“happy accidents ” of literature are very apt to be the
results of quite logical and often prosaic processes.

The author’s first volume was pubiished in 1865 in a
thin book of verse, containing, besides the titular poem,
“The Lost Galleon,” various patriotic contributions to the
lyrics of the Civil War, then raging, and certain better
known humorous pieces, which have been hitherto inter-
spersed with his later poems in separate volumes, but are
now restored to their former companionship. This was
followed in 1867 by ‘“‘The Condensed Novels,” originally
contributed to the “San Francisco Californian,” a journal
then edited by the author, and a number of local sketches
entitled ‘“‘Bohemian Papers,” making a single not very
plethoric volume, the author’s first book of prose. But he
deems it worthy of consideration that during this period,
i. e. from 1862 to 1866, he produced “The Society upon
the Stanislaus” and “The Story of M’liss,” —the first a
dialectical poem, the second a Californian romance, — his

1 By the appearance in England several years ago of an edition of the
author’s writings as then collected.
xil GENERAL INTRODUCTION

first efforts toward indicating a peculiarly characteristic
Western American literature. He would like to offer
these facts as evidence of his very early, half-boyish but
very enthusiastic belief in such a possibility, —a belief
which never deserted him, and which, a few years later,
from the better-known pages of ‘The Overland Monthly,”
he was able to demonstrate to a larger and more cosmopoli-
tan audience in the story of “The Luck of Roaring Camp”
and the poem of the ‘Heathen Chinee.” But it was one
of the anomalies of the very condition of life that he
worked amidst, and endeavored to portray, that these first
efforts were rewarded by very little success; and, as he
will presently show, even “The Luck of Roaring Camp”
depended for its recognition in California upon its success
elsewhere. Hence the critical reader will observe that the
bulk of these earlier efforts, as shown in the first two vol-
umes, were marked by very little flavor of the soil, but
were addressed to an audience half foreign in their sym-
pathies, and still imbued with Eastern or New England
habits and literary traditions. “Home” was still potent
with these voluntary exiles in their moments of relaxation.
Eastern magazines and current Eastern literature formed
their literary recreation, and the sale of the better class of
periodicals was singularly great. Nor was the taste con-
fined to American literature. The illustrated and satirical
English journals were as frequently seen in California as
in Massachusetts; and the author records that he has ex-
perienced more difficulty in procuring a copy of “Punch”
in an English provincial town than was his fortune at
“Red Dog” or “One-Horse Gulch.” An audience thus
liberally equipped and familiar with the best modern writ-
ers was naturally critical and exacting, and no one appre-
eiates more than he does the salutary effects of this severe
discipline upon his earlier efforts.

When the first number of “The Overland Monthly ”
GENERAL INTRODUCTION xiii

appeared, the author, then its editor, called the publisher’s
attention to the lack of any distinctive Californian romance
in its pages, and averred that, should no other contribu-
tion come in, he himself would supply the omission in the
next number. No other contribution was offered, and the
author, having the plot and general idea already in his
mind, in a few days sent the manuscript of “The Luck of
Roaring Camp” to the printer. He had not yet received
the proof-sheets when he was suddenly summoned to the
office of the publisher, whom he found standing the picture
of dismay and anxiety with the proof before him. The
indignation and stupefaction of the author can be well un-
derstood when he was told that the printer, instead of
zeturning the proofs to him, submitted them to the pub-
lisher, with the emphatic declaration that the matter
thereof was so indecent, irreligious, and improper that
his proof-reader —a young lady —had with difficulty been
induced to continue its perusal, and that he, as a friend of
the publisher and a well-wisher of the magazine, was im-
pelled to present to him personally this shameless evidence
of the manner in which the editor was imperilling the
future of that enterprise. It should be premised that the
critic was a man of character and standing, the head of a
large printing establishment, a church member, and, the
author thinks, a deacon. In which circumstances the pub-
lisher frankly admitted to the author that, while he could
not agree with all of the printer’s criticisms, he thought
the story open to grave objection, and its publication of
doubtful expediency.

Believing only that he was the victim of some extraor-
dinary typographical blunder, the author at once sat down
and read the proof. In its new dress, with the metamor-
phosis of type, — that metamorphosis which every writer so
well knows changes his relations to it and makes it no
longer seem a part of himself, — he was able to read it with
xiv GENERAY INTRODUCTION

something of the freshness of an untold tale. As he read
on he found himself affected, even as he had been affected
in the conception and writing of it—a feeling so incom-
patible with the charges against it, that he could only lay
it down and declare emphatically, albeit hopelessly, that
he could really see nothing objectionable in it. Other
opinions were sought and given. ‘To the author’s surprise,
he found himself in the minority. Finally, the story was
submitted to three gentlemen of culture and experience,
friends of publisher and author, — who were unable, how-
ever, to come to any clear decision. It was, however,
suggested to the author that, assuming the natural hypo-
thesis that his editorial reasoning might be warped by his
literary predilections in a consideration of one of his own
productions, a personal sacrifice would at this juncture
be in the last degree heroic. This last suggestion had
the effect of ending all further discussion, for he at once
informed the publisher that the question of the propriety
of the story was no longer at issue: the cnly question was
of his capacity to exercise the proper editorial judgment;
and that unless he was permitted to test that capacity by
the publication of the story, and abide squarely by the
result, he must resign his editorial position. The pub-
lisher, possibly struck with the author’s confidence, pos-
sibly from kindliness of disposition to a younger man,
yielded, and “The Luck of Roaring Camp ” was published
in the current number of the magazine for which it was
written, as it was written, without emendation, omission,
alteration, or apology. A not inconsiderable part of the
grotesqueness of the situation was the feeling, which the
author retained throughout the whole affair, of the perfect
sincerity, good faith, and seriousness of his friend’s — the
printer’s — objection, and for many days thereafter he was
haunted by a consideration of the sufferings of this consci-
entious man, obliged to assist materially in disseminating
GENERAL INTRODUCTION XV

the dangerous and subversive doctrines contained in this
baleful fiction. What solemn protests must have been laid
with the ink on the rollers and impressed upon those
wicked sheets! what pious warnings must have been
secretly folded and stitched in that number of “The Over-
land Monthly *! Across the chasm of years and distance
the author stretches forth the hand of sympathy and for-
giveness, not forgetting the gentle proof-reader, that chaste
and unknown nymph, whose mantling cheeks and downcast
eyes gave the first indications of warning.

But the troubles of the “Luck” were far from ended.
It had secured an entrance into the world, but, like its
own hero, it was born with an evil reputation, and to a
community that had yet to learn to love it. The secular
press, with one or two exceptions, received it coolly, and
referred to its “singularity ;” the religious press frantically
excommunicated it, and anathematized it as the offspring
of evil; the high promise of “The Overland Monthly ” was
said to have been ruined by its birth; Christians were
cautioned against pollution by its contact; practical busi-
ness men were gravely urged to condemn and frown upon
this picture of Californian society that was not conducive
to Eastern immigration; its hapless author was held up to
obloquy as a man who had abused a sacred trust. If its
life and reputation had depended on its reception in Cali-
fornia, this edition and explanation would alike have been
needless. But, fortunately, the young ‘Overland Monthly ”
had in its first number secured a hearing and position
throughout the American Union, and the author waited
the larger verdict. The publisher, albeit his worst fears
were confirmed, was not a man to weakly regret a position
he had once taken, and waited also. The return mail
from the East brought a letter addressed to the “ Editor
of the ‘ Overland Monthly,’ ” enclosing a letter from Fields,
Osgood & Co., the publishers of “The Atlantic Monthly,”
 

xvi GENERAL INTRODUCTIOY

addressed to the-—to them — unknown “Author of ‘ The
Luck of Roaring Camp.’” This the author opened, and
found to be a request, upon the most flattering terms, for
a story for the “ Atlantic” similar to the “Luck.” The
same mail brought newspapers and reviews welcoming the
little foundling of Californian literature with an enthusiasm
that half frightened its author; but with the placing of
that letter in the hands of the publisher, who chanced to
be standing by his side, and who during those dark days
had, without the author’s faith, sustained the author’s
position, he felt that his compensation was full and com-
plete.

Thus encouraged, “The Luck of Roaring Camp” was
followed by “The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” “ Miggles,”
“Tennessee’s Partner,” and those various other characters
who had impressed the author when, a mere truant school-
boy, he had lived among them. It is hardly necessary to
say to any observer of human nature that at this time he
was advised by kind and well-meaning friends to content
himself with the success of the “Luck,” and not tempt
criticism again; or that from that moment ever after he
was in receipt of that equally sincere contemporaneous
criticism which assured him gravely that each successive
story was a falling off from the last. Howbeit, by rein-
vigorated confidence in himself and some conscientious
industry, he managed to get together in a year six or eight
of these sketches, which, in a volume called ‘The Luck
of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches,” gave him that
encouragement in America and England that has since
seemed to justify him in swelling these records of a pic-
turesque passing civilization into the compass of the present
edition.

A few words regarding the peculiar conditions of life
and society that are here rudely sketched, and often but
barely outlined. The author is aware that, partly from
GENERAL INTRODUCTION XViL

a habit of thought and expression, partly from the exigen-
cies of brevity in his narratives, and partly from the habit
of addressing an audience familar with the local scenery,
he often assumes, as premises already granted by the reader,
the existence of a peculiar and romantic state of civiliza-
tion, the like of which few English readers are inclined to
accept without corroborative facts and figures. These he
could only give by referring to the ephemeral records of
Californian journals of that date, and the testimony of far-
scattered witnesses, survivors of the exodus of 1849. He
must beg the reader to bear in mind that this emigration
was either across a continent almost unexplored, or by the
way of a long and dangerous voyage around Cape Horn,
and that the promised land itself presented the singular
spectacle of a patriarchal Latin race who had been left to
themselves, foreotten by the world, for nearly three hun-
dred years. ‘he faith, courage, vigor, youth, and capacity
for adventure necessary to this emigration produced a body
of men as strongly distinctive as the companions of Jason.
Unlike most pioneers, the majority were men of profession
and education; all were young, and all had staked their
future in the enterprise. Critics who have taken large
and exhaustive views of mankind and society from club
windows in Pall Mall or the Fifth Avenue can only accept
tor granted the turbulent chivalry that thronged the streets
of San Francisco in the gala days of her youth, and must
‘ead the blazon of their deeds like the doubtful quarterings
vf the shield of Amadis de Gaul. The author has been
frequently asked if such and such incidents were real, — if
ye had ever met such and such characters. To this he
must return the one answer, that in only a single instance
was he conscious of drawing purely from his imagination
and fancy for a character and a logical succession of inci-
dents drawn therefrom. A few weeks after his story was
published, he received a letter, authentically signed, cor-
XVili GENERAL INTRODUCTION

recting some of the minor details of his facts (!), and
enclosing as corroborative evidence a slip from an old news-
paper, wherein the main incident of his supposed fanciful
creation was recorded with a largeness of statement that far
transcended his powers of imagination.

He has been repeatedly cautioned, kindly and unkindly,
intelligently and unintelligently, against his alleged ten-
dency to confuse recognized standards of morality by ex-
tenuating lives of recklessness, and often criminality, with
a single solitary virtue. He might easily show that he
has never written a sermon, that he has never moralized
or commented upon the actions of his heroes, that he has
never voiced a creed or obtrusively demonstrated an ethi-
eal opinion. He might easily allege that this merciful
effect of his art arose from the reader’s weak human sym-
pathies, and hold himself irresponsible. But he would be
conscious of a more miserable weakness in thus divorcing
himself from his fellow-men who in the domain of art
must ever walk hand in hand with him. So he prefers te
say that, of all the various forms in which Cant presents
itself to suffering humanity, he knows of none so out-
rageous, so illogical, so undemonstrable, so marvelously
absurd, as the Cant of ‘Too Much Mercy.” When it shall
be proven to him that communities are degraded and
brought to guilt and crime, suffering or destitution, from
a predominance of this quality; when he shall see pardoned
ticket-of-leave men elbowing men of austere lives out of
situation and position, and the repentant Magdalen sup-
planting the blameless virgin in society, — then he will lay
aside his pen and extend his hand to the new Draconian
discipline in fiction. But until then he will, without
claiming to be a religious man or a moralist, but simply as
an artist, reverently and humbly conform to the rules laid
down by a Great Poet who created the parable of the
“Prodigal Son” and the “Good Samaritan,” whose works
GENERAL INTRODUCTION xix

have lasted eighteen hundred years, and will remain when
the present writer and his generation are forgotten. And
he is conscious of uttering uno original doctrine in this, but
of only voicing the beliefs of a few of his literary brethren
happily living, and one gloriously dead, who never made
proclamation of this “from the housetops.”
THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP, AND
OTHER STORIES AND SKETCHES

THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP

THERE was commotion in Roaring Camp. It could not
have been a fight, for in 1850 that was not novel enough to
have called together the entire settlement. The ditches and
claims were not only deserted, but “‘Tuttle’s grocery ” had
contributed its gamblers, who, it will be remembered,
calmly continued their game the day that French Pete and
Kanaka Joe shot each other to death over the bar in the
front room. The whole camp was collected before a rude
cabin on the outer edge of the clearing. Conversation was
carried on in a low tone, but the name of a woman was
irequently repeated. It was a name familiar enough in
the camp, — “ Cherokee Sal.”

Perhaps the less said of her the better. She was a
coarse and, it is to be feared, a very sinful woman. But at
that time she was the only woman in Roaring Camp, and
was just then lying in sore extremity, when she most
needed the ministration of her own sex. Dissolute, aban-
doned, and irreclaimable, she was yet suffering a martyrdom
hard enough to bear even when veiled by sympathizing
womanhood, but now terrible in her loneliness. The primal
eurse had come to her in that original isolation which must
have made the punishment of the first transgression se
dreadful. It was, perhaps, part of the expiation of her sin
2 THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP

that, at a moment when she most lacked her sex’s intuitive
tenderness and care, she met only the half-contemptuous
faces of her masculine associates. Yet a few of the specta-
tors were, I think, touched by her sufferings. Sandy Tipton
yhought it was ‘rough on Sal,” and, in the contemplation
of her condition, for a moment rose superior to the fact that
he had an ace and two bowers in his sleeve.

It will be seen also that the situation was novel.
Deaths were by no means uncommon in Roaring Camp, but
a birth was a new thing. People had been dismissed the
camp effectively, finally, and with no possibility of return ;
but this was the first time that anybody had been introduced
ab initio. Hence the excitement.

“You go in there, Stumpy,” said a prominent citizen
known as “ Kentuck,” addressing one of the loungers.
“Go in there, and see what you kin do. You’ve had
experience in them things.”

Perhaps there was a fitness in the selection. Stumpy, in
other climes, had been the putative heaa of two families;
in fact, it was owing to some legal informality in these
proceedings that Roaring Camp —a city of refuge — was
indebted to his company. The crowd approved the choice,
and Stumpy was wise enough to bow to the majority. The
door closed on the extempore surgeon and midwife, and
Roaring Camp sat down outside, smoked its pipe, and
awaited the issue.

The assemblage numbered about a hundred men. One
or two of these were actual fugitives from justice, some
were criminal, and all were reckless, Physically they
exhibited no indication of their past lives and character.
The greatest scamp had a Raphael face, with a profusion of
blonde hair; Oakhurst, a gambler, had the melancholy air
and intellectual abstraction of a Hamlet; the coolest and
most courageous man was scarcely over five feet in height,
with a soft voice and an embarrassed, timid manner. The
THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP 8

term “roughs”’ applied to them was a distinction rather
than a definition. Perhaps in the minor details of fingers,
toes, ears, etc., the camp may have been deficient, but these
slight omissions did not detract from their aggregate force.
The strongest man had but three fingers on his right hand;
the best shot had but one eye.

Such was the physical aspect of the men that were dis.
persed around the cabin. The camp lay in a triangular
valley between two hills and.a river. ‘The only outlet was
a steep trail over the summit of a hill that faced the cabin,
now illuminated by the rising moon. The suffering woman
might have seen it from the rude bunk whereon she lay, —
seen it winding like a silver thread until it wag lost in the
stars above.

A fire of withered pine boughs added sociability to the
gathering. By degrees the natural levity of Roaring Camp
returned. Bets were freely offered and taken regarding the
result. Three to five that ‘Sal would get through with
it; ’’ even that the child would survive; side bets as to the
sex and complexion of the coming stranger. In the midst
of an excited discussion an exclamation came from those
nearest the door, and the camp stopped to listen. Above
the swaying and moaning of the pines, the swift rush of the
river, and the crackling of the fire rose a sharp, querulous
ery, —a cry unlike anything heard before in the camp.
The pines stopped moaning, the river ceased to rush, and
the fire tu crackle. It seemed as if Nature had stopped to
‘isten too.

The camp rose to its feet as one man! It was proposed
to explode a barrel of gunpowder; but in consideration of
the situation of the mother, better counsels prevailed, and
only a few revolvers were discharged; for whether owing
to the rude surgery of the camp, or some other reason,
Clierokee Sal was sinking fast. Within an hour she had
‘limbed, as ib were, that rugged road that led to the stars,
4 THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP

and so passed out of Roaring Camp, its sin and shame, for-
ever. I donot think that the announcement disturbed them
much, except in speculation as to the fate of the child.
“Can he live now ?””? was asked of Stumpy. The answer
was doubtful. he only other being of Cherokee Sal’s sex
and maternal condition in the settlement was an ass.
There was some conjecture as to fitness, but the experimen’
was tried. It was less problematical than the ancient treat.
ment of Romulus and Remus, and apparently as succes:
ful. :

When these details were completed, which exhauste.'
another hour, the door was opened, and the anxious crowc
of men, who had already formed themselves into a queue,
entered in single file. Beside the lew bunk or shelf, on
which the figure of the mother was starkly outlined below
the blankets, stood a pine table. On this a candle-box was
placed, and within it, swathed in staring red flannel, lay the
last arrival at Roaring Camp. Beside the candle-box was
placed a hat. Its use was soon indicated. ‘‘ Gentlemen,”
said Stumpy, with a singular mixture of authority and ex
officio complacency, — “‘ gentlemen will please pass in at
the front door, round the table, and out at the back door.
Them as wishes to contribute anything toward the orphan
will find a hat handy.”” The first man entered with his hat
on; he uncovered, however, as he looked about him, and
so unconsciously set an example to the next. In such
communities good and bad actions are catching. As the
procession filed in comments were audible, — criticisms ad-
dressed perhaps rather to Stumpy in the character of show-
man: “Ts that him?” “Mighty small specimen; ”
“ Has n’t more ’n got the color;” ‘ Ain’t bigger nor a der-
ringer.” The contributions were as characteristic: A
silver tobacco box; a doubloon; a navy revolver, silver
mounted ; a gold specimen ; a very beautifully embroidered
lady’s handkerchief (from Oakhurst the gambler); a dia
THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP 5

mond breastpin; a diamond ring (suggested by the pin, with
the remark from the giver that he ‘saw that pin and went
two diamonds better’’) ; a slung-shot; a Bible (contributor
not detected); a golden spur; a silver teaspoon (the initials,
I regret to say, were not the giver’s); a pair of surgeon’s
shears ; a lancet ; a Bank of England note for £5; and about
$200 in loose gold and silver coin, During these proceed-
ings Stumpy maintained a silence as impassive as the dead on
his left, a gravity as inscrutable as that of the newly born
onhisright. Only one incident occurred to break the monot-
ony of the curious procession. As Kentuck bent over the
candle-box half curiously, the child turned, and, in a spasm
of pain, caught at his groping finger, and held it fast for a
moment. Kentuck looked foolish and embarrassed. Some-
thing like a blush tried to assert itself in his weather-beaten
cheek. ‘The d—d little cuss!” he said, as he extricated
his finger, with perhaps more tenderness and care than he
might have been deemed capable of showing. He held
that finger a little apart from its fellows as he went out,
and examined it curiously. The examination provoked the
same original remark in regard to the child. In fact, he
seemed to enjoy repeating it. ‘ He rastled with my finger,”
he remarked to Tipton, holding up the member, ‘‘ the d—d
little cuss!”

It was four o’clock before the camp sought repose. A
light burnt in the cabin where the watchers sat, for Stumpy
did not go to bed that night. Nor did Kentuck. He drank
quite freely, and related with great gusto his experience,

wariably ending with his characteristic condemnation of
uhe newcomer. It seemed to relieve him of any unjust
implication of sentiment, and Kentuck had the weaknesses
of the nobler sex. When everybody else had gone to bed,
he walked down to the river and whistled reflectingly.
Then he walked up the gulch past the cabin, still whistling
with demonstrative unconcern, At a large redwood-tree he
6 THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP

paused and retraced his steps, and again passed the cabin,
Halfway down to the river’s bank he again paused, and
then returned and knocked at the door. It was opened by
Stumpy. ‘How goes it?” said Kentuck, looking past
Stumpy toward the candle-box. ‘All serene!” replied
Stumpy. “Anything up?” ‘ Nothing.” There was a
pause — an embarrassing one — Stumpy still holding the
door. Then Kentuck had recourse to his finger, which he
held up to Stumpy. “ Rastled with it, — the d—d little
cuss,” he said, and retired.

The next day Cherokee Sal had such rude sepulture as
Roaring Camp afforded. After her body had been committed
to the hillside, there was a formal meeting of the camp to
discuss what should be done with her infant. A resolution
to adept it was unanimous and enthusiastic. But an ani-
mated discussion in regard to the manner and feasibility of
providing for its wants at once sprang up. It was remarkable
that the argument partook of none of those fierce person-
alities with which discussions were usually conducted at
Roaring Camp. Tipton proposed that they should send the
child to Red Dog,—a distance of forty miles, — where
female attention could be procured. But the unlucky sug-
gestion met with fierce and unanimous opposition. It was
evident that no plan which entailed parting from their new
acquisition would for a moment be entertained. ‘‘ Besides,”
said Tom Ryder, “them fellows at Red Dog would swap
it, and ring in somebody else on us.” A disbelief in the
honesty of other camps prevailed at Roaring Camp, as in
other places.

The introduction of a female nurse in the camp also met
with objection. It was argued that no decent woman could
be prevailed to accept Roaring Camp as her home, and the
speaker urged that ‘they did n’t want any more of the other
kind.” This unkind allusion to the defunct mother, harsh
as it may seem, was the first spasm of propriety, —the first
THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP q

symptom of the camp’s regeneration. Stumpy advanced
nothing. Perhaps he felt a certain delicacy in interfering
with the selection of a possible successor in office. But
when questioned, he averred stoutly that he and “ Jinny” —
the mammal before alluded to — could manage to rear the
child. There was something original, independent, and
heroic about the plan that pleased the camp. Stumpy was
retained. Certain articles were sent for to Sacramento.
“Mind,” said the treasurer, as he pressed a bag of gold-dust
into the expressman’s hand, “the best that can be got, —
lace, you know, and filigree-work and frills, —d—n the
cost |”

Strange to say, the child thrived. Perhaps the invigo.
rating climate of the mountain camp was compensation for
material deficiencies. Nature took the foundling to her
broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of the Sierra foot-
hills, — that air pungent with balsamic odor, that ethereal
cordial at once bracing and exhilarating, — he may have
found food and nourishment, or a subtle chemistry that
transmuted ass’s milk to lime and phosphorus. Stumpy
inclined to the belief that it was the latter and good nurs-
ing. ‘Me and that ass,” he would say, “has heen father
and mother to him! Don’t you,” he would add, apostro-
phizing the helpless bundle before him, “never go back
on us.”

By the time he was a month old the necessity of giving
him a name became apparent. He had generally been
known as “The Kid,” “Stumpy’s Boy,” “The Coyote”
(an allusion to his vocal powers), and even by Kentuck’s
endearing diminutive of ‘“ The d—d little cuss.” But these
were felt to be vague and unsatisfactory, and were at iast
dismissed under another influence. Gamblers and adven-
turers are generally superstitious, and Oakhurst one day
declared that the baby had brought “the luck” to Roaring
Camp. It was certain that of late they had been succe »
8 THE LUCK OF KOARING CAMP

ful. ‘Luck’ was the name agreed upon, with the prefix
of Tommy for greater convenience. No allusion was made
te the mother, and the father was unknown. ‘It’s better,”
said the philosophical Oakhurst, “to take a fresh deal all
round, Call him Luck, and start him fair.” A day was
accordingly set apart for the christening. What was meant
by this ceremony the reader may imagine who has already
gathered some idea of the reckless irreverence of Roaring
Camp. The master of ceremonies was one “ Boston,” a
noted wag, and the occasion seemed to promise the greatest
facetiousness. This ingenious satirist had spent two days
in preparing a burlesque of the Church service, with pointed
local allusions. The choir was properly trained, and Sandy
Tipton was to stand godfather. But after the procession
had marched to the grove with music and banners, and the
child had been deposited before a mock altar, Stumpy
stepped before the expectant crowd. ‘It ain’t my. style to
spoil fun, boys,”’ said the little man, stoutly eying the face
around him, “ but it strikes me that this thing ain’t exactly
on the squar. It’s playing it pretty low down on this yer
baby to ring in fun on him that he ain’t goin’ to understand.
And ef there’s goin’ to be any godfathers round, I’d like to
see who’s got any better rights than me.” A silence fol-
lowed Stumpy’s speech. To the credit of all humorists be
it said that the first man to acknowledge its justice was the
satirist thus stopped of his fun. “But,” said Stumpy,
quickly following up his advantage, “we’re here for a
christening, and we’ll have it. I proclaim you Thomas
Luck, according to the laws of the United States and the
State of California, so help me God.” lt was the first time
that the name of the Deity had been otherwise uttered than
profanely in the camp. The form of christening was per-
haps even more Indicrous than the satirist had conceived ;
but strangely enough, nobody saw it and nobody laughed.
“Tommy” was christened as seriously as he would have
THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP 9

been under a Christian roof, and cried and was comforted in
as orthodox fashion.

And so the work of regeneration began in Roaring
Camp. Almost imperceptibly a change came over the
settlement. The cabin assigned to “Tommy Luck”? — or
“The Luck,” as he was more frequently called — first
showed signs of improvement. It was kept scrupulously
clean and whitewashed. Then it was boarded, clothed,
and papered. The rosewood cradle, packed eighty miles by
mule, had, in Stumpy’s way of putting it, “sorter killed
the rest of the furniture.” So the rehabilitation of the
cabin became a necessity. The men who were in the habit
of lounging in at Stumpy’s to see “ how ‘ The Luck’ got on”
seemed to appreciate the change, and in self-defense the
rival establishment of ‘ Tuttle’s grocery ”’ bestirred itself
and imported a carpet and mirrors. The reflections of the
latter on the appearance of Roaring Camp tended to pro-
duce stricter habits of personal cleanliness. Again Stumpy
imposed a kind of quarantine upon those who aspired to the
honor and privilege of holdin, The Luck. It was a cruel
mottification to Kentuck — who, in the carelessness of a
large nature and the habits of frontier life, had begun to
regard all garments as a second cuticle, which, like a
snake’s, only sloughed off through decay — to be debarred
chis privilege from certain prudential reasons. Yet such
was the subtle influence of innovation that he thereafter
appeared regularly every afternoon in a clean shirt and
face still shining from his ablutions. Nor were moral and
social sanitary laws neglected. “Tommy,” who was sup-
posed to spend his whole existence in a persistent attempt
to repose, must not be disturbed by noise. The shouting
and yelling, which had gained the camp its infelicitous title,
were not permitted within hearing distance of Stumpy’s.
The men conversed in whispers or smoked with Indian
gravity. Profanity was tacitly given up in these sacred pre
10 THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP

zincts, and throughout the camp a popular form of exple-
tive, knownas “ D—n the luck!” and “ Curse the luck !”
was abandoned, as having a new personal bearing. Vocal
music was not interdicted, being supposed to have a sooth-
ing, tranquilizing quality ; and one song, sung by ‘ Man-o’-
War Jack,” an English sailor from her Majesty’s Australian
colonies, was quite popular asa lullaby. It was a lugubri-
ous recital of the exploits of “the Arethusa, Seventy-four,”
in a muffled minor, ending with a prolonged dying fall at
the burden of each verse, ‘‘ On b-oo-o-ard of the Arethusa.”
It was a fine sight to see Jack holding The Luck, rocking
from side to side as if with the motion of a ship, and croon-
ing forth this naval ditty. Either through the peculiar
rocking of Jack or the length of his song,—it contained
ninety stanzas, and was continued with conscientious deliber-
ation to the bitter end,—the lullaby generally had the
desired effect. At such times the men would lie at full
length under the trees in‘ the soft summer twilight, smok-
ing their pipes and drinking in the melodious utterances.
An indistinct idea that this was pastoral happiness per-
vaded the camp. ‘This ’ere kind o’ think,” said the
Cockney Simmons, meditatively reclining on his elbow, ‘is
vevingly.”” It reminded him of Greenwich.

On the long summer days The Luck was usually carried
to the gulch from whence the golden store of Roaring
Camp was taken. There, on a blanket spread over pine
boughs, he would lie while the men were working in the
ditches below. Latterly there was a rude attempt to deco-
rate this bower with flowers and sweet-smelline shrubs, and
generally some one would bring him a cluster of wild honey-
suckles, azaleas, or the painted blossoms of Las Mariposas.
The men had suddenly awakened to the fact that there
were beauty and significance in these trifles, which they had
so long trodden carelessly beneath their feet. A flake of
glittering mica, a fragment of variegated quartz, a bright
THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP 11

pebble from the bed of the creek, became beautiful to eyes
thus cleared and strengthened, and were invariably put
aside for The Luck. It was wonderful how many trea-
sures the woods and hillsides yielded that “ would do for
Tommy.” Surrounded by playthings such as never child
out of fairyland had before, it is to be heped that Tommy
was content. He appeared to be serenely happy, albeit
there was an infantine gravity about him, a contemplative
light in his round gray eyes, that sometimes worried Stumpy.
He was always tractable and quiet, and it is recorded that
once, having crept beyond his “ corral,’’ —a hedge of tessel-
lated pine boughs, which surrounded his bed, — he dropped
over the bank on his head in the soft earth, and remained
with his mottled legs in the air in that position for at least
five minutes with unflinching gravity. He was extricated
without a murmur. I hesitate to record the many other
instances of his sagacity, which rest, unfortunately, upon
the statements of prejudiced friends. Some of them were
not without a tinge of superstition. “I crep’ up the bank
” said Kentuck one day, in a breathless state of
excitement, “and dern my skin if he was n’t a-talking to a

just now,

jaybird as was a-sittin’ on his lap. There they was, just as
free and sociable as anything you please, a-jawin’ at each
other just like two cherrybums.”” Howbeit, whether creep-
ing over the pine boughs or lying lazily on his back blink-
ing at the leaves above him, to him the birds sang, the
squirrels chattered, and the flowers bloomed. Nature was
his nurse and playfellow. For him she would let slip be-
tween the leaves golden shafts of sunlight that fell just
within his grasp; she would send wandering breezes to
visit him with the balm of bay and resinous gum; to him
the tall redwoods nodded familiarly and sleepily, the bum-
blebees buzzed, and the rooks cawed a slumbrous accom.
paniment.

Such was the golden summer of Roaring Camp. They
12 THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP

were “flush times,” and the luck was with them. The
claims had yielded enormously. The camp was jealous of
its privileges and looked suspiciously on strangers. No
encouragement was given to immigration, and, to make
their seclusion more perfect, the land on either side of
the mountain wall that surrounded the camp they duly
preémpted. This, and a reputation for singular proficiency
with the revolver, kept the reserve of Roaring Camp invio-
late. The expressman — their only connecting link with
the surrounding world — sometimes told wonderful stories
of the camp. He would say, “They ’ve a street up there
in ‘Roaring’ that would lay over any street in Red Dog.
They ’ve got vines and flowers round their houses, and they
wash themselves twice a day. But they’re mighty rough
on strangers, and they worship an Ingin baby.”

With the prosperity of the camp came a desire for
further improvement. It was proposed to build a hotel in
the following spring, and to invite one or two decent fam-
ilies to reside there for the sake of The Luck, who might
perhaps profit by female companionship. The sacrifice that
this concession to the sex cost these men, who were fiercely
skeptical in regard to its general virtue and usefulness, can
only be accounted for by their affection for Tommy. <A few
still held out. But the resolve could not be carried into
effect for three months, and the minority meekly yielded in
the hope that something might turn up to prevent it, And
it did,

The winter of 1851 will long he remembered in the foot-
hilis. The snow lay deep on the Sierras, and’ every moun-
tain creek became a river, and every river a lake. Each
gorge and gulch was transformed into a tumultuous water-
course that descended the hillsides, tearing down giant trees
and scattering its drift and débris along the plain. Red
Dog had been twice under water, and Roaring Camp had
keen forewarned. ‘“ Water put the gold into them gulches,”
THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP is

said Stumpy. ‘It’s been here once and will be here again!”
And that night the North Fork suddenly leaped over its
banks and swept up the triangular valley of Roaring Camp.

In the confusion of rushing water, crashing trees, and
ervackling timber, and the darkness which seemed to flow
with the water and blot out the fair valley, but little could
be done to collect the scattered camp. When the morning
broke, the cabin of Stumpy, nearest the river-bank, was
gone. Higher up the gulch they found the body of its un-
lucky owner; but the pride, the hope, the joy, The Luck,
of Roaring Camp had disappeared. They were returning
with sad hearts when a shout from the bank recalled them.

It was a relief-boat from down the river. They had
picked up, they said, a man and an infant, nearly exhausted,
about two miles below. Did anybody know them, and
did they belong here ?

It needed but a glance to show them Kentuck lying
there, cruelly crushed and bruised, but still holding The
Luck of Roaring Camp in his arms. As they bent over the
strangely assorted paiz, they saw that the child was cold
and pulseless. “‘ He is dead,” said one. Kentuck opened
his eyes. “Dead?” he repeated feebly. “ Yes, my mar,
and you are dying too.” A smile lit the eyes of the expir-
ing Kentuck. “Dying!” he repeated; “he’s a-taking
me with him. Tell the boys I’ve got The Luck with me
now;’’ and the strong man, clinging to the frail babe as &
drowning man is said to cling to a straw, drifted away ints
the shadowy river that flows forever to the unknown sea.
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT

As Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main
street of Poker Flat on the morning of the 23d of Novem-
ber, 1850, he was conscious of a change in its moral atmos-
phere since the preceding night. Two or three men, con-
versing earnestly together, ceased as he approached, and
exchanged significant glances. There was a Sabbath lull
in the air, which, in a settlement unused to Sabbath in-
fluences, looked ominous.

Mr. Oakhurst’s calm, handsome face betrayed small con-
cern in these indications. Whether he was conscious of
any predisposing cause was another question. “I reckon
they ’re after somebody,” he reflected ; ‘likely it’s me.”
He returned to his pocket the handkerchief with which he
had been whipping away the red dust of Poker Flat from
his neat boots, and quietly discharged his mind of any
further conjecture.

In point of fact, Poker Flat was “after somebody.” It
had lately suffered the loss of several thousand dollars, two
valuable horses, and a prominent citizen. It was experi-
encing a spasm of virtuous reaction, quite as lawless and
ungovernable as any of the acts that had provoked it. A
secret committee had determined to rid the town of all im-
proper persons. This was done permanently in regard of
two men who were then hanging from the boughs of a
sycamore in the gulch, and temporarily in the banishment
of certain other objectionable characters. I regret to say
that some of these were ladies. It is but due to the sex,
however, to state that their impropriety was professional,
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT 15

and it was only in such easily established standards of evil
that Poker Flat ventured to sit in judgment.

Mr. Oakhurst was right in supposing that he was in-
cluded in this category. A few of the committee had
urged hanging him as a possible example and a sure
method of reimbursing themselves from his pockets of the
sums he had won from them. “It’s agin justice,’ said
Jim Wheeler, “to let this yer young man from Roaring
Camp — an entire stranger — carry away our money.” But
a crude sentiment of equity residing in the breasts of those
who had been fortunate enough to win from Mr. Oakhurst
overruled this narrower local prejudice.

Mr. Oakhurst received his sentence with philosophic
calmness, none the less coolly that he was aware of the
hesitation of his judges. He was too much of a gambler
not to accept fate. With him life was at best an uncertain
game, and he recognized the usual percentage in favor of
the dealer.

A body of armed men accompanied the deported wicked-
ness of Poker Flat to the outskirts of the settlement.
Besides Mr. Oakhurst, who was known to be a coolly des-
perate man, and for whose intimidation the armed escort
was intended, the expatriated party consisted of a young
woman familiarly known as “The Duchess; another who
had won the title of ‘ Mother Shipton;’ and “ Uncle
Billy,” a suspected sluice-robber and confirmed drunkard.
The cavalcade provoked no comments from the spectators,
nor was any word uttered by the escort. Only when the
gulch which marked the uttermost limit of Poker Flat was
reached, the leader spoke briefly and to the point. The
exiles were forbidden to return at the peril of their lives.

As the escort disappeared, their pent-up feelings found
vent in a few hysterical tears from the Duchess, some bad
language from Mother Shipton, and a Parthian volley cf
expletives from Uncle Billy. The philosophic Oakhursi
16 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT

alcne remained silent. He listened calmly to Mother
Shipton’s desire to cut somebody’s heart out, to the
repeated statements of the Duchess that she would die in
the road, and to the alarming oaths that seemed to be
bumped out of Uncle Billy as he rode forward. With the
easy good humor characteristic of his class, he insisted
upon exchanging his own riding-horse, “ Five-Spot,” for
the sorry mule which the Duchess rode. But even this
act did not draw the party into any closer sympathy. The
young woman readjusted her somewhat draggled plumes
with a feeble, faded coquetry; Mother Shipton eyed the
possessor of “ Five-Spot’”? with malevolence, and Uncle
Billy included the whole party in one sweeping anathema.

The road to Sandy Bar —a camp that, not having as yet
experienced the regenerating influences of Poker Flat, con-
sequently seemed to offer some invitation to the emigrants
—lay over a steep mountain range. It was distant a day’s
severe travel. In that advanced season the party soon
passed out of the moist, temperate regions of the foothills
into the dry, cold, bracing air of the Sierras. The trail
was narrow and difficult. At noon the Duchess, rolling
out of her saddle upon the grcund, declared her intention
of going no farther, and the party halted.

The spot was singularly wild and impressive. A wooded
amphitheatre, surrounded on three sides by precipitous
clifs of naked granite, sloped gently toward the crest of
another precipice that overlooked the valley. It was, un-
doubtedly, the most suitable spot for a camp, had camping
been advisable. But Mr. Oakhurst knew that scarcely h
the journey to Sandy Bar was accomplished, and the parv,
were not equipped or provisioned for delay. This fact he
pointed out to his companions curtly, with a philosophic
commentary on the folly of ‘throwing up their hand before
the game was played out.’ But they were furnished with
liquor, which in this emergency stood them in place of food,
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT 13

fuel, rest, and prescience. In spite of his remonstrances, it
was not long before they were more or less under its influ-
ence. Uncle Billy passed rapidly from a bellicose state into
one of stupor, the Duchess became maudlin, and Mother
Shipton snored. Mr. Oakhurst alone remained erect, lean-
ing against a rock, calmly surveying them.

Mr. Oakhurst did not drink. It interfered with a pro-
fession which required coolness, impassiveness, and presence
of mind, and, in his own language, he “ could n’t afford it.’
As he gazed at his recumbent fellow exiles, the loneliness
begotten of his pariah trade, his habits of life, his very vices,
for the first time seriously oppressed him. He bestirred
himself in dusting his black clothes, washing his hands and
face, and other acts characteristic >2 his studiously neat
habits, and for a moment icrgot his annoyance. The
thought of deserting his weaker and more pitiable compan-
ions never perhaps occurred to him. Yet he could not help
feeling the want of that excitement which, singularly
enough, was most conducive to that calm equanimity for
which he was notorious. He looked at the gloomy walls
that rose a thousand feet sheer above the circling pines
around him, at the sky ominously clouded, at the valley
below, already deepening into shadow; and, doing so, sud-
denly he heard his own name called.

A horseman slowly ascended the trail. In the fresh,
open face of the newcomer Mr. Oakhurst recognized Tom
Simson, otherwise known as “The Innocent,” of Sandy
Bar. He had met him some months before over a “ little
game,” and had, with perfect equanimity, won the entire
fortune — amcunting to some forty dollars — of that guile-
less youth. After the game was finished, Mr. Oakhurst
drew the youthful speculator behind the door and thus ad-
dressed him: “Tommy, you’re a good little man, but you
can’t gamble worth a cent. Don’t try it over again.” He
18 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT

then handed him his money back, pushed him gently from
the room, and so made a devoted slave of Tom Simson.

There was a remembrance of this in his boyish and en-
thusiastic greeting of Mr. Oakhurst. He had started, he
said, to go to Poker Flat to seek his fortune. ‘‘ Alone?”
No, not exactly alone; in fact (a giggle), he had run away
with Piney Woods. Didn’t Mr. Oakhurst remember Piney ?
She that used to wait on the table at the Temperance
House ? They had been engaged a long time, but old
Jake Woods had objected, and so they had run away, and
were going to Poker Flat to be married, and here they
were. And they were tired out, and how lucky it was they
had found a place to camp, and company. All this the
Innocent delivered rapidly, while Piney, a stout, comely
damsel of fifteen, emerged from behind the pine-tree,
where she had been blushing unseen, and rode to the side
of her lover.

Mr. Oakhurst seldom troubled himself with sentiment,
still less with propriety ; but he had a vague idea that the
situation was not fortunate. He retained, however, his
presence of mind sufficiently to kick Uncle Billy, who was
about to say something, and Uncle Billy was sober enough
to recognize in Mr, Oakhurst’s kick a superior power that
would not bear trifling. He then endeavored to dissuade
Tom Simson from delaying further, but in vain. He even
pointed out the fact that there was no provision, nor means
of making a camp. But, unluckily, the Innocent met this
objection by assuring the party that he was provided with
an extra mule loaded with provisions, and by the discovery
of arude attempt at a log house near the trail. “ Piney
can stay with Mrs, Oakhurst,” said the Innocent, pointing
to the Duchess, “and I can shift for myself.”

Nothing but Mr. Oakhurst’s admonishing foot saved
Uncle Billy from bursting into a roar of laughter. As it
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT 19

was, he felt compelled to retire up the cafion until he could
recover his gravity. There he confided the joke to the tall
pine-trees, with many slaps of his leg, contortions of his
face, and the usual profanity. But when he returned to
the party, he found them seated by a fire — for the air had
grown strangely chill and the sky overcast — in apparently
amicable conversation. Piney was actually talking in an
impulsive girlish fashion to the Duchess, who was listening
with an interest and animation she had not shown for
many days. The Innocent was holding forth, apparently
with equal effect, to Mr. Oakhurst and Mother Shipton,
who was actually relaxing into amiability. “Is this yera
d—d picnic?” said Uncle Billy, with inward scorn, as he
surveyed the sylvan group, the glancing firelight, and the
tethered animals in the foreground. Suddenly an idea
mingled with the alcoholic fumes that disturbed his brain.
It was apparently of a jocular nature, for he felt impelled
to slap his leg again and cram his fist into his mouth.

As the shadows crept slowly up the mountain, a slight
breeze rocked the tops of the pine-trees and moaned
through their long and gloomy aisles. The ruined cabin,
patched and covered with pine boughs, was set apart for the
ladies. As the lovers parted, they unaffectedly exchanged
a kiss, so honest and sincere that it might have been heard
above the swaying pines. The frail Duchess and the
malevolent Mother Shipton were probably too stunned to
remark upon this last evidence of simplicity, and so turned
without a word to the hut. The fire was replenished, the
men lay down before the door, and in a few minutes were
asleep.

Mr. Oakhurst was a light sleeper. Toward morning he
awoke benumbed and cold. As he stirred the dying fire,
the wind, which was now blowing strongly, brought to his
eheek that which caused the blood to leave it, — snow !

He started to his feet with the intention of awakening
20 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT

the sleepers, for there was no time to lose. But turning to
where Uncle Billy had been lying, he found him gone. A
suspicion leaped to his brain, and a curse to his lips. He
ran to the spot where the mules had been tethered — they
were no longer there. The tracks were already rapidly dis-
appearing in the snow.

The momentary excitement brought Mr. Oakhurst back
‘o the fire with his usual calm. He did not waken the
sleepers. The Innocent slumbered peacefully, with a smile
on his good-humored, freckled face; the virgin Piney
slept beside her frailer sisters as sweetiy as though attended
by celestial guardians; and Mr. Oakhurst, drawing his
blanket over his shoulders, stroked his mustaches and
waited for the dawn. It came siowly in a whirling mist
of snowflakes that dazzled and confused the eye. What
could be seen of the landscape appeared magically changed.
He looked over the valley, and summed up the present
and future in two words,‘ Snowed in! ”

A careful inventory of the provisions, which, fortunately
for the party, had been stored within the hut, and sc
ascaped the felonious fingers of Uncle Billy, disclosed the
fact that with care and prudence they might last ten days
longer. ‘That is,” said Mr. Oakhurst sotto voce to the
Innocent, “if you’re willing to board us. If you ain’t —
and perhaps you ’d better not — you can wait till Uncle
Billy gets back with provisions.” For some occult reason,
Mr. Oakhurst could not bring himself to disclose Uncle
Billy’s rascality, and so offered the hypothesis that he had
wandered from the camp and had accidentally stampeded the
animals. He dropped a warning to the Duchess and
Mother Shipton, who of course knew the facts of their
associate’s defection. ‘“ They’ll find out the truth about us
ail when they find out anything,” he added significantly,
“and there ’s no good frightening them now.”

f Tom Simson not only put all his worldly store at the
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT 21

disposai of Mr. Oakhurst, but seemed to enjoy the prospect
of their enforced seclusion. ‘ We ’ll have a good camp for
a week, and then the snow ’ll melt, and we’ll all go back
together.” The cheerful gayety of the young man and
Mr. Oakhurst’s calm infected the others. The Innocent,
with the aid of pine boughs, extemporized a thatch for the
roofless cabin, and the Duchess directed Piney in the
rearrangement of the interior with a taste and tact that
opened the blue eyes of that provincial maiden to their
fullest extent. ‘I reckon now you ’re used to fine things at
Poker Flat,” said Piney. The Duchess turned away sharply
to conceal something that reddened her cheeks through
their professional tint, and Mother Shipton requested Piney
not to “chatter.” But when Mr. Oakhurst returned from
a weary search for the trail, he heard the sound of happy
laughter echoed from the rocks. He stopped in some
alarm, and his thoughts first naturally reverted to the
whiskey, which he had prudently cachéd. “ And yet it
don’t somehow sound like whiskey,” said the gambler. It
was not until he caught sight of the blazing fire through
the still blinding storm, and the group around it, that he
settled to the conviction that it was “ square fun.”
Whether Mr. Oakhurst had cachéd his cards with the
whiskey as something debarred the free access of the com-
munity, I cannot say. It was certain that, in Mother
Shipton’s words, he “didn’t say ‘cards’ once” during that
evening. Haply the time was beguiled by an accordion,
produced somewhat ostentatiously by Tom Simson from
his pack. Notwithstanding some difficulties attending the
manipulation of this instrument, Piney Woods managed to
pluck several reluctant melodies from its keys, to an accom-
paniment by the Innocent on a pair of bone castanets.
But the crowning festivity of the evening was reached in a
rude camp-meeting hymn, which the lovers, joining hands,
sang with great earnestness and vociferation. I fear that 2a
22 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT

sertain defiant toné and Covenanter’s swing to its chorus,
aather than any devotional quality, caused it speedily to
infect the others, who at last joined in the refrain : —

“T?m proud to live in the service of the Lord,
And I’m bound to die in His army.’’

The pines rocked, the storm eddied and whirled above the
miserable group, and the flames of their altar leaped heaven-
ward, as if in token of the vow.

At midnight the storm abated, the rolling clonds parted,
and the stars glittered keenly above the sleeping camp.
Mr. Oakhurst, whose professional habits had enabled him
to live on the smallest possible amount of sleep, in dividing
the watch with Tom Simson somehow managed to take
upon himself the greater part of that duty. He excused
himself to the Innocent by saying that he had “often been
a week without sleep.” “Doing what?” asked Tom.
“Poker!” replied Oakhurst sententiously. ‘When a man
gets a streak of luck, —nigger-luck,—he don’t get tired.
The luck gives in first. Luck,” ccntinued the gambler
reflectively, ‘is a mighty queer thing. All you know
about it for certain is that it’s bound to change. And it’s
finding out when it’s going to change that makes you.
We ’ve had a streak of bad luck since we left Poker Flat, —
you come along, and slap you get into it, too. If you can
hold your cards right along you’re all right. For,’ added
the gambler, with cheerful irrelevance —

“<¢T’m proud to live in the service of the Lord,
And I’m bound to die in His army.’ ”

The third day came, and the sun, looking through the
white-curtained valley, saw the outcasts divide their slowly
decreasing store of provisions for the morning meal. It
was one of the peculiarities of that mountain climate that
its rays diffused a kindly warmth over the wintry landscape,
as if in regretful commiseration of the past. But it revealed
drift on drift of snow piled high around the hut, —a hope
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT 23

less, uncharted, trackless sea of white lying below the rocky
shores to which the castaways still clung. Through the
marvelously clear air the smoke of the pastoral village of
Poker Flat rose miles away. Mother Shipton saw it, ana
from a remote pinnacle of her rocky fastness hurled in that
direction a tinal malediction. It was her last vituperative
attempt, and perhaps for that reason was invested with a
certain degree of sublimity. It did her good, she privately
informed the Duchess. ‘Just you go out there and enss,
and see.”’ She then set herself to the task of amusing “ the
child,” as she and the Duchess were pleased to call Piney.
Piney was no chicken, but it was a soothing and original
theory of the pair thus to account for the fact that she
did n’t swear and was n’t improper.
[ When night crept up again through the gorges, the reedy
notes of the accordion rose and fell in fitful spasms and
long-drawn gasps by the flickering campfire. But music
failed to fill entirely the aching void left by insufficient
food, and a new diversion was proposed by Piney, — story-
telling. Neither Mr. Oakhurst nor his female companions
caring to relate their personal experiences, this plan would
have failed too, but for the Innocent. Some months before
he had chanced upon a stray copy of Mr. Pope’s ingenious
translation of the lliad. He now proposed to narrate the
principal incidents of that poem — having thoroughly mas-
tered the argument and fairly forgotten the words —in the
current vernacular of Sandy Bar. And so for the rest of
that night the Homeric demigods again walked ‘the earth.
‘Trojan bully and wily Greek wrestled in the winds, and the
great p pines in the cafion seemed to bow to the wrath of the
son of Peléus. Mr. Oakhurst listened with quiet satisfaction.
Most especially was he interested in the fate of “ Ash-heels,”’
as the Innocent persisted in denominating the “swift-footed
Achilles.”’ -

So, with small food and much of Homer and the accor-
24 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT

dion, a week passed over the heads of the outcasts. The
sun again forsook them, and again from_leaden skies the
snowflakes were sifted over the land. \Day by day closer
around them drew the snowy circle, until at last they looked
from their prison over drifted walls of dazzling white, that
towered twenty feet above their heads. It became more
and more difficult to replenish their fires, even from the
fallen trees beside them, now half hidden in the drifts.
And yet no one complained. The lovers turned from the
dreary prospect and looked into each other’s eyes, and were
happy. Mr. Oakhurst settled himself coolly to the losing
game before him. The Duchess, more cheerful than she
had been, assumed the care of Piney. Only Mother Ship-
ton —once the strongest of the party — seemed to sicken
and fade. At midnight on the tenth day she called Oak-
hurst to her side. “I’m going,” she said, in a voice of
querulous weakness, “but don’t say anything about it.
Don’t waken the kids. Take the bundle from under my
head, and open it.” Mr. Oakhurst did so. It contained
Mother Shipton’s rations for the last week, untouched.
“Give ’em to the child,” she said, pointing to the sleeping
Piney. ‘You ’ve starved yourself,” said the gambler.
“That’s what they call it,” said the woman querulously, as
she lay down again, and, turning her face to the wall, passed
quietly away. |

The accordion and the bones were put aside that day,
and Homer was forgotten. When the body of Mother
Shipton had been committed to the snow, Mr. Oakhurst
took the Innocent aside, and showed him a pair of snow-
shoes, which he had fashioned from the old pack-saddle.
“There ’s one chance in a hundred to save her yet,” he said,
pointing to Piney; “but it’s there,” he added, pointing
toward Poker Flat. ‘If you can reach there in two days
she’s safe.” “ And you?” asked Tom Simson. “Ill stay
here,” was the curt reply.
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT 25

The lovers parted with a long embrace. ‘ You are not
going, too?” said the Duchess, as she saw Mr. Oakhuyst
apparently waiting to accompany him. ‘As far as the
eafion,”’ he replied. He turned suddenly and kissed the
Duchess, leaving her pallid face aflame, and her trembling
limbs rigid with amazement.

Night came, but not Mr. Oakhurst. It brought the storm
again and the whirling snow. Then the Duchess, feeding
the fire, found that some one had quietly piled beside the
hut enough fuel to last a few days longer. The tears rose
to her eyes, but she hid them from Piney.

The women slept but little. In the morning, looking
mto each other’s faces, they read their fate. Neither spoke,
but Piney, accepting the position of the stronger, drew near
and placed her arm around the Duchess’s waist. They
kept this attitude for the rest of the day. That night the
storm reached its greatest fury, and, rending asunder the
protecting vines, invaded the very hut.

Toward morning they found themselves unable to feed
the fire, which gradually died away. As the embers
slowly blackened, tne Duchess crept closer to Piney, and
broke the silence of many hours: ‘ Piney, can you pray ?”
“No, dear,” said Piney simply. The Duchess, without
knowing exactly why, felt relieved, and, putting her head
upon Piney’s shoulder, spoke no more. And so reclining,
the younger and purer pillowing the head of her soiled sis-
ter upon her virgin breast, they fell asleep.
| The wind lulled as if it feared to waken them. Feath-
ery drifts of snow, shaken from the long pine boughs, flew
like white winged birds, and settled about them as they
slept. The moon through the rifted clouds looked down
upon what had been the camp. JBut all human stain, all
trace of earthly travail, was hidden beneath the spotiess
mantle mercifully flung from above.

They slept all that day and the next, nor did they waken
26 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT

when voices and footsteps broke the silence of the camp.

And when pitying fingers brushed the snow from their

wan faces, you could scarcely have told from the equal

peace that dwelt upon them which was she that had sinned.

Even the law of Poker Flat recognized this, and turned
| Brat leaving them still locked in each other’s arms.

But at the head of the gulch, on one of the largest pine-
trees, they found the deuce of clubs pinned to the bark
with a bowie-knife. It bore the following, written in pen-
cil in a firm hand : —

tT

BENEATH THIS TREE
LIES THE BODY
OF
JOHN OAKHURST,

WHO STRUCK A STREAK OF BAD LUCK
ON THE 23D OF NOVEMBER 1850,
AND
HANDED IN HIS CHECKS
ON THE 7TH DECEMBER, 1850.

4

And pulseless and cold, with a Derringer by his side and a
bullet in his heart, though still calm as in life, beneath the
snow lay he who was at once the strongest and yet the
weakest of the outcasts of Poker Flat.
MIGGLES

We were eight including the driver. We had nofi
spoken during the passage of the last six miles, since the
jolting of the heavy vehicle over the roughening road had
anoiled the Judge’s last poetical quotation. The tall man
beside the Judge was asleep, his arm passed through the
swaying strap and his head resting upon it,— altogether a
limp, helpless looking object, as if he had hanged himself
and been cut down too late. The French lady on the back
seat was asleep too, yet in a half-conscious propriety of at-
titude, shown even in the disposition of the handkerchief
which she held to her forehead and which partially veiled
her face. ‘he lady from Virginia City, traveling with her
husband, had long since lost all individuality in a wild
confusion of ribbons, veils, furs, and shawls. There was
no sound but the rattling of wheels and the dash of rain
upon the roof. Suddenly the stage stopped and we be-
came dimly aware of voices. The driver was evidently in
the midst of an exciting colloquy with some one in the
road, —a colloquy of which such fragments as “ bridge
gone,” ‘twenty feet of water,” “ can’t pass,” were occa-
sionally distinguishable above the storm. Then came a lull,
and a mysterious voice from the road shouted the parting
adjuration —

“Try Miggles’s.”

We caught a glimpse of our leaders as the vehicle slowly
turned, of a horseman vanishing through the rain, and we
were evidently on our way to Miggles’s.

Who and where was Miggles? The Judge, our author-
28 MIGGLES

ity, did not remember the name, and he knew the country
thoroughly. The Washoe traveler thought Miggles must
keep a hotel. We only knew that we were stopped by
high water in front and rear, and that Miggles was our
rock of refuge. A ten minutes’ splashing through a tangled
byroad, scarcely wide enough for the stage, and we drew
up before a barred and boarded gate in a wide stone wall
or fence about eight feet high. Evidently Miggles’s, and
evidently Miggles did not keep a hotel.

The driver got down and tried the gate. It was securely
locked.

“Miggles! O Miggles!”

No answer.

“ Migg-ells! You Miggles!”’ continued the driver, with
rising wrath.

“Migglesy!’’ joined in the expressman persuasively.
“O Miggy! Mig!”

But no reply came from the apparently insensate Mig-
gles. The Judge, who had finally got the window down,
put his head out and propounded a series of questions,
which if answered categorically would have undoubtedly
elucidated the whole mystery, but which the driver evaded
by replying that “if we did n’t want to sit in the coach all
night we had better rise up and sing out for Miggles.”

So we rose up and called on Miggles in chorus, then
separately. And when we had finished, a Hibernian fel-
low passenger from the roof called for ‘‘ Maygells !”? whereat
we all laughed. While we were laughing the driver cried,
“ Shoo ! ”

We listened. To our infinite amazement the chorus of
“ Miggles’”? was repeated from the other side of the wall,
even to the final and supplemental ‘ Maygells.”’

“Extraordinary echo! ” said the Judge.

“ Extraordinary d—d skunk!” roared the driver con-
temptuously. ‘Come out of that, Miggles, and show
MIGGLES 29

vaurself! Beaman, Miggles! Don’t hide in the dark;
I would n’t if I were you, Miggles,’’ continued Yuba Bill,
now dancing about in an excess of fury.

“ Miggles! ”’ continued the voice, “ O Miggles !”

“My good man! Mr. Myghail! ” said the Judge, soften-
ing the asperities of the name as much as possible. ‘ Con-
sider the inhospitality of refusing shelter from the inclem-
ency of the weather to helpless females. Really, my dear
sir’— But a succession of “ Miggles,” ending in a burst
of laughter, drowned his voice.

Yuba Bill hesitated no longer. Taking a heavy stone
from the road, he battered down the gate, and with the
expressman entered the inclosure. We follcwed. Nobody
was to be seen. In the gathering darkness all that we
could distinguish was that we were in a garden — from the
rose bushes that scattered over us a minute spray from
their dripping leaves — and before a long, rambling wooden
building.

“ Do you know this Miggles ? ” asked the Judge of Yube
Bill.

“No, nor don’t want to,” said Bill shortly, who felt the
Pioneer Stage Company insulted in his person by the contu-
macious Miggles.

“But, my dear sir,’ expostulated the Judge, as he
thought of the barred gate.

“ Lookee here,” said Yuba Bill, with fine irony, “had n’t
vou better go back and sit in the coach till yer introduced ?
I’m going in,’ and he pushed open the door of the build-
ing,

A long room, lighted only by the embers of a fire that
was dying on the large hearth at its farther extremity; the
walls curiously papered, and the flickering firelight bringing
out its grotesque pattern ; somebody sitting in a large armn-
chair by the fireplace. All this we saw as we crowded to-
gether into the room after the driver and expressman.
BO MIGGLES

“Hello! be you Miggles?” said Yuba Bill to the soli
tary occupant.

The figure neither spoke nor stirred. Yuba Bill walked
wrathfully toward it and turned the eye of his coach-lantern
upon its face. It was a man’s face, prematurely old and
wrinkled, with very large eyes, in which there was that
expression of perfectly gratuitous solemnity which I had
sometimes seen in an owl’s. The large eyes wandered from
-Bill’s face to the lantern, and finally fixed their gaze on.
that luminous object without further recognition,

Bill restrained himself with an effort.

“ Miggles! be you deaf? You ain’t dumb anyhow, you
know,” and Yuba Bill shook the insensate figure by the
shoulder.

To our great dismay, as Bill removed his hand, the ven-
erable stranger apparently collapsed, sinking into half his
size and an undistinguishable heap of clothing.

“Well, dern my skin,” said Bill, looking appealingly at
us, and hopelessly retiring from the contest.

The Judge now stepped forward, and we lifted the mys-
terious invertebrate back into his original position. Bill
was dismissed with the lantern to reconnoitre outside, for it
was evident that, from the helplessness of this solitary man,
there must be attendants near at hand, and we all drew
around the fire. The Judge, who had regained his author-
ity, and had never lost his conversational amiability, —
standing before us with his back to the hearth, — charged
us, as an imaginary jury, as follows: —

“Tt is evident that either our distinguished friend here
has reached that condition described by Shakespeare as ‘the
zere and yellow leaf,’ or has suffered some premature abate-
ment of his mental and physical faculties. Whether he is
really the Miggles ’—

Here he was interrupted by “ Miggles! O Miggles!
wigglesy ! Mig!’ and, in fact, the whole ckorus of Mig:
MIGGLES 31

gles in very much the same key as 1t had once before been
delivered unto us.

We gazed at each other fora moment in some alarm.
The Judge, in particular, vacated his position quickly, as
the voice seemed to come directly over his shoulder. The
cause, however, was soon discovered in a large magpie who
was perched upon a shelf over the fireplace, and who imme-
diately relapsed into a sepulchral silence, which contrasted
singularly with his previous volubility. It was, undoubtedly,
his voice which we had heard in the road, and our friend
in the chair was not responsible for the discourtesy. Yuba
Bill, who reéntered the room after an unsuccessful search,
was loth to accept the explanation, and still eyed the help.
less sitter with suspicion. He had found a shed in which
he had put up his horses, but he came back dripping and
skeptical. “ Thar ain’t nobody but him within ten mile of
the shanty, and that ar d—d old skeesicks knows it.”

But the faith of the majority proved to be securely based.
Bill had scarcely ceased growling hefore we heard a quick
step upon the porch, the trailing of a wet skirt, the door
was flung open, and with a flash of white teeth, a sparkle
of dark eyes, and an utter absence of ceremony or diffidence,
a young woman entered, shut the door, and, panting, leaned
back against it.

“Oh, if you please, I’m Miggles!”

And this was Miggles! this bright-eyed, full-throated
young woman, whose wet gown of coarse blue stuff could
‘ not hide the beauty of the feminine curves to which it
clung ; from the chestnut crown of whose head, topped by
a man’s oil-skin souw’wester, to the little feet and ankles,
nidden somewhere in the recesses of her boy’s brogans, all
was grace, —this was Miggles, laughing at us, too, in the
snost airy, frank, off-hand manner imaginable.

“You see, boys,” said she, quite out of breath, and
bolding one little hand against her side, quite unheeding
32 MIGGLES

the speechless discomfiture of our party or the complete
demoralization of Yuba Bill, whose features had reiaxed
into an expression of gratuitous and imbecile cheerfulness,
~— “you see, boys, I was mor’n two miles away when you
passed down the road. I thought you might pull up here,
and soI ran the whole way, knowing nobody was home
but Jim, — and — and —I’m out of breath — and — that
lets me out.”? And here Miggles caught her dripping oil-
skin hat from her head, with a mischievous swirl that scat-
tered a shower of raindrops over us; attempted to put hack
her hair; dropped two hairpins in the attempt; laughed,
and sat down beside Yuba Bill, with her hands crossed
lightly on her lap.

The Judge recovered himself first and essayed an extrava-
gant compliment.

“T’ll trouble you for that ha’rpin,” said Miggles gravely.
Half a dozen hands were eagerly stretched forward; the
missing hairpin was restored to its fair owner; and Miggles,
crossing the room, looked keenly in the face of the invalid.
The solemn eyes looked back at hers with an expression we
had never seen before. Life and intelligence seemed to
struggle back into the rugged face. Miggles laughed again,
—it was a singularly eloquent laugh, —and turned her
black eyes and white teeth once more towards us.

“ This afflicted person is ’? — hesitated the Judge.

“Jim!” said Miggles.

“ Your father ? ”

“ No ! ”

“ Brother ? ”

6c No ! ”

“ Husband ?””

Miggles darted a quick, half-defiant glance at the two
lady passengers, who I had noticed did not participate in
the general masculine admiration of Miggles, and said
gravely, “No; it’s Jim!”
MIGGLES 33

There was an awkward pause. The lady passengers
moved closer to each other; the Washoe husband looked
abstractedly at the fire, and the tall man apparently turned
his eyes inward for self-support at this emergency. But Migs
gles’s laugh, which was very infectious, broke the silence.

“Come,” she said briskly, “you must be hungry.
Who’ll bear a hand to help me get tea?”

She had no lack of volunteers. In a few moments Yuba
Bill was engaged like Caliban in bearing logs for this Mi-
randa; the expressman was grinding coffee on the veranda;
to myself the arduous duty of slicing bacon was assigned ;
and the Judge lent each man his good-humored and voluble
counsel. And when Miggles, assisted by the Judge and
our Hibernian “ deck-passenger,” set the table with all the
available crockery, we had become quite joyous, in spite of
the rain that beat against the windows, the wind that
whirled down the chimney, the two ladies who whispered
together in the corner, or the magpie, who uttered a satiri-
eal and croaking commentary on their conversation from
his perch above. In the now bright, blazing fire we could
see that the walls were papered with illustrated journals,
arranged with feminine taste and discrimination. The fur-
niture was extemporized and adapted from candle-boxes and
packing-cases, and covered with gay calico or the skin of
some animal. The armchair of the helpless Jim was an
ingenious variation of a flour-barrel. There was neatness,
and even a taste for the picturesque, to be seen in the few
details of the long, low room.

The meal was a culinary success. But more, it was a
social triumph, — chiefly, I think, owing to the rare tact of
Miggles in guiding the conversation, asking all the questions
herself, yet bearing throughout a frankness that rejected the
idea of any concealment on her own part, so that we talked
of ourselves, of our prospects, of the journey, of the weather,
of each other, — of everything but our host and hostess,
34 MIGGLES

It must be confessed that Miggles’s conversation was never
elegant, rarely grammatical, and that at times she employed
expletives the use of which had generally been yielded to
our sex. But they were delivered with such a lighting up
of teeth and eyes, and were usually followed by a laugh —
a laugh peculiar to Miggles— so frank and honest that it
seemed to clear the moral atmosphere.

Once during the meal we heard a noise like the rubbing
of.a heavy body against the outer walls of the house. This
was shortly followed by a scratching and snifiling at the
door. ‘That’s Joaquin,” said Miggles, in reply to our
questioning glances; ‘ would you like to see him?” Be-
fore we could answer she had opened the door, and disclosed
a half-grown grizzly, who instantly raised himself on his
haunches, with his fore paws hanging down in the popular
attitude of mendicancy, and looked admiringly at Miggles,
with a very singular resemblance in his manner to Yuba
Bill. “ That’s my watch-dog,” said Miggles, in explana-
tion. “Oh, he don’t bite,” she added, as the two lady
passengers fluttered into a corner. “ Does le, old Toppy ?”
(the latter remark being addressed directly to the sagacious
Joaquin). “TI tell you what, boys,” continued Miggles,
after she had fed and closed the door on Ursa Minor, ‘“ you
were in big luck that Joaquin was n’t hanging round when
you dropped in to-night.”

“Where was he?” asked the Judge.

“With me,” said Miggles. ‘Lord love you! he trots
round with me nights like as if he was a man.”

We were silent for a few moments, and listened to the
wind. Perhaps we all had the same picture before us, —
of Miggles walking through the rainy woods with her sav-
age guardian at her side. The Judge, I remember, said
something about Una and her lion; but Miggles received
it, as she did other compliments, with quiet gravity.
Whether she was altogether unconscious of the admiratior
MIGGLES 35

she excited, —she could hardly have been oblivious oh
Yuba Bill’s adoration, — I know not; but her very frankness
suggested a perfect sexual equality that was cruelly humili
ating to the younger members of our party.

The incident of the bear did not add anything in Mig-
gles’s favor to the opinions of those of her own sex who
were present. In fact, the repast over, a chillness radiated
from the two lady passengers that no pine boughs bronght
in by Yuba Bill and cast as a sacrifice upon the hearth
could wholly overcome. Miggles felt it; and suddenly
declaring that it was time to “turn in,” offered to show
the ladies to their bed in an adjoining room. ‘ You, boys,
will have to camp out here by the fire as well as you can,”
she added, “ for thar ain’t but the one room.”

Our sex — by which, my dear sir, I allude of course to
the stronger portion of humanity — has been generally re-
lieved from the imputation of curiosity or a fondness for
gossip. Yet I am constrained to say, that hardly had the
door closed on Miggles than we crowded together, whispet-
ing, snickering, smiling, and exchanging suspicions, sur-
mises, and a thousand speculations in regard to our pretty
hostess and her singular companion. I fear that we even
hustled that imbecile paralytic, who sat like a voiceless
Memnon in our midst, gazing with the serene indifference
of the Past in his passionless eyes upon our wordy coun-
sels. In the midst of an exciting discussion the door
opened again and Miggles reéntered.

But not, apparently, the same Miggles who a few hours
before had flashed upon us. Her eyes were downcast, and
as she hesitated for a moment on the threshold, with a
blanket on her arm, she seemed to have left behind her the
frank fearlessuess which had charmed us a moment hefore.
Coming into the room, she drew a low stool beside the
paralytic’s chair, sat down, drew the blanket over hei
shoulders, and saying, “If it’s all the same to you, boys
86 MIGGLES

as we’re rather crowded, I’1l stop here to-night,” took the
invalid’s withered hand in her own, and turned her eyes
upon the dying fire. An instinctive feeling that this was
only premonitory to more confidential relations, and per-
haps some shame at our previous curiosity, kept us silent.
The rain still beat upon the roof, wandering gusts of wind
stirred the embers into momentary brightness, until, in a
lull of the elements, Miggles suddenly lifted up her head,
and, throwing her hair over her shoulder, turned her face
upon the group and asked, —

“Ts there any of you that knows me ? ”

There was no reply.

“Think again! I lived at Marysville in 753. Every-
body knew me there, and everybody had the right to know
me. I kept the Polka Saloon until I came to live with
Jim. That’s six years ago. Perhaps I’ve changed
some.”

The absence of recognition may have disconcerted her.
She turned her head to the fire again, and it was some sec-
onds before she again spoke, and then more rapidly —

“Well, you see I thought some of you must have known
me. There ’s no great harm done anyway. What I was
going to say was this: Jim here”? — she took his hand in
both of hers as she spoke — ‘used to know me, if you
did n’t, and spent a heap of money upon me. I reckon he
spent all he had. And one day —it’s six years ago this
winter — Jim came into my back room, sat down on my
sofy, like as you see him in that chair, and never moved
again without help. He was struck all of a heap, and
never seemed to know what ailed him. The doctors came
and said as how it was caused all along of his way of life,
—for Jim was mighty free and wild-like,— and that he
would never get better, and couldn’t last long anyway.
They advised me to send him to Frisco to the hospital, for
he was no good to any one and would be a baby all his
MIGGLES 37

life. Perhaps it was something in Jim’s eye, perhaps it
was that I never had a baby, but I said ‘No.’ I was rich
then, for I was popular with everybody, — gentlemen like
yourself, sir, came to see me, — and I sold out my business
and bought this yer place, because it was sort of out of the
way of travel, you see, and I brought my baby here.”

With a woman’s intuitive tact and poetry, she had, as
she spoke, slowly shifted her position so as to bring the
mute figure of the ruined man between her and her audi-
ence, hiding in the shadow behind it, as if she offered it as
a tacit apology for her actious. Silent and expressionless,
it yet spoke for her; helpless, crushed, and smitten with
the Divine thunderbolt, it still stretched an invisible arm
around her.

Hidden in the darkness, but still holding his hand, she
went on : —

“Tt was a long time before I could get the hang of things
about yer, for I was used to company and excitement. I
could n’t get any woman to help me, and a man I durs n’t
trust ; but what with the Indians hereabout, who ’d do odd
jobs for me, and having everything sent from the North
Fork, Jim and I managed to worry through. The Doctor
would run up from Sacramento once in a while. He’d
ask to see ‘ Miggles’s baby,’ as he called Jim, and when
he ’d go away, he’d say, ‘ Miggles, you’re a trump, — God
bless you,’ and it didn’t seem so lonely after that. But
the last time he was here he said, as he opened the door to
go, ‘Do you know, Miggles, your baby will grow up to be
a man yet and an honor to his mother; but not here, Mig-
gles, not here!’ And I thought he‘went away sad, — and
—and’’—and here Miggles’s voice and head were some-
how both lost completely in the shadow.

“The folks about here are very kind,” said Miggles, after
a pause, coming a little into the light again. “The men
from the Fork used to hang around here, until they found
38 MIGGLES

they wasn’t wanted, and the women are kind, and don’t
eall. I was pretty lonely until I picked up Joaquin in the
woods yonder one day, when he was n’t so high, and taught
him to beg for his dinner; and then thar’s Polly — that’s
the magpie — she knows no end of tricks, and makes it
quite sociable of evenings with her talk, and so I don’t feel
like as I was the only living being about the ranch. And
Jim here,” said Miggles, with her old laugh again, and
coming out quite into the firelight, — ‘‘ Jim —- Why, boys,
you would admire to see how much he knows for a man
like him. Sometimes I bring him flowers, and he looks at
’em just as natural as if he knew ’em; and times, when
we ’re sitting alone, I read him those things on the wall.
Why, Lord!” said Miggles, with her frank laugh, “I’ve
read him that whole side of the house this winter. ‘here
never was such a man for reading as Jim.”

“Why,” asked the Judge, “do you not marry this man
to whom you have devoted your youthful life ? ”

“Well, you see,” said Miggles, “it would be playing it
rather low down on Jim to take advantage of his being so
helpless. And then, too, if we were man and wife, now,
we’d both know that I was bound to do what I do now of
my own accord.”

“But you are young yet and attractive ?? —

“Tt’s getting late,” said Miggles gravely, “and you’d
better all turn in. Good-night, boys; ” and throwing the
blanket over her head, Miggles laid herself down beside
Jim’s chair, her head pillowed on the low stool that held
his feet, and spoke no more. The fire slowly faded from
the hearth ; we each sought our blankets in silence; and
uresently there was no sound in the long room but the pat-
tering of the rain upon the roof and the heavy breathing
of the sleepers.

It was nearly morning when I awoke from a troubled
dream. The storm had passed, the stars were shining, anc
MIGGLES 39

through the shutterless window the fall moon, lifting itselt
over the solemn pines without, looked into the room. It
touched the lonely figure in the chair with an infinite com-
passion, and seemed to baptize with a shining flood the
lowly head of the woman whose hair, as in the sweet old
story, bathed the feet of him she loved. It even lent
a kindly poetry to the rugged outline of Yuba Bill, half
reclining on his elbow between them and his passengers,
with savagely patient eyes keeping watch and ward. And
then I fell asleep and only woke at broad day, with Yuba
Bill standing over me, and “ All aboard” ringing in my
ears.

Coffee was waiting for us on the table, but Miggles was
gone. We wandered about the house and lingered long
after the horses were harnessed, but she did not return. It
was evident that she wished to avoid a formal leave-taking,
and had so left us to depart as we had come. After we
had helped the ladies into the coach, we returned to the
house and solemnly shook hands with the paralytic Jim,
as solemnly setting him back into position after each hand-
shake. Then we looked for the last time around the long
low room, at the stool where Miggles had sat, and slowly
took our seats in the waiting coach. The whip cracked,
and we were off !

But as we reached the highroad, Bill’s dexterous hand
laid the six horses back on their haunches, and the stage
stopped with a jerk. For there, on a little eminence beside
the road, stood Migeles, her hair flying, her eyes sparkling,
her white handkerchief waving, and her white teeth flashing
a last ‘ good-by.”” We waved our hats in return. And
then Yuba Bill, as if fearful of further fascination, madly
lashed his horses forward, and we sank back in our
seats,

We exchanged nota word until we reached the North Forl
and the stage drew up at the Independence House. Then,
40 MIGGLES

the Judge leading, we walked into the bar-room and took

our places gravely at the bar.
“Are your glasses charged, gentlemen ? ” said the Judge,

solemnly taking off his white hat.

They were.
 Weli, then, here ’s to Miggles — Gop BLESS HER!”

Perhaps He had. Who knows?
TENNESSEE’S PARTNER

I po not think that we ever knew his real name. Out
ignorance of it certainly never gave us any social inconven-
ience, for at Sandy Bar in 1854 most men were christened
anew. Sometimes these appellatives were derived from
some distinctiveness of dress, as in the case of ‘ Dungaree
Jack;” or from some peculiarity of habit, as shown in
“Saleratus Bill,” so called from an undue proportion of
that chemical in his daily bread; or from some unlucky
slip, as exhibited in “The Iron Pirate,” a mild, inoffensive
man, who earned that baleful title by his unfortunate mis-
pronunciation of the term “iron pyrites.”” Perhaps this
may have been the beginning of a rude heraldry; but I am
constrained to think that it was because a man’s real name
in that day rested solely upon his own unsupported state-
ment. ‘Call yourself Clifford, do you?” said Boston,
addressing a timid newcomer with infinite scorn; ‘hell is
full of such Cliffords!” He then introduced the unfor-
tunate man, whose name happened to be really Clifford, as
‘‘ Jaybird Charley,” — an unhallowed inspiration of the
moment that clung to him ever after. ,

But to return to Tennessee’s Partner, whom we never
knew by any other than this relative title. That he had
ever existed as a separate and distinct individuality we only
learned later. It seems that in 1853 he left Poker Flat to
go to San Francisco, ostensibly to procure a wife. He
never got any farther than Stockton. At that place he wos
attracted by a young person who waited upon the table at
the hotel where he took his meals. One morning he said
42 TENNESSEE’S PARTNER

something to her which caused her to smile not unkindly,
to somewhat coquettishly break a plate of toast over his
upturned, serious, simple face, and to retreat to the kitchen.
He followed her, and emerged a few moments later, covered

‘with more toast and victory. That day week they were mar-
ried by a justice of the peace, and returned to Poker Flat.
Tam aware that something more might be made of this epi-
sode, but I prefer to tell it as it was current at Sandy Bar,
—in the gulches and bar-rooms, — where all sentiment was
modified by a strong sense of humor.

Of their married felicity but little is known, perhaps for
the reason that Tennessee, then living with his partner, one
day took occasion to say something to the bride on his own
account, at which, it is said, she smiled not unkindly and
chastely retreated, —this time as far as Marysville, where
Tennessee followed her, and where they went to house-
keeping without the aid of a justice of the peace. Ten-
nessee’s Partner took the loss of his wife simply and seri-
ously, as was his fashion. But to everybody’s surprise,
when Tennessee one day returned from Marysville, without
his partner’s wife, —she having smiled and retreated with
somebody else, — Tennessee’s Partner was the first man
to shake his hand and greet him with affection. The
boys who had gathered in the cafion to see the shooting
were naturally indignant. Their indignation might have
found vent in sarcasm but for a certain look in Tennessee’s

* Partner’s eye that indicated a lack of humorous appreciation.
In fact, he was a grave man, with a steady application to
practical detail which was unpleasant in a difficulty.
Meanwhile a popular feeling against Tennessee had
grown upon the Bar. He was known to be a gambler;
he was suspected to be a thief. In these suspicions Ten-
nessee’s Partner was equally compromised; his continued
intimacy with Tennessee after the affair above quoted could
only be accounted for on the hypothesis of a copartnership
TENNESSEE'S PARTNER 43

of crime. At last Tennessee’s guilt became flagrant. One
day he overtook a stranger on his way to Red Dog. The
stranger afterward related that Tennessee beguiled the time
with interesting anecdote and reminiscence, but illogically
concluded the interview in the following words: “ And
now, young man, I’) trouble you for your knife, your
pistols, and your money. You see your weppings might
get you into trouble at Red Dog, and your money’s a
temptation to the evilly disposed. TI think you said your
address was San Francisco. J shall endeavor to eal.” It
may be stated here that Tennessee had a fine flow of
humor, which no business preoceupation could wholly sub-
due.

This exploit was his last. Red Dog and Sandy Bar
made eommon cause against the highwayman. Tennessee
was hunted in very much the same fashion as his prototype,
the grizzly. As the toils closed around him, he made a
desperate dash through the Bar, emptying his revolver at
the crowd before the Arcade Saloon, and so on up Grizzly
Cafion; but at its farther extremity he was stopped by a
small man on a gray horse. The men looked at each other
a moment in silence. Both were fearless, both self-pos-
sessed and independent, and both types of a civilization
that in the seventeenth century would have heen called
heroic, but in the nineteenth simply “ reckless.”

“What have you got there? —TI call,” said Tennessee
quietly.

“ Two bowers and an ace,” said the stranger as quietly,
showing two revolvers and a bowie-knife.

“That takes me,” returned Tennessee; and, with this
gambler’s epigram, he threw away his useless pistol and
rode back with his captor.

It was a warm night. The cool breeze which usnally
sprang up with the going down of the sun behind the
chaparral-crested mountain was that evening withheld from
44 TENNESSEE'S PARTNER

Sandy Bar. The little cafion was stifling with heated
resinous odors, and the decaying driftwood on the Bar sent
forth faint sickening exhalations. The feverishness of day
and its fierce passions still filled the camp. Lights moved
restlessly along the bank of the river, striking no answering
reflection from its tawny current. Against the blackness
af the pines the windows of the old loft above the express-
office stood out staringly bright ; and through their curtain-
less panes the loungers below could see the forms of those
who were even then deciding the fate of Tennessee. And
above all this, etched on the dark firmament, rose the
Sierra, remote and passionless, crowned with remoter pas-
sionless stars.

The trial of Tennessee was conducted as fairly as was
consistent with a judge and jury who felt themselves to
some extent obliged to justify, in their verdict, the previous
irregularities of arrest and indictment. The law of Sandy
Bar was implacable, but not vengeful. The excitement and
personal feeling of the chase were over; with Tennessee
safe in their hands, they were ready to listen patiently to
any defense, which they were already satisfied was insuffi-
cient. There being no doubt in their own minds, they
were willing to give the prisoner the benefit of any that
might exist. Secure in the hypothesis that he ought to be
hanged on general principles, they indulged him with more
latitude of defense than his reckless hardihood seemed to
ask. The Judge appeared to be more anxious than the
prisoner, who, otherwise unconcerned, evidently took a grim
pleasure in the responsibility he had created. ‘I don’t
take any hand in this yer game,” had been his invariable
but good-humored reply to all questions. The Judge —
who was also his captor — for a moment vaguely regretted
that he had not shot him “on sight” that morning, but
presently dismissed this human weakness as unworthy of
the judicial mind. Nevertheless, when there was a tap at
TENNESSEE'S PARTNER 45

the door, and it was said that Tennessee’s Partner was there
on behalf of the prisoner, he was admitted at once without
question. Perhaps the younger members of the jury, to
whom the proceedings were becoming irksomely thoughtful,
hailed him as a relief.

For he was not, certainly, an imposing figure. Short and
stout, with a square face, sunburned into a preternatural
redness, clad in a loose duck ‘jumper’ and_ trousers
streaked and splashed with red soil, his aspect under any
circumstances would have been quaint, and was now even
ridiculous. As he stooped to deposit at his feet a heavy
carpetbag he was carrying, it becaine obvious, frum partially
developed legends and inscriptions, that the material with
which his trousers had been patched had been originally in-
tended for a less ambitious covering. Yet he advanced with
great gravity, and after shaking the hand of each person in
the room with labored cordiality, he wiped his serious per-
plexed face on a red bandana handkerchief, a shade lighter
than his complexion, laid his powerful hand upon the table
to steady himself, and thus addressed the Judge: —

““T was passin’ by,’”’ he began, by way of apology, “and
I thought I’d just step in and see how things was gittin’
on with Tennessee thar, —— my pardner. It’s a hot night.
I disremember any sich weather before on the Bar.”

He paused a moment, but nobody volunteering any other
meteorological recollection, he again had recourse to his
pocket-handkerchief, and for some moments mopped his
face diligently.

“ Have you anything to say on behalf of the prisoner?”
said the Judge finally.

“ Thet’s it,’’ said Tennessee’s Partner, in a tone of relief.
“T come yar as Tennessee’s pardner, — knowing him nigh
on four year, off and on, wet and dry, in luck and out 0’
luck. His ways ain’t aller my ways, but thar ain’t any
p’ints in that young man, thar ain’t any liveliness as he’s
46 TENNESSEE'S PARTNER

been up to, as I don’t know. And you sez to me, sez you,
— contidential-like, and between man and man, —sez you,
‘Do you know anything in his behalf ?’ and I sez to you,
sez I, —confidential -like, as between man and man, —
‘ What should a man know of his pardner ?’”

“Ts this all you have to say?” asked the Judge impa-
tiently, feeling, perhaps, that a dangerous sympathy of
humor was beginning to humanize the court.

“‘'Thet’s so,” continued Tennessee’s Partner. “ It ain’t
for me to say anything agin’ him. And now, what’s the
case? Here’s Tennessee wants money, wants it bad, and
does n’t like to ask it of his old pardner. Well, what does
Tennessee do? He lays for a stranger, and he fetches that
stranger; and you lays for him, and you fetches him ; and
the honors is easy. And I put it to you, bein’ a fa’r-minded
man, and to you, gentlemen all, as fa’r-minded men, ef this
isn’t so.”

“ Prisoner,” said the Judge, interrupting, “ have you any
questions to ask this man ? ”

“No! no!” continued Tennessee’s Partner hastily. ‘I
play this yer hand alone. To come down to the bed-rock,
it’s just this: Tennessee, thar, has played it pretty rough
and expensive-like on a stranger, and on this yer camp.
And now, what ’s the fair thing ? Some would say more,
some would say less. Here ’s seventeen hundred dollars in
coarse gold and a watch, — it’s about all my pile, — and
call it square!” And before a hand could be raised to
prevent him, he had emptied the contents of the carpetbag
upon the table.

For a moment his life was in jeopardy. One or two
men sprang to their feet, several hands groped for hidden
weapons, and a suggestion to “throw him from the win-
dow ” was only overridden by a gesture from the Judge.
Tennessee laughed. And apparently oblivious of the ex-
citement, Tennessee’s Partner improved the opportunity to
mop his face again with his handkerchicf.
TENNESSEE'S PARTNER 47

When order was restored, and the man was made to
understand, by the use of forcible figures and rhetoric, that
Tennessee’s offense could not be condoned by money, his
face took a more serious and sanguinary hue, and those
who were nearest to him noticed that his rough hand
trembled slightly on the table. He hesitated a moment as
he slowly returned the gold to the carpetbag, as if he had
not yet entirely caught the elevated sense of justice which
swayed the tribunal, and was perplexed with the belief that
he had not offered enough. Then he turned to the Judge,
and saying, ‘This yer is a lone hand, played alone, and
without my parduer,”’ he bowed to the jury and was about
to withdraw, when the Judge called him back : —

“Tf you have anything to say to Tennessee, you had
better say it now.”

For the first time that evening the eyes of the prisoner
and his strange advocate met. Tennessee smiled, showed
his white teeth, and saying, ‘“ Euchred, old man!” held
out his hand. ‘Tennessee’s Partner took it in his own, and
saying, ‘‘I just dropped in as I was passin’ to see how
things was gettin’ on,” let the hand passively fall, and add-
ing that “it was a warm night,’ again mopped his face
with his handkerchief, and without another word withdrew.

The two men never again met each other alive. For the
unparalleled insult of a bribe offered to Jutge Lynch —
who, whether bigoted, weak, or narrow, was at least incor-
ruptible — firmly fixed in the mind of that mythical per-
sonage any wavering determination of Tennessee’s fate ;
and at the break of day he was marched, closely guarded,
to meet it at the top of Marley’s Hill.

How he met it, how cool he was, how he refused to say
anything, how perfect were the arrangements of the com-
mittee, were all duly reported, with the addition of a warn-
ing moral and example to all future evil-doers, in the “ Red
Dog Clarion,” by its editor, who was present, and to whose
vigorous English I cheerfully refer the veader. But the
48 TENNESSEE'S PARTNER

beauty of that midsummer morning, the blessed amity of
earth and air and sky, the awakened life of the free woods
and hills, the joyous renewal and promise of Nature, and
above all, the infinite serenity that thrilled through each,
was not reported, as not being a part of the social lesson.
And yet, when the weak and foolish deed was done, and a
life, with its possibilities and responsibilities, had passed
out of the misshapen thing that dangled between earth and
sky, the birds sang, the flowers bloomed, the sun shone, as
cheerily as before; and possibly the “ Red Dog Clarion ”
was right.

Tennessee’s Partner was not in the group that surrounded
the ominous tree. But as they turned to disperse, atten-
tion was drawn to the singular appearance of a motionless
donkey-cart halted at the side of the road. As they ap-
proached, they at once recognized the venerable “ Jenny ”
and the two-wheeled cart as the property of Tennessee’s
Partner, used by him in carrying dirt from his claim; and
a few paces distant the owner of the equipage himself,
sitting under a buckeye-tree, wiping the perspiration from
his glowing face. In answer to an inquiry, he said he had
come for the body «{ the “diseased,” ‘if it was all the
same to the committee.” He didn’t wish to “hurry any-
thing; ” he could “ wait.” He was not working that day;
and when the gentlemen were done with the “diseased,”
he would take him. “ Ef thar is any present,” he added,
in his simple, serious way, “(as would care to jine in the
fun’l, they kin come.” Perhaps it was from a sense of
humor, which I have already intimated was a feature of
Sandy Bar, — perhaps it was from something even better
than that, but two thirds of the loungers accepted the in-
vitation at once.

It was noon when the body of Tennessee was delivered
into the hands of his partner. As the cart drew up to the
fatal tree, we noticed that it contained a rough oblong box,
TENNESSEE'S. PARTNER 49

—apparently made from a section of sluicing, — and halt
filled with bark and the tassels of pine. The cart was
further decorated with slips of willow and made fragrant
with buckeye-blossoms. When the body was deposited in
the box, Tennessee’s Partner drew over it a piece of tarred
canvas, and gravely mounting the narrow seat in front, with
his feet upon the shafts, urged the little donkey forward.
The equipage moved slowly on, at that decorous pace which
-was habitual with Jenny even under less solemn circum-
stances. The men—half curiously, half jestingly, but
all good-humoredly — strolled along beside the cart, some
in advance, some a little in the rear of the homely cata-
falque. But whether from the narrowing of the road or
some present sense of decorum, as the cart passed on, the
company fell to the rear in couples, keeping step, and
otherwise assuming the external show of a formal proces-
sion. Jack Folinsbee, who had at the outset played a fu-
neral march in dumb show upon an imaginary trombone,
desisted from a lack of sympathy and appreciation, — not
having, perhaps, your true humorist’s capacity to be con-
tent with the enjoyment of his own fun.

The way led through Grizzly Caifion, by this time
clothed in funereal drapery and shadows. The redwoods,
burying their moccasined feet in the red soil, stood in
Indian file along the track, trailing an unconth benediction
from their bending boughs upon the passing bier. A hare,
surprised into helpless inactivity, sat npitent and pulsating
in the ferns by the roadside as the cortége went by.
Squirrels hastened to gain a secure outlook from higher
boughs ; and the blue-jays, spreading their wings, fluttered
before them like outriders, until the outskirts of Sandy Bar
were reached, and the solitary cabin of Tennessee’s Partner.

Viewed under more favorable circumstances, it would
not have been a cheerful place. The unpicturesque site,
the rude and unlovely outlines, the unsavory details, which
50 TENNESSEE'S PARTNER

distinguish the nest-building of the California miner, were
all here with the dreariness of decay superadded. A few
paces from the cabin there was a rough inclosure, which,
in the brief days of Tennessee’s Partner’s matrimonial
felicity, had been used as a garden, but was now overgrown
with fern, As we approached it, we were surprised to find
that what we had taken for a recent attempt at cultivation
was the broken soil about an open grave.

The cart was halted before the inclosure, and rejecting ,
the offers of assistance with the same air of simple self-
reliance he had displayed throughout, Tennessee’s Partner
lifted the rough coffin on his back, and deposited it unaided
within the shallow grave. He then nailed down the board
which served as a lid, and mounting the little mound of
earth beside it, took off his hat and slowly mopped his face
with his handkerchief. This the crowd felt was a prelimi-
nary to speech, and they disposed themselves variously on
stumps and boulders, and sat expectant.

“ When a man,” began Tennessee’s Partner slowly, “has
been running free all day, what’s the natural thing for him
to do? Why, to come home. And if he ain’t iu a condi-
tion to go home, what can his best friend do? Why, bring
him home. And here ’s Tennessee has been running free,
and we brings him home from his wandering.” He paused
and picked up a fragment of quartz, rubbed it thoughtfully
on his sleeve, and went on: “It ain’t the first time that
I’ve packed hith on my back, as you see’d me now. It
ain’t the first time that I brought him to this yer eabin
when he could n’t help himself; it ain’t the first time that
I and Jinny have waited for him on yon hill, and picked
him up and so fetched him home, when he could n’t speak
and diln’t know ine. And now that it’s the last time,
why ” —he paused and rubbed the quartz gently on his
sleeve

 

“you see it’s sort of rough on his parduer, And
TENNESSEE'S PARTNER 51

sow, gentlemen,” he added abruptly, picking up his long-
nandled shovel, “the fun’l’s over; and my thanks, and
Tennessee’s thanks, to you for your trouble.”

Resisting any proffers of assistance, he began to fill in
the grave, turning his back upon the crowd, that after a
few moments’ hesitation gradually withdrew. As they
crossed the little vidge that hid Sandy Bar from view,
some, looking back, thought they could see Tennessee’s
Partner, his work done, sitting upon the grave, his shovel
between his knees, and his face buried im his red bandana
landkerchief. But it was argued by others that you
could n’t tell his face from his handkerchief at that dis-
tance, and this point remained undecided.

In the reaction that followed the feverish excitement of
that day, Tennessee’s Partner was not forgotten. A secret
investigation had cleared him of any complicity in Tennes-
see’s guilt, and left only a suspicion of his general sanity.
Sandy Bar made a point of calling on him, and proffering
various uncouth but well-meant kindnesses. But from that
day his rude health and great strength seemed visibly to
decline ; and when the rainy season fairly set in, and the
tiny grass-blades were beginning to peep from the rocky
mound above ‘Tennessee’s grave, he took to his bed.

One night, when the pines beside the cabin were swaying
in the storm and trailing their slender fingers over the roof,
and the roar and rush of the swollen river were heard below,
Tennessee’s Partner lifted his head from the pillow, saying,
“It is time to go for Tennessee; I must put Jinny in
the cart; ”? and would have risen from his bed but for the
restraint of his attendant. Struggling, he still pursued his
singular fancy: ‘‘ There, now, steady, Jinny, — steady, old
girl. How dark it is! Look out for the ruts, —and look
out for him, too, old gal. Sometimes, you know, when he’s
blind drunk, he drops down right in the trail. Keep on
52 ‘TENNESSEE'S PARTNER

straight up to the pine on the top of the hill. Thar! I
told you so!—thar he is, —coming this way, too, —all
by himself, sober, and his face a-shining. Tennessee!
Pardner !”

And so they met.
THE IDYL OF RED GULCH

Sanpy was very drunk. He was lying under an azalea
bush, in pretty much the same attitude in which he had
fallen some hours before. How long he had been lying
there he could not tell, and didn’t care; how long he
should le there was a matter equally indefinite and uncon-
sidered. A tranquil philosophy, born of his physical con-
dition, suffused and saturated his moral being.

The spectacle of a drunken man, and of this drunken
man in particular, was not, I grieve to say, of sufficient
novelty in Red Gulch to attract attention. arlier in the
day some local satirist had erected a temporary tombstone
at Sandy’s head, bearing the inscription, “ Effects of
McCorkle’s whiskey — kills at forty rods,” with a hand
pointing to McCorkle’s saloon. But this, I imagine, was,
like most local satire, personal; and was a reflection upon
the unfairness of the process rather than a conimentary upon
the impropriety of the result. With this facetious excep-
tion, Sandy had been undisturbed. A wandering mule,
released from his pack, had cropped the scant herbage beside
him, and sniffed curiously at the prostrate man ; a vagabond
dog, with that deep sympathy which the species have for
drunken men, had licked his dusty boots and curled him-
self up at his feet, and lay there, blinking one eye in the
sunlight, with a simulation of dissipation that was ingenious
and dog-like in its implied flattery of the unconscious man
beside him.

Meanwhile the shadows of the pine-trees had slowly
swung around until they crossed the road, and their trunks
54 THE IDYL OF RED GULCH

barred the open meadow with gigantic parallels of black
and yellow. Little puffs of red dust, lifted by the plung-
ing hoofs of passing teams, dispersed in a grimy shower upon
the recumbent man. The sun sank lower and lower, and still
Sandy stirred not. And then the repose of this philoso-
pher was disturbed, as other philosophers have been, by
the intrusion of an unphilosophical sex.

“ Miss Mary, ” as she was known to the little flock that
she had just dismissed from the log schoolhouse beyond the
pines, was taking her afternoon walk. Observing an unu-
sually fine cluster of blossoms on the azalea-bush opposite,
she crossed the road to pluck it, picking her way through
the red dust, not without certain fierce little shivers of dis:
gust and some feline circumlocution. And then she came
suddenly upon Sandy !

Of course she uttered the little staccato cry of her sex.
But when she had paid that tribute to her physical weak-
ness she became overbold and halted for a moment, — at
least six feet from this prostrate monster, — with her white
skirts gathered in her hand, ready for flight. But neither
sound nor motion came from the bush. With one little
foot she then overturned the satirical headboard, and mut-
tered ‘“Beasts!’?—an epithet which probably, at that
moment, conveniently classified in her mind the entire
male population of Red Gulch. For Miss Mary, being pos-
sessed of certain rigid notions of her own, had not, perhaps,
properly appreciated the demonstrative gallantry for which
the Californian has been so justly celebrated by his brother
Californians, and had, as a newcomer, perhaps fairly earned
the reputation of being “ stuck up.”

f

{ As she stood there she noticed, also, that the slant sun-
beams were heating Sundy’s head to what she judged to be
an unhealthy temperature, and that his hat was lying use-
fessly at his side. To pick it up and to place it over
his face was a work requiring some courage, particularly as
THE IDYL OF RED GULCH 55

his eyes were open. Yet she did it and made good her re
treat. But she was somewhat concerned, on looking back,
to see that the hat was removed, and that Sandy was sitting
up and saying something.

The truth was, that in the calm depths of Sandy’s mind
he was satisfied that the rays of the sun were beneficial and
healthful; that from childhood he had objected to lying
down ina hat; that no people but condemned fools, past
redemption, ever wore hats; and that his right to dispense
with them when he pleased was inalienable. This was the
statement of his inner consciousness. Unfortunately, its
outward expression was vague, being limited to a repetition
of the following formula: ‘Su’shine all ri?! Wasser maiir,
eh? Wass up, su’shine ?”

Miss Mary stopped, and, taking fresh courage from her
vantage of distance, asked him if there was anything that
he wanted.

“Wass up? Wasser maiir?” continued Sandy, in a
very high key.

“Get up, you horrid man!” said Miss Mary, now thor
oughly incensed ; “ get up and go home.”

Sandy staggered to his feet. He was six feet high, and
Miss Mary trembled. He started forward a few paces and
then stopped.

“Wass I go home for ?” he suddenly asked, with great
gravity.

“Go and take a bath,” replied Miss Mary, eying his
grimy person with great disfavor.

To her infinite dismay, Sandy suddenly pulled off his
coat and vest, threw them on the ground, kicked off his
boots, and, plunging wildly forward, darted headlong over
the hill in the direction of the river.

“Goodness heavens! the man will be drowned!” said
Miss Mary ; and then, with feminine inconsistency, she ran
back to the schoolhouse and locked herself in.
56 THE IDYL OF RED GULCH

That night, while seated at supper with her hostess, the
tlacksmith’s wife, it came to Miss Mary to ask, demurely,
if her husband ever got drunk. ‘ Abner,’”’ responded Mrs.
Stidger reflectively, —“ let ’s see! Abner has n’t been tight
since last ’lection.” Miss Mary would have liked to ask if
he preferred lying in the sun on these occasions, and if a
cold bath would have hurt him; but this would have in-
volved an explanation, which she did not then care to give.
So she contented herself with opening her gray eyes widely
at the red-cheeked Mrs. Stidger, —a fine specimen of South-
western efflorescence, —and then dismissed the subject alto-
vether. The next day she wrote to her dearest friend in
Boston: “I think I find the intoxicated portion of this
community the least objectionable. I refer, my dear, to
the men, of course. I do not know anything that could
make the women tolerable.”

In less than a week Miss Mary had forgotten this episode,
except that her afternoon walks took thereafter, almost un-
consciously, another direction. She noticed, however, that
every morning a fresh cluster of azalea blossoms appeared
among the flowers on her desk. This was not strange, as
her Jittle flock were aware of her fondness for flowers, and
invariably kept her desk bright with anemones, syringas,
and lupines; but, on questioning them, they one and all
professed ignorance of the azaleas. A few days later, Master
Johnny Stidger, whose desk was nearest to the window,
was suddenly taken with spasms of apparently gratuitous
laughter, that threatened the discipline of the school. AI
that Miss Mary could get from him was, that some one had
been “looking in the winder.” Irate and indignant, she
aallied from her hive to do battle with the intruder, As she
turned the corner of the schoolhouse she came plump upon
the quondam drunkard, now perfectly sober, and inexpres-
sibly sheepish and guilty-looking.

These facts Miss Mary was not slow to take a feminine
THE IDYL OF RED GULCH 57

advantage of, in her present humor. But it was somewhat
confusing to observe, also, that the beast, despite some faint
signs of past dissipation, was amiable-looking, — in fact, a
kind of blond Samson, whose corn-colored silken beard
apparently had never yet known the touch of barber’s razor
or Delilah’s shears. So that the cutting speech which
quivered on her ready tongue died upon her lips, and she
contented herself with receiving his stammering apology
with supercilious eyelids and the gathered skirts of uncon-
tamination. When she reéntered the schoolroom, her eyes
fell upon the azaleas with a new sense of revelation; and
then she laughed, and the little people all laughed, and they
were all unconsciously very happy.
= It was a hot day, and not long after this, that two
short-legged boys came to grief on the threshold of the
school with a pail of water, which they had laboriously
brought from the spring, and that Miss Mary compassion-
ately seized the pail and started for the spring herself. At
the foot of the hill a shadow crossed her path, and a blue-
shirted arm dexterously but gently relieved her of her
burden. Miss Mary was both embarrassed and angry. ‘If
you carried more of that for yourself,’ she said spitefully
to the blue arm, without deigning to raise her lashes to its
owner, “ you’d do better.” In the submissive silence that
followed she regretted the speech, and thanked him so
sweetly at the door that he stumbled. Which caused the
children to laugh again, —a laugh in which Miss Mary
joined, until the color came faintly into her pale cheek.
The next day a barrel was mysteriously placed beside the
door, and as mysteriously filled with fresh spring-water
every morning.
Nor was this superior young person without other quiet
\_ attentions. “Profane Bill,” driver of the Slumgullion
Stage, widely known in the newspapers for his “ gallan-
try ” in invariably offering the box-seat to the fair sex, had
58 THE IDYL OF RED GULCH

excepted Miss Mary from this attention, on the ground
that he had a habit of “cussin’ on up grades,” and gave
her half the coach to herself. Jack Hamlin, a gambler,
having once silently ridden with her in the same coach,
atterward threw a decanter at the head of a confederate for
mentioning her name in a bar-room. The over-dressed
mother of a pupil whose paternity was doubtful had often
lingered near this astute Vestal’s temple, never daring to
enter its sacred precincts, but content to worship the priest-
ess from afar.

With such unconscious intervals the monotonous proces-
sion of blue skies, glittering sunshine, brief twilights, and
starlit nights passed over Red Gulch. Miss Mary grew
fond of walking in the sedate and proper woods. Perhaps
she believed, with Mrs. Stidger, that the balsamic odors of
the firs ‘did her chest good,” for certainly her slight cough
was less frequent and her step was firmer; perhaps she had
learned the unending lesson which the patient pines are
never weary of repeating to heedful or listless ears. And
so one day she planned a picnic on Buckeye Hill, and took
the children with her. Away from the dusty road, the
straggling shanties, the yellow ditches, the clamor of rest-
Jess engines, the cheap finery of shop-windows, the deeper
glitter of paint and colored glass, and the thin veneering
which barbarism takes upon itself in such localities, what
infinite relief was theirs! The last heap of ragged rock and
ciay passed, the last unsightly chasm crossed, — how the
waiting woods opened their long files to receive them!
How the children — perhaps because they had not yet
grown quite away from the breast of the bounteous Mother
—threw themselves face downward on her brown bosom
‘vith uncouth caresses, filling the air with their laughter;
and how Miss Marr herself — felinely fastidious and in-
trenched as she was 1n the purity of spotless skirts, collar,
and cuffs — forgot all, and ran like a crested quail at the
THE IDYL OF RED GULCH 59

head of her brood, until, romping, laughing, and panting,
with a loosened braid of brown hair, a hat hanging by a
knotted ribbon from her throat, she came suddenly and
violently, in the heart of the forest, upon the luckless
Sandy !

The explanations, apologies, and not overwise conversa-
tion that ensued need not be indicated here. It would seem,
however, that Miss Mary had already established some
acquaintance with this ex-drunkard. Enough that he was
soon accepted as one of the party; that the children, with
that quick intelligence which Providence gives the help-
less, recognized a friend, and played with his blond beard
and long silken mustache, and took other liberties, — as the
helpless are apt to do. And when he had built a fire
against a tree, and had shown them other mysteries of
woodcraft, their admiration knew no bounds. At the close
of two such foolish, idle, happy hours he found himself
lying at the feet of the schoolmistress, gazing dreamily in
her face as she sat upon the sloping hillside weaving
wreaths of laurel and syringa, in very much the same atti-
tude as he had lain when first they met. Nor was the
similitude greatly forced. The weakness of an easy, sensu-
ous nature, that had found a dreamy exaltation in liquor,
it is to be feared was now finding an equal intoxication in
love.

I think that Sandy was dimly conscious of this himself.
I know that he longed to be doing something, — slaying a
grizzly, scalping a savage, or sacrificing himself in some way
for the sake of this sallow-faced, gray-eyed schoolmistress.
As I should like to present him in an heroic attitude, I stay
my hand with great difficulty at this moment, being only
withheld from introducing such an episode by a strong con-
viction that it does not usually occur at such times. And
I trust that my fairest reader, who remembers that, in a
veal crisis, it is always some uninteresting stranger or
60 THE IDYL OF RED GULCH

unromantic policeman, and not Adolphus, who rescues, will
forgive the omission.

| So they sat there undisturbed, — the woodpeckers chat-
‘tering overhead and the voices of the children coming
pleasantly from the hollow below. What they said matters
little. What they thought— which might have been
interesting —did not transpire. The woodpeckers only
learned how Miss Mary was an orphan; how she left her
uncle’s house to come to California for the sake of health
and independence; how Sandy was an orphan too; how
he came to California for excitement; how he had lived a
wild life, and how he was trying to reform; and other
details, which, from a woodpecker’s view-point, undoubtedly
must have seemed stupid and a waste of time. But even
in such trifles was the afternoon spent; and when the chil-
dren were again gathered, and Sandy, with a delicacy which
the schoolmistress well understood, took leave of them
quietly at the outskirts of the settlement, it had seemed
the shortest day of her weary life. \

As the long, dry summer withered to its roots, the school
term of Red Gulch — to use a local euphuism — “ dried
up” also. In another day Miss Mary would be free, and
for a season, at least, Red Gulch would know her no more.
She was seated alone in the schoolhouse, her cheek resting
on her hand, her eyes half closed in one of those day-
dreams in which Miss Mary, I fear, to the danger of school
discipline, was lately in the habit of indulging. Her lap
was full of mosses, ferns, and other woodland memories.
She was so preoccupied with these and her own thoughts
that a gentle tapping at the door passed unheard, or trans-
lated itself into the remembrance of far-off woodpeckers.
When at last it asserted itself mcre distinctly, she started
up with a flushed cheek and opened the door. On the
threshold stood a woman, the self-assertion and audacity of
whose dress were in singular contrast’ to her timid, irreso-
lute bearing.
THE IDYL OF RED GULCH 61

Miss Mary recognized at a glance the dubious mother of
her anonymous pupil. Perhaps she was disappointed, per.
haps she was only fastidious ; but as she coldly invited her
to enter, she half unconsciously settled het white cuffs and
collar, and gathered closer her own chaste skirts. It was,
perhaps, for this reason that the embarrassed stranger, after
a moment’s hesitation, left her gorgeous parasol open and
sticking in the dust beside the door, and then sat down at
the farther end of a long bench. Her voice was husky as
she began,—

“JT heerd tell that you were goin’ down to the Bay to
morrow, and I could n’t let you go until I came to thank
you for your kinduess to my Tommy.”

Tommy, Miss Mary said, was a good boy, and deserved
more than the poor attention she could give him.

“Thank you, miss; thank ye!” cried the stranger,
brightening even through the color which Red Gulch
knew facetiously as her “‘ war paint,” and striving, in her
embarrassment, to drag the long bench nearer the school-
mistress. ‘I thank you, miss, for that; and if I am his
mother, there ain’t a sweeter, dearer, better boy lives than
him. And if I ain’t much as says it, thar ain’t a sweeter,
dearer, angeler‘teacher lives than he ’s got.”

Miss Mary, sitting primly behind her desk, with a ruler
over her shoulder, opened her gray eyes widely at this, but
said nothing.

“ Tt ain’é for you to be complimented by the like of me,
I know,” she went on hurriedly. ‘It ain’t for me to be
comin’ here, in broad day, to do it, either; but I come to
ask a favor,— not for me, miss, — not for me, but for the
darling boy.”

Encouraged by a look in the young schoolmistress’s eye,
and putting her lilac-gloved hands together, the fingers
downward, between her knees, she went on, in a low
voice ; —
62 THE IDYL OF RED GULCH

: “* You see, miss, there’s no one the boy has any claim on
but me, and I ain’t the proper person to bring him up. I
thought some, last year, of sending him away to Frisco to
school, but when they talked of bringing a schoolma’am
here, I waited till I saw you, and then I knew it was all
right, and I could keep my boy a little longer. And, oh!
miss, he loves you so much; and if you could hear him
talk about you in his pretty way, and if he could ask you
what I ask you now, you could n’t refuse him.

“Tt is natural,’ she went on rapidly, in a voice that
trembled strangely between pride and humility, — “it’s
natural that he should take to you, miss, for his father,
when I first knew him, was a gentleman, — and the boy
must forget me, sooner or later, —and soI ain’t a-goin’ to
cry about that. For I come to ask you to take my Tommy,
— God bless him for the bestest, sweetest boy that lives, —
to — to — take him with you.”
~ She had risen and caught the young girl’s hand in her
own, and had fallen on her knees beside her.

“J’ve money plenty, and it’s all yours and his. Put
him in some good school, where you can go and see him,
and help him to —to—to forget his mother. Do with
him what you like. The worst you can de will be kind-
ness to what he will learn with me. Only take him out
of this wicked life, this cruel place, this home of shame
and sorrow. You will! I know you will, — won’t you ?
You will, — you must not, you cannot say no! You will
make him as pure, as gentle as yourself; and when he has
grown up, you will] tell him his father’s name, — the name
that has n’t passed my lips for years, — the name of Alex-
ander Morton, whom they call here Sandy! Miss Mary!
— do not take your hand away! Miss Mary, speak to me!
You will take my boy? Do not put your face from me.
I know it ought not to look on such as me, Miss Mary]
=-my Gi4. be merziful ! — she is leaving me!”
THE IDYL OF RED GULCH 63

Miss Mary had risen, and, in the gathering twilight, had
felt her way to the open window. She stood there, leaning
against the casement, her eyes fixed on the last rosy tints
that were fading from the western sky. There was still
some of its light on her pure young forehead, on her white
collar, on her clasped white hands, but all fading slowly
away. The suppliant had dragged herself, still on her
knees, beside her.

“T know it takes time to consider. I will wait here all
night; but I cannot go until you speak. Do not deny me
now. You will! —TI see it in your sweet face, — such a face
as I have seen in my dreams. I see it in your eyes, Miss
Mary ! — you will take my boy!”

The last red beam crept higher, suffused Miss Mary’s
eyes with something of its glory, flickered, and faded, and
went out. The sun had set on Red Gulch. In the twi.
light and silence Miss Mary’s voice sounded pleasantly.

“T will take the boy. Send him to me to-night.”

The happy mother raised the hem of Miss Mary’s skirts
to her lips. She would have buried her hot face in its
virgin folds, but she dared not. She rose to her feet.

“Does — this man—know of your intention?” asked
Miss Mary suddenly.

“No, nor cares. He has never even seen the child to
know it.”

“Go to him at once — to-night — now! Tell him what
you have done. Tell him I have taken his child, and tell
him — he must never see — see — the child again. Wherever
it may be, he must not come; wherever I may take it, he
must not follow! There, go now, please,—I’m weary,
and — have much yet to do! ”

They walked together to the door. On the threshold the
woman turned.

“ Good-night !”

She would have fallen at Miss Mary’s feet, But at the
64 THE IDYL OF RED GULCH

same moment the young girl reached out her arms, caught
the sinful woman to her own pure breast for one brief
moment, and then closed and locked the door.

It was with a sudden sense of great responsibility that
Profane Bill took the reins of the Slumgullion stage the
next morning, for the schoolmistress was one of his pas-
sengers, As he entered the highroad, in obedience to ¢
pleasant voice from the “inside,” he suddenly reined up his
horses and respectfully waited, as Tommy hopped out at
the command of Miss Mary.

“Not that bush, Tommy, — the next.”

Tommy whipped out his new pocket-knife, and cutting
a branch from a tall azalea-bush, returned with it to Miss
Mary.

“ All right now ?”

“ All right!”

And the stage-door closed on the Idyl of Red Gulch
BROWN OF CALAVERAS

A suBDUED tone of conversation, and the absence o:
cigar-smoke and boot-heels at the windows of the Wingdani
stagecoach, made it evident that one of the inside passengers
wasawoman. A disposition on the part of loungers at the
stations to congregate before the window, and some concern
in regard to the appearance of coats, hats, and collars,
further indicated that she was lovely. All of which Mr.
Jack Hamlin, on the box-seat, noted with the smile of
cynical philosophy. Not that he depreciated the sex, but
that he recognized therein a deceitful element, the pursuit
of which sometimes drew mankind away from the equally
uncertain blandishments of poker, —of which it may be
remarked that Mr. Hamlin was a professional exponent.

So that, when he placed his narrow boot on the wheel
anil leaped down, he did not even glance at the window
from which a green veil was fluttering, but lounged up and
down with that listless and grave indifference of his class,
which was, perhaps, the next thing to good-breeding. With
his closely buttoned figure and self-contained air he was a
marked contrast to the other passengers, with their feverish
restlessness and boisterous emotion ; and even Bill Masters,
a graduate of Harvard, with his slovenly dress, his over-
flowing vitality, his intense appreciation of lawlessness and
barbarism, and his mouth filled with crackers and cheese,
I fear cut but an unromantic figure beside this lonely caleu-
lator of chances, with his pale Greek face and Homeric
gravity.

The driver called “All aboard!” and Mr. Hamlin
66 BROWN OF CALAVERAS

returned to the coach. His foot was upon the wheel, and
his face raised to the level of the open window, when, at
the same moment, what appeared to him to be the finest
eyes in the world suddenly met his. He quietly dropped
down again, addressed a few words to one of the inside
passengers, effected an exchange of seats, and as quietly
took his place inside. Mr. Hamlin never allowed his
philosophy to interfere with decisive and prompt action.

I fear that this irruption of Jack cast some restraint
upon the other passengers, particularly those who were
making themselves most agreeable to the lady. One of
them leaned forward, and apparently conveyed to her
information regarding Mr. Hamlin’s profession in a single
epithet. Whether Mr. Hamlin heard it, or whether he
recognized in the informant a distinguished jurist, from
whom, but a few evenings before, he had won several
thousand dollars, I cannot say. His colorless face betrayed
no sign; his black eyes, quietly observant, glanced indiffer-
ently past the legal gentleman, aud rested on the much
more pleasing features cf his neighbor. An Indian stoicism
— said to be an inheritance from his maternal ancestor —
stood him in good service, until the rolling wheels rattled
upon the river gravel at Scott’s Ferry, and the stage drew
up at the International Hotel for dinner. The legal gentle-
man and a member of Congress leaped out, and stood ready
to assist the descending goddess, while Colonel Starbottle
of Siskiyou took charge of her parasol and shawl. In this
multiplicity of attention there was a momentary confusion
and delay. Jack Hamlin quietly opened the opposite door
of the coach, took the lady’s hand, with that decision and
positiveness which a hesitating and undecided sex know how
to admire, and in an instant had dexterously and gracefully
swung her to the ground and again lifted her to the plat-
form. An audible chuckle on the box, I fear, came from
that other cynic, Yuba Bill, the driver. ‘ Look keerfully
BROWN OF CALAVERAS 67

arter that baggage, Kernel,” said the expressman, with
affected concern, as he looked after Colonel Starbottle,
gloomily bringing up the rear of the triumphant procession
to the waiting-room.

Mr. Hamlin did not stay for dinner. His horse was
already saddled and awaiting him. He dashed over the
ford, up the gravelly hill, and out into the dusty perspective
of the Wingdam road, like one leaving an unpleasant fancy
behind him. The inmates of dusty cabins by the roadside
shaded their eyes with their hands and looked after him,
recognizing the man by his horse, and speculating what
“was up with Comanche Jack.” Yet much of this interest
centred in the horse, in a community where the time made
by “ French Pete’s”? mare, in his run from the Sheriff of
Calaveras, eclipsed all concern in the ultimate fate of that
worthy.

The sweating flanks of his gray at length recalled him to
himself. He checked his speed, and turning into a byroad,
sometimes used as a cut-off, trotted leisurely along, the
reins hanging listlessly from his fingers. As he rode on,
the character of the landscape changed and became more
pastoral. Openings in groves of pine and sycamore disclosed
some rude attempts at cultivation, —a flowering vine trailed
over the porch of one cabin, and a woman rocked her cradled
babe under the roses of another. A little farther on, Mr.
Hamlin came upon some bare-legged children wading in the
willowy creek, and so wrought upon them with a badinage
peculiar to himself, that they were emboldened to climb up
his horse’s legs and over his saddle, until he was fain to
develop an exaggerated ferocity of demeanor, and to es-
cape, leaving behind some kisses and coin. And then,
advancing deeper into the woods, where all signs of habita-
tion failed, he began to sing, uplifting a tenor so singularly
sweet, and shaded by a pathos so subdued and tender, that
I wot the robins and linnets stopped to listen. Mr. Ham-
68 BROWN OF CALAVERAS

lin’s voice was not cultivated; the subject of his song was
some sentimental lunacy, borrowed from the negro minstrels ;
but there thrilled through all some occult quality of tone
and expression that was unspeakably touching. Indeed, it
was a wonderful sight to see this sentimental blackleg, with
a pack of cards in his pocket and a revolver at his back,
sending his voice before him through the dim woods with a
plaint about his ‘Nelly’s grave,” in a way that overflowed
the eyes of the listener. A sparrow-hawk, fresh from his
sixth victim, possibly recognizing in Mr. Hamlin a kindred
spirit, stared at him in surprise, and was fain to confess the
superiority of man. With a superior predatory capacity he
could n’t sing.

But Mr. Hamlin presently found himself again on the
highroad and at his former pace. Ditches and banks of
gravel, denuded hillsides, stumps, and decayed trunks of
trees, took the place of woodland and ravine, and indicated
his approach to civilization. Then a church-steeple came
in sight, and he knew that he had reached home. In a few
moments he was clattering down the single narrow street
that lost itself in a chaotic ruin of races, ditches, and tail-
ings at the foot of the hill, and dismounted before the
gilded windows of the Magnolia saloon. Passing through
the long bar-room, he pushed open a green-baize door,
entered a dark passage, opened another door with a pass-
key, and found himself in a dimly lighted room, whose
furniture, though elegant and costly for the locality, showed
signs of abuse. The inlaid centre-table was overlaid with
stained disks that were not contemplated in the original
design, the embroidered armchairs were discolored, and
the green velvet lounge, on which Mr. Hamlin threw him-
self, was soiled at the foot with the red soil of Wingdam.

Mr. Hamlin did not sing in his cage. He lay still, look-
ing at a highly colored painting above him, representing a
young creature of opulent charms. It occurred to him
BROWN OF CALAVERAS 69

then, for the first time, that he had never seen exactly that
kind of a woman, and that, if he should, he would not,
probably, fall in love with her. Perhaps he was thinking
of another style of beauty. But just then some one knocked
at the door. Without rising, he pulled a cord that appar-
ently shot back a bolt, for the door swung open, and a man
entered.

The new-comer was broad-shouldered and robust, —a
vigor not borne out in the face, which, though handsome,
was singularly weak and disfigured by dissipation. He
appeared to be, also, under the influence of liquor, for he
started on seeing Mr. Hamlin, and said, “I thought Kate
was here ;” stammered, and seemed confused and embar-
rassed.

Mr. Hamlin smiled the smile which he had before worn
on the Wingdam coach, and sat up, quite refreshed and ready
for business.

“ You did n’t come up on the stage,” continued the new-
comer, “did you?”

“No,” replied Hamlin; “T left it at Scott’s Ferry. It
isn’t due for half an hour yet. But how’s luck, Brown ?”

““ D—d bad,” said Brown, his face suddenly assuming
an expression of weak despair. “I’m cleaned out again,
Jack,” he continued, in a whining tone, that formed a
pitiable contrast to his bulky figure; ‘ can’t you help me
with a hundred till to-morrow’s clean-up? You see ]’ve
got to send money home to the old woman, and — you ’ve
won twenty times that amount from me.”

The couclusion was, perhaps, not entirely logical, but
Jack overlooked it, and handed the sum to his visitor.
The old-woman business is about played out, Brown,’ he
added, by way of commentary ; ‘‘ why don’t you say you
want to buck ag’in’ faro? You know you ain’t married !’

“Fact, sir,’’ said Brown, with a sudden gravity, as if thi
mere .contact of the gold with the palm of the hand had
70 BROWN OF CALAVERAS

imparted some dignity to his frame. “I’ve got a wife —a
d—d good one, too, if I do say it— in the States. It’s
three years since I’ve seen her, and a year since I’ve writ
to her. When things is about straight, and we get down
to the lead, I’m going to send for her.”

“ And Kate?” queried Mr. Hamlin, with his previous
smile.

Mr. Brown of Calaveras essayed an archness of gla’ice to
cover his confusion, which his weak face and whiskey-mud-
dled intellect but poorly carried out, and said,—

“ D—n it, Jack, a man must have a little liberty, you
know. But come, what do you say to a little game ? Give
us a show to double this hundred.”

Jack Hamlin looked curiously at his fatuous friend.
Perhaps he knew that the man was predestined to lose the
money, and preferred that it should flow back into his own
coffers rather than any other. He nodded his head, and
drew his chair toward the table. At the same moment
there came a rap upon the door.

“It’s Kate,” said Mr. Brown.

Mr. Hamlin shot back the bolt and the door opened.
But, for the first time in his life, he staggered to his feet
utterly unnerved and abashed, and for the first time in his
life the hot blood crimsoned his colorless cheeks to his
forehead. For before him stood the lady he had lifted
from the Wingdam coach, whom Brown, dropping his cards
with a hysterical laugh, greeted as, —

““My old woman, by thunder!”

They say that Mrs. Brown burst into tears and re-
proaches of her husband, I saw her in 1857 at Marysville,
and disbelieve the story. And the “ Wingdam Chronicle”
of the next week, under the head of “ Touching Reunion,”
said: “One of those beautiful and touching incidents,
peculiar to California life, occurred last week in our city.
The wife of one of Wingdam’s eminent pioneers, tired of
BROWN OF CALAVERAS 7

the effete civilization of the East and its inhospitable
climate, resolved to join her noble husband upon these
golden shores. Without informing him of her intention,
she undertook the long journey, and arrived last week.
The joy of the husband may be easier imagined than de.
scribed. The meeting is said to have been indescribably
affecting. We trust her example may be followed.”

Whether owing to Mrs. Brown’s influence, or to some
more successful speculations, Mr. Brown’s financial fortune
from that day steadily improved. He bought out his part.
ners in the ‘‘ Nip and Tuck ” lead, with money which was
said to have been won at poker a week or two after his
wife’s arrival, but which rumor, adopting Mrs. Brown’s
theory that Brown had forsworn the gaming-table, declared
to have been furnished by Mr. Jack Hamlin. He built
and furnished the Wingdam House, which pretty Mrs.
Brown’s great popularity kept overflowing with guests. He
was elected to the Assembly, and gave largess to churches.
A street in Wingdam was named in his honor.

Yet it was noted that in proportion as he waxed wealthy
and fortunate, he grew pale, thin, and anxious. As his
wife’s popularity increased, he became fretful and impatient.
The most uxorious of husbands, he was absurdly jealous.
If he did not interfere with his wife’s social liberty, it was
because it was maliciously whispered that his first and only
attempt was met by an outburst from Mrs. Brown that terri-
fied him into silence. Much of this kind of gossip came
from those of her own sex whom she had supplanted in the
chivalrous attentions of Wingdam, which, like most popu-
lar chivalry, was devoted to an admiration of power, whether
of masculine force or feminine beauty. It should be re~
membered, too, in her extenuation, that, since her arrival,
she had been the unconscious priestess of a mythological
worship, perhaps not more ennobling to her womanhood
72 BROWN OF CALAVERAS

than that which distinguished an older Greek democracy.
I think that Brown was dimly conscious of this. But his
only confidant was Jack Hamlin, whose infelix reputation
naturally precluded any open intimacy with the family, and
whose visits were infrequent.

It was midsummer and a moonlit night, and Mrs. Brown,
very rosy, large-eyed, and pretty, sat upon the piazza, en-
joying the fresh incense of the mountain breeze, and, it is
to be feared, another incense which was not so fresh nor
quite as innocent. Beside her sat Colonel Starbottle and
Judge Boompointer, and a later addition to her court in the
shape of a foreign tourist. She was in good spirits.

“What do you see down the road ? ” inquired the gallant
Colonel, who had been conscious, for the last few minutes,
that Mrs. Brown’s attention was diverted.

“ Dust,” said Mrs. Brown, with a sigh. ‘Only Sister
Anne’s ‘flock of sheep.’ ”

The Colonel, whose literary recollections did not extend
farther back than last week’s paper, took a more practical
view. “It ain’t sheep,” he continued ; ‘it’s a horseman.
Judge, ain’t that Jack Hamlin’s gray ? ”

But the Judge did n’t know; and, as Mrs. Brown sug-
gested the air was growing too cold for further investiga-
tions, they retired to the parlor.

Mr. Brown was in the stable, where he generally retired
after dinner. Perhaps it was to show his contempt for his
wife’s companions; perhaps, like other weak natures, he
found pleasure in the exercise of absolute power over infe-
rior animals. He had a certain gratification in the training
of a chestnut mare, whom he could beat or caress as pleased
him, which he could n’t do with Mrs. Brown. It was here
that he recognized a certain gray horse which had just come
in, and, looking a little farther on, found hisrider. Brown’s
greeting was cordial and hearty; Mr. Hamlin’s somewhat
testreinad. But, at Brown’s urgent request, he followed
BROWN OF CALAVERAS 73

him up the back stairs to a narrow corridor, and thence to
a small room looking out upon the stable-yard. It was
plainly furnished with a bed, a table, a few chairs, and a
rack for guns and whips.

“This yer’s my home, Jack,” said Brown with a sigh,
as he threw himself upon the bed and motioned his com-
panion toa chair. ‘ Her room’s t’ other end of the hall.
It’s more ’n six months since we’ve lived together, or met,
except at meals. It’s mighty rough papers on the head of
the house, ain’t it ? ”’ he said with a forced langh. “ But
I’m glad to see you, Jack, d—d glad,” and he reached
from the bed, and again shook the unresponsive hand of
Jack Hamlin.

“T brought ye up here, for I didn’t want to talk in the
stable; though, for the matter of that, it’s all round town.
Don’t strike a light. We can talk here in the moonshine.
Put up your feet on that winder and sit here beside me.
Thar ’s whiskey in that jug.”

Mr. Hamlin did not avail himself of the information.
Brown of Calaveras turned his face to the wall, and con-
tinued, —

‘Tf I didn’t love the woman, Jack, I would n’t mind.
But it’s loving her, and seeing her day arter day goin’ on
at this rate, and no one to put down the brake ; that’s what
gits me! But I’m glad to see ye, Jack, d—d glad.”

In the darkness he groped about until he had found and
wrung his companion’s hand again. He would have detained
it, but Jack slipped it into the buttoned breast of his coat,
and asked listlessly, ‘‘ How long has this been going on ?”

“¢ Ever since she came here ; ever since the day she walked
into the Magnolia. I was a fool then; Jack, I’m a fool
now; but I didn’t know how much J loved her till then.
And she has n’t been the same woman since.

“But that ain’t all, Jack; and it’s what I wanted to see
you about, and I’m glad you’ve come. It ain’t that she
74 BROWN OF CALAVERAS

does n’t love me any more; it ain’t that she fools with every
chap that comes along; for perhaps I staked her love and
lost it, as I did everything else at the Magnolia; and
perhaps foolin’ is nateral to some women, and thar ain’t no
great harm done, ‘cept to the fools. But, Jack, I think, —
I think she loves somebody else. Don’t move, Jack ! don’t
move ; if your pistol hurts ye, take it off.

“It’s been more’n six months now that she’s seemed
unhappy and lonesome, and kinder nervous and scared-like.
And sometimes I’ve ketched her lookin’ at me sort of timid
and pitying. And she writes to somebody. And for the
last week she ’s been gathering her own things, — trinkets,
and furbelows, and jew’lry, — and, Jack, I think she’s
goin’ off. I could stand all but that. To have her steal
away like a thief!” He put his face downward to the
pillow, and for a few moments there was no sound but the
ticking of a clock on the mantel. Mr. Hamlin lit a cigar,
and moved to the open window. The moon no longer
shone into the room, and the bed and its occupant were in
shadow. “ What shall I do, Jack ?” said the voice from
the darkness.

The answer came promptly and clearly from the window-
side, “Spot the man, and kill him on sight.”

“ But, Jack”? —

“He ’s took the risk!”

“But will that bring her back ? ”

Jack did not reply, but moved from the window towards
the door.

“Don’t go yet, Jack; light the candle and sit by the
table. It’s a comfort to see ye, if nothin’ else.”

Jack hesitated and then complied. He drew a pack of
eards from his pocket and shuffled them, glancing at the
bed. But Brown’s face was turned to the wall. When
Mr. Hamlin had shuffled the eards, he cut them, and dealt
one card on the opposite side of the table towards the bed,
BROWN OF CALAVERAS 75

and another on his side of the table for himself. The first
was a deuce; his own card aking. He then shuffled and
cut again, This time “dummy” had a queen and himself
a four-spot. Jack brightened up for the third deal. It
brought his adversary a deuce and himself a king again.
“Two out of three,” said Jack audibly.

‘What ’s that, Jack ? ” said Brown.

“ Nothing.”

Then Jack tried his hand with dice; but he always threw
sixes and his imaginary opponent aces. The force of habit
is sometimes confusing.

Meanwhile some magnetic influence in Mr. Hamlin’s
presence, or the anodyne of liquor, or both, brought sur-
cease of sorrow, and Brown slept. Mr. Hamlin moved his
chair to the window and looked out on the town of Wing-
dam, now sleeping peacefully, its harsh outlines softened
and subdued, its glaring colors mellowed and sobered in
the moonlight that flowed over all. In the hush he could
hear the gurgling of water in the ditches and the sighing
of the pines beyond the hill. Then he looked up at the
firmament, and as he did so a star shot across the twin-
kling field. Presently another, and then another. The
phenomenon suggested to Mr. Hamlin a fresh augury. If
in another fifteen minutes another star should fall— He
sat there, watch in hand, for twice that time, but the phe-
nomenon was not repeated.

The clock struck two, and Brown still slept. Mr. Hamlin
approached the table and took from his pocket a letter,
which he read by the flickering candlelight. It contained
only a single line, written in pencil, in a woman’s hand, —

“Be at the corral with the buggy at three.”

The sleeper moved uneasily and then awoke. “ Are
you there, Jack ? ”

“Yes,”

“Don’t go yet. I dreamed just now, Jack, — dreamed
76 BROWN OF CALAVERAS

of old times. I thought that Sue and me was being mar
ried agin, and that the parson, Jack, was— who do you
think ? — you !”

The gambler laughed, and seated himself on the bed, the
paper still in his hand.

“Tt’sa good sign, ain’t it?” queried Brown.

“JT reckon! Say, old man, hadn’t you better get
up - ”

The “old man,” thus affectionately appealed to, rose,
with the assistance of Hamlin’s outstretched hand.

“ Smoke ?”

Brown mechanically took the proffered cigar.

“ Light ?”

Jack had twisted the letter into a spiral, lit it, and held
it for his companion. He continued to hold it until it was
consumed, and ‘dropped the fragment —a fiery star — from
the open window. He watched it as it fell, and then re-
turned to his friend.

“Old man,” he said, placing ois hands upon Brown’s
shoulders, “in ten minutes I’ll be on the road, and gone
like that spark. We won’t see each other agin; but, before
I go, take a fool’s advice: sell outall you ’ve got, take your
wife with you, and quit the country. It ain’t no place for
you nor her. Tell her she must go; make her go if she
won’t. Don’t whine because you can’t be a saint and she
ain’t an angel. Be a man, and treat her like a woman.
Don’t be a d—d fool. Good-by.”

He tore himself from Brown’s grasp and leaped down
the stairs like a deer. At the stable-door he collared the
half-sleeping hostler, and backed him against the wall.
“ Saddle my horse in two minutes, or I’11”7—- The ellip-
sis was frightfully suggestive.

“The missis said you was to have the buggy,” stammered
the man.

 D—n the buggy!”
BROWN OF CALAVERAS 77

The horse was saddled as fast as the nervous hands of
the astounded hostler could manipulate buckle and strap.

“Ts anything up, Mr. Hamlin?” said the man, who,
like all his class, admired the dlan of his fiery patron, and
was really concerned in his welfare.

“ Stand aside ! ”

The man fell back. With an oath, a bound, and clatter,
Jack was into the road. In another nioment, to the man’s
half-awakened eyes, he was but a moving cloud of dust in
the distance, towards which a star just loosed from its
brethren was trailing a stream of fire.

But early that morning the dwellers by the Wingdam
turnpike, miles aways, heard a voice, pure as a sky-lark’s,
singing afield. They who were asleep turned over on thei
rude couches to dream of youth, and love, and olden days.
Hard-faced men and anxious gold-seekers, already at work,
ceased their labors and leaned upon their picks to listen to
a romantic vagabond ambling away against the rosy sun-
T18e.
CONDENSED NOVELS

MUCK-A-MUCK
A MODERN INDIAN NOVEL
AFTER COOPER
CHAPTER I

Ir was toward the close of a bright October day. The
fast rays of the setting sun were reflected from one of those
sylvan lakes peculiar to the Sierras of California. On the
right the curling smoke of an Indian village rose between
the columns of the lofty pines, while to the left the log
cottage of Judge Tompkins, embowered in buckeyes, com-
pleted the enchanting picture.

Although the exterior of the cottage was humble and
unpretentious, and in keeping with the wildness of the
landscape, its interior gave evidence of the cultivation and
vefinement of its inmates. An aquarium, containing gold-
fishes, stood on a marble centre-table at one end of the
apartment, while a magnificent grand piano occupied the
other. The floor was covered with a yielding tapestry
carpet, and the walls were adorned with paintings from the
pencils of Van Dyke, Rubens, Tintoretto, Michael Angelo,
und the productions of the more modern Turner, Kensett,
Church, and Bierstadt. Although Judge Tompkins had
chosen the frontiers of civilization as his home, it was
MUCK-—A-MUCK 79

impossible for him to entirely forego the habits and tastes
of his former life. He was seated in a luxurious armchair,
writing at a mahogany escritoire, while his daughter, a
lovely young girl of seventeen summers, plied her crotchet-
needle on an ottoman beside him. A bright fire of pine
logs flickered and flamed on the ample hearth.

Genevra Octavia Tompkins was Judge Tompkins’s only
child. Her mother had long since died on the Plains.
Reared in affluence, no pains had been spared with the
daughter’s education. She was a graduate of one of the
principal seminaries, and spoke French with a perfect
Benicia accent. Peerlessly beautiful, she was dressed in a
white moiré antique robe trimmed with tulle. That simple
rosebud, with which most heroines exclusively decorate
their hair, was all she wore in her raven locks.

The Judge was the first to break the silence.

“ Genevra, the logs which compose yonder fire seem to
have been incautiously chosen. The sibilation produced
by the sap, which exudes copiously therefrom, is not con-
ducive to composition.”

“True, father, but I thought it would be preferable to
the constant crepitation which is apt to attend the combus-
tion of more seasoned ligneous fragments.”

The Judge looked admiringly at the intellectual features
of the graceful girl, and half forgot the slight annoyances
of the green wood in the musical accents of his daughter.
He was smoothing her hair tenderly, when the shadow of
a tall figure, which suddenly darkened the doorway, caused
him to look up.

CHAPTER II

It needed but a glance at the new-comer to detect at once
the form and features of the haughty aborigine, — the un-
taught and untrammeled son of the forest. Over one
80 CONDENSED NOVELS

shoulder a blanket, negligently but gracefully thrown, dis:
closed a bare and powerful breast, decorated with a quantity
of three-cent postage-stamps which he had despoiled from
an Overland Mail stage a few weeks previous. A cast-off
beaver of Judge Tompkins’s, adorned by a simple feather,
covered his erect head, from beneath which his straight
locks descended. His right hand hung lightly by his side,
while his left was engaged in holding on a pair of panta-
loons, which the lawless grace and freedom of his lower
limbs evidently could not brook.

“Why,” said the Indian, in a low sweet tone, — “ why
does the Pale Face still follow the track of the Red Man ?
‘Why does he pursue him, even as O-kee chow, the wild cat,
chases Ka-ka, the skunk ? Why are the feet of Sorrel-top,
the white chief, among the acorns of Muck-a-Muck, the
mountain forest ? Why,” he repeated, quietly but firmly
abstracting a silver spoon from the table, —‘‘ why do you
seek to drive him from the wigwams of his fathers? His
brothers are already gone to the happy hunting-grounds,
Will the Pale Face seek him there ?”? And, averting his
face from the Judge, he hastily slipped a silver cake-basket
beneath his blanket, to conceal his emotion.

“ Muck-a-Muck has spoken.” said Genevra softly. “ Let
him now listen. Are the acorns of the mountain sweeter
than the esculent and nutritious bean of the Pale Face
miner? Does my brother prize the edible qualities of the
snail above that of the crisp and oleaginous bacon? De-
licious are the grasshoppers that sport on the hillside, —
are they better than the dried apples of the Pale Faces ?
Pleasant is the gurgle of the torrent, Kish-Kish, but is it
better than the cluck-cluck of old Bourbon from the old
stone bottle ? ”

“Ugh!” said the Indian, — “ugh! good. The Whit
Rabbit is wise. Her words fall as the snow on Tootoonolo,
and the rocky heart of Muck-a-Muck is hidden. What says
my brother the Gray Gopher of Dutch Flat ?”
MUCK—A-MUCK 81

“She has spoken, Muck-a-Muck,”’ said the Judge, gazing
fondly on his daughter. “It is well. Our treaty is con-
cluded. No, thank you, — you need not dance the Dance
of Snow-shoes, or the Moccasin Dance, the Dance of Green
Corn, or the Treaty Dance. I would be alone. A strange
sadness overpowers me.”

“T go,” said the Indian. ‘Tell your great chief iv
Washington, the Sachem Andy, that the Red Man is retin
ing before the footsteps of the adventurous pioneer. In-
form him, if you please, that westward the star of empire
takes its way, that the chiefs of the Pi-Ute nation are for
Reconstruction to a man, and that Klamath will poll a
heavy Republican vote in the fall.”

And folding his blanket more tightly around him, Muck:
a-Muck withdrew.

CHAPTER III

Genevra Tompkins stood at the door of the log-cabin,
looking after the retreating Overland Mail stage which
conveyed her father to Virginia City. ‘“ He may never
return again,” sighed the young girl, as she glanced at the
frightfully rolling vehicle and wildly careering horses, —
“at least, with unbroken bones. Should he meet with an
accident! I mind me now a fearful legend, familiar to my
childhood. Can it be that the drivers on this line are
privately instructed to dispatch all passengers maimed by
accident, to prevent tedious litigation? No, no. But why
this weight upon my heart ? ”

She seated herself at the piano and lightly passed her
hand over the keys. Then, in a clear mezzo-soprano voice,
she sang the first verse of one of the most popular Irish
ballads : —

**O Arrah ma dheelish, the distant dudheen
Lies soft in the moonlight, ma bouchal vourneen :
82 CONDENSED NOVELS

The springing gossoons on the heather are still,
And the caubeens and colleens are heard on the hill.”

But as the ravishing notes of her sweet voice died upon
the air, her hands sank listlessly to her side. Music could
not chase away the mysterious shadow from her heart.
Again she rose. Putting on a white crape bonnet, and
carefully drawing a pair of lemon-colored gloves over her
taper fingers, she seized her parasol and. plunged into the
depths of the pine forest.

CHAPTER IV

Genevra had not proceeded many miles before a weari-
ness seized upon her fragile limbs, and she would fain seat
herself upon the trunk of a prostrate pine, which she pre-
viously dusted with her handkerchief. The sun was just
sinking below the horizon, and the scene was one of gor-
geous and sylvan beauty. ‘ How beautiful is nature!”
murmured the innocent girl, as, reclining gracefully against
the root of the tree, she gathered up her skirts and tied a
handkerchief around her throat. But a low growl inter-
rupted her meditation. Starting to her feet, her eyes met
a sight which froze her blood with terror.

The only outlet to the forest was the narrow path, barely
wide enough for a single person, hemmed in by trees and
rocks, which she had just traversed. Down this path, in
Indian file, came a monstrous grizzly, closely followed by
a California lion, a wild cat, and a buffalo, the rear being
brought up by a wild Spanish bull. The mouths of the
three first animals were distended with frightful significance,
the horns of the last were lowered as ominously. As
Genevra was preparing to faint, she heard a low voice
behind her.

“ Eternally dog-gone my skin ef this ain’t the puttiest
chance yet!”
MUCK—A—MUCK 83

At the same moment, a long, shining barrel dropped
lightly from behind her, and rested over her shoulder.

Genevra shuddered.

“Dern ye — don’t move!”

Genevra became motionless.

The crack of a rifle rang through the woods. Three
frightful yells were heard, and two sullen roars. Five
animals bounded into the air and five lifeless bodies lay
upon the plain. The well-aimed bullet had done its work.
Entering the open throat of the grizzly it had traversed his
body only to enter the throat of the California lion, and in
like manner the catamount, until it passed through into the
respective foreheads of the bull and the buffalo, and finally
fell flattened from the rocky hillside.

Genevra turned quickly. ‘‘ My preserver ! ” she shrieked,
and fell into the arms of Natty Bumpo, the celebrated Pike
Ranger of Donner Lake.

CHAPTER V

The moon rose cheerfully above Donner Lake. On its
placid bosom a dug-out canoe glided rapidly, containing
Natty Bumpo and Genevra Tompkins.

Both were silent. The same thought possessed each,
and perhaps there was sweet companionship even in the
unbroken quiet. Genevra bit the handle of her parasol,
and blushed. Natty Bumpo took a fresh chew of tobacco.
At length Genevra said, as if in half-spoken reverie : —

“The soft shining of the moon and the peaceful ripple
of the waves seem to say to us various things of an instruc-
tive and moral tendency.”

“You may bet yer pile on that, miss,” said her coin-
nenion gravely. “It’s all the preachin’ and psalm-singin’
I’ve heern since I was a boy.”

‘Noble being!” said Miss Tompkins éo herself, glancing
84 CONDENSED NOVELS

at the stately Pike as he bent over his paddle to conceal
his emotion. ‘‘ Reared in this wild seclusion, yet he has
become penetrated with visible consciousness of a Great
First Cause.” Then, collecting herself, she said aloud:
“Methinks ’t were pleasant to glide ever thus down the
stream of life, hand in hand with the one being whom the
soul claims as its affinity. But what am I saying?” —
and the delicate-minded girl hid her face in her hands.

A long silence ensued, which was at length broken by
her companion.

“Ef you mean you’re on the marry,” he said thought
fully, ‘I ain’t in no wise partikler.”

““My husband!” faltered the blushing girl; and she fell
into his arms.

In ten minutes more the loving couple had landed at
Judge Tompkins’s.

CHAPTER VI

A year has passed away. Natty Bumpo was returning
from Gold Hill, where he had been to purchase provisions.
On his way to Donner Lake, rumors of an Indian uprising
met his ears. ‘Dern their pesky skins, ef they dare to
touch my Jenny,” he muttered between his clenched teeth.

It was dark when he reached the borders of the lake.
Around a glittering fire he dimly discerned dusky figures
dancing. They were in war paint. Conspicuous among
them was the renowned Muck-a-Muck. But why did the
fingers of Natty Bumpo tighten convulsively around his
Tifle ?

The chief held in his hand long tufts of raven hair. The
heart of the pioneer sickened as he recognized the clustering
curls of Genevra. In a moment his rifle was at his shoulder,
and with a sharp “ping” Muck-a-Muck leaped into the
air a corpse. To knock out the brains of the remaining
MUCK—A—MUCK 85

savages, tear the tresses from the stiffening hand of Muck-
a-Muck, and dash rapidly forward to the cottage of Judge
Tompkins, was the work of a moment.

He burst open the door. Why did he stand transfixed
with open mouth and distended eyeballs? Was the sight
too horrible to be borne?’ On the contrary, before him,
in her peerless beauty, stood Genevra Tompkins, leaning
on her father’s arm.

“Ye’r not scalped, then!” gasped her lover.

“No. I have no hesitation in saying that I am not; but
why this abruptness ?”? responded Genevra.

Bumpo could not speak, but frantically produced the
silken tresses. Genevra turned her face aside.

“Why, that ’s her waterfall!’ said the Judge.

Bumpo sank fainting to the floor.

The famous Pike chieftain never recovered from the
deceit, and refused to marry Genevra, who died, twenty
years afterwards, of a broken heart. Judge Tompkins lost
his fortune in Wild Cat. The stage passes twice a week
the deserted cottage at Donner Lake. ‘Thus was the death
of Muck-a-Muck avenged.
SELINA SEDILIA
BY MISS M. E. B-DD-N AND MRS. H-N-Y W-D.
CHAPTER I

THE sun was setting over Sloperton Grange, and reddened
the window of the lonely chamber in the western tower,
supposed to be haunted by Sir Edward Sedilia, the founder
of the Grange. In the dreamy distance arose the gilded
mausoleum of Lady Felicia Sedilia, who haunted that por-
tion of Sedilia Manor known as “ Stiff-uns Acre.” A little
to the left of the Grange might have been seen a moulder-
ing ruin, known as “ Guy’s Keep,” haunted by the spirit of
Sir Guy Sedilia, who was found, one morning, crushed by
one of the fallen battlements. Yet, as the setting sun
gilded these objects, a beautiful and almost holy calm
seemed diffused about the Grange.

The Lady Selina sat by an oriel window overlooking the
park. The sun sank gently in the bosom of the German
Ocean, and yet the lady did not lift her beautiful head
from the finely curved arm and diminutive hand which
supported it. When darkness finally shrouded the land-
scape she started, for the sound of horse-hoofs clattered
over the stones of the avenue. She had scarcely risen,
before an aristocratic young man fell on his knees before
her.

“My Selina!”

“Edgardo! You here?”

“ Yes, dearest.”

“ And — you — you — have — seen nothing ?”’ said the
SELINA SEDILIA 87

lady in an agitated voice and nervous manner, turning her
face aside to conceal her emotion.

‘“‘ Nothing — that is, nothing of any account,” said Ed-
gardo. “I passed the ghost of your aunt in the park,
noticed the spectre of your uncle in the ruined keep, and
observed the familiar features of the spirit of your great-
grandfather at his usual post. But nothing beyond these
trifles, my Selina. Nothing more, love, absolutely nothing.”

The young man turned his dark, liquid orbs fondly upon
the ingenuous face of his betrothed.

“ My own Edgardo ! — and you still love me? You still
would marry me in spite of this dark mystery which sur-
rounds me ? In spite of the fatal history of my race? In
spite of the ominous predictions of my aged nurse ? ”

“T would, Selina; ” and the young man passed his arm
around her yielding waist. The two lovers gazed at each
other’s faces in unspeakable bliss, Suddenly Selina started.

‘Leave me, Edgardo! leave me! A mysterious some-
thing —a fatal misgiving —a dark ambiguity —an equiv-
ocal mistrust oppresses me. I would be alone!”

The young man arose, and cast a loving glance on the
lady. ‘Then we will be married on the seventeenth.”

“The seventeenth,” repeated Selina, with a mysterious
shudder.

They embraced and parted. As the clatter of hoofs in
the courtyard died away, the Lady Selina sank into the
chair she had just quitted.

“The seventeenth,” she repeated slowly, with the same
fateful shudder. ‘ Ah!—what if he should know that I
have another husband living? Dare I reveal to him that
I have two legitimate and three natural children? Dare
I repeat to him the history of my youth? Dare I confess
that at the age of seven I poisoned my sister, by putting
verdigris in her cream-tarts, — that I threw my cousin from
a swing at the age of twelve? That the lady’s maid whe
88 CONDENSED NOVELS

ineurred the displeasure of my girlhood now lies at the
bottom of the horse-pond? No! no! heis too pure, — too
good, — too innocent,—to hear such improper conversa-
tion! ’? and her whole body writhed as she rocked to and
fro in a paroxysm of grief.

But she was soon calm. Rising to her feet, she opened
a secret panel in the wall, and revealed a slow-match ready
for lighting.

“This match,” said the Lady Selina, “is connected with
a mine beneath the western tower, where my three children
are confined; another branch of it lies under the parish
church, where the record of my first marriage is kept. I
have only to light this match and the whole of my past life
is swept away!’? She approached the match with a lighted .
candle.

But a hand was laid upon her arm, and with a shriek the
Lady Selina fell on her knees before the spectre of Sir Guy.

CHAPTER II

“‘Forbear, Selina,” said the phantom in a hollow voice.

«Why should I forbear ? ” responded Selina haughtily,
as she recovered her courage. ‘You know the secret of
our race ?””

“T do. Understand me, —I do not object to the eccen-
tricities of your youth. I know the fearful destiny which,
pursuing you, led you to poison your sister and drown your
lady’s maid. I know the awful doom which I have brought
upon this house. But if you make away with these chil-
dren ””? —

“ Well,” said the Lady Selina hastily.

“They will haunt you!”

“Well, I fear them not,” said Selina, drawing her superb
figure to its full height.
SELINA SEDILIA 89

“Yes, but, my dear child, what place are they to haunt ?
fhe ruin is sacred to your uncle’s spirit. Your aunt mono-
polizes the park, and, I must be allowed to state, not unfre-
yuently trespasses upon the grounds of others. The horse-
pond is frequented by the spirit of your maid, and your
murdered sister walks these corridors. To be plain, there
is no room at Sloperton Grange for another ghost. I cannot
have them in my room, — for you know I don’t like children.
Think of this, rash girl, and forbear! Would you, Selina,”
said the phantom mournfully, — “would you force your
great-grandfather’s spirit to take lodgings elsewhere ? ”

Lady Selina’s hand trembled; the lighted candle fell
from her nerveless fingers.

‘‘ No,” she cried passionately ; “never!” and fell faint-
ing to the floor.

CHAPTER III

Edgardo galloped rapidly towards Sloperton. When the
outline of the Grange had faded away in the darkness, he
teined his magnificent steed beside the ruins of Guy’s Keep.

“Tt wants but a few minutes of the hour,” he said, con-
sulting his watch by the light of the moon. ‘ He dare not
break his word. He will come.” He paused, and peered
anxiously into the darkness. ‘ But come what may, she is
mine,” he continued, as his thoughts reverted fondly to the
fair lady he had quitted. ‘ Yet iz she knew all. If she
knew that Iam a disgraced and ruined man, —a felon
and an outcast. If she knew that at the age of fourteen I
murdered my Latin tutor and forged my uncle’s will. If
she knew that I had three wives already, and that the
fourth victim of misplaced confidence and my unfortunate
peculiarity is expected to be at Sloperton by to-night’s train
with her baby. But no; she must not know it. Constance
must not arrive; Burke the Slogger must attend to that.
80 CONDENSED NOVELS

“Ha! here he is! Well?”

These words were addressed to a ruffian in a slouched
hat, who suddenly appeared from Guy’s Keep.

“‘T be’s here, measter,” said the villain, with a disgrace-
fully low accent and complete disregard of grammatical
rules.

“Tt is well. Listen: I’m in possession of facts that
will send you to the gallows. I know of the murder of
Bill Smithers, the robbery of the tollgate-keeper, and the
making away of the youngest daughter of Sir Reginald de
Walton. A word from me, and the officers of justice are
on your track.”

Burke the Slogger trembled.

“Hark ye! serve my purpose, and I may yet save you.
The 5.30 train from Clapham will be due at Sloperton at
9.25. It must not arrive!”

The villain’s eyes sparkled as he nodded at Edgardo.

“Enough, — you understand ; leave me!”

CHAPTER IV

About half a mile from Sloperton Station the South Clap-
ham and Medway line crossed a bridge over Sloperton-on-
Trent. As the shades of evening were closing, a man in
a slouched hat might have been seen, carrying a saw and
axe under his arm, hanging about the bridge. From time
to time he disappeared in the shadow of its abutments,
but the sound of a saw and axe still betrayed his vicinity.
At exactly nine o’clock he reappeared, and crossing to the
Sloperton side, rested his shoulder against the abutment
and gave a shove. The bridge swayed a moment, and then
fell with a splash into the water, leaving a space of one
hundred feet between the two banks. This done, Burke
the Slogger, — for it was he, — with a fiendish chuckle
SELINA SEDILIA 91

seated himself on the divided railway track and awaited the
coming of the train.

A shriek from the woods announced its approach. For
an instant Burke the Slogger saw the glaring of a red lamp.
The ground trembled. The train was going with fearful
rapidity. Another second and it had reached the bank.
Burke the Slogger uttered a fiendish laugh. But the next
moment the train leaped across the chasm, striking the rails
exactly even, and dashing out the life of Burke the Slogger,
sped away to Sloperton.

The first object that greeted Edgardo, as he rode up to
the station on the arrival of the train, was the body of
Burke the Slogger hanging on the cowcatcher ; the second
was the face of his deserted wife looking from the window
of a second-class carriage.

CHAPTER V

A nameless terror seemed to have taken possession of
Clarissa, Lady Selina’s maid, as she rushed into the presence
of her mistress.

“Oh, my lady, such news!”

“Explain yourself,” said her mistress, rising.

“An accident has happened on the railway, and a man
has been killed.”

“What — not Edgardo!” almost screamed Selina.

“No, Burke the Slogger, your ladyship! ”

“My first husband!” said Lady Selina, sinking on her
knees, ‘Just Heaven, I thank thee!”
92 CONDENSED NOVELS

CHAPTER VI

The morning of the seventeenth dawned brightly overt
Sloperton. ‘A fine day for the wedding,” said the sexton
to Swipes, the butler of Sloperton Grange. The aged
retainer shook his head sadly. “ Alas! there’s no trusting
in signs!”’ he continued. ‘‘ Seventy-five years ago, on a
day like this, my young mistress”? — but he was cut short
by the appearance of a stranger.

“T would see Sir Edgardo,” said the new-comer im-
patiently.

The bridegroom, who, with the rest of the wedding-train,
was about stepping into the carriage to proceed to the parish
church, drew the stranger aside.

“It’s done!” said the stranger, in a hoarse whisper.

“ Ah! and you buried her ?”

“With the others! ”

“Enough. No more at present. Meet me after the
ceremony, and you shall have your reward.”

The stranger shuffled away, and Edgardo returned to his
bride. “A trifling matter of business I had forgotten, my
dear Selina; let us proceed.” And the young man pressed
the timid hand of his blushing bride as he handed her into
the carriage. The cavalcade rode out of the courtyard.
At the same moment, the deep bell on Guy’s Keep tolled
ominously.

CHAPTER VII

Scarcely had the wedding-train left the Grange, than
Alice Sedilia, youngest daughter of Lady Selina, made her
escape from the western tower, owing to a lack of watch-
fulness on the part of Clarissa. The innocent child, freed
from restraint, rambled through the lonely corridors, and
SELINA SEDILIA $3

finally, opening a door, found herself in her mother’s bou-
doir. For some time she amused herself by examining the
various ornaments and elegant trifles with which it was
filled. Then, in pursuance of a childish freak, she dressed
herself in her mother’s laces and ribbons. In this occupa-
tion she chanced to touch a peg which proved to be a spring
that opened a secret panel in the wall. Alice uttered a
cry of delight as she noticed what, to her childish fancy,
appeared to be the slow-match of a firework. Taking a
lucifer match in her hand she approached the fuse. She
hesitated a moment. What would her mother and her
nurse say ?

Suddenly the ringing of the chimes of Sloperton parish
church met her ear. Alice knew that the sound signified
that the marriage-party had entered the church, and that
she was secure from interruption. With a childish smile
upon her lips, Alice Sedilia touched off the slow-match.

CHAPTER VIII

At exactly two o’clock on the seventeenth, Rupert
Sedilia, who had just returned from India, was thought-
fully descending the hill toward Sloperton manor. “If I
can prove that my aunt, Lady Selina, was married before my
father died, I can establish my claim to Sloperton Grange,”
he uttered, half aloud. He paused, for a sudden trembling
of the earth beneath his feet, and a terrific explosion, as of
a park of artillery, arrested his progress. At the same
moment he beheld a dense cloud of smoke envelop the
churchyard of Sloperton, and the western tower of the
Grange seemed to be lifted bodily from its foundation.
The air seemed filled with falling fragments, and two dark
objects struck the earth close at his feet. Rupert picked
them up. One seemed to be a heavy volume bound in
brass.
94 CONDENSED NOVELS

A ery burst from his lips.

“The Parish Records.” He opened the volume hastily.
It contained the marriage of Lady Selina to “ Burke the
Slogger.”

The second object proved to be a piece of parchment.
He tore it open with trembling fingers. It was the missing
will of Sir James Sedilia!

CHAPTER IX

When the bells again rang on the new parish church of
Sloperton it was for the marriage of Sir Rupert Sedilia and
his cousin, the only remaining members of the family.

Five more ghosts were added to the supernatural popula-
tion of Sloperton Grange. Perhaps this was the reason why
Sir Rupert sold the property shortly afterward, and that
for many years a dark shadow seemed to hang over the ruins
of Sloperton Grange.
THE NINETY-NINE GUARDSMEN
BY AL-XK-D-R D-M-S
CHAPTER I

SHOWING THE QUALITY OF THE CUSTOMERS OF THE
INNKEEPER OF PROVINS

TweENtTy years after, the gigantic innkeeper of Provins
stood looking at a cloud of dust on the highway.

This cloud of dust betokened the approach of a traveler.
Travelers had been rare that season on the highway be-
tween Paris and Provins.

The heart of the innkeeper rejoiced. Turning to Dame
Périgord, his wife, he said, stroking his white apron, —

“St. Denis! make haste and spread the cloth, Adda
bottle of Charlevoix to the table. This traveler, who rides
so fast, by his pace must be a monseigneur.”

Truly the traveler, clad in the uniform of a musketeer,
as he drew up to the door of the hostelry, did not seem to
have spared his horse. Throwing his reins to the landlord,
he leaped lightly to the ground. He was a young man of
four and twenty, and spoke with a slight Gascon accent.

“Tam hungry, morbleu! I wish to dine! ”

The gigantic innkeeper bowed and led the way to a neat
apartment, where a table stood covered with tempting
viands. The musketeer at once set to work. Fowls, fish,
and patés disappeared before him. Périgord sighed as he
witnessed the devastations, Only once the stranger
paused.
96 CONDENSED NOVELS

“Wine!” Périgord brought wine. The stranger drank
a dozen bottles. Finally he rose to depart. Turning to
the expectant landlord, he said, —

“ Charge it.”

“To whom, your highness?” said Périgord anxiously.

“To his Eminence !”

“ Mazarin ?”’ ejaculated the innkeeper.

“The same. Bring me my horse,” and the musketeer,
remounting his favorite animal, rode away.

The innkeeper slowly turned back into the inn. Scarcely
had he reached the courtyard before the clatter of hoofs
again called him to the doorway. A young musketeer of
a light and graceful figure rode up.

“Parbleu, my dear Périgord, I am famishing. What
have you got for dinner ? ”

“Venison, capons, larks, and pigeons, your excellency,”
replied the obsequious landlord, bowing to the ground,

“Enough!” The young musketeer dismounted, and en-
tered the inn. Seating himself at the table replenished by
the careful Périgord, he speedily swept it as clean.as the
first comer.

“Some wine, my brave Périgord,” said the graceful
young musketeer, as soon as he could find utterance.

Périgord brought three dozen of Charlevoix. The young
man emptied them almost at a draught.

“ By-by, Périgord,” he said lightly, waving his hand, as,
preceding the astonished landlord, he slowly withdrew.

“But, your highness, —the bill,” said the astounded
Périgord.

‘Ah, the bill. Charge it!”

“To whom ?”

“The Queen! ”

“ What, Madame ? ”

“The same. Adieu, my good Périgord.” And the
peeen stranger rode away. An interval of quiet succeeded,
THE NINETY-NINE GUARDSMEN 97

in which tie innkeeper gazed woefully at his wife. Suddenly
he was startled by a clatter of hoofs, and an aristocratic
tigure stood in the doorway.

* Ah,” said the courtier good-naturedly. “ What, do my
eyes deceive me? No, it is the festive and luxurious
Périgord. Périgord, listen. I famish. I languish. I
would dine.”

The innkeeper again covered the table with viands.
Again it was swept clean as the fields of Egypt before the
miraculous swarm of locusts. The stranger looked up.

‘“‘ Bring me another fowl, my Périgord.”

“Impossible, your excellency; the larder is stripped
clean.”

“ Another flitch of bacon, then.”

“Tmpossible, your highness ; there is no more.”

“ Well, then, wine!”

The landlord brought one hundred and forty-four bot-
tles. The courtier drank them all.

“One may drink if one cannot eat,” said the aristocratic
stranger good-humoredly.

The innkeeper shuddered.

The guest rose to depart. ‘The innkeeper came slowly
forward with his bill, to which he had covertly added the
losses which he had suffered from the previous strangers.

“ Ah, the bill. Charge it.”

“Charge it! to whom?”

“To the King,” said the guest.

“ What! his Majesty ?”

“Certainly. Farewell, Périgord.”

The innkeeper groaned. Then he went out and took
down his sign. Then remarked to his wife, —

“Tama plain man, and don’t understand politics. It
seems, however, that the country is in a troubled state.
Between his Eminence the Cardinal, his Majesty the King,
and her Majesty the Queen, I am a ruined man.”
98 CONDENSED NOVELS

“ Stay,” said Dame Périgord, “I have an idea.”
“ And that is”? —
“Become yourself a musketeer.”

CHAPTER II
THE COMBAT

On leaving Provins the first musketeer proceeded tc
Nangis, where he was reinforced by thirty-three followers.
The second musketeer, arriving at Nangis at the same
moment, placed himself at the head of thirty-three more.
The third guest of the landlord of Provins arrived at Nan-
gis in time to assemble together thirty-three other mus-
keteers.

The first stranger led the troops of his Eminence.

The second led the troops of the Queen.

The third led the troops of the King.

The fight commenced. It raged terribly for seven hours.
The first musketeer killed thirty of the Queen’s troops.
The second musketeer killed thirty of the King’s troops.
The third musketeer killed thirty of his Eminence’s troops.

By this time it will be perceived the number of mus-
keteers had been narrowed down to four on each side.

Naturally the three principal warriors approached each
other.

They simultaneously uttered a cry.

“ Aramis !”

“ Athos!”

“ 'D’ Artagnan ! ”

They fell into each other’s arms.

‘And it seems that we are fighting against each other,
my children,” said the Count de la Fere mournfully.

“How singular!” exclaimed Aramis and D’ Artagnan.

“ Let us stop this fratricidal warfare,’ said Athos.
THE NINETY-NINE GUARDSMEN 99

“We will!” they exclaimed together.

“But how to disband our followers?” queried D’ Ar-
tagnan.

Aramis winked. They understood each other. “ Let
us cut ’em down!”

They cut ’em down. Aramis killed three. D’Artagnan
three. Athos three.

The friends again embraced. “ How like old times!”
said Aramis. ‘“ How touching!” exclaimed the serious and
philosophic Count de la Féere.

The galloping of hoofs caused them to withdraw from
each other’s embraces. A gigantic figure rapidly ap-
proached,

“The innkeeper of Provins!” they cried, drawing their
swords.

“ Périgord! down with him!” shouted D’Artagnan.

“Stay,” said Athos.

The gigantic figure was beside them. He uttered a ery.

“ Athos, Aramis, D’ Artagnan ! ”

“ Porthos !”’ exclaimed the astonished trio.

“The same.””? They all fell in each other’s arms.

The Count de la Fére slowly raised his hands to heaven.
“Bless you! Bless us, my children! However different
our opinion may be in regard to politics, we have but one
opinion in regard to our own merits. Where can you find
a better man than Aramis ? ”

“Than Porthos ?” said Aramis,

“Than D’Artagnan ?” said Porthos.

Than Athos ? ” said D’ Artagnan.
106 CONDENSED NOVELS

CHAPTER ITI
\HOWING HOW THE KING OF FRANCE WENT UP A LADDER

The King descended into the garden. Proceeding cau-
tiously along the terraced walk, he came to the wall imme-
diately below the windows of Madame. To the left were
two windows, concealed by vines. They opened into the
apartments of La Valliére.

The King sighed.

“Tt is about nineteen feet to that window,” said the
King. “If I had a ladder about nineteen feet long, it
would reach to that window. This is logic.”

Suddenly the King stumbled over something. “St.
Denis!” he exclaimed, looking down. It was a ladder,
just nineteen feet long.

The King placed it against the wall. In so doing, he
fixed the lower end upon the abdomen of a man who lay
concealed by the wall. The man did not utter a ery or
wince. The King suspected nothing. He ascended the
ladder.

The ladder was too short. Louis the Grand was not a
tall man. He was still two feet below the window.

“ Dear me!” said the King.

Suddenly the ladder was lifted two feet from below.
This enabled the King to leap in the window. At the
farther end of the apartment stood a young girl, with red
hair and a lame leg. She was trembling with emotion.

“Louise ! ”

“The King!”

“ Ah, my God, mademoiselle.”’

“Ah, my God, sire.”

But a low knock at the door interrupted the lovers,
The King uttered a cry of rage; Louise one of despair.
THE NINETY-NINE GUARDSMEN 101

The door opened and D’Artagnan entered.

“ Good-evening, sire,” said the musketeer,

The King touched a bell. Porthos appeared in the
doorway.

“ Good-evening, sire.”

“ Arrest M. D’Artagnan.”

Porthos looked at D’Artagnan, and did not move.

The King almost turned purple with rage. He again
touched the bell. Athos entered.

“ Count, arrest Porthos and D’Artagnan.”

The Count de la Fere glanced at Porthos and D’ Ar.
tagnan, and smiled sweetly.

“Sacré! Where is Aramis?” said the King violently,

“Here, sire,’ and Aramis entered.

“ Arrest Athos, Porthos, and D’ Artagnan.”

Aramis bowed and folded his arms.

“ Arrest yourself ! ”

Aramis did not move.

The King shuddered and turned pale. “ Am I not King
of France ? ”

“ Assuredly, sire, but we are also, severally, Porthos,
Aramis, D’Artagnan, and Athos,”

“ Ah!” said the King.

“Yes, sire.”

“What does this mean ?”

“Tt means, your Majesty,” said Aramis, stepping forward,
“that your conduct as a married man is highly improper.
I am an abbé, and I object to these improprieties. My
friends here, D’Artagnan, Athos, and Porthos, pure-minded
young men, are also terribly shocked. Observe, sire, how
they blush! ”

Athos, Porthos, and D’Artagnan blushed.

“ Ah,” said the King thoughtfully. ‘ You teach me a
lesson. You are devoted and noble young gentlemen, but
your only weakness is your excessive modesty. From this
102 CONDENSED NOVELS

moment I make you all marshals and dukes, with the ex-
ception of Aramis.”

“ And me, sire ?” said Aramis.

“ You shall be an archbishop!”

The four friends looked up and then rushed into each
other’s arms. The King embraced Louise de la Valliére,
by way of keeping them company. A pause ensued. At
last Athos spoke, —

“Swear, my: children, that, next to yourselves, you will
respect — the King of France ; and remember that ‘ Forty
years after’ we will meet again.”
MISS MIX
BY CH-L-TTE BR-NTE
CHAPTER I

My earliest impressions are of a huge, misshapen rock,
against which the hoarse waves beat unceasingly. On this
rock three pelicans are standing in a defiant attitude. <A
dark sky lowers in the background, while two sea-gulls and
a gigantic cormorant eye with extreme disfavor the float-
ing corpse of a drowned woman in the foreground. A few
bracelets, coral necklaces, and other articles of. jewelry
scattered around loosely, complete this remarkable picture

It is one which, in some vague, unconscious way,
symbolizes, to my fancy, the character of a man. I have
never been able to explain exactly why. I think I must
have seen the picture in some illustrated volume wher
baby, or my mother may have dreamed it before I was
born.

As a child I was not handsome. When I consulted the
triangular bit of looking-glass which I always carried with
me, it showed a pale, sandy, and freckled face, shaded by
locks like the color of seaweed when the sun strikes it in
deep water. My eyes were said to be indistinctive; they
were a faint, ashen gray ; but above them rose — my only
beauty — a high, massive, domelike forehead, with polished
temples, like door-knobs of the purest porcelain.

Our family was a family of governesses. My mother
had been one, and my sisters had the same occupation
Consequently, when, at the age of thirteen, my eldest sistee
104 CONDENSED NOVELS

handed me the advertisement of Mr. Rawjester, clipped
from that day’s ‘‘ Times,” I accepted it as my destiny. Nev-
ertheless, a mysterious presentiment of an indefinite future
haunted me in my dreams that night, as I lay upon my lit-
tle snow-white bed. The next morning, with two band-
boxes tied up in silk handkerchiefs, and a hair trunk, I
turned my back upon Minerva Cottage forever.

CHAPTER II

Blunderbore Hall, the seat of James Rawjester, Esq.,
was encompassed by dark pines and funereal hemlocks
on all sides. The wind sang weirdly in the turrets and
moaned through the long-drawn avenues of the park. As
I approached the house I saw several mysterious figures flit
befure the windows, and a yell of demoniac laughter
answered my summons at the bell. While I strove to re-
press my gloomy forebodings, the housekeeper, a timid,
seared-looking old woman, showed me into the library.

J entered, overcome with conflicting emotions. I was
dressed in a narrow gown of dark serge, trimmed with
black bugles. A thick green shawl was pinned across my
breast. My hands were encased with black half-mittens
worked with steel beads; on my feet were large pattens,
originally the property of my deceased grandmother. I
carried a blue cotton umbrella. AsI passed before a mir-
ror I could not help glancing at it, nor could I disguise
from myself the fact that I was not handsome.

Drawing a chair into a recess, I sat down with folded
hands, calmly awaiting the arrival of my master. Once or
twice a fearful yell rang through the house, or the rattling
of chains, and curses uttered in a deep, manly voice, broke
upon the oppressive stillness. I began to feel my soul ris-
ing with the emergency of the moment.
MISS MIX 105

“You look alarmed, miss. You don’t hear anything, my
dear, do you?” asked the housekeeper nervously.

“Nothing whatever,’ I remarked calmly, as a terrific
scream, followed by the dragging of chairs and tables in
the room above, drowned for a moment my reply. ‘It is
the silence, on the contrary, which has made me foolishly
nervous.”

The housekeeper looked at me approvingly, and in-
stantly made some tea for me.

I drank seven cups; as I was beginning the eighth, I
heard a crash, and the next moment a man leaped into the
room through the broken window.

CHAPTER III

The crash startled me from my self-control. The house-
keeper bent toward me and whispered,—

“Don’t be excited. It’s Mr. Rawjester,— he prefers
to come in sometimes in this way. It’s his playfulness,
ha! ha! ha!”

“J perceive,’ I said calmly. ‘It’s the unfettered im-
pulse of a lofty soul breaking the tyrannizing bonds of cus-
tom.” And I turned toward him.

He had never once looked at me. He stood with his
back to the tire, which set off the herculean breadth of his
shoulders. His face was dark and expressive ; his under
jaw squarely formed, and remarkably heavy. I was struck
with his remarkable likeness to a gorilla.

As he absently tied the poker into hard knots with his
nervous fingers, I watched him with some interest. Sud-
denly he turned toward me : —

“ Do you think I’m handsome, young woman ? ”

“ Not classically beautiful,” I returned calmly; “but you
have, if I may so express myself, an abstract manliness, —
106 CONDENSED NOVELS

a sincere and wholesome barbarity which, involving as it
does the naturalness” — But I stopped, for he yawned at
that moment, —an action which singularly developed the
immense breadth of his lower jaw,—and I saw he had
forgotten me. Presently he turned to the houskeeper, —

“Leave us.”

The old woman withdrew with a curtsey.

Mr. Rawjester deliberately turned his back upon me and
remained silent for twenty minutes. I drew my shawl the
more closely around my shoulders and closed my eyes.

' You are the governess ? ”’ at length he said.

“T am, sir.”

“ A creature who teaches geography, arithmetic, and the
use of the globes — ha! — a wretched remnant of femininity,
—a skimp pattern of girlhood with a premature flavor of
tea-leaves and morality. Ugh!”

I bowed my head silently.

“Listen to me, girl!’ he said sternly; “ this child you
have come to teach — my ward — is not legitimate. She
is the offspring of my mistress, —a common harlot. Ah!
Miss Mix, what do you think of me now?”

“T admire,” I replied calmly, “ your sincerity. A mawk-
ish regard for delicacy might have kept this disclosure to
yourself. I only recognize in your frankness that perfect
community of thought and sentiment which should exist
between original natures.”

I looked up; he had already forgotten my presence, and
was engaged in pulling off his boots and coat. This done,
he sank down in an armchair before the fire, and ran the
poker wearily through his hair. I could not help pitying
him.

The wind howled dismally without, and the rain beat
furiously against the windows. I crept toward him and
seated myself on a low stool beside his chair.

Presently he turned, without seeing me, and placed his
MISS MIX 107

foot absently in my lap. I affected not to notice it. But
he started and looked down.

“You here yet — Carrothead ? Ah, I forgot. Do you
speak French ? ”

“ Oui, Monsier.”’

“‘Taisez-vous!” he said sharply, with singular purity of
accent. I complied. The wind moaned fearfully in the
chimney, and the light burned dimly. I shuddered in spite
of myself. “ Ah, you tremble, girl!”

“Tt is a fearful night.”

“ Fearful! Call you this fearful? Ha! ha! hat Look!
you wretched little atom, look!” and he dashed forward,
and, leaping out of the window, stood like a statue in the
pelting storm, with folded arms. He did not stay long, but
in a few minutes returned by way of the hall chimney.
I saw from the way that he wiped his feet on my dress that
he had again forgotten my presence.

“ You are a governess, What can you teach ?” he asked,
suddenly and fiercely thrusting his face in mine.

“ Manuers! ”’ I replied calmly.

“fa! teach me /”

“You mistake yourself,” I said, adjusting my mittens.
“Your manners require not the artificial restraint of so-
ciety. You are radically polite; this impetuosity and
ferociousness is simply the sincerity whieh is the basis of a
proper deportment. Your instincts are moral ; your better
nature, I see, is religious. As St. Paul justly remarks —
see chap. 6, 8, 9, and 10” —

He seized a heavy candlestick, and threw it at me. I
dodged it submissively but firmly.

“Excuse me,” he remarked, as his under jaw slowly re-
laxed. ‘‘ Excuse me, Miss Mix— but I can’t stand St
Paul! Enough — you are engaged.”
108 CONDENSED NOVELS

CHAPTER IV

I followed the housekeeper as she led the way timidly
to my room. As we passed into a dark hall in the wing, I
noticed that it was closed by an iron gate with a grating.
Three of the doors on the corridor were likewise grated.
A strange noise, as of shuffling feet and the howling of
infuriated animals, rang through the hall. Bidding the
housekeeper good-night, and taking the candle, I entered
my bedchamber.

I took off my dress, and putting on a yellow flannel
nightgown, which I could not help feeling did not agree
with my complexion, I composed myself to rest by reading
Blair’s “ Rhetoric ” and Paley’s ‘‘ Moral Philosophy.” I
had just put out the light, when I heard voices in the cor-
ridor. JI listened attentively. Irecognized Mr. Rawjester’s
stern tones.

“ Have you fed No. One ?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” said a gruff voice, apparently belonging to a
domestic.

“ How ’s No. Two?”

“She’s a little off her feed, just now, but will pick up in
a day or two.”

“ And No. Three ?”

“Perfectly furious, sir. Her tantrums are ungovern-
able.”

“ Flush !”

The voices died away, and I sank into a fitful slumber.

I dreamed that I was wandering through a tropical forest.
Suddenly I saw the figure of a gorilla approaching me. As
it neared me, I recognized the features of Mr. Rawjester,
He held his hand to his side as if in pain. I saw that he
had been wounded. He recognized me and called me by
name, but at the same moment the vision changed to an
MISS MIX 109°

Ashantee village, where, around the fire, a group of negroes
were dancing and participating in some wild Obi festival.
IT awoke with the strain still ringing in my ears.

“ Hokee-pokee wokee fum!”

Good Heavens! could I be dreaming? I heard the
voice distinctly on the floor below, and smelt something
burning. I arose, with an indistinct presentiment of evil,
and hastily putting some cotton in my ears and tying a
towel about my head, I wrapped myself in a shawl and
tushed downstairs. The door of Mr. Rawjester’s room was
open. I entered.

Mr. Rawjester lay apparently in a deep slumber, from
which even the clouds of smoke that came from the burn-
ing curtains of his bed could not rouse him. Around the
room a large and powerful negress, scantily attired, with her:
head adorned with feathers, was dancing wildly, accompany-
ing herself with bone castanets. It looked like some terrible
fetich.

I did not lose my calmness. After firmly emptying the
pitcher, basin, and slop-jar on the burning bed, I proceeded
ccutiously to the garden, and returning with the garden en-
gine, I directed a small stream at Mr. Rawjester.

At my entrance the gigantic negress fled. Mr. Rawjester
vawned and woke. I explained to him, as he rose dripping
from the bed, the reason of my presence. He did not seem
40 be excited, alarmed, or discomposed. He gazed at me
curiously.

‘“‘ So you risked your life to save mine, eh ? you canary-
colored teacher of infants.”’

I blushed modestly, and drew my shawl tightly over
my yellow flannel nightgown.

‘You love me, Mary Jane,—don’t deny it! This
trempling shows it!’’ He drew me closely toward him,
and said, with his deep voice tenderly modulated, —

“How’s her pooty tootens,—did she get her ’ittle
tootens wet, — b’ess her?”
110 CONDENSED NOVELS

I understood his allusion to my feet. I glanced down
and saw that in my hurry I had put ona pair of his old
india-rubbers. My feet were not small or pretty, and the
addition did not add to their beauty.

“Let me go, sir,’ I remarked quietly. “This is en-
tirely improper; it sets a bad example for your child.”
And I firmly but gently extricated myself from his grasp.
I approached the door. He seemed for a moment buried
in deep thought.

“You say this was a negress ? ”

“ Yes, sir.”

“ Humph, Number One, I suppose.”

“Who is Number One, sir ? ”

“ My first,” he remarked, with a significant and sarcas-
tie smile. Then, relapsing into his old manner, he threw
his boots at my head, and bade me begone. I withdrew
calmly.

CHAPTER V

My pupil was a bright little girl, who spoke French
with a perfect accent. Her mother had been a French
ballet-dancer, which probably accounted for it. Although
she was only six years old, it was easy to perceive that she
had been several times in love. She once said to me, —

“ Miss Mix, did you ever have the grande passion ? Did
you ever feel a fluttering here ?”’ and she placed her hand
upon her small chest, and sighed quaintly; “a kind of
distaste for bonbons and caramels, when the world seemed
as tasteless and hollow as a broken cordial drop ? ”

“Then you have felt it, Nina? ” I said quietly.

“Oh, dear, yes. There was Buttons,— that was our
page, you know, —I loved him dearly, but papa sent him
away. Then there was Dick, the groom; but he laughed
at me, and I suffered misery!” and she struck a tragic
MISS MIX 111

French attitude. ‘There is to be company here to-mor.
row,”’ she added, rattling on with childish naivetd, “and
papa’s sweetheart — Blanche Marabout — is to be here.
You know they say she is to be my mamma.”

What thrill was this shot through me? But I rose
calmly, and administering a slight correction to the child,
left the apartment.

Blunderbore House, for the next week, was the scene of
gayety and merriment. That portion of the mansion closed
with a grating was walled up, and the midnight shrieks no
longer troubled me.

But I felt more keenly the degradation of my situation,
I was obliged to help Lady Blanche at her toilet and help
her to look beautiful. For what? To captivate him ?
Oh — no, no, — but why this sudden thrill and faintness ?
Did he really love her? JI had seen him pinch and swear
at her. ButI reflected that he had thrown a candlestick
at my head, and my foolish heart was reassured.

It was a night of festivity, when a sudden message
obliged Mr. Rawjester to leave his guests for a few hours.
“Make yourselves merry, idiots,’ he added, under his
breath, as he passed me. ‘The door closed and he was
gone.

A half-hour passed. In the midst of the dancing a
shriek was heard, and out of the swaying crowd of fainting
women and excited men a wild figure strode into the room.
One glance showed it to be a highwayman, heavily armed,
holding a pistol in each hand.

“Let no one pass out of this room!” he said, in a voice
of thunder. ‘The house is surrounded and you cannot
escape. The first one who crosses yonder threshold will
be shot like a dog. Gentlemen, I’ll trouble you to ap-
proach in single file, and hand me your purses and watches.”*

Finding resistance useless, the order was ungraciousiy
obeyed.
112 CONDENSED NOVELS

“‘Now, ladies, please to pass up your jewelry and trin.
kets.”

This order was still more ungraciously complied with
As Blanche handed to the bandit captain her bracelet, she
endeavored to conceal a diamond necklace, the gift of Mr.
Rawjester, in her bosom. But, with a demoniac grin, the
powerful brute tore it from its concealment, and administer-
ing a hearty box on the ear of the young girl, flung her
aside.

It was now my turn. With a beating heart I made my
way to the robber chieftain, and sank at his feet. ‘ Oh, sir,
I am nothing but a poor governess, pray let me go.”

“Oho! A governess? Give me your last month’s
wages, then. Give me what you have stolen from your
master! ”’ and he laughed fiendishly.

I gazed at him quietly, and said, in a low voice: “TI
have stolen nothing from you, Mr. Rawjester!”

‘‘ Ah, discovered! Hush! listen, girl!’ he hissed, in a
fierce whisper ; ‘‘ utter a syllable to frustrate my plans, and
you die; aid me, and” — But he was gone.

In a few moments the party, with the exception of my-
self, were gagged and locked in the cellar. The next mo-
ment torches were applied to the rich hangings, and the
house was in flames. I felt a strong hand seize me, and
bear me out in the open air and place me up on the hill-
side, where I could overlook the burning mansion. It was
Mr. Rawijester.

“Burn!” he said, as he shook his fist at the flames,
Then sinking on his knees before me, he said hurriedly, —

“Mary Jane, I love you; the obstacles to our union are
or will be soon removed. In yonder mansion were con-
fined my three crazy wives. One of them, as you know,
attempted to kill me! Ha! this is vengeance! But will
you be mine? ”

I fell, without a word, upon his neck.
MR. MIDSHIPMAN BREEZY
A NAVAL OFFICER
BY CAPTAIN M-RRY-T, RB. N.
CHAPTER I

My father was a north-country surgeon. He had re-
tired, a widower, from her Majesty’s navy many years
before, and had a small practice in his native village.
When I was seven years old he employed me to carry
medicines to his patients. Being of a lively disposition,
I sometimes amused myself, during my daily rounds, by
mixing the contents of the different phials. Although I
had no reason to doubt that the general result of this prac-
tice was beneficial, yet, as the death of a consumptive
curate followed the addition of a strong mercurial lotion to
his expectorant, my father concluded to withdraw me from
the profession and send me to school.

Grubbins, the schoolmaster, was a tyrant, and it was
not long before my impetuous and self-willed nature re-
belled against his authority. I soon began to form plans
of revenge. In this I was assisted by Tom Snaffle, —a
schoolfellow. One day Tom suggested, —

“Suppose we blow him up. I’ve got two pounds of
powder! ”

“No, that’s too noisy,” I replied.

Tom was silent for a minute, and again spoke: —

*You remember how you flattened out the curate, Pills?
Couldn’t you give Grubbins something — something to
make him leathery sick — eh?”
14 CONDENSED NOVELS

A flash of inspiration crossed my mind. I went to the
shop of the village apothecary. He knew me; I had often
purchased vitriol, which I poured into Grubbins’s inkstand
to corrode his pens and burn up his coat-tail, on which he
was in the habit of wiping them. I boldly asked for an
ounce of chloroform. The young apothecary winked and
handed me the bottle.

It was Grubbins’s custom to throw his handkerchief
over his head, recline in his chair, and take a short nap
during recess. Watching my opportunity, as he dozed,
I managed to slip his handkerchief from his face and sub-
stitute my own, moistened with chloroform. In a few
minutes he was insensible. Tom and I then quickly
shaved his head, beard, and eyebrows, blackened his face
with a mixture of vitriol and burnt cork, and fled. There
was a row and scandal the next day. My father always
excused me by asserting that Grubbins had got drunk, —
but somehow found it convenient to procure me an appoint-
ment in her Majesty’s navy at an early day.

CHAPTER II

An official letter, with the Admiralty seal, informed
me that I was expected to join H. M. ship Belcher, Cap-
tain Boltrope, at Portsmouth, without delay. In a few
days I presented myself to a tall, stern-visaged man, who
was slowly pacing the leeward side of the quarter-deck.
As I touched my hat he eyed me sternly : —

“So ho! Another young suckling. The service is
going to the devil. Nothing but babes in the cockpit and
grannies in the board. Boatswain’s mate, pass the word
for Mr. Cheek! ”

Mr. Cheek, the steward, appeared and touched his hat.

“Introduce Mr. Breezy to the young gentlemen. Stop!
Where ’s Mr. Swizzle?”
MR. MIDSHIPMAN BREEZY 115

“At the masthead, sir.”

“Where ’s Mr. Lankey?”

“At the masthead, sir.”

“Mr. Briggs?”

“ Masthead, too, sir.” f

“And the rest of the young gentlemen?” roared the
enraged officer.

“All masthead, sir.”

“Ah!” said Captain Boltrope, as he smiled grimly,
“under the circumstances, Mr. Breezy, you had better go
to the masthead too.”

CHAPTER III

At the masthead I made the acquaintance of two young-
sters of about my own age, one of whom informed me that
he had been there three hundred and thirty-two days out
of the year.

“Tn rough weather, when the old cock is out of sorts,
you know, we never come down,” added a young gentle-
man of nine years, with a dirk nearly as long as himself,
who had been introduced to me as Mr. Briggs. ‘‘By the
way, Pills,” he continued, “how did you come to omit giv-
ing the captain a naval salute?”

“Why, I touched my hat,” I said innocently.

“Yes, but that isn’t enough, you know. ‘That will do
very well at other times. He expects the naval salute
when you first come on board — greeny!”

I began to feel alarmed, and begged him to explain.

“Why, you see, after touching your hat, you should
have touched him hghtly with your forefinger in his waist-
coat, so, and asked, ‘ How ’s his nibs?’ — you see?”

“How ’s his nibs?” I repeated.

| “Exactly. He would have drawn back a little, and
116 CONDENSED NOVELS

then you should have repeated the salute, remarking,
‘How’s his royal nibs?’ asking cautiously after his wife
and family, and requesting to be introduced to the gun-
ner’s daughter.”

“The gunner’s daughter? ”

“The same; you know she takes care of us young gen-
tlemen; now don’t forget, Pillsy!”

When we were called down to the deck I thought it a
good chance to profit by this instruction. I approached
Captain Boltrope and repeated the salute without conscien-
tiously omitting a single detail. He remained for a mo-
ment livid and speechless. At length he gasped out, —

“ Boatswain’s mate!”

“Tf you please, sir,” I asked tremulously, “I should
like to be introduced to the gunner’s daughter! ”

“Oh, very good, sir!” screamed Captain Boltrope, rub-
bing his hands and absolutely capering about the deck with
rage. ‘“Oh,d—nyou! Ofcourse you shall! Oh, ho! the
gunner’s daughter! Oh, h—Ill! this is too much! Boat-
swain’s mate!” Before I well knew where I was, I was
seized, borne to an eight-pounder, tied upon it, and flogged!

CHAPTER IV

As we sat together in the cockpit, picking the weevils
out of our biscuit, Briggs consoled me for my late mishap,
adding that the “naval salute,” as a custom, seemed just
then to be honored more in the dreach than the obser-
vance. JI joined in the hilarity occasioned by the witti-
eism, and in a few moments we were all friends. Pres-
ently Swizzle turned to me: —

“We have just been planning how to confiscate a keg
of claret, which Nips, the purser, keeps under his bunk.
The old nipcheese lies there drunk half the day, and
there ’s no getting at it.”
MR. MIDSHIPMAN BREEZY 117

“Let ’s get beneath the stateroom and bore through the
deck, and so tap it,” said Lankey.

The proposition was received with a shout of applause.
A long half-inch auger and bit was procured from Chips,
the carpenter’s mate, and Swizzle, after a careful examina-
tion of the timbers beneath the wardroom, commenced
operations. The auger at last disappeared, when suddenly
there was a slight disturbance on the deck above. Swizzle
withdrew the auger hurriedly; from its point a few bright
red drops trickled.

“Huzza! send her up again!” cried Lankey.

The auger was again applied. This time a shriek was
heard from the purser’s cabin. Instantly the light was
doused, and the party retreated hurriedly to the cockpit.
A sound of snoring was heard as the sentry stuck his head
into the door. “All right, sir,” he replied in answer to
the voice of the officer of the deck.

The next morning we heard that Nips was in the sur-
geon’s hands, with a bad wound in the fleshy part of his
leg, and that the auger had o¢ struck claret.

CHAPTER V

“Now, Pills, you’ll have a chance to smell powder,”
said Briggs as he entered the cockpit and buckled around
his waist an enormous cutlass, ‘‘We have just sighted a
French ship.”

We went on deck. Captain Boltrope grinned as we
touched our hats. He hated the purser. ‘Come, voung
gentlemen, if you’re boring for French claret, yonder’s a
good quality. Mind your con, sir,” he added, turning to
the quartermaster, who was grinning.

The ship was already cleared for action. The men, in
their eagerness, had started the coffee from the tubs and
118 CONDENSED NOVELS

filled them with shot. Presently the Frenchman yawed,
and a shot from a long thirty-two came skipping over the
water. It killed the quartermaster and took off both of
Lankey’s legs. ‘Tell the purser our account is squared,”
said the dying boy, with a feeble smile.

The fight raged fiercely for two hours. I remember
killing the French admiral, as we boarded, but on looking
around for Briggs, after the smoke had cleared away, I
was intensely amused at witnessing the following novel
sight:

Briggs had pinned the French captain against the mast
with his cutlass, and was now engaged, with all the hilar-
ity of youth, in pulling the Captain’s coat-tails between
his legs, in imitation of a dancing-jack. As the French-
man lifted his legs and arms, at each jerk of Briggs’s, I
could not help participating in the general mirth.

“You young devil, what are you doing?” said a stifled
voice behind me. I looked up and beheld Captain Bolt-
rope, endeavoring to calm his stern features, but the twitch-
ing around his mouth betrayed his intense enjoyment of
the scene.. “Go to the masthead—up with you, sir!”
he repeated sternly to Briggs.

“Very good, sir,” said the boy, coolly preparing to mount
the shrouds. “Good-by, Johnny Crapaud. Humph!” he
added, in a tone intended for my ear, “a pretty way to
treat a hero. The service is going to the devil! ”

I thought so too.

CHAPTER VI

We were ordered to the West Indies. Although Cap-
tain Boltrope’s manner toward me was still severe, and
even harsh, I understood that my name had been favorably
mentioned in the dispatches,

Reader, were you ever at Jamaica? If so, you remem:
MR. MIDSHIPMAN BREEZY 119

ber the negresses, the oranges, Port Royal Tom— the
yellow fever. After being two weeks at the station, I was
taken sick of the fever. In a month I was delirious.
During my paroxysms, I had a wild distempered dream of
a stern face bending anxiously over my pillow, a rough
hand smoothing my hair, and a kind voice saying: —

“Bess his ’ittle heart! Did he have the naughty
fever?” This face seemed again changed to the well
known stern features of Captain Boltrope.

When I was convalescent, a packet edged in black was
put in my hand. It contained the news of my father’s
death, and a sealed letter which he had requested to be
given to me on his decease. I ovened it tremblingly. It
read thus: —

My pear Boy, —I regret to inform you that in all
probability you are not my son. Your mother, I am
grieved to say, was a highly improper person. Who your
father may be, I really cannot say, but perhaps the Honor-
able Henry Boltrope, Captain R. N., may be able to in-
form you. Circumstances over which I have no control
have deferred this important disclosure.

Your StTRIcKEN PARENT.

And so Captain Boltrope was my father. Heavens!
Was it a dream? I recalled his stern manner, his obser-
vant eye, his ill-concealed uneasiness when in my presence.
I longed to embrace him. Staggering to my feet, I rushed
in my scanty apparel to the deck, where Captain Boltrope
was just then engaged in receiving the Governor’s wife
and daughter. The ladies shrieked; the youngest, a beau-
tiful girl, blushed deeply. Heeding them not, I sank at
his feet, and, embracing them, cried, —

“My father!”

“Chuck him overboard!” roared Captain Boltrope.
120 CONDENSED NOVELS

“Stay,” pleaded the soft voice of Clara Maitland, the
Governor’s daughter.

‘Shave his head! he’s a wretched lunatic!” continued
Captain Boltrope, while his voice trembled with excite-
meng,

“No, let me nurse and take care of him,” said the
ovely girl, blushing as she spoke. ‘‘ Mamma, can’t we
take him home?”

The daughter’s pleading was not without effect. In the
meantime I had fainted. When I recovered my senses I
found myself in Governor Maitland’s mansion,

CHAPTER VII

The reader will guess what followed. I fell deeply in
love with Clara Maitland, to whom I confided the secret
of my birth. The generous girl asserted that she had
detected the superiority of my manner at once. We
plighted our troth, and resolved to wait upon events.

Briggs called to see me a few days afterward. He said
that the purser had insulted the whole cockpit, and all the
midshipmen had called him out. But he added thought-
fully: “I don’t see how we can arrange the duel. You
see there are six of us to fight him.”

“Very easily,” I replied. ‘Let your fellows all stand
in a row, and take his fire; that, you see, gives him six
chances to one, and he must be a bad shot if he can’t hit
one of you; while, on the other hand, you see, he gets a
volley from you six, and one of you’ll be certain to fetch
him.”

“Exactly ;” and away Briggs went, but soon returned
to say that the purser had declined, — “like a d—d cow-
ard,” he added.

But the news of the sudden and serious illness of Cap-
MR. MIDSHIPMAN BREEZY 121

tain Boltrope put off the duel. I hastened to his bedside,
but too late,—an hour previous he had given up tho
ghost.

I resolved to return to England. I made known the
secret of my birth, and exhibited my adopted father’s letter
to Lady Maitland, who at once suggested my marriage
with her daughter, before I returned to claim the property.
We were married, and took our departure next day.

I made no delay in posting at once, in company with
my wife and my friend Briggs, to my native village.
Judge of my horror and surprise when my late adopted
father came out of his shop to welcome me.

“Then you are not dead!” I gasped.

“No, my dear boy.”

“ And this letter?”

My father —as I must still call him — glanced on the
paper, and pronounced it a forgery. Briggs roared with
laughter. I turned to him and demanded an explanation.

“Why, don’t you see, Greeny, it’s all.a joke, — a mid-
shipman’s joke! ”

“But ” —I asked,

“Don’t be a fool. You’ve got a good wife, — be satis-
fied.”

I turned to Clara, and was satisfied. Although Mrs.
Maitland never forgave me, the jolly old Governor laughed
heartily over the joke, and so well used his influence that
I soon became, dear reader, Admiral Breezy, K. C. B.
GUY HEAVYSTONE; or, “ENTIRE”
A MUSCULAR NOVEL
BY THE AUTHOR OF “SWORD AND GUN”
CHAPTER I

“NEREI REPANDIROSTRUM INCURVICERVICUM PECUS.”

A piney, swashy, splashy afternoon in October; a
school-yard filled with a mob of riotous boys. A lot of
us standing outside.

Suddenly came a dull, crashing sound from the school-
room. At the ominous interruption I shuddered involun-
tarily, and called to Smithsye, —

“What ’s up, Smithums?”

“Guy ’s cleaning out the fourth form,” he replied.

At the same moment George de Coverly passed me,
holding his nose, from whence the bright Norman blood
streamed redly. To him the plebeian Smithsye laugh-
ingly, —

“Cully! how ’s his nibs?”

I pushed the door of the schoolroom open. There are
some spectacles which a man never forgets. The burning
of Troy probably seemed a large-sized conflagration to the
pious /Eneas, and made an impression on him which he
carried away with the feeble Anchises.

In the centre of the room, lightly brandishing the pis
ton-rod of a steam-engine, stood Guy Heavystone alone
I say alone, for the pile of small boys on the floor in the
corner could hardly be called company.
GUY HEAVYSTONE; OR, “ENTIRE” 123

I will try and sketch him for the reader. Guy Heavy-
stone was then only fifteen. His broad, deep chest, his
sinewy and quivering flank, his straight pastern, showed
him to be a thoroughbred. Perhaps he was a trifle heavy
in the fetlock, but he held his head haughtily erect. His
eyes were glittering but pitiless. There was a sternness
about the lower part of his face, —the old Hearystone
look, —a sternness heightened, perhaps, by the snaffle-bit
which, in one of his strange freaks, he wore in his mouth
to curb his occasional ferocity. His dress was well adapted
to his square-set and herculean frame. A striped knit
undershirt, close-fitting striped tights, and a few spangles
set off his figure; a neat Glengarry cap adorned his head.
On it was displayed the Heavystone crest, a cock regar-
dant on a dunghill or, and the motto, ‘‘ Devil a better!”

I thought of Horatius on the bridge, of Hector before
the walls. I always make it a point to think of something
classical at such times.

He saw me, and his sternness partly relaxed. Some.
thing like a smile struggled through his grim lineaments.
It was like looking on the Jungfrau after having seen
Mont Blanc, —a trifle, only a trifle less sublime and awful.
Resting his hand lightly on the shoulder of the head-
master, who shuddered and collapsed under his touch, he
strode toward me.

His walk was peculiar. You could not call it a stride.
It was like the “‘crest-tossing Bellerophon,” —a kind of
prancing gait. Guy Heavystone pranced toward me.
124 CONDENSED NOVELS

CHAPTER II

“Lord Lovel he stood at the garden gate,
A-combing his milk-white steed.”

It was the winter of 186— when I next met Guy Heavy-
stone. He had left the university and had entered the
79th “Heavies.” “I have exchanged the gown for the
sword, you see,” he said, grasping my hand, and fracturing
the bones of my little finger, as he shook it.

I gazed at him with unmixed admiration. He was
squarer, sterner, and in every way smarter and more re-
markable than ever. I began to feel toward this man as
Phalaster felt towards Phyrgino, as somebody must have
felt toward Archididasculus, as Boswell felt toward John-
son.

“Come into my den,” he said; and lifting me gently by
the seat of my pantaloons he carried me upstairs and
deposited me, before I could apologize, on the sofa. I
looked around the room. It was a bachelor’s apartment,
characteristically furnished in the taste of the proprietor.
A few claymores and battleaxes were ranged against the
wall, and a culverin, captured by Sir Ralph Heavystone,
occupied the corner, the other end of the room being taken
up by a light battery. oils, boxing-gloves, saddles, and
fishing-poles lay around carelessly. A small pile of billets-
doux lay upon a silver salver. The man was not an an-
chorite, nor yet a Sir Galahad.

I never could tell what Guy thought of women. ‘Poor
little beasts,” he would often say when the conversation
turned on any of his fresh conquests. Then, passing his
hand over his marble brow, the old look of stern fixedness
of purpose and unflinching severity would straighten the
lines of his mouth, and he would mutter, half to himself,
“S’death!”
GUY HEAVYSTONE; OR, “ENTIRE” 125

“Come with me to Heavystone Grange. The Exmoor
hounds throw off to-morrow. I’ll give you a mount,” he
said, as he amused himself by rolling up a silver candle-
stick between his fingers. ‘You shall have Cleopatra.
But stay,” he added thoughtfully; “now I remember, I
ordered Cleopatra to be shot this morning.”

“And why?” I queried.

‘She threw her rider yesterday and fell on him” —

“ And killed him?”

“No. That’s the reason why I have ordered her to be
shot. I keep no animals that are not dangerous — I
should add — deadly!” He hissed the last sentence be-
tween his teeth, and a gloomy frown descended over his
calm brow.

[ affected to turn over the tradesmen’s bills that lay on
the table, for, like all of the Heavystone race, Guy seldom
paid cash, and said, —

“You remind me of the time when Leonidas ” —

“Oh, bother Leonidas and your classical allusions.
Come!”

We descended to dinner.

CHAPTER III

“He carries weight, he rides a race,
’T is for a thousand pound.’’

“There is Flora Billingsgate, the greatest coquette and
hardest rider in the country,” said my companion, Ralph
Mortmain, as we stood upon Dingleby Common before the
meet.

T looked up and beheld Guy Heavystone bending haugh-
tily over the saddle, as he addressed a beautiful brunette.
She was indeed a splendidly groomed and high-spirited
woman. We were near enough to overhear the following
126 CONDENSED NOVELS

conversation, which any high-toned reader will recognize
as the common and natural expression of the higher classes.

“When Diana takes the field the chase is not wholly con-
fined to objects fere nature,” said Guy, darting a signifi-
cant glance at his companion. Flora did not shrink either
from the glance or the meaning implied in the sarcasm.

“Tf I were looking for an Endymion, now,” — she said
archly, as she playfully cantered over a few hounds and
leaped a five-barred gate.

Guy whispered a few words, inaudible to the rest of the
party, and curveting slightly, cleverly cleared two of the
huntsmen in a flying leap, galloped up the front steps of
the mansion, and, dashing at full speed through the hall,
leaped through the drawing-room window and rejoined me,
languidly, on the lawn.

“Be careful of Flora Billingsgate,” he said to me, in
low stern tones, while his pitiless eye shot a baleful fire.
“ Gardez-vous! ”

“Gnothi seauton,” I replied calmly, not wishing to
appear to be behind him in perception or verbal felicity.

Guy started off in high spirits. He was well carried.
He and the first whip, a ten-stone man, were head and
head at the last fence, while the hounds were rolling over
their fox a hundred yards farther in the open.

But an unexpected circumstance occurred. Coming
back, his chestnut mare refused a ten-foot wall. She
reared and fell backward. Again he led her up to it
lightly ; again she refused, falling heavily from the coping.
Guy started to his feet. The old pitiless fire shore in his
eyes; the old stern look settled around his mouth. Seiz-
ing the mare by the tail and mane he threw her over the
wall, She landed twenty feet on the other side, erect
and trembling. Lightly leaping the same obstacle himself,
he remounted her. She did not refuse the wall the next
time.
GUY HEAVYSTONE; OR, “ENTIRE” 127

CHAPTER IV
“ Be holds him by his glittering eye.”

Guy was in the north of Ireland, cock-shooting. So
Ralph Mortmain told me, and also that the match between
Mary Brandagee and Guy had been broken off by Flora
Billingsgate. “I don’t like those Billingsgates,” said
Ralph, “they ’re a bad stock. Her father, Smithfield de
Billingsgate, had an unpleasant way of turning up the
knave from the bottom of the pack. But nous verrons;
let us go and see Guy.”

The next morning we started for Fin-ma-Coul’s Cross-
ing. When I reached the shooting-box, where Guy was
entertaining a select company of friends, Flora Billings-
gate greeted me with a saucy smile.

Guy was even squarer and sterner than ever. His gusts
of passion were more frequent, and it was with difficulty
that he could keep an able-bodied servant in his family.
His present retainers were more or less maimed from ex-
posure to the fury of their master. There was a strange
cynicism, a cutting sarcasm in his address, piercing through
his polished manner. I thought of Timon, etc., etc.

One evening, we were sitting over our Chambertin, after
a hard day’s work, and Guy was listlessly turning over
some letters, when suddenly he uttered a cry. Did you
ever hear the trumpeting of a wounded elephant? It was
like that.

I looked at him with consternation. He was glancing
at a letter which he held at arm’s length, and snorting, as
it were, at it as he gazed. The lower part of his face was
stern, but not as rigid as usual. He was slowly grinding
between his teeth the fragments of the glass he had just
been drinking from.

Suddenly he seized one of his servants, and forcing
128 CONDENSED NOVELS

the wretch upon his knees, exclaimed, with the roar of a
tiger, —

“Dog! why was this kept from me?”

“Why, please sir, Miss Flora said as how it was a rec-
onciliation from Miss Brandagee, and it was to be kept
from you where you would not be likely to see it, —and
— and” —

Speak, dog! and you” —

“T put it among your bills, sir!”

With a groan, like distant thunder, Guy fell swooning
to the floor.

He soon recovered, for the next moment a servant came
rushing into the room with the information that a number
of the ingenuous peasantry of the neighborhood were about
to indulge that evening in the national pastime of burning
a farmhouse and shooting a landlord. Guy smiled a fear-
ful smile, without, however, altering his stern and pitiless
expression.

“Let them come,” he said calmly; ‘I feel like enter-
taining company.”

We barricaded the doors and windows, and then chose
our arms from the armory. Guy’s choice was a singular
one: it was a landing-net with a long handle, and a sharp
cavalry sabre.

We were not destined to remain long in ignorance of its
use. A howl was heard from without, and a party of fifty
or sixty armed men precipitated themselves against the
door.

Suddenly the window opened. With the rapidity of
lightning, Guy Heavystone cast the net over the head of
the ringleader, ejaculated “Habet!” and with a back-
stroke of his cavalry sabre severed the member from its
trunk, and drawing the net back again, cast the gory head
upon the floor, saying quietly, —

“One.”
GUY HEAVYSTONE; OR, “ENTIRE” 129

Again the net was cast, the steel flashed, the net was
withdrawn, and an ominous “Two!” accompanied the
head ag it rolled on the floor.

“Do you remember what Pliny says of the gladiator?”
said Guy, calmly wiping his sabre. ‘How graphic is that
passage commencing ‘Inter nos,’ ete.” The sport contin-
ued until the heads of twenty desperadoes had been gath-
ered in. The rest seemed inclined to disperse. Guy
incautiously showed himself at the door; a ringing shot
was heard, and he staggered beck, pierced through the
heart. Grasping the doorpost in the last unconscious
throes of his mighty frame, the whole side of the house
yielded to that earthquake tremor, and we had barely time
to escape before the whole building fell in ruins. I
thought of Samson, the giant judge, etc., etc.; but all
was over.

Guy Heavystone had died as he had lived, — hard.
JOHN JENKINS

OR
THE SMOKER REFORMED
BY T. S. A-TH-R

CHAPTER I

“One cigar a day!” said Judge Boompointer.

“One cigar a day!” repeated John Jenkins, as with
trepidation he dropped his half-consumed cigar under his
work-bench.

“One cigar a day is three cents a day,” remarked Judge
Boompointer gravely; ‘‘and do you know, sir, what one
cigar a day, or three cents a day, amounts to in the course
of four years?”

John Jenkins, in his boyhood, had attended the village
school, and possessed considerable arithmetical ability.
Taking up a shingle which lay upon his work-bench, and
producing a piece of chalk, with a feeling of conscious
pride he made an exhaustive calculation.

“Exactly forty-three dollars and eighty cents,” he re-
plied, wiping the perspiration from his heated brow, while
his face flushed with honest enthusiasm,

“Well, sir, if you saved three cents a day, instead of
wasting it, you would now be the possessor of a new suit
of clothes, an illustrated Family Bible, a pew in the
church, a complete set of Patent Office Reports, a hymn-
book, and a paid subscription to ‘ Arthur’s Home Maga-
JOHN JENKINS 131

zine,’ which could be purchased for exactly forty-three
dollars and eighty cents; and,” added the Judge, with in-
creasing sternness, “if you calculate leap-year, which you
seem to have strangely omitted, you have three cents more,
sir — three cents more! What would that buy you, sir?”

“A cigar,” suggested John Jenkins; but, coloring again
deeply, he hid his face.

“No, sir,” said the Judge, with a sweet smile of benev-
olence stealing over his stern features; “properly invested,
it would buy you that which passeth all price. Dropped
into the missionary-box, who can tell what heathen, now
idly and joyously wantoning in nakedness and sin, might
be brought to a sense of his miserable condition, and made,
through that three cents, to feel the torments of the
wicked?”

With these words the Judge retired, leaving John Jen-
kins buried in profound thought. ‘Three cents a day,”
he muttered. “In forty years I might be worth four
hundred and thirty-eight dollars and ten cents, — and ther
I might marry Mary. Ah, Mary!” The young carpenter
sighed, and drawing a twenty-five cent daguerreotype from
his vest-pocket, gazed long and fervidly upon the features
of a young girl in book muslin and a coral necklace.
Then, with a resolute expression, he carefully locked the
door of his work-shop, and departed.

Alas! his good resolutions were too late. We trifle
with the tide of fortune, which too often nips us in the
bud and casts the dark shadow of misfortune over the
bright lexicon of youth! That night the half-consumed
fragment of John Jenkins’s cigar set fire to his work-shop
and burned it up, together with all his tools and materials.
There was no insurance.
182 CONDENSED NOVELS

CHAPTER II
THE DOWNWARD PATH

“Then you still persist in marrying John Jenkins?”
queried Judge Boompointer, as he playfully, with paternal
familiarity, lifted the golden curls of the village belle,
Mary Jones.

“T do,” replied the fair young girl, in a low voice that
resembled rock candy in its saccharine firmness, — “‘I do.
He has promised to.reform. Since he lost all his property
by fire” —

“The result of his pernicious habit, though he illogi-
cally persists in charging it to me,” interrupted the Judge.

“Since then,” continued the young girl, “he has en-
deavored to break himself of the habit. He tells me that
he has substituted the stalks of the Indian rattan, the outer
part of a leguminous plant called the smoking-bean, and
the fragmentary and unconsumed remainder of cigars, which
occur at rare and uncertain intervals along the road, which,
as he informs me, though deficient in quality and strength,
are comparatively inexpensive.” And blushing at her
own eloquence, the young girl hid her curls on the Judge’s
arm.

“Poor thing!” muttered Judge Boompointer. ‘Dare
I tell her all? Yet I must.”

“T shall cling to him,” continued the young girl, rising
with her theme, ‘‘as the young vine clings to some hoary
ruin. Nay, nay, chide me not, Judge Boompointer. I
will marry John Jenkins!”

The Judge was evidently affected. Seating himself at
the table, he wrote a few lines hurriedly upon a piece of
paper, which he folded and placed in the fingers of the
destined bride of John Jenkins.
JOHN JENKINS 1338

“Mary Jones,” said the Judge, with impressive ear-
nestness, “take this trifle as a wedding gift from one who
respects your fidelity and truthfulness. At the altar let
it be a reminder of me.” And covering his face hastily
with a handkerchief, the stern and iron-willed man left
the room. As the door closed, Mary unfolded the paper.
It was an order.on the corner grocery for three yards. of
flannel, a paper of needles, four pounds of soap, one pound
of starch, and two boxes of matches!

“Noble and thoughtful man!” was all Mary Jones

could exclaim, as she hid her face in her hands and burst
into a flood of tears.
The bells of Cloverdale are ringing merrily. It is a
wedding. ‘How beautiful they look!” is the exclama-
tion that passes from lip to lip, as Mary Jones, leaning
timidly on the arm of John Jenkins, enters the church.
But the bride is agitated, and the bridegroom betrays a
feverish nervousness. As they stand in the vestibule,
John Jenkins fumbles earnestly in his vest-pocket. Can
it be the ring he is anxious about? No. He draws a
small brown substance from his pocket, and biting off a
piece, hastily replaces the fragment and gazes furtively
around. Surely no one saw him? Alas! the eyes of two
of that wedding party saw the fatal act. Judge Boom-
pointer shook his head sternly. Mary Jones sighed and
breathed a silent prayer. Her husband chewed!

CHAPTER III AND LAST

“What! more bread?” said John Jenkins gruffly.
**You ’re always asking for money for bread. D—nation!
Do you want to ruin me by your extravagance?” and as he
uttered these words he drew from his pocket a bottle of
134 CONDENSED NOVELS

whiskey, a pipe, and a paper of tobacco. Emptying the
first at a draught, he threw the empty bottle at the head of
his eldest boy, a youth of twelve summers. The missile
struck the child full in the temple, and stretched him a
lifeless corpse. Mrs. Jenkins, whom the reader will hardly
recognize as the once gay and beautiful Mary Jones, raised
the dead body of her son in her arms, and carefully placing
the unfortunate youth beside the pump in the back yard,
returned with saddened step to the house. At another
time, and in brighter days, she might have wept at the
occurrence. She was past tears now.

“Father, your conduct is reprehensible!” said little
Harrison Jenkins, the youngest boy. ‘Where do you
expect to go when you die?”

“Ah!” said John Jenkins fiercely; ‘‘this comes of giv-
ing children a liberal education; this is the result of Sab-
bath-schools. Down, viper!”

A tumbler thrown from the same parental fist laid out
the youthful Harrison cold. The four other children had,
in the mean time, gathered around the table with anxious
expectancy. With a chuckle, the now changed and brutal
John Jenkins produced four pipes, and filling them with
tobacco, handed one to each of his offspring and bade them
smoke. “It’s better than bread!” laughed the wretch
hoarsely.

Mary Jenkins, though of a patient nature, felt it her
duty now to speak. “I. have borne much, John Jenkins,”
she said. “But I prefer that the children should not
smoke, It is an unclean habit, and soils their clothes. 1
ask this as a special favor! ”

John Jenkins hesitated, —the pangs of remorse began
to seize him.

“Promise me this, John!” urged Mary upon her knees,

“T promise!” reluctantly answered John.

“And you will put the money in a savings-bank?”
JOHN JENKINS 133

“T will,” repeated her husband; “and J’ll give up
smoking, too.”

“Tis well, John Jenkins!” said Judge Boompointer,
appearing suddenly from behind the door, where he had
been concealed during this interview. ‘“Nobly said! my
man. Cheer up! I will see that the children are decently
buried.” The husband and wife fell into each other’s
arms. And Judge Boompointer, gazing upon the affecting
spectacle, burst into tears.

From that day John Jenkins was an altered man.
FANTINE
AFTER THE FRENCH OF VICTOR HUGO

PROLOGUE

As long as there shal! exist three paradoxes, a moral Frenchman, 4 seie
gious atheist, and a believing skeptic; so long, in fact, as booksellers shall
wait —say twenty-five years— for a new gospel; so long as paper shall
remain cheap and ink three sous a bottle, I have no hesitation in saying
that such bocks as these are not utterly profitless.

Victor Hueco.

T

To be good is to be queer. What is a good man]
Bishop Myriel.

My friend, you will possibly object to this, You will
say you know what a good man is. Perhaps you will say
your clergyman is a good man, for instance.

Bah! you are mistaken; you are an Englishman, and an
Englishman is a beast.

Englishmen think they are moral when they are only
serious. These Englishmen also wear ill-shaped hats, and
dress horribly !

Bah! they are canaille.

Still, Bishop Myriel was a good man, — quite as good as
you. Better than you, in fact.

One day M. Myriel was in Paris. This angel used to
walk about the streets like any other man. He was not
proud, though fine-looking. Well, three gamins de Paris
called him bad names. Says one, —

“Ah, mon Dieu! there goes a priest; look out for your
eggs and chickens! ”
FANTINE 137

What did this good man do? He called to them kindly.

“My children,” said he, “this is clearly not your fault.
J recognize in this insult and irreverence only the fault of
your immediate progenitors. Let us pray for your imme-
diate progenitors.”

They knelt down and prayed for their immediate pro<
genitors,

The effect was touching.

The Bishop looked calmly around.

“On reflection,” said he gravely, “I was mistaken; this
is clearly the fault of Society. Let us pray for Society.”

They knelt down and prayed for Society.

The effect was sublimer yet. What do you think of
that? You, I mean.

Everybody remembers the story of the Bishop and Mo-
ther Nez Retroussé. Old Mother Nez Retroussé sold as-
paragus. She was poor; there’s a great deal of meaning in
that word, my friend. Some people say ‘‘ poor but honest.”
I say, Bah!

Bishop Myriel bought six bunches of asparagus. This
good man had one charming failing: he was fond of aspa-
ragus. He gave her a franc, and received three sous
change.

The sous were bad, — counterfeit. What did this good
Bishop do? He said: “I should not have taken change
from a poor woman.”

Then afterwards, to his housekeeper: ‘Never take
change from a poor woman.”

Then he added to himself: ‘‘For the sous will . probably
be bad.”

II

When a man commits a crime, Society claps him in
prison, A prison is one of the worst hotels imaginable.
138 CONDENSED NOVELS

The people there are low and vulgar. The butter is bad,
the coffee is green. Ah, it is horrible!

In prison, as in a bad hotel, a man soon loses, not only
his morals, but what is much worse to a Frenchman, his
sense of refinement and delicacy.

Jean Valjean came from prison with confused notions of
Society. He forgot the modern peculiarities of hospitality.
So he walked off with the Bishop’s candlesticks.

Let us consider. Candlesticks were stolen; that was evi-
dent. Society put Jean Valjean in prison; that was evi-
dent, too. In prison, Society took away his refinement;
that is evident, likewise.

Who is Society ?

You and I are Society.

My friend, you and I stole those candlesticks!

II

The Bishop thought so, too. He meditated profoundly
for six days. On the morning of the seventh he went to
the Prefecture of Police.

He said: “Monsieur, have me arrested. I have stolen
candlesticks.”

The official was governed by the law of Society, and re-

fused.
What did this Bishop do?

He had a charming ball and chain made, affixed to his
leg, and wore it the rest of his life. This is a fact!

IV
Love is a mystery.
A little friend of mine down in the country, at Auvergne,
said to me one day: “Victor, Love is the world, — it con-
tains everything.”
FANTINE 139

She was only sixteen, this sharp-witted little girl, and a
beautiful blonde. She thought everything of me.

Fantine was one of those women who do wrong in the
most virtuous and touching manner. This is a peculiarity
of French grisettes.

You are an Englishman, and you don’t understand.
Learn, my friend, learn. Come to Paris and improve
your morals.

Fantine was the soul of modesty, Sbe always wore
high-neck dresses. High-neck dresses are a sign of mod-
esty.

Fantine loved Tholmoyes. Why? My God! What
are you todo? It was the fault of her parents, and she
hadn’t any. How shall you teach her? You must teach
the parent if you wish to educate the child. How would
you become virtuous?

Teach your grandmother!

Vv

When Tholmoyes ran away from Fantine, — which was
done in a charming, gentlemanly manner, — Fantine became
convinced that a rigid sense of propriety might look upon
her conduct as immoral. She was a creature of sensitive-
ness, — and her eyes were opened.

She was virtuous still, and resolved to break off the liai-
son at once.

So she put up her wardrobe and baby in a bundle,
child as she was, she loved them both, — then left Paris.

Vi

Fantine’s native place had changed.
M. Madeline—an angel, and inventor of jet-work ~
140 CONDENSED NOVELS

had been teaching the villagers how to make spurious
jet.

This is a progressive age. Those Americans — children
of the West, — they make nutmegs out of wood.

I, myself, have seen hams made of pine, in the wigwams
of those children of the forest.

But civilization has acquired deception too. Society is
made up of deception. Even the best French society.

Still there was one sincere episode.

Eh?

The French Revolution!

VIE

M. Madeline was, if anything, better than Myriel.

M. Myriel was a saint. M. Madeline a good man.

M. Myriel was dead. M. Madeline was living.

That made all the difference.

M. Madeline made virtue profitable. I have seen it writ-
ten, — ‘

“Be virtuous and you will be happy.”

Where did I see this written? In the modern Bible?
No. Inthe Koran? No. In Rousseau? No. Diderot?
No. Where then?

In a copy-book.

VIII

M. Madeline was M. le Maire.

This is how it came about.

For a long time he refused the honor. One day an old
woman, standing on the steps, said, —

“Bah, a good mayor is a good thing.

“You are a good thing,
FANTINE 141

“Be a good mayor.”

This woman was a rhetorician. She understood inductive
tatiocination.

IX

When this good M. Madeline, who, the reader will per.
ceive, must have been a former convict, and a very bad man,
gave himself up to justice as the real Jean Valjean, about
this same time, Fantine was turned away from the manu-
factory, and met with a number of losses from Society.
Society attacked her, and this is what she lost: —

First her lover.

Then her child.

Then her place.

Then her hair.

Then her teeth.

Then her liberty.

Then her life.

What do you think of Society after that? I tell you tha
present social system is a humbug.

x

This is necessarily the end of Fantine.

There are other things that will be stated in other vol-
umes to follow. Don’t be alarmed; there are plenty of
miserable people left.

Au revoir — my friend.
“LA FEMME”

AFTER THE FRENCH OF M. MICHELET

I

WOMEN AS AN INSTITUTION

“Tr it were not for women, few of us would at present
be in existence.” This is the remark of a cautious and
discreet writer. He was also sagacious and intelligent.

Woman! Lock upon her and admire her. Gaze upon
her and love her. If she wishes to embrace you, permit
her. Remember she is weak and you are strong.

But don’t treat her unkindly. Don’t make love to an-
other woman before her face, even if she be your wife.
Don’t do it. Always be polite, even should she fancy
somebody better than you.

If your mother, my dear Amadis, had not fancied your
father better than somebody, you might have been that
somebody’s son. Consider this. Always be a philosopher,
even about women.

Few men understand women. Frenchmen, perhaps.
better than any one else. J am a Frenchman.

Ir

THE INFANT

She is a child —a little thing — an infant.
She has a mother and father. Let us suppose, for ex-
omple, they are married. Let us be moral if we cannot be
“LA FEMME” 143

happy and free —they are married — perhaps —- they love
one another — who knows?

But she knows nothing of this; she is an infant—a
small thing —a trifle!

She is not lovely at first. It is cruel, perhaps, but she
is red, and positively ugly. She feels this keenly, and
cries. She weeps. Ah, my God, how she weeps! Her
cries and lamentations now are really distressing.

Tears stream from her in floods. She feels deeply and
copiously, like M. Alphonse de Lamartine in his “‘Confes-
sions.”

If you are her mother, Madame, you will fancy worms;
you will examine her linen for pins, and what not. Ah,
hypocrite! you, even you, misunderstand her.

Yet she has charming natural impulses. See how she
tosses her dimpled arms. She looks longingly at her
mother. She has a language of her own. She says, “ga0,
goo,” and “ga, ga.”

She demands something — this infant!

She is faint, poor thing. She famishes. She wishes
to be restored. Restore her, Mother!

it is the first duty of a mother to restore her child /

Til
THE DOLL

She is hardly able to walk; she already totters under
the weight of a doll.

It is a charming and elegant affair. It has pink cheeks
and purple-black hair. She prefers brunettes, for she has
already, with the quick knowledge of a French infant, per-
ceived she is a blonde, and that her doll cannot rivai her.
Mon Dieu, how touching! Happy child! She spends
hours in preparing its toilet. She begins to show her taste
44 CONDENSED NOVELS

in the exquisite details of its dress, She loves it madly,
devotedly. She will prefer it to bonbons. She already
anticipates the wealth of love she will hereafter pour out
on her lover, her mother, her father, and finally, perhaps,
her husband.

This is the time the anxious parent will guide these
first outpourings. She will read her extracts from Miche-
let’s “L’ Amour,” Rousseau’s “ Héloise,” and the ‘ Revue
des deux Mondes.”

IV
THE MUD PIE

She was in tears to-day.

She had stolen away from her bonne and was with some
rustic infants. They had noses in the air, and large, coarse
hands and feet.

They had seated themselves around a pool in the road,
and were fashioning fantastic shapes in the clayey soil with
their hands. Her throat swelled and her eyes sparkled
with delight as, for the first time, her soft palms touched
the plastic mud. She made a graceful and lovely pie. She
stuffed it with stones for almonds and plums. She forgot
everything. It was being baked in the solar rays, when
madame came and took her away.

She weeps. It is night, and she is weeping still.

v
THE FIRST LOVE

She no longer doubts her beauty. She is loved.
She saw him secretly. He is vivacious and sprightly.
He is famous. He has already had an affair with Finfin,
“LA FEMME” 145

the fille de chambre, and poor Finfin is desolate. He is
noble. She knows he is the son of Madame la Baronne
Couturiére. She adores him.

She affects not to notice him. Poor little thing! Hip-
polyte is distracted — annihilated —inconsolable and
charming.

She admires his boots, his cravat, his little gloves — his
exquisite pantaloons — his coat, and cane.

She offers to run away with him. He is transported,
but magnanimous. He is wearied, perhaps. She sees him
the next day offering flowers to the daughter.of Madame
la Comtesse Blanchisseuse.

She is again in tears.

She reads “Paul et Virginie.” She is secretly trans-
ported. When she reads how the exemplary young woman
laid down her life rather than appear en déshabillé to her
lover, she weeps again. ‘Tasteful and virtuous Bernardin
de Saint-Pierre! — the daughters of France admire you!

All this time her doll is headless in the cabinet. The
mud pie is broken on the road.

VI
THE WIFE

She is tired of loving, and she marries.

Her mother thinks it, on the whole, the best thing. As
the day approaches, she is found frequently in tears. Her
mother will not permit the affianced one to see her, and he
makes several attempts to commit suicide.

But something happens. Perhaps it is winter, and the
water is cold. Perhaps there are not enough people present
to witness his heroism.

In this way her future husband is spared to her. The
ways of Providence are indeed mysterious. At this time
146 CONDENSED NOVELS

her mother will talk with her. She will offer philosophy.
She will tell her she was married herself.

But what is this new and ravishing light that breaks upon
her? The toilet and wedding clothes! She is in a new

sphere.
She makes out her list in her own charming writing.
Here it is. Let every mother heed it.+

She is married. On the day after, she meets her old
lover, Hippolyte. He is again transported.
VII
HER OLD AGE

A Frenchwoman never grows old.

1 The delicate reader will appreciate the omission of certain articles for
which English synonyms are forbidden.
THE DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD

BY SIR ED-D L-TT-N B-LW-R

BOOK I

THE PROMPTINGS OF THE IDEAL

Ir was noon. Sir Edward had stepped from his
brougham, and was proceeding on foot down the Strand.
He was dressed with his usual faultless taste, but in alight-
ing from his vehicle his foot had slipped, and a small round
disk of conglomerated soil, which instantly appeared on
his high arched instep, marred the harmonious glitter of
his boots. Sir Edward was fastidious. Casting his eyes
around, at a little distance he perceived the stand of a
youthful bootblack. Thither he sauntered, and carelessly
placing his foot on the low stool, he waited the application
of the polisher’s art. “’Tis true,” said Sir Edward to
himself, yet half aloud, “the contact of the Foul and the
Disgusting mars the general effect of the Shiny and the
Beautiful — and, yet, why am I here? I repeat it, calmly
and deliberately — why am I here? Ha! Boy!”

The Boy looked up — his dark Italian eyes glanced intel-
ligently at the Philosopher, and as with one hand he tossed
back his glossy curls from his marble brow, and with the
other he spread the equally glossy Day & Martin over the
Baronet’s boot, he answered in deep, rich tones: ‘The
Ideal is subjective to the Real. The exercise of appercep-
tion gives a distinctiveness to-idiocracy, which is, however,
subject to the limits of Mz. You are an admirer of the
148 CONDENSED NOVELS

Beauitful, sir. You wish your boots blacked. The Beau.
tiful is attainable by means of the Coin.”

“Ah,” said Sir Edward thoughtfully, gazing upon the
almost supernal beauty of the Child before him; “you speak
well. You have read Kant.”

The Boy blushed deeply. He drew a copy of Kant
from his blouse, but in his confusion several other volumes
dropped from his bosom on the ground. The Baronet
picked them up.

“Ah!” said the Philosopher, “what’s this? Cicero’s
* De Senectute,’ — at your age, too? Martial’s ‘ Epigrams,’
Cesar’s ‘Commentaries.’ What! a classical scholar?”

“¥ pluribus Unum. Nux vomica. Nil desperandum,
Nihil fit!” said the Boy enthusiastically. The Philosopher
gazed at the Child. A strange presence seemed to transfuse
and possess him. Over the brow of the Boy glittered the
pale nimbus of the Student.

“ Ah, and Schiller’s ‘ Robbers,’ too?” queried the Phi-
losopher.

“Das ist ausgespielt,” said the Boy modestly.

“Then you have read my translation of Schiller’s ‘ Bal-
lads’ ?”? continued the Baronet, with some show of interest.

“T have, and infinitely prefer them to the original,” said
the Boy, with intellectual warmth. “ You have shown how
in Actual life we strive for a Goal we cannot reach; how
in the Ideal the Goal is attainable, and there effort is vic-
tory. You have given us the Antithesis which is a key to
the Remainder, and constantly balances before us the con-
ditions of the Actual and the privileges of the Ideal.”

“My very words,” said the Baronet; ‘wonderful, won-
derful! ” and he gazed fondly at the Italian boy, who again
resumed his menial employment. Alas! the wings of the
Ideal were folded. The Student had been absorbed in the
Boy.

But Sir Edward’s boots were blacked, and he turned to
THE DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD 149

depart. Placing his hand upon the clustering tendrils
that surrounded the classic nob of the infant Italian, he
said softly, like a strain of distant music, —

“Boy, you have done well. Love the Good. Protect
the Innocent. Provide for the Indigent. Respect the
Philosopher. . . . Stay! Can you tell me what zs The
True, The Beautiful, The Innocent, The Virtuous?”

“They are things that commence with a capital letter,”
said the Boy promptly.

“Enough! Respect everything that commences with a
capital letter! Respect Mz!” and dropping a halfpenny in
the hand of the boy, he departed.

The Boy gazed fixedly at the coin. A frightful and
instantaneous change overspread his features. His noble
brow was corrugated with baser lines of calculation. His
black eye, serpent-like, glittered with suppressed passion.
Dropping upon his hands and feet, he crawled to the curb-
stone, and hissed after the retreating form of the Baronet
the single word —

“Bilk!”

BOOK II
IN THE WORLD

“Eleven years ago,” said Sir Edward to himself, as his
brougham slowly rolled him toward the Committee Room,
“just eleven years ago my natural son disappeared mysteri-
ously. I have no doubt in the world but that this little
bootblack is he. His mother died in Italy. He resembles
his mother very much. Perhaps I ought to provide for
him. Shall I disclose myself? No! no! Better he should
taste the sweets of Labor. Penury ennobles the mind and
kindles the Love of the Beautiful. I will act to him,
not like a Father, not like a Guardian, not like a Friend
— but like a Philosopher!”
150 CONDENSED NOVELS

With these words, Sir Edward entered the Committee
Room. His Secretary approached him. “Sir Edward,
there are fears of a division in the House, and the Prime
Minister has sent for you.”

“J will be there,” said Sir Edward, as he placed his
hand on his chest and uttered a hollow cough!

No one who heard the Baronet that night, in his sarcastic
and withering speech on the Drainage and Sewerage Bill,
would have recognized the Lover of the Ideal and the
Philosopher of the Beautiful. No one who listened to his
eloquence would have dreamed of the Spartan resolution.
this iron man had taken in regard to the Lost Boy — his
own beloved Lionel. None!

“A fine speech from Sir Edward to-night,” said Lord
Billingsgate, as, arm and arm with the Premier, he entered
his carriage.

“Yes! but how dreadfully he coughs!”

“Exactly. Dr. Bolus says his lungs are entirely gone;
he breathes entirely by an effort of will, and altogether in-
dependent of pulmonary assistance.”

“How strange!” And the carriage rolled away.

BOOK III
THE DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD

“Adon Ai, appear! appear!”

And as the Seer spoke, the awful Presence glided out of
Nothingness, and sat, sphinx-like, at the feet of the Al-
chemist.

“T am come!” said the Thing.

“You should say, ‘I have come,’ —it’s better gram-
mar,” said the Boy-Neophyte, thoughtfully accenting the
substituted expression. :

‘Hush, rash Boy,” said the Seer sternly. “ Would you
THE DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD 151

oppose your feeble knowledge to the infinite intelligence of
the Unmistakable? A word, and you are lost forever.”

The Boy breathed a silent prayer, and handing a sealed
package to the Seer, begged him to hand it to his father in
case of his premature decease.

“You have sent for me,” hissed the Presence. ‘Behold
me, Apokatharticon, —-the Unpronounceable. In me all
things exist that are not already coexistent. I am the
Unattainable, the Intangible, the Cause, and the Effect. In
me observe the Brahma of Mr. Emerson; not only Bralma
himself, but also the sacred musical composition rehearsed
by the faithful Hindoo. I am the real Gyges. None
others are genuine.”

And the veiled Son of the Starbeam laid himself loosely
about the room, and permeated Space generally.

“Unfathomable Mystery,” said the Rosicrucian in a low,
sweet voice. “Brave Child with the Vitreous Optic!
Thou who pervadest all things and rubbest against us with-
out abrasion of the cuticle. I command thee, speak!”

And the misty, intangible, indefinite Presence spoke.

BOOK IV

MYSELF

After the events related in the last chapter, the reader
will perceive that nothing was easier than to reconcile Sir
Edward to his son Lionel, nor to resuscitate the beautiful
Italian girl, who, it appears, was not dead, and to cause Sir
Edward to marry his first and boyish love, whom he had
deserted. They were married in St. George’s, Hanover
Square. As the bridal party stood before the altar, Sir
Edward, with a sweet, sad smile, said in quite his old man-
ner, —

“The Sublime and Beautiful are the Real; the only Ideal
152 CONDENSED NOVELS

is the Ridiculous and Homely. Let us always remember
this. Let us through life endeavor to personify the virtues,
and always begin ’em with a capital letter. Let us, when-
ever we can find an opportunity, deliver our sentiments in
the form of roundhand copies. Respect the Aged. Eschew
Vulgarity. Admire Ourselves. Regard the Novelist.”
NN.
BEING A NOVEL IN THE FRENCH PARAGRAPHIC STYLE

— MADEMOISELLE, I swear to you that I love you.

— You who read these pages. You who turn your burn-
ing eyes upon these words — words that I trace — ah,
heaven! the thought maddens me.

—I will be calm. I will imitate the reserve of the fes-
tive Englishman, who wears a spotted handkerchief which
he calls a Belchio, who eats biftek, and caresses a bulldog.
I will subdue myself like him.

—Ha! Poto-beer! All right —Goddam!

— Or, I will conduct myself as the free-born American
—the gay Brother Jonathan. I will whittle me a stick.
I will whistle to myself ‘“ Yankee Doodle,” and forget my
passion in excessive expectoration.

— Ho! ho! — wake snakes and walk chalks.

The world is divided into two great divisions, — Paris
and the provinces. There is but one Paris. There are
several provinces, among which may be numbered England,
America, Russia, and Italy.

NN. was a Parisian.

But N N. did not live in Paris. Drop a Parisian in the
provinces, and you drop a part of Paris with him. Drop
him in Senegambia, and in three days he will give you an
omelette soufflée, or a paté de foie gras, served by the neat-
est of Senegambian filles, whom he will call mademoiselle.
In three weeks he will give you an opera.
154 CONDENSED NOVELS

NN. was not dropped in Senegambia, but in San Fran-
cisco, — quite as awkward.

They find gold in San Francisco, but they don’t under

, stand gilding.
: N N. existed three years in this place. He became
hald on the top of his head, as all Parisians do. Look down
from your box at the Opéra Comique, mademoiselle, and
count the bald crowns of the fast young men in the pit.
Ah — you tremble! They show where the arrows of love
have struck and glanced off.

N N. was almost near-sighted, as all Parisians finally
become. This is a gallant provision of nature to spare them
the mortification of observing that their lady friends grow
old. After a certain age every woman is nandsome toa
Parisian.

One day, N N. was walking down Washington Street,
Suddenly he stopped.

He was standing before the door of a mantua-maker.
Beside the counter, at the farther extremity of the shop,
stood a young and elegantly formed woman. Her face was
turned from N N. He entered. With a plausible excuse
and seeming indifference, he gracefully opened conversation
with the mantua-maker as only a Parisian can. But he
had to deal with a Parisian. His attempts to view the
features of the fair stranger by the counter were deftly com-
bated by the shopwoman. He was obliged to retire.

NN. went home and lost his appetite. He was haunted
by the elegant basque and graceful shoulders of the fair
unknown, during the whole night.

The next day he sauntered by the mantua-maker. Ah!
Heavens! A thrill ran through his frame, and his fingers
tingled with a delicious electricity. The fair inconnue was
there! He raised his hat gracefully. He was not certain,
but he thought that a slight motion of her faultless bonnet
betrayed recognition. He would have wildly darted into
NN. 155

the shop, but just then the figure of the mantua-maker ap-
peared in the doorway.

— Did monsieur wish anything ?

— Misfortune! Desperation. N N. purchased a bottle
of Prussic acid, a sack of charcoal, and a quire of pink note-
paper, and returned home. He wrote a letter of farewell to
the closely fitting basque, and opened the bottle of Prussic
acid.

Some one knocked at his door. It was a Chinaman, with
his weekly linen.

These Chinese are docile, but not intelligent. They are
ingenious, but not creative. They are cunning in expedi-
ents, but deficient in tact. In love they are simply barbar-
ous. They purchase their wives openly, and not construc-
tively by attorney. By offering small sums for their
sweethearts, they degrade the value of the sex.

Nevertheless, N N. felt he was saved. He explained all
to the faithful Mongolian, and exhibited the letter he had
written. He implored him to deliver it.

The Mongolian assented. The race are not cleanly
or sweet-savored, but N N. fell upon his neck. He em-
braced him with one hand, and closed his nostrils with the
other. Through him, he felt he clasped the close-fitting
basque.

The next day was one of agony and suspense. Evening
came, but no mercy. N N, lit the charcoal. But, to com-
pose his nerves, he closed his door and first walked mildly
up and down Montgomery Street. When he returned, he
found the faithful Mongolian on the steps.

— All lity!

These Chinese are not accurate in their pronunciation,
They avoid the r, like the English nobleman.

NN. gasped for breath. He leaned heavily against the
Chinaman.

— Then you have seen her, Ching Long?
156 CONDENSED NOVELS

— Yes. Alllity. Shecum. Top side of house.

The docile barbarian pointed up the stairs, and chuckled.

—She here —impossible! Ah, Heaven! do I dream?

— Yes. All lity, —top side of house. Good-by, John.

This is the familiar parting epithet of the Mongolian. It
is equivalent to our au revoir.

NN. gazed with a stupefied air on the departing servant.

He placed his hand on his throbbing heart. She here,
— alone beneath this roof? Oh, heavens, — what happiness!

But how? Torn from her home. Ruthlessly dragged,
perhaps, from her evening devotions, by the hands of a re-
lentless barbarian. Could she forgive him?

He dashed frantically up the stairs. He opened the
door.

She was standing beside his couch with averted face.

A strange giddiness overtook him. He sank upon his
knees at the threshold.

— Pardon, pardon. My angel, can you forgive me?

A terrible nausea now seemed added to the fearful giddi-
ness. His utterance grew thick and sluggish.

—Speak, speak, enchantress. Forgiveness is all I ask.
My Love, my Life!

She did not answer. He staggered to his feet. As he
rose, his eyes fell on the pan of burning charcoal. A ter-
rible suspicion flashed across his mind. This giddiness —
this nausea. The ignorance of the barbarian. This
silence. Oh, merciful heavens! she was dying!

He crawled toward her. He touched her. She fell for-
ward with a lifeless sound upon the floor. He uttered a
piercing shriek, and threw himself beside her.

A file of gendarmes, accompanied by the Chef Burke,
fonnd him the next morning lying lifeless upon the floor.
They laughed brutally — these cruel minions of the law —
ana disengaged his arm from the waist of the wooden
NN. 157

dummy which they had come to reclaim, from the mantua-

maker.

Emptying a few bucketfuls of water over his form, they
finally succeeded in robbing him, not only of his mistress,
but of that Death he had coveted without her.

Ah! we live in a strange world, messieurs.
NO TITLE

BY W-LK-E C-LL-NS
PROLOGUE

Tur following advertisement appeared in the “Times”
of the 17th of June, 1845: —

Wantep. — A few young men for a light, genteel em-
ployment. Address J. W., P.O.

In the same paper, of same date, in another column: —

To Ler. — That commodious and elegant family man-
sion, No. 27 Limehouse Road, Pultneyville, will be rented
low to a respectable tenant if applied for immediately, the
family being about to remove to the Continent.

Under the local intelligence, in another column: —

Missing. — An unknown elderly gentleman a week ago
left his lodgings in the Kent Road, since which nothing
has been heard of him. He left no trace of his identity
except a portmanteau containing a couple of shirts marked
209, Ward.”

To find the connection between the mysterious disap-
pearance of the elderly gentleman and the anonymous com-
munication, the relevancy of both these incidents to the
letting of a commodious family mansion, and the dead secret
NO TITLE 159

involved in the three occurrences, is the task of the writer
of this history.

A slim young man with spectacles, a large hat, drab
gaiters, and a notebook, sat late that night with a copy of
the “Times” before him, and a pencil which he rattled
nervously between his teeth in the coffee-room of the Blue
Dragon.

CHAPTER I
MARY JONES’S NARRATIVE

I am upper housemaid to the family that live at No. 27
Limehouse Road, Pultneyville. I have been requested by
Mr. Wilkey Collings, which I takes the liberty of here stat-
ing is a gentleman born and bred, and has some considera-
tion for the feelings of servants, and is not above reward-
ing them for their trouble, which is more than you can say
for some who ask questions and gets short answers enough,
gracious knows, to tell what I know about them. I have
been requested to tell my story in my own langwidge,
though, being no schollard, mind cannot conceive. JI think
my master is a brute. Do not know that he has ever at-
tempted to poison my missus, — which is too good for him,
and how she ever came to marry him, heart only can tell,
—but believe him to be capable of any such _hatrosity.
Have heard him swear dreadful because of not having his
shaving-water at nine o’clock precisely. Do not know
whether he ever forged a will or tried to get my missus’s
property, although, not having confidence in the man,
should not be surprised if he had done so. Believe that
there was always something mysterious in his conduct.
Remember distinctly how the family left home to go abroad.
Was putting up my back hair, last Saturday morning,
when I heard a ring. Says cook, “That ’s missus’s bell,
and mind you hurry or the master ‘ill know why.” Says
166 CONDENSED NOVELS

I, “Humbly thanking you, mem, but taking advice of them
as is competent to give it, I’ll take my time.” Found
missus dressing herself and master growling as usual. Says
missus, quite calm and easy-like, ‘Mary, we begin to
pack to-day.” ‘What for, mem?” says I, taken aback.
“Whats that hussy asking?” says master from the bed-
clothes quite savage-like. ‘For the Continent — Italy,”
says missus. ‘Can you go, Mary?” Her voice was
quite gentle and saintlike, but I knew the struggle it cost,
and says I, “With you, mem, to India’s torrid clime, if
required, but with African Gorillas,” says I, looking toward
the bed, “never.” ‘‘Leave the room,” says master, start-
ing up and catching of his bootjack. “Why, Charles!”
says missus, “how you talk!” affecting surprise. ‘Do go,
Mary,” says she, slipping a half-crown into my hand. I
left the room, scorning to take notice of the odious wretch’s
conduct.

Cannot say whether my master and missus were ever
legally married. What with the dreadful state of morals
nowadays and them stories in the circulating libraries, in-
nocent girls don’t know into what society they might be
obliged to take situations. Never saw missus’s marriage
certificate, though I have quite accidental-like looked in
her desk when open, and would have seen it. Do not
know of any lovers missus might have had. Believe she
had a liking for John Thomas, footman, for she was always
spiteful-like — poor lady — when we were together —
though there was nothing between us, as cook well knows,
and dare not deny, and missus need n’t have been jealous.
Have never seen arsenic or Prussian acid in any of the
private drawers — but have seen paregoric and camphor.
One of my master’s friends was a Count Moscow, a Rus-
sian papist — which I detested.
NO TITLE 161

CHAPTER II
THE SLIM YOUNG MAN’S STORY

Iam by profession a reporter, and writer for the press.
T live at Pultneyville. 1 have always had a passion for
the marvelous, and have been distinguished for my facility
in tracing out mysteries, and solving enigmatical occur-
rences. On the night of the 17th June, 1845, I left my
office and walked homeward. The night was bright and
starlight. I was revolving in my mind the words of a
singular item I had just read in the “Times.” I had
reached the darkest portion of the road, and found myself
mechanically repeating: “An elderly gentleman a week
ago left his lodgings on the Kent Road,” when suddenly
I heard a step behind me.

I turned quickly, with an expression of horror in my
face, and by the light of the newly risen moon beheld an
elderly gentleman, with green cotton umbrella, approaching
me. His hair, which was snow white, was parted over a
broad, open forehead. The expression of his face, which
was slightly flushed, was that of amiability verging almost
upon imbecility. There was a strange, inquiring look
about the widely opered mild blue eye, —a look that might
have been intensified to insanity or modified to idiocy. As
he passed me, he paused and partly turned his face, with
a gesture of inquiry. I see him still, his white locks blow-
ing in the evening breeze, his hat a little on the back of
his head, and his figure painted in relief against the dark
blue sky.

Suddenly he turned his mild eye full upon me. A
weak smile played about his thin lips. In a voice which
had something of the tremulousness of age and the self-
162 CONDENSED NOVELS

satisfied chuckle of imbecility in it, he asked, pointing to
the rising moon, “‘ Why ?— Hush!”

He had dodged behind me, and appeared to be looking
anxiously down the road. I could feel his aged frame
shaking with terror as he laid his thin hands upon my
shoulders and faced me in the direction of the supposed
danger.

“Hush! did you not hear them coming?”

I listened; there was no sound but the soughing of the
roadside trees in the evening wind. JI endeavored to reas-
sure him, with such success that in a few moments the old
weak smile appeared on his benevolent face.

“Why?” — But the look of interrogation was succeeded
by-a hopeless blankness.

“Why?” I repeated with assuring accents.

“Why,” he said, a gleam of intelligence flickering over
his face, “is yonder moon, as she sails in the blue empy-
rean, casting a flood of light o’er hill and dale, like —
Why,” he repeated, with a feeble smile, ‘‘is yonder moon,
as she sails in the blue empyrean” — He hesitated, —
stammered, — and gazed at me hopelessly, with the tears
dripping from his moist and widely opened eyes.

I took his hand kindly in my own. ‘Casting a shadow
o’er hill and dale,” I repeated quietly, leading him up to
the subject, “like— Come, now.”

“Ah!” he said, pressing my hand tremulously, “you
know it?”

“T do. Why is it like — the — eh — the commodious
mansion on the Limehouse Road?”

A blank stare only followed. He shook his head sadly.

“Like the young men wanted for a light, genteel employ-
ment?”

He wagged his feeble old head cunningly.

“Or, Mr. Ward,” I said, with bold confidence, “like
the mysterious disappearance from the Kent Road?”
NO TITLE’ 163

The moment was full of suspense. He did not seem to
hear me. Suddenly he turned.

“ Ha! ” :

I darted forward. But he had vanished in the darkness,

CHAPTER III
NO. 27 LIMEHOUSE ROAD

It was a hot midsummer evening. Limehouse Road was
deserted save by dust and a few rattling butchers’ carts,
and the bell of the muffin and crumpet man. A commodi-
ous mansion, which stood on the right of the road as you
enter Pultneyville, surrounded by stately poplars and a high
fence surmounted by a cheval de frise of broken glass,
looked to the passing and footsore pedestrian like the genius
of seclusion and solitude. A bill announcing in the usual
terms that the house was to let hung from the bell at the
servants’ entrance.

As the shades of evening closed, and the long shadows
of the poplars stretched across the road, a man carrying a
small kettle stopped and gazed, first at the bill and then at
the house. When he had reached the corner of the fence,
he again stopped and looked cautiously up and down the
road. Apparently satisfied with the result of his scrutiny,
he deliberately sat himself down in the dark shadow of the
fence, and at once busied himself in some employment, so
well concealed as to be invisible to the gaze of passers-by.
At the end of an hour he retired cautiously.

But not altogether unseen. A slim young man, with
spectacles and notebook, stepped from behind a tree as the
retreating figure of the intruder was lost in the twilight,
and transferred from the fence to his notebook the freshly
stenciled inscription, ““S—T—1860 —X.”
164 CONDENSED NOVELS

CHAPTER IV
COUNT MOSCOW’S NARRATIVE

Iam a foreigner. Observe! To be a foreigner in Eng-
land is to be mysterious, suspicious, intriguing. M. Col-
lins has requested the history of my complicity with certain
occurrences. It is nothing, bah! absolutely nothing.

I write with ease and fluency. Why should I not
write? Tra-la-la! J am what you English call corpulent.
Ha, ha! I am a pupil of Macchiavelli. I find it much
better to disbelieve everything, and to approach my subject
and wishes circuitously than in a direct manner. You
have observed that playful animal, the cat. Call it, and
it does not come to you directly, but rubs itself against all
the furniture in the room, and reaches you finally —and
scratches. Ah, ha, scratches! I am of the feline species.
People call me a villain — bah!

I know the family living No. 27 Limehouse Road. I
respect the gentleman, —a fine, burly specimen of your,
Englishman, — and madame, charming, ravishing, delight-
ful. When it became known to me that they designed to
let their delightful residence, and visit foreign shores, I
at once called upon them. I kissed the hand of madame.
I embraced the great Englishman. Madame blushed
slightly. The great Englishman shook my hand like a
mastiff.

I began in that dexterous, insinuating manner of which
Iam truly proud. I thought madame was ill. Ah, no.
A change, then, was all that was required. I sat down at
the piano and sang. In a few minutes madame retired.
I was alone with my friend.

Seizing his hand, I began with every demonstration of
courteous sympathy. I do not repeat my words, for my
NO TITLE 165

intention was conveyed more in accent, emphasis, and man-
ner, than speech. I hinted to him that he had another wife
living. I suggested that this was balanced — ha! — by his
wife’s lover. That, possibly, he wished to fly; hence the
letting of his delightful mansion. That he regularly and
systematically beat his wife in the English manner, and
that she repeatedly deceived him. JI talked of hope, of
consolation, of remedy. carelessly produced a bottle of
strychnine and a small vial of stramonium from my pocket,
and enlarged on the efficiency of drugs. His face, which
had gradually become convulsed, suddenly became fixed
with a frightful expression. He started to his feet, and
roared, ‘‘ You d—d Frenchman!”

TI instantly changed my tactics, and endeavored to em-
brace him. He kicked me twice, violently. I begged per-
mission to kiss madame’s hand. He replied by throwing
me downstairs.

I am in bed with my head bound up, and beefsteaks
upon my eyes, but still confident and buoyant. I have not
lost faith in Macchiavelli. Tra-la-la! as they sing in the
opera. I kiss everybody’s hands.

CHAPTER V
DR. DIGGS’S STATEMENT

My name is David Diggs. I am a surgeon, living at
No. 9 Tottenham Court. On the 15th of June, 1854, I
was called to see an elderly gentleman lodging on the
Kent Road. Found him highly excited, with strong febrile
symptoms, pulse 120, increasing. Repeated incoherently
what I judged to be the popular form of aconundrum. On
closer examination found acute hydrocephalus, and both
lobes of the brain rapidly filling with water. In consulta-
tion with an eminent phrenologist, it was further discovered
'166 CONDENSED NOVELS

that all the organs were more or less obliterated, except
that of Comparison. Hence the patient was enabled to only
distinguish the most common points of resemblance between
objects, without drawing upon other faculties, such as
Ideality or Language, for assistance. ‘Later in the day
found him sinking, — being evidently unable to carry the
most ordinary conundrum to a successful issue. Exhibited
Tinct. Val., Ext. Opii, and Camphor, and prescribed quiet
and emoilients. On the 17th the patient was missing.

CHAPTER LAST
STATEMENT OF THE PUBLISHER

On the 18th of June, Mr. Wilkie Collins left a roll of
manuscript with us for publication, without title or direc-
tion, since which time he has not been heard from. In
spite of the care of the proof-readers, and valuable literary
assistance, it is feared that the continuity of the story has
been destroyed by some accidental misplacing of chapters
during its progress. How and what chapters are so mis-
placed, the publisher leaves to an indulgent public to dis
cover,
HANDSOME IS AS HANDSOME DOES

BY CH-S R-DE

CHAPTER I

Tue Dodds were dead. For twenty years they had slept
under the green graves of Kittery churchyard. The town-
folk still spoke of them kindly.. The keeper of the ale-
house, where David had smoked his pipe, regretted him
regularly, and Mistress Kitty, Mrs. Dodd’s maid, whose
trim figure always looked well in her mistress’s gowns, was
inconsolable. The Hardins were in America. Raby was
aristocratically gouty; Mrs. Raby, religious. Briefly, then,
we have disposed of —

1. Mr. and Mrs. Dodd (dead).

2. Mr. and Mrs. Hardin (translated).

3. Raby, baronetfemme. (Yet I don’t know about the
former; he came of a long-lived family, and the gout is an
uncertain-disease. )

We have active at the present writing (place aux
dames) —

1. Lady Caroline Coventry, niece of Sir Frederick.

2. Faraday Huxley Little, son of Henry and Grace
Little deceased.

Sequitur to the above, A Hero anp HEROINE.

CHAPTER II

On the death of his parents, Faraday Little was taken
to Raby Hall. In accepting his guardianship, Mr. Raby
168 CONDENSED NOVELS

struggled stoutly against two prejudices: Faraday was plain-
looking and skeptical.

“Handsome is as handsome does, sweetheart,” pleaded
Jael, interceding for the orphan with arms that were still
beautiful. ‘Dear knows, it is not his fault if he does not’
look like — his father,” she added with a great gulp. Jael
was a woman, and vindicated her womanhood by never
entirely forgiving a former rival.

“Tt’s not that alone, madam,” screamed Raby, “but,
d—m it, the little rascal ’s a scientist, —an atheist, a radi-
cal, a scoffer! Disbelieves in the Bible, ma’am; is full of
this Darwinian stuff about natural selection and descent.
Descent, forsooth! In my day, madam, gentlemen were
content to trace their ancestors back to gentlemen, and not
to — monkeys!”

“Dear heart, the boy is clever,” urged Jael.

“Clever!” roared Raby; ‘what does a gentleman want
with cleverness?”

CHAPTER III

Young Little was clever. At seven he had constructed
a telescope; at nine, a flying-machine. At ten he saved a
valuable life.

Norwood Park was the adjacent estate, —a lordly do-
main dotted with red deer and black trunks, but scrupu-
lously kept with graveled roads as hard and blue as steel.
There Little was strolling one summer morning, meditating
on a new top with concealed springs. At a little distance
before him he saw the flutter of lace and ribbons. A
young lady, a very young lady, —say of seven summers,
—tricked out in the erying abominations of the present
fashion, stood beside a low bush. Her nursery-maid was
not present, possibly owing to the fact that John the foot-
man was also absent.
HANDSOME IS AS HANDSOME DOES 169

Suddenly Little came towards her. ‘Excuse me, but
do you know what those berries are?” He was pointing
to the low bush filled with dark clusters of shining — sus-
piciously shining — fruit.

“Certainly ; they are blueberries.”

“Pardon me; you are mistaken. They belong to quite
another family.”

Miss Impudence drew herself up to her full height
(exactly three feet nine and a half inches), and, curling an
eighth of an inch of scarlet lip, said scornfully, “ Your
family, perhaps.”

Faraday Little smiled in the superiority of boyhood over
girlhood.

“T allude to the classification. That plant is the bella-
donna, or deadly nightshade. Its alkaloid is a narcotic
poison.”

_ Sauciness turned pale. ‘I— have — just — eaten —
some!” And began to whimper. ‘‘Oh dear, what shall I
do?” Then did it, i. e., wrung her small fingers, and cried.

“Pardon me one moment.” Little passed his arm around
her neck, and with his thumb opened widely the patrician-
veined lids of her sweet blue eyes. “Thank Heaven, there
is yet no dilation of the pupil; it is not too late!” He
cast a rapid glance around. The nozzle and about three
feet of garden hose lay near him.

“Open your mouth, quick!”

It was a pretty, kissable mouth. But young Little meant
business. He put the nozzle down her pink throat as far
as it would go.

“Now, don’t move.”

He wrapped his handkerchief around a hoop-stick. Then
he inserted both in the other end of the stiff hose. It fitted
snug:y. He shoved it in and then drew it back.

Neture abhors a vacuum. The young patrician was as
amenable to this law as the child of the lowest peasant.
170 CONDENSED NOVELS

She succumbed. It was all over in a minute, Then she
burst into a small fury.

“You nasty, bad — ugly boy.”

Young Little winced, but smiled.

“Stimulants,” he whispered to the frightened nursery-
maid, who approached; ‘‘good-evening.” He was gone.

CHAPTER IV

The breach between young Little and Mr. Raby was
slowly widening. Little found objectionable features in
the Hall. ‘This black oak ceiling and wainscoting is not
as healthful as plaster; besides, it absorbs the light. The
bedroom ceiling is too low; the Elizabethan architects knew
nothing of ventilation. The color of that oak paneling
which you admire is due to an excess of carbon and the
exuvia from the pores of your skin” — ,

“Leave the house,” bellowed Raby, ‘before the roof
falls on your sacrilegious head!”

As Little left the house, Lady Caroline and a handsome
boy of about Little’s age entered. Lady Caroline recoiled,
and then—blushed. Little glared; he instinctively felt
the presence of a rival.

CHAPTER V

Little worked hard. He studied night and day. In
five years he became a lecturer, then a professor.

He soared as high as the clouds, he dipped as low as the
cellars of the London poor. He analyzed the London fog,
and found it two parts smoke, one disease, one unmention-
able abominations. He published a pamphlet, which was
violently attacked. Then he knew he had done some-
thing.
HANDSOME IS AS HANDSOME DOES 171

But he had not forgotten Caroline. He was walking
one day in the Zodlogical Gardens, and he came upon a
pretty picture, — flesh and blood, too.

Lady Caroline feeding buns to the bears!) An exquisite
thrill passed through his veins. She turned her sweet face
and their eyes met. They recollected their first meeting
seven years before, but it was his turn to be shy and timid.
Wonderful power of age and sex! She met him with per-
fect self-possession.

“Well meant, but indigestible, I fear” (he alluded to the
buns).

“A clever person like yourself can easily correct that”
(she, the slyboots, was thinking of something else).

In a few moments they were chatting gayly. Little
eagerly descanted upon the different animals; she listened
with delicious interest. An hour glided delightfully away.

After this sunshine, clouds.

To them suddenly entered Mr. Raby and a handsome
young man. The gentlemen bowed stiffly and looked vi-
cious —as they felt. The lady of this quartette smiled
amiably — as she did not feel.

“Looking at your ancestors, I suppose,” said Mr. Raby,
pointing to the monkeys; “we will not disturb you.
Come.” And he led Caroline away.

Little was heart-sick. He dared not follow them. But
an hour later he saw something which filled his heart with
bliss unspeakable.

Lady Caroline, with a divine smile on her face, feeding
the monkeys!

CHAPTER VI

Encouraged by love, Little worked hard upon his new
flying-machine. His labors were lightened by talking of
the beloved one with her French maid Thérése, whom he
172 CONDENSED NOVELS

had discreetly bribed. Mademoiselle Thérése was venal,
like all her class, but in this instance I fear she was not
bribed by British gold. Strange as it may seem to the
British mind, it was British genius, British eloquence,
British thought, that brought her to the feet of this young
savan.

“T believe,” said Lady Caroline, one day, interrupting
her maid in a glowing eulogium upon the skill of “M.
Leetell,” — “I believe you are in love with this professor.”
A quick flush crossed the olive cheek of Thérése, which
Lady Caroline afterward remembered.

The eventful day of trial came. The public were gath-
ered, impatient and scornful as the pig-headed public are
apt to be. In the open area a long cylindrical balloon, in
shape like a Bologna sausage, swayed above the machine,
from which, like some enormous bird caught in a net, it
tried to free itself, A heavy rope held it fast to the
ground.

Little was waiting for the ballast, when his eye caught
Lady Caroline’s among the spectators. The glance was ap-
pealing. In a moment he was at her side.

“T should like so much to get into the machine,” said
the arch-hypocrite demurely.

“Are you engaged to marry young Raby?” said Little
bluntly.

“As you please,” she said with a curtsy; “do I take
this as a refusal?”

Little was a gentleman. He lifted her and her lap-dog
into the car.

“How nice! it won’t go off?”

“No, the rope is strong, and the ballast is not yet in.”

A report like a pistol, a cry from the spectators, a thou-
sand hands stretched to grasp the parted rope, and the bal-
loon darted upward.

Only one hand of that thousand caught the rope, —
HANDSOME IS AS HANDSOME DOES 173

Little’s! | But in the same instant the horror-stricken spec-
tators saw him whirled from his feet and borne upward,
still clinging to the rope, into space.

CHAPTER VI!

Lady Caroline fainted. The cold, watery nose of her
dog on her cheek brought her to herself. She dared not
look over the edge of the car; she dared not look up to the
bellowing monster above her, bearing her to death. She
threw herself on the bottom of the car, and embraced the
only living thing spared her,— the poodle. Then she cried,
Then a clear voice came apparently out of the circumambi-
ent air, —

“May I trouble you to look at the barometer?”

She put her head over the car. Little was hanging at
the end of a long rope. She put her head back again.

In another moment he saw her perplexed, blushing face
over the edge, — blissful sight.

“Oh, please don’t think of coming up! Stay there, do!”

Little stayed. Of course she could make nothing out of
vhe barometer, and said so. Little smiled.

“Will you kindly send it down to me?”

But she had no string or cord. Finally she said, “ Wait
a moment.”

Little waited. This time her face did not appear. The
barometer came slowly down at the end of —a stay-lace.

The barometer showed a frightful elevation. Little
Looked up at the valve aad said nothing. Presently he
heard a sigh. Then asob, Then, rather sharply, —

“Why don’t you do something?”

1 The right of dramatization of this and succeeding chapters is reserved
\y the writer.
174 CONDENSED NOVELS

CHAPTER VIII

Little came up the rope hand over hand. Lady Caroline
crouched in the farther side of the car. Fido, the poodle,
whined.

“Poor thing,” said Lady Caroline, ‘it’s hungry.”

“Do you wish to save the dog?” said Little.

i es?

“Give me your parasol.”

She handed Little a good-sized affair of lace and silk and
whalebone. (None of your ‘“‘sunshades.”) Little ex-
amined its ribs carefully.

“Give me the dog.”

Lady Caroline hurriedly slipped a note under the dog’s
collar, and passed over her pet.

Little tied the dog to the handle of the parasol and
launched them both into space. The next moment they
were slowly, but tranquilly, sailing to the earth.

‘A parasol and a parachute are distinct, but not differ-
ent. Be not alarmed, he will get his dinner at some farm-
house.”

“Where are we now?”

“That opaque spot you see is London fog. Those twin
clouds are North and South America. Jerusalem and
Madagascar are those specks to the right.”

Lady Caroline moved nearer; she was becoming inter-
ested. Then she recalled herself, and said freezingly, ‘‘ How
are we going to descend?”

“By opening the valve.”

‘Why don’t you open it then?”

“ BECAUSE THE VALVE-STRING IS BROKEN!”
HANDSOME IS AS HANDSOME DOES 175

CHAPTER IX

Lady Caroline fainted. When she revived it was dark.
They were apparently cleaving their way through a solid
block of black marble. She moaned and shuddered.

“T wish we had a light.”

“T have no lucifers,” said Little. ‘I observe, however,
that you wear a necklace of amber. Amber under certain
conditions becomes highly electrical. Permit me.”

He took the amber necklace and rubbed it briskly.
Then he asked her to present her knuckle to the gem. <A
bright spark was the result. This was repeated for some
hours. The light was not brilliant, but it was enough
for the purposes of propriety, and satisfied the delicately
minded girl.

Suddenly there was a tearing, hissing noise and a smell
of gas. Little looked up and turned pale. The balloon,
at what I shall call the pointed end of the Bologna sausage,
was evidently bursting from increased pressure. The gas
was escaping, and already they were beginning to descend.
Little was resigned but firm.

“Tf the silk gives way, then we are lost. Unfortunately
I have no rope nor material for binding it.”

The woman’s instinct had arrived at the same conclu-
sion sooner than the man’s reason. But she was hesitating
over a detail.

“Will you go down the rope for a moment?” she said,
with a sweet smile.

Little went down. Presently she called to him. She
held something in her hand,—a wonderful invention of
the seventeenth century, improved and perfected in this:
a pyramid of sixteen circular hoops of light yet strong steel,
attached to each other by cloth bands.

With a cry of joy Little seized them, climbed to the
176 CONDENSED NOVELS

balloon, and fitted the elastic hoops over its conical end,
Then he returned to the car.

“We are saved.” Lady Caroline, blushing, gathered
her slim but antique drapery against the other end of the
car.

CHAPTER X

They were slowly descending. Presently Lady Caro-
line distinguished the outlines of Raby Hall.

“T think I will get out here,” she said.

Little anchored the balloon, and prepared to follow her.

“Not so, my friend,” she said, with an arch smile.
“We must not be seen together. People might talk.
Farewell.”

Little sprang again into the balloon and sped away to
America. He came down in California, oddly enough in
tront of Hardin’s door, at Dutch Flat. Hardin was just
examining a specimen of ore.

“You are a scientist; can you tell me if that is worth
anything?” he said, handing it to Little.

Little held it to the light. “It contains ninety per.cent.
of silver.”

Hardin embraced him. ‘Can I do anything for you,
and why are you here?”

Little told his story. Hardin asked to see the rope.
Then he examined it carefully.

“Ah, this was cut, not broken! ”

“With a knife?” asked Little.

“No. Observe both sides are equally indented. It was
done with a scissors /”

“Just Heaven!” gasped Little. ‘“Thérése!”
HANDSOME IS AS HANDSOME DOES 177

CHAPTER XI

Little returned to London. Passing through London
one day he met a dog-fancier.

“Buy a nice poodle, sir?”

Something in the animal attracted his attention.

“Fido!” he gasped.

The dog yelped.

Little bought him. On taking off his collar a piece of
paper rustled to the floor. He knew the handwriting and
kissed it. It ran: —

To tue Honoraste Aveustus Rasy —I cannot
marry you. If I marry any one [sly puss] it will be the
man who has twice saved my life, Professor Little.

CAROLINE COVENTRY.

And she did.
LOTHAW
OR

THE ADVENTURES OF A YOUNG GENTLEMAN IN SEARCH OF
A RELIGION

BY MR. BENJAMINS

CHAPTER I

“T REMEMBER him a little boy,” said the Duchess.
“His mother was a dear friend of mine; you know she
was one of my bridesmaids.”

“ And you have never seen him since, mamma?” asked
the oldest married daughter, who did not look a day older
than her mother.

“Never ; he was an orphan shortly after. I have often
reproached myself, but it is so difficult to see boys.”

This simple yet first-class conversation existed in the
morning-room of Plusham, where the mistress of the pala-
tial mansion sat involved in the sacred privacy of a circle
ot her married daughters. One dexterously applied golden
knitting-needles to the fabrication of a purse of floss silk of
the rarest texture, which none who knew the almost fabu-
lous wealth of the Duke would believe was ever destined to
hold in its silken meshes a less sum than £1,000,000;
another adorned a slipper exclusively with seed pearls; a
third emblazoned a page with rare pigments and the finest
quality of gold leaf. Beautiful forms leaned over frames
glowing with embroidery, and beautiful frames leaned over
forms inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Others, more remote,
occasionally burst into melody as they tried the passages of
LOTHAW 179

anew and exclusive air given to them in MS. by some titled
and devoted friend, for the private use of the aristocracy
alone, and absolutely prohibited for publication.

The Duchess, herself the superlative of beauty, wealth,
and position, was married to the highest noble in the Three
Kingdoms. Those who talked about such matters said that
their progeny were exactly like their parents, — a peculiar-
ity of the aristocratic and wealthy. ‘hey all looked like
brothers and sisters, except their parents, who, such was
their purity of blood, the perfection of their manners, and
the opulence of their condition, might have been taken for
their own children’s elder son and daughter. The daugh-
ters, with one exception, were all married to the highest
nobles in the land. That exception was the Lady Corian-
der, who, there being no vacancy above a marquis and a
rental of £1,000,000, waited. Gathered around the refined
and sacred circle of their breakfast-table, with their glitter-
ing coronets, which, in filial respect to their father’s Tory
instincts and their mother’s Ritualistic - tastes, they always
wore on their regal brows, the effect was dazzling as it was
refined. It was this peculiarity and their strong family
resemblance which led their brother-in-law, the good-
humored St. Addlegourd, to say that, ‘“’Pon my soul, you
know, the whole precious mob looked like a ghastly pack
of court cards, you know.” St. Addlegourd was a radical.
Having a rent-roll of £15,000,000, and belonging to one of
the oldest families in Britain, he could afford to be.

“Mamma, I’ve just dropped a pearl,” said the Lady
Coriander, bending over the Persian hearth-rug.

“ From your lips, sweet friend ?” said Lothaw, who came
of age and entered the room at the same moment.

“No, from my work. It was a very valuable pearl,
mamma; papa gave Isaacs Sons £50,000 for the two.”

“ Ah, indeed,” said the Duchess, languidly rising ; “ let
us go to luncheon.”
180 CONDENSED NOVELS

“ But, your Grace,’’ interposed Lothaw, who was still
quite young, and had dropped on all fours on the carpet in
search of the missing gem, “consider the value ” —

“ Dear friend,’ interposed the Duchess with infinite tact,
gently lifting him by the tails of his dress coat, “ I am wait-
ing for your arm.”

CHAPTER II

Lothaw was immensely rich. The possessor of seventeen
castles, fifteen villas, nine shooting-boxes, and seven town
houses, he had other estates of which he had not even heard.

Everybody at Plusham played croquet, and none badly.
Next to their purity of blood and great wealth, the family
were famous for this accomplishment. Yet Lothaw soon
tired of the game, and after seriously damaging his aristo-
cratically large foot in an attempt to “ tight croquet” the
Lady Aniseed’s ball, he limped away to join the Duchess.

“T’m going to the hennery,” she said.

“Let me go with you; I dearly love fowls — broiled,”
he added thoughtfully.

“The Duke gave Lady Montairy some large Cochins the
other day,” continued the Duchess, changing the subject
with delicate tact.

“Lady Montairy
Quite contrairy,
How do your Cochins grow ?”*
sang Lothaw gayly.

The Duchess looked shocked. After a prolonged silence
Lothaw abruptly and gravely said : —

“Tf you please, ma’am, when I come into my property I
should like to build some improved dwellings for the poor,
and marry Lady Coriander.”

“You amaze me, dear friend; and yet both your aspira-
tions are noble and eminently proper,” said the Duchess.
LOTHAW 181

“Coriander is but a child, — and yet,” she added, looking
graciously upon her companion, “ for the matter of that, so
are you.”

CHAPTER III

Mr. Putney Giles’s was Lothaw’s first grand dinner-party.
Wet, by carefully watching the others, he managed to acquit
himself creditably, and avoided drinking out of the finger-
bowl by first secretly testing its contents with a spoon.
The conversation was peculiar and singularly interesting.

“Then you think that monogamy is simply a question of
the thermometer?” said Mrs. Putney Giles to her com-
panion.

“T certainly think that polygamy should be limited by
isothermal lines,’”’ replied Lothaw.

“T should say it was a matter of latitude,’’ observed a
loud, talkative man opposite. He was an Oxford professor
with a taste for satire, and had made himself very obnoxious
to the company, during dinner, by speaking disparagingly
of a former well-known chancellor of the exchequer, —a
great statesman and brilliant novelist, — whom he feared
and hated.

Suddenly there was a sensation in the room; among the
females it absolutely amounted to a nervous thrill. His
Eminence, the Cardinal, was announced. He entered with
gieat suavity of manner, and after shaking hands with
everybody, asking after their relatives, and chucking the
more delicate females under the chin with a high-bred grace
peculiar to his profession, he sat down, saying, “ And how
do we all find ourselves this evening, my dears?” in sev-
eral different languages, which he spoke fluently.

Lothaw’s heart was touched. His deeply religious con-
victions were impressed. He instantly went up to this
gifted being, confessed, and received absolution. ‘“To-
182 CONDENSED NOVELS

morrow,” he said to himself, ‘I will partake of the com.
munion, and endow the Church with my vast estates. For
the present I’ll let the improved cottages go.”

CHAPTER IV

As Lothaw turned to leave the Cardinal, he was struck
by a beautiful face. It was that of a matron, slim but
shapely as an Jonic column. Her face was Grecian, with
Corinthian temples; Hellenic eyes that looked from jutting
eyebrows, like dormer-windows in an Attic forehead, com-
pleted her perfect Athenian outline. She wore a black
frock-coat tightly buttoned over her bloomer trousers, and a
standing collar.

“Your lordship is struck by that face?” said a social
parasite.

“Tam; who is she?”

“Her name is Mary Ann. She is married to an Ameri-
can, and has lately invented a new religion.”

“ Ah!” said Lothaw eagerly, with difficulty restraining
himself from rushing toward her.

“Yes; shall I introduce you?”

Lothaw thought of Lady Coriander’s High Church pro-
ciivities, of the Cardinal, and hesitated: ‘No, I thank
you, not now.”

CHAPTER V

Lothaw was maturing. He had attended two womens’
rights conventions, three Fenian meetings, had dined at
White’s, and had danced vis-a-vis to a prince of the blood,
and eaten off gold plates at Crecy House.

His stables were near Oxford, and occupied more ground
than the University. He was driving over there one day,
when he perceived some rustics and menials endeavoring
LOTHAW 188

to stop a pair of runaway horses attached to a carriage in
which a lady and gentleman were seated. Calmly awaiting
the termination of the accident, with high-bred courtesy
Lothaw forbore to interfere until the carriage was over-
turned, the occupants thrown out, and the runaways se-
cured by the servants, when he advanced and offered the
lady the exclusive use of his Oxford stables.

Turning upon him a face whose perfect Hellenic details
he remembered, she slowly dragged a gentleman from under
the wheels into the light, and presented him with ladylike
dignity as her husband, Major-General Camperdown, an
American.

“ Ah,” said Lothaw carelessly, “I believe I have some
land there. If I mistake not, my agent, Mr. Putney
Giles, lately purchased the State of — Illinois ——I think
you call it.”

‘Exactly. As a former resident of the city of Chicago,
let me introduce myself as your tenant.”

Lothaw bowed graciously to the gentleman, who, except
that he seemed better dressed than most Englishmen, showed
no other signs of inferiority and plebeian extraction.

“We have met before,” said Lothaw to the lady as she
leaned on his arm, while they visited his stables, the Uni-
versity, and other places of interest in Oxford. “ Pray tell
me, what is this new religion of yours ? ”

“Tt is Woman Suffrage, Free Love, Mutual Affinity, and
Communism. Embrace it and me.”

Lothaw did not know exactly what to do. She, how-
ever, soothed and sustained his agitated frame, and sealed
with an embrace his speechless form. ‘The General ap-
proached and coughed slightly with gentlemanly tact.

‘* My husband will be too happy to talk with you further
on this subject,” she said with quiet dignity, as she regained
the General’s side. ‘ Come with us to Oneida. Brook
Farm is a thing of the past.”
184 CONDENSED NOVELS

CHAPTER VI

As Lothaw drove toward his country-seat, The Mural
Inclosure, he observed a crowd, apparently of the work-
ing-class, gathered around a singular-looking man in the
picturesque garb of an Ethiopian serenader. “ What does
he say ?”? inquired Lothaw of his driver.

The man touched his hat respectfully, and said, “ My
Mary Ann.”

“¢My Mary Ann!’” Lothaw’s heart beat rapidly.
Who was this mysterious foreigner ? He had heard from
Lady Coriander of a certain Popish plot; but could he
connect Mr. Camperdown with it ?

The spectacle of two hundred men at arms, who advanced
to meet him at the gates of The Mural Inclosure, drove
all else from the still youthful and impressible mind of
Lothaw. Immediately behind them, on the steps of the
baronial halls, were ranged his retainers, led by the chief
cook and bottle-washer and head crumb-remover. On
either side were two companies of laundry-maids, preceded
by the chief crimper and fluter, supporting a long Ancestral
Line, on which depended the family linen, and under which
the youthful lord of the manor passed into the halls of his
fathers. Twenty-four scullions carried the massive gold
and silver plate of the family on their shoulders, and de-
posited it at the feet of their master. The spoons were
then solemnly counted by the steward, and the perfect cere-
mony ended.

Lothaw sighed. He sought out the gorgeously gilded
“Taj,” or sacred mausoleum erected to his grandfather in
the second-story front room, and wept over the man he did
not know.

He wandered alone in his magnificent park, and then,
throwing himself on a grassy bank, pondered on the Great
LOTHAW 185

First Cause and the necessity of religion. “J will send
Mary Ann a handsome present,” said Lothaw thought-
fully.

CHAPTER VII

‘* Rach of these pearls, my lord, is worth fifty thousand
guineas,” said Mr. Amethyst, the fashionable jeweler, as he
lightly lifted a large shovelful from a convenient bin behind
his counter.

“ Indeed,” said Lothaw carelessly, “I should prefer to
see some expensive ones.”

“Some number sixes, I suppose,’ said Mr. Amethyst,
taking a couple from the apex of a small pyramid that lay
piled on the shelf. ‘These are about the size of the
Duchess of Billingsgate’s, but they are in finer condition.
The fact is, her Grace permits her two children, the Mar-
quis of Smithfield and the Duke of St. Giles, — two sweet
pretty boys, my lord, —to use them as marbles in their
games. Pearls require some attention, and I go down there
regularly twice a week to clean them. Perhaps your lord-
ship would like some ropes of pearls ? ”

“About half a cable’s length,” said Lothaw shortly,
‘and send them to my lodgings.”

Mr. Amethyst became thoughtful. ‘TI am afraid I have
not the exact number — that is — excuse me one moment.
I will run over to the Tower and borrow a few from the
crown jewels.” And before Lothaw could prevent him, he
seized his hat and left Lothaw alone.

His position certainly was embarrassing. He could not
move without stepping on costly gems which had rolled
from the counter; the rarest diamonds lay scattered on the
shelves; untold fortunes in priceless emeralds lay within
his grasp. Although such was the aristocratic purity of his
blood and the strength of his religious convictions that he
186 CONDENSED NOVELS

probably would not have pocketed a single diamond, still he
could not help thinking that he might be accused of taking
some, ‘You can search me, if you like,” he said when
Mr. Amethyst returned; “but I assure you, upon the honor
of a gentleman, that I have taken nothing.”

“Enough, my lord,” said Mr. Amethyst, with a low
bow; “we never search the aristocracy.”

CHAPTER VIII

As Lothaw left Mr. Amethyst’s, he ran against General
Camperdown. “How is Mary Ann?” he asked hur-
riedly.

“TJ regret to state that she is dying,” said the General,
with a grave voice, as he removed his cigar from his lips,
and lifted his hat to Lothaw.

“Dying! ” said Lothaw incredulously.

“ Alas, too true!” replied the General. ‘The engage-
ments of a long lecturing season, exposure in traveling by
railway during the winter, and the imperfect nourishment
afforded by the refreshments along the road, have told on
her delicate frame. But she wants to see you before she
dies. Here is the key of my lodging. I will finish my
cigar out here.”

Lothaw hardly recognized those wasted Hellenic outlines
as he entered the dimly lighted room of the dying woman.
She was already a classic ruin, —as wrecked and yet as per-
fect as the Parthenon. He grasped her hand silently.

“Open-air speaking twice a week, and saleratus bread in
the rural districts, have brought me to this,’ she said fee-
bly; ‘but it is well. The cause progresses. The tyrant
man succumbs.”

Lothaw could only press her hand.

“Promise me one thing. Don’t — whatever you do—
become a Catholic.”
LOTHAW 187

“Why?”

“The Church does not recognize divorce. And now
embrace me. J would prefer at this supreme moment to
introduce myself to the next world through the medium of
the best society in this. Good-by. When I am dead, be
good enough to inform my husband of the fact.”,

CHAPTER IX

Lothaw spent the next six months on an Aryan island,
in an Aryan climate, and with an Aryan race.

“This is an Aryan landscape,” said his host, “and
that is a Mary Ann statue.” It was, in fact, a full-length
figure in marble of Mrs. General Camperdown.

“Tf you please, I should like to become a Pagan,” said
Lothaw, one day, after listening to an impassioned discourse
on Greek art from the lips of his host.

But that night, on consulting a well-known spiritual
medium, Lothaw received a message from the late Mrs.
General Camperdown, advising him to return to England.
Two days later he presented himself at Plusham.

“The young ladies are in the garden,” said the Duchess.
“Don’t you want to go and pick a rose?” she added with
a gracious smile, and the nearest approach to a wink that
was consistent with her patrician bearing and aquiline nose.

Lothaw went and presently returned with the blushing
Coriander upon his arm.

“Bless you, my children,” said the Duchess. Then
turning to Lothaw, she said: ‘‘You have simply fulfilled
and accepted your inevitable destiny. It was morally im-
possible for you to marry out of this family. For the
present, the’ Church of England is safe.”
THE HAUNTED MAN
BY CH-R-S D-CK-N-S.

A CHRISTMAS STORY
PART I
THE FIRST PHANTOM

Don’r tell me that it wasn’t a knocker. I had seen it
often enough, and I ought to know. So ought the three-
o’clock beer, in dirty high-lows, swinging himself over the
railing, or executing a demoniacal jig upon the doorstep ;
so ought the butcher, although butchers as a general thing
are scornful of such trifles; so ought the postman, to whom
knockers of the most extravagant description were merely
human weaknesses, that were to be pitied and used. And
so ought for the matter of that, etc., etc., etc.

But then it was such a knocker. A wild, extravagant,
and utterly incomprehensible knocker. A knocker so mys-
terious and suspicious that policeman X 37, first coming
upon it, felt inclined to take it instantly in custody, but
zompromised with his professional instincts by sharply and
sternly noting it with an eye that admitted of no nonsense,
but confidently expected to detect its secret yet. An ugly
knocker; a knocker with a hard human face, that was a
type of the harder human face within. A human face that
held between its teeth a brazen rod. So hereafter, in the
mysterious future should be held, etc., ete.

But if the knocker had a fierce human aspect in the
glare of day, you should have seen it at night, when it
THE HAUNTED MAN 189

peered out of the gathering shadows and suggested an
ambushed figure; when the light of the street lamps fell
upon it, and wrought a play of sinister expression in its
hard outlines; when it seemed to wink meaningly at a
shrouded figure who, as the night fell darkly, crept up the
steps and passed into the mysterious house; when the
swinging door disclosed a black passage into which the
figure seemed to lose itself and become a part of the mys-
terious gloom; when the night grew boisterous and the
fierce wind made furious charges at the knocker, as if to
wrench it off and carry it away in triumph. Such a night
as this.

It was a wild and pitiless wind. A wind that had com-
menced life as a gentle country zephyr, but, wandering
through manufacturing towns, had become demoralized, and,
reaching the city, had plunged into extravagant dissipation
and wild excesses. A roistering wind that indulged in
Bacchanalian shouts on the street corners, that knocked
off the hats from the heads of helpless passengers, and then
fulfilled its duties by speeding away, like all young prodi-
gals, — to sea.

He sat alone in a gloomy library listening to the wind
that roared in the chimney. Around him novels and story-
books were strewn thickly ; in his lap he held one with its
pages freshly cut, and turned the leaves wearily until his
eyes rested upon a portrait in its frontispiece. And as the
wind howled the more fiercely, and the darkness without
fell blacker, a strange and fateful likeness to that portrait
appeared above his chair and leaned upon his shoulder.
The Haunted Man gazed at the portrait and sighed. The
figure gazed at the portrait and sighed too.

“Here again?” said the Haunted Man.

‘“‘ Here again,” it repeated in a low voice,

“ Another novel ? ”

« Another novel.”
190 CONDENSED NOVELS

“The old story ?”

“The old story.”

“T see a child,” said the Haunted Man, gazing from the
pages of the book into the fire, — “‘a most unnatural child,
a model infant. It is prematurely old and philosophic. It
dies in poverty to slow music. It dies surrounded by lux-
ury to slow music. It dies with an accompaniment of
golden water and rattling carts to slow music. Previous to
its decease it makes a will; it repeats the Lord’s Prayer, it
kisses the ‘ boofer lady.’ That child” —

“Ts mine,” said the phantom.

“T see a good woman, undersized. I see several charm-
ing women, but they are all undersized. They are more or
less imbecile and idiotic, but always fascinating and under-
sized. They wear coquettish caps and aprons. I observe
that feminine virtue is invariably below the medium height,
and that it is always simple and infantine. These wo-
men ” —

“ Ave mine.”

“‘T see a haughty, proud, and wicked lady. She is tall
and queenly. JI remark that all proud and wicked women
are tall and queenly. That woman’? —

“Ts mine,” said the phantom, wringing his hands.

“T see several things continually impending. I observe
that whenever an accident, a murder, or death is about to
happen, there is something in the furniture, in the locality,
in the atmosphere, that foreshadows and suggests it years
in advance. I cannot say that in real life I have noticed
it, — the perception of this surprising fact belongs’? —

“To me!” said the phantom. The Haunted Man con-
tinued, in a despairing tone, —

“T see the influence of this in the magazines and daily
papers ; I see weak imitators rise up and enfeeble the world
with senseless formula. I am getting tired of it. It won’t
do, Charles! it won’t do!” and the Haunted Man buried
THE HAUNTED MAN 191

his head in his hands and groaned. The figure looked
down upon him sternly; the portrait in the frontispiece
frowned as he gazed.

“ Wretched man,” said the phantom, ‘and how have
these things affected you? ”

“Once I laughed and cried, but then I was younger.
Now, I would forget them if I could.”

“Fave then your wish. And take this with you, man
whom I renounce. From this day henceforth you shall live
with those whom I displace. Without forgetting me, ’t will
be your lot to walk through life as if we had not met. But
first you shall survey these scenes that henceforth must be
yours. At one to-night, prepare to meet the phantom I
have raised. Farewell!”

The sound of its voice seemed to fade away with the
dying wind, and the Haunted Man was alone. But the
firelight flickered gayly, and the light danced on the walls,
making grotesque figures of the furniture.

“Ha, ha!” said the Haunted Man, rubbing his hands
gleefully ; ‘now for a whiskey punch and a cigar.”

PART II
THE SECOND PHANTOM

One! The stroke of the far-off bell had hardly died
before the front door closed with a reverberating clang.
Steps were heard along the passage; the library door swung
open of itself, and the Knocker— yes, the Knocker —
slowly strode into the room. The Haunted Man rubbed
his eyes, —no! there could be no mistake about it, — it
was the Knocker’s face, mounted on a misty, almost imper-
ceptible body. The brazen rod was transferred from its
mouth to its right hand, where it was held like a ghostly
truncheon.
192 CONDENSED NOVELS

“It’s a cold evening,” said the Haunted Man.

“Tt is,” said the Goblin, in a hard, metallic voice.

“Tt must be pretty cold out there,” said the Haunted
Man, with vague politeness. “ Do you ever — will you —
take some hot water and brandy ? ”

“ No,” said the Goblin.

“ Perhaps you’d like it cold, by way of change?” con,
tinued the Haunted Man, correcting himself, as he remem-
bered the peculiar temperature with which the Goblin was
probably familiar.

“Time flies,” said the Goblin coldly. ‘‘ We have no
leisure for idle talk, Come!” He moved his ghostly
truncheon toward the window, and laid his hand upon the
other’s arm. At his touch the body of the Haunted Man
seemed to become as thin and incorporeal as that of the
Goblin himself, and together they glided out of the window
into the black and blowy night. n

In the rapidity of their flight the senses of the Haunted
Man seemed to leave him. At length they stopped sud-
denly.

“What do you see ?”’ asked the Goblin.

“T see a battlemented medieval castle. Gallant men in
mail ride over the drawbridge, and kiss their gauntleted
fingers to fair ladies, who wave their lily hands in return.
I see fight and fray and tournament. I hear roaring heralds
bawling the charms of delicate women, and shamelessly
proclaiming their lovers. Stay. I see a Jewess about to
leap from a battlement, I see knightly deeds, violence,
rapine, and a good deal of blood. I’ve seen pretty much
the same at Astley’s.”’

“ Look again.”

“T see purple moors, glens, masculine women, bare-legged
men, priggish book-worms, more violence, physical excel-
lence, and blood. Always blood, —and the superiority of
physical attainments.”
THE HAUNTED MAN 193

« And how do you feel now ? ” said the Goblin.

The Haunted Man shrugged his shoulders. ‘ None the
better for being carried back and asked to sympathize with
a barbarous age.”

The Goblin smiled and clutched his arm ; they again sped
rapidly away through the black night, and again halted.

“ What do you see ?” said the Goblin.

““T see a barrack-room, with a mess-table, and a group
of intoxicated Celtic officers telling funny stories, and giving
challenges to duel. I see a young Irish gentleman capable
of performing prodigies of valor. I learn incidentally that
the acme of all heroism is the cornetcy of a dragoon regi-
ment. J hear a good deal of French! No, thank you,’
said the Haunted Man hurriedly, as he stayed the waving
hand of the Goblin; “I would rather not go to the Penin-
sula, and don’t care to have a private interview with
Napoleon.”

Again the Goblin flew away with the unfortunate man,
and from a strange roaring below them he judged they were
above the ocean. A ship hove in sight, and the Goblin
stayed its flight. ‘‘ Look,” he said, squeezing his compan-
ion’s arm.

The Haunted Man yawned. ‘ Don’t you think, Charles,
you’re rather running this thing into the ground? Of
course it’s very moral and instructive, and all that. But
ain’t there a little too much pantomime akout it? Come
now!”

“Look!” repeated the Goblin, pinching his arm male-
volently. The Haunted Man groaned.

“Oh, of course, I see her Majesty’s ship Arethusa. 0’
course I am familiar with her stern First Lieutenant, her
eccentric Captain, her one fascinating and several mischiev:
ous midshipmen. Of course I know it’s a splendid thing
to see all this, and not to be seasick. Oh, there, the young
gentlemen are going to play a trick on the purser. For
194 CONDENSED NOVELS

God’s sake, let us go,’”? and the unhappy man absolutely
dragged the Goblin away with him.

When they next halted, it was at the edge of a broad
and boundless prairie, in the middle of an oak opening.

“T see,” said the Haunted Man, without waiting for his
cue, but mechanically, and as if he were repeating a lesson
which the Goblin had taught him, — “I see the Noble
Savage. He is very fine to look at! But I observe, under
his war-paint, feathers, and picturesque blanket, dirt, disease,
and an unsymmetrical contour. I observe beneath his
inflated rhetoric deceit and hypocrisy ; beneath his physical.
hardihood cruelty, malice, and revenge. The Noble
Savage isahumbug. I remarked the same to Mr. Catlin.”

“Come,” said the phantom.

The Haunted Man sighed, and took out his watch.
“Could n’t we do the rest of this another time ? ”

““ My hour is almost spent, irreverent being, but there is
yet a chance for your reformation. Come!”

Again they sped through the night, and again halted.
The sound of delicious but melancholy music fell upon
their ears. ’

“T see,” said the Haunted Man, with something of
interest in his manner, — “I see an old moss-covered manse
beside a sluggish, flowing river. I see weird shapes:
witches, Puritans, clergymen, little children, judges, mes-
merized maidens, moving to the sound of melody that
thrills me with its sweetness and purity. But, although
earried along its calm and evenly flowing current, the
shapes are strange and frightful: an eating lichen gnaws at
the heart of each. Not only the clergymen, but witch,
maiden, judge, and Puritan, all wear Scarlet Letters of
some kind burned upon their hearts. I am fascinated and
thrilled, but I feel a morbid sensitiveness creeping over me.
I—I beg your pardon.” The Goblin was yawning fright-
fully. “ Well, perhaps we had better go.”
THE HAUNTED MAN 195

“One more, and the last,” said the Goblin.

They were moving home. Streaks of red were beginning
to appear in the eastern sky. Along the banks of the
blackly flowing river by moorland and stagnant fens, by
low houses, clustering close to the water’s edge, like strange
mollusks crawled upon the beach to dry; by misty black
barges, the more misty and indistinct seen through its
mysterious veil, the river fog was slowly rising. So rolled
away and rose from the heart of the Haunted Man, etc.,
etc.

They stopped before a quaint mansion of red brick. The
Goblin waved his hand without speaking.

“T see,” said the Haunted Man, ‘‘a gay drawing-room.
I see my old friends of the club, of the college, of society,
even as they lived and moved. I see the gallant and
unselfish men whom I have loved, and the snobs whom I
have hated. I see strangely mingling with them, and now
and then blending with their forms, our old friends Dick
Steele, Addison, and Congreve. I observe, though, that
these gentlemen have a habit of getting too much in the
way. The royal standard of Queen Anne, not in itself a
beautiful ornament, is rather too prominent in the picture.
The long galleries of black oak, the formal furniture, the
old portraits, are picturesque, but depressing. The house
is damp. I enjoy myself better here on the lawn, where
they are getting up a Vanity Fair. See, the bell rings, the
curtain is rising, the puppets are brought out for a new
play. Let me see.”

The Haunted Man was pressing forward in his eagerness,
but the hand of the Goblin stayed him, and pointing to his
feet he saw, between him and the rising curtain, a new
made grave. And bending above the grave in passionate
grief, the Haunted Man beheld the phantom of the previous
night.
196 CONDENSED NOVELS

The Haunted Man started, and—woke. The bright
sunshine streamed into the room. The air was sparkling
with frost. He ran joyously to the window and opened it.
A small boy saluted him with ‘Merry Christmas.” The
Haunted Man instantly gave him a Bank of England note.
“How much like Tiny Tim, Tom, and Bobby that boy
looked, — bless my soul, what a genius this Dickens has!”

A knock at the door, and Boots entered.

“Consider your salary doubled instantly. Have you
read ‘David Copperfield’ ? ”

“ Yezzur.”

“ Your salary is quadrupled. What do you think of the
‘Old Curiosity Shop’ ?”

The man instantly burst into a torrent of tears, and then
into a roar of laughter.

“Enough! Here are five thousand pounds. Open a
porter-house, and call it ‘Our Mutual Friend.’ Huzza!
I feel so happy!” And the Haunted Man danced about
the room.

And so, bathed in the light of that blessed sun, and yet
glowing with the warmth of a good action, the Haunted
Man, haunted no longer, save by those shapes which make
the dreams of children beautiful, reseated himself in his
chair, and finished “ Our Mutual Friend.”
TERENCE DENVILLE
BY CH-L-S L-V-R
CHAPTER I
MY HOME

Tue little village of Pilwiddle is one of the smallest
and obscurest hamlets on the western coast of Ireland. On
a lofty crag, overlooking the hoarse Atlantic, stands ‘‘ Den-
ville’s Shot Tower,” a corruption by the peasantry of ‘‘ D’En-
ville’s Chateau,”’ so called from my great-grandfather, Phelim
St. Remy d’Enville, who assumed the name and title of a
French heiress with whom he ran away. To this fact my
familiar knowledge and excellent pronunciation of the
French language may be attributed, as well as many of the
events which covered my after life.

The Denvilles were always passionately fond of field
sports. At the age of four, I was already the boldest rider
and the best shot in the country. When only eight, I won
the St. Remy Cup at the Pilwiddle races, —riding my
favorite blood-mare Hellfire. As I approached the stand
amidst the plaudits of the assembled multitude, and cries
of, “‘Thrue for ye, Mashter Terence,” and “oh, but it’s a
Dinville!” there was a slight stir among the gentry, who
surrounded the Lord Lieutenant and other titled person-
ages whom the race had attracted thither. ‘“ How young
he is, —a mere child, and yet how noble-looking,” said a
sweet low voice, which thrilled my soul.

I looked up and met the full liquid orbs of the Hon.

 
198 CONDENSED NOVELS

Blanche Fitzroy Sackville, youngest daughter of the Lord
Lieutenant. She blushed deeply. I turned pale and almost
fainted. But the cold, sneering tones of a masculine voic2
sent the blood back again into my youthful cheek.

“ Very likely the ragged scion of one of these banditti
Trish gentry, who has taken naturally to ‘the road.’ He
should be at school — though I warrant me his knowledge
of Terence will not extend beyond his own name,” said
Lord Henry Somerset, aid-de-camp to the Lord Lieutenant.

A moment and I was perfectly calm, though cold as ice.
Dismounting, and stepping to the side of the speaker, I said
in a low firm voice : —

“Had your lordship read Terence more carefully, you
would have learned that banditti are sometimes proficient
in other arts beside horsemanship,” and I touched his
holster significantly with my hand. I had not read Ter-
ence myself, but with the skillful audacity of my race I
calculated that a vague allusion, coupled with a threat,
would embarrass him. It did.

“ Ah — what mean you ?” he said, white with rage.

“Enough, we are observed,” I replied; “ Father Tom
will wait on you this evening; and to-morrow morning, my
lord, in the glen below Pilwiddle, we will meet again.”

“ Father Tom — glen!” ejaculated the Englishman, with
genuine surprise. ‘‘ What? do priests carry challenges and
act as seconds in your infernal country ?”

“Yes,” I answered scornfully ; “‘ why should they not ?
Their services are more often necessary than those of a sur-
geon,” I added significantly, turning away.

The party slowly rode off, with the exception of the
Hon. Blanche Sackville, who lingered for a moment be-
hind. In an instant I was at her side. Bending her
blushing face over the neck of her white filly, she said
hurriedly : —

“Words have passed between Lord Somerset and your-
TERENCE DENVILLE 199

self. You are about to fight. Don’t deny it— but hear
me. You will meet him —I know your skill of weapons.
He will be at your mercy. I entreat you to spare his
life !”

I hesitated. “Never!” I cried passionately ; “he has
insulted a Denville!”

“ Terence,” she whispered, “Terence — for my sake?”

The blood rushed to my cheeks, and her eyes sought the
ground in bashful confusion.

“You love him then?” I cried bitterly.

“No, no,’ she said agitatedly, — “no, you do me wrong.
I—I—cannot explain myself. My father!—the Lady
Dowager Sackville — the estate of Sackville — the borough
—my uncle, Fitzroy Somerset. Ah! what am I saying?
Forgive me. Oh, Terence,” she said, as her beautiful head
sank on my shoulder, “ you know not what I suffer!”

I seized her hand and covered it with passionate kisses.
But the high-bred English girl, recovering something of her
former hauteur, said hastily, ‘Leave me, leave me, but
promise !”

“JT promise,” I replied enthusiastically ; ‘I wil spare
his life!”

“Thanks, Terence, — thanks!” and disengaging her
hand from my lips she rode rapidly away.

The next morning, the Hon. Captain Henry Somerset
and myself exchanged nineteen shots in the glen, and at
each fire I shot away a button from his uniform. As my
last bullet shot off the last’ button from his sleeve, I re-
marked quietly, “‘ You seem now, my lord, to be almost as
ragged as the gentry you sneered at,” and rode haughtily
away.
200 CONDENSED NOVELS

CHAPTER II
THE FIGHTING FIFTY-SIXTH

When I was nineteen years old my father sold the
Chateau d’ Enville, and purchased my commission in the
“ Fifty-sixth ’ with the proceeds. “I say, Denville,”
said young McSpadden, a boy-faced ensign, who had just
joined, “ you’ll represent the estate in the Army, if you
won’t in the House.” Poor fellow, he paid for his mean-
ingless joke with his life, for I shot him through the heart
the next morning. ‘ You’re a good fellow, Denville,’ said
the poor boy faintly, as I knelt beside him; “ good-by !”
For the first time since my grandfather’s death I wept. I
could not help thinking that I would have been a better
man if Blanche — But why proceed ? Was she not now
in Florence — the belle of the English embassy ?

But Napoleon had returned from Elba. Europe was in
a blaze of excitement. The Allies were preparing to resist
the Man of Destiny. We were ordered from Gibraltar
home, and were soon again en route for Brussels. I did
not regret that I was to be placed in active service. I was
ambitious, and longed for an opportunity to distinguish my-
self. My garrison life in Gibraltar had been monotonous
and dull. I had killed five men in duel, and had an affair
with the colonel of my regiment, who handsomely apolo-
gized before the matter assumed a serious aspect. I had
been twice in love. Yet these were but boyish freaks and
follies. I wished to be a man.

The time soon came, — the morning of Waterloo. But
why describe that momentous battle, on which the fate of
the entire world was hanging ? Twice were the Fifty-sixth
surrounded by French cuirassiers, and twice did we mow
them down by our fire. I had seven horses shot under me,
TERENCE DENVILLE 201

and was mounting the eighth, when an orderly rode up
hastily, touched his cap, and, handing me a dispatch, gal-
loped rapidly away.

I opened it hurriedly and read : —

“Let PICTON ADVANCE IMMEDIATELY ON THF RIGHT.”

I saw it all at a glance. J had been mistaken for a gen-
eral officer. But what was to be done? Pict-n’s divi-
sion was two miles away, only accessible through a heavy
cross-fire of artillery and musketry. But my mird was
made up.

In an instant I was engaged with an entire squadron of
cavalry, who endeavored to surround me. Cutting my
way through them, I advanced boldly upon a battery and
sabred the gunners before they could bring their pieces to
bear. Looking around, I saw that I had in fact penetrated
the French centre. Before I was well aware of the local-
ity, I was hailed by a sharp voice in French, —

“‘Come here, sir! ”

I obeyed, and advanced to the side of a little man ina
cocked hat.

“ Has Grouchy come ? ”

“Not yet, sire,’ I replied, —for it was the Emperor.

“Ha!” he said suddenly, bending his piercing eyes on
my uniform; “a prisoner ? ”

‘No, sire,” I said proudly.

‘A spy ?”

I placed my hand upon my sword, but a gesture from
the Emperor bade me forbear.

“You are a brave man,” he said.

I took my snuff-box from my pocket, and, taking a
pinch, replied by handing it, with a bow, to the Emperor.

His quick eye caught the cipher on the lid.

“What! aD’Enville? Ha! this accounts for the pur-
ity of your accent. Any relation to Roderick d’Enville ? ”

“ My father, sire.’
202 CONDENSED NOVELS

“He was my schoolfellow at the Ecole Polytechnique.
Embrace me!’’? And the Emperor fell upon my neck in
the presence of his entire staff. Then, recovering himself,
he gently placed in my hand his own magnificent snuff-box,
in exchange for mine, and hanging upon my breast the
cross of the Legion of Honor which he took from his own,
he bade one of his marshals conduct me back to my regi-
ment.

I was so intoxicated with the honor of which I had been
the recipient, that on reaching our lines I uttered a shout
of joy and put spurs to my horse. The intelligent animal
seemed to sympathize with my feelings, and fairly flew
over the ground. On a rising eminence a few yards before
me stood a gray-haired officer, surrounded by his staff. I
don’t know what possessed me, but putting spurs to my
horse, I rode at him boldly, and with one bound cleared
him, horse and all. A shout of indignation arose from the
assembled staff. JI wheeled suddenly, with the intention
of apologizing, but my mare misunderstood me, and, again
dashing forward, once more vaulted over the head of the
officer, this time unfortunately uncovering him by a vicious
kick of her hoof. ‘Seize him!” roared the entire army.
I was seized. As the soldiers led me away, I asked the
name of the gray-haired officer. ‘ That— why, that’s
the Duke or WELLINGTON!”

I fainted.

For six months I had brain fever. During my illness
ten grapeshot were extracted from my body which I had
unconsciously received during the battle. When I opened
my eyes I met the sweet glance of a Sister of Charity.

“ Blanche !”’ I stammered feebly.

“The same,” she replied.

“You here ? ”

“Yes, dear; but hush! It’s a long story. You see,
TERENCE DENVILLE 203

dear Terence, your grandfather married my great-aunt’s
sister, and your father again married my grandmother’s
niece, who, dying without a will, was, according to the
French law ” —

“ But I do not comprenend,”’ I saia.

“Of course not,” said Blanche, with her old sweet
smile; ‘ you’ve had brain fever; so go to sleep.”

I understood, however, that Blanche loved me; and I
am now, dear reader, Sir Terence Sackville, K. C. B.. and
Lady Blanche is Lady Sackville.
MARY McGILLUP

A SOUTHERN NOVEL

AFTER BELLE BOYD

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY G. A. S-LA

INTRODUCTION

6 WILL you write me up ? ”

The scene was near Temple Bar. The speaker was the
famous rebel Mary McGillup,—a young girl of fragile:
frame, and long, lustrous black hair. I must confess that
the question was a peculiar one, and, under the circum-
stances, somewhat puzzling. It was true I had been kindly
treated by the Northerners, and, though prejudiced against
them, was to some extent under obligations to them. It
was true that I knew little or nothing of American politics,
history, or geography. But when did an English writer
ever weigh such trifles ? Turning to the speaker, I in-
quired with some caution the amount of pecuniary compen-
sation offered for the work.

“Sir!’? she said, drawing her fragile form to its full
height, “ you insult me, — you insult the South.”

“But look ye here, d’ye see —the tin — the blunt —
the ready — the stiff, you know. Don’t ye see, we can’t
do without that, you know!”

“Tt shall be contingent on the success of the story,” she
answered haughtily. ‘In the mean time take this precious
gem.” And drawing a diamond ring from her finger, she
placed it with a roll of MSS. in my hands, and vanished.
MARY McGILLUP 205

Although unable to procure more than £1 2s. 6d. from
an intelligent pawnbroker to whom I stated the circum-
stances and with whom I pledged the ring, my sympathies
with the cause of a downtrodden and chivalrous people
were at once enlisted. I could not help wondering that
in rich England, the home of the oppressed and the free, a
young and lovely woman like the fair author of those pages
should be obliged to thus pawn her jewels—her marriage
gift —for the means to procure her bread! With the ex-
ception of the English aristocracy, who much resemble
them, —I do not know of a class of people that I so much
admire as the Southern planters, May I become better
acquainted with both!

Since writing the above, the news of Mr. Lincoln’s as-
sassination has reached me. It is enough for me to say
that I am dissatisfied with the result. I do not attempt to
excuse the assassin. Yet there will be men who will
charge this act upon the chivalrous South. This leads me
to repeat a remark once before made by me in this connec-
tion, which has become justly celebrated. It is this : —

“Tt is usual, in cases of murder, to look for the criminal
among those who expect to be benefited by the crime. In
the death of Lincoln, his immediate successor in office alone
receives the benefit of his dying.”

If her Majesty Queen Victoria were assassinated, which
Heaven forbid, the one most benefited by her decease
would, of course, be his Royal Highness the Prince of
Wales, her immediate successor. It would be unnecessary
to state that suspicion would at once point to the real
culprit, which would of course be his Royal Highness.
This is logic.

But I have done. After having thus stated my opinion
in favor of the South, I would merely remark that there is
One who judgeth all things, — who weigheth the cause be-
tween brother and brother,—and awardeth the perfect
206 CONDENSED NOVELS

retribution; and whose ultimate decision I, as a British
subject, have only anticipated.

G. A. 8.

CHAPTER I

Every reader of Belle Boyd’s narrative will remember
an allusion to a “lovely, fragile-looking girl of nineteen,”
who rivaled Belle Boyd in devotion to the Southern cause,
and who, like her, earned the enviable distinction of being
a “rebel spy.”

I am that “fragile”? young creature. Although on
friendly terms with the late Miss Boyd, now Mrs. Hardinge,
candor compels me to state that nothing but our common
politics prevents me from exposing the ungenerous spirit
she has displayed in this allusion. To be dismissed in a
single paragraph after years of — But Il anticipate. To put
up with this feeble and forced acknowledgment of services
rendered would be a confession of a craven spirit, which,
thank God, though “fragile”? and only “nineteen,” I do
not possess. I may not have the “ blood of a Howard” in
my veins, as some people, whom I shall not disgrace myself
by naming, claim to have, but I have yet to learn that the
race of McGillup ever yet brooked slight or insult. I shall
not say that attention in certain quarters seems to have
turned some people’s heads; nor that it would have been
more delicate if certain folks had kept quiet on the subject
of their courtship, and the rejection of certain offers, when
it is known that their forward conduct was all that procured
them a husband! Thank Heaven, the South has some
daughters who are above such base considerations! While
nothing shall tempt me to reveal the promises to share
equally the fame of certain enterprises, which were made
by one who shall now be nameless, I have deemed it only
just to myself to put my own adventures upon record. If
MARY McGILLUP 207

they are not equal to those of another individual, it is be-
cause, though “fragile,” my education has taught me to
have some consideration for the truth. I am done.

CHAPTER II

I was born in Missouri. My dislike for the Northern
scum was inherent. This was shown, at an early age, in
the extreme distaste I exhibited for Webster’s spelling-book,
—the work of a well-known Eastern Abolitionist. I can-
not be too grateful for the consideration shown by my
chivalrous father, —a gentleman of the old school, — who
resisted to the last an attempt to introduce Mitchell’s
Astronomy and Geography into the public school of our
district. When I state that this same Mitchell became
afterward a hireling helot in the Yankee Army, every
intelligent reader will appreciate the prophetic discrimination
of this true son of the South.

I was eight years old when I struck the first blow for
Southern freedom against the Northern Tyrant. It is
hardly necessary to state that in this instance the oppressor
was a pale, overworked New England “ schoolmarm.” The
principle for which I was contending, I felt, however, to
be the same. MResenting an affront put upon me, I one
day heaved a rock? at the head of the Vandal schoolmis-
tress. I was seized and overpowered. My pen falters as
I reach the climax. English readers will not give credit
to this sickening story, — the civilized world will avert its
head, — but I, Mary McGillup, was publicly spanKED !

1 Notr, By G. A. §.—In the Southwest, any stone larger than a pea
is termed ‘‘a rock.”
208 CONDENSED NOVELS

CHAPTER III

But the chaotic vortex of civil war approached, and fell
destruction, often procrastinated, brooded in storm.! As
the English people may like to know what was really the
origin of the Rebellion, I have no hesitation in giving them
the true and only cause. Slavery had nothing to do with
it, although the violation of the Declaration of Indepen-
dence, in the disregard by the North of the Fugitive Slave
Law,” might have provoked a less fiery people than the
Southrons. At the inception of the struggle a large amount
of Southern indebtedness was held by the people of the
North. To force payment from the generous but insolvent
debtor — to obtain liquidation from the Southern planter ~
was really the soulless and mercenary object of the craven
Northerners. Let the common people of England look to
this. Let the improvident literary hack, the starved im-
pecunious Grub Street debtor, the newspaper frequenter
of sponging-houses, remember this in their criticisms of the
vile and slavish Yankee.

CHAPTER IV

The roasting of an Abolitionist, by a greatly infuriated
community, was my first taste of the horrors of civil war.
Heavens! Why will the North persist in this fratricidal
warfare ? The expulsion of several Union refugees, which
soon followed, now fairly plunged my beloved State into
the seething vortex.

1 I make no pretension to fine writing, but perhaps Mrs. Hardinge can
lay over that. Oh, of course! M. McG.

2 The Declaration of Independence grants to each subject ‘the pursuit
of life, liberty, and happiness.” A fugitive slave may be said to person-

ify “life, liberty, and happiness.’ Hence his pursuit is really legal.
This is logic. G. A. S.
MARY McGILLUP 209

I was sitting at the piano one afternoon, singing that
stirring refrain, so justly celebrated, but which a craven
spirit, unworthy of England, has excluded from some of
her principal restaurants, and was dwelling with some en-
thusiasm on the following line : —

“Fuzza! she spurns the Northern scum!”’

when a fragment of that scum, clothed in that detestable
blue uniform which is the symbol of oppression, entered
the apartment.

“‘T have the honor of addressing the celebrated rebel
spy, Miss McGillup ?” said the Vandal officer.

In a moment I was perfectly calm. With the exception
of slightly expectorating twice in the face of the minion,
I did not betray my agitation. Haughtily, yet firmly, I
replied, —

“ce I am.”’

“You looked as if you might be,” the brute replied, as
he turned on his heel to leave the apartment.

In an instant I threw myself before him. ‘“ You shall
not leave here thus,” I shrieked, grappling him with an
energy which no one, seeing my frail figure, would have.
believed. ‘I know the reputation of your hireling crew.
I read your dreadful purpose in your eye. ‘Tell me not
that your designs are not sinister. You came here to
insult me,—to kiss me, perhaps. You shan’t, — yor
naughty man. Go away!”

The blush of conscious degradation rose to the cheek of
the Lincoln hireling as he turned his face away from mine.

In an instant I drew my pistol from my belt, which, in
anticipation of some such outrage, I always carried, and
shot him,
210 CONDENSED NOVELS

CHAPTER V

“ Thy forte was less to act than speak,
Maryland !
Thy politics were changed each week,
Maryland !
With Northern Vandals thou wast meek,
With sympathizers thou wouldst shriek,
I know thee — oh, ’t was like thy cheek !
Maryland! my Maryland !”

After committing the act described in the preceding
chapter, which every English reader will pardon, I went
apstairs, put on a clean pair of stockings, and, placing a
rose in my lustrous black hair, proceeded at once to the
camp of Generals Price and Mosby to put them in posses-
sion of information which would lead to the destruction of
a portion of the Federal Army. During a great part of my
flight I was exposed to a running fire from the Federal pick-
ets of such coarse expressions as, ‘Go it, Sally Reb,’
“Dust it, my Confederate Beauty,’ but I succeeded in
reaching the glorious Southern camp uninjured.

In a week afterwards I was arrested, by a lettre de
cachet of Mr. Stanton, and placed in the Bastile. British
readers of my story will express surprise at these terms, but
I assure them that not only these articles but tumbrils,
guillotines, and conciergeries were in active use among the
Federals. If substantiation be required, I refer to the
Charleston ‘‘ Mercury,” the only reliable organ, next to the
New York “ Daily News,” published in the country. At
the Bastile I made the acquaintance of the accomplished
vnd elegant author of “ Guy Livingstone,” } to whom I pre-
vented a curiously carved thigh-bone of a Union officer, and

1 The recent conduct of Mr. Livingstone renders him unworthy of my
notice. His disgusting praise of Belle Boyd, and complete ignoring of my
clarms, show the artfulness of some females and puppyism of some men.

M. McG.
MARY McGILLUP 211

from whom I received the following beautiful acknowledg-
ment: —

DemoisELLE: — Should I ever win hame to my ain
countrie, I make mine avow to enshrine in my reliquaire
this elegant bijouterie and offering of La belle Rebelle.
Nay, methinks this fraction of man’s anatomy were sone
compensation for the rib lost by the “ grand old gardener,”

Adam.

CHAPTER VI

Released at last from durance vile, and placed on board
of an Erie canal-boat, on my way to Canada, I for a mo-
ment breathed the sweets of liberty. Perhaps the interval
gave me opportunity to indulge in certain reveries which I
had hitherto sternly dismissed. Henry Breckinridge Fo-
lair, a consistent Copperhead, captain of the canal-boat,
again and again pressed that suit I had so often rejected.

It was a lovely moonlight night. We sat on the deck
of the gliding craft. The moonbeam and the lash of the
driver fell softly on the danks of the off horse, and only
the surging of the tow-rope broke the silence. Folair’s
arm clasped my waist. I suffered it to remain. Placing
in my lap a small but not ungrateful roll of checkerberry
lozenges, he took the occasion to repeat softly in my ear
the words of a motto he had just unwrapped — with its
graceful covering of the tissue paper— from a sugar
almond. The heart of the wicked little rebel, Mary Mc-
Gillup, was won!

The story of Mary MeGillup is done. I might have
added the journal of my husband, Henry Breckinridge Fo-
lair, but as it refers chiefly to his freights and a schedule
of his passengers, I have been obliged, reluctantly, to sup-
press it.
212 CONDENSED NOVELS

It is due to my friends to say that I have been requested
not to write this book. Expressions have reached my ears,
the reverse of complimentary. I have been told that its
publication will probably insure my banishment for life,
Be it so. If the cause for which I labored have been sub-
served, I am content,
THE HOODLUM BAND

OR

THE BOY CHIEF, THE INFANT POLITICIAN, AND THE PIRATE
PRODIGY

CHAPTER I

Ir was a quiet New England village. Nowhere in the
valley of the Connecticut the autumn sun shone upon a
more peaceful, pastoral, manufacturing community. The
wooden nutmegs were slowly ripening on the trees, and the
white-pine hams for Western consumption were gradually
rounding into form under the deft manipulation of the
hardy American artisan. The honest Connecticut farmer
was quietly gathering from his threshing-floor the shoe-
pegs, which, when intermixed with a fair proportion of oats,
offered a pleasing substitute for fodder to the effete civili-
zations of Europe. An almost Sabbath-like stillness pre-
vailed. Doemville was only seven miles from Hartford,
and the surrounding landscape smiled with the conviction
of being fully insured.

Few would have thought that this peaceful village was
the home of the three young heroes whose exploits would
hereafter — But we anticipate.

Doemville Academy was the principal seat of learning in
the county. Under the grave and gentle administration of
the venerable Doctor Context, it had attained just popu-
larity. Yet the increasing infirmities of age obliged the
doctor to relinquish much of his trust to his assistants, who,
214 CONDENSED NOVELS

it is needless to say, abused his confidence. Before long
their brutal tyranny and deep-laid malevolence became
apparent. Boys were absolutely forced to study their
lessons. The sickening fact will hardly be believed, but
during school-hours they were obliged to remain in their
seats with the appearance, at least, of discipline. It is
stated by good authority that the rolling of croquet-balls
across the floor during recitation was objected to, under
the fiendish excuse of its interfering with their studies.
The breaking of windows by baseballs, and the beating of
small scholars with bats, was declared against. At last,
bloated and arrogant with success, the under-teachers threw
aside all disguise, and revealed themselves in their true
colors. A cigar was actually taken out of a day-scholar’s
mouth during prayers! A flask of whiskey was dragged
from another’s desk, and then thrown out of the window,
And finally, Profanity, Hazing, Theft, and Lying were
almost discouraged.

Could the youth of America, conscious of their power,
and a literature of their own, tamely submit to this
tyranny ? Never! We repeat it firmly. Never! We
repeat it to parents and guardians. Never! But the
fiendish tutors, chuckling in their glee, little knew what
was passing through the cold, haughty intellect of Charles
Francis Adams Golightly, aged ten; what curled the lip of
Benjamin Franklin Jenkins, aged seven ; or what shone in
the bold, blue eyes of Bromley Chitterlings, aged six and
a half, as they sat in the corner of the playground at recess.
Their only other companion and confidant was the negro
porter and janitor of the school, known as “ Pirate Jim.”

Fitly, indeed, was he named, as the secrets of his early
wild career — confessed freely to his noble young friends —
plainly showed. A slaver at the age of seventeen, the
ringleader of a mutiny on the African coast at the age of
twenty, a privateersman during the last war with England,
THE HOODLUM BAND 215

the commander of a fire-ship and its sole survivor at twenty-
five, with a wild, intermediate career of unmixed piracy
until the Rebellion called him to civil service again as.
blockade runner, and peace and a desire for rural repose
led him to seek the janitorship of the Doemville Academy,
where no questions were asked and references not ex-
changed — he was, indeed, a fit mentor for our daring youth,
Although a man whose days had exceeded the usual space
allotted to humanity, the various episodes of his career foot-
ing his age up to nearly one hundred and fifty-nine years,
he scarcely looked it, and was still hale and vigorous.

“ Yes,”’ continued Pirate Jim critically ; “TI don’t think
he was any bigeer nor you, Master Chitterlings, if as big,
when he stood on the fork’stle of my ship and shot the
captain o’ that East Injyman dead. We used to call hits
little Weevils, he was so young-like. But, bless your
hearts, boys! he wa’n’t anything to Little Sammy Barlow.
ez once crep’ up inter the captain’s stateroom on a Rooshir.:
frigate, stabbed him to the heart with a jack-knife, then put
on the captain’s uniform and his cocked hat, took commana
of the ship, and fout her hisself.”’

“Was n’t the captain’s clothes big for him?” asked B.
Franklin Jenkins anxiously.

The janitor eyed young Jenkins with pained dignity.

“ Did n’t I say the Rooshin captain was a small, a very
small, man? Rooshins is small, likewise Greeks.”

A noble enthusiasm beamed in the faces of the youthful
heroes.

“Was Barlow as large as me?” asked C. F. Adams
Golightly, lifting his curls from his Jove-like brow.

“Yes; but, then, he hed hed, so to speak, experiences.
It was allowed that he had pizened his schoolmaster afore
he went to sea. But it’s dry talking, boys.”

Golightly drew a flask from his jacket and handed it to
the janitor. It was his father’s best brandy. The heart of
the honest old seaman was touched.
216 CONDENSED NOVELS

‘Bless ye, my own pirate boy!” he said in a voice
suffocating with emotion.

“I’ve got some tobacco,” said the youthful Jenkins,
“ut it’s fine cut; I use only that now.”

“ T kin buy some plug at the corner grocery,” said Pirate
Jim, ‘only I left my portmoney at home.”

“Take this watch,” said young Golightly ; “’tis my
father’s. Since he became a tyrant and usurper, and forced
me to join a corsair’s band, I’ve begun by dividing the
property.”

“This is idle trifling,” said young Chitterlings wildly.
“Every moment is precious. Is this an hour to give to
wine and wassail? Ha, we want action —action! We
must strike the blow for freedom to-night — ay, this very
night. The scow is already anchored in the mill-dam,
freighted with provisions for a three months’ voyage. I
have a black flag in my pocket. Why, then, this cowardly
delay ?”

The two elder youths turned with a slight feeling of awe
and shame to gaze on the glowing cheeks and high, haughty
crest of their youngest comrade — the bright, the beautiful
Bromley Chitterlings. Alas! that very moment of forget-
fulness and mutual admiration was fraught with danger.
A thin, dyspeptic, half-starved tutor approached.

“Jt is time to resume your studies, young gentlemen,”
he said, with fiendish politeness.

They were his last words on earth.

“ Down, Tyrant!’ screamed Chitterlings.

“Sic him—I mean, sic semper tyrannis!’’ said the
classical Golightly.

A heavy blow on the head from a baseball bat, and the
rapid projection of a baseball against his empty stomach,
brought the tutor a limp and lifeless mass to the ground.
Golightly shuddered. Let not my young readers blame
him too rashly. It was his first homicide.
THE HOODLUM BAND 217

“Search his pockets,” said the practical Jenkins.

They did so, and found nothing but a Harvard Triennial
Catalogue.

“ Let us fly,’”’ said Jenkins.

“Forward to the boats!” cried the enthusiastic Chitter-
lings.

But C. F. Adams Golightly stood gazing thoughtfully at
the prostrate tutor.

“ This,”’ he said calmly, ‘is the result of a too free gov-
ernment and the common-school system. What the country
needs is reform. I cannot go with you, boys.”

“ Traitor!” screamed the others.

C. F. A. Golightly smiled sadly.

“You know me not. I shall not become a pirate — but
a Congressman ! ””

Jenkins and Chitterlings turned pale.

“T have already organized two caucuses in a baseball
club, and bribed the delegates of another. Nay, turn not
away. Let us be friends, pursuing through various ways
one common end. Farewell!’’? They shook hands.

‘‘ But where is Pirate Jim?” asked Jenkins.

“He left us but for a moment to ratse money on the
watch to purchase armament for the scow. Farewell!”

And so the gallant, youthful spirits parted, bright with
the sunrise of hope.

That night a conflagration raged in Doemville. The
Doemville Academy, mysteriously fired, first’ fell a victim
to the devouring element. ‘The candy-shop and cigar-store,
both holding heavy liabilities against the academy, quickly
followed. By the lurid gleams of the flames, a long, low,
sloop-rigged scow, with every mast gone except one, slowly
worked her way out of the mill-dam towards the Sound.
The next day three boys were missing —C. F. Adam.
Golightly, B. F. Jenkins, and Bromley Chitterlings. Haid
iney perished in the flames? Who shall say? Enough
218 CONDENSED NOVELS

that never more under these names did they agein appear in
the homes of their ancestors.

Happy, indeed, would it have been for Doemville lad
the mystery ended here. But a darker interest and scandal
rested upon the peaceful village. During that awful night
the boarding-school of Madame Brimborion was visited
stealthily, and two of the fairest heiresses of Connecticut —
daughters of the president of a savings bank and insurance
director —were the next morning found to have eloped.
With them also disappeared the entire contents of the
savings bank, and on the following day the Flamingo Fire
Insurance Company failed.

CHAPTER II

Let my young readers now sail with me to warmer and
more hospitable climes. Off the coast of Patagonia a long,
low, black schooner proudly rides the seas, that break softly:
upon the vine-clad shores of that luxuriant land. Who is
this that, wrapped in Persian rugs, and dressed in the most:
expensive manner, calmly reclines on the quarter-deck of
the schooner, toying lightly ever and anon with the luscious
fruits of the vicinity, held in baskets of solid gold by Nubian’
slaves ? or at intervals, with daring grace, guides an ebony
velocipede over the polished black walnut decks, and in and
out the intricacies of the rigging ? Who is it? well may
be asked. What name is it that blanches with terror the
cheeks of the Patagonian navy? Who but the Pirate
Prodigy — the relentless Boy Scourer of Patagonian seas ?
Voyagers slowly drifting by the Silurian beach, coasters
along the Devonian shore, still shudder at the name of
Bromley Chitterlings — the Boy Avenger, late of Hartford,
Connecticut.

It has been often asked by the idly curious, Why
Avenger, and of what? Let us not seek to disclose the
THE HOODLUM BAND 219

awful secret hidden under that youthful jacket. Enough
that there may have been that of bitterness in his past life
that they

“Whose soul would sicken o’er the heaving wave, ”

or “whose soul would heave above the sickening wave,”
did not understand. Only one knew him, perhaps too well
—a queen of the Amazons taken prisoner off Terra del
Fuego a week previous. She loved the Boy Avenger.
But in vain; his youthful heart seemed obdurate.

“ Hear me,” at last he said, when she had for the seventh
time wildly proffered her hand and her kingdom in mar-
riage, “and know once and forever why I must decline your
flattering proposal. JI love another.”

With a wild, despairing cry she leaped into the sea, but
was instantly rescued by the Pirate Prodigy. Yet, even in
that. supreme moment, such was his coolness, that on his
way to the surface he captured a mermaid, and placing her
in charge of his steward, with directions to give her a state-
room, with hot and cold water, calmly resumed his place
by the Amazon’s side. When the cabin door closed on his
faithful servant, bringing champagne and ices to the inter-
esting stranger, Chitterlings resumed his narrative with a
choking voice —

“ When I first fled from the roof of a tyrannical parent
I loved the beautiful and accomplished Eliza J. Sniffen.
Her father was president of the Workingmen’s Savings
Bank, and it was perfectly understood that in the course of
time the entire deposits would be his. But, like a vain fool,
I wished to anticipate the future, and in a wild moment per-
suaded Miss Sniffen to elope with me; and with the entire
cash assets of the bank, we fled together.’”? He paused,
overcome with emotion. ‘But fate decreed it otherwise.
In my feverish haste, I had forgotten to place among the
stores of my pirate craft that peculiar kind of chocolate
220 CONDENSED NOVELS

caramel to which Eliza Jane was most partial. We were
obliged to put into New Rochelle on the second day out, to
enable Miss Sniffen to procure that delicacy at the nearest
confectioner’s, and match some zephyr worsteds at the first
fancy shop. Fatal mistake. She went—she never re-
turned!” In a moment he resumed, in a choking voice,
“‘ After a week’s weary waiting, I was obliged to put to
sea again, bearing a broken heart and the broken bank of
her father. I have never seen her since.”

‘And you still love her? ” asked the Amazon queen
excitedly.

“ Ay, forever! ”

“Noble youth. Here, take the reward of thy fidelity;
for know, Bromley Chitterlings, that I am Eliza Jane.
Wearied with waiting, I embarked on a Peruvian guano
ship — it’s a long story, dear.”

“ And altogether too thin,” said the Boy Avenger, fiercely
releasing himself from her encircling arms. “ Eliza Jane’s
age, a year ago, was only thirteen, and you are forty, if a
day.”

“True,” she returned sadly, “but I have suffered much,
and time passes rapidly, and I’ve grown. You would
scarcely believe that this is my own hair.”

“T know not,” he replied, in gloomy abstraction.

“Forgive my deceit,” she returned. ‘If you are affi-
anced to another, let me at least be —a mother to you.”

The Pirate Prodigy started, and tears came to his eyes.
The scene was affecting in the extreme. Several of the
oldest seamen—men who had gone through scenes of
suffering with tearless eyes and unblanched cheeks — now
retired to the spirit room to conceal their emotion. A few
went into caucus in the forecastle, and returned with the
request that the Amazonian queen should hereafter be
known as the “ Queen of the Pirates’ Isle.’

“Mother!” gasped the Pirate Prodigy.
THE HOODLUM BAND 221

“My son!” screamed the Amazonian queen.

They embraced. At the same moment a loud flop was
heard on the quarter-deck. It was the forgotten mermaid,
who, emerging from her stateroom, and ascending the
companion-way at that moment, had fainted at the spec-
tacle. The Pirate Prodigy rushed to her side with a bottle
of smelling-salts.

She recovered slowly. ‘Permit me,” she said, rising
with dignity, “to leave the ship. I am unaccustomed to
such conduct.”

“ Hear me —she is my mother!”

“She certainly is old enough to be,” replied the mer-
maid. “ And to speak of that being her own hair!” she
said, as she rearranged with characteristic grace, a comb,
and a small hand-mirror, her own luxuriant tresses.

“Tf I couldn’t afford any other clothes, I might wear a
switch, too!” hissed the Amazonian queen. ‘I suppose
you don’t dye it on account of the salt water? But per.
haps you prefer green, dear ?”

“ A little salt water might improve your own complexion
love.”

“ Fishwoman!”’ screamed the Amazonian queen.

“Bloomerite !”? shrieked the mermaid.

In another instant they had seized each other.

“Mutiny! Overboard with them!” cried the Pirat
Prodigy, rising to the occasion, and casting aside all human
affection in the peril of the moment.

A plank was brought and the two women placed upon it.

“ After you, dear,” said the mermaid significantly to the
Amazonian queen; ‘you’re the oldest.”

“Thank you!” said the Amazonian queen, stepping
back. ‘“ Fish is always served first.”

Stung by the insult, with a wild scream of rage the mer-
maid grappled her in her arms and leaped into the sea.

As the waters closed over them forever, the Pirate Prod:
222 CONDENSED NOVELS

igy sprung to his feet. ‘“ Up with the black flag, and beaz
away for New London,” he shouted in trumpet-like tones.
“Ha! ha! Once more the Rover is free!”
Indeed it was too true. In that fatal moment he had
again loosed himself from the trammels of human feeling
and was once more the Boy Avenger.

CHAPTER III

Again I must ask my young readers to mount my hippo-
griff and hie with me to the almost inaccessible heights of
the Rocky Mountains, There, for years, a band of wild and
untamable savages, known as the Pigeon Feet, had resisted
the blankets and Bibles of civilization. For years the trails
leading to their camp were marked by the bones of team-
sters and broken wagons, and the trees were decked with
the dying scalp-locks of women and children. The boldest
of military leaders hesitated to attack them in their for-
tresses, and prudently left the scalping-knives, rifles, powder,
and shot provided by a paternal government for their wel-
fare lying on the ground a few miles from their encampment,
with the request that they were not to be used until the
military had safely retired. Hitherto, save an occasional
incursion into the territory of the Knock-knees, a rival
tribe, they had limited their depredations to the vicinity.

But lately a baleful change had come over them. Acting
under some evil influence, they now pushed their warfare
into the white settlements, carrying fire and destruction
with them. Again and again had the Government offered
them a free pass to Washington and the privilege of being
photographed, but under the same evil guidance they
refused. There was a singular mystery in their mode of
aggression. Schoolhouses were always burned, the school-
masters taken into captivity, and never again heard from.
THE HOODLUM BAND 223

A palace car on the Union Pacific Railway, containing an
excursion party of teachers en route to San Francisco, was
surrounded, its inmates captured, and — their vacancies in
the schooi catalogue never again filled. Even a board of
educational examiners, proceeding to Cheyenne, were taken
prisoners, and obliged to answer questions they themselves
had proposed, amidst horrible tortures. By degrees these
atrocities were traced to the malign influence of a new
chief of the tribe. As yet little was known of him but
through his baleful appellations, “ Young Man who Goes
for His Teacher,” and ‘‘ He Lifts the Hair of the School-
Marm.’? He was said to he small and exceedingly youth-
ful in appearance. Indeed, his earlier appellative, ‘“‘ He
Wipes His Nose on His Sleeve,” was said to have been
given to him to indicate his still boy-like habits.

It was night in the encampment and among the lodges
of the Pigeon Toes. Dusky maidens flitted in and out
among the campfires like brown moths, cooking the tooth-
some buffalo-hump, frying the fragrant bear’s-meat, and
stewing the esculent bean for the braves. For a few
favored ones sput grasshoppers were reserved as a rare
delicacy, although the proud Spartan soul of their chief
scorned all such luxuries.

He was seated alone in his wigwam, attended only by
the gentle Mushymush, fairest of the Pigeon Feet maidens.
Nowhere were the characteristics of her great tribe more
plainly shown than in the little feet that lapped over each
other in walking. A single glance at the chief was svffi-
cient to show the truth of the wild rumors respecting his
youth. He was scarcely twelve, of proud and lofty bear-
ing, and clad completely in wrappings of varions-colored
scalloped cloths, which gave him the appearance of a some-
what extra-sized penwiper. An enormous eagle’s feather,
torn from the wing of a bald eagle who once attempted to
varry him away, completed his attire. It was also the
224 CONDENSED NOVELS

memento of one of his most superhuman feats of courage.
He would undoubtedly have scalped the eagle but that
nature had anticipated him.

“ Why is the Great Chief sad?” said Mushymush softly.
‘Does his soul still yearn for the blood of the palefaced
teachers? Did not the scalping of two professors of
geology in the Yale exploring party satisfy his warrior’s
heart yesterday ? Has he forgotten that Gardener and
King are still to follow ? Shall his own Mushymush bring
him a botanist to-morrow ? Speak, for the silence of my
brother lies on my heart like the snow on the mountain, and
checks the flow of my speech.”

Still the proud Boy Chief sat silent. Suddenly he said,
“ Hiss!’? and rose to his feet. Taking a long rifle from
the ground he adjusted its sight. Exactly seven miles away
on the slope of the mountain the figure of a man was seen
walking. The Boy Chief raised the rifle to his unerring eye
and fired. The man fell.

A scout was dispatched to scalp and search the body.
He presently returned.

“Who was the paleface ? ”” eagerly asked the chief,

“ A life insurance agent.”

A dark scowl settled on the face of the chief.

“T thought it was a book peddler.”

“Why is my brother’s heart sore against the book ped-
dler ?’ asked Mushymush.

“Because,” said the Boy Chief fiercely, “I am again
without my regular dime novel—and I thought he might
have one in his pack. Hear me, Mushymush. The United
States mails no longer bring me my ‘Young America’ or
my ‘ Boys’ and Girls’ Weekly.’ I find it impossible, even
with my fastest scouts, to keep up with the rear of General
Howard, and replenish my literature from the sutler’s
wagon, Without a dime novel or a ‘ Young America,’
how am I to keep up this Injin business ?”
THE HOODLUM BAND 225

Mushymush remained in meditation a singie moment.
Then she looked up proudly.

“My brother has spoken. It is well. He shall have
his dime novel. He shall know the kind of hairpin his
sister Mushymush is.”

And she arose and gamboled lightly as the fawn out of
his presence.

In two hours she returned. In one hand she held three |
small flaxen scalps, in the other “The Boy Marauder,
complete in one volume, price ten cents.

“Three palefaced children,” she gasped, “were reading
it in the tail-end of an emigrant wagon. I crept up to them
softly. Their parents are still unaware of the accident,”
and she sank helpless at his feet.

“Noble girl!” said the Boy Chief, gazing proudly on her
prostrate form; “‘and these are the people that a military
despotism expects to subdue!”

CHAPTER IV

But the capture of several wagon-loads of commissary
whiskey, and the destruction of two tons of stationery
intended for the general commanding, which interfered with
his regular correspondence with the War Department, at
last awakened the United States military authorities to
active exertion. A quantity of troops were massed before
the Pigeon Feet encampment, and an attack was hourly
imminent.

“Shine your boots, sir?”

It was the voice of a youth in humble attire, standing
before the flap of the commanding general’s tent.

The general raised his head from his correspondence.

“ Ah,” he said, looking down on the humble boy, “I
see; I shall write that the appliances of civilization move
steadily forward with the army. Yes,” he added, ‘ you
226 CONDENSED NOVELS

may shine my military boots. You understand, however,
that to get your pay you must first’? —

“Make a requisition on the commissary-general, have
it certified to by the quartermaster, countersigned by the
post-adjutant, and submitted by you to the War Depart-
ment ”? —

‘“‘ And charged as stationery,” added the general gently.
“You are, I see, an intelligent and thoughtful boy. I
trust you neither use whiskey, tobacco, nor are ever pyro-
fane ?”

““T promised my sainted mother’? —

“Enough! Go on with your blacking; I have to lead
the attack on the Pigeon Feet at eight precisely. It is now
half past seven,” said the general, consulting a large kitchen’
clock that stood in the corner of his tent.

The little bootblack looked up— the general was absorbed:
in his correspondence. The bootblack drew a tin putty~
blower from his pocket, took unerring aim, and nailed in
a single shot the minute hand to the dial. Going on with
his blacking, yet stopping ever and anon to glance over
the general’s plan of campaign, spread on the table before
him, he was at last interrupted by the entrance of an
officer.

‘‘ Everything is ready for the attack, general. It is now
eight o’clock.”

“Impossible! It is only half past seven.”

“But my watch, and the watches of the staff’? —

“ Are regulated by my kitchen clock, that has been in
my family for years. Enough! it is only half past seven.”

The officer retired ; the bootblack had finished one boct.
Another ofticer appeared.

“Instead of attacking the enemy, general, we are attacked
ourselves. Our pickets are already driven in.”

“Military pickets should not differ from other pickets,”
said the bootblack modestly. “To stand firmly they shouid
be well driven in,”

”
THE HOODLUM BAND 227

‘‘Ha! there is something in that,” said the general
thoughtfully.‘ But who are you, who speak thus ?”

Pising to his full height, the bootblack threw off his
outer rags, and revealed the figure of the Boy Chief of the
Pigeon Feet.

“Treason!” shrieked the general. ‘Order an advance
along the whole line.”

But in vain. The next moment he fell beneath the tom-
ahawk of the Boy Chief, and within the next quarter of an
hour the United States army was dispersed. Thus ended
the battle of Bootblack Creek.

CHAPTER V

And yet the Boy Chief was not entirely happy. Indeed,
at times he seriously thought of accepting the invitation
extended by the Great Chief at Washington immediately
after the massacre of his soldiers, and once more revisiting
the haunts of civilization. His soul sickened in feverish
inactivity ; schoolmasters palled on his taste; he had intro-
duced baseball, blind hooky, marbles, and peg-top among
his Indian subjects, but only with indifferent success. The
squaws persisted in boring holes through the china alleys
and wearing them as necklaces ; his warriors stuck pipes in
their baseball bats, and made war-clubs of them. He conld
not but feel, too, that the gentle Mushymush, although
devoted to her paleface brother, was deficient in culinary
education. Her mince-pies were abominable ; her jam fav
inferior to that made by his Aunt Sally of Doemville. Only
an unexpected incident kept him equally from the extreme
of listless sybaritic indulgence or of morbid cynicism. In-
deed, at the age of twelve, he already had become disgusted
with existence. :

He had returned to his wigwam after an exhausting
buffalo Lunt, in which he had slain two hundred and sev-
228 CONDENSED NOVELS

enty-five buffaloes with his own hand, not counting the
individual buffalo on which he had leaped, so as to join the
herd, and which he afterward led into the camp a captive
and a present to the lovely Mushymush. He had scalped
two express riders, and a correspondent of the “ New York
Herald ;”’ had despoiled the Overland Mail stage of a quan-
tity of vouchers which enabled him to draw double rations
from the Government, and was reclining on a bearskin,
smoking and thinking of the vanity of human endeavor,
when a scout entered, saying that a paleface youth had
demanded access to his person.

“Ts he a commissioner ? If so, say that the red man is
rapidly passing to the happy hunting-grounds of his fathers,
and now desires only peace, blankets, and ammunition;
obtain the latter, and then scalp the commissioner.”

“But it is only a youth who asks an interview.”

“Does he look like an insurance agent? If so, say
that I have already policies in three Hartford companies,
Meanwhile prepare the stake, and see that the squaws are
ready with their implements of torture.”

The youth was admitted; he was evidently only half the
age of the Boy Chief. As he entered the wigwam, and
stood revealed to his host, they both started. In another
moment they were locked in each other’s arms.

“ Jenky, old boy!”

“ Bromley, old fel!”

B. F. Jenkins, for such was the name of the Boy Chief,
was the first to recover his calmness. Turning to his war-
uiors he said proudly, —

“Let my children retire while I speak to the agent of
sur Great Father in Washington. Hereafter no latch-keys
will be provided for the wigwams of the warriors. The
practice of late hours must be discouraged.”

“How!” said the warriors, and instantly retired.

“Whisper!?’ said Jenkins, drawing his friend aside
THE HOODLUM BAND 229

“JT am known here only as the Boy Chief of the Pigeon
Toes.”

“ And I,” said Bromley Chitterlings proudly, “am known
everywhere as the Pirate Prodigy — the Boy Avenger of
the Vatagonian coast.”

“But how came you here ? ”

“Listen! My pirate brig, the Lively Mermaid, now
lies at Meiggs’s wharf in San Francisco, disguised as a Men-
docino lumber vessel. My pirate crew accompanied me
here in a palace car from San Francisco.”

“Jt must have been expensive,” said the prudent Jen-
kins.

“Tt was, but they defrayed it by a collection from the
other passengers, you understand. The papers will be full
of it to-morrow. Do you take in the ‘New York Sun’ ?”

“No; I dislike their Indian policy. But why are you
here ?”

“Hear me, Jenk! ’T is a long anda sad story. The
lovely Eliza J. Sniffen, who fled with me from Doemville,
was seized by her parents and torn from my arms at New
Rochelle. Reduced to poverty by the breaking of the sav-
ings bank of which he was president —a failure to which
I largely contributed, and the profits of which I enjoyed —
I have since ascertained that Eliza Jane Sniffen was forced
to become a schoolmistress, departed to take charge of a
seminary in Colorado, and since then has never been heard
from.”

Why did the Boy Chief turn pale, and clutch at the
tent-pole for support ? Why, indeed ?

“ Eliza Jane Sniffen,’”’ gasped Jenkins, — “ aged fourteen,
red-haired, with a slight tendency to strabismus ? ”

“The same.”

“Heaven help me! She died by my mandate!”

“Traitor!” shrieked Chitterlings, rushing at Jenkins
with a drawn poniard.
230 CONDENSED NOVELS

But a figure interposed. The slight girlish form of
Mushymush with outstretched hands stood between the
exasperated Pirate Prodigy and the Boy Chief.

“ Forbear,” she said sternly to Chitterlings ; “ you know
not what you do.”

The two youths paused.

“Hear me,” she said rapidly. ‘When captured in a
confectioner’s shop at New Rochelle, E. J. Sniffen was
taken back to poverty. She resolved to become a school-
mistress. Hearing of an. opening in the West, she pro-
ceeded to Colorado to take exclusive charge of the pension-
nat of Mdme. Choflie, late of Paris. On the way thither
she was captured by the emissaries of the Boy Chief”? —

“Tn consummation of a fatal vow I made, never to spare
educational instructors,” interrupted Jenkins.

“But in her captivity,’ continued Mushymush, “she
managed to stain her face with poke-berry juice, and min-
gling with the Indian maidens was enabled to pass for one
of the tribe. Once undetected, she boldly ingratiated her-
self with the Boy Chief, — how honestly and devotedly he
best can tell, —for I, Mushymush, the little sister of the
Boy Chief, am Eliza Jane Sniffen.”

The Pirate Prodigy clasped her in his arms. The Boy
Chief, raising his hand, ejaculated, —

“Bless you, my children!”

“There is but one thing wanting to complete this re-
union,” said Chitterlings, after a pause, but the hurried
entrance of a scout stopped his utterance.

“ A commissioner from the Great Father in Washington.”

“Scalp him!”? shrieked the Boy Chief; “this is no time
for diplomatic trifling.”

‘We have; but he still insists upon seeing you, and has
sent in his card.”

The Boy Chief took it, and read aloud, in agonized
accents, —
THE HOODLUM BAND 231

“Charles Francis Adams Golightly, late page in United
States Senate, and acting commissioner of United States.”

In another moment, Golightly, pale, bleeding, and, as it
were, prematurely bald, but still cold and intellectual, en-
tered the wigwain. They fell upon his neck and begged
his forgiveness.

“Don’t mention it,’”’ he said quietly ; “ these things must
and will happen under our present system of government.
My story is brief. Obtaining political influence through
caucuses, I became at last page in the Senate. Through
the exertions of political friends, I was appointed clerk te
the commissioner whose functions I now represent. Know-
ing through political spies in your own camp who you were,
I acted upon the physical fears of the commissioner, who
was an ex-clergyman, and easily induced him to deputize
me to consult with you. In doing so, I have lost my scalp,
but as the hirsute signs of juvenility have worked against
my political progress, I do not regret it. Asa partially
bald young man I shall have more power. The terms that
J have to offer are simply this: you can do everything you
want, go anywhere you choose, if you will only leave this
place. I have a hundred-thousand-dollar draft on the
United States Treasury in my pocket at your immediate
disposal.”

“ But what ’s to become of me ?” asked Chitterlings.

“ Your case has already been under advisement. The
Secretary of State, who is an intelligent man, has deter-
mined to recognize you as de jure and de facto the only
loyal representative of the Patagonian Government. You
may safely proceed to Washington as its envoy extraordi-
nary. I dine with the secretary next week.”

“ And yourself, old fellow ?”

“T only wish that twenty years from now you will recog-
nize by your influence and votes the rights of C. F. A.
Golightly to the presidency.”
232 CONDENSED NOVELS

And here ends our story. Trusting that my dear young
friends may take whatever example or moral their respec-
tive parents and guardians may deem fittest from these
pages, I hope in future years to portray further the career
of those three young heroes I have already introduced in
the springtime of life to their charitable consideration,
KARLIER SKETCHES

M’LISS
AN IDYL OF RED MOUNTAIN

THERE are two forms of this tale. The earlier one is that
printed originally in The Golden Era and afterward and until
this time included in Mr. Harte’s collected writings. It is com-
prised in four chapters and occupies about thirty pages. When
the present edition was under consideration, Mr. Harte called
his publishers’ attention to the fact that the editor of the same
paper proposed to him some time later to continue it asa serial.
In order to do this, he found himself obliged to make some
changes in the earlier incidents. Accordingly he republished the
story in its first form, but with some interpolations and altera-
tions, and then proceeded with other chapters, making ten in all,
“ concluding it,” he says, “rather abruptly when I found it was
inartistically prolonged.” This was in 1863. But even thus
the story was not to be let alone. Ten years later, in 1873,
another writer took the tale up at the end of the tenth chapter,
added fifty more, and issued the whole in The Golden Era.
When the continuation had been running some time, Mr. Harte
discovered the fraud, and inserted a card in the same paper,
advising the public that he had nothing whatever to do with
this further amplification of his story. Afterward, when the
whole was published in book form, he instituted legal proceed-
ings and suppressed the sale.

The present form is Mr. Harte’s revision and extension of his
first, and is reprinted from The Golden Era with his consent.

Epiror.
234 EARLIER SKETCHES

CHAPTER I
SMITH’S POCKET

Just where the Sierra Nevada begins to subside in gen-
tie undulations, and the rivers grow less rapid and yellow,
on the side of a great red mountain stands Smith’s
Pocket. Seen from the red road at sunset, in the red light
and the red dust, its white houses look like the outcrop-
pings of quartz on the mountain side. The red stage,
topped with red-shirted passengers, is lost to view half a
dozen times in the tortuous descent, turning up unex-
pectedly in out-of-the-way places, and vanishing altogether
within a hundred yards of the town. It is probably owing
to this sudden twist in the road that the advent of a stran-
ger at Smith’s Pocket is usually attended with a peculiar
circumstance. Dismounting from the vehicle at the stage
office the too-confident traveler is apt to walk straight out
of town under the impression that it lies in quite another
direction. It is related that one of the tunnel men, two
miles from town, met one of these self-reliant passengers
with a carpetbag, umbrella, “ Harper’s Magazine,’ and other
evidences of ‘ civilization and refinement,” plodding along
over the road he had just ridden, vainly endeavoring to
find the settlement of Smith’s Pocket.

Had he been an observant traveler he might have found
some compensation for his disappointment in the weird
aspect of that vicinity. There were huge fissures on the
hillside, and displacements of the red soil, resembling more
the chaos of some primary elementary upheaval than the
work of man ; while, halfway down, a long flume straddled
its narrow body and disproportionate legs over the chasm,
like an enormous fossil of some forgotten antediluvian.
At every step smaller ditches crossed the road, hiding in
M LISS 235

their shallow depths unlovely streams that crept away to a
clandestine union with the great yellow torrent below. Here
and there the ruins of some cabin, with the chimney alone
left intact and the hearthstone open to the skies, gave such
a flat contradiction to the poetic delusion of Lares and
Penates that the heart of the traveler must have collapsed
as he gazed, and even the bar-room of the National Hotel
have afterward seemed festive, and invested with preternat-
ural comfort and domesticity.

The settlement of Smith’s Pocket owed its origin to the
finding of a “pocket” on its site by a veritable Smith.
Five thousand dollars were taken out of it in one half-hour
by Smith. Three thousand dollars were expended by
Smith and others in erecting a flume and in tunneling.
And then Smith’s Pocket was found to be only a pocket,
and subject like other pockets to depletion. Although
Smith pierced the bowels of the great red mountain, that
five thousand dollars was the first and the last return of his
labor. The mountain grew reticent of its golden secrets,
and the flume steadily ebbed away the remainder of Smith’s
fortune. Then Smith went into quartz mining. Then into
quartz milling. Then into hydraulics and ditching, and
then by easy degrees into saloon keeping. Presently it
was whispered that Smith was drinking a good deal; then
it was known that Smith was an habitual drunkard; and
then people began to think, as they are apt to, that he had
never been anything else. But the settlement of Smith’s
Pocket, like that of most discoveries, was happily not
dependent on the fortune of its pioneer, and other parties
projected tunnels and found pockets. So Smith’s Pocket
became a settlement with its two fancy stores, its two hotels,
its one express office, and its two first families. Occasion-
ally its one long straggling street was overawed hy the
assumption of the latest San Francisco fashions, imported
per express, exclusively to the first families; making out-
236 EARLIER SKETCHES

raged nature, in the ragged outline of her furrowed surface,
look still more homely, and putting personal insult on that
greater portion of the population to whom the Sabbath, with
a change of linen, brought merely the necessity of cleanliness
without the luxury of adornment. Then there was a
Methodist church, and hard by a monte bank, and a little
beyond, on the mountain side, a graveyard ; and then a little
schoolhouse.

“The master,’ as he was known to his little flock, sat
alone one night in the schoolhouse, with some open copy-
books before him, carefully making those bold and full
characters which are supposed to combine the extremes of
chirographical and moral excellence, and had got as far as
“ Riches are deceitful,’ and was elaborating the noun with
an insincerity of flourish that was quite in the spirit of his
text, when he heard a gentle tapping. The woodpeckers
had been busy about the roof, during the day, and the noise
did not disturb his work. But the opening of the door, and
the tapping continuing from the inside, caused him to look
up. He was slightly startled by the figure of a young girl,
dirty, and shabbily clad. Still her great black eyes, her
coarse uncombed lusterless black hair falling over her sun-
burned face, her red arms and feet streaked with the red
soil, were all familiar to him. It was Melissa Smith —
Smith’s motherless child.

“What can she want here?” thought the master. Every-
body knew “M’liss,”’ as she was called’, throughout the
length and height of Red Mountain. Everybody knew her
as an incorrigible girl. Her fierce, ungovernable disposition,
her mad freaks and lawless character, were in their way as
proverbial as the story of her father’s weakness, and as
philosophically accepted by the townsfolk. She wrangled
with and fought the schoolboys with keener invective and
quite as powerful arm. She followed the trails with wood-
man’s craft, and the master had met her before, miles away,
M’LISS 237

shoeless, stockingless, and bareheaded on the mountain road.
The miners’ camps along the stream supplied her with sub-
sistence during these voluntary pilgrimages, in freely offered
alms. Not but that a larger protection had been previously
extended to M’liss. The Rev. Joshua McSnagley, “stated”
teacher, had placed her in the hotel as servant, by way
of preliminary refinement, and had introduced her to his
scholars at Sunday-school. But she threw plates occasion-
ally at the landlord, and quickly retorted to the cheap
witticisms of the guests, and created in the Sabbath-school
a sensation that was so inimical to the orthodox dullness
and placidity of that institution, that, with a decent regard
for the starched frocks and unblemished morals of the
two pink-and-white-faced children of the first families, the
reverend gentleman had her ignominiously expelled. Such
were the antecedents and such the character of M’liss, as
she stood before the master. It was shown in the ragged
dress, the unkempt hair and bleeding feet, and asked his
pity. It flashed from her black fearless eyes, and commanded
his respect.

“T come here to-night,’ she said rapidly and boldly,
keeping her hard glance on his, “because I knew you was
alone. I would n’t come here when them gals was here. I
hate ’em and they hates me. That’s why. You keep
school, — don’t you? I want to be teached !”

If to the shabbiness of her apparel and uncomeliness of
her tangled hair and dirty face she had added the humility
of tears the master would have extended to her the usual
moiety of pity, and nothing more. But with the natural
though illogical instincts of his species, her boldness awak-
ened in him something of that respect which all original
natures pay unconsciously to one another in any grade.
And he gazed at her the more fixedly as she went on still
rapidly, her hand on the door-latch and her eyes on his.

“My name is M’liss — M’liss Smith! You can bet your
238 EARLIER SKETCHES

life on that. My father’s Old Smith—Old Bummer Smith
—that’s what’s the matter with him. M/’liss Smith —
and I’m comin’ to school!”

“Well?” said the master.

Accustomed to be thwarted and opposed, often wantonly
and cruelly, for no other purpose than to excite the violent
impulses of her nature, the master’s phlegm evidently took
her by surprise. She stopped. She began to twist a lock
of her hair between her fingers; and the rigid line of upper
lip, drawn over the wicked little teeth, relaxed and quivered
slightly. Then her eyes dropped, and something like a blush
struggled up to her cheek, and tried to assert itself through
the splashes of redder soil and the sunburn of years.
Suddenly she threw herself forward, calling on God to
strike her dead, and fell quite weak and helpless, with her
face on the master’s desk, crying and sobbing as if her heart
would break.

The master lifted her gently, and waited for the paroxysm'
to pass. When, with face still averted, she was repeating
between her sobs the mea culpa of childish penitence —
that “she ’d be good, she didn’t mean to,’ ete., it came to
him to ask her why she had left Sabbath-school.

Why had she left Sabbath-school? Why? Oh, yes.
What did he (McSnagley) want to tell her she was wicked
for? What did he tell her that God hated her for? If
God hated her, what did she want to go to Sabbath school
for? She didn’t want to be beholden to anybody whe
hated her.

Had she told McSnagley this ?

Yes, she had.

The master laughed. It wasa hearty laugh, and echoed
so oddly in the little schoolhouse, and seemed so inconsist
ent and discordant with the sighing of the pines without,
that he shortly corrected himself with a sigh. The sigh
was quite as sincere in its way, however, and after a mo
ment of serious silence he asked about her father.
MLISS 239

Her father. What father? Whose father ? What had
he ever done for her ? Why did the girls hate her? Come,
now! What inade the folks say, “Old Bummer Smith’s
M’liss”” when she passed ? Yes; oh, yes. She wished he
was dead — she was dead — everybody was dead; and her
sobs broke forth anew.

The master then, leaning over her, told her, as well as he
could, what you or I might have said after hearing such
unnatural theories from childish lips; only bearing in mind
perhaps better than you or I the unnatural facts of her
ragged dress, her bleeding feet, and the omnipresent shadow
of her drunken father. Then raising her to her feet, he
wrapped his shawl around her, and bidding her come early
in the morning he walked with her down the road. Then
he bade her “ good-night.””. The moon shone brightly on
the narrow path before them. He stood and watched the
bent little figure as it staggered down the road, and waited
until it had passed the little graveyard and reached the
curve of the hill, where it turned and stood for a moment,
a mere atom of suffering outlined against the far-off patient
stars. Then he went back to his work. But the lines of
the copybook thereafter faded into long parallels of never-
ending road, over which childish figures seemed to pass
sobbing and crying to the night. Then, the little school-
house seeming lonelier than before, he shut the door and
went home.

The next morning M’liss came to school. Her face had
been washed, and her coarse black hair bore evidence of
recent strugcles with the comb, in which both had evidently
suffered. The old defiant look shone occasionally in her
eyes, but her manner was tamer and more subdued. Then
began a series of little trials and self-sacrifices in which
master and pupil bore an equal part, and which increased
the confidence and sympathy between them. Although
obedient under the master’s eye, at times during recess, if
240 EARLIER SKETCHES

thwarted or stung by a fancied slight, M’liss would rage in
ungovernable fury, and many a palpitating young savage,
finding himself matched with his own weapons of torment,
would seek the master with torn jacket and scratched face,
and complaints of the dreadful M’liss. There was a serious
division among the townspeople on the subject ; some threat-
ening to withdraw their children from such evil companion-.
ship, and others as warmly upholding the course of the
master in his work of reclamation. Meanwhile, with a
steady persistence that seemed quite astonishing to him on
looking back afterward, the Master drew M’liss gradually
out of the shadow of her past life, as though it were but
her natural progress down the narrow path on which he
had set her feet the moonlight night of their first meeting.
Remembering the experience of the evangelical McSnagley,
he carefully avoided that Rock of Ages on which that un-
skillful pilot had shipwrecked her young faith. But if, in
the course of her reading, she chanced to stumble upon
those few words which have lifted such as she above the
level of the older, the wiser, and the more prudent, — if she
learned something of a faith that is symbolized by suffering,
and the old light softened in her eyes, it did not take the
shape of a lesson. A few of the plainer people had made
up a little sum by which the ragged M’liss was enabled to
assume the garments of respect and civilization, and often a
rough shake of the hand and words of commendation from
a red-shirted and burly figure, sent a glow to the cheek of
the young master and set him to thinking if it was alto-
gether deserved.

Three months had passed, from the time of their first
meeting, and the master was sitting late one evening over
the moral and sententious copies, when there came a tap at
the door, and again M’liss stood before him. She was
neatly clad and clean-faced, and there was nothing perhaps
but the long black hair and bright black eyes to remind him
M LISS 241

of his former apparition. ‘Are you busy?” she asked;
‘can you come with me ? ” and on his signifying his readi-
ness, in her old willful way she said, “Come, then, quick ! ”’

They passed out of the door together and into the dark
road. As they entered the town, the master asked hei
whither she was going. She replied, ‘to see her father.”

It was the first time he had heard her use that filial
expression, or, indeed, allude to him in any other way than
“ Old Smith ” or the “Old Man.” It was the first time in
many weeks that she had spoken of him at all. He had
been missed from the settlement for the past fortnight, and
the master had credited the rumors of the townsfolk that
Smith had “ struck something rich ”’ on the “ North Fork,”
about ten miles from the village. As they neared the set-
tlement, the master gathered from M’liss that the rumor
was untrue, and that she had seen her father that day.
As she grew reticent to further questioning, and as the
master was satisfied from her manner that she had some
definite purpose beyond her usual willfulness, he passively
resigned himself and followed her.

Through remote groggeries, restaurants, and saloons; in
gambling-hells and dance-houses, the master, preceded by
M’liss, passed and repassed. In the reeking smoke and
blasphemous outcries of noisome dens, the child, holding
the master’s hand, pursued her search with a strange famil-
larity, perfect self-possession, and implied protection of
himself, that even in his anxiety seemed ludicrous. Some
of the revelers, recognizing M’liss, called to her to sing and
dance for them, and would have forced hquor upon her but
for the master’s interference. Others mutely made way for
them. So an hour slipped by, and as yet their search was
fruitless. The master had yawned once or twice and
whistled, — two fatal signs of failing interest, — and finally
came to a full stop.

“It’s half past eleven, Melissa,” said he, consulting his
242 EARLIER SKETCHES

watch by a broad pencil of light from an open shutter, —
“half past eleven; and it strikes me that our old friends,
the woodpeckers, must have gone to bed some hours ago,
unless they are waiting up for us. I’m much obliged to
you for the evening’s entertainment, but I’m afraid that even
the pretext of looking fora parent won’t excuse further dis-
sipation. Wed better put this off till to-morrow. What
do you say, Melissa ? Why! what ails the child? What’s
that noise ? Why, a pistol ! — You’re not afraid of that ?”

Few children brought up in the primeval seclusion of
Smith’s Pocket were unfamiliar with those quick and sharp
notes which usually rendered the evening zephyrs of that
locality vocal ; certainly not M’liss, to have started when
that report rang on the clear night air. The echoes caught
it as usual, and carried it round and round Red Mountain,
and set the dogs to barking all along the streams. The
lights seemed to dance and move quickly on the outskirts
of the town for a few moments afterward, the stream sud-
denly rippled quite audibly behind them, a few stones loos-
ened themselves from the hillside and splashed into the
stream, a heavy wind seemed to suage the branches of the
funereal pines, and then the silence fell again, heavier, dead-
lier than ever.

When the last echo had died away, the master felt his
companion’s hand relax its grasp. Taking advantage of
this outward expression of tractability, he drew her gently
with him until they reached the hotel, which — in her
newer aspect of a guest whose bcard was secured by respon-
sible parties — had forgivingly opened its hospitable doors
to the vagrant child. Here the master lingered a moment
to assure her that she might count upon his assistance to-
morrow; and having satisfied his conscience by this antici-
pated duty, bade her good-night. In the darkness of the
road — going astray several times on his way home, and
narrowly escaping the yawning ditches in the trail — he had
M’LISS 243

reason to commend his foresight in dissuading M’liss from
a further search that night, and in this pleasant reflection
went to bed and slept soundly.

For some hours after a darkness thick and heavy brooded
over the settlement. The sombre pines encompassing the
village seemed to close threateningly about it as if to reclaim
the wilderness that had been wrested from them. A low
tustling as of dead leaves, and the damp breath of forest
odors filled the lonely street. Emboldened by the darkuess
other shadows slipped by, leaving strange footprints in the
moist ditches for people to point at next day, until the
moon, round and full, was lifted above the crest of the
opposite hill, and all was magically changed.

The shadows shrank away, leaving the straggling street
sleeping in a beauty it never knew by day. All that was
unlovely, harsh, and repulsive in its jagged outlines was
subdued and softened by that uncertain light. It smoothed
the rough furrows and unsightly chasms of the mountain
with an ineffable love and tenderness. It fell upon the
face of the sleeping M’liss, and left a tear glittering on her
black lashes and a smile on her lip, which would have been
rare to her at any other time; and fell also on the white
upturned face of “Old Smith,” with a pistol in his hand
and a bullet in his heart, lying dead beside his empty
pocket.

CHAPTER II
WHICH CONTAINS A DREAM OF THE JUST ARISTIDES

The opinion which MeSnagley expressed in reference
to a “change of heart,’’ as experienced by M’liss, was
more forcibly described in the gulches and tunnels. It
was thought there that M’liss had struck a “ good lead.”
And when there was a new grave added to the little inclos
244 EARLIER SKETCHES

ure, and —at the expense of the master —a little board
and inscription put above it, the “Red Mountain Banner ”
came out quite handsomely and did the correct thing for
the memory of one of “our oldest pioneers,” alluding
gracefully to that ‘bane of noble intellects,” touching
slightly on the “vicissitudes of fortune,” and otherwise
assisting our dear brother into genteel obscurity. ‘He
leaves an only child to mourn his loss,” said the “ Banner,’’
“‘who is now an exemplary scholar, thanks to the efforts of
the Rev. J. McSnagley.”” That reverend gentleman, in
fact, made a strong point of M’liss’s conversion, and, indi-
rectly attributing to her former bad conduct the suicide of
her father, made affecting allusions in Sunday-school to the
beneficial effects of the ‘silent tomb,” and in that cheer-
ful contemplation froze most of the children into speechless
horror, and caused the fair-complexioned scions of the first
families to how] dismally and refuse to be comforted.

Of the homes that were offered to M’liss when her con-
version became known, the master had preferred that of
Mrs. Morpher, a womanly and kind-hearted specimen of
Southwestern efflorescence, known in her maidenhood as
the “Per-ra-rie Rose.” By a steady system of struggle
and self-sacrifice, she had at last subjugated her naturally
careless disposition to principles of “order,” which as a
pious woman she considered, with Pope, as ‘ Heaven’s
first law.” But she could not entirely govern the orbits
of her satellites, however regular her own movements, and
her old nature asserted itself in her children. Lycurgus
dipped in the cupboard “ between meals,’’ and Aristides:
same home from school without shoes, leaving those impor-
tant articles at the threshold, for the delights of a bare-
footed walk down the ditches. Octavia and Cassandra
were “keerless” of their clothes. So that with but one
exception, however the “Prairie Rose” might have
trimmed, pruned, and trained her own natural luxuriance,
M’LISS 245

the little shoots came up defiantly wild and strageling.
That one exception was Clytemnestra Morpher, aged fifteen,
She was the realization of her mother’s most extravagant
dream. I stay my hand with difficulty at this moment,
for I long to describe this model of deportment; but the
progress of my story just at present supplants Clytemnestra
in the larger prominence it gives to another member of the
family, — the just Aristides.

The long dry summer had come. As each fierce day
seemed to burn itself out in little whiffs of pearl gray
smoke on the mountain summits, and as the upspringing
breeze scattered what might have been its red embers over
the landscape, the green wave which, in early spring, had
upheaved above Smith’s grave grew sere and dry and hard.
In those days, the master, strolling in the little churchyard
of a Sabbath afternoon, was sometimes surprised to find a
few wild flowers, plucked from the damp pine forest, scat-
tered there, and oftener rude wreaths hung upon the little
pine cross. Most of these wreaths were formed of a sweet-
scented grass which the children loved to keep in their
desks, entwined with the pompon-like plumes of the buck-
eye and syringa, the wood anemone, and here and there
the master noticed the dark blue cowl of the monk’s-hood
or deadly aconite. One day, during a walk, in crossing a
wooded ridge, he came upon M’liss in the heart of the
forest, perched upon a prostrate pine, on a fantastic throne,
formed by the hanging plumes of lifeless branches, her lap
full of grasses and pine burrs, and crooning to the just
Aristides, who sat humbly at her feet, one of the negro
melodies of her younger life. It was perhaps the influence
of the season, or the memory of this sylvan enjoyment,
which caused Aristides, one midsummer day, to have a
singular vision.

The just Aristides had begun that morning with a seri-
ous error. loitering on his way to school, occasionally
246 EARLIER SKETCHES

stopping to inspect the footprints of probable bears, or in-
dulging in cheerful badinage with the tunnel men, — to
whom the apparition of a short-legged boy weighed down
by a preternaturally large satchel was an object of boister-
ous solicitude, — Aristides suddenly found that he was an
hour and a half too late for school. Whether this circum-
stance was purely accidental or not is a question of some
uncertainty, for Aristides, on finding himself occupying
this criminal position, at once resolved to play truant. I
shall not stop to inquire by what system of logic this
result presented itself to that just youth as a consistent
deduction, or whether some indistinct apprehension of an-
other and a better world beyond the settlement, where there
were no schools and blackberries were plenty, had not
influenced him in taking this fatal step. Enough that he
entered on his rash career by instantly eating the dinner
which he carried with him, and having propitiated that
terrible god whose seat is every small boy’s stomach, with
a feeling of inexpressible guiltiness creeping over him, he
turned his back upon the schoolhouse and ran into the
woods.

Away from the glare of the red road, how deliciously cool
was the damp breath and twilight dimness of the stately
pines. How they seemed to welcome him in their deepest
recesses, ranging themselves silently around him as he ran,
shutting out the world and its schoolhouses, and the pur-
suit of indignant parents and vindictive teachers. How in
the forest depths the blue jay called to him mockingly, and
the kingbird, spreading his tail like a crimson pennant,
beckoned him onward. How there was recognition and
greeting even in the squirrel that scampered past him, mis-
chievously whisking his ridiculous tail within an inch of
his outstretched fingers. And how Aristides, at last flinging
away hat, shoes, and satchel, uttered a shrill whoop and
dashed forward like a youthful savage. But are not these
M’LISS 247

things written in the dog’s-eared pages of every boy’s mem.
ory, even though they seemed afterward to the just Aris.
tides a part and parcel of his own strange vision ?

Yet even such delights had their hour of culminatior,
and Aristides found himself at high noon back on the road
again in a state of feverish excitement, carrying a ravished
jay’s nest, two pine cones, a dead hare, and a plume of the
white syringa. Somewhat overpowered by the weight of
these trophies, which he had collected in the vague belief
that they would be of future service to him, he hegan to
look about for some convenient place to bestow his booty.
It was nearly time for the great Wingdam stage to go by,
and when it came at last with a sharp rattle of wheels and
prancing of horses, and a red pillar of dust hanging over it
that partook of both the fiery and cloudy attributes of the
Israelitish sign, Aristides exchanged epithets with the
driver, and, although standing knee-deep in red dust, felt a
thrill of joy in the recognition which no future honor or
dignity might ever give him.

Retracing his steps, the truant presently came to a semi-
circular opening in the side of Red Mountain, which
inclosed, like the walls of some vast amphitheatre, what
had been the arena of the early struggles of the gladiators
of fortune. There were terrible traces of that struggle still
—in the rock blasted by fire —in the bank furrowed by
water—and in the débris of Red Mountain scattered
along the gulch two miles in extent. Their forgotter
engines were lying half buried in the ditches — the prime-
val structure which had served them for a banking-house
was roofless, and held the hoards of field-mice and squir
rels. The unshapely stumps of ancient pines dotted the
ground, and Aristides remembered that under the solitary
redwood, which of all its brothers remained still standing,
one of those early pioneers lay buried. No wonder that,
as the gentle breeze of that summer day swept through its
248 EARLIER SKETCHES

branches, the just Aristides might have heard, as part of
his wonderful dream, some echo of its far off brothers of
Lebanon, saying, “Since thou art fallen, no feller has
risen up against us!”

But the short legs of Aristides were aching, and he was
getting thirsty. There was a rough cavern close at hand ;
and as most of these openings condensed their general
dampness somewhere in quiet pools, Aristides turned into
the first one. When he had slaked his thirst, he looked
around him and recognized Smith’s Pocket.

It had undergone little change in the last two years.
The winter rains had detached those portions of the wall
which were not upheld by decaying timbers. It was cer-
tainly a dirty pocket —a pocket filled with rubbish —a
shabby pocket — a worn-out and ragged pocket. It was so
unpromising in its present exterior, so graphic in its story
of misfortune, and so terrible in its recent memories, that
the most sanguine prospector would have passed it by, as
though the hopeless sentence of Dante had been written:
over its ragged portal.

The active mind of Aristides, however, saw in the lurking.
shadows of its arches much promise as a future play-room,
to which he intended to induct hereafter his classical brother
Lycurgus. In this reflection he threw himself on the
ground, and luxuriously burying his bare feet in the cool,
loose soil, gave himself up to serene meditation. But the
heat and exertion were beginning to exert a certain influence
over him, and once or twice his eyes closed. ‘he water
rippled beside him with a sleepy sound. The sunlight on
the hill without made him wink. The long-drawn cawing
of a crow on the opposite hillside, and the buzzing of a
bluebottle fly who had sought retreat in the cavern, had a
like effect, and he felt himself falling asleep. How long
he slept, or if he slept at all, he could not remember, for
he started suddenly, and, listening a moment, sprang to
his feet.
M’LISS 249

The low, heavy blows of a pick came deadened and muf-.
fled from the extremity of the cavern.

At first a terrible fear took possession of him; for an
instant the white, rigid face of Smith, as he had seen it on |
the day of the inquest, when an irresistible curiosity led
him to creep into the room where the dead man was lying
— for an instant only, this fearful remembrance seemed to
rise before him out of the gloom of the pit. The terror
passed away.

Ghosts were historically unknown to Aristides, and even
had his imaginative faculty been more prominent, the edu-
cation of Smith’s Pocket was not of a kind to foster such
weaknesses. Jixcept a twinge of conscience, a momentary.
recollection of the evil that comes to bad boys through the
severe pages of Sunday-school books — with this excep-
tion, Aristides was not long in recovering his self-possession.
He did not run away, for his curiosity was excited. The
same instinct which prompted an examination of bear-
tracks gave a fascination to the situation, and a nervous
energy to his frame.

The regular blows of the pick still resounded through
the cavern. He crept cautiously to the deepest recesses of
the pocket, and held his breath and listened. The sound
seemed to come from the bowels of the mountain. There
was no sign of opening or ingress; an impenetrable veil of
quartz was between him and the mysterious laborer. He
was creeping back, between the displaced rafters, when a
light glanced suddenly in his face, and flashed on the wet
roof above him. Looking fearfully down, Aristides beheld
between the interstices of the rafters, which formed a tem-
porary flooring, that there was another opening below, and
in that opening a man was working. In the queer fantasy
of Aristides’s dream, it took the aspect of a second pocket
and a duplicate Smith !

He had no time to utter his astonishment, for at that
250 EARLIER SKETCHES

moment an ominous rattling of loose soil upon his back
made him look up, and he had barely time to spring away
before a greater portion of the roof of Smith’s Pocket,
loosened by the displacement of its supports in his search,
fell heavily to the ground. But in the fall a long-handled
shovel which had been hidden somewhere in the crevices of
the rock above came rattling down with it, and, seizing this
as a trophy, Aristides emerged from Smith’s Pocket, at a
rate of speed which seemed singularly disproportionate with
his short legs and round stomach.

When he reached the road the sun was setting. Inspect-
ing his prize by that poetic light, he found that the shovel
was a new one, and bore neither mark of use nor exposure.
Shouldering it again, with the intention of presenting it as
a peace-offering to propitiate the just wrath of his parents,
Aristides had gone but a few rods when an unexpected cir-
cumstance occurred which dashed his fond hope, and to the
conscientious child seemed the shadow of an inevitable
Nemesis. At the curve of the road, as the settlement of
Smith’s Pocket came into view, with its straggling street,
and its church spire that seemed a tongue of flame in the
setting sun, a broad-shouldered figure sprang, apparently,
from out of the bank, and stood in the path of that infelix
infant.

“Where are you going with that shovel, you young
devil?”

Aristides looked up and saw that his interlocutor was a
man of powerful figure, whose face, though partially con-
sealed by a red handkerchief, even in that uncertain light
was not prepossessing. Children are quick physiognomists,
and Aristides, feeling the presence of evil, from the depth:
of his mighty little soul then and there took issue with the
giant.

“Where are you going with that shovel ; d—n you, do
you hear ? ” said he of the red handkerchief impatiently.
M'LISS 251

“Home,” said Aristides stoutly.

“Home, eh!” said the stranger sneeringly. “ And
where did you steal it, you young thief ? ”

The Morpher stock not being of a kind to receive oppro-
brious epithets meekly, Aristides slowly, and with an evi-
dent effort, lifted the shovel in a menacing attitude.

A single step was all that separated six feet of Strength
from three feet of Valor. The stranger eyed Aristides with
an expression of surly amazement, and hesitated. The ele-
phant quailed before the gad-fly. As that precocious in-
fant waved the threatening shovel, his youthful lips slowly
fashioned this tremendous sentence : —

** You let me pass and I won’t hit you!”

And here I must pause. I would that for the sake of
poetry I could leave my hero, bathed in that heroic lighs,
erect and menacing. But alas, in this practical world cf
ours, the battle is too often to the strong. And I hasten
over the humiliating spectacle of Aristides, spanked, cuffed,
and kicked, and pick him from the ditch into which he was
at last ignominiously tossed, a defeated but still struggling
warrior, and so bring him, as the night closes charitably
around him, in contrite tears and muddy garments to his
father’s door.

When the master stopped at Mrs. Morpher’s to inquire
after his errant pupil that night, he found Aristides in bed,
smelling strongly of soap and water, and sinking into a
feverish sleep. As he muttered from time to time some in-
coherent sentence, tossing restlessly in his cot, the master
turned to those about him and asked what it was he said.

It was nothing. Aristides had been dreaming, and that
was his dream.

That was all. Yet a dream that foreshadowed a slow-
coming but unerring justice, that should give the little
dreamer in after years some credit to the title of Aristides
the Just.
w
om
be

EARLIER SKETCHES

CHAPTER III
UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE

It was an amiable weakness of Mrs. Morpher to imagine
that, of all her classical progeny, Clytemnestra was particu-
larly the model for M’liss. Following this fallacy she
threw “Clytie” at the head of M’liss when she was “ bad,”
and set her up before the child for adoration in her peni-
tential moments. It was not therefore surprising to the
master to hear that Clytie was coming to school, obviously
as a favor to the master and as an example for M’liss and
others, For Clytie was quite a young lady. Inheriting
her mother’s physical peculiarities, and in obedience to the
climatic laws of the Red Mountain region, she was an early
bloomer. The youth of Smith’s Pocket, to whom this kind
of flower was rare, sighed for her in April and languished
in May. Enamored swains haunted the schoolhouse at
the hour of dismissal. A few were jealous of the master.

Perhaps it was this latter circumstance that opened the
master’s eyes to another. He could not help noticing that
Clytie was romantic; that in school she required a great
deal of attention; that her pens were uniformly bad and
wanted fixing; that she usually accompanied the request
with a certain expectation in her eye that was somewhat
disproportionate to the quality of service she verbally re-
quired; that she sometimes allowed the curves of a round
plump white arm to rest on his when he was writing her
copies; that she always blushed and flung back her blond
curls when she did so, I don’t remember whether I have
stated that the master was a young man — it’s of little con-
sequence, however. He had been severely educated in
the school in which Clytie was taking her first lesson, and
on the whole withstood the flexible curves and facetious
M’LISS 253

glance like the fine young Spartan that he was. Perhaps
an insufficient quality of food may have tended to this ascet-
icism. He generally avoided Clytie; but one evening
when she returned to the schoolhouse after something she
had forgotten, —and did not find it until the master walked
home with her, —I hear that he endeavored to make him-
self particularly agreeable, partly from the fact, I imagine,
that his conduct was adding gall and bitterness to the
already overcharged hearts of Clytemnestra’s admirers.

The morning after this affecting episode, M’liss did not
come to school. Noon came, but not M’liss. Questioning
Clytie on the subject, it appeared that they had left for
school together, but the willful M’liss had taken another
road. The afternoon brought her not. In the evening he
called on Mrs. Morpher, whose motherly heart was really
alarmed. Mr. Morpher had spent all day in search of her,
without discovering a trace that might lead to her discovery.
Aristides was summoned as a probable accomplice, but that
equitable infant succeeding in impressing the household with
his innocence, Mrs. Morpher entertained a vivid impression
that the child would yet be found drowned in a ditch, or —
what was almost as terrible — mud-dyed and soiled beyond
the redemption of soap and water. Sick ut heart, the master
returned to the schoolhouse. As he lit his lamp and seated
himself at his desk, he found a note lying before him,
addressed to himself in M’liss’s handwriting. It seemed to
be written on a leaf torn from some old memorandum-book,
and, to prevent sacrilegious trifling, had been sealed with six
troken wafers. Opening it almost tenderly, the master read
as follows: —

RespecTeD Sir: When you read this, I am run away.
Wever to come back. Never Never NEVER. You can
give my beeds to Mary Jennings, and my Amerika’s Pride
[a highly colored lithograph from a tobacco box] to Sally
254 EARLIER SKETCHES

Flanders. But don’t you give anything to Clytie Morper.
Don’t you dair to. Do you know what my opinnion is of
her, it is this, she is perfekly disgustin. That is all and no
more at present from

Meuissa SMITH.

The master mused for some time over this characteristic
epistle. As he was mechanically refolding it his eye caught
a sentence written on the back in pencil, in another hand-
writing, somewhat blurred and indistinct from the heavy
incisive strokes of M’liss’s pen on the other side. It
seemed to be a memorandum belonging to the book from
which the leaf was originally torn : —

July 17th. 5 hours in drift — dipping west — took out
20 oz.; cleaned up 40 oz. Mem. —saw M. 8.

“July 17th,” said the master, opening his desk and
taking out a file of the “Red Mountain Banner.” “July
17th,” he repeated, running over the pages till he came to a
paragraph headed “ Disrressine Surcrpz.” “July 17th
—why, that’s the day Smith killed himself. That’s
funny!”

In a strict etymological sense there was nothing so very
ludicrous in this coincidence, nor did the master’s face betray
any expression of the kind. Perhaps the epithet was chosen
to conceal the vague uneasiness which it produced in his
mind. We are all of us more affected by these coincidences
than we care to confess to one another. If the most
matter-of-fact reader of these pages were to find a hearse
standing in front of his door for three consecutive mornings,
although the circumstance might be satisfactorily explained,
—shall I go further and say, because the circumstance
might be satisfactorily explained, — he would vaguely wish
it hadn’t happened. Philosophize as we may, the simple
M’LISS 255

fact of two remote lines crossiny each other always seems
to us of tremendous significance, and quite overshadows the
more important truth that the real parallels of life’s journey
are the lines that never meet. It will do us good to
remember these things, and look more kindly on our
brothers of Borrioboola-Gha and their fetich superstitions,
when we drop our silver in the missionary box next Sabbath.

“T wonder where that memorandum came from,” said
the master, as he rose at last and buttoned up his coat.
Who is ‘M. 8.’?? M. S.. stands for manuscript and
Melissa Smith. Why don’t” — But checking an impul-
sive query as to why people don’t make their private mem-
oranda generally intelligible, the master put the letter in
his pocket and went home.

At sunrise the next morning he was picking his way
through the palm-like fern and thick underbrush of the
pine forest, starting the hare from its form, and awakening
a querulous protest from a few dissipated crows, who had
evidently been making a night of it, and so came to the
wooded ridge where he had once found M’liss. There he
found the prostrate pine and tessellated branches, but the
throne was vacant. As he drew nearer, what might have
been some frightened animal started through the crackling
limbs. It ran up the tossed arms of the fallen monarch,
and sheltered itself in some friendly foliage. The master,
reaching the old seat, found the nest still warm; looking
up in the intertwining branches, he met the black eyes of
the errant M’liss. They gazed at each other without speak-
ing. She was first to break the silence.

“What do you want ?”’ she asked curtly.

The master had decided on a course of action. “TI want
some crab apples.”’ he said humbly.

‘“Shan’t have ’em! go away! Why don’t you get ’em
of Clytemnerestera ?’”’ It seemed to be a relief to M’liss to
express her contempt in additional syllables to that classi-
256 EARLIER SKETCHES

cal young woman’s already long-drawn title. ‘Oh, you
wicked thing !”

“Tam hungry, Lissy. I have eaten nothing since din-
ner yesterday. Jam famished!” and the young man, in
a state of remarkable exhaustion, leaned against the tree.

Melissa’s heart was touched. In the bitter days of her
gypsy life she had known the sensation he so artfully sim-
ulated. Overcome by his heartbroken tone, but not en-
tirely divested of suspicion, she said : —

“Dig under the tree near the roots, and you ’ll find lots:
but mind you don’t tell,’? for M’liss had Aer hoards as well
as the rats and squirrels.

But the master of course was unable to find them, the
effects of hunger probably blinding his senses. M’liss
grew uneasy. At length she peered at him through the
leaves in an elfish way, and questioned : —

“Tf I come down and give you some, youll promise
you won’t touch me?”

The master promised.

“ FHlope you ’ll die if you do?”

The master accepted instant dissolution as a forfeit.
M’liss slid down the tree. The duties of hospitality ful-
filled, she seated herself at a little distance and eyed the
master with extreme caution.

“Why did n’t you eat your breakfast, you bad man ? ”

“ Because I’ve run away.”

“ Where to?” said M’liss, her eyes twinkling.

“ Anywhere — anywhere, away from here!” responded
that deceitful wretch with tragic wildness of demeanor.

“What made you? —bad boy!” said M’liss, with a
sudden respect of conventionalities, and a rare touch of
tenderness in her tones. ‘ You’d better go back where
your vittals are.”

“What are victuals to a wounded spirit ?’’ asked the
young man dramatically. He had reached the side of
M'LISS 257

M’liss during this dialogue, and had taken her unresisting
hand. He was too wise to notice his victory, however;
and drawing Melissa’s note from his pocket, opened it
before her.

“Could n’t you find any paper in the schoolhouse with-.
out tearing a leaf out of my memorandum book, Melissa ? ”
he asked.

“Tt ain’t out of your memorandum book,’ responded
M’liss fiercely.

“‘ Indeed,” said the master, turning to the lines in pencil;
“T thought it was my handwriting.”

M’liss, who had been looking over his shoulder, suddenly
seized the paper and snatched it out of his hand.

“It’s father’s writing!’ she said, after a pause, in a
softer tone.

“ Where did you get it, M’liss ? ”

“ Aristides gave it to me.”

“Where did he get it?”

“Don’t know. He had the book in his pocket when I
told him I was going to write to you, and he tore the leaf
out. There now —don’t bother me any more.” M’liss
had turned her face away, and the black hair had hid her
downcast eyes.

Something in her gesture and expression reminded him
of her father. Something, and more that was characteris-
tic to her at such moments, made him fancy another resem-
blance, and caused him to ask impulsively, and less
cautiously than was his wont: —

‘*Do you remember your mother, M’liss ? ”

No.”

“Did you never see her? ”

“No —didn’t I tell you not to bother, and you’re
a-goin’ and doin’ it,” said M’liss savagely.

The master was silent a moment. “ Did you ever think
you would like to have a mother, M’liss? ” he asked
again.
258 EARLIER SKETCHES

“ No-0-0-0 |”

The master rose ; M’liss looked up.

“Does Aristides come to school to-day ?”

“J don’t know.”

“ Are you going back? You’d better,” she said.

“Well! — perhaps I may. Good-by !”

He had proceeded a few steps when, as he expected, she
called him back. He turned. She was standing by the
tree, with tears glistening in her eyes. ‘The master felt
the right moment had come. Going up to her, he took
both her hands in his, and looking in her tearful eyes, said
gravely : —

“‘ W’liss, do you remember the first evening you came to
‘see me ?””

M’liss remembered.

“ You asked me if you might come to school, and I
said —”

“Come!” responded the child softly.

“Tf I told you I was lonely without my little scholar,
and that I wanted her to come, what would you say ? ”

The child hung her head in silence. The master waited
patiently. Tempted by the quiet, a hare ran close to the
couple, and raising her bright eyes and velvet fore paws,
gazed at them ‘fearlessly. A squirrel ran halfway down
the furrowed bark of the fallen tree, and there stopped.

“ We are waiting, Lissy,” said the master in a whisper,
and the child smiled. Stirred by a passing breeze, the tree-
tops rocked, and a slanting sunbeam stole through their
interlaced boughs and fell on the doubting face and irreso-
lute little figure. But a step in the dry branches and a
rustling in the underbrush broke the spell.

A man dressed as a miner, carrying a long-handled
shovel, came slowly through the woods. A red handker-
chief tied around his head under his hat, with the loose
ends hanging from beneath, did not add much favor to his
M’LISS 259

unprepossessing face. He did not perceive the master and
M’liss until he was close upon them. When he did, he
stopped suddenly and gazed at them with an expression of
lowering distrust. M/’liss drew nearer to the master.

“ Good-mornin’ — picknickin’, eh?” he asked, with an
attempt at geniality that was more repulsive than his
natural manner,

‘* How are you — prospecting, eh ?” said the master
quietly, after the established colloquial formula of Red
Mountain.

“ Yes — a little in that way.”

The stranger still hesitated, apparently waiting for them
to go first, a matter which M’liss decided by suddenly taking
the master’s hand in her quick way. What she said was
scarcely audible, but the master, parting her hair over her
forehead, kissed her, and so, hand in hand, they passed
vut of the damp aisles and forest odors into the open sun-
lit road. But M’liss, looking back, saw that her old seat
was occupied by the hopeful prospector, and fancied that in
the shadows of her former throne something of a gratified
leer overspread his face. ‘ He ’ll have to dig deep to find
the crab apples,” said the child to the master, as they
came to the Red Mountain road.

When Aristides came to school that day he was con-
fronted by M’liss. But neither threats nor entreaties could
extract from that reticent youth the whereabout of the
memorandum book nor where he got it. Two or three
days afterward, during recess, he approached M’liss, and
beckoned her one side.

“Well,” said M’liss impatiently.

“Did you ever read the story of ‘ Ali Baba’ ?”

“ Yes.”

“Do you believe it ?”

66 Ne.”

“ Well,” said that sage infant, wheeling around on his
stout legs, “it ’s true!”
260 EARLIER SKETCHES

CHAPTER IV
WHICH HAS A GOOD MORAL TENDENCY

Somewhat less spiteful in her intercourse with the other
scholars, M’liss still retained an offensive attitude toward
Clytemnestra. Perhaps the jealous element was not entirely
stilled in her passionate little breast. Perhaps it was that
Clytemnestra’s round curves and plump outlines afforded
an extensive pinching surface. But while these ebullitions
were under the master’s control, her enmity occasionally
took a new and irresponsible form.

In his first estimate of the child’s character he could not
conceive that she had ever possessed a doll. But the mas-
ter, like many other professed readers of character, was
safer in a posteriori than a priori reasoning, for M’liss had
adoll. But then it was a peculiar doll, —a frightful per-
version of wax and sawdust, —a doll fearfully and wonder-
fully made, —a smaller edition of M’liss. Its unhappy
existence had been a secret discovered accidentally by Mrs.
Morpher. It had been the oldtime companion of M’liss’s
wanderings, and bore evident marks of suffering. Its
original complexion was long since washed away by the
weather, and anointed by the slime of ditches. It looked
very much as M’liss had in days past. Its one gown of
faded stuff was dirty and ragged as hers had been. M’liss
had never been known to apply to it any childish term of
endearment. She never exhibited it in the presence of other
children. It was put severely to bed in a hollow tree near
the schoolhouse, and only allowed exercise during M’liss’s
rambles. Fulfilling a stern duty to her doll—as she
would to herself — it knew no luxuries.

Now, Mrs. Morpher, obeying a commendable impulse,
bought another doll and gave it to M’liss. The child re-
M’LISS 261

ecived it gravely and curiously. The master, on looking at
it one day, fancied he saw a slight resemblance in its round
red cheeks and mild blue eyes to Clytemnestra. It became
evident befure long that M’liss had also noticed the same
resemblance. Accordingly she hammered its waxen head
on the rocks when she was alone, and sometimes dragged it
with a string round its neck to and from school. At other
times, setting it up on her desk, she made a pincushion of
its patient and inoffensive body. Whether this was done
in revenge of what she considered a second figurative obtru-
sion of Clytie’s excellencies upon her; or whether she had
an intuitive appreciation of the rites of certain other hea-
thens, and indulging in that ‘“fetich” cereniony imagined
that the original of her wax model would pine away and
finally die, is a metaphysical question I shall not now con-
sider.

In spite of these moral vagaries, the master could not
help noticing in her different tasks the workings of a quick,
restless, and vigorous perception. She knew neither the
hesitancy nor the doubts of childhood. Her answers in
class were always slightly dashed with audacity. Of course
she was not infallible. But her courage and daring in
venturing beyond her own depth and that of the flounder-
ing little swimmers around her, in their minds outweighed
all errors of judgment. Children are no better than grown
people in this respect, I fancy; and whenever the little
red hand flashed above her desk, there was a wondering
silence, and even the master was sometimes oppressed with
a doubt of his own experience and judgment.

Nevertheless, certain attributes which at first amused
and entertained his fancy began to affect him with grave
doubts. He could not but see that M’liss was revenge-
ful, irreverent, and willful. But there was one better
quality which pertained to her semi-savage disposition —
the faculty of physical fortitude and self-sacvitice, and
262 EARLIER SKETCHES

another — though not always an attribute of the noble
savage — truth. M/’liss was both fearless and sincere —
perhaps in such a character the adjectives were synony-
mous.

The master had been doing some hard thinking on this
subject, and had arrived at that conclusion quite common
to all who think sincerely, that he was generally the slave
of his uwn prejudices, when he determined to call on the
Rev. Mr. McSnagley for advice. This decision was some-
what humiliating to his pride, as he and McSnagley were
not friends. But he thought of M’liss, and the evening
of their first meeting; and perhaps with a pardonable
superstition that it was not chance alone that had guided
her willful feet to the schoolhouse, and perhaps with a com-
placent consciousness of the rare magnanimity of the act,
he choked back his dislike and went to McSnagley.

The reverend gentleman was glad to see him. More-
over, he observed that the master was looking “ peartish ”
and hoped he had got over the ‘“neuralgy ” and ‘“ rheuma-
tiz.”” He himself had been troubled with a dumb “ ager ”
since last conference. But he had learned to “ rastle and
pray.”’

Pausing a moment to enable the master to write this cer-
tain method of curing the dumb “ager” upon the book
and volume of his brain, Mr. McSnagley proceeded to in-
quire after Sister Morpher. “She is an adornment to
Christewanity, and has a likely, growin’ young family,”
added Mr. McSnagley ; ‘and there’s that mannerly young
gal —so well behaved — Miss Clytie.”” In fact, Clytie’s
perfections seemed to affect him to such an extent that he
dwelt for several minutes upon them. ‘The master was
doubly embarrassed. In the first place, there was an en-
forced contrast with poor M’liss in all this praise of Clytie.
Secondly, there was something unpleasantly confidential
in his tone of speaking of Morpher’s-earliest born. So that
M’LISS 263

the master, after a few futile efforts to say something natu-
ral, found it convenient to recall another engagement and
left without asking the information required, but in his
after reflections somewhat unjustly giving the Rev. Mr.
McSnagley the full benefit of having refused it.

But the master obtained the advice in another and unex-
pected. direction.

The resident physician of Smith’s Pocket was a Dr.
Duchesne, or as he was better known to the locality, “ Dr.
Doochesny.” Of a naturally refined nature and liberal
education, he had steadily resisted the aggressions and temp-
tations of Smith’s Pocket, and represented to the master a
kind of connecting link between his present life and the
past. So that an intimacy sprang up between the two men,
involving prolonged interviews in the doctor’s little back
shop, often to the exclusion of other suffering humanity and
their physical ailments. It was in one of these interviews
that the master mentioned the coincidence of the date of
the memoranda on the back of M’liss’s letter and the day of
Smith’s suicide.

“Tf it were Smith’s own handwriting, as the child says
it is,’ said the master, “it shows a queer state of mind
that could contemplate suicide and indite private memo-
randa within the same twenty-four hours.”

Dr. Duchesne removed his cigar from his lips and looked
attentively at his friend.

“The only hypothesis,” continued the master, ‘is that
Smith was either drunk or crazy, and the fatal act was in a
measure unpremeditated.”’

«Every man who commits suicide,” returned the doctor
gravely, “is in my opinion insane, or, what is nearly the
same thing, becomes through suffering an irresponsible
agent. In my professional experience I have seen most of
the forms of mental and physical agony, and know what
sacrifices men will make to preserve even an existence that
264 EARLIER SKETCHES

to me seemed little better than death, so Jong as their intel-
lect remained unclouded. When you come to reflect on
the state of mind that chooses death as a preferable alter-
native, you generally find an exaltation and enthusiasm
that differs very little from the ordinary diagnosis of de-
lirium. Smith was not drunk,” added the doctor in his
usual careless tone ; ‘I saw his body.”

The master remained buried in reflection. Presently the
doctor removed his cigar.

“Perhaps I might help you to explain the coincidence
you speak of.”

6c How ? ”

“Very easily. But this is a professional secret, you
understand.”

“Yes, I understand,” said the master hastily, with an ill-
defined uneasiness creeping over him.

“Do you know anything of the phenomena of death by
gunshot wounds ? ”

6c No ! ”

“Then you must take certain facts as granted. Smith,
you remember, was killed instantly / The nature of his
wound and the manner of his death were such as would
have caused an instantaneous and complete relaxation of all
the muscles. Rigidity and contraction would have super-
vened of course, but only after life was extinct and con-
sciousness fled. Now Smith was found with his hand
tightly grasping a pistol.”

“Well ?”

“Well, my dear boy, he must have grasped it after he
was dead, or have prevailed on some friend to stiffen his
fingers round it.”

“Do you mean that he was murdered ? ”

Dr. Duchesne rose and closed the door. “We have
different names for these things in Smith’s Pocket. I mean
to say that he did n’t kill himself — that’s all.”
M’LISS 265

“ But, doctor,” said the master earnestly; ‘do you
think you have done right in concealing this fact ? Do
you think it just—do you think it consistent with your
duty to his orphan child ?”

“That’s why I have said nothing about it,” replied the
doctor coolly, — ‘‘ because of my consideration for his orphan
child.”

The master breathed quickly, and stared at the doctor.

“Doctor! you don’t think that M’liss ’”? —

“ Hush ! —don’t get excited, my young friend. Remem-
ber I am not a lawyer — only a doctor.”

“But M’liss was with me the very night he must have
been killed. We were walking together when we heard the
report — that is—a report— which must have been the
one’? —stammered the master.

“When was that ?”

“ At half past eleven. I remember looking at my watch.”

“ Humph ! — when did you meet her first ? ”

“ At half past eight. Come, doctor, you have made a
mistake here at least,’ said the young man with an assump-
tion of ease he was far from feeling. ‘Give M’liss the
benefit of the doubt.”

Dr. Duchesne replied by opening a drawer of his desk.
After rummaging among the powders and mysterious looking
instruments with which it was stored, he finally brought
forth a longitudinal slip of folded white paper. It was
appropriately labeled “ Poison.”

‘Look here,’”? said the doctor, opening the paper. I*
contained two or three black coarse hairs. “Do you kno. -
them ?”

“cc No.”’

“ Look again!”

“Tt looks something like Melissa’s hair,” said the master,
with a fathomless sinking of the heart.

6 When I was called to look at the body,” continued the:
266 EARLIER SKETCHES

doctor with the deliberate cautiousness of a professional
diagnosis, ‘‘ my suspicions were aroused by the circumstance
I told you of. I managed to get possession of the pistol,
and found these hairs twisted around the lock as though
they had been accidentally caught and violently disentangled.
I don’t think that any one else saw them. I removed them
without observation, and —they are at your service.”

The master sank back in his seat and pressed his hand to
his forehead. The image of M’liss rose before him with
flashing eye and long black hair, and seemed to beat down
and resist defiantly the suspicion that crept slowly over his
heart.

“‘T forbore to tell you this, my friend,” continued the
doctor slowly and gravely, ‘‘ because when I learned that
you had taken this strange child under your protection I did
not wish to tell you that which —though I contend does
not alter her claims to man’s sympathy and kindness — still
might have prejudiced her in your eyes. Her improvement
under your care has proven my position correct. I have,
as you know, peculiar ideas of the extent to which human-
ity is responsible. I find in my heart — looking back over
that child’s career—no sentiment but pity. I am mis-
taken in you if I thought this circumstance aroused any
other feeling in yours.”

Still the figure of M’liss stood before the master as he
bent before the doctor’s words, in the same defiant attitude,
with something of scorn in the great dark eyes, that made
the blood tingle in his cheeks, and seemed to make the
reasoning of the speaker but meaningless and empty words.
At length he rose. As he stood with his hand on the latch
he turned to Dr. Duchesne, who was watching him with
eareful solicitude.

“JT don’t know but that you have done well to keep this
from me. At all events it has not — cannot, and should not
alter my opinion toward M’liss. You will of course keep it
M’LISS 267

vsecret. In the mean time you must not blame me if I
sling to my instinets in preference to your judgment. I
still believe that you are mistaken in regard to her.”

“Stay, one moment,” said the doctor; “ promise me you
will not say anything of this, nor attempt to prosecute the
matter further till you have consulted with me.”

“T promise. Good-night.”

“ Good-night ; ” and so they parted.

True to that promise and his own instinctive promptings
the master endeavored to atone for his momentary disloyalty
by greater solicitude for M’liss. But the child had noticed
some change in the master’s thoughtful manner, and in one
of their long post-prandial walks she stopped suddenly, and
mounting a stump, looked full in his face with big search-
ing eyes. ;

“You aim’t mad?” said she, with an interrogative
shake of the black braids.

“No.”

“Nor bothered ? ”

“No.”

“Nor hungry ?”? (Hunger was to M’liss a sickness that
might attack a person at any moment.)

“No.”

“Nor thinking of her ? ”

“Of whom, Lissy ? ”

“That white girl.” (This was the latest epithet
invented by M/’liss, who was a very dark brunette, to
express Clytemnestra.)

“No.”

“Upon your word?” (A substitute for “Hope you’ll
die!” proposed by the master.)

NES

“ And sacred honor ? ”

6 Veg ??

Then M’liss gave him a fierce little kiss, and hopping
268 EARLIER SKETCHES

down, fluttered off. For two or three days after that she
condescended to appear like other children and be, as she
expressed it, ‘ good.”

When the summer was about spent, and the last harvest
had been gathered in the valleys, the master bethought him
of gathering in a few ripened shoots of the young idea, and
of having his Harvest Home, or Examination. So the
savans and professionals of Smith’s Pocket were gathered
to witness that time-honored custom of placing timid chil-
dren in a constrained position, and bullying them as in a
witness-box. As usual in such cases, the most audacious
and self-possessed were the lucky recipients of the honors.
The reader will imagine that in the present instance M’liss
and Clytie were preéminent and divided public attention:
M’liss with her clearness of material perception and self-
reliance, and Clytie with her placid self-esteem and saint-
like correctness of deportment. The other little ones were
timid and blundering. M’liss’s readiness and brilliancy, of
course, captivated the greatest number, and provoked the
greatest applause, and M’liss’s antecedents had unconsciously
awakened the strongest sympathies of the miners, whose
athletic forms were ranged against the walls, or whose hand-
some bearded faces looked in at the window. But M’liss’s
popularity was overthrown by an unexpected circumstance.

McSnagley had invited himself, and had been going
through the pleasing entertainment of frightening the more
timid pupils by the vaguest and most ambiguous questions,
delivered in an impressive, funereal tone; and M’liss had
soared into astronomy, and was tracking the course of our
“spotted ball” through space, and defining the “ tethered
orbits ” of the planets, when McSnagley deliberately arose.

“ Meelissy, ye were speaking of the revolutions of this
yer yearth, and its movements with regard to the sun, and

I think you said it had been a-doin’ of it since the creation,
eh?”
M’LISS 269

M’liss nodded a scornful affirmative.

“Well, was that the truth ?” said McSnagley, folding
his arms.

“ Yes,” said M’liss, shutting up her little red lips
tightly.

The handsome outlines at the windows peered further
into the schoolroom, and a saintly, Raphael-like face, with
blond beard and soft blue eyes, belonging to the biggest
scamp in the diggings, turned toward the child and whis-
pered : —

“Stick to it, M’liss! It’s only a big bluff of the parson.”

The reverend gentleman heaved a deep sigh, and cast a
compassicnate glance at the master, then at the children,
and then rested his eye on Clytemnestra. That young
woman softly elevated her round, white arm. Its seduc-
tive curves were enhanced by a gorgeous and massive
specimen bracelet, the gift of one of her humblest wor-
shipers, worn in honor of the occasion. There was a
momentary pause. Clytie’s round cheeks were very pink
and soft. Clytie’s big eyes were very bright and blue.
Clytie’s low-necked white book-muslin rested softly on
Clytie’s white, plump shoulders. Clytie looked at the
master, and the master nodded. Then Clytie spoke softly :

“ Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and it obeyed
him.”

There was a low hum of applause in the schoolroom, a
triumphant expression on McSnagley’s face, a grave shadow
on the master’s, and a comical look of disappointment
reflected from the windows. M/’liss skimmed rapidly over
her astronomy, and then shut the .book with a loud snap.
A groan burst from McSnagley, an expression of astonish-
ment from the schoolroom, and a yell from the windows,
as M’liss brought her red fist down on the desk, with the
emphatic declaration ; —

“TIt’sad—n lie. I don’t believe it!”
270 EARLIER SEETCHES

CHAPTER V
“OPEN SESAME”

The long wet season had drawn near its close. Signs of
spring were visible in the swelling buds and rushing tor-
rents. The pine forests exhaled a fresher spicery. The
azaleas were already budding; the ceanothus getting ready
its lilac livery for spring. On the green upland which
climbed the Red Mountain at its southern aspect, the long
spike of the monk’s-hood shot up from its broad-leaved
stool and once more shvok its dark blue bells. Again the
billow above Smith’s grave was soft and green, its crest just
tossed with the foam of daisies and buttercups. The little
graveyard had gathered a few new dwellers in the past year,
and the mounds were placed two by two by the little paling
until they reached Smith’s grave, and there, there was but
one. General superstition had shunned the enforced com-
panionship. ‘he plot beside Smith was vacant.

It was the custom of the driver of the great Wingdam
stage to whip up his horses at the foot of the hill, and so
enter Smith’s Pocket at that remarkable pace which the
woodcuts in the hotel bar-room represented to credulous
humanity as the usual rate of speed of that conveyance.
At least, Aristides Morpher thought so as he stood one
Sunday afternoon, uneasily conscious of his best jacket and
ecllar, waiting its approach. Nor could anything shake hie
belief that regularly on that occasion the horses ran away
with the driver, and that that individual from motives of
deer policy pretended not to notice it until they were
stopped.

“ Anybody up from below, Bill?” said the landlord as
the driver slowly descended from his perch,

“ Nobody for you,’ responded Bill shortly. “ Dusen-
M’LISS 271

berry kem up as usual, and got off at the old place. You
can’t make a livin’ off him, I reckon.”

“ Have you found out what his name is yet ?” continued
he landlord, implying that “ Dusenberry ” was simply a
playful epithet of the driver.

“ He says his name is Waters,” returned Bill.” Jake said
he saw him at the North Fork in ’50—called himself
Moore then. Guess he ain’t no good, nowhow. What’s
he doin’ round here ? ”

‘Says he’s prospectin’,” replied the landlord. ‘He has
a claim somewhere in the woods. Gambles a little too, I
reckon. He don’t travel on his beauty anyhow.”

“Tf you had seen him makin’ up to a piece of calico in-
side, last trip, and she a-makin’ up to him quite confidential-
like, I guess you’d think he was a lady-killer. My eye,
but wasn’t she a stunner! Clytie Morpher was n’t nowhere
to begin with her.”

“Who was she, Bill?” asked half a dozen masculine
voices.

“Don’t know. We picked her up this side of ‘ Coyote.’
Tancy ? [ tell you! — pretty little hat and pink ribbings —
eyes that ud bore you through at a hundred yards — white
teeth — brown gaiters, and such an ankle! She didn’t want
to show it, — oh, no!” added the sarcastic Bill with deep sig-
nificance.

“Where did you leave her, Bill? ” asked a gentle village
swain who had been fired by the glowing picture of the fair
unknown.

“That’s what ’s the matter. You see after we picked
her up, she said she was goin’ through to Wingdam. Of
course there wasn’t anything in the stage or on the road too
good to offer her. Old Major Spaftier wanted to treat her
to leraonade at every station. Judge Plunkett kep’ a-pullin’
down the blinds and a-h‘istin’ of them up to keep out the
sun and let in the air. Blest if old McSnagley did n’t want
272 EARLIER SKETCHES

to carry her travelin’-bag. There was n’t any attention,
boys, she did n’t get — but it was n’t no use — bless you !
She never so much as passed the time of day with them.”

“But where did she go?” inquired another anxiou:
auditor.

“‘ Keep your foot off the drag, and Ill tell you. Arter
we .left Ring Tail Cafion, Dusenberry, as usual, got on.
Presently one of the outsides turned round to me, and says
he, ‘D—d if Ugly Mug ain’t got the inside track of all
of you this time!’ J looked down, and dern my skin if
there was n’t Dusenberry a-sittin’ ‘up alongside of the lady,
quite comfortable, as if they had ben children together.
At the next station Dusenberry gets off. So does the lady.
‘ Ain’t you goin’ on to Wingdam,’ says I. ‘No,’ says she.
‘May n’t we have the pleasure of your kempany further ?’
says the judge, taking off his hat. ‘No, I’ve changed my
mind,’ says she, and off she got, and off she walked arm in
arm with him as cool as you please.”

“Wonder if that wa’n’t the party that passed through
here last July ?”’ asked the blacksmith, joining the loungers
in front of the stage-office. ‘‘ Waters brought up a buggy
to get the axle bolted. There was a woman setting in the
buggy, but the hood was drawn down, and I didn’t get to
see her face.”

During this conversation Aristides, after a long, linger-
ing glance at the stage, had at last torn himself away from
its fascinations, and was now lounging down the long strag-
gling street in a peculiarly dissipated manner, with his hat
pushed on the back part of his head, his right hand and a
greater portion of his right arm buried in his trousers
pocket. This might have been partly owing to the short-
ness of his legs and the comparative amplitude of his trou-
sers, which to the casual observer seemed to obviate .the
necessity of any other garment. But when he reached the
bottom of the street, and further enlivened his progress by
M’LISS 273

whistling shrilly between his fingers, and finally drew a
fragment of a cigar from his pocket and placed it betweer
his teeth, it was evident that there was a moral as well a.
physical laxity in his conduct. The near fact was thaé
Aristides had that afternoon evaded the Sunday-school,
and was open to any kind of infant iniquity.

The main street of Smith’s Pocket gradually lost its
civilized character, and after one or two futile attempts at
improvement at its lower extremity, terminated impotently
in achaos of ditches, races, and trailings. Out of this again
a narrow trail started along the mountain side, and com-
municated with that vast amphitheatre which still exhibitecl
the pioneer efforts of the early settlers. It was this trai]
that Aristides took that Sunday afternoon, and which hs
followed until he reached the hillside a few rods below tl-e
yawning fissure of Smith’s Pocket. After a careful exami
nation of the vicinity, he cleared away the underbrush be-
side a fallen pine that lay near, and sat down in the attitude
of patient and deliberate expectancy.

Five minutes passed — ten, twenty — and finally a helf-
hour was gone. Aristides threw away his cigar, which he
had lacked determination to light, and peeled small slips
from the inner bark of the pine-tree, and munched then
gravely. Another five, ten, and twenty minutes passed, and
the sun began to drop below the opposite hillside. Another
ten minutes, and the whole of the amphitheatre above was
in heavy shadow. Ten minutes more, and the distant
windows in the settlement flamed redly. Five minutes,
and the spire of the Methodist church caught the glow ~
and then the underbrush crackled.

Aristides, looking up, saw the trunk of the prostrate pine
slowly lifting itself before him.

A second glance showed the fearless and self-possessed
boy that the apparent phenomenon was simply and easily
expleined. The tree had fallen midway and at right angles
274 EARLIER SKETCHES

across the trunk of another prostrate monarch. So accu-
rately and evenly was it balanced that the child was satis-
tied, from a liberal experience of the application of these
principles to the game of “seesaw,” that a very slight
impulse to either end was sufficient to destroy the equilib-
rium. That impulse proceeded from his end of the tree, as
he saw when the uplifted trunk disclosed an opening in the
ground beneath it, and the head and shoulders of a man
emerging therefrom.

Aristides threw himself noiselessly on his stomach. The
thick clump of an azalea hid him from view, though it did
not obstruct his survey of the stranger, whom he at once
recognized as his former enemy, — the man with the red
handkerchief, —the hopeful prospector of Red Mountain,
and the hypothetical ‘ Dusenberry ”’ of the stage-driver.

The stranger looked cautiously round, and Aristides
shrank close behind the friendly azalea.

Satisfied that he was unobserved, the subterranean pro-
prietor returned to the opening and descended, reappearing
with a worn black enameled traveling-bag which he carried
with difficulty. This he again enveloped in a blanket and
strapped tightly on his back, and a Jong-handled shovel,
brought up from the same mysterious storehouse, completed
his outfit. As he stood fora moment leaning on the shovel,
it was the figure of the hopeful prospector in the heart of
the forest. A very slight effort was sufficient to replace
the falien tree in its former position. Raising the shovel
to his shoulder, he moved away, brushing against the aza-
lea bush which hid the breathless Aristides. The sound of
his footsteps retreating through the crackling brush pre-
sently died out, and a drowsy Sabbath stillness succeeded.

Aristides rose. There was a wonderful brightness in
his gray eyes, and a flush on his sunburned cheek. Seiz-
ing a root of the fallen pine he essayed to move it. But
it defied his endeavors. Aristides looked round.
M’LISS 275

“ There ’s some trick about it, but I’ll find it yet,” said
that astute child.

Breaking off the limb of a buckeye, he extemporized a
lever. The first attempt failed. The second succeeded,
and the long roots of the tree again ascended. But as it
required prolonged effort to keep the tree up, before the
impetus was lost Aristides seized the opportunity te jump
into the opening. At the same moment the tree slowly
returned to its former position.

In the sudden change from the waning light to complete
darkness, Aristides was for a moment confounded. Recov-
ering himself, he drew a match from his capacious pocket,
and striking it against the sole of his shoe, by the up-
springing flash perceived a candle stuck in the crevices of
the rock beside him. Lighting it, he glanced curiously
around him. He was at the entrance of a long gallery at
the further extremity of which he could faintly see the
glimmering of the outer daylight. Following this gallery
cautiously he presently came to an antechamber, and by
the glimmering of the light above him at once saw that it
was the same he had seen in his wonderful dream.

The antechamber was about fourteen feet square, with
walls of decomposed quartz, mingling with flaky mica that
reflected here and there the gleam of Aristides’s candle with
a singular brilliancy. It did not need much observation
on his part to determine the reason of the stranger’s lonely
labors. On a rough rocker beside him were two fragments
of ore taken from the adjacent wall, the smallest of which
the two arms of Aristides could barely clasp. To hi.
dazzled eyes they seemed to be almost entirely of pur.
gold. The great strike of ’56 at Ring Tail Cafion had
brought to the wonderful vision of Smith’s Pocket no
such nuggets as were here.

Aristides turned to the wall again, which had been ap-
parently the last scene of the stranger’s labors, and from
276 EARLIER SKETCHES

which the two masses of ore were taken. Even to his in-
experienced eye it represented a wealth almost incalculable.
Through the loose, red soil everywhere glittering star
points of the precious metal threw back the rays of his
candle. Aristides turned pale and trembled.

Here was the realization of his most extravagant fancy.
Ever since his strange dream and encounter with the
stranger, he had felt an irresistible desire to follow up his
adventure, and discover the secrets of the second cavern.
But when he had returned to Smith’s Pocket, a few days
after, the wreck of the fallen roof had blocked up that
part of the opening from which he had caught sight of the
hidden workman below. During his visit he had picked
up from among the rubbish the memorandum book which
had supplied M’liss with letter paper. Still haunting the
locality after school hours, he had noticed that regularly at
sunset the man with the red handkerchief appeared in some
mysterious way from the hillside below Smith’s Pocket,
and went away in the direction of the settlement. By
careful watching, Aristides had fixed the location of his
mysterious appearance to a point a few rods below the
opening of Smith’s Pocket. Flushed by this discovery, he
had been betrayed from his usual discretion so far as to
intimate a hinting of the suspicion that possessed him in
the few mysterious words he had whispered to M’liss at
school. The accident we have described above determined
the complete discovery of the secret.

Who was the stranger, and why did he keep the fact of
this immense wealth hidden from the world ? Suppose
he, Aristides, were to tell? Would n’t the schoolboys
look up at him with interest as the hero and discoverer of
this wonderful cavern, and would n’t the stage-driver feel
proud of his acquaintance and offer him rides for nothing ?
Why had n’t Smith discovered it — who was poor and wanted
money, whom Aristides had liked, who was the father of
M LISS 277

M’liss, for whom Aristides confessed a secret passion, who
belonged to the settlement and helped to build it up—-
instead of the stranger? Had Smith never a suspicion
that gold was so near him, and if so, why had he killed
himself? But did Smith kill himself? And at this
thought and its correlative fancy, again the cheek of Aris-
tides blanched, and the candle shook in his nerveless fingers.

Apart and distinct from these passing conjectures one idea
remained firm and dominant in his mind: the man with
the red handkerchief had no right to this treasure! The
mysterious instinct which directed this judicial ruling of
Aristides had settled this fact as indubitably as though
proven by the weight of the strongest testimony. For an
instant a wild thought sprang up in his heart, and he seized
the nearest mass of ore with the half-formed intention of
bearing it directly to the feet of M’liss as her just and due
inheritance. But Aristides could not lift it, and the idea
passed out of his mind with the frustrated action.

At the further end of the gallery a few blankets were
lying, and with some mining implements, a kettle of water,
a few worn flannel shirts, were the only articles which this
subterranean habitation possessed. In turning over one of
the blankets Aristides picked up a woman’s comb. It was
a tortoise-shell, and bright with some fanciful ornamenta-
tion. Without a moment’s hesitation Aristides pocketed
it as the natural property of M’liss. A pocketbook con-
taining a few old letters in the breast pocket of one of the
blue shirts was transferred to that of Aristides with the
same coolness and sentiment of instinctive justice.

Aristides wisely reflected that these unimportant articles
would excite no suspicion if found in his possession. A
fragment of the rock, which, if he had taken it as he felt
impelled, would have precipitated the discovery that Aris-
tides had decided to put off until he had perfected a certain
plan.
278 EARLIER SKETCHES

The light from the opening above had gradually faded,
and Aristides knew that night had fallen. To prevent
suspicion he must return home. He reéntered the gallery
and reached the opening of the egress. One of the roots
of the tree projected into the opening.

He seized it and endeavored to lift it, but in vain. Pant-
ing with exertion, he again and again exerted the fullest
power of his active sinews, but the tree remained immova-
ble — the opening remained sealed as firmly as with Sol-
omon’s signet. Raising his candle towards it, Aristides saw
the reason of its resistance. In his hurried ingress he had
allowed the tree to revolve sufficiently to permit one of its
roots to project into the opening, which held it firmly down.
In the shock of the discovery the excitement which had
sustained him gave way, and with a hopeless cry the just
Aristides fell senseless on the floor of the gallery.

CHAPTER VI
THE TRIALS OF MRS. MORPHER

“Now, where on earth can that child be?” said Mrs.
Morpher, shading her eyes with her hand, as she stood at
the door of the “Mountain Ranch,” looking down the
Wingdam road at sunset. ‘“ With his best things on, too.
Goodness ! — what were boys made for ? ”

Mr. Morpher, without replying to this question, appar-
ently addressed to himself as an adult representative of the
wayward species, appeared at the door, and endeavored to
your oil on the troubled waters.

“Oh, he’s all right, Sue! Don’t fuss about him,” saia
Mr. Morpher with an imbecile sense of conveying comfort
in the emphasized pronoun. ‘He’s down the gulch, or
in the tunnel, or over to the claim. He’ll turn up by bed-
time. Don’t you worry about dim. I7ll look him up in
M’LISS 279

a minit,” and Mr. Morpher, taking his hat, sauntered down
the road in the direction of the National Hotel.

Mrs. Mopher gazed doubtfully after her liege. “ Look-
ing up” Aristides, in her domestic experience, implied a
prolonged absence in the bar-room of the hotel, the tedium
whereof was beguiled by seven-up or euchre. But she
only said: “ Don’t be long, James,” and sighed hopelessly
as she turned back into the house.

Once again within her own castle walls Mrs. Morpher
dropped her look of patient suffering and glanced defiantly
around for a fresh grievance.

The decorous little parlor offered nothing to provoke the
hostility of her peculiar instincts. Spotless were the white
curtains ; the bright carpet guiltless of stain or dust. The
chairs were placed arithmetically in twos, and added up
evenly on the four sides with nothing to carry over. Two
bunches of lavender and fennel breathed an odor of sancti-
fied cleanliness through the room. Five daguerreotypes on
the mantelpiece represented the Morpher family in the
progressive stages of petrifaction, and had the Medusa-like
effect of freezing visitors into similar attitudes in their
chairs. The walls were further enlivened with two colored
engravings of scenes in the domestic history of George
Washington, in which the Father of his Country seemed to
look blandly from his own correct family circle into Mor-
pher’s, and to breathe quite audibly from his gilt frame a
dignified blessing.

Lingering a moment in this sacred inclosure to readjust
the tablecloth, Mrs. Morpher passed into the dining-room.
where the correct Clytie presided at the supper-table, a
which the rest of the family were seated. Mrs. Morpher’s
quick eyes caught the spectacle of M’liss with her chin
resting on her hands, and her elbows on the table, sardoni-
cally surveying the model of deportment opposite to her.

“ M’liss!””
280 EARLIER SKETCHES

“Well?”

“Where ’s your elbows ? ”

“Here ’s one and there ’s the other,” said M’liss quietly,
indicating their respective localities by smartly tapping
them with the palm of her hand.

“Take them off the table, instantly, you bold, forward
girl — and you, sir, quit that giggling and eat your supper,
if you don’t want to be put to bed without it!” added Mrs.
Morpher to Lycurgus, to whom M’liss’s answer had afforded
boundless satisfaction. ‘ You ’re getting to be just as bad
as her, and mercy knows you never were a seraphim ! ”

“What ’s a seraphim, mother, and what do they do?”
asked Lycurgus, with growing interest.

“They don’t ask questions when they should be eating
their supper, and thankful for it,’ interposed Clytie, au-
thoritatively, as one to whom the genteel attributes and
social habits of the seraphim had been a privileged revela-
tion.

“ But, mother ”? —

“ Hush — and don’t be a heathen —run and see who is
coming in,” said Mrs. Morpher, as the sound of footsteps
was heard in the passage.

The door opened and McSnagley entered.

“Why, bless my soul —how do you do?” said Mrs.
Morpher, with genteel astonishment. ‘Quite a stranger, I
declare.”

This was a polite fiction. M’liss knew the fact to be
that Mrs. Morpher was reputed to ‘“ set the best table” in
Smith’s Pocket, and McSnagley always called in on Sunday
evenings at supper to discuss the current gossip, and “ nag”
M’liss with selected texts.

The verbal McSnagley as usual could n’t stop a moment
—and just dropped in “in passin’.” The actual McSnag-
ley deposited his hat in the corner, and placed himself, in
the flesh, on a chair by the table.
M’LISS 281

“ And how ’s Brother James, and the fammerly ?”

“ They ’re all well — except ‘ Risty;’ he’s off again, —
as if my hfe were n’t already pestered out with one child,”
and Mrs. Morpher glanced significantly at M’liss.

“Ah, well, we all of us have our trials,” said McSnag-
ley. “I’ve been ailin’ again. That ager must be in my
bones still. I’ve been rather onsettled myself to-day.”

There was the appearance of truth in this statement;
Mr. McSnagley’s voice had a hollow resonant sound, and
his eyes were nervous and fidgety. He had an odd trick,
too, of occasionally stopping in the middle of a sentence,
and listening as though he heard some distant sound.
These things, which Mrs. Morpher recalled afterwards, did
not, in the undercurrent of uneasiness about Aristides which
she felt the whole of that evening, so particularly attract
her notice.

“T know something,” said Lycurgus, during one of these
pauses, from the retirement of his corner.

“Tf you dare to— Kerg!” said M’liss.

“Mliss says she knows where Risty is, but she won’t
tell,” said the lawgiver, not heeding the warning. The
words were scarcely uttered before M’liss’s red hand flashed
in the air and descended with a sounding box on the
traitor’s ear. Lycurgus howled, Mrs. Morpher darted into
the corner, and M’liss was dragged defiant and struggling
to the light.

“Oh, you wicked, wicked child— why don’t you say
where, if you know ?” said Mrs. Morpher, shaking her, as
if the information were to be dislodged from some concealed
part of her clothing.

“T didn’t say I knew for sure,” at last responded
M’liss. ‘TI said I thought I knew.”

“Well, where do you think he is ? ”

But M’liss was firm. Even the gloomy picture of the
future state devised by McSnagley could not alter her
282 EARLIER SKETCHES

determination. Mrs. Morpher, who had a wholesome awe
for this strange child, at last had recourse to entreaty,
Finally Mliss offered a compromise.

“T?ll tell the master, but I won’t tell you — partikerly
him,” said M’liss, indicating the parson with a bodkin-
like dart of her forefinger.

Mrs. Morpher hesitated. Her maternal anxiety at
length overcame her sense of dignity and discipline.

‘‘ Who knows where the master is, or where he is to be
found to-night ? ” she asked hastily.

“He ’s over to Dr. Duchesne’s,” said Clytie eagerly;
“that is,’ she stammered, a rich color suddenly flushing
from her temples to her round shoulders, “he’s usually
there in the evenings, I mean.”

“Run over, there’s a dear, and ask him to come here,”
said Mrs. Morpher, without noticing a sudden irregularity
of conduct in her firstborn. “ Run quick!”

Clytie did not wait for a second command. Without
availing herself of the proffered company of McSnagley she
hastily tied the strings of her school hat under her plump
chin, and slipped out of the house. It was not far to the
doctor’s office, and Clytie walked quickly, overlooking in
her haste and preoccupation the admiring glances which
several of the swains of Smith’s Pocket cast after her as
she passed. But on arriving at the doctor’s door, so out of
breath and excited was this usual model of deportment that,
on finding herself in the presence of the master and his
friend, she only stood in embarrassed silence, and made up
for her lack of verbal expression by a succession of elo-
quent blushes.

Let us look at her for a moment as she stands there.
Her little straw hat, trimmed with cherry-colored ribbons,
rests on the waves of her blonde hair. There are other gay
ribbons on her light summer dress, clasping her round
waist, girdling her wrist, and fastening her collar about her
M’LISS 283

white throat. Her farge blue eyes are very dark and moist
—it may be with excitement ora tearful thought of the
lost Aristides — or the tobacco smoke, with which I regret
to say the room is highly charged. But certainly as she
stands leaning against the doorway, biting her moist scar-
let lip, and trying to pull down the broad brim of her hat
over the surging waves of color that wild beat rhythmically
up to her cheeks and temples, she is so dangerously pretty
that I am glad for the master’s sake he is the philosopher he
has just described himself to his friend the doctor, and that
he prefers to study human physiology from the inner surfaces.

When Clytie had recovered herself sufficiently to state
her message, the master offered to accompany her back.
As Clytie took his arm with some slight trepidation Dr.
Duchesne, who had taken sharp notes of these “ febrile ”
symptoms, uttered a prolonged whistle and returned thought-
fully to his office.

Although Clytie found the distance returning no further
than the distance going, with the exhaustion of her first
journey it was natural that her homeward steps should be
slower, and that the master should regulate his pace to
accommodate her. It was natural, too, that her voice should
be quite low and indistinct, so that the master was obliged
to bring his hat nearer the cherry-colored ribbons in the
course of conversation. It was also natural that he should
offer the sensitive young girl such comfort as lay in ten-
derly modulated tones and playful epithets. And if in the
irregularities of the main street it was necessary to take
Clytie’s hand or to put his arm around her waist in help-
ing her up declivities, that the master saw no impropriety
in the act was evident from the fact that he did not remove
his arm when the difficulty was surmounted. In this way
Clytie’s return occupied some moments more than her go-
ing, and Mrs. Morpher was waiting anxiously at the door
when the young people arrived.
284 EARLIER SKETCHES

As the master entered the rooom, M’liss called him to
her. ‘Bend down your head,” she said, “and Ill whis-
per. But mind, now, I don’t say I know for truth where
Risty is, I only reckon.”

The master bent down his head. As usual in such cases,
everybody else felt constrained to listen, and McSnagley’s
curiosity was awakened to its fullest extent. When the
master had received the required information, he said
quietly : —

“T think I’ll go myself to this place which M’liss
wishes to make a secret of and see if the boy is there. It
will save trouble to any one else, if she should be mis-
taken.”

“Had n’t you better take some one with you?” said
Mrs. Morpher.

“By all means. I’ll go!” said Mr. McSnagley, with
feverish alacrity.

The master looked inquiringly at M’liss.

“ He can go if he wants to, but he’d better not,” said
M’liss, looking directly into McSnagley’s eyes.

“What do you mean by that, you little savage ?” said
McSnagley quickly.

M’liss turned scornfully away. ‘‘ Go,” she said, — “go
if you want to,” and resumed her seat in the corner.

The master hesitated. But he could not withstand the
appeal in the eyes of the mother and daughter, and after a
short inward struggle he turned to McSnagley and bade
him briefly ‘ Come.”

When they had left the house and stood in the road to-
gether, McSnagley stopped,

“ Where are you goin’ ?”

“To Smith’s Pocket.”

McSnagley still lingered. ‘Do you ever carry any wep-
pings?” he at length asked.

“Weapons? No. What do you want with weapons to
M LISS 285

go a mile on a starlit road to a deserted claim. Nonsense,
man, what are you thinking of ? We/’re hunting a lost
child, not a runaway felon. Come along,” and the master
dragged him away.

Mrs. Morpher watched them from the door until their
figures were lost in the darkness. When she returned to
the dining-room, Clytie had already retired to her room,
and Mrs. Morpher, overruling M’liss’s desire to sit up until
the master returned, bade her follow that correct example.
‘There ’s Clytie, now, gone to bed like a young lady, and
do you do like her,” and Mrs. Morpher, with this one drop
of balm in the midst of her trials, trimmed the light and
sat down in patience to wait for Aristides, and console her-
self with the reflection of Clytie’s excellence. ‘ Poor
Clytie!” mused that motherly woman ; “ how excited and
worried she looks about her brother. I hope she’ll be able
to get to sleep.”

It did not occur to Mrs. Morpher that there were seasons
in the life of young girls when younger brothers ceased to
become objects of extreme solicitude. It did not occur to
her to go upstairs and see how her wish was likely to be
gratified. It was well in her anxiety that she did not, and
that the crowning trial of the day’s troubles was spared her
then. For at that moment Clytie was lying on the bed
where she had flung herself without undressing, the heavy
masses of her blond hair tumbled about her neck, and her
hof face buried in her hands.

Of what was the correct Clytie thinking ?

She was thinking, lying there with her burning cheeks
ptessed against the pillow, that she loved the master!
Ske was recalling step by step every incident that had oc-
curred in their lonely walk. She was repeating to herself
kis facile sentences, wringing and twisting them to extract
one drop to assuage the strange thirst that was growing up
inhersoul. She was thinking — silly Clytie ! — that he had
286 EARLIER SKETCHES

never appeared so kind before, and she was thinking — sil-
lier Clytie!— that no one had ever before felt as she did
then.

How soft and white his hands were! How sweet and
gentle were the tones of his voice! How easily he spoke —
so unlike her father, McSnagley, or the young men whom
she met at church or on picnics! How tall and handsome
he looked as he pressed her hand at the door! Did he
press her hand, or was it a mistake? Yes, he must have
pressed her hand, for she remembers now to have pressed his
in return. And he put his arm around her waist once, and
she feels it yet, and the strange perfume as he drew her
closer to him. (Mem.— The master had been smoking.
Poor Clytie !)

When she had reached this point she raised herself and
sat up, and began the process of undressing, mechanically
putting each article away in the precise, methodical habit of
her former life. But she found herself soon sitting again
on the bed, twisting her hair, which fell over her plump
white shoulders, idly between her fingers, and patting the
carpet with her small white foot. She had been sitting thus
some minutes when she heard the sound of voices with-
out, the trampling of many feet, and a loud rapping at the
door below. She sprang to the door and looked out in the
passage. Something white passed by her like a flash and
crouched down at the head of the stairs. It was M’liss.

Mrs. Morpher opened the door.

“Ts Mr. Morpher in?” said a half dozen strange, hoarse
voices.

6c No ! 29

‘Where is he ? ”

“He’s at some of the saloons. Oh, tell me, has any-
thing happened? Is it about Aristides? Where is he
— is he safe ? ” said Mrs. Morpher, wringing her hands in
agony.
M’LISS 287

“ He’s all right,” said one of the men, with Mr. Mor
pher’s old emphasis ; ‘ but ”? —

“ But what ? ”

M’liss moved slowly down the staircase, and Clytie from
he passage above held her breath.

“There’s been a row down to Smith’s old Pocket —z
fight —a man killed.”

‘Who ?” shouted M’liss from the stairs.

“ McSnagley — shot dead.”

CHAPTER VII

Tue PEvPLE

vs. Before Chief Justice Lyncn.
Joun Doz WATERS.

The hurried statement of the messenger was corroborated
in the streets that night. It was certain that McSnagley
was killed. Smith’s Pocket, excited but skeptical, had
seen the body, had put its fingers in the bullethole, and
was satisfied. Smith’s Pocket, albeit hoarse with shouting
and excitement, still discussed details with infinite relish
in bar-rooms and saloons, and in the main street in clam-
orous knots that in front of the jail where the prisoner
was confined seemed to swell into a mob. Smith’s Pocket,
bearded, blue-shirted, and belligerent, crowding about this
locality, from time to time uttered appeals to justice that
swelled on the night wind, not infrequently coupling these
invocations with the name of that eminent jurist — Lynch.

Let not the simple reader suppose that the mere taking
off of a fellow. mortal had created this uproar. The tenure
of life in Smith’s Pocket was vain and uncertain at the
best, and as such philosophically accepted, and the blowing
out of a brief candle here and there seldom left a perma-
nent shadow with the survivors. In such instances, too,
288 EARLIER SKETCHES

vhe victims had received their quietus from the hands of
brother townsmen, socially, as it were, in broad day, in the
open streets, and under other mitigating circumstances,
Thus, when Judge Starbottle of Virginia and ‘‘ French Pete ”?
exchanged shots with each other across the plaza until their
revolvers were exhausted, and the luckless Pete received a
bullet through the lungs, half the town witnessed jit, and
were struck with the gallant and chivalrous bearing of these
gentlemen, and to this day point with feelings of pride and
admiration to the bulletholes in the door of the National
Hotel, as they explain how narrow was the escape of the
women in the parlor. But here was a man murdered at
night, in a lonely place, and by a stranger —a man un-
known to the saloons of Smith’s Pocket —a wretch who
could not plead the excitement of monte or the delirium of
whiskey as an excuse. No wonder that Smith’s Pocket
surged with virtuous indignation beneath the windows of
his prison, and clamored for his blood.

And as the crowd thickened and swayed to and fro, the
story of his crime grew exaggerated by hurried and frequent
repetition. Half a dozen speakers volunteered to give the
details with an added horror to every sentence. How one
of Morpher’s children had been missing for a week or more.
How the schoolmaster and the parson were taking a walk
that evening, and coming to Smith’s Pocket heard a faint
voice from its depths which they recognized as belonging to
the missing child. How they had succeeded in dragging
him out and gathered from his infant lips the story of his
incarceration by the murderer, Waters, and his enforced
labors in the mine. How they were interrupted by the
appearance of Waters, followed by a highly colored and
epithet-illustrated account of the interview and quarrel.
How Waters struck the schoolmaster, who returned the blow
with a pick, How Waters thereupon drew a derringer and
fired, missing the schoolmaster, but killing McSnagley
M’LISS 289

behind him. How it was believed that Waters was one of
Joaquin’s gang, that he had killed Smith, etc, etc. At
each pause the crowd pushed and panted, stealthily creeping
around the doors and windows of the jail like some strange
beast of prey, until the climax was reached, and a hush fell,
and two men were silently dispatched for a rope, and a
critical examination was made of the limbs of a pine-tree in
the vicinity.

The man to whom these incidents had the most terrible
significance might have seemed the least concerned as he sat
that night but a few feet removed from the eager crowd
without, his hands lightly clasped together between his
knees, and the expression on his face of one whose thoughts
were far away. A candle stuck in a tin sconce on the wall
flickered as the night wind blew freshly through a broken
pane of the window. Its uncertain light revealed a low
room whose cloth ceiling was stained and ragged, and from
whose boarded walls the torn paper hung in strips; a lumber-
room partitioned from the front office, which was occupied
by a justice of the peace. If this temporary dungeon had
un appearance of insecurity, there was some compensation in
the spectacle of an armed sentinel who sat upon a straw
mattress in the doorway, and another who patrolled the
narrow hall which led to the street. That the prisoner was
not placed in one of the cells in the floor below may have
been owing to the fact that the law recognized his detention
as only temporary, and while providing the two guards as a
preventive against the egress of crime within, discreetly
removed all unnecessary and provoking obstacles to the
ingress of justice from without.

Since the prisoner’s arrest he had refused to answer any
interrogatories. Since he had been placed in confinement he
had not moved from his present attitude. The guard, find-
ing all attempts at conversation fruitless, had fallen into a
veverie, and regaled himself with pieces of straw plucked
290 EARLIER SKETCHES

from the mattress. A mouse ran across the floor. The
silence contrasted strangely with the hum of voices in the
street.

The candle-light, falling across the prisoner’s forehead,
showed the features which Smith’s Pocket knew and recog.
nized as Waters, the strange prospector. Had M’liss or
Aristides seen him then they would have missed that sinister
expression which was part of their fearful remembrance.
The hard, grim outlines of his mouth were relaxed, the
broad shoulders were bent and contracted, the quick, search-
ing eyes were fixed on vacancy. The strong man —
physically strong only —was breaking up. The fist that
might have felled an ox could do nothing more than sepa-
rate its idle fingers with childishness of power and purpose.
An hour longer in this condition, and the gallows would
have claimed a figure scarcely less limp and impotent than
that it was destined to ultimately reject.

He had been trying to collect his thoughts. Would they
hang him? No, they must try him first, legally, and he
could prove —he could prove— But what could he prove?
For whenever he attempted to consider the uncertain chances
of his escape, he found his thoughts straying wide of the
question. It was of no use for him to clasp his fingers or
knit his brows. Why did the recollection of a school-fellow,
long since forgotten, blot out all the fierce and feverish
memories of the night and the terrible certainty of the
future? Why did the strips of paper hanging from the
wall recall to him the pattern of a kite he had flown forty
years ago. In a moment like this, when all his energies
were required and all his cunning and tact would be called
into service, could he think of nothing better than trying to
match the torn paper on the wall, or to count the cracks in
the floor? And an oath rose to his lips, but from very
feebleness died away without expression.

Why had he ever come to Smith’s Pocket ? If he had
M’LISS 291

not been guided by that hell-cat, this would not have hap.
pened. What if he were to tell «27 he knew? What if he
should accuse her? But would they be willing to give up
the bird they had already caught ? Yet he again found ,
himself cursing his own treachery and cowardice, and this
time an exclamation burst from his lips and attracted the
attention of the guard.

“ Hello, there! easy, old fellow; thar ain’t any good in
that,” said the sentinel, looking up. “It’s a bad fix you’re
in, swre, but rarin’ and pitchin’ won’t help things. ’T ain’t
no use cussin’ — leastways, ’t ain’t that kind o’ swearing that
gets a chap out o’ here,” he added, with a conscientious
reservation. ‘Now, ef I was in your place, I’d kinder
reflect on my sins, and make my peace with God Almighty,
for I tell you the looks o’ them people outside ain’t pleas-
ant. You’re in the hands of the law, and the law will
protect you as far as it can, —as far as two men can stand
agin a hundred; sabe? That’s what’s the matter; and
it’s as well that you knowed that now as any time.”

But the prisoner had relapsed into his old attitude, and
was surveying the jailor with the same abstracted air as
before. That individual resumed his seat on the mattress,
and now lent his ear to a colloquy which seemed to be
progressing at the foot of the stairs. Presently he was
hailed by his brother turnkey from below.

“Oh, Bill,” said fidus Achates from the passage, with
the usual Californian prefatory ejaculation.

“Well?”

‘“‘ Here’s M’liss! Says she wants to come up. Shall I
let her in?”

The subject of inquiry, however, settled the question of
admission by darting past the guard below in this moment
of preoccupation, and bounded up the stairs like a young
fawn. The guards laughed.

“Now, then, my infant phenomenon,” said the one
292 EARLIER SKETCHES

called Bill, as M’liss stood panting before him, “ wot’s up?
and nextly, wot ’s in that bottle ? ”’

M’liss whisked the bottle which she held in her hand
smartly under her apron, and said curtly, “ Where ’s him
vhat killed the parson ?”

‘“‘ Yonder,” replied the man, indicating the abstracted
figure with his hand. “ Wot do yow want with him ?
None o’ your tricks here, now,” he added threateningly.

“T want to see him!”

“ Well, look! make the most of your time, and his too,
for the matter of that; but mind, now, no nonsense, M’liss,
he won’t stand it!’’ repeated the guard with an emphasis
in the caution.

Mliss‘ crossed the room, until opposite the prisoner.
“ Are you the chap that killed the parson?” she said,
addressing the motionless figure.

Something in the tone of her voice startled the prisoner
from the reverie. He raised his head and glanced quickly,
and with his old sinister expression, at the child.

* What ’s that te you ?”’ he asked, with the grim lines set-
ting about his mouth again, and the old harshness of his voice.

“ Did n’t I tell you he would n’t stand any of your non-
sense, M’liss ? ” said the guard testily.

M’liss only repeated her question.

“And what if I did kill him ? ” said the prisoner sav-
agely; “ what’s that to you, you young hell-cat ? Guard!
— damnation !— what do you let her come here for? Do
you hear? Guard!” he screamed, rising in a transport of
passion, “‘take her away! fling her downstairs! What
the h—ll is she doing here ? ”’

“Tf you was the man that killed McSnagley,” said
M’liss, without heeding the interruption, “I’ve brought
you something ;” and she drew the bottle from under her
apron and extended it to Waters, adding, “It’s brandy —
Cognac — Al.”
M’LISS 293

“Take it away, and take yourself with it,” returned
Waters, without abating his angry accents. ‘Take it away !
do you hear ?”

“Well, that’s what I call ongrateful, dog-gone my skin
if it ain’t,” said the guard, who had been evidently struck
with M’liss’s generosity. ‘ Pass the licker this way, my
veauty, and I’ll keep it till he changes his mind. He’s
naturally a little flustered just now, but he’ll come round
after you go.”

But M’liss did n’t accede to this change in the disposition
of the gift, and was evidently taken aback by her reception
and the refusal of the proffered comfort.

“Come, hand the bottle here!” repeated the guard.
“Tt’s agin rules to bring the pris’ner anything, anyway,
and it’s confiscated to the law. It’s agin the rules, too,
to ask a pris’ner any question that’ll criminate him, and
on the whole you’d better go, M’liss,” added the guard, to
whom the appearance of the bottle had been the means of
provoking a spasm of discipline.

But M’liss refused to make over the coveted treasure.
Bill arose half jestingly and endeavored to get possession of
the bottle. A struggle ensued, good-naturedly on the part
of the guard, but characterized on the part of M’liss by that
half-savage passion which any thwarted whim or instinct
was sure to provoke in her nature. At last with a curse
she freed herself from his grasp, and seizing the bottle by
the neck aimed it with the full strength of her little arm
fairly at his head. But he was quick enough to avert that
important object, if not quick enough to save his shoulder
from receiving the strength of the blow, which shattered
the thin glass and poured the fiery contents of the bottle
over his shirt and breast, saturating his clothes, and diffus-
ing a sharp alcoholic odor through the room.

A forced laugh broke from his lips, as he sank back on
the mattress, not without an underlying sense of awe as
294 EARLIER SKETCHES

this savage girl who stood panting before him, and from
whom he had just escaped a blow which might have been
fatal. ‘It’s a pity to waste so much good licker,’ he
added, with affected carelessness, narrowly watching each
movement of the young pythoness, whose rage was not yet
abated.

“Come, M’liss,” he said at last, “we’ll say quits,
You ’ve lost your brandy, and I’ve got some of the pieces
of yonder bottle sticking in my shoulder yet. I sup-
pose brandy is good for bruises, though. Hand me the
light ! ”’

M’liss reached the candle from the sconce and held it by
the guard as he turned back the collar of his shirt to lay
bare his shoulder. ‘So,” he muttered, “ black and blue;
no bones broken, though no fault of yours, eh ? my young
cherub, if it was n’t. There— why, what are you looking
at in that way, M’liss, are you crazy ? — Hell’s furies, don’t
hold the light so near! What are you doing; Hell —
ho, there! Help!”

Too late, for in an instant he was a sheet of living flame.
When or how the candle had touched his garments, satu-
rated with the inflammable fluid, Waters, the only inactive
spectator in the room, could never afterward tell. He
only knew that the combustion was instantaneous and com-
plete, and before the cry had died from his lips, not only
the guard, but the straw mattress on which he had been
sitting, and the loose strips of paper hanging from the walls,
and the torn cloth ceiling above were in flames.

“Help! Help! Fire! Fire!”

With a superhuman effort, M’liss dragged the prisoner
past the blazing mattress, through the doorway into the
passage, and drew the door, which opened outwardly, against
him. The unhappy guard, still blazing like a funeral pyre,
after wildly beating the air with his arms for a few seconds,
dashed at the broken window, which gave way with his
M'LISS 295

weight, and precipitated him, still flaming, into the yard
below. A column of smoke and a licking tongue of flame
leaped from the open window at the same moment, and the
ery of fire was reéchoed from a hundred voices in the street.
But scarcely had M’liss closed the open door against
Waters, when the guard from the doorway mcunted the
stairs in time to see a flaming figure leap from the window.
The room was filled with smoke and fire. With an instinct
of genius, M’liss, pointing to the open window, shouted
hoarsely in his ear : —

‘“* Waters has escaped ! ”

A ery of fury from the guard was echoed from the stairs,
even now crowded by the excited mob, who feared the
devastating element might still cheat them of their intended
victim. In another moment the house was emptied, and
the front street deserted, as the people rushed to the rear
of the jail — climbing fences and stumbling over ditches in
pursuit of the imagined runaway. M’liss seized the hat
and coat of the luckless ‘“ Bill,” and dragging the prisoner
from his place of concealment hurriedly equipped him, and
hastened through the blinding smoke of the staircase boldly
on the heels of the retiring crowd. Once in the friendly
darkness of the street, it was easy to mingle with the push-
ing throng until an alley crossing at right angles enabled
them to leave the main thoroughfare. A few moments’
rapid flight, and the outskirts of the town were reached,
the tall pines opened their abysmal aisles to the fugitives.
and M’liss paused with her companion. Until daybreak,
at least, here they were safe !

From the time they had quitted the burning room to that
moment, Waters had passed into his listless, abstracted con-
dition, so helpless and feeble that he retained the grasp of
M’liss’s hand more through some instinctive prompting rather
than the dictates of reason. M’liss had fouud it necessary
to almost drag him from the main street and the hurrying
296 EARLIER SKETCHES

crowd, which seemed to exercise a strange fascination over
his bewildered senses. And now he sat down passively
beside her, and seemed to submit to the guidance of her
superior nature.

“You’re safe enough now till daylight,” said M’liss,
when she had recovered her breath, “ but you must make
the best time you can through these woods to-night, keeping
the wind to your back, until you come to the Wingdam
road. There! do you hear?” said M’liss, a little vexed at
her companion’s apathy.

Waters released the hand of M’liss, and commenced me-
chanically to button his coat around his chest with fumbling,
purposeless fingers. He then passed his hand across his
forehead as if to clear his confused and bewildered brain;
all this, however, to no better result than to apparently root
his feet to the soil and to intensify the stupefaction which
seemed to be creeping over him.

“Be quick, now! You’ve no time to lose! Keep
straight on through the woods until you see the stars again
before you, and you’re on the other side of the ridge.
What are you waiting for?’? And M’liss stamped her
little foot impatiently.

An idea which had been struggling for expression at last
seemed to dawn in his eyes. Something like a simpering
blush crept over his face as he fumbled in his pocket. At
last, drawing forth a twenty-dollar piece, he bashfully
offered it to M’liss. In a twinkling the extended arm was
stricken up, and the bright coin flew high in the air, and
disappeared in the darkness.

“ Keep your money! I don’t want it. Don’t do that
again!” said M’liss, highly excited, “or I’11—I’ll — bite
you!”

Her wicked little white teeth flashed ominously as she
said it.

“Get off while you can. Look!” she added, pointing to
M’'LISS 297

a column of flame shooting up above the straggling mass of
buildings in the village, ‘the jail is burning; and if that
goes, the block will go with it. Before morning these woods
will be filled with people. Save yourself while you can!”

‘Waters turned and moved away in the darkness. “ Keep
straight on, and don’t waste a moment,” urged the child, as
the man seemed still disposed to linger. “Trot nuw!” and
in another moment he seemed to melt into the forest
depths.

M’liss threw her apron around her head, and coiled her-
self up at the root of a tree in something of her old fashion.
She had prophesied truly of the probable extent of the fire.
The fresh wind, whirling the sparks over the little settle-
ment, had already fanned the single flame into the broad
sheet which now glowed fiercely, defining the main street
along its entire length. The breeze which fanned her cheek
bore the crash of falling timbers and the shouts of terrified
and anxious men. ‘There were no engines in Smith’s Pocket,
and the contest was unequal. Nothing but a change of
wind could save the doomed settlement.

The red glow lit up the dark cheek of M’liss and kindled
a savage light in her black eyes. Relieved by the back-
ground of the sombre woods, she might have heen a red-
handed Nemesis looking over the city of Vengeance. As
the long tongues of flame licked the broad colonnade of the
National Hotel, and shot a wreathing pillar of fire and smoke
high into the air, M’liss extended her tiny fist and shook it
at the burning building with an inspiration that at the
moment seemed to transtigure her.

So the night wore away until the first red bars of morn-
ing light gleamed beyond the hill, and seemed to emulate
the dying embers of the devastated settlement. M’liss for
the first time began to think of the home she had quitted
the night before, and looked with some anxiety in the direc-
tion of “Mountain Ranch.’ Its white walls and little
298 EARLIER SKETCHES

orchard were untouched, and Icoked peacefully over the
blackened and deserted village. M’liss rose, and, stretching
her cramped limbs, walked briskly toward the town. She
had proceeded but a short distance when she heard the
sound of cautious and hesitating footsteps behind her, and,
facing quickly about, encountered the figure of Waters.

“ Are you drunk ?” said M’liss passionately, “or what
do you mean by this nonsense ? ”

The man approached her with a strange smile on his
face, rubbing his hands together, and shivering as with
cold. When he had reached her side he attempted to take
her hand. M/liss shrank away from him with an expres-
sion of disgust.

«What are you doing here again? ” she demanded.

“T want to go with you. It’s dark in there,” he said,
motioning to the wood he had just quitted, “and I don’t
like to be alone. You’ll let me be with you, won’t you ?
I won’t be any trouble; ’’ and a feeble smile flickered on
his lips.

M’liss darted a quick look into his face. The grim out-
lines of his mouth were relaxed, and his lips moved again
impotently. But his eyes were bright and open, — bright
with a look that was new to M’liss — that imparted a
strange softness and melancholy to his features, — the incip-
ient gleam of insanity !

CHAPTER VIII
THE AUTHOR TO THE READER—EXPLANATORY

If I remember rightly, in one of the admirable tragedies
of Tsien Tsiang at a certain culminating point of interest
an innocent person is about to be sacrificed. The knife is
raised and the victim meekly awaits the stroke. At this
moment the author of the play appears on the stage, and,
M‘LISS 299

delivering an excellent philosophical dissertation on the
merits of the “ situation,” shows that by the purest princi-
ples of art the sacrifice is necessary, but at the same time
offers to the audience the privilege of changing the dé-
nouement. Such, however, is the nice esthetic sense of a
Chinese auditory, and so universal the desire of bloodshed
in the heathen breast, that invariably at each representa-
tion of this remarkable tragedy the cause of humanity gives
way to the principles of art.

I offer this precedent as an excuse for digressing at a
moment when I have burned down a small settlement,
dispatched a fellow being, and left my heroine alone in the
company of an escaped convict who has just developed
insanity as a new social quality. My object in thus digress-
ing is to confer with the reader in regard to the evolution
of this story, —a familiarity not without precedent, as I
might prove from most of the old Greek comedies, whose
parabasis permits the poet to mingle freely with the dra-
matis persone, to address the audience and descant at
length in regard to himself, his play, and his own merits.

The fact is that, during the progress of this story, I
have received many suggestions from intimate friends in
regard to its incidents and construction. I have also been
in the receipt of correspondence from distant readers, one
letter of which I recall signed by an ‘“ Honest Miner,”
who advises me to “do the right thing by M’liss,” or in-
timates somewhat obscurely that he will ‘“ bust my crust
for me,” which, though complimentary in its abstract
expression of interest, and implying a taste for euphonism,
evinces an innate coarseness which I fear may blunt his
perceptions of delicate shades and Greek outlines.

Again, the practical nature of Californians and their
familiarity with scenes and incidents which would be novel
to other people have occasioned me great uneasiness. In
the course of the last three chapters of M’liss I have re«
800 EARLIER SKETCHES

ceived some twenty or thirty communications from differené
parts of the State corroborating incidents of my story,
which I solemnly assure the reader is purely fictitious.
Some one has lately sent me a copy of an interior paper
containing an old obituary of Smith of Smith’s Pocket.
Another correspondent writes to me that he was acquainted
with the schoolmaster in the fall of ’49, and that they
“‘orubbed together.” The editors of the serial in which
this story appears assure me that they have received an
advertisement from the landlord of the “ National Hotel”
contingent upon an editorial notice of its having been at
one time the abode of M’liss; while an aunt of the heroine,
alluding in excellent terms to the reformed character of
her niece M’liss, clenches her sincerity by requesting the
loan of twenty dollars to buy clothes for the desolate
orphan.

Under these cireumstances I have hesitated to go on.
What were the bodiless creatures of my fancy — the pale’
phantoms of thought, evoked in the solitude of my chamber,
and sometimes even midst the hum of busy streets — have
suddenly grown into flesh and blood, living people, pro-
tected by the laws of society, and having their legal right
to actions for slander in any court. Worse than that, I
have sometimes thought with terror of the new responsibility
which might attach to my development of their characters.
What if I were obliged to support and protect these Frank-
enstein monsters? What if the original of the principal
villain of my story should feel impelled through esthetic
principles of art to work out in real life the supposititious
dénouement I have sketched for him ?

I have therefore concluded to lay aside my pen for this
week, leaving the catastrophe impending, and await the sug-
gestion of my correspondents. I do so the more cheerfully
as it enables the editors of this weekly to publish twenty-
seven more columns of Miss Braddon’s “ Outcasts of So<
M’LISS 301

ciety ” and the remainder of the “ Duke’s Motto,’? — two
works which in the quiet simplicity of their home-like pic-
tures and household incidents are attended with none of the
difficulties which beset my unhappy story.

CHAPTER IX
CLEANING UP

As the master, wan-eyed and unrefreshed by slumber,
strayed the next morning among the blackened ruins of the
fire, he was conscious of having undergone some strange
revulsion of sentiment. What he remembered of the last
evening’s events, though feverish and indistinct as a dream,
and though, like a dream, without coherency or connected
outline, had nevertheless seriously impressed him. How
frivolous and trifling his past life and its pursuits looked
through the lightning vista opened to his eyes by the flash
of Waters’s pistol! ‘Suppose I had been killed,” rumi-
nated the master, ‘what then? A paragraph in the
‘Banner,’ headed ‘ Fatal Affray,’ and my name added te
the already swollen list of victims to lawless violence and
crime! Humph! A pretty scrape, truly!” And the
master ground his teeth with vexation.

Let not the reader judge him too hastily. In the best
regulated mind, thankfulness for deliverance from danger is
apt to be mingled with some doubts as to the necessity of
the trial.

In this frame of mind the last person he would have
cared to meet was Clytie. That young woman’s evil
genius, however, led her to pass the burnt district that
morning. Perhaps she had anticipated the meeting. At
all events, he had proceeded but a few steps before he was
confronted by the identical round hat and cherry colored
ribbons. But in his present humor the cheerful color
3802 EARLIER SKETCHES

somehow reminded him of the fire and of a ruddy stain
over McSnagley’s heart, and invested the innocent Clytie
with a figurative significance. Now Clytie’s reveries at
that moment were pleasant, if the brightness of her eyes
and the freshened color on her cheeks were any sign, and,
as she had not seen the master since then, she naturally ex-
pected to take up the thread of romance where it had been
dropped. But it required all her feminine tact to conceal
her embarrassment at his formal greeting and constrained
* manner.

“‘ He is bashful,” reasoned Clytie to herself.

“This girl is a tremendous fool,’ growled the master
inwardly.

An awkward pause ensued. Finally, Clytie logwitur : —

“M’liss has been missing since the fire!”

“ Missing ? ”’ echoed the master in his natural tone.

Clytie bit her lip with vexation. “Yes, she’s always
running away. She’ll be back again. But you look
interested. Do you know,” she continued with exceeding
archness, ‘I sometimes think, Mr. Gray, if M’liss were a
little older” —

“Well?”

“ Well, putting this and that together, you know!”

“Well?”

“People will talk, you know,” continued Clytie, with
that excessive fondness weak people exhibit in enveloping
in mystery the commonest affairs of life.

‘People are d—d fools!” roared the master.

The correct Clytie was a little shocked. Perhaps under-
neath it was a secret admiration of the transgressor. Force
even of this cheap quality goes a good way with some
natures.

“That is,” continued the master, with an increase of
dignity in inverse proportion to the lapse he had made,
“people are apt to be mistaken, Miss Morpher, and without
M’LISS 803

meaning it, to do infinite injustice to their fellow mortals.
But I see I am detaining you. I will try and find Melissa,
I wish you good-morning.”” And Don Whiskerandos stalked
solemnly away.

Clytie turned red and white by turns, and her eyes filled
with tears. This dénouement to her dreams was utterly
unexpected. While a girl of stronger character and active
intelligence would have employed the time in digesting
plans of future retaliation and revenge, Clytie’s dull brain
and placid nature were utterly perplexed and shaken.

“Dear me!” said Clytie to herself, as she started home,
“if he don’t love me, why don’t he say so?”

The master, or Mr. Gray, as we may now call him as he
draws near the close of his professional career, took the old
trail through the forest, which led to M’liss’s former hiding-
place. He walked on briskly, revolving in his mind the
feasibility of leaving Smith’s Pocket. The late disaster,
which would affect the prosperity of the settlement for
some time to come, offered an excuse to him to give up his
situation. On searching his pockets he found his present
capital to amount to ten dollars. This increased by forty
dollars, due him from the trustees, would make fifty dollars ;
deduct thirty dollars for liabilities, and he would have twenty
dollars left to begin the world anew. Youth and hope added
an indefinite number of ciphers'to the right hand of these
figures, and in this sanguine mood our young Alnaschar
walked on until he had reached the old pine throne in the
bank of the forest. M’liss was not there. He sat down
on the trunk of the tree, and for a few moments gave him-
self up to the associations it suggested. What would be-
come of M’liss after he was gone? But he quickly dropped
the subject as one too visionary and sentimental for his
then fiercely practical consideration, and, to prevent the
recurrence of such distracting fancies, began to retrace his
steps toward the settlement. At the edge of the woods,
804 EARLIER SKETCHES

at a point where the trail forked toward the old site of
Smith’s Pocket, he saw M’liss coming toward him. Her
ordinary pace on such occasions was a kind of Indian trot;
to his surprise she was walking slowly, with her apron
thrown over her head, —an indication of meditation with
M’liss and the usual way in which she excluded the outer
world in studying her lessons. When she was within a
few feet of him he called her by name. She started as
she recognized him. There was a shade of seriousness in
her dark eyes, and the hand that took his was listless and
totally unlike her old frank, energetic grasp.

“You look worried, M’liss,”’ said Mr. Gray soothingly, as
the old sentimental feeling crept over his heart. ‘‘ What ’s
the matter now ?”

M’liss replied by seating herself on the bank beside
the road, and pointed to a place by her side. Mr. Gray
took the proffered seat. M’liss then, fixing her eyes on
some distant part of the view, remained for some moments
in silence. Then, without turning her head or moving her
eyes, she asked : —

“What’s that they call a girl that has money left
her?”

“An heiress, M’liss ?”

“ Yes, an heiress.”

“Well?” said Mr. Gray.

“Well,” said M’liss, without moving her eyes, “I’m
cone, —I’m a heiress!”

“What ’s that, M’liss ?” said Mr. Gray laughingly.

M’liss was silent again. Suddenly turning her eyes full
upon him, she said: —

“Can you keep a secret ?”’

“Yes,” said Mr. Gray, beginning to be impressed by the
child’s manner.

“ Listen, then.”

In short guick sentences, M’liss began. How Aristides
M'LISS 303

had several times hinted of the concealed riches of Smith’s
Pocket. How he had last night repeated the story to her
of a strange discovery he had made. How she remembered
to have heard her father often swear that there was money
“in that hole,” if he only had means to work it. How,
partly impressed by this statement and partly from curios-
ity and pity for the prisoner, she had visited him in con-
finement. An account of her interview, the origin of the
fire, her flight with Waters. (Questions by Mr. Gray:
What was your object in assisting this man to escape? lns.
They were going to kill him. Ques. Had n’t he killed Mce-
Snagley. Ans. Yes, but McSnagley ought to have been
killed long ago.) How she had taken leave of him that
morning. How he had come back again “ silly.”” How she
had dragged him on toward the Wingdam road, and how he
had told her that all the hidden wealth of Smith’s Pocket
had belonged to her father. How she had found out, from
some questions, that he had known her father. But how
all his other answers were “silly.”

“ And where is he now ?” asked Mr. Gray.

“Gone,” said M’liss. ‘I left him at the edge of the
wood to go back and get some provisions, and when I re-
turned he was gone. If he had any senses left, he’s miles
away by this time. When he was off I went back to Smith’s
Pocket. I found the hidden opening and saw the gold.”

Mr. Gray looked at her curiously. He had, in his more
intimate knowledge of her character, noticed the unconcern
with which she spoke of the circumstances of her father’s
death and the total lack of any sentiment of filial regar¢c
The idea that this man whom she had aided in escapin,
had ever done her injury had not apparently entered her
mind, nor did Mr. Gray think it necessary to hint the
deeper suspicion he had gathered from Dr. Duchesne that
Waters had murdered her father. If the story of the con-
cealed treasures of Smith’s Pocket were exaggerated he
306 EARLIER SKETCHES

could easily satisfy himself on that point. M1’liss met his
suggestion to return to the Pocket with alacrity, and the
two started away in that direction.

It was late in the afternoon when Mr. Gray returned.
His heightened color and eager inquiry for Dr. Duchesne
provoked the usual hope from the people that he met
“that it was nothing serious.” No, nothing was the mat-
ter, the master answered with a slight laugh, but would
they send the doctor to his schoolhouse when he returned ?
“That young chap’s worse than he thinks,” was one sym-
pathizing suggestion ; “ this kind of life’s too rough for his
sort.”

To while away the interim, Mr. Gray stopped on his way
to the schoolhouse at the stage office as the Wingdam stage
drew up and disgorged its passengers. He was listlessly
watching the passengers as they descended when a soft voice
from the window addressed lim, ‘‘ May I trouble you for
your arm as I get down?” Mr. Gray looked up. It was
a singular request, as the driver was at that moment stand-
ing by the door, apparently for that purpose. But the
request came from a handsome woman, and with a bow the
young man stepped to the door. The lady laid her hand
lightly on his arm, sprang from the stage with a dexterity
that showed the service to have been merely cereionious,
thanked him with an elaboration of acknowledgment which
seemed equally gratuitous, and disappeared in the office.

“That ’s what I call a dead set,” said the driver, draw-
ing a long breath, as he turned to Mr. Gray, who stood in
some embarrassment. ‘Do you know her?”

“No,” said Mr. Gray laughingly, ‘do you? ”

“Nary time! But take care of yourself, young man;
she’s after you, sure!”

But Mr. Gray was continuing his walk to the school-
house, unmindful of the caution. For the momentary
glimpse he had caught of this woman’s face, she appeared
M’LISS 307

to be about thirty. Her dress, though tasteful and elegant,
in the present condition of California society afforded no
criterion of her social status. But the figure of Dr. Du-
chesne waiting for him at the schoolhouse door just then
usurped the place of all others, and she dropped out of his
mind.

“Now then,” said the doctor, as the young man grasped
his hand, “you want me to tell you why your eyes are
bloodshot, why your cheeks burn, and your hand is dry
and hot ?”

“Not exactly! Perhaps you’ll understand the symp-
toms better when you’ve heard my story. Sit down here
and listen.”

The doctor took the proffered seat on top of a desk, and
Mr. Gray, after ‘assuring himself that they were entirely
alone, related the circumstances he had gathered from
M’liss that morning.

“You see, doctor, how unjust were your surmises in
regard to this girl,” continued Mr. Gray. ‘‘ But let that
pass now. At the conclusion of her story, I offered to go
with her to this Ali Baba cave. It was no easy job find-
ing the concealed entrance, but I found it at last, and
ample corroboration of every item of this wild story. The
pocket is rich with the most valuable ore. It has evi-
dently been worked for some time since the discovery was
made, but there is still a fortune in its walls, and several
thousand dollars of ore sacked up in its galleries. Look at
that !’? continued Mr. Gray, as he drew an oblong mass of
quartz and metal from his pocket. ‘Think of a secret of
this kind having been intrusted for three weeks to a pen-
niless orphan girl of twelve and an eccentric schoolhoy
of ten, and undivulged except when a proper occasion
offered.”

Dr. Duchesne smiled. “ And Waters is really clear ?”

“ Yes,” said Mr. Gray.
308 EARLIER SKETCHES

“‘ And M’liss assisted him to escape ? ”

“Yes.”

“Well, you are an innocent one! And you see nothing
a this but an act of thoughtless generosity ? No assisting
of an old accomplice to escape ? ”

“T see nothing but truth in her statement,” returned Mr.
Gray stoutly. ‘If there has been any wrong committed,
I believe her to be innocent of its knowledge.”

“ Well, I’m glad at least the money goes to her and not
to him. But how are you to establish her right to this
property ? ”

“ That was my object in conferring with you. At present
the claim is abandoned. I have taken up the ground in
my own name (for her), and this afternoon I posted up the
usual notice.”

“Goon. You are not so much of a fool, after all.”

“Thank you! This will hold until a better claim is
established. Now, if Smith had discovered this lead, and
was, as the lawyers say, ‘seized and possessed’ of it at the
time of his death, M’liss, of course, as next of kin, inherits
it.”

“ But how can this be proved ? It is the general belief
that Smith committed suicide through extreme poverty and
destitution.”

Mr. Gray drew a letter from his pocket.

“You remember the memorandum I showed you, which
came into my possession. Here it is; it is dated the day
of his death.”

Dr. Duchesne took it and read : —

“July 17th. Five hours in drift — dipping west.
Took out 20 oz. — cleaned up 40 oz. — Mem. Saw M. 8.”

“This evidently refers to actual labor in the mine at the
time,” said Dr. Duchesne. ‘“ But is it legally sufficient to
support a claim of this magnitude? That is the only ques-
tion now. You say this paper was the leaf of an old mem-
M’LISS 309

orandum, torn off and used for a letter by M’liss; do you
know where the orignal book can be found ? ”

“ Aristides has it, or knows where it is,’ answered Mr.
Gray.

“Find it by all means. And get legal advice before you
do anything. Go this very evening to Judge Plunkett and
state your case to him. ‘The promise of a handsome con-
tingent fee won’t hurt M’liss’s prospects any. Remember,
our ideas of abstract justice and the letter of the law in
this case may be entirely different. Take Judge Plunkett
your proofs; that is,” said the Doctor, stopping and eye-
ing his friend keenly, “if you have no fears for M’liss if
this matter should be thoroughly ventilated.”

Mr. Gray did not falter.

“T go at once,” said he gayly, “if only to prove the
child’s claim to a good name if we fail in getting her
property.”

The two men left the schoolhouse together. As they
reached the main street, the doctor paused : —

“ You are still determined ? ”

“Tam,” responded the young man.

“ Good-night, and God speed you, then,’’ and the doctor
left him.

The fire had been particularly severe on the legal frater-
nity in the settlement, and Judge Plunkett’s office, together
with those of his learned brethren, had been consumed with
the courthouse on the previous night. The judge’s
house was on the outskirts of the village, and thither Mr.
Gray proceeded. The judge was at home, but engaged at
that moment. Mr. Gray would wait, and was ushered into
a small room evidently used as a kitchen, but just then
littered with law books, bundles of papers, and blanks that
had been hastily rescued from the burning building. The
sideboard groaned with the weight of several volumes of
New York Reports, that seemed to impart a dusty flavor
310 EARLIER SKETCHES

to the adjoining victual. Mr. Gray picked up a volume of
supreme court decisions from the coal-scuttle, and was
deep in an interesting case, when the door of the adjoining
room opened and Judge Plunkett appeared.

He was an oily man of about fifty, with spectacles. He
was glad to see the schoolmaster. He hoped he was not
suffering froin the excitement of the previous evening. For
his part, the spectacle of sober citizens rising in a body to
vindicate the insulted majesty of the laws of society, and
of man, had always something sublime in it. And the
murderer had really got away after all. And it was a nar-
row escape the schoolmaster had, too, at Smith’s Pocket.

Mr. Gray took advantage of the digression to state his
business. He briefly recounted the circumstances of the
discovery of the hidden wealth of Smith’s Pocket, and
exhibited the memorandum he had shown the doctor.
When he had concluded, Judge Plunkett looked at him over
his spectacles, and rubbed his hands with satisfaction.

‘* You apprehend,” said the judge eagerly, “that you
will have no difficulty in procuring this book from which
ihe leaf was originally torn ? ”

“ None,” replied Mr. Gray.

“Then, sir, I should give as my professional opinion
that the case was already won.”

Mr. Gray shook the hand of the little man with great
fervor, and thanked him for his belief. ‘‘ And so this prop-
erty will go entirely to M’liss ?” he asked again.

“ Well — ah — no — not exactly,” said Judge Plunkett,
with some caution. “She will benefit by it undoubtedly
— undoubtedly,’ and he rubbed his hands again.

‘‘ Why not M’liss alone? There are no other claim-
ants!” said Mr. Gray.

“T beg your pardon — you mistake,” said Judge Plun-
kett, with a smile. ‘ You surely would not leave out the

widow and motlier ? ”
M’LISS 311

“Why, M’liss is an orphan,” said Mr. Gray in utter be-
wilderment.

““A sad mistake, sir,—a painful though natural mis-
take. Mr. Smith, though separated from his wife, was
never divorced. A very affecting history —the old story,
you know —an injured and loving woman deserted by her
natural protector, but disdaining to avail herself of our
legal aid. By a singular coincidence that I should have
told you, I am anticipating you in this very case. Your
‘services, however, I feel will be invaluable. Your concern
for her amiable and interesting daughter Narcissa — ah, no,
Melissa — will, of course, make you with us. You have
never seen Mrs. Smith? A fine-looking, noble woman,
sir, — though still disconsolate, — still thinking of the de-
parted one. By another singular coincidence that I should
have told you, she is here now. You shall see her, sir.
Pray, let me introduce you;”’ and still rubbing his hands,
Judge Plunkett led the way to the adjoining room.

Mr. Gray followed him mechanically. A handsome
woman rose from the sofa as they entered. It was the
woman he assisted to alight from the Wingdam stage.

CHAPTER X
THE RED ROCK

In the strong light that fell upon her face, Mr. Gray
had an opportunity to examine her features more closely.
Her eyes, which were dark and singularly brilliant, were
half closed, either from some peculiar conformation of the
lids, or an habitual effort to conceal expression. Her skin
was colorless with that satin-like lustre that belongs to
some brunettes, relieved by one or two freckles that were
scarcely blemishes. Her face was squared a little at the
lower angles, but the chin was round and soft, and the
312 EARLIER SKETCHES

curves about the mouth were full and tender enough to
destroy the impression left by contemplation of those rigid
outlines. The effect of its general contour was that of a
handsome woman of thirty. In detail, as the eye dwelt
upon any particular feature, you could have added a margin
of ten years either way.

‘Mrs. Smith — Mr. Gray,” said the lawyer briskly.
“Mr. Gray is the gentleman who, since the decease of
your husband, has taken such a benevolent interest in our
playful Narcissa — Melissa, I should say. He is the pre-
ceptor of our district school, and beside his relation as
teacher to your daughter has, I may say in our legal fash-
ion, stood in loco parentis —in other words, has been a
parent, a —a — father to her.”

At the conclusion of this speech Mrs. Smith darted a
quick glance at Mr. Gray, which was unintelligible to any
but a woman. As there were none of her own keen-witted
sex present to make an ungracious interpretation of it, it
passed unnoticed, except the slight embarrassment and con-
fusion it caused the young man from its apparent gratuity.

“We have met before, I believe,” said Mrs. Smith, with
her bright eyes half hid and her white teeth half disclosed.
“T can easily imagine Mr. Gray’s devotion to a friend from
his courtesy to a stranger. Let me thank you again for
both my daughter and myself.”

In the desperate hope of saying something natural, Mr.
Gray asked if she had seen Melissa yet.

“Oh, dear, no! Think how provoking! Judge Plun-
kett says it is absolutely impossible till some tiresome for-
malities are over. There are so many stupid forms to go
through with first. But how is she ? You have seen her,
have you not? you will see her again to-night, perhaps ?
How I long to embrace her again! She was a mere baby
when she left me. Tell her how I long to fly to her.”

Her impassioned utterance and the dramatic gestures
M’LISS 213

that accompanied these words afforded a singular contrast
to the cool way with which she rearranged the folds of her
dress when she had finished, folding her hands over her
ap and settling herself unmistakably back again on the
sofa. Perhaps it was this that made Mr. Gray think she
had, at some time, been an actress. But the next moment
he caught her eye again and felt pleased, — and again vexed
with himself for being so, — and in this mental condition
began to speak in favor of his old pupil. His embarrass-
ment passed away as he warmed with his subject, dwelling
at length on M’liss’s better qualities, and did not return un-
til in a breathless pause he became aware that this woman’s
bright eyes were bent upon him. ‘The color rose in his
cheek, and with a half-muttered apology for his prolixity
he offered his excuses to retire.

“Stay a moment, Mr. Gray,’ said the lawyer. ‘“ You
are going to town, and will not think it a trouble to see
Mrs. Smith safely back to her hotel. You can talk these
things over with our fair friend on the way. To-morrow,
at ten, I trust to see you both again.”

‘Perhaps I am taxing Mr. Gray’s gallantry too much,”
interposed the lady with a very vivid disclosure of eyes
and teeth. ‘‘Mr. Gray would be only too happy.’’ After
he had uttered this civility, there was a slight consciousness
of truth about it that embarrassed him again. But Mrs.
Smith took his proffered arm, and they bade the lawyer
good-night and passed out in the starlit night together.

Four weeks have elapsed since the advent of Mrs. Smith
to the settlement, — four weeks that might have been years
in any other but a California mining camp, for the wonder-
ful change that has been wrought in its physical aspect.
Each stage has brought its load of fresh adventurers; an-
other hotel, which sprang up on the site of the National,
has its new landlord, and a new set of faces about its hos-
314 EARLIER SKETCHES

pitable board, where the conventional bean appears daily as a
modest vegetable or in the insincerer form of coffee. The
sawmills have been hard at work for the last month, and
huge gaps appear in the circling files of redwood where the
fallen trees are transmuted to a new style of existence in
the damp sappy tenements that have risen over the burnt
district. The ‘“ great strike ” at Smith’s Pocket has been
heralded abroad, and above and below, and on either side of
the crumbling tunnel that bears that name, as other tun-
nels are piercing the bowels of the mountain, shafts are be-
ing sunk, and claims are taken up even to the crest of Red
Mountain, in the hope of striking the great Smith lead.
Already an animated discussion has sprung up in the
columns of the “ Red Mountain Banner” in regard to the
direction of the famous lead, —a discussion assisted by cor-
respondents who have assumed all the letters of the alpha-
bet in their anonymous arguments, and have formed the
opposing “angle” and “ dip” factions of Smith’s Pocket.
But whatever be the direction of the lead, the progress
of the settlement has been steadily onward, with an impe-
tus gained by the late disaster. That classical but much
abused bird, the Phoenix, has been invoked from its ashes
in several editorials in the ‘ Banner,” to sit as a type of
resuscitated Smith’s Pocket, while in the homelier phrase of
an honest miner “it seemed as if the fire kem to kinder
clean out things for a fresh start.”

Meanwhile the quasi-legal administration of the estate of
Smith is drawing near a termination that seems to credit
the prophetic assertion of Judge Plunkett. One fact has
been evolved in the process of examination, viz., that Smith
had discovered the new lead before he was murdered. It
was a fair hypothesis that the man who assumed the benefit of
his discovery was the murderer, but as this did not imme-
diately involve the settlement of the estate it excited little
comment or opposition. The probable murderer had es-
MLISS 314

eaped. Judicial investigations even in the hands of the
people had been attended with disastrous public results, and
there was no desire on the part of justice to open the case
and deal with an abstract p:inciple when there was no op-
portunity of making an individual example. The circum-
stances were being speedily forgotten in the new excitement ;
even the presence of Mrs. Smith lost its novelty. The
‘“* Banner,” when alluding to her husband, spoke of him as
the “late J. Smith, Esq., ” attributing the present activity
of business as the result of his lifelong example of untir-
ing energy, and generally laid the foundation of a belief,
which thereafter obtained, that he died comfortably in the
bosom of his family, surrounded by disconsolate friends,
The history of all pioneer settlements has this legendary
basis, and M’liss may live to see the day when her father’s
connection with the origin of the settlement shall become
apocryphal, and contested like that of Romulus and Remus
and their wolfish wet-nurse.

It is to the everlasting credit and honor of Smith’s Pocket
that the orphan and widow meet no opposition from the spec-
ulative community, and that the claim’s utmost boundaries
are liberally rendered. How far this circumstance may be
owing to the rare personal attractions of the charming
widow or to M’liss’s personal popularity, I shall not pretend
to say. It is enough that when the brief of Judge Plun-
kett’s case is ready there are clouds of willing witnesses
to substantiate and corroborate doubtful points to an ex-
tent that is more creditable to their generosity than their
veracity.

M’liss has seen her mother. Mr. Gray, with his know-
ledge of his pupil’s impulsiveness, has been surprised to
notice that the new relationship seems to awaken none of
those emotions in the child’s nature that he confidently
looked for. On the occasion of their first meeting, to which
Mr. Gray was admitted, M’liss maintained a guarded shy-
316 EARLIER SKETCHES

ness totally different from her usual frank boldness, —a
shyness that was the more remarkable from its contrast
with the unrepressed and somewhat dramatic emotions of
Mrs. Smith. Now, under her mother’s protection and care,
he observes another radical change in M’liss’s appearance.
She is dressed more tastefully and neatly — not entirely the
result of a mother’s influence, but apparently the result of
some natural instinct now for the first time indulged, and
exhibited in a ribbon or a piece of jewelry, worn with a
certain air of consciousness. There is a more strict atten-
tion to the conventionalities of life; her speech is more
careful and guarded; her walk, literally, more womanly
and graceful. Those things Mr. Gray naturally attributes
to the influence of the new relation, though he cannot help
recalling his meeting with M’liss in the woods, on the morn-
ing of the fire, and of dating many of these changes from
thence.

It is a pleasant morning, and Mr. Gray is stirring early.
He has been busied in preparation the night previous, for
this is his last day in Smith’s Pocket. He lingers for some
time about the schoolhouse, gathering up those little trifles
which lie about his desk, which have each a separate his-
tory in his experience of Smith’s Pocket, and are a part of
the incrustations of his life. Lastly, a file of the “Red
Mountain Banner,” is taken from the same receptacle and
packed away in his bag. He walks to the door and turns
to look back. Has he forgotten anything ? No, nothing.
But still he lingers. He wonders who will take his plact
at the desk, and for the first time in his pedagogue ex
perience, perhaps, feels something of an awful responsibility
as he thinks of his past influence over the wretched litth
beings who used to tremble at his nod, and whose future,
ill or good, he may have helped to fashion. At last he
closes the door, almost tenderly, and walks thoughtfully
down the road. He has to pass the cabin of an Irish miner,
M'LISS 317

whose little boy is toddling in the ditch, with a pinafore,
hands, and face in a chronic state of untidiness. Mr. Gray
seizes him with an hilarious impulse, and after a number of
rapid journeys to Banbury Cross, in search of an old woman
who mounted a mythical white horse, he kisses the cleanest
place on his broad expanse of cheek, presses some silver
into his chubby fist, tells him to be a good boy, and de-
posits him in the ditch again. Having in this youthful!
way atoned for certain sins of omission a little further
back, he proceeds, with a sense of perfect absolution, on
his way to the settlement.

A few hours lie between him and his departure, to be
employed in friendly visits to Mrs. Morpher, Dr. Duchesne,
M’liss, and her mother. The Mountain Ranch is nearest,
and thither Mr. Gray goes first. Mrs. Morpher, over a
kneading-trough, with her bare arm whitened with flour, is
genuinely grieved at parting with the master, and, in spite
of Mr. Gray’s earnest remonstrances, insists upon conduct-
ing him into the chill parlor, le-ving him there until she
shall have attired herself in a manner becoming to “ com-
pany.” “I don’t want you to go at all—no more I don’t,”
says Mrs. Morpher, with all sincerity, as she seats herself
finally on the shining horsehair sofa, ‘‘ The children will
miss you. I don’t believe that any one will do for Risty,
Kerg, and Clytie what you have done. But I suppose you
know best what’s best. Young men like to see the world,
and it ain’t expected one so young as you should settle
down yet. That’s what I was telling Clytie this morning.
That was just the way with my John afore he was married.
I suppose you’ll see M’liss and her before you go. They
say that she is going to San Francisco soon. Is it so?”

Mr. Gray understands the personal pronoun to refer ta
Mrs. Smith, a title Mrs. Morpher has never granted M’liss’s
mother, for whom she entertains an instinctive dislike
He answers in the affirmative, however, with the conscious
818 EARLIER SKETCHES

ness of uneasiness under the inquiry; and as the answer
does not seem to please Mrs. Morpher, he is constrained to
commend M’liss’s manifest improvement under her mother’s
care.

“Well,” says Mrs. Morpher, with a significant sigh, “I
hope it’s so; but bless us, where ’s Clytie ? You must n’t
go without saying ‘ good-by’ to her,” and Mrs. Morpher
starts away in search of her daughter.

The dining-room door scarcely closes before the bedroom
door opens, and Clytie crosses the parlor softly with some-
thing in her hands. “ You are going now?” she says
hurriedly.

“Yes.”

“Will you take this?” putting a sealed package into
his hand, “and keep it without opening it until ” —

“ Until when, Clytie? ”

“Until you are married.”

Mr. Gray laughs.

“ Promise me,” repeats Clytie.

“But I may expire in the mean time, through sheer
curiosity.”

“ Promise!” says Clytie gravely.

“T promise, then.”

Mr. Gray receives the package. ‘“‘ Good-by,” says Clytie
softly.

Clytie’s rosy cheek is very near Mr. Gray. There is no-
body by. He is going away. It is the last time. He
kisses her just before the door opens again to Mrs. Morpher.

Another shake of hands all around, and Mr. Gray passes
out of the Mountain Ranch forever.

Dr. Duchesne’s office is near at hand; but for some
reason, that Mr. Gray cannot entirely explain to himself,
he prefers to go to Mrs. Smith’s first. The little cottage
which they have taken temporarily is soon reached, and as
the young man stands at the door he re-knots the bow of
M’LISS 319

his cravat, and passes his fingers through his curls, — trifles
that to Dr. Duchesne or any other critical, middle-aged
person might look bad.

M’liss and Mrs. Smith are both at home. They have
been waiting for him so long. Was it that pretty daughter
of Mrs. Morpher — the fair young lady with blond curls, —
who caused the detention? Is not Mr. Gray a sly young
fellow for all his seeming frankness ? So he must go to-day ?
He cannot possibly wait a few days, and go with them?
Thus Mrs. Smith, between her red lips and white teeth,
and under her half-closed eyes; for M’liss stands quietly
apart without speaking. Her reserve during the interview
contrasts with the vivacity of her mother as though they
had changed respective places in relationship. Mr. Gray is
troubled by this, and as he rises to go, he takes M’liss’s
hand in his.

‘Have you nothing to say to me before I yo? ” he asks.

‘“‘ Good-by,” answers M’liss.

“ Nothing more ?”

“ That ’s enough,” rejoins the child simply.

Mr. Gray bites his lips. ‘I may never see you again,
you know, Melissa,”’ he continues.
says M’liss quietly, raising her

‘You will see us again,”

great dark eyes to his.

The blood mounted to his cheek and crimsoned his fore-
head. He was conscious, too, that the mother’s face had
taken fire at his own, as she walked away toward the win-
dow.

“ Good-by, then,” said Mr. Gray pettishly, as he stooped
to kiss her.

M’liss accepted the salute stoically. Mr. Gray took Mrs.
Smith’s hand; her face had resumed its colorless, satin-like
sheen.

“M’liss knows the strength of your good will, and makes
her calculations accordingly. I hope she may not be mis
320 EARLIER SKETCHES

taken,” she said, with a languid tenderness of voice and
eye. The young man bent over her outstretched hand, and
withdrew as the Wingdam stage noisily rattled up before
the National Hotel.

There was but little time left to spend with Dr. Du-
chesne, so the physician walked with him to the stage office.
There were a few of the old settlers lounging by the stage,
who had discerned, just as the master was going away, how
much they liked him. Mr. Gray had gone through the cus-
tomary bibulous formula of leave-taking; with a hearty
shake of the doctor’s hand, and a promise to write, he
climbed to the box of the stage. ‘ All aboard!” cried the
driver, and with a preliminary bound, the stage rolled down
Main Street.

Mr. Gray remained buried in thought as they rolled
through the tewn, each object in passing recalling some in-
cident of his past experience. The stage had reached the
outskirts of the settlement when he detected a well-known
little figure running down a by-trail to intersect the road
before the stage had passed. THe called the driver’s atten-
tion to it, and as they drew up at the crossing Aristides’s
short legs and well-known features were plainly discernible
through the dust. He was holding in his hand a letter.

“Well, my little man, what is it?” said the driver im-

patiently.
“A letter for the master,” gasped the exhausted child.
“Give it here ! — Any answer ? ”

‘* Wait a moment,” said Mr. Gray.

‘Look sharp, then, and get your billet duxis before you
go next time.”

Mr. Gray hurriedly broke the seal and read these words:

Judge Plunkett has just returned from the county seat,
Our case is won. We leave here next week. J. 5.
P. 8. Have you got my address in San Francise |?
M'LISS 321

« Any answer ? ”’ said the driver.

oe None.”’

“Get up!”

And the stage rolled away from Smith’s Pocket, leaving
the just Aristides standing in the dust of its triumphal
wheels,
HIGH-WATER MARK

WuHeEn the tide was out on the Dedlow Marsh, its ex-
tended dreariness was patent. Its spongy, low-lying surface,
sluggish, inky pools, and tortuous sloughs, twisting their
slimy way, eel-like, toward the open bay, were all hard facts.
So were the few green tussocks, with their scant blades,
their amphibious flavor, and unpleasant dampness. And
if you chose to indulge your fancy, —although the flat
monotony of the Dedlow Marsh was not inspiring, — the
wavy line of scattered drift gave an unpleasant conscious-
ness of the spent waters, and made the dead certainty of
the returning tide a gloomy reflection, which no present
sunshine could dissipate. The greener meadow-land seemed
oppressed with this idea, and made no positive attempt at
vegetation until the work of reciamation should be com-
plete. In the bitter fruit of the low cranberry bushes one
might fancy he detected a naturally sweet disposition curdled
and soured by an injudicious course of too much regular
cold water.

The vocal expression of the Dedlow Marsh was also
melancholy and depressing. The sepulchral boom of the
bittern, the shriek of the curlew, the scream of passing
brant, the wrangling of quarrelsome teal, the sharp querulous
protest of the startled crane, and syllabled complaint of the
‘“killdeer” plover were beyond the power of written expres-
sion. Nor was the aspect of these mournful fowls at all
cheerful and inspiring. Certainly ‘not the blue heron,
standing midleg deep in the water, obviously catching cold
in a reckless disregard of wet feet and consequences; nor
HIGH-WATER MARK 325

the mournful curlew, the dejected plover, or the low-
spirited snipe, who saw fit to join him in his suicidal
contemplation ; nor the impassive kingfisher — an ornitho-
logical Marius — reviewing the desolate expanse; nor the
black raven that went to and fro over the face of the marsh
continually, but evidently could n’t make up his mind
whether the waters had subsided, and felt low-spirited in
the reflection that after all this trouble he would n’t be able
to give a definite answer. On the contrary, it was evident
at a glance that the dreary expanse of Dedlow Marsh told
unpleasantly on the birds, and that the season of migration
was looked forward to with a feeling of relief and satisfaction
by the full grown, and of extravagant anticipation by the
callow brood. But if Dedlow Marsh was cheerless at the
slack of the low tide, you should have seen it when the
tide was strong and full. When the damp air blew chilly
over the cold glittering expanse, and came to the faces of
those who looked seaward like another tide; when a steel.
like glint marked the low hollows and the sinuous line of
slough ; when the great shell-incrusted trunks of fallen trees
arose again, and went forth on their dreary purposeless
wanderings, drifting hither and thither, but getting no
farther toward any goal at the falling tide or the day’s
decline than the cursed Hebrew in the legend; when the
glossy ducks swung silently, making neither ripple uor
furrow on the shimmering surface; when the fog came in
with the tide and shut out the blue above, even as the green
below had been obliterated ; when boatmen, lost in that
fog, paddling about in a hopeless way, started at what
seemed the brushing of mermen’s fingers on the boat’s keel,
or shrank from the tufts of grass spreading around like the
floating hair of a corpse, ‘and knew by these signs that they
were lost upon Dedlow Marsh, and must make a night of
it, and a gloomy one at that, — then you might know some-
thing of Dedlow Marsh at high water,
824 EARLIER SKETCHES

Let me recall a story connected with this latter view
which never failed to recur to my mind in my long gunning
excursions upon Dedlow Marsh. Although the event was
briefly recorded in the county paper, I had the story, in all
its eloquent detail, from the lips of the principal actor. I
cannot hope to catch the varying emphasis and peculiar
coloring of feminine delineation, for my narrator was a
woman; but I’ll try to give at least its substance.

She lived midway of the great slough of Dedlow Marsh
and a good-sized river, which debouched four miles beyond
into an estuary formed by the Pacific Ocean, on the long
sandy peninsula which constituted the southwestern boun-
dary of a noble bay. The house in which she lived was a
small frame cabin raised from the marsh a few feet by stout
piles, and was three miles distant from the settlements upon
the river. Her husband was a logger, —a profitable busi-
ness in a county where the principal occupation was the
manufacture of lumber.

It was the season of early spring, when her husband left
on the ebb of a high tide with a raft of logs for the usual
transportation to the lower end of the bay. As she stood
by the door of the little cabin when the voyagers departed,
she noticed a cold look in the southeastern sky, and she
remembered hearing her husband say to his companions
that they must endeavor to complete their voyage before
the coming of the south-westerly gale which he saw brew-
ing. And that night it began to storm and blow harder
than she had ever before experienced, and some great trees
fell in the forest by the river, and the house rocked like
her baby’s cradle.

But however the storm might roar about the little cabin,
she knew that one she trusted had driven bolt and bar
with his own strong hand, and that had he feared for
her he would not have left her. This, and her domestic
duties, and the care of her little sickly baby, helped to
HIGH-WATER MARK 325

keep her mind from dwelling on the weather, except, of
course, to hope that he was safely harbored with the logs
at Utopia in the dreary distance. But she noticed that
day, when she went out to feed the chickens and look
after the cow, that the tide was up to the little fence of
their garden patch, and the roar of the surf on the south
beach, though miles away, she could hear distinctly. And
she began to think that she would like to have some one
to talk with about matters, and she believed that if it had
not been so far and so stormy, and the trail so impassable,
she would lave taken the baby and have gone over to
Ryckman’s, her nearest neighbor. But then, you see, he
might have returned in the storm, all wet, with no one to
see to him; and it was a long exposure for baby, who was
croupy and ailing.

But that night, she never could tell why, she did n’t feel
like sleeping or even lying down. ‘The storm had some-
what abated, but she still “sat and sat,” and even tried to
read. I don’t know whether it was a Bible or some profane
magazine that this poor woman read, but most probably
the latter, for the words all ran together and made such
sad nonsense that she was forced at last to put the book
down and turn to that dearer volume which lay before her
in the cradle, with its white initial leaf as yet unsoiled, and
try to look forward to its mysterious future. And, rocking
the cradle, she thought of everything and everybody, but
still was wide awake as ever.

It was nearly twelve o’clock when she at last lay down
in her clothes. How long she slept she could not remem-
ber, but she awoke with a dreadful choking in her throat,
and found herself standing, trembling all over, in the
middle of the room, with her baby clasped to her breast,
and she was “saying something.” The baby cried and
sobbed, and she walked up and down trying to hush it,
when she heard a scratching at the door. She opened it
326 EARLIER SKETCHES

fearfully, and was glad to see it was only old Pete, their
dog, who crawled, dripping with water, into the room.
She would have liked to look out, not in the faint hope
of her husband’s coming, but to see how things looked ;
but the wind shook the door so savagely that she could
hardly hold it. Then she sat down a little while, and
chen walked up and down a little while, and then she lay
down again a little while. Lying close by the wall of the
little cabin, she thought she heard once or twice something
scrape slowly against the clapboards, like the scraping of
branches. ‘Then there was a little gurgling sound, “ like
the baby made when it was swallowing; ” then something
went “ click-click ”’ and “ cluck-cluck,” so that she sat up
in bed. When she did so she was attracted by something
else that seemed creeping from the back door toward the
centre of the room. It wasn’t much wider than her little
finger, but soon it swelled to the width of her hand, and
began spreading all over the floor. It was water!

She ran to the front door and threw it wide open, and
saw nothing but water. She ran to the back door and
threw it open, and saw nothing but water. She ran to
the side window, and throwing that open, she saw nothing
but water. Then she remembered hearing her husband
once say that there was no danger in the tide, for that
fell regularly, and people could calculate on it, and that
he would rather live near the bay than the river, whose
banks might overflow at any time. But was it the tide?
So she ran again to the back door, and threw out a stick of
wood. It drifted away towards the bay. She scooped up
some of the water and put it eagerly to her lips. It was
fresh and sweet. It was the river, and not the tide!

It was then — oh, God be praised for his goodness! she
did neither faint nor fall; it was then— blessed be the
Saviour, for it was his merciful hand that touched and
strengthened her in this awful moment — that fear dropped
HIGH-WATER MARK 327

from her like a garment, and her trembling ceased. It
was then and thereafter that she never lost her self-com-
mand, through all the trials of that gloomy night.

She drew the bedstead toward the middle of the room,
and placed a table upon it, and on that she put the cradle.
The water on the floor was already over her ankles, and
the house once or twice moved so perceptibly, and seemed
to be racked so, that the closet doors all flew open. Then
she heard the same rasping and thumping against the wall,
and, looking out, saw that a large uprooted tree, which
had lain near the road at the upper end of the pasture,
had floated down to the house. Luckily its long roots
dragged in the soil and kept it from moving as rapidly as
the current, for had it struck the house in its full career,
even the strong nails and bolts in the piles could not
have withstood the shock. The hound had leaped upon
its knotty surface, and crouched near the roots, shivering
and whining. A ray of hope flashed across her mind.
She drew a heavy blanket from the bed, and, wrapping
it about the babe, waded in the deepening waters to the
door. As the tree swung again, broadside on, making the
little cabin creak and tremble, she leaped on to its trunk.
By God’s mercy she succeeded in obtaining a footing on its
slippery surface, and, twining an arm about its roots, she
held in the other her moaning child. Then something
cracked near the front porch, and the whole front of the
house she had just quitted fell forward, — just as cattle
fall on their knees before they lie down, —and at the
same moment the great redwood tree swung round and
drifted away with its living cargo into the black night.

For all the excitement and danger, for all her soothing of
her crying babe, for all the whistling of the wind, for all the
uncertainty of her situation, she still turned to look at the
deserted and water-swept cabin. She remembered oven
then, and she wondered how foolish she was to think or it ab
3828 EARLIER SKETCHES

that time, that she wished she had put on another dress and
the baby’s best clothes; and she kept praying that the
house would be spared so that he, when he returned, would
have something to come to, and it wouldn’t be quite so
desolate, and — how could he ever know what had become
of her and baby? And at the thought she grew sick and
faint. But she had something else to do besides worrying,
for whenever the long roots of her ark struck an obstacle
the whole trunk made half a revolution, and twice dipped
her in the black water. The hound, who kept distracting
her by running up and down the tree and howling, at last
fell off at one of these collisions. He swam for some time
beside her, and she tried to get the poor beast upon the tree,
but he “acted silly’ and wild, and at last she lost sight
of him forever. Then she and her baby were left alone.
The light which had burned for a few minutes in the
deserted cabin was quenched suddenly. She could not then
tell whither she was drifting. The outline of the white
dunes on the peninsula showed dimly ahead, and she judged
the tree was moving in a line with the river. It must be
about slack water, and she had probably reached the eddy
formed by the confluence of the tide and the overflowing
waters of the river. Unless the tide fell soon, there was
present danger of her drifting to its channel, and being
carried out to sea or crushed in the floating drift. That
peril averted, if she were carried out on the ebb toward the
bay, she might hope to strike one of the wooded promon-
tories of the peninsula, and rest till daylight. Sometimes
she thought she heard voices and shouts from the river, and
the bellowing of cattle and bleating of sheep. Then again
it was only the ringing in her ears and throbbing of her
heart. She found at about this time that she was so chilled
and stiffened in her cramped position that she could scarcely
move, and the baby cried so when she put it to her breast
that she noticed the milk refused to flow; and she was so
HIGH-WATER MARK 329

frightened at that that she put her head under her shawl,
and for the first time cried bitterly.

When she raised her head again the boom of the surf
was behind her, and she knew that her ark had again swung
round. She dipped up the water to cool her parched
throat, and found that it was salt as her tears. There was
a relief, though, for by this sign she knew that she was
drifting with the tide. It was then the wind went down,
and the great and awful silence oppressed her. There was
scarcely a ripple against the furrowed sides of the great
trunk on which she rested, and around her all was black
gloom and quiet. She spoke to the baby just to hear
herself speak, and to know that she had not lost her voice.
She thought then — it was queer, but she could not help
thinking it — how awful must have been the night when the
great ship swung over the Asiatic peak, and the sounds of
creation were blotted out from the world. She thought,
too, of mariners clinging to spars, and of poor women who
were lashed to rafts and beaten to death by the cruel sea.
She tried to thank God that she was thus spared, and
lifted her eyes from the baby who had fallen into a fretful
sleep. Suddenly, away to the southward, a great light
lifted itself out of the gloom, and flashed and flickered, and
flickered and flashed again. Her heart fluttered quickly
against the baby’s cold cheek. It was the lighthouse at
the entrance of the bay. As she was yet wondering the
tree suddenly rolled a little, dragged a little, and then
seemed to lie quiet and still. She put out her hand and
the current gurgled against it. The tree was aground, and,
by the position of the light and the noise of the surf,
aground upon the Dedlow Marsh.

Had it not been for her baby, who was ailing and croupy,
had it not been for the sudden drying up of that sensitive
fountain, she would have felt safe and relieved. Perhaps it
was this which tended to make all her impressions mournful
330 EARLIER SKETCHES

and gloomy. As the tide rapidly fell, a great flock of black
brant fluttered by her, screaming and crying. Then the
plover flew up and piped mournfully as they wheeled
around the trunk, and at last fearlessly lt upon it like a
gray cloud. Then the heron flew over and around her,
shrieking and protesting, and at last dropped its gaunt legs
only a few yards from her. But, strangest of all, a pretty
white bird, larger than a dove, — like a pelican, but not a
pelican, — circled around and around her. At last it lit
upon a rootlet of the tree quite over her shoulder. She
put out her hand and stroked its beautiful white neck, and
it never appeared to move. It stayed there so long that
she thought she would lift up the baby to see it and try to
attract her attention. But when she did so, the child was
so chilled and cold, and had such a blue look under the
little lashes, which it didn’t raise at all, that she screamed
aloud, and the bird flew away, and she fainted.

Well, that was the worst of it, aud perhaps it was not so
much, after all, to any but herself. For when she recovered
her senses it was bright sunlight and dead low water.
There was a confused noise of guttural voices about her,
and an old squaw, singing an Indian “hushaby,”’ and rock-
ing herself from side to side before a fire built on the marsh,
before which she, the recovered wife and mother, lay weak
and weary. Her first thought was for her baby, and she
was about to speak when a young squaw, who must have
been a mother herself, fathomed her thought and brought
her the “‘mowitch,” pale but living, in such a queer little
willow cradle, all bound up, just like the squaw’s own young
one, that she laughed and cried together, and the young
squaw and the old squaw showed their big white teeth and
glinted their black eyes, and said, “ Plenty get well, skeena
mowitch,” “Wagee man come plenty soon,” and she could
have kissed their brown faces in her joy. And then she
found that they had been gathering berries on the marsh in
HIGH-WATER MARK 231

oe

heir queer comical baskets, and saw the skirt of her gown
fluttering on the tree from afar, and the old squaw could n’t
resist the temptation of procuring a new garment, and came
down and discovered the “ wagee’”? woman and child, And
of course she gave the garment to the old squaw, as you
may imagine, and when he came at last and rushed up to
her, looking about ten years older in his anxiety, she felt
so faint again that they had to carry her to the canoe. For,
you see, he knew nothing about the flood until he met the
Indians at Utopia, and knew by the signs that the poor
woman was his wife. And at the next high tide he towed
the tree away back home, although it wasn’t worth the
trouble, and built another house, using the old tree for the
foundation and props, and called it after her, “ Mary’s
Ark!” But you may guess the next house was built above
high-water mark. And that’s all.

Not much, perhaps, considering the malevolent capacity
of the Dedlow Marsh. But you must tramp over it at low
water, or paddle over it at high tide, or get lost upon it
once or twice in the fog, as I have, to understand properly
Mary’s adventure, or to appreciate duly the blessings of
living beyond high-water mark.
A LONELY RIDE

As I stepped into the Slumgullion stage I saw that it
was a dark night, a lonely road, and that I was the only
passenger. Let me assure the reader that I have no ulte-
rior design in making this assertion. A long course of
light reading has forewarned me what every experienced
intelligence must confidently look for from such a state.
ment. The story-teller who willfully tempts fate by such
obvious beginnings, who is to the expectant reader in
danger of being robbed or half-murdered, or frightened by
an escaped lunatic, or introduced to his lady-love for the first
time, deserves to be detected. Iam relieved to say that
none of these things occurred to me. The road from Wing-
dam to Slumgullion knew no other banditti than the regu-
larly licensed hotel-keepers; lunatics had not yet reached
such depth of imbecility as to ride of their own free will in
Californian stages ; and my Laura, amiable and long-suffering
as she always is, could not, I fear, have borne up against
these depressing circumstances long enough to have made
the slightest impression on me.

I stood with my shawl and carpetbag in hand, gazing
doubtingly on the vehicle. Even in the darkness the red
dust of Wingdam was visible on its roof and sides, and the
red slime of Slumgullion clung tenaciously to its wheels.
I opened the door; the stage creaked uneasily, and in the
gloomy abyss the swaying straps beckoned me, like ghostly
hands, to come in now, and have my sufferings out at
once.

I must not omit to mention the occurrence of a circum-
A LONELY RIDE 333

stance which struck me as appalling and mysterious. A
lounger on the steps of the hotel, who I had reason to
suppose was not in any way connected with the stage com-
pany, gravely descended, and, walking toward the convey-
ance, tried the handle of the door, opened it, expectorated
in the carriage, and returned to the hotel with a serious
demeanor. Hardly had he resumed his position, when an-
other individual, equally disinterested, impassively walked
down the steps, proceeded to the back of the stage, lifted
it, expectorated carefully on the axle, and returned slowly
and pensively to the hotel. A third spectator wearily
disengaged himself from one of the Ionic columns of the
portico and walked to the box, remained for a moment in
serious and expectorative contemplation of the boot, and
then returned to his column. There was something so
weird in this baptism that I grew quite nervous.

Perhaps I was out of spirits. A number of infinitesimal
annoyances, winding up with the resolute persistency of the
clerk at the stage office to enter my name misspelt on the
way-bill, had not predisposed me to cheerfulness. The in-
mates of the Eureka House, from a social view-point, were
not attractive. There was the prevailing opinion — so
common to many honest people — that a serious style of
deportment and conduct te rard a stranger indicates high
gentility and elevated statin. Obeying this principle, all
hilarity ceased on my entrance to supper, and general
remark merged into the safer and uncompromising chroni-
cle of several bad cases of diphtheria, then epidemic at
Wingdam. When I left the dining-room, with an odd
feeling that I had been supping exclusively on mustard and
tea leaves, I stopped a moment at the parlor door, A
piano, harmoniously related to the dinner-bell, tinkled
responsive to a diffident and uncertain touch. On the
white wall the shadow of an old and sharp profile was bend-
ing over several symmetrical and shadowy curls. “ Isez to
334 EARLIER SKETCHES

Mariar, ‘ Mariar,’ sez I, ‘praise to the face is open, dis-
7” Theard no more. Dreading some susceptibility
to sincere expression on the subject of female loveliness, I
walked away, checking the compliment that otherwise
might have risen unbidden to my lips, and have brought
shame and sorrow to the household.

It was with the memory of these experiences resting
heavily upon me that I stood hesitatingly before the stage
door. The driver, about to mount, was for a moment
illuminated by the open door of the hotel. He had the
wearied look which was the distinguishing expression of
Wingdam. Satisfied that I was properly way-billed and
receipted for, he took no further notice of me. I looked
longingly at the box-seat, but he did not respond to the ap-
peal. I flung my carpetbag into the chasm, dived reck-
lessly after it, and — before I was fairly seated — with a
great sigh, a creaking of unwilling springs, complaining
bolts, and harshly expostulating axle, we moved away.
Rather the hotel door slipped behind, the sound of the
piano sank to rest, and the night and its shadows moved
solemnly upon us.

To say it was dark expressed but faintly the pitchy
obscurity that encompassed the vehicle. The roadside
trees were scarcely distinguishable as deeper masses of
shadow ; I knew them only by the peculiar sodden odor
that from time to time sluggishly flowed in at the open
window as we rolled by. We proceeded slowly; so lei-
surely that, leaning from the carriage, I more than once
detected the fragrant sigh of some astonished cow, whose
ruminating repose upon the highway we had ruthlessly dis-
turbed. But in the darkness our progress, more the guid-
ance of some mysterious instinct than any apparent volition

grace,

of our own, gave an indefinable charm of security to our
journey, that a moment’s hesitation or indecision on the
part of the driver would have destroyed.
A LONELY RIDE 333

I had indulged a hope that in the empty vehicle I might
obtain that rest so often denied me in its crowded condition.
It was a weak delusion. When I stretched out my limbs
it was only to find that the ordinary conveniences for mak-
ing several people distinctly uncomfortable were distributed
throughout my individual frame. At last, resting my arms
on the straps, by dint of much gymnastic effort I became
sufficiently composed to be aware of a more refined species
of torture. The springs of the stage, rising and falling
regularly, produced a rhythmical beat, which began to
painfully absorb my attention. Slowly this thumping
merged into a senseless echo of the mysterious female of
the hotel parlor, and shaped itself into this awful and
benumbing axiom: “ Praise-to-the-face-is-open-disgrace,
Praise-to-the-face-is-open-disgrace.”” Inequalities of the road
only quickened its utterance or drawled it to an exasperat-
ting length.

It was of no use to seriously consider the statement. It
was of no use to except to it indignantly. It was of no use
to recall the many instances where praise to the face had
redounded to the everlasting honor of praiser and bepraised ;
of no use to dwell sentimentally on modest genius and
courage lifted up and strengthened by open commendation ;
of no use to except to the mysterious female, — to picture
her as rearing a thin-blooded generation on selfish and me-
chanically repeated axioms, —all this failed to counteract
the monotonous repetition of this sentence. There was
nothing to do but to give in, and I was about to accept it
weakly, as we too often treat otler illusions of darkness and
necessity, for the time being, when I became aware of some
other annoyance that had been forcing itself upon me for
the last few moments. How quiet the driver was!

Was there any driver? Had I any reason to suppose
that he was not lying gagged and bound on the roadside,
and the highwayman, with blackened face, who did the
336 EARLIER SKETCHES

thing so quietly, driving me — whither? The thing is per-
fectly feasible. And what is this fancy now being jolted
out of me? <A story? It’s of no use to keep it back,
particularly in this abysmal vehicle, and here it comes: I
am a marquis—a French marquis; French, because the
peerage is not so well known, and the country is better
adapted to romantic incident—-a marquis, because the
democratic reader delights in the nobility. My name is
something ligny. JI am coming from Paris to my country-
seat at St. Germain. It is a dark night, and I fall asleep
and tell my honest coachman, André, not to disturb me,
and dream of an angel. The carriage at last stops at the
chateau. It is so dark that, when I alight, I do not recog-
nize the face of the footman who holds the carriage-door.
But what of that ? — peste! Iam heavy with sleep. The
same obscurity also hides the old familiar indecencies of the
statues on the terrace; but there is a door, and it opens
and shuts behind me smartly. Then I find myself in a
trap, in the presence of the brigand who has quietly gagged
poor André and conducted the carriage thither. There is
nothing for me to do, as a gallant French marquis, but to
say, “ Parbleu!” draw my rapier, and die valorously! I
am found, a week or two after, outside a deserted cabaret
near the barrier, with a hole through my ruffled linen, and
my pockets stripped. No; on second thoughts, I am res-
cued, — rescued by the angel I have been dreaming of, who
is the assumed daughter of the brigand, but the real daughter
of an intimate friend.

Looking from the window again, in the vain hope of
distinguishing the driver, I found my eyes were growing
accustomed to the darkness. I could see the distant hori-
zon, defined by India-inky woods relieving a lighter sky.
A few stars, widely spaced in this picture, glimmering
sadly. I noticed again the infinite depth of patient sorrow
in their serene faces; and I hope that the Vandal who first
A LONELY RIDE 337

applied the flippant “twinkle” to them may not be driven
melancholy mad by their reproachful eyes. I noticed again
the mystic charm of space, that imparts a sense of individual
solitude to each integer of the densest constellation, in-
volving the smallest star with immeasurable loneliness.
Something of this calm and solitude crept over me, and
I dozed in my gloomy cavern. When I awoke the full
moon was rising. Seen from my window, it had an in-
describably unreal and theatrical effect. It was the full
moon of Norma — that remarkable celestial phenomenon
which rises so palpably to a hushed audience and a sublime
andante chorus, until the Casta Diva is sung — the “ incon-
stant moon” that then and thereafter remains fixed in the
heavens as though it were a part of the solar system inaugu-
rated by Joshua. Again the white-robed Druids filed past
me, again I saw that improbable mistletoe cut from that
impossible oak, and again cold chills ran down my back
with the first strain of the recitative. The thumping
springs essayed to beat time, and the private box-like
obscurity of the vehicle lent a cheap enchantment to the
view. But it was a vast improvement upon my past ex-
perience, and I hugged the fond delusion.

My fears for the driver were dissipated with the rising
moon. <A familiar sound had assured me of his presence in
the full possession of at least one of his most important
functions. Frequent and full expectoration convinced me
that his lips were as yet not sealed by the gag of highway-
men, and soothed my anxious ear. With this load lifted
from my mind, and assisted by the mild presence of Diana,
who left, as when she visited Endymion, much of her
splendor outside my cavern, —I looked around the empty
vehicle. On the forward seat lay a woman’s hairpin. I
picked it up with an interest that, however, soon abated.
There was no scent of the roses to cling to it still, not even
of hair-oil. No bent or twist in its rigid angles betrayed
838 EARLIER SKETCHES

any trait of its wearer’s character. I tried to think that
it might have been ‘“ Mariar’s.” I tried to imagine that,
sonfining the symmetrical curls of that girl, it might have
heard the soft compliments whispered in her ears which
provoked the wrath of the aged female. But in vain. It
was reticent and unswerving in its upright fidelity, and at
last slipped listlessly through my fingers.

I had dozed repeatedly, — waked on the threshold of
oblivion by contact with some of the angles of the coach,
and feeling that I was unconsciously assuming, in imitation
of a humble insect of my chiidish recollection, that spherical
shape which could best resist those impressions, when I
perceived that the moon, riding high in the heavens, had
begun to separate the formless masses of the shadowy
landscape. ‘Trees isolated, in clumps, and assemblages,
changed places before my window. ‘The sharp outlines of
the distant hills came back asin daylight, but little softened
in the dry, cold, dewless air of a California summer night.
I was wondering how late it was, and thinking that if the
horses of the night traveled as slowly as the team before
us, Faustus might have been spared his agonizing prayer,
when a sudden spasm of activity attacked my driver. A
succession of whip-snappings, like a pack of Chinese crack-
ers, broke from the box before me. ‘The stage leaped for-
ward, and when I could pick myself from under the seat,
a long white building had in some mysterious way rolled
before my window. It must be Slumegullion! As I de-
scended from the stage I addressed the driver: —

“T thought you changed horses on the road ?”

“So we did. Two hours ago.”

“That ’s odd. I did n’t notice it.”

*‘ Must have been asleep, sir. Hope you had a pleasant
nap. Bully place for a nice quiet snooze, empty stage,
sir!”
THE MAN OF NO ACCOUNT

His name was Fagg, — David Fagg. He came to Cali |
fornia in 752 with us, in the Skyscraper. I don’t think
he did it in an adventurous way. He probably had no other
place to go to. When a knot of us young fellows would
recite what splendid opportunities we resigned to go, and
how sorry our friends were to have us leave, and show
daguerreotypes and Jocks of hair, and talk of Mary and
Susan, the man of no account used to sit by and listen with
a pained, mortified expression on his plain face, and say
nothing. I think he had nothing to say. He had no as-
sociates, except when we patronized him; and, in point of
fact, he was a good deal of sport to us. He was always
seasick whenever we had a capful of wind. He never got
his sea-legs on either. And I never shall forget how we
all laughed when Rattler took him the piece of pork on a
string, and — But you know that time-honored joke. And
then we had such a splendid lark with him. Miss Fanny
Twinkler could n’t bear the sight of him, and we used to
make Fagg think that she had taken a fancy to him, and
sent him little delicacies and books from the cabin. You
ought to have witnessed the rich scene that took place
when he came up, stammering and very sick, to thank her!
Did n’t she flash up grandly, and beautifully, and scornfully ?
So like “‘ Medora,” Rattler said, — Rattler knew Byron by
heart, —and wasn’t Old Fagg awfully cut up? But he got
over it, and when Rattler fell sick at Valparaiso, Old Fagg
used to nurse him. You see he was a good sort of fellow,
but he lacked manliness and spirit.
340 EARLIER SKETCHES

He had absolutely no idea of poetry. I’ve seen him sit
stolidly by, mending his old clothes, when Rattler delivered
that stirring apostrophe of Byron’s to the ocean. He asked
Rattler once, quite seriously, if he thought Byron was ever
seasick. I don’t remember Rattler’s reply, but I know we
all laughed very much, and I have no doubt it was some-
thing good, for Rattler was smart.

When the Skyscraper arrived at San Francisco we had.
a grand ‘“ feed.” We agreed to meet every year and per-
petuate the occasion. Of course we didn’t invite Fagg.
Fagg was a steerage passenger, and it was necessary, you
see, now we were ashore, to exercise a little discretion.
But Old Fagg, as we called him, — he was only about twenty-
five years old, by the way, — was the source of immense
amusement to us that day. It appeared that he had con-
ceived the idea that he could walk to Sacramento, and
actually started off afoot. We had a good time, and shook
hands with one another all around, and so parted. Ah,
me! only eight years ago, and yet some of those hands,
then clasped in amity, have been clenched at each other,
or have dipped furtively in one another’s pockets. I know
that we didn’t dine together the next year, because young
Barker swore he wouldn’t put his feet under the same
mahogany with such a very contemptible scoundrel as that
Mixer; and Nibbles, who borrowed money at Valparaiso of
young Stubbs, who was then a waiter in a restaurant, did n’t
like to meet such people.

When I bought a number of shares in the Coyote Tunnel
at Mugginsville, in ’54, I thought I’d take a run up there
and see it. I stopped at the Empire Hotel, and after
dinner I got a horse and rode round the town and out to
the claim. One of those individuals whom newspaper cor-
respondents call “ our intelligent informant,” and to whom
in all small communities the right of answering questions is
tacitly yielded, was quietly pointed out to me. Habit had
THE MAN OF NO ACCOUNT 341

enabled him to work and talk at the same time, and he
never pretermitted either. He gave me a history of the
claim, and added: “You see, stranger (he addressed the
bank before him), gold is sure to come outer that theer
claim (he put in a comma with his pick), but the old pro-
pri-e-tor (he wriggled out the word and the point of his
pick) warn’t of much account (a long stroke of the pick for
a period), He was green, and let the boys about here
jump him,’’ —and the rest of his sentence was confided to
his hat, which he had removed to wipe his manly brow with
his red bandana.

I asked him who was the original proprietor.

“His name war Fagg.”

I went to see him. He looked a little older and plainer.
He had worked hard, he said, and was getting on “so-so.”
I took quite a liking to him and patronized him to some
extent. Whether I did so because I was beginning to have
a distrust for such fellows as Rattler and Mixer is not
necessary for me to state.

You remember how the Coyote Tunnel went in, and
how awfully we shareholders were done! Well, the next
thing I heard was that Rattler, who was one of the heaviest
shareholders, was up at Mugginsville keeping bar for the
proprietor of the Mugginsville Hotel, and that Old Fagg had
struck it rich, and did n’t know what todo with his money.
All this was told me by Mixer, who had been there settling
up matters, and likewise that Fagg was sweet upon the
daughter of the proprietor of the aforesaid hotel. And so
by hearsay and letter I eventually gathered that old Robins,
the hotel man, was trying to get up a match between Nellie
Robins and Fagg. Nellie was a pretty, plump, and foolish
little thing, and would do just as her father wished. I
thought it would be a good thing for Fagg if he should
marry and settle down; that as a married man he might
be of some account. So Iran up to Mugginsville one day
to look after things.
342 EARLIER SKETCHES

It did me an immense deal of good to make Rattler mix
my drinks for me, — Rattler! the gay, brilliant, and un-
conquerable Rattler, who had tried to snub me two years
ago! JI talked to him about Old Fagg and Nellie, particu-
larly as I thought the subject was distasteful. He never
liked Fagg, and he was sure, he said, that Nellie didn’t.
Did Nellie like anybody else? He turned round to the
mirror behind the bar and brushed up his hair. I under-
stood the conceited wretch. I thought I’d put Fagg on
his guard, and get him to hurry up matters. I had a long
talk with him. You could see by the way the poor fellow
acted that he was badly stuck. He sighed, and promised
to pluck up courage to hurry matters to a crisis. Nellie
was a good girl, and I think had a sort of quiet respect for
Old Fagg’s unobtrusiveness. But her fancy was already
taken captive by Rattler’s superficial qualities, which were
obvious and pleasing. I don’t think Nellie was any worse
than you or J. We are more apt to take acquaintances at
their apparent value than their intrinsic worth. It’s less
trouble, and except when we want to trust them, quite as
convenient. The difficulty with women is that their feelings
are apt to get interested sooner than ours, and then, you
know, reasoning is out of the question. This is what Old
Fagg would have known had he been of any account. But
he was n’t. So much the worse for him.

It was a few months afterward, and I was sitting in my
office when in walked Old Fagg. I was surprised to see
him down, but we talked over the current topics in that
mechanical manner of people who know that they have
something else to say, but are obliged to get at it in that
formal way. After an interval, Fage in his natural manner
said, —

“T’m going home!”

“ Going home ?”

“Yes, — that is, I think I’ll take a trip tc the Atlantic
THE MAN OF NO ACCOUNT 843-

States. I came to see you, as you know I have some little
property, and I have executed a power of attorney for you
to manage my affairs. I have some papers I’d like to leave
with you. Will you take charge of them ? ”

“Yes,” I said. “ But what of Nellie?”

His face fell. He tried to smile, and the combination
resulted in one of the most startling and grotesque effects I
ever beheld. At length he said, —

“T shall not marry Nellie, —that is,” —he seenied to
apologize internally for the positive form of expression, —
“T think that I had better not.”

“David Fagg,” I said with sudden severity, “ you’re of
no account ! ”

To my astonishment, his face brightened.

“ Yes,”’ said he, “ that’s it !— I’m of no account! But
I always knew it. You see, I thought Rattler loved that
girl as well as I did, and I knew she liked him better than
she did me, and would be happier, I dare say, with him.
But then I knew that old Robins would have preferred
me to him, as I was better off, — and the girl would do as
he said, — and, you see, I thought I was kinder in the way,
—and so I left. But,” he continued, as I was about to
interrupt him, “ for fear the old man might object to Rattler,
I’ve lent him enough to set him up in business for himself
in Dogtown. A pushing, active, brilliant fellow, you know,
like Rattler can get along, and will’soon be in his old posi-
tion again, — and you need n’t be hard on him, you know
if he does n’t. Good-by.”

I was too much disgusted with his treatment of that
Rattler to be at all amiable, but as his business was profit
able, I promised to attend to it, and he left. A few weeks
passed. The return steamer arrived, and a terrible incident
occupied the papers for days afterwards, People in all parts
of the State conned eagerly the details of an awful ship-
wreck, and those who had friends aboard went away by
344 EARLIER SKETCHES

themselves, and read the long list of the lost under their
breath. I read of the gifted, the gallant, the noble, and
loved ones who had perished, and among them I think I
was the first to read the name of David Fagg. For the
‘ man of no account” had “gone home!”
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD
PART I
IN THE FIELD

Ir was near the close of an October day that I began to be
disagreeably conscious of the Sacramento Valley. I had
been riding since sunrise, and my course through the de-
pressing monotony of the long level landscape affected me
more like a dull, dyspeptic dream than a business journey,
performed under that sincerest of natural phenomena, — a
California sky. The recurring stretches of brown and baked
fields, the gaping fissures in the dusty trail, the hard out-
line of the distant hills, and the herds of slowly moving
cattle, seemed like features of some glittering stereoscopic
picture that never changed. Active exercise might have
removed this feeling, but my horse by some subtle instinct
had long since given up all ambitious etfort, and had lapsed
into a dogged trot.

It was autumn, but not the season suggested to the
Atlantic reader under that title. The sharply defined
boundaries of the wet and dry seasons were prefigured in
the clear outlines of the distant hills. In the dry atmos-
phere the decay of vegetation was too rapid for the slow
hectic which overtakes an Eastern landscape, or else Nature
was too practical for such thin disguises. She merely
turned the Hippocratic face to the spectator, with the old
diagnosis of death in her sharp, contracted features.

In the contemplation of such a prospect there was little
to excite any but a morbid fancy. There were no clouds
346 EARLIER SKETCHES

in the flinty blue heavens, and the setting of the sun was
accompanied with as little ostentation as was consistent
with the dryly practical atmosphere. Darkness soon fol-
lowed, with a rising wind, which increased as the shadows
deepened on the plain. The fringe of alder by the water-
course began to loom up as I urged my horse forward. <A
half-hour’s active spurring brought me to a corral, and a
little beyond a house, so low and broad, it seemed at first
sight to be half buried in the earth.

My second impression was that it had grown out of the
soi] like some monstrous vegetable, its dreary proportions
were so in keeping with the vast prospect. There were no
recesses along its roughly boarded walls for vagrant and
unprofitable shadows to lurk in the daily sunshine. No
projection for the wind by night to grow musical over, to
wail, whistle, or whisper to; only a long wooden shelf con-
taining a chilly-looking tin basin and a bar of soap. Its
uncurtained windows were red with the sinking sun, as
though bloodshot and inflamed from a too long unlidded
existence. The tracks of cattle led to its front door, firmly
closed against the rattling wind.

To avoid being confounded with this familiar element, I
walked to the rear of the house, which was connected with
‘a smaller building by a slight platform. A grizzled, hard-
gaced old man was standing there, and met my salutation
with a look of inquiry, and, without speaking, led the way
to the principal room. As I entered, four young men who
were reclining by the fire slightly altered their attitudes of
perfect repose, but beyond that betrayed neither curiosity
nor interest. A hound started from a dark corner with a
growl, but was immediately kicked by the old man into
obscurity and silenced again. I can’t tell why, but I
instantly received the impression that for a long time the
group by the fire had not uttered a word or moved a
muscle. Taking a seat, I briefly stated my business.
NOTES: BY FLOOD AND FIELD 347

Was a United States surveyor. Had come on account
of the Espiritu Santo rancho. Wanted to correct the
exterior boundaries of township lines, so as to connect with
the near exteriors of private grants. There had been some
intervention to the old survey by a Mr. Tryan, who had pre-
Smpted adjacent — “ Settled land warrants,” interrupted
the old man. “ Ah, yes! land warrants, — and then this
was Mr. Tryan?”

Thad spoken mechanically, for I was preoccupied in con-
necting other public lines with private surveys, as I looked
in his face. It was certainly a hard face, and reminded
me of the singular effect of that mining operation known as
“eround sluicing;” the harder lines of underlying char-
acter were exposed, and what were once plastic curves and
soft outlines were obliterated by some powerful agency.

There was a dryness in his voice not unlike the prevail-
ing atmosphere of the valley, as he launched into an ex
parte statement of the contest, with a fluency which, like
the wind without, showed frequent and unrestrained expres-
sion. He told me— what I had already learned — that
the boundary line of the old Spanish grant was a creek,
described in the loose phraseology of the desefio as begin-
ning in the valda or skirt of the hill, its precise location
long the subject of litigation. I listened and answered with
little interest, for my mind was still distracted by the wind
which swept violently by the house, as well as by his odd
face, which was again reflected in the resemblance that the
silent group by the fire bore toward him. He was still
talking, and the wind was yet blowing, when my confused
attention was aroused by a remark addressed to the recum-
bent figures.

“Now, then, which on ye’ll see the stranger up the
creek to Altascar’s to-morrow ? ”

There was a general movement of opposition in the group,
but no decided answer.
348 EARLIER SKETCHES

“Kin you go, Kerg ?”

“'Who’s to look up stock in Strarberry per-ar-ie ?”’

This seemed to imply a negative, and the old man
turned to another hopeful, who was pulling the fur from a
mangy bearskin on which he was lying, with an expression
as though it were somebody’s hair.

“ Well, Tom, wot’s to hinder you from goin’ ?”

““Mam’s goin’ to Brown’s store at sun-up, and I s’pose
I’ve got to pack her and the baby again.”

I think the expression of scorn this unfortunate youth
exhibited for the filial duty into which he had been evi-
dently beguiled was one of the finest things I had ever
seen.

“Wise ?”

Wise deigned no verbal reply, but figuratively thrust a
worn and patched boot into the discourse. The old man
flushed quickly.

“T told ye to get Brown to give you a pair the last time
you war down the river.”

“ Said he would n’t without an order. Said it was like
pulling gum-teeth to get the money from you even then.”

There was a grim smile at this local hit at the old man’s
parsimony, and Wise, who was clearly the privileged wit of
the family, sank back in honorable retirement.

“Well, Joe, ef your boots are new, and you are n’t pes-
tered with wimmin and children, p’r’aps you’ll go,” said
Tryan, with a nervous twitching, intended for a smile, about
a mouth not remarkably mirthful.

Tom lifted a pair of bushy eyebrows and said shortly, —

“ Got no saddle.”

“ Wot ’s gone of your saddle ? ”

“ Kerg, there!” indicating his brother with a look such
as Cain might have worn at the sacrifice.

“You lie!” returned Kerg cheerfully.

Tryan sprang to his feet, seizing the chair, flourishing it
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD 349

around hishead and gazing furiously in the hard young faces
which fearlessly met his own. But it was only for a mo-
ment; his arm soon dropped by his side, and a look of hope-
less fatality crossed his face. He allowed me to take the
chair from his hand, and I was trying to pacify him by the
assurance that I required no guide, when the irrepressible
Wise again lifted his voice —

“Theer’s George comin’?! Why don’t ye ask him?
He’ll go and introduce you to Don Fernandy’s darter, too,
ef you ain’t pertickler.”

The laugh which followed this joke, which evidently had
some domestic allusion (the general tendency of rural
pleasantry), was followed by a light step on the platform,
and the young man entered. Seeing a stranger present, he
stopped and colored, made a shy salute and colored again,
and then, drawing a box from the corner, sat down, his
hands clasped tightly together and his very handsome bright
blue eyes turned frankly on mine.

Perhaps I was in a condition to receive the romantic im-
pression he made upon me, and I took it upon myself to
ask his company as guide, and he cheerfully assented. But
some domestic duty called him presently away.

The fire gleamed brightly on the hearth, and, no longer
resisting the prevailing influence, I silently watched the
spirting flame, listening to the wind which continually shook
the tenement. Besides the one chair, which had acquired
a new importance in my eyes, I presently discovered a crazy
table in one corner, with an inkbottle and pen, the latter
in that greasy state of decomposition peculiar to country
taverns and farmhouses. A goodly array of rifles and
double-barreled guns stocked the corner; half a dozen
saddles and blankets lay near, with a mild flavor of the
horse about them. Some deer and bear skins completed
the inventory. As I sat there, with the silent group around
me, the shadowy gloom within and the dominant wind
3850 EARLIER SKETCHES

without, I found it difficult to believe I had ever known a
different existence. My profession had often led me to
wilder scenes, but rarely among those whose unrestrained
habits and easy unconsciousness made me feel so lonely
and uncomfortable. I shrank closer to myself, not without
grave doubts — which I think occur naturally to people in
like situations — that this was the general rule of humanity,
and I was a solitary and somewhat gratuitous exception.

It was a relief when a laconic announcement of supper
by a weak-eyed girl caused a general movement in the
family. We walked across the dark platform, which led to
another low-ceiled room. Its entire length was occupied
by a table, at the further end of which a weak-eyed woman
was already taking her repast as she at the same time gave
nourishment to a weak-eyed baby. As the formalities of
introduction had been dispensed with, and as she took no
notice of me, I was enabled to slip into a seat without dis-
composing or interrupting her. Tryan extemporized a grace,
and the attention of the family became absorbed in bacon,
potatoes, and dried apples.

The meal was a sincere one. Gentle gurglings at the
upper ond of the table often betrayed the presence of
the “ wellspring of pleasure.” The conversation generally
referred to the labors of the day, and comparing notes as
to the whereabouts of missing stock. Yet the supper was
such a vast improvement upon the previous intellectual
feast, that when a chance allusion of mine to the business
of my visit brought out the elder Tryan, the interest grew
quite exciting. I remember he inveighed bitterly against
the system of ranch-holding by the ‘“ Greasers,’’ as he was
pleased tu term the native Californians, As the same ideas
have been sometimes advanced under more pretentious cir-
cumstances, they may be worthy of record.

“ Look at ’em holdin’ the finest grazin’ land that ever lay
suter doors? Whar’s the papers for it? Was it grants ?
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD 351

Mighty fine grants, — most of ’em made arter the ’Merri.
kans got possession. More fools the ’Merrikans for lettin’
?em hold ’em. Wat paid for’em? ?’Merrikan blood and
money.

“Didn’t they oughter have suthin’ out of their native
country ? Wot for? Did they ever improve ? Got a lot
of yaller-skinned diggers, not so sensible as niggers, to look
arter stock, and they a-sittin’ home and smokin’. With
their gold and silver candlesticks, and missions, and cruci-
fixens, priests and graven idols, and sich? Them sort
things wuren’t allowed in Mizzoori.”

At the mention of improvements I involuntarily lifted
my eyes, and met the half-laughing, half-embarrassed look
of George. The act did not escape detection, and I had at
once the satisfaction of seeing that the rest of the family
had formed an offensive alliance against us.

‘Tt was agin nater and agin God,” added Tryan. “ God
never intended gold in the rocks to be made into heathen
candlesticks and crucifixens. That’s why he sent ’Merri-
kans here. Nater never intended such a climate for lazy
lopers. She never gi’n six months’ sunshine to be slept
and smoked away.”

How long he continued, and with what further illustra-
tion, I could not say, for I took an early opportunity to
escape to the sitting-room. I was soon followed by George,
who called me to an open door leading to a smaller room,
and pointed to a bed.

“You ’d better sleep there to-night,” he said; “ you’ll be
more comfortable, and Il] call you early.”

I thanked him, and would have asked him several ques-
tions which were then troubling me, but he shyly slipped
to the door and vanished.

A shadow seemed to fall on the room when he had gone.
The “ boys ” returned, one by one, and shuffled to their old
places. A larger log was thrown on the fire, and the huge
852 EARLIER SKETCHES

chi:nney glowed like a furnace, but it did not seem to melt
or subdue a single line of the hard faces that it lit. Half
an hour later, the furs which had served as chairs by day
undertook the nightly office of mattresses, and each received
its owner’s full-length figure. Mr. Tryan had not re-
turned, and I missed George. I sat there until, wakeful
and nervous, I saw the fire fall and shadows mount the
wall. There was no sound but the rushing of the wind
and the snoring of the sleepers. At last, feeling the place
insupportable, I seized my hat, and, opening the door, ran
out briskly into the night.

The acceleration of my torpid pulse in the keen fight
with the wind, whose violence was almost equal to that of
a tornado, and the familiar faces of the bright stars ahove
me, I felt as a blessed relief. Iran, not knowing whither,
and when I halted, the square outline of the house was
lost in the alder-bushes. An uninterrupted plain stretched
before me, like a vast sea beaten flat by the force of the
gale: As I kept on I noticed a slight elevation toward the
horizon, and presently my progress was impeded by the ascent
of an Indian mound. It struck me forcibly as resembling
an island in the sea. Its height gave me a better view of
the expanding plain. But even hereI found no rest. The
ridiculous interpretation Tryan had given the climate was
somehow sung in my ears and echoed in my throbbing pulse
as, guided by the stars, I sought the house again.

But I felt fresher and more natural as I stepped upon
the platform. The door of the lower building was open,
and the old man was sitting beside the table, thumbing the
zeaves of a Bible with a look in his face as though he were
hunting up prophecies against the ‘‘ Greaser.” I turned to
enter, but my attention was attracted by a blanketed figure
lying beside the house on the platform. The broad chest
heaving with healthy slumber, and the open, honest face
were familiar. It was George, who had given up his bed to
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD 353

the stranger among his people. I was about to wake him,
but he lay so peaceful and quiet, I felt awed and hushed.
And I went to bed with a pleasant impression of his hand-
some face and tranquil figure soothing me to sleep.

I was awakened the next morning from a sense of lulled
repose and grateful silence by the cheery voice of George,
who stood beside my bed ostentatiously twirling a riata,
as if to recall the duties of the day to my sleep-bewildered
eyes. I looked around me. The wind had been magically
laid, and the sun shone warmly through the windows. <A
dash of cold water, with an extra chill on, from the tin basin,
helped to brighten me. It was still early, but the family
had already breakfasted and dispersed, and a wagon wind-
ing far in the distance showed that the unfortunate Tom
had already “ packed”? his relatives away. I felt more
cheerful, — there are few troubles Youth cannot distance
with the start of a good night’s rest. After a substantial
breakfast, prepared by George, in a few moments we were
mounted and dashing down the plain.

We followed the line of alder that defined the creek, now
dry and baked with summer’s heat, but which in winter,
George told me, overflowed its banks. I still retain a vivid
impression of that morning’s ride ; the far-off mountains, like
silhouettes, against the steel-blue sky; the crisp, dry air,
and the expanding track before me, animated often by the
well-knit figure of George Tryan, musical with jingling
spurs and picturesque with flying riata. He rode a
powerful native roan, wild-eyed, untiring in stride, and un-
broken in nature. Alas! the curves of beauty were con-
cealed by the cumbrous machillas of the Spanish saddle,
which levels all equine distinctions. The single rein lay
loosely on the cruel bit that can gripe and, if need be,
crush the jaw it controls.

Again the illimitable freedom of the valley rises before
354 EARLIER SKETCHES

me as we again bear down into sunlit space. Can this be
ohu-Chu, staid and respectable filly of American pedigree,
—Chu-Chu, forgetful of plank-roads and cobble stones,
wild with excitement, twinkling her small white feet be-
neath me? George laughs out of a cloud of dust, “ Give
her her head; don’t you see she likes it?” and Chu-Chu
seems to like it, and, whether bitten by native tarantula into
native barbarism or emulous of the roan, “blood” asserts
itself, and in 4 moment the peaceful servitude of years is
beaten out in the music of her clattering hoofs. The creek
widens toa deep gully. We dive into it and up on the
opposite side, carrying a moving cloud of impalpable
powder witn us. Cattle are scattered over the plain,
grazing quietly or banded together in vast restless herds.
George makes a wide, indefinite sweep with the riata, as
if to include them all in his vaquero’s loop, and says,
“Ours!”

About how many, George ? ”

“ Don’t know.”

‘How many ?”

“Well, p’r’aps three thousand head,” says George,
reflecting. ‘ We don’t know; takes five men to look ’em up
and keep run.”

“What are they worth-? ”

“ About thirty dollars a head.”

I make a rapid calculation, and look my astonishment
at the laughing George. Perhaps a recollection of the
domestic economy of the Tryan household is expressed in
that look, for George averts his eye and says apologeti-
cally, —

“T’ve tried to get the old man to sell and build, but you
know he says it ain’t no use to settle down just yet. We
must keep movin’. In fact, he built the shanty for that
purpose, lest titles should fall through, and we ’d have to get
up and move stakes farther down.”
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD 358

Suddenly his quick eye detects some unusual sight in a
herd we are passing, and with an exclamation he puts his
roan into the centre of the mass. I follow, or rather
Cha-Chu darts after the roan, and in a few moments we
are in the midst of apparently inextricable horns and hoofs.
“Toro !’? shouts George, with vaquero enthusiasm, and the
band opens a way for the swinging riata. I can feel their
steaming breaths, and their spume is cast on Chu-Chu’?:
quivering flank.

Wild, devilish-looking beasts are they; not such shapes
as Jove might have chosen to woo a goddess, nor such as
peacefully range the downs of Devon, but lean and hungry
Cassius-like bovines, economically got up to meet the ex-
igencies of a six-months’ rainless climate, and accustomed
to wrestle with the distracting wind and the blinding
dust.

“ That’s not our brand,” says George; ‘they ’re strange
stock,’’ and he points to what my scientific eye recognizes
as the astrological sign of Venus deeply seared in the brown
flanks of the bull he is chasing. But the herd are closing
round us with low mutterings, and George has again re-
course to the authoritative “Toro,” and with swinging
riata divides the ‘bossy bucklers”’ on either side. When
we are free, and breathing somewhat more easily, I venture
to ask George if they ever attack any one.

“* Never horsemen, — sometimes footmen. Not through
rage, you know, but curiosity. They think a man and his
horse are one, and if they meet a chap afoot, they run him
down and trample him under hoof, in the pursuit of know-
ledge. But,” adds George, “here’s the lower bench of the
foothills, and here’s Altascar’s corral, and that white build-
ing you see yonder is the casa.”

A whitewashed wall inclosed a court containing another
adobe building, baked with the solar beams of many
summers. Leaving our horses in the charge of a few peons
856 EARLIER SKETCHES

in the courtyard, who were basking lazily in the sun, we
eutered a low duorway, where a deep shadow and an agree-
able coolness fell upon us, as sudden and grateful as a
plunge in cool water, from its contrast with the external
glare and heat. In the centre of a low-ceiled apartment sat
an old man with a black silk handkerchief tied about his
head, the few gray hairs that escaped from its folds reliev-
ing his gamboge-colored face. The odor of cigarritos was
as incense added to the cathedral gloom of the building.

As Sefior Altascar rose with well-bred gravity to receive
us, George advanced with such a heightened color, and
such a blending of tenderness and respect in his manner,
that I was touched to the heart by so much devotion in the
careless youth. In fact, my eyes were still dazzled by the
effect of the outer sunshine, and at first I did not see the
white teeth and black eyes of Pepita, who slipped into the
corridor as we entered.

It was no pleasant matter to disclose particulars of
business which would deprive the old sefior of the greater
part of that land we had just ridden over, and I did it with
great embarrassment. But he listened calmly,—not a
muscle of his dark face stirring, — and the smoke curling
placidly from his lips showed his regular respiration. When
I had finished, he offered quietly to accompany us to the
line of demarcation. George had meanwhile disappeared,
but a suspicious conversation in broken Spanish and Englisk
in the corridor betrayed his vicinity. When he returned
again, a little absent-minded, the old man, by far the coolest
and most self-possessed of the party, extinguished his
black silk cap beneath that stiff, uncomely sombrero which
all native Californians affect. A serapa thrown over his
shoulders hinted that he was waiting. Horses are always
ready saddled in Spanish ranchos, and in half an hour from
the time of our arrival we were again loping in the staring
sunlight.
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD 357

But not as cheerfully as before. George and myself were
weighed down by restraint, and Altascar was gravely quiet.
To break the silence, and by way of a consolatory essay, I
hinted to him that there might be further intervention or
< ppeal, but the proffered oil and wine were returned with a
careless shrug of the shoulders and a sententious “Que
bieno ? Your courts are always just.”

The Indian mound of the previous night’s discovery was
‘ bearing monument of the new line, and there we halted.
\/e were surprised to find the old man Tryan waiting us.
Inr the first time during our interview the old Spaniard
seemed moved, and the blood rose in his yellow cheek.
I was anxious to close the scene, and pointed out the corner
boundaries as clearly as my recollection served.

“The deputies will be here to-morrow to run the lines
from this initial point, and there will be no further trouble,
I believe, gentlemen.”

Sefior Altascar had dismounted and was gathering a few
tufts of dried grass in his hands. George and I exchanged
glances. He presently arose from his stooping posture,
and advancing to within a few paces of Joseph Tryan, said
in ¢ voice broken with passion, —

‘-And I, Fernando Jesus Maria Altascar, put you in
possession of my land in the fashion of my country.”

He threw a sod to each of the cardinal points.

“YT don’t know your courts, your judges, or your corre-
gidores. Take the llano!—and take this with it. May
the drought seize your cattle till their tongues hang down
as long as those of your lying lawyers! May it be the
curse and torment of your old age, as you and yours have
made it of mine!”

We stepped between the principal actors in this scene,
which only the passion of Altascar made tragical, but
Tryan, with a humility but ill concealing his triumph, in-
terrupted, —
358 EARLIER SKETCHES

“Let him curse on. He’ll find ’em coming home ta
him sooner than the cattle he has lost through his sloth and
pride. The Lord is on the side of the just, as well as agin
all slanderers and revilers.”

Altascar but half guessed the meaning of the Missourian,
yet sufficiently to drive from his mind all but the extrava-
gant power of his native invective.

“Stealer of the sacrament! Open not! — open not, I
say, your lying Judas lips tome! Ah! half-breed, with
the soul of a coyote ! — Car-r-r-ramba !”

With his passion reverberating among the consonants
like distant thunder, he laid his hand upon the mane of
his horse as though it had been the gray locks of his adver-
sary, swung himself into the saddle, and galloped away.

George turned to me.

“ Will you go back with us to-night ?”

I thought of the cheerless walls, the silent figures by the
fire, and the roaring wind, and hesitated.

“ Well, then, good-by.”

“ Good-by, George.”

Another wring of the hands, and we parted. JI had not
ridden far, when I turned and looked back. The wind
had risen early that afternoon, and was already sweeping
across the plain. A cloud of dust traveled before it, and
a picturesque figure occasionally emerging therefrom was
my last indistinct impression of George Tryan.

PART II
IN THE FLOOD

Three months after the survey of the Espfritu Santo
rancho I was again in the valley of the Sacramento. But
a general and terrible visitation had erased the memory of
that event as completely as I supposed it had obliterated
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD 359

the boundary monuments I had planted. The great flood
of 1861-62 was at its height when, obeying some indefi-
nite yearning, I took my carpetbag and embarked for the
inundated valley.

There was nothing to be seen from the bright cabin win-
dows of the Golden City but night deepening over the
water. The only sound was the pattering rain, and that
had grown monotonous for the past two weeks, and did
not disturb the national gravity of my countrymen as they
silently sat around the cabin stove. Some on errands of
relief to friends and relatives wore anxious faces, and con-
versed soberly on the one absorbing topic. Others like
myself, attracted by curiosity, listened eagerly to newer
details. But, with that human disposition to seize upon
any circumstance that might give chance event the exagger-
ated importance of instinct, I was half conscious of some-
thing more than curiosity as an impelling motive.

The dripping of rain, the low gurgle of water, and a
Jeaden sky greeted us the next morning as we lay beside
the half-submerged levee of Sacramento. Here, however,
the novelty of boats to convey us to the hotels was an
appeal that was irresistible. I resigned myself to a drip-
ping rubber-cased mariner called Joe, and wrapping my-
self in a shining cloak of the like material, about as sugges-
tive of warmth as court-plaster might have been, took my
seat in the stern sheets of his boat. It was no slight
inward struggle to part from the steamer, that to most of
the passengers was the only visible connecting link between
us and the dry and habitable earth, but we pulled away
and entered the city, stemming a rapid current as we shot
the levee.

We glided up the long level of K Street, — once a cheer-
ful busy thoroughfare, now distressing in its silent desola-
tion. The turbid water, which seemed to meet the horizon
edge before us, flowed at right angles in sluggish rivers
360 EARLIER SKETCHES

through the streets. Nature had revenged herself on the
local taste by disarraying the regular rectangles by hud-
dling houses on street corners, where they presented abrupt
gables to the current, or by capsizing them in compact ruin,
Crafts of all kinds were gliding in and out of low-arched
doorways. The water was over the top of the fences sur-
rounding well-kept gardens, in the first stories of hotels
and private dwellings, trailing its slime on velvet carpets as
well as roughly boarded floors. And a silence quite as sug-
gestive as the visible desolation was in the voiceless streets
that no longer echoed to carriage-wheel or footfall. The
low ripple of water, the occasional splash of oars, or the
warning cry of boatmen were the few signs of life and hab-
itation.

With such scenes before my eyes and such sounds in my
ears, as I lie lazily in the boat, is mingled the song of my
gondolier, who sings to the music of his oars. It is not
quite as romantic as his brother of the Lido might impro-
vise, but my Yankee Giuseppe has the advantage of
earnestness and energy, and gives a graphic description of
the terrors of the past week and of noble deeds of self-sae-
rifice and devotion, occasionally pointing out a balcony from
which some California Bianca or Laura had been snatched,
half-clothed and famished. Giuseppe is otherwise peculiar,
and refuses the proffered fare, for—am TI not a citizen of
San Francisco, which was first to respond to the suffering
cry of Sacramento? and is not he, Giuseppe, a member of
the Howard Society ? No, Giuseppe is poor, but cannot
take my money. Still, if I must spend it, there is the
Howard Society, and the women and children without food
and clothing at the Agricultural Hall.

I thank the generous gondolier, and we go to the Hall,
—a dismal, bleak place, ghastly with the memories of last
year’s opulence and plenty, —and here Giuseppe’s fare is
swelled by the stranger’s mite. But here Giuseppe tells
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD 361

me of the “ Relief Boat’? which leaves for the flooded dis-
trict in the interior, and here, profiting by the lesson he
has taught me, I make the resolve to turn my curiosity to
the account of others, and am accepted of those who go
forth to succor and help the afflicted. Giuseppe takes
charge of my carpetbag, and does not part from me until I
stand on the slippery deck of Relief Boat No. 3.

An hour later I am in the pilot-house, looking down
upon what was once the channel of a peaceful river. But
its banks are only defined by tossing tufts of willow washed
by the long swell that breaks over a vast inland sea,
Stretches of tule land fertilized by its once regular
channel, and dotted by flourishing ranchos, are now cleanly
erased. The cultivated profile of the old landscape had
faded. Dotted lines in symmetrical perspective mark
orchards that are buried and chilled in the turbid flood.
The roofs of a few farmhouses are visible, and here and
there the smoke curling from chimneys of half-submerged
tenements shows an undaunted life within. Cattle and
sheep are gathered on Indian mounds, waiting the fate of
their companions, whose carcases drift by us or swing in
eddies with the wrecks of barns and outhouses. Wagons
are stranded everywhere where the tide could carry them.
As I wipe the moistened glass, I see nothing but water,
pattering on the deck from the. lowering clouds, dashing
against the window, dripping from the willows, hissing by
the wheels, everywhere washing, coiling, sapping, hurrying
in rapids, or swelling at last into deeper and vaster lakes,
awful in their suggestive quiet and concealment.

As day fades into night the monotony of this strange
prospect grows oppressive. I seek the engine-room, and
in the company of some of the few half-drowned sufferers
we have already picked up from temporary rafts, I forget
the general aspect of desolation in their individual misery.
Later we meet the San Francisco packet, and transfer a
362 EARLIER SKETCHES

number of our passengers. From them we learn how
inward-bound vessels report to having struck the well-defined
channel of the Sacramento fifty miles beyond the bar,
There is a voluntary contribution taken among the generous
travelers for the use of our afflicted, and we part company
with a hearty “God speed” on either side. But our sig-
nal lights are not far distant before a familiar sound comes
back to us, —an indomitable Yankee cheer, — which scat-
ters the gloom.

Our course is altered, and we are steaming over the
obliterated banks far in the interior. Once or twice black
objects loom up near us, — the wrecks of houses floating
by. ‘There is a slight rift in the sky towards the north,
and a few bearing stars to guide us over the waste. As we
penetrate into shallower water, it is deemed advisable to
divide our party into smaller boats, and diverge over the
submerged prairie. I borrow a pea-coat of one of the crew,
and in that practical disguise am doubtfully permitted to
pass into one of the boats. We give way northerly. It
is quite dark yet, although the rift of cloud has widened.

it must have been about three o’clock, and we were
lying upon our oars in an eddy formed by a clump of cot-
tonwood, and the light of the steamer is a solitary bright
star in the distance, when the silence is broken by the
“ bow oar”? : —

“ Light ahead.”

All eyes are turned in that direction. In a few seconds
» twinkling light appears, shines steadily, and again disap-
pears, as if by the shifting position of some black objeci
apparently drifting close upon us.

“Stern, all! — a steamer!”

* Hold hard, there! Steamer be d—d!” is the reply
of the coxswain. ‘It’s a house, and a big one too.”

It is a big one, looming in the starlight like a huge frag
ment of the darkness. The light comes from a sing!s
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD 8638

candle which shines through a window as the great shapa
swings by. Some recollection is drifting back to me with
't, as I listen with beating heart.

“There ’s some one in it, by heavens! Give way, boys,
—lay her alongside. Handsomely, now! The door’s
fastened; try the window; no! here’s another! ”

In another moment we are trampling in the water, which
washes the floor to the depth of several inches. It isa
large room, at the farther end of which an old man is sit-
ting, wrapped in a blanket, holding a candle in one hand,
and apparently absorbed in the book he holds with the
other. I spring toward him with an exclamation : —

“ Joseph Tryan!”

He does not move. We gather closer to him, and I lay
my hand gently on his shoulder, and say, —

“Look up, old man, look up! Your wife and children,
where are they? The boys,—-George! Are they here ?
are they safe ? ”

He raises his head slowly, and turns his eyes to mine,
and we involuntarily recoil before his look. It isa ealm
and quiet glance, free from fear, anger, or pain; but it
somehow sends the blood curdling through our veins. He
bowed his head over his book again, taking no further
notice of us. The men look at me compassionately and
hold their peace. I make one more effort : —

“ Joseph Tryan, don’t you know me — the surveyor who
surveyed your ranch, — the Espiritu Santo? Look up, old
man!”

He shuddered and wrapped himself closer in his blanket.
Presently he repeated to himself, “The surveyor who sur-
veyed your ranch, Espiritu Santo,” over and over again, as
though it were a lesson he was trying to fix in his mem-
ory.

I was turning sadly to the hoatmen, when he suddenly
caught me fearfully by the hand, and said : —
364 EARLIER SKETCHES

“ Hush !”?

We were silent.

“Listen!?? He puts his arm around my neck, and
whispers in my ear, “I’m a-moving off!”

“ Moving off?”

“Hush! Don’tspeak so loud. Moving off! Ah! wot’s
that? Don’t you hear ? — there ! — listen!”

We listen, and hear the water gurgle and click beneath
the floor.

“Tt’s them wot he sent!—old Altascar sent. They ’ve
been here all night. I heard ’em first in the creek, when
they came to tell the old man to move farther off. They
came nearer and nearer. They whispered under the door,
and I saw their eyes on the step, — their cruel, hard eyes.
Ah! why don’t they quit ?”

I tell the men to search the room and see if they can
find any farther traces of the family, while Tryan resumes
his old attitude. It is so much like the figure I remember
on the breezy night, that a superstitious feeling is fast over-
coming me. When they have returned, I tell them briefly
what I know of him, and the old man murmurs again, —

‘Why don’t they quit, then? They have the stock, —
all gone — gone, — gone for the hides and hoofs,” and he
groans bitterly.

“There are other boats below us. The shanty cannot
nave drifted far, and perhaps the family are safe by this
time,” says the coxswain hopefully.

We lift the old man up, for he is quite helpless, and
carry him to the boat. He is still grasping the Bible in his
right hand, though its strengthening grace is blank to his
vacant eye, and he cowers in the stern as we pull slowly to
the steamer, while a pale gleam in the sky shows the com-
ing day.

I was weary with excitement, and when we reached the
steamer, and I had seen Joseph Tryan comfortably be-
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD 365

stowed, I wrapped myself in a blanket near the boiler and
presently fell asleep. But even then the figure of the old
man often started before me, and a sense of uneasiness about
George made a strong undercurrent to my drifting dreams.
I was awakened at about eight o’clock in the morning by
the engineer, who told me one of the old man’s sons had
been picked up and was now on board.

“Ts it George Tryan ?”’ I ask quickly.

“ Don’t know; but he’s a sweet one, whoever he is,”
adds the engineer, with a smile at some luscious remem-
brance. ‘You ’ll find him for’ard.”

I hurry to the bow of the boat, and find not George, but
the irrepressible Wise, sitting on a coil of rope, a little
dirtier and rather more dilapidated than I can remember
having seen him.

He is examining, with apparent admiration, some rough,
dry clothes that have been put out for his disposal. I can-
not help thinking that circumstances have somewhat exalted
his usual cheerfulness. He puts me at ease by at once
addressing me : —

“These are high old times, ain’t they ? I say, what do
you reckon ’s become o’ them thar bound’ry moniments you
stuck ? Ah!”

The pause which succeeds this outburst is the effect of a
spasm of admiration at a pair of high boots, which, by great
exertion, he has at last pulled on his feet.

“So you’ve picked up the ole man in the shanty, clean
crazy ? He must have been soft to have stuck there instead
0’ leavin’ with the old woman. Didn’t know me frei
Adam ; took me for George!” ;

At this affecting instance of paternal forgetfulness, Wise
was evidently divided between amusement and chagrin. I
took advantage of the contending emotions to ask about
George.

“Don’t know whar he is! If he’d tended stock instead
366 EARLIER SKETCHES

of running about the prairie, packin’ off wimmin and chil-
dren, he might have saved suthin’. He lost every hoof and
hide, I’ll bet a cooky! Say, you,” to a passing boatman,
“when are you goin’ to give us some grub? I’m hungry
’nough to skin and eat a hoss. Reckon I’ll turn butcher
when things is dried up, and save hides, horns, and taller.”

I could not but admire this indomitable energy, which
under softer climatic influences might have borne such
goodly fruit. ,

“Have you any idea what you’ll do, Wise?” I ask.

“Thar ain’t much to do now,” says the practical young
man. ‘J’ll have to lay over a spell, I reckon, till things
comes straight. The land ain’t worth much now, and won’t
be, I dessay, for some time. Wonder whar the ole man’ll
drive stakes next.”

“T meant as to your father and George, Wise.”

“Oh, the ole man and I’ go on to Miles’s, whar Tom
packed the old woman and babies last week. George Il
turn up somewhar atween this and Altascar’s, ef he ain’t
thar now.”

I ask how the Altascars have suffered.

“Well, I reckon he ain’t lost much in stock. I should n’t
wonder if George helped him drive ’em up the foothills.
And his casa ’s built too high. Oh, thar ain’t any water
thar, you bet. Ah!” says Wise, with reflective admiration,
“those Greasers ain’t the darned fools people thinks ’em.
I’ll bet thar ain’t one swamped out in all ’er Californy.”’
But the appearance of “grub” cut this rhapsody short.

“T shall keep on a little farther,” I say, “and try to
find George.”

Wise stared a moment at this eccentricity until a new
light dawned upon him.

“T don’t think you’ll save much. What’s the percent-
age, — workin’ on shares, eh?”

I answer that I am only curious, which I feel lessens his
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD 367

opinion of me, and with a sadder feeling than his assurance
of George’s safety might warrant, I walked away.

From others whom we picked up from time to time we
heard of George’s self-sacrificing devotion, with the praises
of the many he had helped and rescued. But 1 did not
feel disposed to return until J had seen him, and soon pre-
pared myself to take a boat to the lower valda of the
foothills, and visit Altascar. I soon ‘perfected my arrange-
ments, bade farewell to Wise, and took a last look at the
old man, who was sitting by the furnace fires quite passive
and composed. Then our boat-head swung round, pulled
by sturdy and willing hands.

It was again raining, and a disagreeable wind had risen.
Our course lay nearly west, and we soon knew by the strong
current that we were in the creek of the Espfritu Santo.
From time to time the wrecks of barns were seen, and we
passed many half-submerged willows hung with farming
implements.

We emerge at last into a broad silent sea. It is the
Nano de Espiritu Santo. As the wind whistles by me,
piling the shallower fresh water into mimic waves, I go
back, in fancy, to the long ride of October over that hound-
less plain, and recall the sharp outlines of the distant hills
which are now lost in the lowering clouds. The men are
rowing silently, and I find my mind, released from its ten-
sion, growing benumbed and depressed as then. The water,
too, is getting more shallow as we leave the banks of the
creek, and with my hand dipped listlessly over the thwarts,
T detect the tops of chimisal, which shows the tide to have
somewhat fallen. There is a black mound, bearing to the
north of the line of alder, making an adverse current, which,
as we sweep to the right to avoid it, I recognize. We pull
close alongside, and I call to the men to stop.

There was a stake driven near its summit with the
initials, “L. E. 8. 1” Tied halfway down was a curi-
368 EARLIER SKETCHES

ously worked riata. It was George’s. It had been cut
with some sharp instrument, and the loose gravelly soil of
the mound was deeply dented with horse’s hoofs, The
stake was covered with horsehairs. Jt was a record, but
no clue.

The wind: had grown more violent, as we still fought
our way forward, resting and rowing by turns, and oftener
“poling” the shallower surface, but the old valda, or
bench, is still distant. My recollection of the old survey
enables me to guess the relative position of the meander-
ings of the creek, and an occasional simple professional
experiment to determine the distance gives my crew the
fullest faith in my ability. Night overtakes us in our im-
peded progress. Our condition looks more dangerous than
it really is, but I urge the men, many of whom are still new
in this mode of navigation, to greater exertion by assurance
of perfect safety and speedy relief ahead. We go on in
this way until about eight o’clock, and ground by the wil-
lows. We have a muddy walk for a few hundred yards
before we strike a dry trail, and simultaneously the white
walls of Altascar’s appear like a snow-bank before us.
Lights are moving in the courtyard; but otherwise the old
tomb-like repose characterizes the building.

One of the peons recognized me as I entered the court,
and Altascar met me on the corridor.

I was too weak to do more than beg his hospitality for
the men who had dragged wearily with me. He looked at
my hand, which still unconsciously held the broken riata.
I began, wearily, to tell him about George and my fears,
but with a gentler courtesy than was even his wont, he
gravely laid his hand on my shoulder.

“Poco a poco, sefior,—not now. You are tired, you
have hunger, you have cold. Necessary it is you should
have peace.”

He took us into a small room and poured out some French
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD 369

cognac, which he gave to the men that had accompanied
me. ‘They drank, and threw themselves before the tire in
the larger room. The repose of the building was intensified
that night, and I even fancied that the footsteps on the cor-
ridor were lighter and softer. The old Spaniard’s habitual
gravity was deeper; we might have been shut out from the
world as well as the whistling storm, behind those ancient
walls with their time-worn inheritor.

Before I could repeat my inquiry he retired. In a few
minutes two smoking dishes of chupa with coffee were
placed before us, and my men ate ravenously. I drank
the coffee, but my excitement and weariness kept down the
instincts of hunger.

I was sitting sadly by the fire when he reéntered.

“You have eat?”

I said, ‘‘ Yes,” to please him.

“‘ Bueno, eat when you can, — food and appetite are not
always.”

He said this with that Sancho-like simplicity with which
most of his countrymen utter a proverb, as though it were
an experience rather than a legend, and, taking the riata
from the floor, held it almost tenderly before him.

“Tt was made by me, sefior.”

“JT kept it as a clue to him, Don Altascar,’”’ I said.
“Tf I could find him ” —

“ He is here.”

“ Here! and’”?—but I could not say, “well!” I
understood the gravity of the old man’s face, the hushed
footfalls, the tomb-like repose of the building, in an electric
flash of consciousness: I held the clue to the broken riata
at last. Altascar took my hand, and we crossed the corri-
dor to a sombre apartment. A few tall candles were burn
ing in sconces before the window.

In an alcove there was a deep bed with its counterpane,
pillows, and sheets heavily edged with lace, in all that
370 EARLIER SKETCHES

splendid luxury which the humblest of these strange people
lavish upon this single item of their household. I stepped
beside it and saw George lying, as I had seen him once
before, peacefully at rest. But a greater sacrifice than that
he had known was here, and his generous heart was stilled
forever.

‘‘ He was honest and brave,” said the old man, and
turned away.

There was another figure in the room; a heavy shawl
drawn over her graceful outline, and her long black hair
hiding the hands that buried her downcast face. I did not
seem to notice her, and, retiring presently, left the loving
and loved together.

When we were again beside the crackling fire, in the
shifting shadows of the great chamber, Altascar told me
now he had that morning met the horse of George Tryan
swimming on the prairie; how that, farther on, he found
him lying, quite cold and dead, with no marks or bruises
on his person; that he had probably become exhausted in
fording the creek, and that he had as probably reached the
mound only to die for want of that help he had so freely
given to others; that, as a last act, he had freed his horse.
These incidents were corroborated by many who collected
in the great chamber that evening, — women and children,
— most of them succored through the devoted energies of
him who lay cold and lifeless above.

He was buried in the Indian mound, —the single spot
of strange perennial greenness, which the poor aborigines
had raised above the dusty plain. A little slab of sand-
stone with the initials “G. T.’”’ is his monument, and one
of the bearings of the initial corner of the new survey of
the Espiritu Santo rancho.
WAITING FOR THE SHIP
A FORT POINT IDYL

Axsout an hour’s ride from the Plaza there is a high
bluff with the ocean breaking uninterruptedly along its
rocky beach. ‘There are several cottages on the sands,
which look as if they had recently been cast up by a heavy
sea. The cultivated patch behind each tenement is fenced
in by bamboos, broken spars, and driftwood. With its few
green cabbages and turnip-tops, each garden looks something
like an aquarium with the water turned off. In fact you
would not be surprised to meet a merman digging among
the potatoes, or a mermaid milking a sea-cow hard by.

Near this place formerly arose a great semaphoric tele-
graph, with its gaunt arms tossed up against the horizon.
It has been replaced by an observatory, connected with an
electric nerve to the heart of the great commercial city.
From this point the incoming ships are signaled, and again
checked off at the City Exchange. And while we are here,
looking for the expected steamer, let me tell you a story.

Not long ago, a simple, hard-working mechanic had
amassed suflicient by diligent labor in the mines to send
home for his wife and two children. He arrived in San
Francisco a month before the time the ship was due, for he
was a Western man, and had made the overland journey,
and knew little of ships or seas or gales. He procured
work in the city, but as the time approached he would go
to the shipping office regularly every day. The month
passed, but the ship came not; then a month and a week,
two weeks, three weeks, two months, and then a year.
372 EARLIER SKETCHES

The rough, patient face, with soft lines overlying its hard
features, which had become a daily apparition at the ship-
ping-agent’s, then disappeared. It turned up one afternoon
at the observatory as the setting sun relieved the operator
from his duties. There was something so childlike: and
simple in the few questions asked by this stranger, touching
his business, that the operator spent some time to explain.
When the mystery of signals and telegraphs was unfolded,
the stranger had one more question to ask. ‘ How long
might a vessel be absent before they would give up expect-
ing her?” The operator could n’t tell; it would depend
on circumstances. Would it be a year? Yes, it might be
a year, and vessels had been given up for lost after two
years and had come home. The stranger put his rough
hand on the operator’s, and thanked him for his “ troubil,’”’
and went away.

Still the ship came not. Stately clippers swept into the
Gate, and merchantmen went by with colors flying, and
the welcoming gun of the steamer often reverberated among
the hills. Then the patient face, with the old resigned
expression, but a brighter, wistful look in the eye, was
regularly met on the crowded decks of the steamer as she
disembarked her living freight. He may have had a dimly
defined hope that the missing ones might yet come this
way, as only another road over that strange unknown ex-
panse. But he talked with ship captains and sailors, and
even this last hope seemed to fail. When the careworn
face and bright eyes were presented again at the observa-
tory, the operator, busily engaged, could not spare time to
answer foolish interrogatories, so he went away. But as
night fell, he was seen sitting on the rocks with his face
turned seaward, and was seated there all that night.

When he became hopelessly insane, for that was what the
physicians said made his eyes so bright and wistful, he was
cared for by a fellow craftsman who had known his troubles.
WAITING FOR THE SHIP 375

He was aliowed to indulge his fancy of going out to watch
for the ship, in which she “and the children” were, at night,
when no one else was watching. He had made up his
mind that the ship would come in at night. This, and the
idea that he would relieve the operator, who would be tired
with watching all day, seemed to please him. So he went
out and relieved the operator every night!

For two years the ships came and went. He was there
to see the outward-bound clipper, and greet her on her
return. He was known only by a few who frequented the
place. When he was missed at last from his accustomed
spot, a day or two elapsed before any alarm was felt. One
Sunday, a party of pleasure-seekers clambering over the
rocks were attracted by the barking of a dog that had run
on before them. When they came up they found a plainly
dressed man lying there dead. There were a few papers in
his pocket, — chiefly slips cut from different journals of old
marine memoranda, — and his face was turned towards ths
distant sea.
A NIGHT AT WINGDAM

I wap been stage-ridden and bewildered all day, and
when we swept down with the darkness into the Arcadian
hamlet of Wingdam I resolved to go no farther, and rolled
out in a gloomy and dyspeptic state. The effects of a
mysterious pie, and some sweetened carbonic acid known to
the proprietor of the Half-way House as “lemming sody,”
stil oppressed me. Even the facetie of the gallant ex.
pressman, who knew everybody’s Christian name along the
route, who rained letters, newspapers, and bundles from
the top of the stage, whose legs frequently appeared in
frightful proximity to the wheels, who got on and off while
we were going at full speed, whose gallantry, energy, and
superior knowledge of travel crushed all us other passengers
to envious silence, and who just then was talking with sev-
eral persons and manifestly doing something else at the same
time, — even this had failed to interest me. So I stood
gloomily, clutching my shawl] and carpetbag, and watched
the stage roll away, taking a parting look at the gallant
expressman as he hung on the top rail with one leg, and lit
his cigar from the pipe of a running footman. I then
turned toward the Wingdam Temperance Hotel.

It may have been the weather, or it may have been the
pie, but I was not impressed favorably with the house. Per-
haps it was the name extending the whole length of the
building, with a letter under each window, making the peo-
ple who looked out dreadfully conspicuous. Perhaps it
was that “Temperance” always suggested to my mind
rusks and weak tea. It was uninviting. It might have
A NIGHT AT WINGDAM 875

been called the ‘Total Abstinence’? Hotel, from the lack
of anything to intoxicate or inthrall the senses, it was
designed with an eye to artistic dreariness. It was so mucn
too large for the settlement that it appeared to be a very
slight improvement on outdoors. It was unpleasantly new.
There was the forest flavor of dampness about it, and a
slight spicing of pine. Nature outraged, but not entir ly
subdued, sometimes broke out afresh in little round, sticky
resinous tears on the doors and windows. It seemed to me
that boarding there must seem like a perpetual picnic. As
T entered the door, a number of the regular boarders rushed
out of a long room, and set about trying to get the taste of
something out of their mouths, by the application of tobacco
in various forms, A few immediately ranged themselves
around the fireplace, with their legs over each other’s chairs,
and in that position silently resigned themselves to indiges-
tion. Remembering the pie, I waived the invitation of the
landlord to supper, but suffered myself to be conducted into
the sitting-room. ‘Mine host”? was a magnificent-looking,
heavily bearded specimen of the animal man. He reminded
me of somebody or something connected with the drama.
I was sitting beside the fire, mutely wondering what i
could be, and trying to follow the particular chord of mem-
ory thus touched into the intricate past, when a little
delicate-looking woman appeared at the door, and, leaning
heavily against the casing, said in an exhausted tone, ‘ Hus-
band!” As the landlord turned toward her, that particu-
lar remembrance flashed before me in a single line of blank
verse. It was this: “Two souls with but one single
thought, two hearts that beat as one.”

It was Ingomar and Parthenia his wife. I imagined a
different dénouement from the play. Ingomar had taken
Parthenia back to the mountains, and kept a hotel for the
benefit of the Alemanni, who resorted there in large num-
bers. Poor Parthenia was pretty well fagged out, ana aid
3876 EARLIER SKETCHES

all the work without “help.” She had two “ young barbari-
aus,’ a boy and a girl, She was faded, but still good-
looking.

I sat and talked with Ingomar, who seemed perfectly at
home, and told me several stories of the Alemanni, all bear-
ing a strong flavor of the wilderness, and being perfectly in
keeping with the house. How he, Ingomar, had killed a
certain dreadful “ b’ar,” whose skin was just up “yar,”
over his bed. How he, Ingomar, had killed several ‘ bucks,”
whose skins had been prettily fringed and embroidered by
Parthenia, and even now clothed him. How he, Ingomar,
had killed several ‘‘ Injins,” and was once nearly scalped
himself. Ali this with that ingenious candor which is per-
fectly justifiable in a barbarian, but which a Greek might
feel inclined to look upon as “ blowing.” Thinking of the
wearied Parthenia, I began to consider for the first time
that perhaps she had better married the old Greek. Then
she would at least have always looked neat. Then she would
not have worn a woolen dress flavored with all the dinners
of the past year. Then she would not have been obliged
to wait on the table with her hair half down. Then the
two children would not have hung about her skirts with
dirty fingers, palpably dragging her down day by day. I
suppose it was the pie which put such heartless and im-
proper ideas in my head, and so I rose up and told Ingo-
mar I believed I’d go to bed. Preceded by that redoubt-
able barbarian and a flaring tallow candle, I followed him
upstairs to my room. It was the only single room he had,
he told me; he had built it for the convenience of married
parties who might stop here, but, that event not happening
yet, he had left it half furnished. It had cloth on one
side, and large cracks on the other. The wind, which
always swept over Wingdam at night-time, puffed through
the apartment from different apertures. The window was
too smail for the hole in the side of the house where it
A NIGHT AT WINGDAM 377

hung, and rattled noisily. Everything looked cheerless and
dispiriting. Before Ingomar left me, he brought that ‘ b’ar-
skin,” and throwing it over the solemn bier which stood in
one corner, told me he reckoned that would keep me warm,
and then bade me good-night. I undressed myself, the
light blowing out in the middle of that ceremony, crawled
under the ‘ b’arskin,’ and tried to compose myself to
sleep.

But I was staringly wide awake. I heard the wind
sweep down the mountuin-side, and toss the branches of the
melancholy pine, and then enter the house, and try all the
doors along the passage. Sometimes strong currents of air
blew my hair all over the pillow, as with strange whispering
breaths. The green timber along the walls seemed to be
sprouting, and sent a dampness even through the ‘‘b’arskin.”
I felt like Robinson Crusoe in his tree, with the ladder
pulled up, —or like the rocked baby of the nursery song.
After lying awake half an hour, I regretted having stopped
at Wingdam; at the end of the third quarter, I wished I
had not gone to bed; and when a restless hour passed, [ got
up and dressed myself. There had been a fire down in the
big room. Perhaps it was still burning. I opened the door
and groped my way along the passage, vocal with the snores
of the Alemanni and the whistling of the night wind; I
partly fell downstairs, and at last entering the big room,
saw the fire still burning. I drew a chair toward it, poked
it with my foot, and was astunished to see, by the upspring-
ing flash, that Parthenia was sitting there also, holding a
faded-looking baby.

I asked her why she was sitting up.

“She did not go to bed on Wednesday night before the
mail arrived, and then she awoke her husband, and there
were passengers to ’tend to.”

“Did she not get tired sometimes ?”

‘CA little, but Abner” (the barbarian’s Christian name>
378 EARLIER SKETCHES

‘had promised to get her more help next spring, if business
was good.”

‘‘ How many boarders had she ? ”

“She believed about forty came to regular meals, and
there was transient custom, which was as much as she and
her husband could ’tend to. But he did a great deal of
work.”

« What work ?”

“Oh, bringing in the wood, and looking after the traders’
things.”

“How long had she been married ?”

“About nine years. She had lost a little girl and boy.
Three children living. He was from Illinois. She from
Boston. Had an education (Boston Female High School, —
Geometry, Algebra, a little Latin and Greek). Mother and
father died. ‘Came to Illinois alone, to teach school. Saw
him — yes—a love match.” (‘Two souls,” etc., etc.)
“Married and emigrated to Kansas. Thence across the
Plains to California. Always on the outskirts of civilization.
He \iked it.

“She might sometimes have wished to go home. Would
like to on account of her children. Would like to give
them an education. Had taught thein a little herself, but
could n’t do much on account of other work. Hoped that
the boy would be like his father, strong and hearty. Was
fearful the girl would be more like her. Had often thought
she was not fit for a pioneer’s wife.”

“Why?”

“Oh, she was not strong enough, and had seen some of his
friends’ wives in Kansas who could do more work. But he
never complained, — he was so kind.” (‘ Two souls,” etc.)

Sitting there with her head leaning pensively on one
hand, holding the poor, wearied, and limp-looking baby
wearily on the other arm, dirty, drabbled, and forlorn, with
the firelight playing upon her features no longer fresh or
A NIGHT AT WINGDAM 279

goung, but still refined and delicate, and even in her
grotesque slovenliness still bearing a faint reminiscence of
birth and breeding, it was not to be wondered that I did
not fall into excessive raptures over the barbarian’s kindness.
Emboldened by my sympathy, she told me how she had
given up, little by little, what she imagined to be the weak-
ness of her early education, until she found that she acquired
but little strength in her new experience. How, translated
to a backwoods society, she was hated by the women, and
called proud and “ fine,’ and how her dear husband lost
popularity on that account with his fellows. How, led
partly by his roving instincts, and partly from other circum-
stances, he started with her to California. An account of
that tedious journey. How it was a dreary, dreary waste ir
her memory, only a blank plain marked by a little cairn of
stones, —a child’s grave. How she had noticed that little
‘Willie failed. How she had called Abner’s attention to it,
but, man-like, he knew nothing about children, and pooh-
poohed it, and was worried by the stock. How it happened
that after they had passed Sweetwater she was walking
beside the wagon one night, and looking at the western sky,
and she heard a little voice say ‘ Mother.””? How she looked
into the wagon and saw that little Willie was sleeping com-
fortably and did not wish to wake him. How that in a few
moments more she heard the same voice saying ‘“‘ Mother.”
How she came back to the wagon and leaned down over
him, and felt his breath upon her face, and again covered
him up tenderly, and once more resumed her weary journey
beside him, praying to God for his recovery. How with
her face turned to the sky she heard the same voice saying
“Mother,” and directly a great bright star shot away from
its brethren and expired. And how she knew what had
happened, and ran to the wagon again only to pillow a little
pinched and cold white face upon her weary bosom. The
thin red hands went up to her eyes here, and for a few
880 EARLIER SKETCHES

moments she sat still. The wind tore round the house and
made a frantic rush at the front door, and from his couch
of skins in the inner room Ingomar, the barbarian, snored
peacefully.

“Of course she always found a protector from insult
and outrage in the great courage and strength of her hus-
band ?”

“Oh, yes; yryhen Ingomar was with her she feared nothing.
But she was nervous and had been frightened once !”

[79 How 7 ”

“They had just arrived in California. They kept house
then, and had to sell liquor to traders. Ingomar was hos-
pitable, and drank with everybody, for the sake of popu-
larity and business, and Ingomar got to like liquor, and was
easily affected by it. And how one night there was a
hoisterous crowd in the bar-room ; she went in and tried to
get him away, but only succeeded in awakening the coarse
gallantry of the half-crazed revelers. And how, when she
had at last got him in the room with her frightened children,
he sank down on the bed in a stupor, which made her think
the liquor was drugged. And how she sat beside him all
night, and near morning heard a step in the passage, and,
looking toward the door, saw the latch slowly moving up
and down, as if somebody were trying it. And how she
shook her husband, and tried to waken him, but without
effect. And how at last the door yielded slowly at the top
(it was bolted below), as if by a gradual pressure without;
and how a hand protruded through the opening. And how
as quick as lightning she nailed that hand to the wall with
her scissors (her only weapon), but the point broke, and
somebody got away with a fearful oath. How she never
told her husband of it, for fear he would kill that some-
body ; hut how on one day a stranger called here, and as
she was handing him his coffee, she saw a queer triangular
scar on the back of his hand.”
A NIGHT AT WINGDAM 381

She was still talking, and the wind was still blowing,
and Ingomar was still snoring from his couch of skins,
when there was a shout high up the straggling street,
and a clattering of hoofs and rattling of wheels. The
mail had arrived. Parthenia ran with the faded baby to
awaken Ingomar, and almost simultaneously the gallant
expressman stood again before me, addressing me by my
Christian name, and invited me to drink out of a mysterious
black bottle. The horses were speedily watered, and the
business of the gallant expressman concluded, and, bidding
Parthenia good by, I got on the stage, and immediately fell
asleep, and dreamt of calling on Parthenia and Ingomar,
and being treated with pie to an unlimited extent, until I
woke up the next morning in Sacramento. I have some
doubts as to whether all this was not a dyspeptic dream,
but I never witness the drama, and hear that noble senti-
ment concerning “Two souls,” etc., without thinking of
Wingdam and poor Parthenia.
SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

THE LEGEND OF MONTE DEL DIABLO

THE cautious reader will detect a lack of authenticity in
the following pages. I am not a cautious reader myself,
yet I confess with sume concern to the absence of much
documentary evidence in support of the singular incident I
am about to relate. Disjointed memoranda, the proceed-
ings of ayuntamientos and early departmental juntas, with
other records of a primitive and superstitious people, have
been my inadequate authorities. It is but just to state,
however, that though this particular story lacks corrobora-
tion, in ransacking the Spanish archives of Upper Califor-
nia I have met with many more surprising and incredible
stories, attested and supported to a degree that would have
placed this legend beyond a cavil or doubt. I have, also,
never lost faith in the legend myself, and in so doing have
profited much from the examples of divers grant-claimants,
who have often jostled me in their more practical researches,
and who have my sincere sympathy at the skepticism of a
modern liard-headed and practical world.

For many years after Father Junipero Serro first rang his
bell in the wilderness of Upper California, the spirit which
animated that adventurous priest did not wane. The con-
version of the heathen went on rapidly in the establishment
of missions throughout the land. So sedulously did the
good Fathers set about their work, that around their iso-
THE LEGEND OF MONTE DEL DIABLO 383

lated chapels there presently arose adobe huts, whose mud-
plastered and savage tenants partook regularly of the
provisions, and occasionally of the Sacrament, of their
pious hosts. Nay, so great was their progress, that one
zealous Padre is reported to have administered the Lord’s
Supper one Sabbath morning to “over three hundred
heathen salvages.”” It was not to be wondered that the
Enemy of Souls, being greatly incensed thereat, and alarmed
at his decreasing popularity, should have grievously tempted
and embarrassed these holy Fathers, as we shall presently
see.

Yet they were happy, peaceful days for California. The
vagrant keels of prying Commerce had not as yet ruffled
the lordly gravity of her bays. No torn and ragged gulch
betrayed the suspicion of golden treasure. The wild oats
drooped idly in the morning heat or wrestled with the
afternoon breezes. Deer and antelope dotted the plain.
The watercourses brawled in their familiar channels, nor
dreamed of ever shifting their regular tide. The wonders
of the Yosemite and Calaveras were as yet unrecorded.
The holy Fathers noted little of the landscape beyond the
barbaric prodigality with which the quick soil repaid the
sowing. A new conversion, the advent of a saint’s day, or
the baptism of an Indian baby, was at once the chronicle
and marvel of their day.

At this blissful epoch there lived at the Mission of San
Pablo Father José Antonio Haro, a worthy brother of the
Society of Jesus. He was of tall and cadaverous aspect.
A. somewhat romantic history had given a poetic interest to
his lugubrious visage. While a youth, pursuing his studies
at famous Salamanca, he had become enamored of the
charms of Dofia Carmen de Torrencevara, as that lady
passed to her matutinal devotions. Untoward cirecum-
stances, hastened, perhaps, by a wealthier suitor, bronght
this amour to a disastrous issue, and Father José entered
284 SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

a monastery, taking upon himself the vows of celibacy. It
was here that his natural fervor and poetic enthusiasm
conceived expression asa missionary. A longing to convert
the uncivilized heathen succeeded his frivolous earthly pas-
sion, and a desire to explore and develop unknown fast-
nesses continually possessed him. In his flashing eye and
sombre exterior was detected a singular commingling of the
discreet Las Casas and the impetuous Balboa.

Fired by this pious zeal, Father José went forward in the
van of Christian pioneers. On reaching Mexico he obtained
authority to establish the Mission of San Pablo. Like the
good Junipero, accompanied only by an acolyte and mule-
teer, he unsaddled his mules in a dusky cafion, and rang his
bell in the wilderness. The savages—a peaceful, inoffensive,
and inferior race— presently flocked around him. The
nearest military post was far away, which contributed much
to the security of these pious pilgrims, who found their opeu
trustfulness and amiability better fitted to repress hostility
than the presence oi an armed, suspicious, and brawling
soldiery. So the good Father José said matins and prime,
mass and vespers, in the heart of sin and heathenism,
taking no heed to himself, but looking only to the welfare
of the Holy Church. Conversions soon followed, and on
the 7th of July, 1760, the first Indian baby was baptized, —
an event which, as Father José piously records, “ exceeds
the richnesse of gold or precious jewels or the chancing
upon the Ophir of Solomon.” I quote this incident as best
suited to show the ingenious blending of poetry and piety
which distinguished Father José’s record.

The Mission of San Pehlo progressed and prospered,
until the pious founder thereof, like the infidel Alexander,
might have wept that there were no more heathen worlds
to conquer. But his ardent and enthusiastic spirit could
not long brook an idleness that seemed hegotten of sin;
and one pleasant August morning in the year of grace 1770
THE LEGEND OF MONTE DEL DIABLO 385

Father José issued from the outer court of the mission
building, equipped to explore the field for new missionary
labors.

Nothing could exceed the quiet gravity and unpreten-
tiousness of the little cavaleade. First rode a stout mule-
teer, leading a pack-mule laden with the provisions of the
party, together with a few cheap crucifixes and hawks’ bells,
After him came the devout Padre José, bearing his breviary -
and cross, with a black serapa thrown around his shoulders ;
while on either side trotted a dusky convert, anxious to
show a proper sense of his regeneration by acting as
guide into the wilds of his heathen brethren. Their new
condition was agreeably shown by the absence of the usual
mud-plaster, which in their unconverted state they assumed
to keep away vermin and cold. The morning was bright
and propitious. Before their departure, mass had been
said in the chapel, and the protection of St. Ignatius
invoked against all contingent evils, but especially against
bears, which, like the fiery dragons of old, seemed to
cherish unconquerable hostility to the Holy Church.

As they wound through the cafion, charming birds dis-
ported upon boughs and sprays, and sober quails piped
from the alders; the willowy watercourses gave a musical
utterance, and the !ong grass whispered on the hillside.
On entering the deeper defiles, above them towered dark
green masses of pine, and occasionally the madrofio shook
its bright scarlet berries. As they toiled up many a steep
ascent, Father José sometimes picked up fragments of
scoria, which spake to his imagination of direful volcanoes
and impending earthquakes. ‘To the less scientific mind of
the muleteer Ignacio they had even a more terrifying signi-
ficance ; and he once or twice snuffed the air suspiciously,
and declared that it smelt of sulphur. So the first day of
their journey wore away, and at night they encamped with-
cut having met a single heathen face.
386 SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

It was on this night that the Enemy of Souls appeared
to Ignacio in an appalling form. He had retired to a
secluded part of the camp and had sunk upon his knees in
prayerful meditation, when he looked up and perceived the
Arch-Fiend in the likeness of a monstrous bear. The
Evil One was seated on his hind legs immediately before
him, with his fore paws joined together just below his black
muzzle. Wisely conceiving this remarkable attitude to he
in mockery and derision of his devotions, the worthy mule-
teer was transported with fury. Seizing an arquebus, he
instantly closed his eyes and fired. When he had recovered
from the effects of the terrific discharge, the apparition had
disappeared. Father José, awakened by the report, reached
the spot only in time to chide the muleteer for wasting
powder and ball in a contest with one whom a single ave
would have been sufficient to utterly discomfit. What
further reliance he placed on Ignacio’s story is not known;
but, in commemoration of a worthy Californian custom, the
place was called “‘ La Cafiada de la Tentacion del Pio
Muletero,” or “The Glen of the Temptation of the Pious
Muleteer,” a name which it retains to this day.

The next morning the party, issuing from a narrow gorge,
came upon a long valley, sear and burnt with the shadeless
heat. Its lower extremity was lost in a fading line of low
hills, which, gathering might and volume toward the upper
end of the valley, upheaved a stupendous bulwark against
the breezy north. The peak of this awful spur was just
touched by a fleecy cloud that shifted to and fro like a
banneret. Father José gazed at it with mingled awe and
admiration. By a singular coincidence, the muleteer Ignacio
uttered the simple ejaculation “ Diablo! ”

As they penetrated the valley, they soon began to miss
the agreeable life and companionable echoes of the cafion
they had quitted. Huge fissures in the parched soil seemed
to gape as with thirsty mouths. A few squirrels darted
THE LEGEND OF MONTE DEL PDrABLO 387

from the earth and disappeared as mysteriously before the
jinely mules. A gray wolf trotted leisurely along just
ahead. But whichever way Father José turned, the moun-
tain always asserted itself and arrested his wandering eye.
Out of the dry and arid valley it seemed to spring into
cooler and bracing life. Deep cavernous shadows dwelt
along its base; rocky fastnesses appeared midway of its
elevation ; and on either side huge black hills diverged
like massy roots from a central trunk. His lively fancy
pictured these hills peopled with a majestic and intelligent
race of savages; and looking into futurity, he already saw
a monstrous cross crowning the dome-like summit. Far
different were the sensations of the muleteer, who saw in
those awful solitudes only fiery dragons, colossal bears, and
breakneck trails. The converts, Concepcion and Incarna-
cion, trotting modestly beside the Padre, recognized, per-
haps, some manifestation of their former weird mythology.

At nightfall they reached the base of the mountain.
Here Father José unpacked his mules, said vespers, and,
formally ringing his bell, called upon the Gentiles within
hearing to come and accept the holy faith. The echoes of
the black frowning hills around him caught up the pious
invitation and repeated it at intervals; but no Gentiles
appeared that night. Nor were the devotions of the mule-
teer again disturbed, although he afterward asserted that,
when the Father’s exhortation was ended, a mocking peal
of laughter came from the mountain. Nothing daunted by
these intimations of the near hostility of the Evil One,
Father José declared his intention to ascend the mountain
at early dawn, and before the sun rose the next morning
he was leading the way.

The ascent was in many places difficult and dangerous.
Huge fragments of rock often lay across the trail, and after
a few hours’ climbing they were forced to leave their mules
in a little gully and continue the ascent afoot. Unaccus-
888 SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

tomed to such exertion, Father José often stopped to wipe
the perspiration from his thin cheeks. As the day wore
on a strange silence oppressed them. Except the occasional
pattering of a squirrel, or a rustling in the chimisal bushes,
there were.no signs of life. The half-human print of a
bear’s foot sometimes appeared before them, at which
Ignacio always crossed himself piously. The eye was
sometimes cheated by a dripping from the rocks, which on
closer inspection proved to be a resinous oily liquid‘ with
an abominable sulphurous smell. When they were within
a short distance of the summit, the discreet Ignacio, select-
ing a sheltered nook for the camp, slipped aside and busied
himself in preparations for the evening, leaving the holy
Father to continue the ascent alone. Never was there a
more thoughtless act of prudence, never a more imprudent
piece of caution. Without noticing the desertion, buried
in pious reflection, Father José pushed mechanically on,
and, reaching the summit, cast himself down and gazed
upon the prospect.

Below him lay a succession of valleys opening into each
other like gentle lakes, until they were lost to the southward.
Westerly the distant range hid the bosky cafiada which
sheltered the Mission of San Pablo. In the farther distance
the Pacific Ocean stretched away, bearing a cloud of fog
upon its bosom, which crept through the entrance of the
bay, and rolled thickly between him and the northeast-
ward; the same fog hid the base of the mountain and the
view beyond. Still from time to time the fleecy veil parted,
and timidly disclosed charming glimpses of mighty rivers,
mountain defiles, and rolling plains, sear with ripened oats
and bathed in the glow of the setting sun. As father José
gazed, he was penetrated with a pious longing. Already
his imagination, filled with enthusiastic conceptions, beheld
all that vast expanse gathered under the imild sway of the
holy faith and peopled with zealous converts. Each little
THE LEGEND OF MONTE DEL DIABLO 389

knoll in fancy became crowned with a chapel; from each
dark cation gleamed the white walls of a mission building.
Growing bolder in his enthusiasm and looking farther into
futurity, he beheld a new Spain rising on these savage
shores. He already saw the spires of stately cathedrals,
the domes of palaces, vineyards, gardens, and groves. Con-
vents, half hid among the hills, peeping from plantations
of branching limes, and long processions of chanting nuns
wound through ‘the defiles. So completely was the good
Father’s conception of the future confounded with the
past, that even in their choral strain the well-remembered
accents of Carmen struck his ear. He was busied in these
fanciful imaginings, when suddenly over that extended
prospect the faint distant tolling of a bell rang sadly out
and died. It was the Angelus. Father José listened with
superstitious exaltation. The Mission of San Pablo was
far away, and the sound must have been some miraculous
omen. But never before, to his enthusiastic sense, did the
sweet seriousness of this angelic symbol come with such
strange significance. With the last faint peal his glowing
fancy seemed to cool; the fog closed in below him, and the
good Father remembered he had not had his supper. He
had risen and was wrapping his serapa around him, when he
perceived for the first time that he was not alone.

Nearly opposite, and where should have been the faithless
Tgnacio, a grave and decorous figure was seated. His ap-
pearance was that of an elderly hidalgo, dressed in mourn-
ing, with mustaches of iron-gray carefully waxed and twisted
round a pair of lantern-jaws. The monstrous hat and
prodigious feather, the enormous ruff and exaggerated trunk-
hose, contrasted with a frame shriveled and wizened, all
belonged to a century previous. Yet Father José was not
astonished. His adventurous life and poetic imagination,
continually on the look-out for the marvelous, gave him 4
certain advantage over the practical and material-minded
890 SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

He instantly detected the diabolical quality of his visitant,
and was prepared. With equal coolness and courtesy he
met the cavalier’s obeisance.

“T ask your pardon, Sir Priest,” said the stranger, “ for
disturbing your meditations. Pleasant they must have been,
and right fanciful, I imagine, when occasioned by so fair a
prospect.”

“Worldly, perhaps, Sir Devil, — for such I take you to
be,” said the holy Father, as the stranger bowed his black
plumes to the ground; “worldly, perhaps; for it hath
pleased Heaven to retain even in our regenerated state
much that pertaineth to the flesh, yet still, I trust, not with-
out some speculation for the welfare of the Holy Church.
In dwelling upon yon fair expanse, mine eyes have been
graciously opened with prophetic inspiration, and the pro-
mise of the heathen as an inheritance hath marvelously
recurred to me. For there can be none lack such diligence
in the true faith but may see that even the conversion of
these pitiful salvages hath a meaning. As the blessed St.
Ignatius discreetly observes,’’ continued Father José, clear-
ing his throat and slightly elevating his voice, ‘the heathen
is given to the warriors of Christ, even as the pearls of rare
discovery which gladden the hearts of shipmen.’ Nay, I
might say ’? —

But here the stranger, who had been wrinkling his brows
and twisting his mustaches with well-bred patience, took
advantage of an oratorical pause.

“Tt grieves me, Sir Priest, to interrupt the current of
your eloquence as discourteously as I have already broken
your meditations; but the day already waneth to night. I
have a matter of serious import to make with you, could I
entreat your cautious consideration a few moments.”

Father José hesitated. The temptation was great, and
the prospect of acquiring some knowledge of the Great
Enemy’s plans not the least trifling cbject. And, if the
THE LEGEND OF MONTE DEL DIABLO 391

truth must be told, there was a certain decorum about. the
stranger that interested the Padre. Though well aware of
the Protean shapes the Arch-Fiend could assume, and
though free from the weaknesses of the flesh, Father José
was not above the temptations of the spirit. Had the
Devil appeared, as in the case of the pious St. Anthony, in
the likeness of a comely damsel, the good Father, with his
certain experience of the deceitful sex, would have whisked
her away in the saying of a paternoster. But there was,
added to the security of age, a grave sadness about the
stranger, —a thoughtful consciousness, as of being at a
great moral disadvantage, which at once decided him on a
magnanimous course of conduct.

The stranger then proceeded to inform him that he had
been diligently observing the holy Father's triumphs in the
valley. That, far from being greatly exercised thereat, he
had been only grieved to see so enthusiastic and chivalrous
an antagonist wasting his zeal in a hopeless work. For, he
observed, the issue of the great battle of Good and Evil had
been otherwise settled, as he would presently show him.
“Tt wants but a few moments of night,’’ he continued, “and
over this interval of twilight, as you know, I have been given
complete control. Look to the west.”

As the Padre turned, the stranger took his enormous hat
from his head and waved it three times before him. At
each sweep of the prodigious feather the fog grew thinner,
until it melted impalpably away, and the former landscape
returned, yet warm with the glowing sun. As Father José
gazed a strain of martial music arose from the valley, and
issuing from a deep cafion the good Father beheld a long
cavalcade of gallant cavaliers, habited like his companion.
As they swept down the plain, they were joined by like
processions, that slowly defiled from every ravine and cafior.
of the mysterious mountain. From time to time the peal
of a trumpet swelled fitfully upon the breeze; the cross oi
892 SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

Santiago glittered, and the royal banners of Castile and
Aragon waved over the moving column. So they moved
on solemnly toward the sea, where, in the distance, Father
José saw stately caravels, bearing the same familiar banner,
waiting them. The good Padre gazed with conflicting
emotions, and the serious voice of the stranger broke the
silence.

‘Thou hast beheld, Sir Priest, the fading footprints of
adventurous Castile. Thou hast seen the declining glory
of old Spain, —declining as yonder brilliant sun. The
sceptre she hath wrested from the heathen is fast dropping
from her decrepit and fieshless grasp. The children she
hath fostered shall know her no longer. The soil she hath
acquired shall be lost to her as irrevocably as she herself
hath thrust the Moor from her own Granada.”

The stranger paused, and his voice seemed broken hy
emotion; at the same time, Father José, whose sympathiz-
ing heart yearned toward the departing banners, cried in
poignant accents, —

“Farewell, ye gallant cavaliers and Christian soldiers!
Farewell, thou, Nufies de Balboa! thou, Alonzo de Ojeda!
and thou, most venerable Las Casas! farewell, and may
Heaven prosper still the seed ye left behind!”

‘Then turning to the stranger, Father José beheld him
gravely draw his pocket-handkerchief from the basket-hilt
cf his rapier and apply it decorously to his eyes.

“Pardon this weakness, Sir Priest,” said the cavalier
apologetically ; “ but these worthy gentlemen were ancient
friends of mine, and have done me many a delicate service,
—much more, perchance, than these poor sables may
siguify,’’ he added, with a grim gesture toward the mourn-
ing suit he wore.

Father José was too much preoccupied in reflection to
notice the equivocal nature of this tribute, and, after a few
moments’ silence, said, as if continuing his thought, —
THE LEGEND OF MONTE DEL DIABLO 393

“ But the seed they have planted shall thrive and prosper
on this fruitful soil.”

As if answering the interrogatory, the stranger turned to
the opposite direction, and, again waving his hat, said, in the
same serious tone, ‘‘ Look to the east!”

The Father turned, and, as the fog broke away before
the waving plume, he saw that the sun was rising. Issuing
with its bright beams through the passes of the snowy
mountains beyond appeared a strange and motley crew.
Instead of the dark and romantic visages of his last phantom
train, the Father beheld with strange concern the blue eyes
and flaxen hair of a Saxon race. In place of martial airs
and musical utterance, there rose upon the ear a strange
din of harsh gutturals and singular sibilation. Instead of
the decorous tread and stately mien of the cavaliers of the:
former vision, they came pushing, bustling, panting, and swag-
gering. And as they passed, the good Father noticed that
giant trees were prostrated as with the breath of a tornado,
and the bowels of the earth were torn and rent as with a
convulsion. And Father José looked in vain for holy cross
or Christian symbol; there was but one that seemed an
ensign, and he crossed himself with holy horror as he per-
ceived it bore the effigy of a bear.

‘““Who are these swaggering Ishmaelites?” he asked,
with something of asperity in his tone.

The stranger was gravely silent.

“What do they here, with neither cross nor holy symbol ?””
he again demanded.

“Have you the courage to see, Sir Priest ?” responded
the stranger quietly.

Father Jos¢ felt his crucifix, as a lonely traveler might
his rapier, and assented.

“ Step under the shadow of my plume,” said the stranger.

Father José stepped beside him and they instantly sank
though the earth.
394 SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

When he opened his eyes, which had remained closed in
prayerful meditation during his rapid descent, he found
himself in a vast vault, bespangled overhead with luminous
points like the starred firmament. It was also lighted by a
yellow glow that seemed to proceed from a mighty sea or
lake that occupied the centre of the chamber. Around this
subterranean sea dusky figures flitted, bearing ladles filled
with the yellow fluid, which they had replenished from its
depths. From this lake diverging streams of the same
mysterious flood penetrated like mighty rivers the cavernous
distance. As they walked by the banks of this glittering
Styx, Father José perceived how the liquid stream at certain
places became solid. The ground was strewn with glitter-
ing flakes. One of these the Padre picked up and curiously
examined. It was virgin gold.

An expression of discomfiture overcast the good Father’s
face at this discovery ; but there was trace neither of malice
nor satisfaction in the stranger’s air, which was stil! of serious
and fateful contemplation. When Father José recovered
his equanimity, he said bitterly, —

“This, then, Sir Devil, is your work! This is your
deceitful lure for the weak souls of sinful nations! So
would you replace the Christian grace of Holy Spain!”

“ This is what must be,” returned the stranger gloomily.
* But listen, Sir Priest. It lies with you to avert the issue
fora time. Leave me here in peace. Go back to Castile,
and take with you your bells, your images, and your
missions. Continue here, and you only precipitate results,
Stay! promise me you will do this, and you shall not lack
that which will render your old age an ornament and a
blessing ;”? and the stranger motioned significantly to the
lake.

It was here, the legend discreetly relates, that the Devil
showed —as he always shows sooner or later — his cloven
hoof. The worthy Padre, sorely perplexed by this threefold
THE LEGEND OF MONTE DEL DIABLO 398

vision, and, if the truth must be told, a little nettled at this
wresting away of the glory of holy Spanish discovery, had
shown some hesitation. But the unlucky bribe of the
Enemy of Souls touched his Castilian spirit. Starting back
in deep disgust, he brandished his crucifix in the face of the
unmasked Fiend, and in a voice that made the dusky vault
resound cried, —

“ Avaunt thee, Sathanas! Diabolus, I defy thee! What!
wouldst thou bribe me, — me, a brother of the Sacred Society
of the Holy Jesus, Licentiate of Cordova and Inquisitor of
Guadalaxara ? Thinkest thou to buy me with thy sordid
treasure? Avaunt!”

What might have been the issue of this rupture, and how
complete might have been the triumph of the holy Father
over the Arch-Fiend, who was recoiling aghast at these sacred
titles and the flourishing symbol, we can never know, for at
that moment the crucifix slipped through his fingers.

Searcely had it touched the ground before Devil and
holy Father simultaneously cast themselves toward it. In
the struggle they clinched, and the pious José, who was as
much the superior of his antagonist in bodily as in spiritual
strength, was about to treat the Great Adversary to a back
somersault, when he suddenly felt the long nails of the
stranger piercing his flesh. A new fear seized his heart, a
numbing chillness crept through his body, and he struggled
to free himself, but in vain. A strange roaring was in his
ears ; the lake and cavern danced before his eyes and vanished,
and with a loud cry he sank senseless to the ground.

When he recovered his consciousness, he was aware of a
gentle swaying motion of his body. He opened his eyes,
and saw it was high noon, and that he was being carried in
a litter through the valley. He felt stiff, and looking down,
perceived that his arm was tightly bandaged to his side.

He closed his eyes, and, after a few words of thankful
prayer, thought how miraculously he had been preserved,
396 SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

and made a vow of candlesticks to the blessed Saint José.
He then called in a faint voice, and presently the penitent
Ignacio stood beside him.

The joy the poor fellow felt at his patron’s returning
consciousness for some time choked his utterance. He
could only ejaculate, “A miracle! Blessed Saint José, he
lives!” and kiss the Padre’s bandaged hand. Father José,
more intent on his last night’s experience, waited for his
emotion to subside, and asked where he had been found.

“On the mountain, your Reverence, but a few varas
from where he attacked you.”

“ How ? — you saw him then?” asked the Padre in
unfeigned astonishment.

‘Saw him, your Reverence! Mother of God! I should
think I did! And your Reverence shall see him too, if he
ever comes again within range of Ignacio’s arquebus.”

“What mean you, Ignacio?” said the Padre, sitting
bolt-upright in his litter.

“Why, the bear, your Reverence,—the bear, holy
Father, who attacked your worshipful person while you
were meditating on the top of yonder mountain.”

“ Ah!” said the holy Father, lying down again. ““ Chut,
child! I would be at peace.”

When he reached the mission he was tenderly cared for,
and in a few weeks was enabled to resume those duties
from which, as will be seen, not even the machinations of
the Evil One could divert him. The news of his physical
disaster spread over the country, and a letter to the Bishop
of Guadalaxara contained a confidential and detailed ac
count of the good Father’s spiritual temptation. But in
some way the story leaked out; and long after José was
gathered to his fathers, his mysterious encounter formed
the theme of thrilling and whispered narrative. The moun
tain was generally shunned. It is true that Sefior Joaquin
Pedrillo afterward located a grant near the. base of the
THE LEGEND OF MONTE DEL DIABLO 397

mountain; but as Sefiora Pedrillo was known to be a
termagant half-breed, the sefior was not supposed to be
over-fastidious.

Such is the legend of Monte del Diablo, As I said
before, it may seem to lack essential corroboration. The
discrepancy between the Father’s narrative and the actual
climax has given rise to some skepticism on the part of
ingenious quibblers. All such I would simply refer to
that part of the report of Sefior Julio Serro, Sub-Prefect
of San Pablo, before whom attest of the above was made.
Touching this matter, the worthy Prefect observes, “ That
although the body of Father José doth show evidence of
grievous conflict in the flesh, yet that is no proof that the
Enemy of Souls, who could assume the figure of a decorous
elderly caballero, could not at the same time transform
himself into a bear for his own vile purposes.”
THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER

THE year of grace 1797 passed away on the coast of
California in a southwesterly gale. The little bay of San
Carlos, albeit sheltered by the headlands of the Blessed
Trinity, was rough and turbulent; its foam clung quivering
to the seaward wall of the mission garden; the air was
filled with flying sand and spume, and as the Sefior Coman-
dante, Hermenegildo Salvatierra, looked from the deep
embrasured window of the presidio guardroom, he felt the
salt breath of the distant sea butfet a color into his smoke-
dried cheeks.

The commander, I have said, was gazing thoughtfully
from the window of the guardroom. He may have been
reviewing the events of the year now about to pass away.
But, like the garrison at the Presidio, there was little to
review. The year, like its predecessors, had been unevent-
ful, — the days had slipped by in a delicious monotony of
simple duties, unbroken by incident or interruption. The
regularly recurring feasts and saints’ days, the half-yearly
courier from San Diego, the rare transport-ship and rarer
foreign vessel, were the mere details of his patriarchal life.
Tf there was no achievement, there was certainly no failure.
Abundant harvests and patient industry amply supplied the
wants of presidio and mission. Isolated from the family
of nations, the wars which shook the world concerned them
not so much as the last earthquake; the struggle that
emancipated their sister colonies on the other side of the
continent to them had no suggestiveness. In short, it was
that glorious Indian summer of Californian history around
THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER 399

which so much poetical haze still lingers, — that bland,
indolent autumn of Spanish rule, so soon to be followed by
the wintry storms of Mexican independence and the reviv-
ing spring of American conquest.

The commander turned from the window and walked
toward the fire that burned brightly on the deep oven-like
hearth. A pile of copy-books, the work of the presidio
school, lay on the table. As he turned over the leaves with
a paternal interest, and surveyed the fair round Scripture
text, — the first pious pothooks of the pupils of San Carlos,
an audible commentary fell from his lips: “ ‘ Abimelech
tock her from Abraham’ — ah, little one, excellent ! —
‘ Jacob sent to see his brother’ — body of Christ! that up-
stroke of thine, Paquita, is marvelous; the governor shall
see it!’’ <A film of honest pride dimmed the commander’s
left eye, —the right, alas! twenty years before had been
sealed by an Indian arrow. He rubbed it softly with the
sleeve of his leather jacket, and continued: ‘The Ishma-
elites having arrived’ ’? —

He stopped, for there was a step in the courtyard, a foot
upon the threshold, and a stranger entered. With the
instinct of an old soldier, the commander, after one glance
at the intruder, turned quickly toward the wall, where his
trusty Toledo hung, or should have been hanging. But it
was not there, and as he recalled that the last time he had
seen that weapon it was being ridden up and down the
gallery by Pepito, the infant son of Bautista, the tortilio-
maker, he blushed, and then contented himself with frown-
ing upon the intruder.

But the stranger’s air, though irreverent, was decidedly
peaceful. He was unarmed, and wore the ordinary cape of
tarpaulin and sea-boots of a mariner. Except a villainous
sell of codfish, there was little about him that was

 

peculiar.
His name, as he informed the commander in Spanish
400 SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

that was more fluent than elegant or precise, — his name
was Peleg Scudder. He was master of the schooner Gen-
eral Court, of the port of Salem, in Massachusetts, on a
trading voyage to the South Seas, but now driven by stress
of weather into the bay of San Carlos. He begged permis-
sion to ride out the gale under the headlands of the
Blessed Trinity, and no more. Water he did not need,
having taken in a supply at Bodega. He knew the strict
surveillance of the Spanish port regulations in regard to
foreign vessels, and would do nothing against the severe
discipline and good order of the settlement. There was a
slight tinge of sarcasm in his tone as he glanced toward the
desolate parade ground of the presidio and the open un-
guarded gate. The fact was that the sentry, Felipe Gomez,
had discreetly retired to shelter at the beginning of the
storm, and was then sound asleep in the corridor.

The commander hesitated. The port regulations were
severe, but he was accustomed to exercise individual author-
ity, and beyond an old order issued ten years before, regard-
ing the American ship Columbia, there was no precedent
to guide him. The storm was severe, and a sentiment of
humanity urged him to grant the stranger’s request. It is
but just to the commander to say that his inability to en-
force a refusal did not weigh with his decision. He would
have denied with equal disregard of consequences that right
to a seventy-four-gun ship which he now yielded so grace-
fully to this Yankee trading schooner. He stipulated only
that there should be no communication between the ship
and shore. “ For yourself, Sefior Captain,’ he continued,
“accept my hospitality. The fort is yours as long as you
shall grace it with your distinguished presence,” and with
old-fashioned courtesy he made the semblance of withdraw-
ing from the guardroom.

Master Peleg Scudder smiled as he thought of the half-
dismantled fort, the two mouldy brass cannon, cast in Ma
THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER 401

nila a century previous, and the shiftless garrison. A wild
thought of accepting the commander’s offer literally, con-
ceived in the reckless spirit of a man who never let slip ar
offer for trade, for a moment filled his brain, but a timely
reflection of the commercial unimportance of the transac-
tion checked him. He only took a capacious quid of to-
bacco, as the commander gravely drew a settle before thie
fire, and in honor of his guest untied the black silk hand-
kerchief that bound his grizzled brows.

What passed between Salvatierra and his guest that
night it becomes me not, as a grave chronicler of the sa-
lient points of history, to relate. I have said that Master
Peleg Scudder was a fluent talker, and under the influence
of divers strong waters, furnished by his host, he became
still more loquacious. And think of a man with a twenty
years’ budget of gossip! The commander learned, for the
first time, how Great Britain lost her colonies; of tne
French Revolution; of the great Napoleon, whose achieve -
ments, perhaps, Peleg colored more highly than the com-
mander’s superiors would have liked. And when Pelog
turned questioner, the commander was at his mercy. He
gradually made himself master of the gossip of the mission
and presidio, the ‘small beer” chronicles of that pastoral
age, the conversion of the heathen, the presidio schools,
and even asked the commander how he had lost his eye.
It is said that at this point of the conversation Master Peleg
produced from about his person divers small trinkets, kick-
shaws and new-fangled trifles, and even forced some of
them upon his host. It .is further alleged that under the
malign influence of Peleg and several glasses of aguardiente
the commander lost somewhat of his decorum, and behaved
in a manner unseemly for one in his position, reciting high-
flown Spanish poetry, and even piping in a thin high voice
‘livers madrigals and heathen canzonets of an amorous com-

plexion, chiefly in regard to a “little one’? who was his,
402 SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

the commander’s, “soul.” These allegations, perhaps un-
worthy the notice of a serious chronicler, should be re.
ceived with great caution, and are introduced here as simple
hearsay. That the commander, however, took a handker-
chief and attempted to show his guest the mysteries of the
sembi cuacua, capering in an agile but indecorous manner
about the apartment, has been denied. Enough for the
purposes of this narrative, that at midnight Peleg assisted
his host to bed with many protestations of undying friend-
ship, and then, as the gale had abated, took his leave of the
presidiv, and hurried aboard the General Court. When
the day broke the ship was gone.

I know not if Peleg kept his word with his host. It is
said that, the holy Fathers at the mission that night heard a
loud chanting in the plaza, as of the heathens singing psalms
through their noses; that for many days after an odor of
salt codfish prevailed in the settlement; that a dozen hard
nutmegs, which were unfit for spice or seed, were found in
the possession of the wife of the baker, and that several
bushels of shoe-pegs, which bore a pleasing resemblance to
oats, but were quite inadequate to the purposes of pro-
vender, were discovered in the stable of the blacksmith.
But when the reader reflects upon the sacredness of a Yan-
kee trader’s word, the stringent discipline of the Spanish
port regulations, and the proverbial indisposition of my
countrymen to impose upon the confidence of a simple peo-
ple, he will at once reject this part of the story.

A roll of drums, ushering in the year 1798, awoke the
eommander. The sun was shining brightly, and the storm
had ceased. He sat up in bed, and through the force of habit
tubbed his left eye. As the remembrance of the previous
night came back to him, he jumped from his couch and ran
to the window. There was no ship in the bay. A sudden
thought seemed to strike him, and he rubbed both of his
eyes. Not content with this, he consulted the metallic
THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER 403

mirror which hung beside his crucifix. There was no mis-
take ; the commander had a visible second eye, —a right
one, —as good, save for the purposes of vision, as the left.

Whatever might have been the true secret of this trans-
formation, but one opinion prevailed at San Carlos. It was
one of those rare miracles vouchsafed a pious Catholic
community as an evidence to the heathen, through the
intercession of the blessed San Carlos himself. That their
beloved commander, the temporal defender of the Faith,
should be the recipient of this miraculous manifestation
was most fit and seemly. The commander himself was
reticent; he could not tell a falsehood, — he dared not tell
the truth. After all, if the good folk of San Carlos be-
lieved that the powers of his right eye were actually restored,
was it wise and discreet for him to undeceive them? For
the first time in his life the commander thought of policy,
— for the first time he quoted that text which has been the
lure of so many well-meaning but easy Christians, of being
“all things to all men.” Infeliz Hermenegildo Salva-
tierra !

For by degrees an ominous whisper crept through the
little settlement. The right eye of the commander, al-
though miraculous, seemed to exercise a baleful effect upon
the beholder. Noone could look at it without winking.
It was cold, hard, relentless, and unflinching. More than
that, it seemed to be endowed with a dreadful prescience, —
a faculty of seeing through and into the inarticulate thoughts
of those it looked upon. The soldiers of the garrison obeyed
the eye rather than the voice of their commander, and an.
swered his glance rather than his lps in questioning. Thc
servants could not evade the ever-watchful but cold atten-
tion that seemed to pursue them. The children of the
presidio school smirched their copy-books under the awtul
supervision, and poor Paquita, the prize pupil, failed utterly
in that marvelous up-stroke when her patron stood beside
404 SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

her. Gradually distrust, suspicion, self-accusation, and
timidity took the place of trust, confidence, and security
throughout San Carlos. Wherever the right eye of the
commander fell, a shadow fell with it.

Nor was Salvatierra entirely free from the baleful influ.
ence of his miraculous acquisition. Unconscious of its
effect upon others, he only saw in their actions evidence of
certain things that the crafty Peleg had hinted on that
eventful New Year’s eve. His most trusty retainers stam-
mered, blusked, and faltered before him. Self-accusations,
confessions of minor faults and delinquencies, or extrava-
gant excuses and apologies met his mildest inquiries. The
very children that he loved—his pet pupil, Paquita —
seemed to be conscious of some hidden sin. The result
of this constant irritation showed itself more plainly. For
the first half-year the commander’s voice and eye were at
variance. He was still kind, tender, and thoughtful in
speech. Gradually, however, his voice took upon itself
the hardness of his glance and its skeptical, impassive
quality, and as the year again neared its close it was plain
that the commander had fitted himself to the eye, and not
the eye to the commander.

It may be surmised that these changes did not escape
the watchful solicitude of the Fathers. Indeed, the few
who were first to aseribe the right eye of Salvatierra to
miraculous origin and the special grace of the blessed San
Carlos, now talked openly of witchcraft and the agency of
Luzbel, the evil one. It would have fared ill with Her-
menegildo Salvatierra had he been aught but commander
or amenable to local authority. But the reverend Father,
Friar Manuel de Cortes, had no power over the political
executive, and all attempts at spiritual advice failed sig-
nally. He retired baffled and confused from his first inter-
view with the commander, who seemed now to take a grim
satisfaction in the fateful power of his glance. The holy
THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER 405

Father contradicted himself, exposed the fallacies of his
own arguments, and even, it is asserted, committed himself
to several undoubted heresies. When the commander
stood up at mass, if the officiating priest caught that skepti-
cal and searching eye, the service was inevitably ruined.
Even the power of the Holy Church seemed to be lost, and
the last hold upon the affections of the people and the good
order of the settlement departed from San Carlos.

As the long dry summer passed, the low hills that sur-
rounded the white walls of the presidio grew more and
more to resemble in hue the leathern jacket of the com-
mander, and Nature herself seemed to have borrowed his
dry, hard glare. The earth was cracked and seamed with
drought ; a blight had fallen upon the orchards and vine-
yards, and the rain, long delayed and ardently prayed for,
came not. The sky was as tearless as the right eye of the
commander. Murmurs of discontent, insubordination, and
plotting among the Indians reached his ear; he only set
his teeth the more firmly, tightened the knot of his black
silk handkerchief, and looked up his Toledo.

The last day of the year 1798 found the commander
sitting, at the hour of evening prayers, alone in the guard-
room. He no longer attended the services of the Holy
Church, but crept away at such times to some solitary spot,
where he spent the interval in silent meditation. The fire-
light played upon the low beams and rafters, but left the
bowed figure of Salvatierra in darkness. Sitting thus, he
felt a small hand touch his arm, and, looking down, saw
the figure of Paquita, his little Indian pupil, at his knee.
“Ah! littlest of all,” said the commander, with something
of his old tenderness, lingering over the endearing diminu-
tives of his native speech, — “ sweet one, what doest thou
here ? Art thou not afraid of him whom every one shuns
and fears ? ”

“No,” said the little Indian readily, “not in the dark
406 SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

I hear your voice, — the old voice ; I feel your touch, — the
old touch; but I see not your eye, Sefior Comandante.
That only I fear, —and that, O sefior, O my father,” said
the child, lifting her little arms towards his, — “ that I
know is not thine own! ”

The commander shuddered and turned away. Then,
recovering himself, he kissed Paquita gravely on the fore-
head and bade her retire. A few hours later, when silence
had fallen upon the presidio, he sought his own couch and
slept peacefully.

At about the middle watch of the night a dusky figure
crept through the low embrasure of the commander’s apart-
ment. Other figures were flitting through the parade-
ground, which the commander might have seen had he
uot slept so quietly. The intruder-stepped noiselessly to
the couch and listened to the sleeper’s deep-drawn respira-
tion. Something glittered in the firelight as the savage
lifted his arm ; another moment and the sore perplexities
of Hermenegildo Salvatierra would have been over, when
suddenly the savage started and fell back in a paroxysm of
terror. The commander slept peacefully, but his right
eye, widely opened, fixed and unaltered, glared coldly on
the would-be assassin. The man fell to the earth in a fit,
and the noise awoke the sleeper.

To rise to his feet, grasp his sword, and deal blows thick
and fast upon the mutinous savages who now thronged the
room, was the work of a moment. Help opportunely
arrived, and the undisciplined Indians were speedily driven
beyond the walls; but in the scuffle the commander received
a blow upon his right eye, and, lifting his hand to that
mysterious organ, it was gone. Never again was it found,
and never again, for bale or bliss, did it adorn the right
orbit cf the commander.

With it passed away the spell that had fallen upon San
Carlos. The rain returned to invigorate the languid soil,
THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER 40?

harmony was restored between priest and soldier, the green
grass presently waved over the sere hillsides, the children
flocked again to the side of their martial preceptor, a Te
Deum was sung in the mission church, and pastoral content
once more smiled upon the gentle valleys of San Carlos.
And far southward crept the General Court with its master,
Peleg Scudder, trafficking in beads and peltries with the In
dians, and offering glass eyes, wooden legs, and other Boston
notions to the chiefs.
THE LEGEND OF DEVIL'S POINT

On the northerly shore of San Francisco Bay, at a point
where the Golden Gate broadens into the Pacific, stands a
bluff promontory. It affords shelter from the prevailing
winds to a semicircular bay on the east. Around this bay
the hillside is bleak and barren, but there are traces of
former habitation in a weather-beaten cabin and deserted
corral. It is said that these were originally built by an
enterprising squatter, who for some unaccountable reason
abandoned them shortly after. The “jumper” who suc-
ceeded him disappeared one day quite as mysteriously.
The third tenant, who seemed to be a man of sanguine,
hopeful temperament, divided the property into building
lots, staked off the hillside, and projected the map of a new
metropolis. Failing, however, to convince the citizens of
San Francisco that they had mistaken the site of their city,
he presently fell into dissipation and despondency. He
was frequently observed haunting the narrow strip of beach
at low tide or perched upon the cliff at high water. In
the latter position a sheep-tender one day found him, cold
and pulseless, with a map of his property in his hand, and
his face turned toward the distant sea.

Perhaps these circumstances gave the locality its infeli-
citous reputation. Vague rumors were bruited of a super-
natural influence that had been exercised on the tenants.
Strange stories were circulated of the origin of the diaboli-
cal title by which the promontory was known. By some it
was believed to be haunted by the spirit of one of Sir Fran-
cis Drake’s sailors, who had deserted his ship in conse
THE LEGEND OF DEVIL’S POINT 409

quence of stories told by the Indians of gold discoveries,
but who had perished by starvation on the rocks. A
vaquero who had once passed a night in the ruined cabin
related how a strangely dressed and emaciated figure had
knocked at the door at midnight and demanded food.
Other story-tellers, of more historical accuracy, roundly as-
serted that Sir Francis himself had been little better than a
pirate, and had chosen this spot to conceal quantities of ill-
gotten booty taken from neutral bottoms, and had protected
his hiding-place ty the orthodox means of hellish incanta-
tion and diabolic agencies. On moonlight nights a sha-
dowy ship was sometimes seen standing off and on, or when
fogs encompassed sea and shore, the noise of oars rising
and falling in their rowlocks could be heard muffled and
indistinctly during the night. Whatever foundation there
might have been for these stories, it was certain that a more
weird and desolate-looking spot could not have been selected
for their theatre. High hills, verdureless and enfiladed
with dark cafiadas, cast their gaunt shadows on the tide.
During a greater portion of the day the wind, which blew
furiously and incessantly, seemed possessed with a spirit of
fierce disquiet and unrest. Toward nightfall the sea-fog
crept with soft step through the portals of the Golden Gate,
or stole in noiseless marches down the hillside, tenderly
soothing the wind-buffeted face of the cliff, until sea and
sky were hid together. At such times the populous city
beyond and the nearer settlement seemed removed to an in-
finite distance. An immeasurable loneliness settled upon
the cliff. The creaking of a windlass, or the monotonous
chant of sailors on some unseen, outlying ship, came faint
and far, and full of mystic suggestion.

About a year ago a well-to-do middle-aged broker of San
Francisco found himself at nightfall the sole occupant of a
plunger, encompassed in a dense fog, and drifting toward
the Golden Gate. This unexpected termination of an after
410 SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

noon’s sail was partly attributable to his want of nautical
skill, and partly to the effect of his usually sanguine nature,
Having given up the guidance of his boat to the wind and
tide, he had trusted too implicitly for that reaction which
his business experience assured him was certain to occur in
all affairs, aquatic as well as terrestrial. ‘The tide will
turn soon,” said the broker confidently, “or something will
happen.” He had scarcely settled himself back again in
the stern-sheets, before the bow of the plunger, obeying
some mysterious impulse, veered slowly around and a dark
object loomed up before him. A gentle eddy carried the
boat farther in shore, until at last it was completely embayed
under the lee of a rocky point now faintly discernible
through the fog. He looked around him in the vain hope
of recognizing some familiar headland. The tops of the
high hills which rose on either side were hidden in the fog.
As the boat swung around, he succeeded in fastening a line
to the rocks, and sat down again with a feeling of renewed
confidence and security.

It was very cold. The insidious fog penetrated his
tightly buttoned coat, and set his teeth to chattering in
spite of the aid he sometimes drew from a_pocket-flask.
His clothes were wet, and the stern-sheets were covered
with spray. The comforts of fire and shelter continually
rose before his fancy as he gazed wistfully on the rocks.
In sheer despair he finally drew the boat toward the most
accessible part of the cliff and essayed to ascend. This
was less difficult than it appeared, and in a few moments
he had gained the hill above. A dark object at a little
distance attracted his attention, and on approaching it
proved to be a deserted cabin. The story goes on to say
that, having built a roaring fire of stakes pulled from the
adjoining corral, with the aid of a flask of excellent brandy,
he managed to pass the early part of the evening with com-
parative comfort.
THE LEGEND OF DEVIL'S POINT 411

There was no door in the cabin, and the windows were
simply square openings, which freely admitted the searching
fog. But in spite of these discomforts, — being a man of
cheerful, sanguine temperament, —he amused himself by
poking the fire and watching the ruddy glow which the
flames threw on the fog from the open door. In this
innocent occupation a great weariness overcame him, and
he fell asleep.

{He was awakened at midnight by a loud “halloo,” which
ssemed to proceed directly from the sea. Thinking it
might be the ery of some boatman lost in the fog, he walked
to the edge of the cliff, but the thick veil that covered sea
and land rendered all objects at the distance of a few feet
indistinguishable. He heard, however, the regular strokes
of oars rising and falling on the water. The halloo was
repeated. He was clearing his throat to reply, when to his
surprise an answer came apparently from the very cabin he
had quitted. Hastily retracing his steps, he was the more
amazed, on reaching the open door, to find a stranger
warming himself by the fire. Stepping back far enough to
conceal his own person, he took a good look at the
intruder.

He was a man of about forty, with a cadaverous face.
But the oddity of his dress attracted the broker’s attention
more than his lugubrious physiognomy. His legs were
hid in enormously wide trousers descending to his knee,
where they met long boots of sealskin, A pea-jacket with
exaggerated cutfs, almost as large as the breeches, covered
his chest, and around his waist a monstrous belt, with a
buckle like a dentist’s sign, supported two trumpet-mouthed
pistols and a curved hanger. He wore a long queue, which
depended halfway down his back. As the firelight fell on
his ingenuous countenance the broker observed with some
concern that this queue was formed entirely of a kind of
tobacco known as pigtail or twist. Its effect, the broker
412 SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

remarked, was much heightened when ina moment of
thoughtful abstraction the apparition bit off a portion of it
and rolled it as a quid into the cavernous recesses of his
jaws.

Meanwhile the nearer splash of oars indicated the ap-
proach of the unseen boat. The broker had barely time
to conceal himself behind the cabin before a number of
ancouth-looking figures clambered up the hill toward the
ruined rendezvous. They were dressed like the previous
comer, who, as they passed through the open door, exchanged
greetings with each in antique phraseology, bestowing at
the same time some familiar nickname. Flash-in-the-Pan,
Spitter-of-Frogs, Malmsey Butt, Latheyard Will, and Mark-
the-Pinker, were the few sobriquets the broker remembered.
Whether these titles were given to express some peculiarity
of their owner he could not tell, for a silence followed as
they slowly ranged themselves upon the floor of the cabin
in a semicircle around their cadaverous host.

At length Malmsey Butt, a spherical-bodied man-of-war’s-
man, with a rubicund nose, got on his legs somewhat
unsteadily, and addressed himself to the company. They
had met that evening, said the speaker, in accordance with
a time-honored custom. This was simply to relieve that
one of their number who for fifty years had kept watch and
ward over the locality where certain treasures had been
buried. At this point the broker pricked up his ears. “ If
so be, camarados and brothers all,” he continued, “ye are
ready to receive the report of our excellent and well-beloved
brother, Master Slit-the-Weazand, touching his search for
this treasure, why, marry, to’t and begin.”

A murmur of assent went around the circle as the
speaker resumed his seat. Master Slit-the-Weazand slowly
opened his lantern jaws and began. He had spent much
of his time in determining the exact location of the treasure.
He believed — nay, he could state positively — that its posi-
THE LEGEND OF DEVIL’S POINT 413

tion was now settled. It was true he had done some trifling
little business outside. Modesty forbade his mentioning
the particulars, but he would simply state that of the three
tenants who had occupied the cabin during the past ten
years, none were now alive. [Applause, and cries of “ Go
to! thou wast always a tall fellow!” and the like. ]

Mark-the-Pinker next arose. Before proceeding to busi-
ness he had a duty to perform in the sacred name of friend-
ship. It ill became him to pass a eulogy upon the qualities
of the speaker who had preceded him, for he had known
him from “ boyhood’s hour.” Side by side they had wrought
together in the Spanish war. For a neat hand with a Toledo
he challenged his equal, while how nobly and beautifully he
had won his present title of Slit-the-Weazand all could
testify. The speaker, with some show of emotion, asked to
be pardoned if he dwelt too freely on passages of their early
companionship; he then detailed, with a fine touch of
humor, his comrade’s peculiar manner of slitting the ears
and lips of a refractory Jew who had been captured in one
of their previous voyages. He would not weary the patience
of his hearers, but would briefly propose that the report of
Slit-the-Weazand be accepted, and that the thanks of the
company be tendered him.

A breaker of strong spirits was then rolled into the hut,
and cans of grog were circulated freely from hand to hand.
The health of Slit-the-Weazand was proposed in a neat
speech by Mark-the-Pinker, and responded to by the former
gentleman in a manner that drew tears to the eyes of all
present. To the broker, in his concealment, this momentary
diversion from the real business of the meeting occasioned
much anxiety. As yet nothing had been said to indicate
the exact locality of the treasure to which they had myste-
riously alluded. Fear restrained him from open inquiry, and
curiosity kept him from making good his escape during the
orgy which followed.
414 SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

But his situation was beginning to become critical. Flash-
in-the-Pan, who seemed to have been a man of choleric
humor, taking fire during some hotly contested argument,
discharged both his pistols at the breast of his opponent.
The balls passed through on each side immediately below
his armpits, making a clean hole, through which the hor-
rified broker could see the firelight behind him. The
wounded man, without betraying any concern, excited the
laughter of the company by jocosely putting his arms
akimbo, and inserting his thumbs into the orifices of the
wounds as if they had been armholes. This having in a
measure restored good humor, the party joined hands and
formed a circle preparatory to dancing. The dance was
commenced by some monotonous stanzas hummed in a very
high key by one of the party, the rest joining in the fol.
lowing chorus, which seemed to present a familiar sound te
the broker’s ear : —

“« Her Majesty is very sicke,
Lord Essex hath the measles,
Our Admiral hath licked ye French —
Poppe ! saith ye weasel !’’ a

At the regular recurrence of the last line, the party dis.
charged their loaded pistols in all directions, rendering the
position of the unhappy broker one of extreme peril and
perplexity.

When the tumult had partially subsided, Flash-in-the-
Pan called the meeting to order, and most of the revelers
returned to their places, Malmsey Butt, however, insisting
upon another chorus, and singing at the top of his voice: —

“Tam ycleped J. Keyser —I was born at Spring, hys Garden,
My father toe make me ane clerke erst did essaye,
But a fico for ye offis—I spurn ye losels offeire ;
For I fain would be ane butcher by’r ladykin alwaye.”’

Flash-in-the-Pan drew a pistol from his belt, and bidding

some one gag Malmsey Butt with the stock of it, proceeded
to read from a portentous roll of parchment that he held
THE LEGEND OF DEVIL’S POINT 415

in his hand. It was a semi-legal document, clothed in the
quaint phraseology of a bygone period. After a long pre-
amble, asserting their loyalty as lieges of her most bountiful
Majesty and Sovereign Lady the Queen, the document
declared that they then and there took possession of the
promontory, and all the treasure-trove therein contained,
formerly buried by Her Majesty’s most faithful and devoted
Admiral Sir Francis Drake, with the right to search, dis-
cover, and appropriate the same; and for the purpose
thereof they did then and there form a guild or corporation
to so discover, search for, and disclose said treasures, and
by virtue thereof they solemnly subscribed their names.
But at this moment the reading of the parchment was
arrested by an exclamation from the assembly, and the
broker was seen frantically struggling at the door in the
strong arms of Mark-the-Pinker.

“Let me go!” he cried, as he made a desperate attempt
to reach the side of Master Flash-in-the-Pan. ‘Let me
go! I tell you, gentlemen, that document is not worth the
parchment it is written on. The laws of the State, the
customs of the country, the mining ordinances, are all
against it. Don’t, by all that’s sacred, throw away such a
capital investment through ignorance and informality. Let
me go! I assure you, gentlemen, professionally, that you
have a big thing, —a remarkably big thing, and even if I
ain’t in it, I’m not going to see it fall through. Don’t, for
God’s sake, gentlemen, I implore you, put your names to
such a ridiculous paper. There isn’t a notary”? —

He ceased. The figures around him, which were begin-
ning to grow fainter and more indistinct as he went on,
swam before his eyes, flickered, reappeared again, and finally
went out. He rubbed his eyes and gazed around him.
The cabin was deserted. On the hearth the red embers of
his fire were fading away in the bright beams of the morn-
ing sun, that looked aslant through the open window. He
416 SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

ran out to the cliff. The sturdy sea-breeze fanned his fever.
ish cheeks and tossed the white caps of waves that beat in
pleasant music on the beach below. A stately merchant-
man with snowy canvas was entering the Gate. The voices
of sailors came cheerfully from a bark at anchor below the
point. The muskets of the sentries gleamed brightly on
Alcatraz, and the rolling of drums swelled on the breeze.
Farther on, the hills of San Francisco, cottage-crowned and
bordered with wharves and warehouses, met his longing eye.:

Such is the legend of Devil’s Point. Any objections to
its reliability may be met with the statement that the broker
who tells the story has since incorporated a company under
the title of “ Flash-in-the-Pan Gold and Silver Treasure
Mining Company,’’ and that its shares are already held at a
stiff figure. A copy of the original document is said to be
on record in the office of the company, and on any clear day
the locality of the claim may be distinctly seen from tbe
hills of San Francisco.
THE ADVENTURE OF PADRE VICENTIO
A LEGEND OF SAN FRANCISCO

One pleasant New Year’s eve, about forty years ago,
Padre Vicentio was slowly picking his way across the sand-
hills from the Mission Dolores. As he climbed the crest of
the ridge beside Mission Creek, his broad, shining face
might have been easily mistaken for the beneficent image of
the rising moon, so bland was its smile and so indefinite its
features. For the Padre was a man of notable reputation
and character; his ministration at the Mission of San José
had been marked with cordiality and unction ; he was adored
by the simple-minded savages, and had succeeded in im-
pressing his individuality so strongly upon them, that the
very children were said to have miraculously resembled him
in feature.

As the holy man reached the loneliest portion of the road,
he naturally put spurs to his mule as if to quicken that de-
corous pace which the obedient animal had acquired through
long experience of its master’s habits. The locality had an
unfavorable reputation. Sailors —deserters from whale-
ships — had been seen lurking about the outskirts of the
town, and low scrub oaks which everywhere beset the trail
might have easily concealed some desperate runaway. Be-
sides these material obstructions, the Devil, whose hostility
to the Church was well known, was said to sometimes haunt
the vicinity in the likeness of a spectral whaler, who had
met his death in a drunken bout from a harpoon in the
hands of a companion. The ghost of this unfortunate
mariner was frequently observed sitting on the hill toward
418 SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

the dusk of evening, armed with his favorite weapon and
a tub containing a coil of line, looking out for some belated
traveler on whom to exercise his professional skill. It is
related that the good Father José Maria of the Mission
Dolores had been twice attacked by this phantom sports-
man; that once, on returning from San Francisco, and
panting with exertion from climbing the hill, he was startled
by a stentorian cry of “There she blows!” quickly followed
by a hurtling harpoon, which buried itself in the sand beside
him; that on another occasion he narrowly escaped destruc-
tion, his serapa having been transfixed by the diabolical
harpoon and dragged away in triumph. Popular opinion
seems to have been divided as to the reason for the Devil’s
particular attention to Father José, some asserting that the
extreme piety of the Padre excited the Evil One’s animosity,
and others that his adipose tendency simply rendered him,
from a professional view-point, a profitable capture.

Had Father Vicentio been inclined to scoff at this appa-
rition as a heretical innovation, there was still the story of
Concepcion, the Demon Vaquero, whose terrible riata was
fully as potent as the whaler’s harpoon. Concepcion, when
in the flesh, had been a celebrated herder of cattle and wild
horses, and was reported to have chased the Devil in the
shape of a fleet pinto colt all the way from San Luis Obispo
to San Francisco, vowing not to give up the chase until he
had overtaken the disguised Arch-Enemy. This the Devil
prevented by resuming his own shape, but kept the unfor
tunate vaquero to the fulfillment of his rash vow; and Con
cepcion still scoured the coast on a phantom steed, beguil-
ing the monotony of his eternal pursuit by lassoing travelers,
dragging them at the heels of his unbroken mustang until
they were eventually picked up, half strangled, by the road-
side. The Padre listened attentively for the tramp of this
terrible rider. But no footfall broke the stillness of the
night; even the hoofs of his own mule sank noiselessly in
THE ADVENTURE OF PADRE VICENTIO 419

the shifting sand. Now and then a rabbit hounded lightly
by hin, or a quail ran into the bushes. The melancholy
call of plover from the adjoining marshes of Mission Creek
came to him so faintly and fitfully that it seemed almost a
recollection of the past rather than a reality of the present.

To add to his discomposure, one of those heavy sea-fogs
peculiar to the locality began to drift across the hills and

. presently encompassed him. While endeavoring to evade
its cold embraces, Padre Vicentio incautiously drove his
heavy spurs into the flanks of his mule as that puzzled
animal was hesitating on the brink of a steep declivity,
Whether the poor beast was indignant at this novel outrage,
or had been for some time reflecting on the evils of being
priest-ridden, has not transpired; enough that he suddenly
threw up his heels, pitching the reverend man over his
head, and, having accomplished this feat, coolly dropped
on his knees and tumbled after his rider. —

Over and over went the Padre, closely followed by his
faithless mule. Luckily the little hollow which received
the pair was of sand, that yielded to the superincumbent
weight, half burying them without further injury. For
some moments the poor man lay motionless, vainly en-
deavoring to collect his scattered senses. A hand irreve-
rently laid upon his collar and a rough shake assisted to
recall his consciousness. As the Padre staggered to his
feet he found himself confronted by a stranger.

Seen dimly through the fog, and under circumstances
that to say the least were not prepossessing, the new-comer
had an inexpressibly mysterious and brigand-like aspect.
A long boat-cloak concealed his figure, and a slouched hat
hid his features, permitting only his eyes to glisten in the
depths. With a deep groan the Padre slipped from the
stranger’s grasp and subsided into the soft sand again.

“Gad’s life!” said the stranger, pettishly, “hast no
more bones in thy fat carcass than a jellyfish? Lenda
420 SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

hand, here! Yo, heave ho!’ and he dragged the Padre
into an upright position. ‘‘ Now, then, who and what art
thou ?”

The Padre could not help thinking that the question
night have more properly been asked by himself; but with
an odd mixture of dignity and trepidation he began enumer-
ating his different titles, which were by no means brief, and
would have been alone sufficient to strike awe in the bosom
of an ordinary adversary. The stranger irreverently broke
in upon his formal phrases, and assuring him that a priest
was the very person he was looking for, coolly replaced
the old man’s hat, which had tumbled off, and bade him
accompany him at once on an errand of spiritual counsel
to one who was even then lying in extremity. ‘To think,”
said the stranger, “‘ that I should stumble upon the very
man I was seeking! Body of Bacchus! but this is lucky!
Follow me quickly, for there is no time to lose.”

Like most easy natures, the positive assertion of the
stranger, and withal a certain authoritative air of command,
overcame what slight objections the Padre might have
feebly nurtured during this remarkable interview. The
spiritual invitation was one, also, that he dared not re-
fuse ; not only that, but it tended somewhat to remove the
superstitious dread with which he had begun to regard the
mysterious stranger. But, following at a respectful dis-
tance, the Padre could not help observing with a thrill of
horror that the stranger’s footsteps made no impression on
the sand, and his figure seemed at times to blend and incor-
porate itself with the fog, until the holy man was obliged
to wait for its reappearance. In one of, these intervals of
embarrassment he heard the ringing of the far-off mission
bell proclaiming the hour of midnight. Scarcely had the
last stroke died away before the announcement was taken
up and repeated by a multitude of bells of all sizes, and the
air was filled with the sound of striking clocks and the
THE ADVENTURE OF PADRE VICENTIO 421

pealing of steeple chimes. The old man uttered a cry of
alarm. The stranger sharply demanded the cause. “ The
bells! did you not hear them?” gasped Padre Vicentio,
“Tush! tush!’ answered the stranger, “ thy fall hath set
triple bob-majors ringing in thine ears. Come on!”

The Padre was only too glad to accept the explanation
conveyed in this discourteous answer. But he was destined
for another singular experience. When they had reache¢
the summit of the eminence now known as Russian Hill,
an exclamation again burst from the Padre. The stranger
turned to his companion with an impatient gesture, but
the Padre heeded him not. The view that burst upon his
sight was such as might well have engrossed the attention
of a more enthusiastic temperament. The fog had not yet
reached the hill, and the long valleys and hillsides of the
embarcadero below were glittering with the light of a popu-
lous city. Look!” said the Padre, stretching his hand
over the spreading landscape. ‘Look! dost thou not see
the stately squares and brilliantly lighted avenues of a
mighty metropolis ? Dost thou not see, as it were, another
firmament below ? ”

“ Avast heaving, reverend man, and quit this folly,” said
the stranger, dragging the bewildered Padre after him.
“ Behold rather the stars knocked out of thy hollow noddle
by the fall thou hast had. Prithee, get over thy visions
and rhapsodies, for the time is wearing apace.”

The Padre humbly followed without another word. De-
scending the hill toward the north, the stranger leading the
way, in a few moments the Padre detected the wash of
waves, and presently his feet struck the firmer sand of the
beach. Here the stranger paused, and the Padre perceived
a boat lying in readiness hard by. As he stepped into the
stern-sheets, in obedience to the command of his compan-
ion, he noticed that the rowers seemed to partake of the
misty incorporeal texture of his companion, a similarity that
422 SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

became the more distressing when he perceived also that
their oars in pulling together made no noise. The stranger,
assuming the helm, guided the boat on quietly, while the
fog, settling over the face of the water and closing around
them, seemed to interpose a muffled wall between them-
selves and the rude jarring of the outer world. As they
pushed further into this penetralia, the Padre listened cx-
iously for the sound of creaking blocks and the rattling of
cordage, but no vibration broke the veiled stillness or dis-
turbed the warm breath of the fleecy fog. Only one inci-
dent occurred to break the monotony of their mysterious
journey. A one-eyed rower, who sat in front of the Padre,
catching the devout Father’s eye, immediately grinned such
a ghastly smile, and winked his remaining eye with such
diabolical intensity of meaning, that the Padre was con-
strained to utter a pious ejaculation, which had the disas
trous effect of causing the marine Cocles to ‘catch a crab,”
throwing his heels in the air and his head into the bottom
of the boat. But even this accident did not disturb the
gravity of the rest of the ghastly boat’s crew.

When, as it seemed to the Padre, ten minutes had elapsed,
the outline of a large ship loomed up directly across their
bow. Before he could utter the cry of warning that rose to
his lips, or brace himself against the expected shock, the
boat passed gently and noiselessly through the sides of the
vessel, and the holy man found himself standing on the
berth-deck of what seemed to be an ancient caravel. The
boat and boat’s crew had vanished, Only his mysterious
friend, the stranger, remained. By the light of a swinging-
lamp the Padre beheld him standing beside a hammock,
whereon, apparently, lay the dying man to whom he had
been so mysteriously summoned, As the Padre, in obedi-
ence to a sign from his companion, stepped to the side of
the sufferer, he feebly opened his eyes and thus addressed

him ;: —
THE ADVENTURE OF PADRE VICENTIO 423

“ Thou seest before thee, reverend Father, a helpless
mortal, struggling not only with the last agonies of the flesh,
but beaten down and tossed with sore anguish of the spirit.
It matters little when or how I became what thou now seest
me. Enough that my life has been ungodly and sinful, and
that my only hope of absolution lies in my imparting to thee
a secret which is of vast importance to the Holy Church,
and affects greatly her power, wealth, and dominion on these
shores. But the terms of this secret and the conditions of
cny absolution are peculiar. J have but five minutes to live.
In that time I must receive the extreme unction of the
Church.”

“ And thy secret ?”’ said the holy Father.

“Shall be told afterwards,” answered the dying man.
“Come, my time is short. Shrive me quickly.”

The Padre hesitated. ‘ Couldst thou not tell this secret
first ? ”

“Impossible!” said the dying man, with what seemed
to the Padre a momentary gleam of triumph. Then, as his
breath grew feebler, he called impatiently, “‘Shrive me!
shrive me! ”

“Let me know at least what this secret concerns ? ” sug-
gested the Padre insinuatingly.

“Shrive me first,” said the dying man.

But the priest still hesitated, parleying with the sufferer
until the ship’s bell struck, when, with a triumphant mock-
ing langh from the stranger, the vessel suddenly fell to
pieces, amid the rushing of waters which at once involved
the dying man, the priest, and the mysterious stranger.

The Padre did not recover his consciousness until high
noon the next day, when he found himself lying in a little
hollow between the Mission Hills, and his faithful mule a
few paces from him, cropping the sparse herbage. The
Padre made the best of his way home, but wisely abstained
from narrating the facts mentioned above until after the
424 SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

discovery of gold, when the whole of this veracious incident
was related, with the assertion of the Padre that the secret
which was thus mysteriously snatched from his possession
was nothing more than the discovery of gold, years since,
by the runaway sailors from the expedition of Sir Francis
Drake,
THE DEVIL AND THE BROKER
A MEDIZVAL LEGEND

‘THE church clocks in San Francisco were striking ten.
Tre Devil, who had been flying over the city that evening,
just then alighted on the roof of a church near the corner of
Bush and Montgomery streets. It will be perceived that
the popular belief that the Devil avoids holy edifices, and
vanishes at the sound of a credo or paternoster, is long
since exploded. Indeed, modern skepticism asserts that he
is not averse to these orthodox discourses, which particularly
bear reference to himself, and in a measure recognize his
power and importance.

I am inclined to think, however, that his choice of a
resting-place was a good deal influenced by its contiguity to
a populous thoroughfare. When he was comfortably seated,
he began pulling out the joints of a small rod which he
held in his hand, and which presently proved to be an ex-
traordinary fishing-pole, with a telescopic adjustment that
permitted its protraction to a marvelous extent. Affixing
a line thereto, he selected a fly of a particular pattern
from a small box which he carried with him, and, making
a skillful cast, threw his line into the very centre of that
living stream which ebbed and flowed through Montgomery
Street.

Hither the people were very virtuous that evening, or the
bait was not a taking one. In vain the Devil whipped the
stream at an eddy in front of the Occidental, or trolled his
line into the shadows of the Cosmopolitan ; five minutes
passed without even a nibble. “Dear me!” quoth the
426 SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

Devil, “that’s very singular; one of my most popular
flies, too! Why, they ’d have risen by shoals in Broadway
or Beacon Street for that. ‘Well, here goes another.” And
fitting a new fly from his well-filled box, he gracefully recast
his line

For a tew moments there was every prospect of sport,
The line was continually bobbing and the nibbles were dis-
tinct and gratifying. Once or twice the bait was apparently
gorged and carried off to the upper stories of the hotels, to
be digested at leisure. At such times the professional
manner in which the Devil played out his line would have
thrilled the heart of Izaak Walton. But his efforts were
unsuccessful; the bait was invariably carried off without
hooking the victim, and the Devil finally lost his temper.
“T’ve heard of these San Franciscans before,’”’ he muttered.
* Wait till I get hold of one, that ’s all!” he added
malevolently, as he rebaited his hook. A sharp tug and a
wriggle followed his next trial, and finally, with considerable
effort, he landed a portly two-hundred-pound broker upon
the church roof.

As the victim lay there gasping, it was evident that the
Devil was in no hurry to remove the hook from his gills;
nor did he exhibit in. this delicate operation that courtesy
of manner and graceful manipulation which usually distin-
guished him.

“ Come,” he said gruffly, as he grasped the broker by the
waistband, “quit that whining and grunting. Don’t flatter
yourself that you ’re a prize, either. I was certain to have
had you. It was only a question of time.”

“Tt is not that, my lord, which troubles me,’’ whined the
unfortunate wretch, as he painfully wriggled his head, “ but
that I should have been fooled by such a paltry bait. What
will they say of me down there? To have let ‘ bigger
things’ go by, and to be taken in by this cheap trick,” he
added, as he groaned and glanced at the fly which the
THE DEVIL AND THE BROKER 427

Devil was carefully rearranging, “is what, — pardon me,
my lord, —is what gets me!”

“Yes,” said the Devil philosophically, “I never caught
mybody yet who didn’t say that; but tell me, ain’t you
getting somewhat fastidious down there? Here is one
of my most popular flies, the greenback,” he continued,
exhibiting an emerald-looking insect, which he drew from
his box. ‘This, so generally considered excellent in elec-
tion season, has not even been nibbled at. Perhaps your
sagacity, which, in spite of this unfortunate contretemps, no
one can doubt,” added the Devil, with a graceful return to
his usual courtesy, “may explain the reason or suggest a
substitute.”

The broker glanced at the contents of the box with a
supercilious smile. ‘ Too old-fashioned, my lord, — long
ago played out. Yet,” he added, with a gleam of interest,
“for a consideration I might offer something — ahem ! —
that would make a taking substitute for these trifles. Give
me,” he continued, in a brisk, business-like way, “a slight
percentage and a bonus down, and I’m your man.”

““ Name your terms,” said the Devil earnestly.

““ My liberty and a percentage on all you take, and the
thing ’s done.”

The Devil caressed his tail thoughtfully for a few
moments. He was certain of the broker anyway, and the
risk was slight. ‘ Done!” he said.

“Stay a moment,” said the artful broker. “ There.are
certain contingencies. Give me your fishing-rod and let
me apply the bait myself. It requires a skillful hand, my
lord : even your well-known experience might fail. Leave
me alone for half an hour, and if you have reason to com-
plain of my success J will forfeit my deposit, — I mean my
liberty.”

The Devil acceded to his request, bowed, and withdrew.
Alighting gracefully in Montgomery Street, he dropped into
428 SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

Meade & Co.’s clothing store, where, having completely
equipped himself 2 la mode, he sallied forth intent on his
personal enjoyment. Determining to sink his professional
character, he mingled with the current of human life, and
enjoyed, with that immense capacity for excitement peculiar
to his nature, the whirl, bustle, and feverishness of the
people, as a purely esthetic gratification unalloyed by the
cares of business. What he did that evening does not
belong to our story. We return to the broker, whom we
left on the roof.

When he made sure that the Devil had retired, he care-
fully drew from his pocketbook a slip of paper and affixed
it on the hook. The line had scarcely reached the current
before he felt a bite. The hook was swallowed. To bring
up his victim rapidly, disengage him from the hook, and
reset his line, was the work of a moment. Another bite
and the same result. Another, and another. In a very
few minutes the roof was covered with his panting spoil.
The broker could himself distinguish that many of them
were personal friends; nay, some of them were familiar
frequenters of the building on which they were now miser-
ably stranded. That the broker felt a certain satisfaction
in being instrumental in thus misleading his fellow-brokers
no one acquainted with human nature will for a moment
doubt. But a stronger pull on his line caused him to put
forth all his strength and skill. The magic pole bent like
a coach-whip. The broker held firm, assisted by the battle-
ments of the church. Again and again it was almost
wrested from his hand, and again and again he slowly
reeled in a portion of the tightening line. At last, with
one mighty effort, he lifted to the level of the roof a strug-
gling object. A. howl like Pandemonium rang through the
air as the broker successfully landed at his feet — the Devil
himself !

The two glared fiercely at each other. The broker, per:
THE DEVIL AND THE BROKER 429

haps mindful of his former treatment, evinced no haste to
remove the hook from his antagonist’s jaw. When it was
finally accomplished, he asked quietly if the Devil was
satisfied. That gentleman seemed absorbed in the con-
semplation of the bait which he had just taken from his
mouth. “Iam,” he said finally, “and forgive you; but
what do you call this ? ”

‘“‘ Bend low,” replied the broker, as he buttoned up his
coat ready to depart. The Devil inclined hisear. ‘“T call
it Witp Cat!”
THE OGRESS OF SILVER LAND

OR

THE DIVERTING HISTORY OF PRINCE BADFELLAH AND
PRINCE BULLEBOYE

In the second year of the reign of the renowned Caliph
Lo there dwelt in Silver Land, adjoining his territory, a
certain terrible Ogress. She lived in the bowels of a dismal
mountain, where she was in the habit of confining such
unfortunate travelers as ventured within her domain. The
country for miles around was sterile and barren. In some
places it was covered with a white powder, which was called
in the language of the country Al Ka Li, and was supposed
to be the pulverized bones of those who had perished miser-
ably in her service.

In spite of this, every year great numbers of young men
devoted themselves to the service of the Ogress, hoping to
become her godsons, and to enjoy the good fortune which
belonged to that privileged class. For these godsons had
no work to perform, neither at the mountain nor elsewhere,
but roamed about the world with credentials of their
relationship in their pockets, which they called stokh,
which was stamped with the stamp and sealed with the
seal of the Ogress, and which enabled them at the end of
each moon to draw large quantities of gold and silver from
her treasury. And the wisest and most favored of those
godsons were the Princes Badfellah and Bulleboye. They
knew all the secrets of the Ogress, and how to wheedle and
coax her. They were also the favorites of Soopah Inten-
THE OGRESS OF SILVER LAND 431

dent, who was her Lord High Chamberlain and Prime
Minister, and who dwelt in Silver Land.

One day, Soopah Intendent said to his servants, “ What
is that which travels the most surely, the most secretly,
and the most swiftly ? ”

And they all answered as one man, “ Lightning, my
lord, travels the most surely, the most swiftly, and the
most secretly !”

Then said Soopah Intendent, ‘“ Let Lightning carry this
message secretly, swiftly, and surely to my beloved friends
the Princes Badfellah and Bulleboye, and tell them that
their godmother is dying, and bid them seek some other
godmother or sell their stokh ere it becomes badjee, —
worthless.”

“Bekhesm! On our heads be it!’’ answered the sez-
vants; and they ran to Lightning with the message, who
flew with it to the City by the Sea, and delivered it, even
at that moment, into the hands of the Princes Badfellah
and Bulleboye.

Now the Prince Badfellah was a wicked young man;
and when he had received this message he tore his beard
and rent his garment and reviled his godmother and his
fiend Soopah Intendent. But presently he arose, and
dressed himself in his finest stuffs, and went forth into the
bazaars and among the merchants, capering and dancing as
he walked, and crying in aloud voice, ‘ Oh, happy day ! Oh,
day worthy to be marked with a white stone!”

This he said cunningly, thinking the merchants and men
of the bazaars would gather about him, which they presently
did, and began to question him: “ What news, O most
worthy and serene Highness ? Tell us, that we may make
merry too!”

Then replied the cunning prince, “Good news, O my
brothers, for I have heard this day that my godmother in
Silver Land is well.’”? The merchants, who were not aware
432 SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

of the substance of the real message, envied him greatly,
and said one to another, “‘Surely our brother the Prince
Badfellah is favored by Allah above all men;” and they
were about to retire, when the prince checked them, saying,
“Tarry fora moment. Here are my credentials or stokh.
The same I will sell you for fifty thousand sequins, for I
have to give a feast to-day, and need much gold. Whe
will give fifty thousand?” And he again fell to capering
and dancing. But this time the merchants drew a little
apart, and some of the oldest and wisest said, ‘ What dirt
is this which the prince would have us swallow? If his
godmother were well, why should he sell his stokh?
Bismillah! The olives are old and the jar is broken!”
When Prince Badfellah perceived them whispering, his
countenance fell, and his knees smote against each other
through fear; but, dissembling again, he said, “ Well, so
be it! Lo! I have much more than shall abide with me,
for my days are many and my wants are few. Say forty
thousand sequins for my stokh and let me depart, in
Allah’s name. Who will give forty thousand sequins to
become the godson of such a healthy mother?” And he
again fell to capering and dancing, but not as gayly as
before, for his heart was troubled. The merchants, how-
ever, only moved farther away. “ Thirty thousand sequins,”
cried Prince Badfellah; but even as he spoke they fled
before his face, crying, ‘‘ His godmother is dead. Lo! the
jackals are defiling her grave. Mashallah! he has no god-
mother.” And they sought out Panik, the swift-footed
messenger, and bade him shout through the bazaars that
the godmother of Prince Badfellah was dead. When he
heard this, the prince fell upon his face, and rent his gar-
ments, and covered himself with the dust of the market-
place. As he was sitting thus, a porter passed him with
jars of wine on his shoulders, and the prince begged him
to give him a jar, for he was exceeding thirsty and faint
THE OGRESS OF SILVER LAND 433

But the porter said, “ What will my lord give me first ? ”
And the prince, in very bitterness of spirit, said, “Take
this,” and handed him his stokh, and so exchanged it for a
jar of wine.

Now the Prince Bulleboye was of a different disposition.
When he received the message of Soopah Intendent he
bowed his head, and said, “‘ It is the will of God.” Then
he rose, and without speaking a word entered the gates of
his palace. But his wife, the peerless Maree Jahann, per-
ceiving the gravity of his countenance, said, “‘ Why is my
lord cast down and silent? Why are those rare and price-
less pearls, his words, shut up so tightly between those gor-
geous oyster-shells, his lips?” But to this he made no
reply. Thinking further to divert him, she brought her
lute into the chamber and stood before him, and sang the
song and danced the dance of Ben Kotton, which is called
Ibrahim’s Daughter, but she could not lift the veil of sad-
ness from his brow.

When she had ceased, the Prince Bulleboye arose and
said, “‘ Allah is great, and what am I, his servant, but the
dust of the earth! Lo! this day has my godmother sick-
ened unto death, and my stokh become as a withered
palm-leaf. Call hither my servants and camel drivers, and
the merchants that have furnished me with stuffs, and the
beggars who have feasted at my table, and bid them take
all that is here, for it is mine no longer!” With these:
words he buried his face in his mantle and wept aloud.

But Maree Jahann, his wife, plucked him by the sleeve.
“‘ Prithee, my lord,” said she, “‘ bethink thee of the Brokah
or scrivener who besought thee but yesterday to share thy
stokh with him and gave thee his bond for fifty thousand
sequins.” But the noble Prince Bulleboye, raising his
head, said, ‘Shall I sell to him for fifty thousand sequins
that which I know is not worth a Soo Markee? For is
not all che Brokah’s wealth, even his wife and children,
434 SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

pledged on that bond ? Shall I ruin him to save myself ?
Allah forbid! Rather let me eat the salt fish of honest
penury than the kabobs of dishonorable affluence ; rather
let me wallow in the mire of virtuous oblivion than repose
on the divan of luxurious wickedness !”’

When the prince had given utterance to this beautiful
and edifying sentiment, a strain of gentle music was heard,
and the rear wall of the apartment, which had been ingen-
iously constructed like a flat, opened and discovered the
Ogress of Silver Land in the glare of blue fire, seated on
a triumphal car attached to two ropes which were connected
with the flies, in the very act of blessing the unconscious
prince. When the walls closed again without attracting his
attention, Prince Bulleboye arose, dressed himself in his
coarsest and cheapest stuffs, and sprinkled ashes on his
head, and in this guise, having embraced his wife, went
-orth into the bazaars. In this it will be perceived how
flifferently the good Prince Bulleboye acted from the wicked
Prince Badfellah, who put on his gayest garments, to simu-
late and deceive.

Now when Prince Bulleboye entered the chief bazaar,
where the merchants of the city were gathered in council,
he stood up in his accustomed place, and all that were there
held their breath, for the noble Prince Bulleboye was much
respected. ‘Let the Brokah whose bond I hold for fifty
thousand sequins stand forth!” said the prince. And the
Brokah stood forth from among the merchants. Then said
the prince, “Here is thy bond for fifty thousand sequins,
for which I was to deliver unto thee one half of my stokh.
Know, then, O my brother, —and thou, too, O Aga of the
Brokahs, — that this my stokh which I pledged to thee is
worthless. For my godmother, the Ogress of Silver Land,
is dying. Thus do J release thee from thy bond, and from
the poverty which might overtake thee, as it has even me,
thy brother, the Prince Bulleboye.” And with that the
THE OGRESS OF SILVER LAND 435

noble Prince Bulleboye tore the bond of the Brokah into
pieces and scattered it to the four winds.

Now when the Prince tore up the bond there was a great
commotion, and some said, ‘Surely the Prince Bulleboye
is drunken with wine; ” and others, “‘He is possessed of
an evil spirit ;”” and his friends expostulated with him, say-
ing, ‘ What thou hast done is not the custom of the bazaars,
— behold, it is not Biz!” But to all the prince answered
gravely, ‘It is right ; on my own head be it! ”

But the oldest and wisest of the merchants, they who had
talked with Prince Badfellah the same morning, whispered
together, and gathered round the Brokah whose bond the
Prince Bulleboye had torn up, “Hark ye,” said they,
“our brother the Prince Bulleboye is cunning as a jackai.
What bosh is this about ruining himself to save thee ?
Such a thing was never heard before in the bazaars. It is
a trick, O thou mooncalf of a Brokah! Dost thou not see
that he has heard good news from his godmother, the same
that was even now told us by the Prince Badfellah, his
confederate, and that he would destroy thy bond for fifty
thousand sequins because his stokh is worth a hundred
thousand! Be not deceived, O too credulous Brokah!
for this that our brother the prince doeth is not in the
name of Allah, but of Biz, the only god known in the ba-
zaars of the city.”

When the foolish Brokah heard these things he cried,
“ Justice, O Aga of the Brokahs, — justice and the fulfill-
ment of my bond! Let the prince deliver unto me the
stokh. Here are my fifty thousand sequins.” But the
prince said, ‘‘ Have IJ not told thee that my godmother is
dying, and that my stokh is valueless?” At this the Bro-
kah only clamored the more for justice and the fulfillment
of his bond. Then the Aga of the Brokahs said, “Since
the bond is destroyed, behold thou hast no claim. Go thy
ways!’ But the Brokah again cried, “Justice, my lord
436 SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

Aga! Behold, I offer the prince seventy thousand sequins
for his stokh!” But the prince said, “ It is not worth one
jequin!” Then the Aga said, “ Bismillah! I cannot un-
derstand this. Whether thy godmother be- dead, or dying,
or immortal, does not seem to signify. Therefore, O prince,
by the laws of Biz and of Allah, thou art released. Give
the Brokah thy stokh for seventy thousand sequins, and
bid him depart in peace. On his own head be it!’ When
the prince heard this command, he handed the stokh to
the Brokah, who counted out to him seventy thousand
sequins. But the heart of the virtuous prince did not
rejoice, nor did the Brokah when he found his stokh was
valueless; but the merchants lifted their hands in wonder
at the sagacity and wisdom of the famous Prince Bulleboye.
For none would believe that it was the law of Allah that
the prince followed, and not the rules of Biz.
THE CHRISTMAS GIFT THAT CAME TO
RUPERT

A STORY FOR LITTLE SOLDIERS

Ir was the Christmas season in California, —a season 91
falling rain and springing grasses. There were intervals
when, through driving clouds and flying scud, the sun
visited the haggard hills with a miracle, and death and
resurrection were as one, and out of the very throes of
decay a joyous life struggled outward and upward. Even
the storms that swept down the dead leaves nurtured the
tender buds that took their places. There were no episodes
of snowy silence ; over the quickening fields the farmer’s
ploughshare hard followed the furrows left by the latest
tains. Perhaps it was for this reason that the Christmas
evergreens which decorated the drawing-room took upon
themselves a foreign aspect, and offered a weird contrast
to the roses, seen dimly through the windows, as the south-
west wind beat their soft faces against the panes.

“ Now,” said the doctor, drawing his chair closer to the
fire, and looking mildly but firmly at the semicircle of
flaxen heads around him, “I want it distinctly understood
before I begin my story, that I am not to be interrupted by
any ridiculous questions. At the first one I shall stop.
At the second, I shall feel it my duty to administer a dose
of castor-oil all round. The boy that moves his legs or
arms will be understood to invite amputation. I have
brought my instruments with me, and never allow pleasure
to interfere with my business. Do you promise ? ”

“ Yes, sir,” said six small voices simultaneously. The
438 SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

volley was, however, followed by half a dozen dropping
questions.

“Silence! Bob, put your feet down, and stop rattling
that sword. Flora shall sit by my side, like a little lady,
and be an example to the rest. Fung Tang shall stay, too,
if he likes. Now, turn down the gas a little; there, that
will do — just enough to make the fire look brighter, and to
show off the Christmas candles. Silence, everybody! The
boy who cracks an almond, or breathes too loud over his
raisins, will be put out of the room.”

There was a profound silence. Bob. laid his sword
tenderly aside and nursed his leg thoughtfully. Flora,
after coquettishly adjusting the pockets of her little apron,
put her arm upon the doctor’s shoulder, and permitted
herself to be drawn beside him. Fung Tang, the little
heathen page, who was permitted, on this rare occasion, to
share the Christmas revels in the drawing-room, surveyed
the group with a smile that was at once sweet and philoso-
phical. The light ticking of a French clock on the mantel,
supported by a young shepherdess of bronze complexion
and great symmetry of limb, was the only sound that dis-
turbed the Christmas-like peace of the apartment, —a
peace which held the odors of evergreens, new toys, cedar
boxes, glue, and varnish in a harmonious combination that
passed all understanding.

“About four years ago at this time,” began the doctor,
‘** T attended a course of lectures in a certain city. One of
the professors, who was a sociable, kindly man — though
somewhat practical and hard-headed — invited me to his
house on Christmas night. I was very glad to go, as I was
anxious to see one of his sons, who, though only twelve
years old, was said to be very clever. I dare not tell you
how many Latin verses this little fellow could recite, or
how many English ones he had composed. In the first
‘piace, you’d want me to repeat them; secondly, I’m nota
RUPERT'S CHRISTMAS GIFT 439

judge of poetry — Latin or English. But there were judges
who said they were wonderful for a boy, and everybody
predicted a splendid future for him. Everybody but his
father. He shock his head doubtingly whenever it was
mentioned, for, as I have told you, he was a practical,
matter-of-fact man.

‘‘ There was a pleasant party at the professor’s that night.
All the children of the neighborhood were there, and
among them the professor’s clever son, Rupert, as they
called him —a thin little chap, about as tall as Bobby there,
and fair and delicate as Flora by my side. His health was
feeble, his father said; he seldom ran about and played
with other boys — preferring to stay at home and brood
over his books, and compose what he called his verses.

‘‘ Well, we had a Christmas-tree just like this, and we
had been laughing and talking, calling the names of the
children who had presents on the tree, and everybody was
very happy and joyous, when one of the children suddenly
uttered a cry of mingled surprise and hilarity, and said,
‘Here’s something for Rupert —and what do you think
it is?’

“We all guessed. ‘A desk;’ ‘A copy of Milton;’ ‘A
cold pen;’ ‘A rhyming dictionary.’ ‘No? what then?’

“«¢A drum!’

“¢ A what ?’ asked everybody.

“¢ A drum! with Rupert’s name on it.’

“ Sure enough, there it was. A good-sized, bright, new,
brass-bound drum, with a slip of paper on it, with the
inscription, ‘ For Rupert.’

“ Of course we all laughed, and thought it a good joke.
‘You see you’re to make a noise in the world, Rupert!’
said one. ‘Here’s parchment for the poet,’ said another.
‘Rupert’s last work in sheepskin covers,’ said a third.
‘Give us a classical tune, Rupert,’ said a fourth, and so on.
But Rupert seemed too mortified to speak; he changed
440 . SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

color, bit his lips, and finally burst into a passionate fit of
crying and left the room. Then those who had joked him
felt ashamed, and everybody began to ask who had put the
drum there. But no one knew, or, if they did, the unex-
pected sympathy awakened for the sensitive boy kept them
silent. Even the servants were called up and questioned,
but no one could give any idea where it came from. And
what was still more singular, everybody declared that up
to the moment it was produced, no one had seen it hang-
ing on the tree. What do I think? Well, I have my own
opinion. But no questions! Enough for you to know that
Rupert did not come downstairs again that night, and the
party soon after broke up.

“T had almost forgotten those things, for the war of the
Rebellion broke out the next spring, and I was appointed
surgeon in one of the new regiments, and was on my way
to the seat of war. But I had to pass through the city
where the professor lived, and there I met him. My first
question was about Rupert. The professor shook his
head sadly. ‘He’s not so well,’ he said; ‘he has been
declining since last Christmas, when you saw him. A very
strange case,’ he added, giving it a long Latin name, ‘a
very singular case. But go and see him yourself,’ he urged ;
‘it may distract his mind and do him good.’

“T went accordingly to the professor’s house, and found
Rupert lying on a sofa propped up with pillows. Around
him were scattered his books, and, what seemed in singular
contrast, that drum I told you about was hanging on a nail
just above his head. His face was thin and wasted; there
was a red spot on either cheek, and his eyes were very
bright and widely opened. He was glad to see me, and
when I told him where I was going, he asked a thousand
questions about the war. I thought I had thoroughly
diverted his mind from its sick and languid fancies, when
he suddenly grasped my hand and drew me towards him.
RUPERT'S CHRISTMAS GIFT 441

*¢ Doctor,’ said he, in a low whisper, ‘ you won’t laugh
at me if I tell you something ?’

“No, certainly not,’ I said.

“¢ You remember that drum ?’ he said, pointing to the
glittering toy that hung against the wall. ‘You know, too,
how it came to me. A few weeks after Christmas I was
lying half asleep here, and the drum was hanging on the
wall, when suddenly I heard it beaten; at first low and
slowly, then faster and louder, until its rolling filled the
house. In the middle of the night I heard it again. I did
not dare to tell anybody about it, but I have heard it every
night ever since.’

“He paused and looked anxiously in my face. ‘ Some-
times,’ he continued, ‘ it is played softly, sometimes loudly,
but always quickening to a long roll, so loud and alarming
that I have looked to see people coming into my room to
ask what was the matter. But I think, doctor —[ think,’
he repeated slowly, looking up with painful interest into my
face, ‘that no one hears it but myself.’

“T thought so, too, but I asked him if he had heard it
at any other time.

“¢ Once or twice in the daytime,’ he replied, ‘ when I
have been reading or writing; then very loudly, as though
it were angry, and tried in that way to attract my attention
away from my books.’

“T looked into his face and placed my hand upon his
pulse. His eyes were very bright and his pulse a little
flurried and quick. I then tried to explain to him that he
was very weak, and that his senses were very acute, as most
weak people’s are; and how that when he read, or grew
interested and excited, or when he was tired at night, the
throbbing of a big artery made the beating sound he heard.
He listened to me with a sad smile of unbelief, but thanked
me, and in a little while I went away. But as I was going
downstairs I met the professor. I gave him my opinion of
the case — Well, no matter what it was.
442 SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

- ¢He wants fresh air and exercise,’ said the professor,
‘and some practical experience of life, sir.’ The professor
was not a bad man, but he was a little worried and imfa-
tient, and thought — as clever people are apt to think — that
things which he didn’t understand were either silly or
improper.

“T left the city that very day, and in the excitement of
battlefields and hospitals I forgot all about little Rupert,
nor did I hear of him again, until one day, meeting an old
classmate in the army, who had known the professor, he
told me that Rupert had become quite insane, and that in
one of his paroxysms he had escaped from the house, and
as he had never been found, it was feared that he had fallen
into the river and was drowned. I was terribly shocked for
the moment, as you may imagine; but, dear me, I was
living just then among scenes as terrible and shocking, and
I had little time to spare to mourn over poor Rupert.

. “Tt was not long after receiving this intelligence that we
had a terrible battle, in which a portion of our army was
slaughtered. I was detached from my brigade to ride over
to the battlefield and assist the surgeons of the beaten
division, who had more on their hands than they could
attend to. When I reached the barn that served for a tem-
porary hospital, I went at once to work. Ah! Bob,” said
the doctor thoughtfully, taking the bright sword from the
hands of the half-frightened Bob, and holding it gravely
before him, “these pretty playthings are symbols of cruel,
ugly realities.”

“T turned toa tall, stout Vermonter,” he continued, very
slowly, tracing a pattern on the rug with the point of the
scabbard, ‘who was badly wounded in both thighs, but he
held up his hands and begged me to help others first who
needed it more than he. I did not at first heed his request,
for this kind of unselfishness was very common in the army ;
but he went on, ‘For God’s sake, doctor, leave me here;
RUPERT'S CHRISTMAS GIFT 443

there is a drummer boy of our regiment —a mere child —
dying, if he isn’t dead now. Go and see him first. He
lies over there. He saved more than one life. He was at
his post in the panic of this morning, and saved the honor
of the regiment.’ I was so much more impressed by the
man’s manner than by the substance of his speech, which
was, however, corroborated by the other poor fellows
stretched around me, that I passed over to where the
drummer lay, with his drum beside him. I gave one glance
at his face — and — yes, Bob —yes, my children —it was
Rupert.

“Well! well! it needed not the chalked cross which my
brother surgeons had left upon the rough board whereon he
lay to show how urgent was the relief he sought; it needed
not the prophetic words of the Vermonter, nor the damp
that mingled with the brown curls that clung to his pale
forehead, to show how hopeless it was now. I called him
by name. He opened his eyes — larger, I thought, in the
new vision that was beginning to dawn upon him -—and
recognized me. He whispered, ‘I’m glad you are come,
but I don’t think you can do me any good.’

“JT could not tell hima lie. I could not say anything.
I only pressed his hand in mine as he went on.

“But you will see father, and ask him to forgive me.
Nobody is to blame but myself. It was a long time before
I understood why the drum came to me that Christmas
night, and why it kept calling to me every night, and what
it said. I know it now. The work is done, and I am con-
tent. Tell father it is better as itis. I should have lived
only to worry and perplex him, and something in me tells
me this is right.’

“ He lay still for a moment, and then grasping my hand,
said, —

oe Mark!’

“T listened, but heard nothing but the suppressed moans
V4 SPANISH AND AMERICAN LEGENDS

vf the wounded men around me. ‘The drum,’ he said
taintly ; ‘don’t you hear it ? —the drum is calling me.’

“He reached out his arm to where it lay, as though he
ould embrace it.

“<¢Tisten ’ — he went on — ‘it’s the reveille. There are
the ranks drawn up in review. Don’t you see the sunlight
flash down the long line of bayonets? Their faces are
shining — they present arms — there comes the General —
but his face I cannot look at for the glory round his head.
He sees me; he smiles, it is’ — and with a name upon his
lips that he had learned long ago, he stretched himself
wearily upon the planks and lay quite still.

“That’s all.

“No questions now — never mind what became of the
drum.

“Who’s that sniveling?

‘Bless my soul! where’s my pill-box.?”
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS
AND OTHER TALES!
CONTENTS

PAGER
In THE CARQUINEZ Woops % x * * + & os “ 1
A Biue Grass PENELOPE a ‘ * . . . . « 126
Lert Out on Lone Star Mountain . . . . % - 192
A Suir or 49. ‘ r . i fe eo) eT os . ‘ 223
An APOSTLE OF THE TULES . . . . . . . - 806
Deviw’s Forp . a je a ee ~ » 8835

A SEcRET oF TELEGRAPH HILL * ee . e « 417
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS AND OTHER
TALES

IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS
CHAPTER I

THE sun was going down on the Carquinez Woods.
The few shafts of sunlight that had pierced their pillared
gloom were lost in unfathomable depths, or splintered
their ineffectual lances on the enormous trunks of the red-
woods. For a time the dull red of their vast columns,
and the dull red of their cast-off bark which matted the
echoless aisles, still seemed to hold a faint glow of the
dying day. But even this soon passed. Light and color
fled upwards. The dark, interlaced treetops, that had all
day made an impenetrable shade, broke into fire here and
there; their lost spires glittered, faded, and went utterly
out. A weird twilight that did not come from an outer
world, but seemed born of the wood itself, slowly filled
and possessed the aisles. The straight, tall, colossal
trunks rose dimly like columns of upward smoke. The
few fallen trees stretched their huge length into obscurity,
and seemed to lie on shadowy trestles. The strange
breath that filled these mysterious vaults had neither cold-
ness nor moisture; a dry, fragrant dust arose from the
noiseless foot that trod their bark-strewn floor: the aisles
might have been tombs; the fallen trees, enormous mum-
mies ; the silence, the solitude of the forgotten past.

And yet this silence was presently broken by a recurring
2 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

sound like breathing, interrupted occasionally by inarticu.
late and stertorous gasps. It was not the quick, panting,
listening breath of some stealthy feline or canine animal,
but indicated a larger, slower, and more powerful organi-
zation, whose progress was less watchful and guarded, or
as if a fragment of one of the fallén monsters had become
animate. At times this life seemed to take visible form,
but as vaguely, as misshapenly, as the phantom of a night-
mare. Now: it was a square object moving sideways, end-
ways, with neither head nor tail and scarcely visible feet;
then an arched bulk rolling against the trunks of the trees
and recoiling again, or an upright cylindrical mass, but al-
ways oscillating and unsteady, and striking the trees on
either hand. The frequent occurrence of the movement
suggested the figures of some weird rhythmic dance to
music heard by the shape alone. Suddenly it either be-
came motionless or faded away. There was the frightened
neighing of a horse, the sudden jingling of spurs, a shout
and outcry, and the swift apparition of three dancing torches
in one of the dark aisles; but so intense was the obscurity
that they shed no light on surrounding objects, and seemed
to advance at their own volition without human guidance,
until they disappeared suddenly behind the interposing bulk
of one of the largest trees. Beyond its eighty feet of cir-
cumference the light could not reach, and the gloom re-
mained inscrutable. But the voices and jingling spurs
were heard distinctly.

“Blast the mare! She’s shied off that cursed trail
again.”

“Ye ain’t lost it agin, hev ye?” growled a second voice.

“That ’s jist what I hev. And these blasted pine knots
don’t give light an inch beyond ’em. D—d if I don’t
think they make this cursed hole blacker.”

There was a laugh —a woman’s laugh — hysterical,
bitter, sarcastic, exasperating. The second speaker, with-
out heeding it, went on: —
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 3

- “ What in thunder skeert the hosses? Did you see or
hear anything ? ”

‘Nothin’. The wood is like’a graveyard.’””

The woman’s voice again broke into-a hoarse, contemp-
tuous laugh. The man resumed angrily : —

“Tf you know anything, why in h—ll don’t you say so,
instead of cackling like a d—d squaw there? P’r’aps you
reckon you ken find the trail too.” ”

“Take this: rope off my: wrist,” said the woman’s voice,
“untie my hands, let me down, and I’ll find it.” She
spoke quickly and with a Spanish accent.

It was the men’s turn to laugh. “ And give you a show
to snatch that six-shooter and blow a hole through me, as
you did to the Sheriff of Calaveras, eh ? Not if this court
understands itself,” said the first speaker dryly.

'“ Go to the devil, then,” she said curtly.

‘* Not before a lady,” responded the other. There was
another laugh from the men, the spurs jingled again, the
three torches reappeared from behind the tree, and then
pessed away in the darkness.

For a time silence and immutability possessed the woods ;
the great trunks loomed upwards, their fallen brothers
stretched their slow length into obscurity. The sound of
breathing again became audible; the shape reappeared in
the aisle, and recommenced its mystic dance. Presently it
was lost in the shadow of the largest tree, and to the sound
of breathing succeeded a grating and scratching of. bark.
Suddenly, as if riven by lightning, a flash broke from the
centre of the tree-trunk, lit up the woods, and a sharp
report rang through it. After a pause the jingling of spurs
and the dancing of torches were revived from the distance.

“ Hallo?”

No answer.

“Who fired that shot ? ”

But there was no reply. A slight veil of smoke passed
4 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

away to the right, there was the spice of gunpowder in the
air, but nothing more.

The torches came forward again, but this time it could
be seen they were held in the hands of two men and a
woman. The woman’s hands were tied at the wrist to the
horse-hair reins of her mule, while a riata, passed around
her waist and under the mule’s girth, was held by one of
the men, who were both armed with rifles and revolvers.
Their frightened horses curveted, and it was with difficulty
they could be made to advance.

“Ho! stranger, what are you shooting at ?”

The woman laughed, and shrugged her shoulders.
‘Look yonder at the roots of the tree. You’re a d—d
smart man for a sheriff, ain’t you?”

The man uttered an exclamation and spurred his horse
forward, but the animal reared in terror. He then sprang
to the ground and approached the tree. The shape lay
there, a scarcely distinguishable bulk.

“A prizzly, by the living Jingo! Shot through the
heart.”

It was true. The strange shape lit up by the flaring
torches seemed more vague, unearthly, and awkward in
its dying throes, yet the small shut eyes, the feeble nose,
the ponderous shoulders, and half-human foot armed with
powerful claws were unmistakable. The men turned by a
common impulse and peered into the remote recesses of the
wood again.

“Hi, mister! come and pick up your game. Hallo
there!” The challenge fell unheeded on the empty woods.

“ And yet,” said he whom the woman had called the
sheriff, “‘ he can’t be far off. It was a close shot, and the
bear hez dropped in his tracks. Why, wot’s this sticking
in his claws ? ”

The two men bent over the animal. “ Why, it’s sugar,
brown sugar —look!”? There was no mistake. The huge
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 5

beast’s fore paws and muzzle were streaked with the unro-
mantic household provision, and heightened the absurd con-
trast of its incongruous members. The woman, apparently
indifferent, had taken that opportunity to partly free one of
her wrists.

“Tf we had n’t been cavorting round this yer spot for
the last half-hour, I1’d swear there was a shanty not a
hundred yards away,” said the sheriff. The other man,
without replying, remounted his horse instantly.

“Tf there is, and it’s inhabited by a gentleman that
kin make centre shots like that in the dark, and don’t
care to explain how, I reckon I won’t disturb him.”

The sheriff was apparently of the same opinion, for he
followed his companion’s example, and once more led the
way. The spurs tinkled, the torches danced, and the
cavalcade slowly reéntered the gloom. In another moment
it had disappeared.

The wood sank again into repose, this time disturbed by
neither shape nor sound. What lower forms of life might
have crept close to its roots were hidden in the: ferns, or
passed with deadened tread over the bark-strewn floor.
Towards morning a coolness like dew fell from above,
with here and there a dropping twig or nut, or the crepi-
tant awakening and stretching-out of cramped and weary
branches. Later a dull, lurid dawn, not unlike the last
evening’s sunset, filled the aisles. This faded again, and
a clear gray light, in which every object stood out in sharp
distinctness, took its place. Morning was waiting outside
in all its brilliant, youthful coloring, but only entered as
the matured and sobered day.

Seen in that stronger light, the monstrous tree near
which the dead bear lay revealed its age in its denuded
and scarred trunk, and showed in its base a deep cavity,
a foot or two from the ground, partly hidden by hanging
strips of bark which had fallen across it. Suddenly one
6 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

of these strips was pushed aside, and a young: man leaped
lightly down.

But for the rifle he carried and some modern peculiari-
ties of dress, he was of a grace so unusual and unconven-
tional that he might have passed for a faun who was
quitting his ancestral home. He stepped to the side of
the bear with a light elastic movement that was as unlike
customary progression as his face and figure were unlike
the ordinary types of humanity. Even as he leaned upon
his rifle, looking down at the prostrate animal, he uncon-
sciously fell into an attitude that in any other mortal
would have been a pose, but with him was the picturesque
and unstudied relaxation of perfect symmetry.

“ Hallo, mister ! ””

He raised his head so carelessly and listlessly that he
did not otherwise change his attitude. Stepping from
behind the tree, the woman of the preceding night stood
before him. Her hands were free except for a thong of
the riata, which was still knotted around one wrist, the
end of the thong having been torn or burnt away. Her
eyes were bloodshot, and her hair hung over her shoulders
in one long black braid.

“T reckoned all along it was you who shot the bear,”
she said; “at least some one hidin’ yer,” and she indi-
cated the hollow tree with her hand. ‘It wasn’t no
chance shot.” Observing that the young man, either from
misconception or indifference, did not seem to comprehend
her, she added, ‘“‘ We came by here last night, a minute
after you fired.”

“Oh, that was you kicked up such a row, was it?”
said the young man, with a shade of interest.

“T reckon,” said the woman, nodding her head, “ and
them that was with me.”

“ And who are they ?”

“ Sheriff Dunn, of Yolo, and his deputy.”
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

“ And where are they now ? ”

“The deputy — in h—Il, I reckon. I don’t know about
the sheriff.”

“T see,” said the young man quietly; “and you?”

““T —got away,” she said savagely. But she was taken
with a sudden nervous shiver, which she at once repressed
by tightly dragging her shawl over her shoulders and el-
bows, and folding her arms defiantly.

“And you’re going ?”

“To follow the deputy, maybe,” she said gloomily.
“But come, I say, ain’t you going to treat? It’s cursed
cold here.”

“Wait a moment.” The young man was looking at
her, with his arched brows slightly knit and a half smile
of curiosity. ‘ Ain’t you Teresa ? ”

She was prepared for the question, but evidently was
not certain whether she would reply defiantly or confi-
dently. After an exhaustive scrutiny of his face she
chose the latter, and said, ‘“ You can bet your life on it,
Johnny.”

“T don’t bet, and my name isn’t Johnny. Then
you’re the woman who stabbed Dick Curson over at
Lagrange’s ?”

She became defiant again. ‘ That’s me, all the time.
What are you going to do about it ?”

“ Nothing. And you used to dance at the Alhambra ?”

She whisked the shawl from her shoulders, held it up
like a scarf, and made one or two steps of the sembi-
cuacua. There was not the least gayety, recklessness,
or spontaneity in the action; it was simply mechanical
bravado. It was so ineffective, even upon her own feel-
ings, that her arms presently dropped to her side, and she
coughed embarrassedly. ‘‘ Where’s that whiskey, pard-
ner ?”’ she asked.

The young man turned toward the tree he had just
8 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

quitted, and without further words assisted her to mount
to the cavity. It was an irregular-shaped vaulted cham-
ber, pierced fifty feet above by a shaft or cylindrical open-
ing in the decayed trunk, which was blackened by smoke
as if it had served the purpose of a chimney. In one
corner lay a bearskin and blanket; at the side were two
alcoves or indentations, one of which was evidently used
asa table, and the other as a cupboard. In another hol-
low, near the entrance, lay a few small sacks of flour, coffee,
and sugar, the sticky contents of the latter still strewing
the floor. From this storehouse the young man drew a
wicker flask of whiskey, and handed it, with a tin cup of
water, to the woman. She waved the cup aside, placed
the flask to her lips, and drank the undiluted spirit. Yet
even this was evidently bravado, for the water started to
her eyes, and she could not restrain the paroxysm of cough-
ing that followed.

“YT reckon that’s the kind that kills at forty rods,” she
said, with an hysterical laugh. ‘“ But I say, pardner, you
look as if you were fixed here to stay,” and she stared
ostentatiously around the chamber. But she had already
taken in its minutest details, even to observing that the
hanging strips of bark could be disposed so as to com-
pletely hide the entrance.

“ Well, yes,” he replied; “it would n’t be very easy to
pull up the stakes and move the shanty further on.”

Seeing that either from indifference or caution he had not
accepted her meaning, she looked at him fixedly, and said,—

“What is your little game ?” -

6s Eh ? )

‘* What are you hiding for — here in this tree ?”

“But I’m not hiding.”

“Then why didn’t you come out when they hailed you
last night ? ”

6 Because I did n’t care to.”
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 9

Teresa whistled incredulously. ‘All right — then if
you’re not hiding, I’m going to.” As he did not reply,
she went on: “Tf I can keep out of sight for a couple of
weeks, this thing will blow over here, and I can get across
into Yolo. I could get a fair show there, where the boys
know me. Just now the trails are all watched, but no one
would think of lookin’ here.”

“Then how did you come to think of it?” he asked
carelessly.

“Because I knew that bear hadn’t gone far for that
sugar; because I knew he had n’t stole it from a cache —
it was too fresh, and we’d have seen the torn-up earth;
because we had passed no camp; and because I knew
there was no shanty here. And, besides,’ she added in a
low voice, ‘maybe I was huntin’ a hole myself to die in —
and spotted it by instinct.”

There was something in this suggestion of a hunted
animal that, unlike anything she had previously said or
suggested, was not exaggerated, and caused the young man
to look at her again. She was standing under the chimney-
like opening, and the light from above illuminated her head
and shoulders. The pupils of her eyes had lost their fever-
ish prominence, a.J were slightly suffused and softened as
she gazed abstractedly before her. The only vestige of her
previous excitement was in her left-hand fingers, which were
incessantly twisting and turning a diamond ring upon her
right hand, but without imparting the least animation to
her rigid attitude. Suddenly, as if conscious of his scrutiny,
she stepped aside out of the revealing light, and by a swift
feminine instinct raised her hand to her head as if to ad-
just her straggling hair. It was only for a moment, how-
ever, for, as if aware of the weakness, she struggled tc
resume her aggressive pose.

“ Well,” she said, “speak up. Am I goin’ to stop here,
or have I got to get up and get ?”
10 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

“You can stay,” said the young man quietly; “ but as
J’ve got my provisions and ammunition here, and haven’t
any other place to go to just now, I suppose we ’ll have te
share it together.”

She glanced at him under her eyelids, and a half-bitter,
half-contemptuous smile passed across her face. “ All
right, old man,’’ she said, holding out her hand, “ it’s a go,
We’ll start in housekeeping at once, if you like.”

“T’ll have to come here once or twice a day,” he said,
quite composedly, “to look after my things, and get some-
thing to eat; but I’ll be away most of the time, and what
with camping out under the trees every night I reckon my
share won’t incommode you.”

She opened her black eyes upon him, at this original
proposition, Then she looked down at her torn dress.
“T suppose this style of thing ain’t very fancy, is it?” she
said, with a forced laugh.

“T think I know where to beg or borrow a change for
you, if you can’t get any,” he replied simply.

She stared at him again. “Are you a family man ?”

6c No.”

She was silent for a moment. ‘ Well,’ she said, ‘you
can tell your girl I’m not particular about its being in the
latest fashion.”

There was a slight flush on his forehead as he turned
toward the little cupboard, but no tremor in his voice as he
went on: “ Youll find tea and coffee here, and, if you ’re
bored, there’s a book or two. You read, don’t you —I
mean English ? ”

She nodded, but cast a look of undisguised contempt
upon the two worn, coverless novels he held out to her.
“You haven’t got last week’s ‘Sacramento Union,’ have
yo? J hear they have my case all in; only them lying
repc~ters made it out against me all the time.”

“y don’t see the papers,” he replied curtly.
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 11

' “They say there’s a picture of me in the ‘Police Ga-
zette,’ taken in the act,” and she laughed.

He looked a little abstracted, and turned as if to go.
“J think you ’ll do well to rest a while just now, and keep
as close hid as possible until afternoon. The trail is a mile
away at the nearest point, but some one might miss it and
stray over here. You’re quite safe if you’re careful, and
stand by the tree. You can build a fire here,’ he stepped
under the chimney-like opening, “ without its being noticed.
Even the smoke is lost and cannot be seen so high.”

The light from above was falling on his head and shoul-
ders, as it had on hers, She looked at him intently.

“ You travel a good deal on your figure, pardner, don’t
you ?” she said, with a certain admiration that was quite
sexless in its quality ; “but I don’t see how you pick up a
living by it in the Carquinez Woods. So you’re going,
are you? You might be more sociable. Good-by.”

‘* Good-by !” He leaped from the opening.

“T say, pardner !”

He turned, a little impatiently. She had knelt down at
the entrance, so as to be nearer his level, and was holding
out her hand. But he did not notice it, and she quietly
withdrew it,

“Tf anybody dropped in and asked for you, what name
will they say ?”

He smiled. “ Don’t wait to hear.”

“ But suppose J wanted to sing out for you, what will I
eall you ? ”

He hesitated. ‘‘ Call me — Lo.”

“To, the poor Indian ?” 4

‘“ Exactly.”

It suddenly occurred to the woman, Teresa, that in the
young man’s height, supple yet erect carriage, color, and

1 The first word of Pope’s familiar apostrophe is humorously used in the
far West as a distinguishing title for the Indian. ‘
12 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

singular gravity of demeanor there was a refined aboriginal
suggestion. He did not look like any Indian she had ever
seen, but rather as a youthful chief might have looked.
There was a further suggestion in his fringed buckskin shirt
and moceasins; but before she could utter the half-sarcastic
comment that rose to her lips he had glided noiselessly
away, even as an Indian might have done.

She readjusted the slips of hanging bark with feminine
ingenuity, dispersing them so as to completely hide the
entrance. Yet this did not darken the chamber, which
seemed to draw a purer and more vigorous light through
the soaring shaft that pierced the room than that which
came from the dim woodland aisles below. Nevertheless,
she shivered, and drawing her shawl closely around her
began to collect some half-burnt fragments of wood in the
chimney to make a fire. But the preoccupation of her
thoughts rendered this a tedious process, as she would
from time to time stop in the middle of an action and fall
into an attitude of rapt abstraction, with far-off eyes and
rigid mouth. When she had at last succeeded in kindling
a fire and raising a film of pale blue smoke, that seemed to
fade and dissipate entirely before it reached the top of the
chimney shaft, she crouched beside it, fixed her eyes on the
darkest corner of the cavern, and became motionless.

What did she see through that shadow ?

Nothing at first but a confused medley of figures and
incidents of the preceding night; things to be put away
and forgotten; things that would not have happened but
for another thing —the thing before which everything
faded! A ball-room; the sounds of music; the one man
she had cared for insulting her with the flaunting osten-
tation of his unfaithfulness; herself despised, put aside,
laughed at, or worse, jilted. And then the moment of
delirium, when the light danced; the one wild act that
lifted her, the despised one, above them all — made her
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 18

the supreme figure, to be glanced at by frightened women,
stared at by half-startled, half-admiring men! ‘ Yes,” she
laughed ; but struck by the sound of her own voice, moved
twice round the cavern nervously, and then dropped again
into her old position.

As they carried him away he had laughed at her —
like a hound that he was; he who had praised her for
her spirit, and incited her revenge against others; he
who had taught her to strike when she was insulted ;
and it was only fit he should reap what he had sown.
She was what he, what other men, had made her. And
what was she now? What had she been once ?

She tried to recall her childhood: the man and woman
who might have been her father and mother; who fought
and wrangled over her precocious little life; abused or
caressed her as she sided with either; and then left her
with a circus troupe, where she first tasted the power of
her courage, her beauty, and her recklessness. She re-
membered those flashes of triumph that left a fever in her
veins —a fever that when it failed must be stimulated by
dissipation, by anything, by everything that, would keep
her name a wonder in men’s mouths, an envious fear to
women. She recalled her transfer to the strolling play-
ers; her cheap pleasures, and cheaper rivalries and hatred
—but always Teresa! the daring Teresa! the reckless
Teresa! audacious as a woman, invincible as a boy; dan-
cing, flirting, fencing, shooting, swearing, drinking, smoking,
fighting Teresa! ‘Oh, yes; she had been loved, perhaps
— who knows ? — but always feared. Why should she
change now? Ha! he should see.”

She had lashed herself in a frenzy, as was her wont,
with gestures, ejaculations, oaths, adjurations, and pas-
sionate apostrophes, but with this strange and unexpected
result. Heretofore she had always: been sustained and
kept up by an audience of some kind or quality, if only
14 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

perhaps a humble companion;. there had always been
some one she could fascinate or horrify, and she could
read her power mirrored in their eyes. Even the half-
abstracted indifference of her strange host had been something.
But she was alone now. Her words fell on apathetic soli-
tude; she was acting to viewless space. She rushed to the
opening, dashed the hanging bark aside, and leaped to the
ground,

She ran forward wildly a few steps, and stopped.

“ Hallo!” she cried. Look, ’t is I, Teresa!”

The profound silence remained unbroken. Her shrill-
est tones were lost in an echoless space, even as the
smoke of her fire had faded into pure ether. She stretched
out her clenched fists as if to defy the pillared austerities
of the vaults around her.

“Come and take me if you dare!”

The challenge was unheeded. If she had thrown her-
self violently against the nearest tree-trunk, she could not
have been stricken more breathless than she was by the
compact, embattled solitude that encompassed her. The
hopelessness of impressing these cold and passive vaults
with her selfish passion filled her with a vague fear. In
her rage of the previous night she had not seen the wood
in its profound immobility. Left alone with the majesty
of those enormous columns, she trembled and turned
faint. The silence of the hollow tree she had just quitted
seemed to her less awful than the crushing presence of
these mute and monstrous witnesses of her weakness,
Like a wounded quail, with lowered crest and trailing wing,
she crept back to her hiding-place.

Even then the influence of the wood was still upon her.
She picked up the novel she had contemptuously thrown
aside, only to let it fall again in utter weariness. For a
moment her feminine. curiosity was excited by the discov-
ery of an old book, in whose blank leaves were pressed a
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 15

variety of flowers and woodland grasses. As she could
not conceive that these had been kept for any but a senti-
mental purpose, she was disappointed to find that under-
neath each was a sentence in an unknown tongue, that
even to her untutored eye did not appear to be the lan-
‘guage of passion. Finally she rearranged the couch of
skins and blankets, and, imparting to it in three clever
shakes an entirely different character, lay down to pursue
her reveries. But nature asserted herself, and ere she
knew it she was fast asleep.

So intense and prolonged had been her previous excite,
ment that, the tension once relieved, she passed into a
slumber of exhaustion so deep that she seemed scarce to
breathe. High noon succeeded morning, the central shaft
received a single ray of upper sunlight, the afternoon came
and went, the shadows gathered below, the sunset fires
began to eat their way through the groined roof, and she
still slept. She slept even when the bark hangings of the
chamber were put aside, and the young man reéntered.

He laid down a bundle he was carrying, and softly ap-
proached the sleeper. For a moment he was startled from
his indifference — she lay so still and motionless. But this
was not all that struck him: the face before him was no
longer the passionate, haggard visage that confronted him
that morning; the feverish air, the burning color, the
strained muscles of mouth and brow, and the staring eyes
were gone; wiped away, perhaps, by the tears that still
left their traces on cheek and dark eyelash. It was a face
of a handsome: women of thirty, with even a suggestion of
softness in the contour of the cheek and arching of her
upper lip, no longer rigidly drawn down in anger, but re-
laxed by sleep on her white teeth.

With the lithe, soft tread that was habitual to him, the
young man moved about, examining the condition of the
little chamber and its stock of provisions and necessaries,
16 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

and withdrew presently, to reappear as noiselessly with a
tin bucket of water. This done he replenished the little
pile of fuel with an armful of bark and pine cones, cast an
approving glance about him, which included the sleeper,
and silently departed.

It was night when she awoke. She was surrounded by
a profound darkness, except where the shaft-like opening
made a nebulous mist in the corner in her wooden cavern.
Providentially she struggled back to consciousness slowly, so
that the solitude and silence came upon her gradually, with
a growing realization of the events of the past twenty-four
hours, but without a shock. She was alone here, but safe
still, and every hour added to her chances of ultimate escape.
She remembered to have seen a candle among the articles
on the shelf, and she began to grope her way toward the
matches. Suddenly she stopped. What was that panting ?

Was it her own breathing, quickened with a sudden
nameless terror? or was there something outside? Her
heart seemed to stop beating while she listened. Yes! it
was a panting outside —a panting now increased, multi-
plied, redoubled, mixed with the sounds of rustling, tear-
ing, craunching, and occasionally a quick, impatient snarl.
She crept on her hands and knees to the opening and looked
out. At first the ground seemed to be undulating between
her and the opposite tree. But a second glance showed
her the black and gray, bristling, tossing backs of tumbling
beasts of prey, charging the carcass of the bear that lay at
its roots, or contesting for the prize with gluttonous
choked breath, sidelong snarls, arched spines, and recurved
tails. One of the boldest had leaped upon a_buttressing
root of her tree within a foot of the opening. The excite-
ment, awe, and terror she had undergone culminated in one
wild, maddened scream, that seemed to pierce even the cold
depths of the forest, as she dropped on her face, with her
bands clasped over her eyes in an agony of fear.
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 17

Her scream was answered, after a pause, by a sudden
volley of firebrands and sparks into the midst of the pant-
ing, crowding pack; a few smothered howls and _ snaps,
and a sudden dispersion of the concourse. In another
moment the young man, with a blazing brand in either
hand, leaped upon the body of the bear.

Teresa raised her head, uttered a hysterical ery, slid
down the tree, flew wildly to his side, caught convulsively
at his sleeve, and fell on her knees beside him.

“Save me! save me!” she gasped, in a voice broken
by terror. ‘Save me from those hideous creatures. No,
no!” she implored, as he endeavored to lift her to her
feet. “No—let me stay here close beside you. So,”
clutching the fringe of his leather hunting-shirt, and drag-
ging herself on her knees nearer him — “so — don’t leave
me, for God’s sake!”

“They are gone,” he replied, gazing down curiously at
her, as she wound the fringe around her hand to strengthen
her hold; “they ’re only a lot of cowardly coyotes and
wolves, that dare not attack anything that lives and can
move.”

The young woman responded with a nervous shudder.
«Yes, that’s it,’ she whispered, in a broken voice; ‘it’s
only the dead they want. Promise me—swear to me, if
I’m caught, or hung, or shot, you won’t let me be left
here to be torn and—ah! my God! what’s that ? ”

She had thrown her arms around his knees, completely
pinioning him to her frantic breast. Something like a
smile of disdain passed across his face as he answered,
“It’s nothing. They will not return. Get up!”

Even in her terror she saw the change in his face. “TI
know, I know!” she cried. ‘I’m frightened — but I
cannot bear it any longer. Hear me! Listen! Listen
—but don’t move! I didn’t mean to kill Curson—no:
IT swear to God, no! I didn’t mean to kill the sheriff —
18 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

and I didn’t. I was only bragging—do you hear? [I
lied! I lied —don’t move, I swear to God I lied. I’ve
made myself out worse: than I was. JI have. Only don’t
leave me now — and if I die—and it’s not far off, may-
be —get me away from here —and from them. Swear
it!”

“ All right,” said the young man, with a scarcely con.
zealed movement of irritation. ‘ But get up now, and go
back to the cabin.”

“No; not there alone.” Nevertheless, he quietly but
firmly released himself.

“T will stay here,” he replied. ‘I would have been
nearer to you, but I thought it better for your safety that
my camp-fire should be further off. But I can build it
here, and that will keep the coyotes off.”

“Let me stay with you— beside you,” she said im-
ploringly.

She looked so broken, crushed, and spiritless, so unlike
the woman of the morning that, albeit with an ill grace,
he tacitly consented, and turned away to bring his blan-
kets. But in the next moment she was at his side, follow-
ing him like a dog, silent and wistful, and even offering
to carry his burden. When he hod built the fire, for
which she had collected the pine cones and broken branches
near them, he sat down, folded his arms, and leaned back
against the tree in reserved and deliberate silence. Hum-
ble and submissive, she did not attempt to break in upon
a reverie she could not help but feel had little kindliness
to herself. As the fire snapped and sparkled, she pil-
lowed her head upon a root, and lay still to watch it.

It rose and fell, and dying away at times to a mere lurid
glow ; and again, agitated by some breath scarcely perceptible
to them, quickening into a roaring flame. When only the
embers remained, a dead silence filled the wood. Then the
first breath of morning moved the tangled canopy above,
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 19

and a dozen tiny sprays and needles detached from the
interlocked boughs winged their soft way noiselessly to the
earth. A few fell upon the prostrate woman like a gentle
benediction, and she slept. But even then, the young man,
looking down, saw that the slender fingers were still aim-

lessly but rigidly twisted in the leather fringe of his hunting-
shirt.
CHAPTER I

Tr was a peculiarity of the Carquinez Woods that it stood
apart and distinct in its gigantic individuality. Even where
the integrity of its own singular species was not entirely
preserved, it admitted no inferior trees. Nor was there any
diminishing fringe on its outskirts ; the sentinels that guarded
the few gateways of the dim trails were as monstrous as the
serried ranks drawn up in the heart of the forest. Conse-
quently, the red highway that skirted the eastern angle was
bare and shadeless, until it slipped a league off into a watered
valley and refreshed itself under lesser sycamores and
willows. It was here the newly born city of Excelsior, still
in its cradle, had, like an infant Hercules, strangled the
serpentine North Fork of the American river, and turned its
life-current into the ditches and flumes of the Excelsior
miners.

Newest of the new houses that seemed to have acciden-
tally formed its single, straggling street was the residence
of the Rev. Winslow Wynn, not unfrequently known as
“Father Wynn,” pastor of the first Baptist church. The
“ pastorage,” as it was cheerfully called, had the glaring
distinction of being built of brick, and was, as had been
wickedly pointed out by idle scoffers, the only “ fire-
proof” structure in town. This sarcasm was not, however,
supposed to be particularly distasteful to “ Father Wynn,”
who enjoyed the reputation of being “hail fellow, well
met” with the rough mining element, who called them by
their Christian names, had been known to drink at the bar
of the Polka Saloon while engaged in the conversion of a
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 21

prominent citizen, and was popularly said to have no
“gospel starch”? about him. Certain conscious outcasts
and transgressors were touched at this apparent unbend-
ing of the spiritual authority. The rigid tenets of Father
Wyun’s faith were lost in the supposed catholicity of his
humanity. ‘A preacher that can jine a man when he’s
histin’ liquor into him, without jawin’ about it, ought to be
allowed to wrestle with sinners and splash about in as
much cold wateras he likes,’ was the criticism of one of
his converts. Nevertheless, it was true that Father Wynn
was somewhat loud and intolerant in his tolerance. It was
true that he was a little more rough, a little more frank, a
little more hearty, a little more impulsive, than his disciples.
It was true that often the proclamation of his extreme liber-
ality and brotherly equality partook somewhat of an apology.
It is true that a few who might have been most benefited
by this kind of gospel regarded him with a singular disdain.
It is true that his liberality was of an ornamental, insinuat-
ing quality, accompanied with but little sacrifice ; his ac-
ceptance of a collection taken up in a gambling-saloon for
the rebuilding of his church, destroyed by fire, gave him a
popularity large enough, it must be confessed, to cover the
sins of the gamblers themselves, but it was not proven that
he had ever organized any form of relief. But it was true
that local history somehow accepted him as an exponent of
mining Christianity, without the least reference to the
opinions of the Christian miners themselves.

The Rev. Mr. Wynn’s liberal habits and opinions were
not, however, shared by his only daughter, a motherless
young lady of eighteen. Nellie Wynn was in the eye of
Excelsior an unapproachable divinity, as inaccessible and
cold as her father was impulsive and familiar. An atmos-
phere of chaste and proud virginity made itself felt even
in the starched integrity of her spotless skirts, in her
neatly gloved finger-tips, in her clear amber eyes, in her
22 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

imperious red lips, in her sensitive nostrils. Need it be
said that the yowth and middle age of Excelsior were
madly, because apparently hopelessly, in love with her?
For the rest, she had been expensively educated, was pro-
foundly ignorant in two languages, with a trained misun-
derstanding of music and painting, and a natural and fault-
less taste in dress.

The Rev. Mr. Wynn was engaged in a characteristic
hearty parting with one of his latest converts upon his
own doorstep, with admirable al fresco effect. He had
just clapped him on the shoulder. ‘ Good-by, good-by,
Charley, my boy, and keep in the right path; not up, or
down, or round the gulch, you know — ha, ha!— but
straight across lots to the shining gate.” He had raised
his voice under the stimulus of a few admiring spectators,
and backed his convert playfully against the wall. ‘“ You
see! we’re goin’ in to win, you bet. Good-by! I'd ask
you to step in and have a chat, but I’ve got my work to
do, and so have you. The gospel mustn’t keep us from
that, must it, Charley ? Ha, ha!”

The convert (who elsewhere was a profane expressman,
and had become quite imbecile under Mr. Wynn’s active
heartiness and brotherly horse-play before spectators)
managed, however, to feebly stammer with a blush some-
thing about “ Miss Nellie.”

“Ah, Nellie. She, too, is at her tasks — trimming her
lamp — you know, the parable of the wise virgins,’’ con-
tinued Father Wynn hastily, fearing that the convert
might take the illustration literally. ‘There, there —
good-by. Keep in the right path.” And with a parting
shove he dismissed Charley, and entered his own house.

That “ wise virgin,” Nellie, had evidently finished with
the lamp, and was now going out to meet the bridegroom,
as she was fully dressed and gloved, and had a pink par
asol in her hand, as her father entered the sitting-room,
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 23

His bluff heartiness seemed to fade away as he removed
his soft, broad-brimmed hat and glanced across the too
fresh-looking apartment. There was a smell of mortar
still in the air, and a faint suggestion that at any moment
green grass might appear between the interstices of the red-
brick hearth, The room, yielding a little in the point of
coldness, seemed to share Miss Nellie’s fresh virginity, and,
barring the pink parasol, set her off as in a vestal’s cell.

‘““T supposed you would n’t care to see Brace, the ex-
pressman, so I got rid of him at the door,” said her father,
drawing one of the new chairs towards him slowly, and
sitting down carefully, as if it were a hitherto untried ex-
periment.

Miss Nellie’s face took a tint of interest. ‘Then he
does n’t go with the coach to Indian Spring to-day ?”

“No; why?”

“T thought of going over myself to get the Burnham
girls to come to choir-meeting,’”’ replied Miss Nellie care-
lessly, ‘and he might have been company.”

“He ’d go now if he knew you were going,” said her
father; “ but it’s just as well he should n’t be needlessly
encouraged. I rather think that Sheriff Dunn is a little
jealous of him. By the way, the sheriff is much better.
I called to cheer him up to-day’? (Mr. Wynn had in fact
tumultuously accelerated the sick man’s pulse), “and he
talked of you, as usual. In fact, he said he had only two
things to get well for. One was to catch and hang that
woman Teresa, who shot him; the other —can’t you guess
the other ?’’ he added archly, with a faint suggestion of
his other manner.

Miss Nellie coldly could not.

The Rev. Mr. Wynn’s archness vanished. ‘ Don’t be
a fool,” he said dryly. “He wants to marry you, and you
know it.”

Most of the men here do,” responded Miss Nellie, with-
24 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

out the least trace of coquetry. ‘Is the wedding or the
hanging to take place first, or together, so he can offici-
ate at both ? ”

‘‘ His share in the Union Ditch is worth a. hundred
thousand dollars,” continued her father; ‘and if he isn’t
nominated for district judge this fall, he’s bound to go to
the legislature, anyway. I don’t think a girl with your
advantages and education can afford to throw away the
chance of shining in Sacramento, San Francisco, or, in good
time, perhaps even Washington.”

Miss Nellie’s eyes did not reflect entire disapproval of
this suggestion, although she replied with something of her
father’s practical quality.

“Mr. Dunn is not out of his bed yet, and they say
Teresa’s got away to Arizona, so there isn’t any particular
hurry.”

“Perhaps not; but see here, Nellie, I’ve some impor-
tant news for you. You know your young friend of the
Carquinez Woods — Dorman, the botanist, eh? Well,
Brace knows all about him. And what do you think he
is?”

Miss Nellie took upon herself a few extra degrees of
zold, and did n’t know.

“An Injin! Yes, an out-and-out Cherokee. You see
he calls himself Dorman — Low Dorman. That’s only
French for ‘Sleeping Water,’ his Injin name — ‘ Low Dox
man.’ ”

“ You mean ‘L’Eau Dormante,’”’ said Nellie.

“That’s what I said. The chief called him ‘Sleeping
Water’ when he was a boy, and one of them French
Canadian trappers translated it into French when he
brought him to California to school. But he’s an Injin,
sure. No wonder he prefers to live in the woods.”

“ Well?” said Nellie.

“ Well,” echoed her father impatiently, “he ’s an Injin,
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 25

I tell you, and you can’t of course have anything to do
with him. He must n’t come here again.”

“But you forget,” said Nellie imperturbably, “ that it
was you who invited him here, and were so much exer-
cised over him. You remember you introduced him to
the bishop and those Eastern clergymen as a magnificent
specimen of a young Californian. You forget what an oc-
casion you made of his coming to church on Sunday, and
how you made him come in his buckskin shirt and walk
down the street with you after service!”

“Yes, yes,” said the Rev. Mr. Wynn hurriedly.

“ And,” continued Nellie carelessly, “how you made
us sing out of the same book ‘Children of our Father’s
Fold,’ and how you preached at him until he actually got
a color!”

“ Yes,” said her father; “ but it wasn’t known then he
was an Injin, and they are frightfully unpopular with those
Southwestern men among whom we labor. Indeed, I am
quite convinced that when Brace said ‘the only good
Indian was a dead one’ his expression, though extravagant,
perhaps, really voiced the sentiments of the majority. It
would be only kindness to the unfortunate creature to
warn him from exposing himself to their rude but consci-
entious antagonism.”

“Perhaps you’d better tell him, then, in your own
popular way, which they all seem to understand so well,”
responded the daughter. Mr. Wynn cast a quick glance
at her, but there was no trace of irony in her face — no-
thing but a half-bored indifference as she walked toward the
window.

“JT will go with you to the coach-office,” said her father,
who generally gave these simple paternal duties the pro-
nounced character of a public Christian example.

“JTt’s hardly worth while,” replied Miss Nellie. ‘I’ve
to stop at the Watsons’, at the foot of the hill, and ask
26 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

after the baby; so I shall go on to the Crossing and pick
up the coach as it passes. Good-by.”

Nevertheless, as soon as Nellie had departed, the Rev.
Mr. Wynn proceeded to the coach-office, and publicly
grasping the hand of Yuba Bill, the driver, commended
his daughter to his care in the name of the universal
brotherhood of man and the Christian fraternity. Carried
away by his heartiness, he forgot his previous caution, and
confided to the expressman Miss Nellie’s regrets that she
was not to have that gentleman’s company. The result
was that Miss Nellie found the coach with its passengers
awaiting her with uplifted hats and wreathed smiles at the
Crossing, and the box-seat (from-which an unfortunate
stranger, who had expensively paid for it, had been sum-
marily ejected) at her service, beside Yuba Bill, who had
thrown away his cigar and donned a new pair of buckskin
gloves to do her honor. But a more serious result to the
young beauty was the effect of the Rev. Mr. Wynn’s con-
fidences upon the impulsive heart of Jack Brace, the ex-
pressman. It has been already intimated that it was his
“ day off.” Unable to summarily reassume his usual func-
tions beside the driver without some practical reason, and
ashamed to go so palpably as a mere passenger, he was
forced to let the coach proceed without him. Discomfited
for the moment, he was not, however, beaten. He had
lost the blissful journey by her side, which would have
been his professional right, but — she was going to Indian
Spring! could he not anticipate her there? Might they
not meet in the most accidental manner? And what
might not come from that meeting away from the prying
eyes of their own town? Mr. Brace did not hesitate, but
saddling his fleet Buckskin, by the time the stage-coach
had passed the Crossing in the highroad he had mounted
the hill and was dashing along the “ cut-off’ in the same
direction, a full mile in advance. Arriving at Indian
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 27

Spring, he left his horse at a Mexican posada on the con-
fines of the settlement, and from the piled débris of a
tunnel excavation awaited the slow arrival of the coach.
On mature reflection he could give no reason why he had
not boldly awaited it at the express-office, except a certain
bashful consciousness of his own folly, and a belief that it
might be glaringly apparent to the bystanders. When the
coach arrived and he had overcome this consciousness, it
was too late. Yuba Bill had discharged his passengers for
Indian Spring, and driven away. Miss Nellie was in the
settlement, but where? As time passed he became more
desperate and bolder. He walked recklessly up and down
the main street, glancing in at the open doors of shops,
and even in the windows of private dwellings. It might
have seemed a poor compliment to Miss Nellie, but it was
an evidence of his complete preoccupation, when the sight
of a female face at a window, even though it was plain or
perhaps painted, caused his heart to bound, or the glancing
of a skirt in the distance quickened his feet and his pulses,
Had Jack contented himself with remaining at Excelsior
he might have vaguely regretted, but as soon become as
vaguely accustomed to, Miss Nellie’s absence. But it was
not until his hitherto quiet and passive love took this first
step of action that it fully declared itself. When he had
made the tour of the town a dozen times unsuccessfully,
he had perfectly made up his mind that marriage with
Nellie or the speedy death of several people, including
possibly himself, was the only alternative. He regretted
he had not accompanied her; he regretted he had not
demanded where she was going; he contemplated a course
of future action that two hours ago would have filled him
with bashful terror. There was clearly but one thing to
do, — to declare his passion the instant he met her, and
return with her to Excelsior an accepted suitor, or not to
return at all.
28 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

Suddenly he was vexatiously conscious of hearing his
name lazily called, and looking up found that he was on
the outskirts of the town, and interrogated by two horse-
men.

“Got down to walk, and the coach got away from you,
Jack, eh?”

A little ashamed of his preoccupation, Brace stammered
something about ‘collections.’ He did not recognize the
men, but his own face, name, and business were familiar to
everybody for fifty miles along the stage-road.

‘Well, you can settle a bet for us, I reckon. Bill Dacre
thar bet me five dollars and the drinks that a young gal we
met at the edge of the Carquinez Woods, dressed in a
long brown duster and half-muffled up in a hood, was the
daughter of Father Wynn of Excelsior. I did not get a
fair look at her, but it stands to reason that a high-toned
young lady like Nellie Wynn don’t go trap’sing along the
wood like a Pike County tramp. I took the bet. May be
you know if she’s here or in Excelsior ?”

Mr. Brace felt himself turning pale with eagerness and
excitement. But the near prospect of seeing her presently
gave him back his caution, and he answered truthfully that
he had left her in Excelsior, and that in his two hours’
sojourn in Indian Spring he had not once met her.
“ But,” he added, with a Californian’s reverence for the
sanctity of a bet, ‘I reckon you’d better make it a stand-
off for twenty-four hours, and I’ll find out and let you
know ;” which, it is only fair to say, he honestly intended
to do.

With a hurried nod of parting, he continued in the
direction of the woods. When he had satisfied himself
that the strangers had entered the settlement and would
not follow him for further explanation, he quickened his
pace. In half an hour he passed between two of the
gigantic sentinels that guarded the entrance to a trail
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 29

Here he paused to collect his thoughts. The woods were
vast in extent, the trail dim and uncertain — at times
apparently breaking off, or intersecting another trail as faint
as itself. Believing that Miss Nellie had diverged from the
highway only as a momentary excursion into the shade, and
that she would not dare to penetrate its more sombre and
unknown recesses, he kept within sight of the skirting
plain. By degrees the sedate influence of the silent vaults
seemed to depress him. The ardor of the chase began to
flag. Under the calm of their dim roof the fever of his
veins began to subside; his pace slackened; he reasoned
more deliberately. It was by no means probable that the
young woman in a brown duster was Nellie; it was not
her habitual traveling-dress; it was not like her to walk
unattended in the road; there was nothing in her tastes
and habits to take her into this gloomy forest, allowing
that she had even entered it; and on this absolute ques-
tion of her identity the two witnesses were divided. He
stopped irresolutely, and cast a last, long, half-despairing
look around him. MHitherto he had given that part of
the wood nearest the plain his greatest attention. His
glance now sought its darker recesses. Suddenly he be-
came breathless. Was it a beam of sunlight that had
pierced the groined roof above, and now rested against
the trunk of one of the dimmer, more secluded giants ?
No, it was moving; even as he gazed it slipped away,
glanced against another tree, passed across one of the
vaulted aisles, and then was lost again. Brief as was the
glimpse, he was not mistaken —it was the figure of a
woman.

In another moment he was on her track, and soon had
the satisfaction of seeing her reappear at a lesser distance.
But the continual intervention of the massive trunks made
the chase by no means an easy one, and as he could not
keep her always in sight he was unable to follow or under
380 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

stand the one intelligent direction which she seemed to
invariably keep. Nevertheless, he gained upon her breath-
lessly, and, thanks to the bark-strewn floor, noiselessly.
He was near enough to distinguish and recognize the dress
she wore, a pale yellow, that he had admired when he first
saw her. It was Nellie, unmistakably; if it were she of
the brown duster, she had discarded it, perhaps for greater
freedom. He was near enough to call out now, but a sud-
den nervous timidity overcame him; his lips grew dry.
What should he say to her? How account for his pre-
sence? ‘Miss Nellie, one moment!” he gasped. She
darted forward and — vanished.

At this moment he was not more than a dozen yards
from her. He rushed to where she had been standing, but
her disappearance was perfect and complete. He made 2a
circuit of the group of trees within whose radius she had
last appeared, but there was neither trace of her, nor sug-
gestion of her mode of escape. He called aloud to her;
the vacant woods let his helpless voice die in their unre-
sponsive depths. He gazed into the air and down at the
bark-strewn carpet at his feet. Like most of his vocation,
he was sparing of speech, and epigrammatic after his fashion.
Comprehending in one swift but despairing flash of intel-
ligence the existence of some fateful power beyond his own
weak endeavor, he accepted its logical result with character-
istic grimness, threw his hat upon the ground, put his
hands in his pockets, and said, —

“Well, I’m d—d!”
CHAPTER III

Our of compliment to Miss Nellie Wynn, Yuba Bill, on
reaching Indian Spring, had made a slight detour to enable
him to ostentatiously set down his fair passenger before the
door of the Burnhams, When it had closed on the admiring
eyes of the passengers and the coach had rattled away,
Miss Nellie, without any undue haste or apparent change
in her usual quiet demeanor, managed, however, to dispatch
her business promptly, and, leaving an impression that she
would call again before her return to Excelsior, parted from
her friends, and slipped away through a side street to the
General Furnishing Store of Indian Spring. In passing
this emporium, Miss Nellie’s quick eye had discovered a
cheap brown linen duster hanging in its window. To pur-
chase it, and put it over her delicate cambric dress, albeit
with a shivering sense that she looked like a badly folded
brown paper parcel, did not take long. As she left the shop
it was with mixed emotions of chagrin and security that
she noticed that her passage through the settlement no
longer turned the heads of its male inhabitants. She
reached the outskirts of Indian Spring and the highroad
at about the time Mr. Brace had begun his fruitless patrol
of the main street. Far in the distance a faint olive-green
table mountain seemed to rise abruptly from the plain.
It was the Carquinez Woods. Gathering her spotless skirts
beneath her extemporized brown domino, she set out briskly
towards them.

But her progress was scarcely free or exhilarating. She
was not accustomed to walking in a country where “ buggy-
82 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

riding” was considered the only genteel young-lady-like mode
of progression, and its regular provision the expected cour-
tesy of mankind. Always fastidiously booted, her low-
quartered shoes were charming to the eye, but hardly
adapted to the dust and inequalities of the highroad. It
was true that she had thought of buying a coarser pair at
Indian Spring, but once face to face with their uncompro-
mising ugliness, she had faltered and fled. The sun was
unmistakably hot, but her parasol was too well known and
offered too violent a contrast to the duster for practical use.
Once she stopped with an exclamation of annoyance, hesitated,
and looked back. In half an hour she had twice lost her shoe
and her temper; a pink flush took possession of her cheeks,
and her eyes were bright with suppressed rage. Dust
began to form grimy circles around their crbits ; with cat-like
shivers she even felt it pervade the roots of her blonde hair.
Gradually her breath grew more rapid and hysterical, her
smarting eyes became humid, and at last, encountering two
observant horsemen in the road, she turned and fled, until,
reaching the wood, she began to ery.

Nevertheless she waited for the two horsemen to pass, to
satisfy herself that she was not followed; then pushed on
vaguely, until she reached a fallen tree, where, with a
gesture of disgust, she tore off her hapless duster and flung
it on the ground. She then sat down sobbing, but after a
moment dried her eyes hurriedly and started to her ‘feet.
A few paces distant, erect, noiseless, with outstretched hand,
the young solitary of the Carquinez Woods advanced towards
her. His hand had almost touched hers, when he stopped.

“What has happened ?” he asked gravely.

“Nothing,” she said, turning half away, and searching
the ground with her eyes as if she had lost something.
“Only I must be going back now.”

‘You shall go back at once, if you wish it,” he said,
flushing slightly. “ But you have been crying; why ? ”
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 33

Frank as Miss Nellie wished to be, she could not bring
herself to say that her feet hurt her, and the dust and heat
were ruining her complexion. It was therefore with a half-
confident belief that her troubles were really of a moral
quality that she answered, ‘“ Nothing — nothing, but — but
— it’s wrong to come here.”

“ But you did not think it was wrong when you agreed
to come, at our last meeting,” said the young man, with
that persistent logic which exasperates the inconsequent
feminine mind. ‘It cannot be any more wrong to-day.”

“ But it was not so far off,” murmured the young girl,
without looking up.

“Oh, the distance makes it more improper, then,’’ he
said abstractedly ; but after a moment’s contemplation of
her half-averted face, he asked gravely, ‘“‘ Has any one
talked to you about me ? ”

Ten minutes before, Nellie had been burning to unbur-
den herself of her father’s warning, but now she felt she
would not. “I wish you wouldn’t call yourself Low,’’
she said at last.

“ But it’s my name,” he replied quietly.

“Nonsense! It’s only a stupid translation of a stupid
nickname. They might as well call you ‘ Water’ at once.”

“But you said you liked it.”

“Well, so I do. But don’t you see —I—oh dear!
you don’t understand.”

Low did not reply, but turned his head with resigned
gravity towards the deeper woods. Grasping the barrel of
his rifle with his left hand, he threw his right arm across
his left wrist and leaned slightly upon it with the habitual
ease of a Western hunter — doubly picturesque in his own
lithe, youthful symmetry. Miss Nellie looked at him from
under her eyelids, and then half defiantly raised her head
and her dark lashes. Gradually an almost magical change
came over her features; her eyes grew larger and more and
34 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

more yearning, until they seemed to draw and absorb in
their liquid depths the figure of the young man before her;
her cold face broke into an ecstasy of light and color; her
humid lips parted in a bright, welcoming smile, until, with
an irresistible impulse, she arose, and throwing back her
head stretched towards him two hands full of vague and
trembling passion.

In another moment he had seized them, kissed them,
and, as he drew her closer to his embrace, felt them tighten
around his neck. ‘ But what name do you wish to call
me?” he asked, looking down into her eyes.

Miss Nellie murmured something confidentially to the
third button of his hunting-shirt. “ But that,” he replied,
with a faint smile, “‘ that would n’t be any more practical,
and you would n’t want others to call me dar—” Her
fingers loosened around his neck, she drew her head back,
and a singular expression passed over her face, which to
any calmer observer than a lover would have seemed, how-
ever, to indicate more curiosity than jealousy.

“Who else does call you so?” she added earnestly.
‘* How many, for instance ? ”

Low’s reply was addressed not to her ear, but her lips.
She did not avoid it, but added, “And do you kiss them
all like that ?” Taking him by the shoulders, she held
him a little way from her, and gazed at him from head to
foot. Then drawing him again to her embrace, she said, “1
don’t care; at least no woman has kissed you like that.”
Happy, dazzled, and embarrassed, he was beginning to
stammer the truthful protestation that rose to his lips, but
she stopped him: “No, don’t protest! say nothing! Let
me love you—that is all. It is enough.”? He would
have caught her in his arms again, but she drew back.
“We are near the road,” she said quietly. “Come! you
promised to show me where you camped. Let us make the
most of our holiday. In an hour I inust leave the woods.”
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 35

“ But I shall accompany you, dearest.”

“No, I must go as I came — alone.”

“ But Nellie” —

“T tell you no,” she said, with an almost harsh prac
tical decision, incompatible with her previous abandonment.
“We might be seen together.”

“Well, suppose we are; we must be seen together
eventually,” he remonstrated.

The young girl made an involuntary gesture of impa-
tient negation, but checked herself. “Don’t let us talk of
that now. Come, while I am here under your own roof”
—she pointed to the high interlaced boughs above them —
“you must be hospitable. Show me your home; tell me,
isn’t it a little gloomy sometimes ? ”

“Tt never has been; I never thought it would be until
the moment you leave it to-day.”

She pressed his hand briefly and in a half-perfunctory
way, as if her vanity had accepted and dismissed the com-
pliment. ‘Take me somewhere,” she said inquisitively,
“where you stay most; I do not seem to see you here,”
she added, looking around her with a slight shiver. “It
is so big and so high. Have you no place where you eat
and rest and sleep ?”

“Except in the rainy season, I camp all over the place
—at any spot where I may have been shooting or collect-
ing.”

“ Collecting ? ” queried Nellie.

“Yes; with the herbarium, you know.”

“Yes,” said Nellie dubiously. ‘ But you told me once
—the first time we ever talked together,” she added,
looking in his eyes — “ something about your keeping your
things like a squirrel in a tree. Could we not go there ?
Is there not room for us to sit and talk without being brow-
beaten and looked down upon by these supercilious trees ? ”

“Tt’s too far away,’ said Low truthfully, but with a
36 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

somewhat pronounced emphasis, “much too far for you
just now; and it lies on another trail that enters the wood
beyond. But come, I will show you a spring known only
to myself, the wood ducks, and the squirrels. I discov-
ered it the first day I saw you, and gave it your name.
But you shall christen it yourself. It will be all yours,
and yours alone, for it is so hidden and secluded that I
defy any feet but my own, or whoso shall keep step with
mine, to find it. Shall that foot be yours, Nellie ?”

Her face beamed with a bright assent. ‘It may be
difficult to track it from here,” he said, ‘‘ but stand where
you are a moment, and don’t move, rustle, nor agitate the
air in any way. The woods are still now.” He turned at
right angles with the trail, moved a few paces into the
ferns and underbrush, and then stopped with his finger on
his lips. For an instant both remained motionless; then,
with his intent face bent forward and both arms extended,
he began to sink slowly upon one knee and one side, in-
clining his body with a gentle, perfectly graduated move-
ment until his ear almost touched the ground. Nellie
watched his graceful figure breathlessly, until, like a bow
unbent, he stood suddenly erect again, and beckoned to her
without changing the direction of his face.

“What is it?” she asked eagerly.

“ Allright ; I have found it,” he continued, moving for-
ward without turning his head.

“But how ? What did you kneel for?” He did not
reply, but taking her hand in his, continued to move
slowly on through the underbrush, as if obeying some
magnetic attraction. ‘ How did you find it?” again asked
the half-awed girl, her voice unconsciously falling to a
whisper. Still silent, Low kept his rigid face and forward
tread for twenty yards further; then he stopped and re-
leased the girl’s half-impatient hand. “How did you find
it? she repeated sharply.
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 3?

«“ With my ears and nose,” replied Low gravely.

“ With your nose ?”

“Yes; I smelt it.”

Still fresh with the memory of his picturesque attitude,
the young man’s reply seemed to involve something more
irritating to her feelings than even that absurd anti-climax.
She looked at him coldly and critically, and appeared to
hesitate whether to proceed. “Is it far? ” she asked.

“Not more than ten minutes now, as I shall go.”

“And you won’t have to smell your way again ?”

“No; it is quite plain now,’ he answered seriously,
the young girl’s sarcasm slipping harmlessly from his
Indian stolidity. ‘ Don’t you smell it yourself ? ”

But Miss Nellie’s thin, cold nostrils refused to take that
vulgar interest.

“Nor hear it? Listen! ”

“You forget I suffer the misfortune of having been
brought up under a roof,” she replied coldly.

“That ’s true,” repeated Low, in all seriousness; “it’s
not your fault. But do you know, I sometimes think I am
peculiarly sensitive to water; I feel it miles away. At
night, though I may not see it or even know where it is,
I am conscious of it. It is company to me when I am
alone, and I seem to hear it in my dreams. There is no
music as sweet to me as its song. When you sang with
me that day in church, I seemed to hear it ripple in your
voice. It says to me more than the birds do, more than
the rarest plants I find. It seems to live with me and for
me. It is my earliest recollection; I know it will be my
last, for I shall die in its embrace. Do you think, Nellie,”
he continued, stopping short and gazing earnestly in her
face —‘“ do you think that the chiefs knew this when
they called me ‘Sleeping Water’ ? ”

To Miss Nellie’s several gifts I fear the gods had not
added poetry. A slight knowledge of English verse of a
38 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

select character, unfortunately, did not assist her in the in-
terpretation of the young man’s speech, nor relieve her from
the momentary feeling that he was at times deficient in
intellect. She preferred, however, to take a personal view
of the question, and expressed her sarcastic regret that she
had not known before that she had been indebted to the
great flume and ditch at Excelsior for the pleasure of his
acquaintance. This pert remark occasioned some explana-
tion, which ended in the girl’s accepting a kiss in lieu of
more logical argument. Nevertheless, she was still con-
scious of an inward irritation — always distinct from her
singular and perfectly material passion — which found vent
as the difficulties of their undeviating progress through the
underbrush increased. At last she lost her shoe again, and
stopped short. ‘It’s a pity your Indian friends did not
christen you ‘ Wild Mustard’ or ‘ Clover,’” she said satiri-
cally, ‘that you might have had some sympathies and
longings for the open fields instead of these horrid jungles !
I know we will not get back in time.”

Unfortunately, Low accepted this speech literally and
with his remorseless gravity. ‘ If my name annoys you, I
can get it changed by the legislature, you know, and I can
find out what my father’s name was, and take that. My
mother, who died in giving me birth, was the daughter of a
chief.”

“ Then your mother was really an Indian ?” said Nel-
lie, “and you are ” — She stopped short.

“But I told you all this the day we first met,’ said
Low, with grave astonishment. “Don’t you remember
our long talk coming from church ? ”

“No,” said Nellie coldly, “you didn’t tell me.” But
she was obliged to drop her eyes before the unwavering,
undeniable truthfulness of his.

“You have forgotten,” he said calmly; “but it is only
right you should have your own way in disposing of a
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 39

name that I have cared little for; and as you’re to have
a share of it ’?? —

“Yes, but it’s getting late, and if we are not going
forward ” — interrupted the girl impatiently.

“We are going forward,’ said Low imperturbably ;
“but I wanted to tell you, as we were speaking on that
subject” (Nellie looked at her watch), “I’ve been offered
the place of botanist and naturalist in Professor Grant’s
survey of Mount Shasta, and if I take it — why, when I
come back, darling — well ’”? —

“ But you’re not going just yet,” broke in Nellie, with
a new expression in her face.

“cc No.”

“Then we need not talk of it now,” she said with ani-
mation.

Her sudden vivacity relieved him. “TI see what’s the
matter,” he said gently, looking down at her feet, “these
little shoes were not made to keep step with a moccasin.
We must try another way.” He stooped as if to secure
the erring buskin, but suddenly lifted her like a child to
his shoulder. ‘ There,” he continued, placing her arm
around his neck, “ you are clear of the ferns and brambles
now, and we can go on. Are you comfortable?” He
looked up, read her answer in her burning eyes and the
warm lips pressed to his forehead at the roots of his
straight dark hair, and again moved onward as in a mes-
meric dream. But he did not swerve from his direct
course, and with a final dash through the undergrowth
parted the leafy curtain before the spring.

At first the young girl was dazzled by the strong light
that came from a rent in the interwoven arches of the
wood. The breach had been caused by the huge bulk
of one of the great giants that had half fallen, and was
lying at a steep angle against one of its mightiest brethren,
having borne down a lesser tree in the are of its down-
40 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

ward path. Two of the roots, as large as younger trees,
tossed their blackened and bare limbs high in the air.
The spring —the insignificant cause of this vast disrup-
tion — gurgled, flashed, and sparkled at the base; the
limpid baby fingers that had laid bare the foundations of
that fallen column played with the still clinging rootlets,
laved the fractured and twisted limbs, and, widening,
filled with sleeping water the graves from which they had
been torn.

“Tt had been going on for years, down there,” said
Low, pointing to a cavity from which the fresh water now
slowly welled, “but it had been quickened by the rising
of the subterranean springs and rivers which always oc-
curs at a certain stage of the dry season. I remember
that on that very night— for it happened a little after
midnight, when all sounds are more audible —I was
troubled and oppressed in my sleep by what you would
call a nightmare; a feeling as if I was kept down by
bonds and pinions that I longed to break. And then I
heard a crash in ‘this direction, and the first streak of
morning brought me the sound and scent of water. Six
months afterwards I chanced to find my way here, as I
told you, and gave it your name. I did not dream that I
should ever stand beside it with you, and have you christen
it yourself.”

He unloosed the cup from his flask, and filling it at
the spring handed it to her. But the young girl leant
over the pool, and pouring the water idly back said, “I’d
rather put my feet in it. May n’t 1?”

“T don’t understand you,’’ he said wonderingly.

“My feet are so hot and dusty. The water looks de-
liciously cool. May 1?”

“ Certainly.”

He turned away as Nellie, with apparent unconscious.
ness, seated herself on the bank, and removed her shoes
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 4]

and stockings. When she had dabbled her feet a few
moments in the pool, she said over her shoulder, —

“We can talk just as well, can’t we?”

“ Certainly.”

“Well, then, why didn’t you come to church more
often, and why didn’t you think of telling father that you
were convicted of sin and wanted to be baptized ? ”

“T don’t know,” hesitated the young man.

“Well, you lost the chance of having father convert
you, baptize you, and take you into full church fellow-
ship.”

“T never thought ’”’ — he began.

“ You never thought. Aren’t you a Christian ?”

“T suppose so.”

“He supposes so! Have you no convictions — no pro-
fessions ?”

“But, Nellie, I never thought that you” —

“ Never thought that I— what? Do you think that I
could ever be anything to a man who did not believe in
justification by faith, or in the covenant of church fellow-
ship? Do you think father would let me?”

In his eagerness to defend himself he stepped to her
side. But seeing her little feet shining through the dark
water, like outcroppings of delicately veined quartz, he
stopped embarrassed. Miss Nellie, however, leaped to
one foot, and, shaking the other over the pool, put her
hand on his shoulder to steady herself. ‘You haven’t
got a towel —or,” she said dubiously, looking at her
small handkerchief, “anything to dry them on ?”’

But Low did not, as she perhaps expected, offer his
own handkerchief.

“Tf you take a bath after our fashion,” he said gravely,
you must learn to dry yourself after our fashion.”

Lifting her again lightly in his arms, he carried her a
few steps to the sunny opening, and bade her bury her
42 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

feet in the dried mosses and baked withered grasses that
were bleaching in a hollow. The young girl uttered a
cry of childish delight, as the soft ciliated fibres touched
her sensitive skin.

“Tt is healing, too,’ continued Low; “a moccasin
filled with it after a day on the trail makes you all right
again.”

But Miss Nellie seemed to be thinking of something
else.

“Ts that the way the squaws bathe and dry them-
selves ? ”

“T don’t know; you forget I was a boy: when [I left
them.”

‘‘ And you ’re sure you never knew any ? ”

“ None.”

The young girl seemed to derive some satisfaction in
moving her feet up and down for several minutes among
the grasses in the hollow; then, after a pause, said, “ You
are quite certain I am the first woman that ever touched
this spring ?”

‘Not only the first woman, but the first human being,
except myself.”

“ How nice!”

They had taken each other’s hands; seated side by
side, they leaned against a curving elastic root that half
supported, half encompassed them. The girl’s capri-
cious, fitful manner succumbed as before to the near con-
tact of her companion. Looking into her eyes, Low fell
into a sweet, selfish lover’s monologue, descriptive of his
past and present feelings toward her, which she accepted
with a heightened color, a slight exchange of sentiment,
and a strange curiosity. The sun had painted their half-
embraced silhouettes against the slanting tree-trunk, and
began to decline unnoticed; the ripple of the water
mingling with their whispers came as one sound to the
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 43

listening ear; even their eloquent silences were as deep,
and, I wot, perhaps as dangerous as the darkened pool
that filled so noiselessly a dozen yards away. So quiet
were they that the tremor of invading wings once or
twice shook the silence, or the quick scamper of fright-
ened feet rustled the dead grass. But in the midst of a
prolonged stillness the young man sprang up so suddenly
that Nellie was still half clinging to his neck as he stood
erect. “ Hush!” he whispered; “some one is near!”

He disengaged her anxious hands gently, leaped upon the
slanting tree-trunk, and running half way up its incline with
the agility of a squirrel, stretched himself at full length
upon it, and listened.

To the impatient, inexplicably startled girl, it seemed an
age before he rejoined her.

“You are safe,” he said; “he’s going by the western
trail toward Indian Spring.”

“Who is he?” she asked, biting her lips with a poorly
restrained gesture of mortification and disappointment.

“Some stranger,” replied Low.

“ As long as he wasn’t coming here, why did you give
me such a fright ?” she said pettishly. ‘‘ Are you nervous
because a single wayfarer happens to stray here ? ”

“Tt was no wayfarer, for he tried to keep near the
trail,” said Low. ‘ He was a stranger to the wood, for he
lost his way every now and then. He was seeking or ex-
pecting some one, for he stopped frequently and waited or
listened. He had not walked far, for he wore spurs that
tinkled and caught in the brush; and yet he had not rid-
den here, for no horse’s hoofs passed the road since we
have been here. He must have come from Indian
Spring.”

“ And you heard all that when you listened just now ?”
asked Nellie half disdainfully.

Impervious to her incredulity, Low turned his calm eyes
44 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

on her face. ‘Certainly, I’1l bet my life on what I say,
Tell me; do you know anybody in Indian Spring whe
would likely spy upon you ?”

The young girl was conscious of a certain ill-defined
uneasiness, but answered, ‘ No.”

“Then it was not you he was seeking,” said Low
thoughtfully. Miss Nellie had not time to notice the
emphasis, for he added, “ You must go at once; and lest
you have been followed I will show you another way back
to Indian Spring. It is longer, and you must hasten,
Take your shoes and stockings with you until we are out
of the bush.”

He raised her again in his arms and strode once more
out through the covert into the dim aisles of the wood.

They spoke but little; she could not help feeling that
some other discordant element, affecting him more strongly
than it did her, had come between them, and was half
perplexed and half frightened. At the end of ten minutes
he seated her upon a fallen branch, and telling her he
would return by the time she had resumed her shoes and
stockings glided from her like a shadow. She would have
uttered an indignant protest at being left alone, but he
was gone ere she could’ detain him. For a moment she
thought she hated him. But when she had mechanically
shod herself once more, not without nervous shivers at
every falling needle, he was at-her side.

“Do you know any one who wears a frieze coat like
that ?’’ he asked, handing her a few torn shreds of wool
affixed to a splinter of bark.

Miss Nellie instantly recognized the material of a certain
sporting-coat worn by Mr. Jack Brace on festive occasions,
but a strange yet infallible instinct that was part of her
nature made her instantly disclaim all knowledge of it.

“No,” she said.

4 Not any one who scents himself with some doctor’s
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 45

stuff like cologne ?”’ continued Low, with the disgust of
keen olfactory sensibilities.

Again Miss Nellie recognized the perfume with which the
gallant expressman was wont to make redolent her little
parlor, but again she avowed no knowledge of its possessor.
“Well,” returned Low, with some disappointment, “such
a man has been here. Be on your guard. Let us go at
once.”

She required no urging to hasten her steps, but hurried
breathlessly at his side. He had taken a new trail by
which they left the wood at right angles with the highway,
two miles away. Following an almost effaced mule track
along a slight depression of the plain, deep enough, how-
ever, to hide them from view, he accompanied her, until,
rising to the level again, she saw they were beginning to
approach the highway and the distant roofs of Indian
Spring. “Nobody meeting you now,” he whispered,
“would suspect where you had been. Good-night! until
next week — remember.”

They pressed each other’s hands, and standing on the
slight ridge outlined against the paling sky, in full view of
the highway, parted carelessly, as if they had been chance-
met travelers. But Nellie could not restrain a parting
backward glance as she left the ridge. Low had descended
to the deserted trail, and was running swiftly in the direc
tion of the Carquinez Woods.
CHAPTER IV

Teresa awoke with a start. It was day already, but
how far advanced the even, unchanging, soft twilight of
the woods gave no indication. Her companion had van-
ished, and to her bewildered senses so had the camp-fire,
even to its embers and ashes. Was she awake, or had she
wandered away unconsciously in the night? One glance
at the tree above her dissipated the fancy. There was the
opening of her quaint retreat and the hanging strips of
bark, and at the foot of the opposite tree lay the carcass of
the bear. It had been skinned, and, as Teresa thought
with an inward shiver, already looked half its former size.

Not yet accustomed to the fact that a few steps in either
direction around the circumference of those great trunks
produced the sudden appearance or disappearance of any
figure, Teresa uttered a slight scream as her young compan-
ion unexpectedly stepped to her side. ‘ You see a change
here,” he said; “the stamped-out ashes of the camp-fire
lie under the brush,” and he pointed to some cleverly
scattered boughs and strips of bark which completely
effaced the traces of last night’s bivouac. ‘We can’t
afford to call the attention of any packer or hunter whe
might straggle this way to this particular spot and this
particular tree; the more naturally,” he added, ‘‘as they
always prefer to camp over an old fire.”” Accepting this
explanation meekly, as partly a reproach for her caprice of
the previous night, Teresa hung her head.

“T’m very sorry,’ she said, “but would n’t that,”
pointing to the carcass of the bear, “have made them
curious ?”
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 47

But Low’s logic was relentless.

‘By this time there would have been little left to excite
curiosity if you had been willing to leave those beasts to
their work.”

“T’m very sorry,” repeated the woman, her lips quiver-
ing.

‘“‘ They are the scavengers of the wood,” he continued in
a lighter tone; “if you stay here you must try to use them
to keep your house clean.”

Teresa smiled nervously.

“T mean that they shall finish their work to-night,” he
added, ‘and I shall build another camp-fire for us a mile
from here until they do.”

But Teresa caught his sleeve.

“No,” she said hurriedly, “don’t, please, for me. You
must not take the trouble nor the risk. Hear me; do,
please. Ican bear it, I wild bear it —to-night. I would
have borne it last night, but it was so strange — and,”’ she
passed her hands over her forehead, “I think I must have
been half mad. But I am not so foolish now.”

She seemed so broken and despondent that he replied
reassuringly : “‘ Perhaps it would be better that I should
find another hiding-place for you, until I can dispose of
that carcass, so that it will not draw dogs after the wolves,
and men after them. Besides, your friend the sheriff will
probably remember the bear when he remembers anything,
and try to get on its track again.”

“He ’s a conceited fool,’ broke in Teresa in a high voice,
with a slight return of her old fury, “ or he’d have guessed
where that shot came from; and,” she added in a lower
tone, looking down at her limp and nerveless fingers, ‘“ he
would n’t have let a poor, weak, nervous wretch like me
get away.”

“But his deputy may put two and two together, and
connect your escape with it.”
48 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

Teresa’s eyes flashed. ‘It would be like the dog, just
to save his pride, to swear it was an ambush of my friends,
and that he was overpowered by numbers. Oh yes! I
see it all!’ she almost screamed, lashing herself into a
rage at the bare contemplation of this diminution of her
glory. ‘ That ’s the dirty lie he tells everywhere, and is
telling now.”

She stamped her feet and glanced savagely around, as if
at any risk to proclaim the falsehood. Low turned his im-
passive, truthful face towards her.

“ Sheriff Dunn,’ he began gravely, “is a politician, and
a fool when he takes to the trail as a hunter of man or
beast. But he is not a coward nora liar. Your chances
would be better if he were —if he laid your escape to an
ambush of your friends, than if his pride held you alone
responsible.”

“If he ’s such a good man, why do you hesitate ?” she
replied bitterly. “ Why don’t you give me up at once, and
do a service to one of your friends ?”

“T do not even know him,” returned Low, opening his
clear eyes upon her. ‘I’ve promised to hide you here,
«nd I shall hide you as well from him as from anybody.”

Teresa did not reply, but suddenly dropping down upon
the ground buried her face in her hands and began to sob
convulsively. Low turned impassively away, and putting
aside the bark curtain climbed into the hollow tree. In
a few moments he reappeared, laden with provisions and a
few simple cooking-utensils, and touched her lightly on
the shoulder. She looked up timidly ; the paroxysm had
passed, but her lashes yet glittered.

“Come,” he said, “come and get some breakfast. I find
you have eaten nothing since you have been here — twenty-
four hours.”

“T did n’t know it,” she said, with a faint smile. Then
seeing his burden, and possessed by a new and _ strange
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 49

desire for some menial employment, she said hurriedly,
“Let me carry something — do, please,” and even tried to
disencumber him.

Half annoyed, Low at last yielded, and handing his rifle
said, “There, then, take that; but be careful — it’s
loaded !”

A cruel blush burnt the woman’s face to the roots o*
her hair as she took the weapon hesitatingly in her hand.

“No!” she stammered, hurriedly lifting her shame-
suffused eyes to his; “no! no!”

He turned away with an impatience which showed her
how completely gratuitous had been her agitation and its
significance, and said, “ Well, then give it back if you are
afraid of it.” But she as suddenly declined to return it;
and shouldering it deftly, took her place by his side.
Silently they moved from the hollow tree together.

During their walk she did not attempt to invade his
taciturnity. Nevertheless she was as keenly alive and
watchful of his every movement and gesture as if she had
hung enchanted on his lips. The unerring way with
which he pursued a viewless, undeviating path through
those trackless woods, his quick reconnaissance of certain
trees or openings, his mute inspection of some almost im-
perceptible footprint of bird or beast, his critical examination
of certain plants which he plucked and deposited in his
deerskin haversack, were not lost on the quick-witted
woman. As they gradually changed the clear, unencum-
bered aisles of the central woods for a more tangled under-
growth, Teresa felt that subtle admiration which culminates
in imitation, and simulating perfectly the step, tread, and
easy swing of her companion, followed so accurately his
lead that she won a gratified exclamation from him when
their goal was reached —a broken, blackened shaft, splin-
tered by long-forgotten lightning, in the centre of a tangled
carpet of wood-clover.
50 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

“JT don’t wonder you distanced the deputy,” he said
cheerfully, throwing down his burden, “if you can take
the hunting-path like that. In a few days, if you stay
here, I can venture to trust you alone for a little pasear
when you are tired of the tree.”

Teresa looked pleased, but busied herself with arrange-
ments for the breakfast, while he gathered the fuel for the
roaring fire which soon blazed beside the shattered tree.

Teresa’s breakfast was a success. It was a revelation to
the young nomad, whose ascetic habits and simple tastes
were usually content with the most primitive forms of
frontier cookery. It was at least a surprise to him to know
that without extra trouble kneaded flour, water, and salera-
tus need not be essentially heavy ; that coffee need not be
boiled with sugar to the consistency of syrup; that even
that rarest delicacy, small shreds of venison covered with
ashes and broiled upon the end of a ramrod boldly thrust
into the flames, would be better and even more expeditiously
cooked upon burning coals. Moved in his practical nature,
he was surprised to find this curious creature of disorganized
nerves and useless impulses informed with an intelligence
that did not preclude the welfare of humanity or the exist-
ence of a soul. He respected her for some minutes, until
in the midst of a culinary triumph a big tear dropped and
spluttered in the saucepan. But he forgave the irrelevancy
by taking no notice of it, and by doing full justice to that
particular dish.

Nevertheless, he asked several questions based upon these
recently discovered qualities. It appeared that in the old
days of her wanderings with the circus troupe she had often
been forced to undertake this nomadic housekeeping. But
she “ despised it,’ had never done it since, and always had
refused to do it for “ him’ — the personal pronoun refer-
ring, as Low understood, to her lover, Curson. Not caring
to revive these memories further, Low briefly concluded: —
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 51

“JT don’t know what you were, or what you may be,
but from what I see of you you’ve got all the sabe of a
frontiersman’s wife.”

She stopped and looked at him, and then, with an im-
pulse of impudence that only half concealed a more serious
vanity, asked, ‘Do you think I might have made a good
squaw ?”

“JT don’t know,” he replied quietly. “I never saw
enough of them to: know.”

Teresa, confident from his clear eyes that he spoke the
truth, but having nothing ready to follow this calm dis-
posal of her curiosity, relapsed into silence.

The meal finished, Teresa washed their scant table
equipage in a little spring near the camp-fire; where,
catching sight of her disordered dress and collar, she
rapidly threw her shawl, after the national fashion, over
her shoulder and pinned it quickly. Low cached the re-
maining provisions and the few cooking-utensils under the
dead embers and: ashes, obliterating all superficial indica-
tion of their camp-five as deftly and artistically as he had’
before.

“There isn’t the ghost of a chance,” he said in expla-
nation, “that anybody but you or I will set foot here be-
fore we come back to supper, but it’s well to be on guard.
I’ll take you back to the cabin now, though I bet you
eould find your way there as well as I can.”

On their way back Teresa ran ahead of her companion,
and plucking a few tiny leaves from a hidden oasis in the
bark-strewn trail brought them to him.

“hat’s the kind you’re looking for, isn’t it ?” she
said half timidly.

“Tt is,” responded Low, in gratified surprise; “ but
how did you know it? You’re not a botanist, are you?”

“T reckon not,” said Teresa; “but you picked some
when we came, and I noticed what they were.”
52 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

Here was indeed another revelation. Low stopped and
gazed at her with such frank, open, utterly unabashed
curiosity that her black eyes fell before him.

‘‘And do you think,’ he asked with logical delibera-
tion, “that you could find any plant from another I should
give you?”

cc Yes.”

“Or from a drawing of it?”

“Yes; perhaps even if you described it to me.”

A half-confidential, half-fraternal silence followed.

“J tell you what. I’ve got a book” —

“T know it,” interrupted Teresa; “full of these things.”

“Ves, Do you think you could”? —

“ Of course I could,” broke in Teresa again.

“ But you don’t know what I mean,” said the imperturb-
able Low.

‘Certainly I do. Why, find ’em, and preserve all the
different ones for you to write under — that’s it, is n’tit?”

Low nodded his head, gratified, but not entirely con-
vinced that she had fully estimated the magnitude of the
endeavor.

“T suppose,” said Teresa, in the feminine proscriptum
voice which it would seem entered even the philosophical
calm of the aisles they were treading— ‘I suppose that
she places great value on them ? ”

Low had indeed heard Science personified before, nor
was it at all impossible that the singular woman walking
by his side had also. THe said, “ Yes;” but added, in
mental reference to the Linnzan Society of San Francisco,
that “they were rather particular about the rarer kinds.”

Content as Teresa had been to believe in Low’s tender
relations with some favored one of her sex, this frank con:
fession of a plural devotion staggered her.

“They ?” she repeated.

“ Yes,” he continued calmly. “The Botanical Society
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 53

I correspond with are more particular than the Govern-
ment Survey.”

“Then you are doing this for a society ?”” demanded
Teresa, with a stare.

“Certainly. I’m making a collection and classifica-
tion of specimens. I intend — but what are you looking
at?”

Teresa had suddenly turned away. Putting his hand
lightly on her shoulder, the young man brought her face to
face with him again. She was laughing.

“T thought all the while it was for a girl,” she said ;
“and” — But here the mere effort of speech sent her
off into an audible and genuine outburst of laughter. It
was the first time he had seen her even smile other than
bitterly. Characteristically unconscious of any humor in
her error, he remained unembarrassed. But he could not
help noticing a change in the expression of her face, her
voice, and even her intonation. It seemed as if that fit
of laughter had loosed the last ties that bound her to a
self-imposed character, had swept away the last barrier
between her and her healthier nature, had dispossessed <
painful unreality, and relieved the morbid tension of ¢
purely nervous attitude. The change in her utterance
and the resumption of her softer Spanish accent seemed
to have come with her confidences, and Low took leave
of her before their sylvan cabin with a comrade’s hearti-
ness, and a complete forgetfulness that her voice had ever
irritated him.

When he returned that afternoon he was startled to find
the cabin empty. But instead of bearing any appearance
of disturbance or hurried flight, the rude interior seemed to
have magically assumed a decorous order and cleanliness
unknown before. Fresh bark hid the inequalities of the
floor. The skins and blankets were folded in the corners,
the rude shelves were carefully arranged; even a few tall
o£ IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

ferns and bright but quickly fading flowers were disposed:
around the blackened chimney. She had evidently availed
herself of the change of clothing he had brought her, for
her late garments were hanging from the hastily-devised
wooden pegs driven in the wall. The young man gazed
around him with mixed feelings of gratification and uneasi-
ness. His presence had been dispossessed in a single hour;
his ten years of lonely habitation had left no trace that this
woman had not effaced with a deft move of her hand.
More than that, it looked as if she had always occupied it ;
and it was with a singular conviction that even when she
should occupy it no longer it would only revert to him.as
her dwelling, that he dropped the bark shutters athwart the.
opening, and left it to follow her.

To his quick ear, fine eye, and abnormal senses, this was
easy enough. She had gone in the direction of this morn-.
ing’s camp. Once or twice he paused with a half-gesture
of recognition and a characteristic “Good!” at the place
where she had stopped, but was surprised to tind that he
main course had been as direct as his own. Deviating.
from this direct line with Indian precaution he first made a
circuit of the camp, and approached the shattered trunk
from the opposite direction. He consequently came upon
Teresa unawares. But the momentary astonishment and.
embarrassment were his alone.

He scarcely recognized her. She was wearing the gar-
ments he had brought her the day before —a certain dis-
carded gown of Miss Nellie Wynn, which he had hurriedly.
begged from her under the pretext of clothing the wife of a
distressed overland emigrant then on the way to the mines.
Although he had satisfied his conscience with the intention
of confessing the pious fraud to her when Teresa was gone
and safe from pursuit, it was not without a sense of remorse
that he witnessed the sacreligious transformation. The twa
women were nearly the same height and size; and although
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 55

Teresa’s maturer figure accented the outlines more strongly,
it was still becoming enough to increase his irritation.

Of this becomingness she was doubtless unaware at the
moment that he surprised her. She was conscious of hav-
ing ‘a change,” and this had emboldened her to “do her
hair” and otherwise compose herself. After their greeting
she was the first to allude to the dress, regretting that it
was not more of a rough: disguise, and that, as she must
now discard the national habit of wearing her shawl
“manta” fashion over her head, she wanted a_ hat.
“ But you must not,” she said, ‘borrow any more dresses
for me from your young woman. Buy them for me at some
shop. They left me enough money for that.”” Low gently
put aside the few pieces of gold she had drawn from her
pocket, and briefly reminded her of the suspicion such a
purchase by him would produce. “ That’s so,” she said
with a laugh. “ Caramba! what a mule I’m becoming!
Ah! wait a moment. J have it! Buy me a common felt
hat —a man ’s hat —as if for yourself, as a change to that
animal,’’ pointing to the fox-tailed cap he wore summer
and winter, “and I’ll show you a trick. JI have n’t run
a theatrical wardrobe for nothing.” Nor had she, for the
hat thus procured, a few days Jater, became, by the aid of
a silk handkerchief and a bluejay’s feather, a fascinating
* pork pie.”

Whatever cause of annoyance to Low still lingered in
Teresa’s dress, it was soon forgotten in a palpable evidence
of Teresa’s value as botanical assistant. It appeared that
during the afternoon she had not only duplicated his spe-
eimens, but had discovered one or two rare plants as yet
unclassified in the flora of the Carquinez Woods. He was
delighted, and in turn, over the camp-fire, yielded up some
details of his present life and some earlier recollections.

“You don’t remember anything of your father?” she
asked. ‘Did he ever try to seek you out?”
&6 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

“No! Why should he?” replied the imperturbable
Low; ‘‘he was not a Cherokee.”

‘““No, he was a beast,’ responded Teresa promptly.
«And your mother —do you remember her ? ””

‘No, I think she died.”

“You think she died 2? Don’t you know ?”

6 No ! ae

“Then you’re another!” said Teresa. Notwithstand.
ing this frankness, they shook hands for the night; Teresa
nestling like a rabbit in a hollow by the side of the camp-
fire; Low with his feet towards it, Indian-wise, and his
head and shoulders pillowed on his haversack, only half
distinguishable in the darkness beyond.

With such trivial details three uneventful days slipped
by. Their retreat was undisturbed, nor could Low detect,
by the least evidence to his acute perceptive faculties, that
any intruding feet had since crossed the belt of shade. The
echoes of passing events at Indian Spring had recorded the
escape of Teresa as occurring at a remote and purely
imaginative distance, and her probable direction the county
of Yolo.

‘Can you remember,” he one day asked her, ‘ what
time it was when you cut the riata and got away ?”

Teresa pressed her hands upon her eyes and temples.

« About three, I reckon.”

‘* And you were here at seven; you could have covered
some ground in four hours ?”

‘‘ Perhaps —I don’t know,” she said, her voice taking
up its old quality again. “Don’t ask me —I ran all the
way.”

Her face was quite pale as she removed her hands from
her eyes, and her breath came as quickly as if she had just
finished that race for life.

“Then you think I am safe here?” she added, after a
pause.
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 57

“ Perfectly — until they find you are not in Yolo. Then
they ’ll look here. And that’s the time for you to go there.”

Teresa smiled timidly. “It will take them some time
to search Yolo — unless,” she added, “you’re tired of me
here.” The charming non sequitur did not, however, seem
to strike the young man. “I’ve got time yet to find a
few more plants for you,” she suggested.

“Oh, certainly !”

“ And give you a few more lessons in cooking.”

‘ Perhaps.”

The conscientious and literal Low was beginning to
doubt if she were really practical. How otherwise could
she trifle with such a situation ?

It must be confessed that that day and the next she did
trifle with it. She gave herself up to a grave and delicious
languor that seemed to flow from shadow and silence and
permeate her entire being. She passed hours in a thought-
ful repose of mind and spirit that seemed to fall like balm
from those steadfast guardians, and distill their gentle
ether in her soul; or breathed into her listening ear im-
munity from the forgotten past and security for the pre-
sent. If there was no dream of the future in this calm,
even recurrence of placid existence, so much the better.
The simple details of each succeeding day, the quaint
housekeeping, the brief companionship and coming and
going of her young host, — himself at best a crystallized
personification of the sedate and hospitable woods, — satis-
fied her feeble cravings. She no longer regretted the inferior
passion that her fears had obliged her to take the first night
she came; she began to look up to this young man —so
much younger than herself — without knowing what it
meant; it was not until she found that this attitude did
not detract from his picturesqueness that she discovered
herself seeking for reasons to degrade him from this seduc-
tive eminence.
58 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

A week had elapsed with little change. On two days
he had been absent all day, returning only in time to sup
in the hollow tree, which, thanks to the final removal of
the dead bear from its vicinity, was now considered a
safer retreat than the exposed camp-fire. On the first of
these occasions she received him with some preoccupation,
paying but little heed to the scant gossip he brought frown
Indian Spring, and retiring early under the plea of fatigue,
that he might seek his own distant camp-fire, which, thanks
to her stronger nerves and regained courage, she no longer
required so near. On the second occasion, he found her
writing a letter more or less blotted with her tears. When
it was finished, she begged him to post it at Indian
Spring, where in two days an answer would be returned,
under cover, to him.

“JT hope you will be satisfied then,” she added.

“ Satisfied with what?” queried the young man.

“You ’ll see,” she replied, giving him her cold hand.
“ Good-night.”

“ But can’t you tell me now ?” he remonstrated, retain-
ing her hand.

“ Wait two days longer —it isn’t much,” was all -she
vouchsafed to answer.

The two days passed. Their former confidence and
good fellowship were fully restored when the morning
came on which he was to bring the answer from the post-
office at Indian Spring. He had talked again of his fu-
ture, and had recorded his ambition to procure the appoint-
ment of naturalist ‘to a Government Surveying Expedition.
She had even jocularly proposed to dress herself in man’s
attire and “enlist” as his assistant.

“But you will be safe with your friends, I hope, by
that time,’ responded Low.

“Safe with my friends,” she repeated in a lower voice.
“Safe with my friends— yes!” An awkward silence
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 59

followed. Teresa broke it gayly: “But your girl, your
sweetheart, my benefactor — will she let you go? ”

“J have n’t told her yet,” said Low gravely, “but J
don’t see why she should object.”

‘Object, indeed!” interrupted Teresa in a high voice
and a sudden and utterly gratuitous indignation; “how
should she? I’d like to see her do it!”

She accompanied him some distance to the intersection
of the trail, where they parted in good spirits. On the
dusty plain without a gale was blowing that rocked the
high treetops above her, but, tempered and subdued, en-
tered the low aisles with a fluttering breath of morning
anl a sound like the cooing of doves. Never had the
wood before shown so sweet a sense of security from the
turmoil and tempest of the world beyond; never before
had an intrusion from the outer life —even in the shape
of a letter —seemed so wicked a desecration. Tempted
by the solicitation of air and shade, she lingered, with
Low’s herbarium slung on her shoulder.

A strange sensation, like a shiver, suddenly passed
across her nerves, and left them in a state of rigid tension.
With every sense morbidly acute, with every faculty
strained to its utmost, the subtle instincts of Low’s wood-
craft transformed and possessed her. She knew it now!
A new element was in the wood —a strange being — an-
other life — another man approaching! She did not even
raise her head to look about her, but darted with the pre-
cision and fleetness of an arrow in the direction of her
tree. But her feet were arrested, her limbs paralyzed,
her very existence suspended, by the sound of a voice : —

“ Teresa !

It was a voice that had rung in her ears for the last
two years in all phases of intensity, passion, tenderness,
and anger; a voice upon whose modulations, rude and
unmusical though they were, her heart and soul had hung
60 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

in transport or anguish. But it was a chime that had
tung its last peal to her senses as she entered the Car-
quinez Woods, and for the last week had been as dead to
her as a voice from the grave. It was the voice of her
lover — Dick Curson !
CHAPTER V

Tue wind was blowing towards the stranger, so that
he was nearly upon her when Teresa first took the alarm.
He was a man over six feet in height, strongly built, with
a slight tendency to a roundness of bulk which suggested
reserved rather than impeded energy. His thick beard
and mustache were closely cropped around a small and
handsome mouth that lisped except when he was excited,
but always kept fellowship with his blue eyes in a per-
petual smile of half-cynical good humor. His dress was
superior to that of the locality ; his general expression that
of a man of the world, albeit a world of San Francisco,
Sacramento, and Murderer’s Bar. He advanced towards
her with a laugh and an outstretched hand.

“ You here!” she gasped, drawing back.

Apparently neither surprised nor mortified at this recep-
tion, he answered frankly, “‘ Yeth. You did n’t expect me,
I know. But Doloreth showed me the letter you wrote
her, and — well — here I am, ready to he]p you, with two
men and a thpare horthe waiting outside the woodth on the
blind trail.”

“ You — you — here ?”’ she only repeated.

Curson shrugged his shoulders. “ Yeth, Of courth
yoa never expected to thee me again, and leatht of all
here. I?ll admit that; I’ll thay I would n’t if I’d been
in your plathe. Ill go further, and thay you didn’t
want to thee me again — anywhere. But it all cometh to
the thame thing. Here I am; I read the letter you wrote
Doloreth. I read how you were hiding here, under
62 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

Dunn’th very nothe, with his whole pothe out, cavorting
round and barkin’ up the wrong tree. JI made up my
mind to come down here with a few nathty friends of mine
and cut you out under Dunn’th nothe, and run you over
into Yuba — that ’th all.”

“How dared she show you my letter — you of all men ?
How dared she ask your help? ” continued Teresa fiercely.

“ But she didn’t athk my help,” he responded coolly.
“ D—d if I don’t think she jutht calculated I’d be glad to
know you were being hunted down and thtarving, that. I
might put Dunn on your track.”

“You lie!” said Teresa furiously; “she was my
friend. A better friend than those who professed —
more,” she added, with a contemptuous drawing away of
her skirt as if she feared Curson’s contamination.

“ All right. Thettle that with her when you go back,”
continued Curson philosophically. ‘We can talk of that
on the way. The thing now ith to get up and get out. of
thethe woods. Come!”

Teresa’s only reply was a gesture of scorn.

“T know all that,” continued Curson half soothingly,
“but they ’re waiting.”

“Let them wait. I shall not go.”

“What will you do?”

“Stay here — till the wolves eat me.”

“Teresa, listen. D— it all — Teresa! — Tita! see
here,” he said with sudden energy. ‘I swear to God it’s
all right. I’m willing to let bygones be bygones and
take a new deal. You shall come back as if nothing had
happened, and take your old place as before. I don’t
mind doing the square thing, all round. If that’s what
you mean, if that’s all that stands in the way, why, look
upon the thing as settled. There, Tita, old girl, come.”

Careless or oblivious of her stony silence and staring
eyes, he attempted to take her hand. But she disengaged
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 63

aerself with a quick movement, drew back, and suddenly
evouched like a wild animal about to spring. Curson
folded his arms as she leaped to her feet; the little dagger
she had drawn from her garter flashed menacingly in the
air, but she stopped.

The man before her remained erect, impassive, and
silent; the great trees around and beyond her remained
erect, impassive, and silent; there was no sound in the
dim aisles but the quick panting of her mad passion, no
movement in the calm, motionless shadow but the trem-
bling of her uplifted steel. Her arm bent and slowly
sank, her fingers relaxed, the knife fell from her hand.

“That’th quite enough for a thow,” he said, with a
return to his former cynical ease and a perceptible tone
of relief in his voice. ‘It’th the thame old Teretha.
Well, then, if you won’t go with me, go without me; take
the led horthe and cut away. Dick Athley and Peterth
will follow you over the county line. If you want thome
money, there it ith.” He took a buckskin purse from his
pocket. ‘If you won’t take it from me” —— he hesitated
as she made no reply —‘‘Athley ’th flush and ready to
lend you thome.”

She had not seemed to hear him, but had stooped in
some embarrassment, picked up the knife and hastily hid
it, then with averted face and nervous fingers was begin-
ning to tear strips of loose bark from the nearest trunk.

“Well, what do you thay ?”

TJ don’t want any money, and I shall stay here.” She
hesitated, looked around her, and then added, with an
effort, “I suppose you meant well. Be it so! Let by-
gones be bygones. You said just now, ‘It’s the same
old Teresa.’ So she is, and seeing she’s the same she’s
better here than anywhere else.”

There was enough bitterness in her tone to call for
Curson’s half-perfunctory sympathy.
64 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

“That be d—d,” he responded quickly. ‘ Jutht thay
you'll come, Tita, and” —

She stopped his half-spoken sentence witli a negative
gesture. ‘ You don’t understand. I shall stay here.”

“ But even if they don’t theek you here, you can’t live
here forever. The friend that you wrote about who wath
tho good to you, you know, can’t keep you here alwayth;
and are you thure you can alwayth trutht her ? ”

“Tt isn’t a woman — it’s a man.” She stopped short,
and colored to the line of her forehead. ‘‘ Who said it
was a woman?” she continued fiercely, as if to cover her
confusion with a burst of gratuitous anger. ‘Is that an.
other of your lies ? ”

Curson’s lips, which for a moment had completely lost
their smile, were now drawn together in a prolonged
whistle. He gazed curiously at her gown, at her hat, at
the bow of bright ribbon that tied her black hair, and said,
“Ah!”

‘‘ A poor man who has kept my secret,” she went on
hurriedly; “a man as friendless and lonely as myself,
Yes,”’ disregarding Curson’s cynical smile, “a man who
has shared everything ’? —

“ Naturally,’”’ suggested Curson.

“ And turned himself out of his only shelter to give-me
a roof and covering,” she continued mechanically, strug-
gling with the new and horrible fancy that his words
awakened.

“ And thlept every night at Indian Thpring to save your
reputation,” said Curson. ‘‘ Of courthe.”

Teresa turned very white. Curson was prepared for an
outburst of fury — perhaps even another attack. But the
crushed and beaten woman only gazed at him with fright-
ened and imploring eyes. ‘For God’s sake, Dick, don’t
say that!”

The amiable cynic was staggered. His good humor
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 65

and a certain chivalrous instinct he could not repress got
the better of him. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘ What
I thay and what you do, Teretha, need n’t make us quar-
rel. I’ve no claim on you—I know it. Only ”—a
vivid sense of the ridiculous, powerful in men of his
stamp, completed her victory — “only don’t thay any-
thing about my coming down here to cut you out from
the — the — the sheriff.” He gave utterance to a short
but unaffected laugh, made a slight grimace, and turned
to go.

Teresa did not join in his mirth. Awkward as it would
have been if he had taken a severer view of the subject,
she was mortified even amidst her fears and embarrassment
at his levity. Just as she had become convinced that his
jealousy had made her over-conscious, his apparent good-
humored indifference gave that over-consciousness a guilty
significance. Yet this was lost in her sudden alarm as her
companion, looking up, uttered an exclamation, and placed
his hand upon his revolver. With a sinking conviction
that the climax had come, Teresa turned her eyes. From
the dim aisles beyond, Low was approaching. The catas:
trophe seemed complete.

She had barely time to utter an imploring whisper: ‘ In
the name of God, not a word to him.” Buta change had
already come over her companion. It was no longer a par-
ley with a foolish woman; he had to deal with a man like
himself. As Low’s dark face and picturesque figure came
nearer, Mr. Curson’s proposed method of dealing with him
was made audible.

“Tth it a mulatto or a Thircuth, or both?” he asked,
with affected anxiety.

Low’s Indian phlegm was impervious to such assault.
He turned to Teresa, without apparently noticing her com-
panion. ‘JI turned back,” he said quietly, “as soon as I
knew there were strangers here; I thought you might need
60 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

me.” She noticed for the first time that, in addition to his
rifle, he carried a revolver and hunting-knife in his belt.

“Yeth,” returned Curson, with an ineffectual attempt to
imitate Low’s phlegm; “but ath I didn’t happen to be a
sthranger to thith lady, perhaps it wath n’t nethethary,
particularly ath I had two friends ’? —

“ Waiting at the edge of the wood with a led horse,”
interrupted Low, without addressing him, but apparently
continuing his explanation to Teresa. But she turned to
Low with feverish anxiety.

“That ’s so—he is an old friend”? —she gave a quick,
imploring glance at Curson — ‘‘an old friend who came to
help me away — he is very kind,” she stammered, turning
alternately from the one to the other; ‘‘ but I told him there
was no hurry —at least to-day —that you — were — very
good — too, and would hide me a little longer until your
plan — you know your plan,” she added, with a look of
beseeching signiticance to Low — “could be tried.” And
then, with a helpless conviction that her excuses, motives,
and emotions were equally and perfectly transparent to both
men, she stopped in a tremble.

“ Perhapth it ’th jutht ath well, then, that the gentle-
man came thraight here, and did n’t tackle my two friendth
when he pathed them,” observed Curson half sarcastically.

“JT have not passed your friends, nor have I been near
them,” said Low, looking at him for the first time, with
the same exasperating calm; ‘‘ or perhaps I should not be
here or they there. I knew that one man entered the
wood a few moments ago, and that two men and four
horses remained outside.”

“That’s true,” said Teresa to Curson excitedly —
“that’s true. He knows all. He can see without look-
ing, hear without listening. He — he” — she stammered,
colored, and stopped.

The two men had faced each other. Curson, after his
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 67

first good-natured impulse, had retained no wish to regain
Teresa, whom he felt he no longer loved, and yet who,
for that very reason perhaps, had awakened his chivalrous
instincts. Low, equally on his side, was altogether uncon-
scious of any feeling which might grow into a passion, and
prevent him from letting her go with another if for her
own safety. They were both men of a certain taste and
refinement. Yet, in spite of all this, some vague instinct
of the baser male animal remained with them, and they
were moved to a mutually aggressive uttitude in the pre-
sence of the female.

One word more, and the opening chapter of a sylvan
Iliad might have begun. But this modern Helen saw it
coming, and arrested it with an inspiration of feminine
genius. Without being observed, she disengaged her knife
from her bosom, and let it fall as if by accident. It struck
the ground with the point of its keen blade, bounded, and
rolled between them. The two men started, and looked at
each other with a foolish air. Curson laughed.

“I yveckon she can take care of herthelf,’’ he said, ex-
tending his hand to Low. “I’m off. But if I’m wanted
she’ll know where to find me.” Low took the proffered
hand, but neither of the two men looked at Teresa. The
reserve of antagonism once broken, a few words of caution,
advice, and encouragement passed between them, in appar-
ent obliviousness of her presence or her personal responsi-
bility. As Curson at last nodded a farewell to her, Low
insisted upon accompanying him as far as the horses, and
in another moment she was again alone.

She had saved a quarrel between them at the sacrifice
of herself, for her vanity was still keen enough to feel that
this exhibition of her old weakness had degraded her in
their eyes, and, worse, had lost the respect her late restraint
had won from Low. They had treated her like a child or
& crazy woman, perhaps even now were exchanging criti
68 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

cisms upon her— perhaps pitying her! Yet she had pre-
vented a quarrel, a fight, possibly the death of either one
or the other of these men who despised her, for none better
knew than she the trivial beginning and desperate end of
these encounters. Would they — would Low ever realize
it, and forgive her? Her small, dark hands went up to
her eyes, and she sank upon the ground. She looked
through tear-veiled lashes upon the mute and giant wit-
nesses of her deceit and passion, and tried to draw, from
their immovable calm, strength and consolation as before.
But even they seemed to stand apart, reserved and for-
bidding.

When Low returned she hoped to gather from his eyes
and manner what had passed between him and her former
lover. But beyond a mere gentle abstraction at times he
retained his usual calm. She was at last forced to allude
to it herself with simulated recklessness.

“T suppose I didn’t get a very good character from my
last place ?” she said, with a laugh.

“T don’t understand you,” he replied, in evident sin-
cerity.

She bit her lip and was silent. But as they were re-
turning home, she said gently, “I hope you were not
angry with me for the lie I told when I spoke of ‘ your
plan.’ I could not give the real reason for not returning
with — with — that man. But it’s not alla lie. I have
a plan—if you haven’t. When you are ready to go to
Sacramento to take your place, dress me as an Indian boy,
paint my face, and let me go with you. You can leave
me — there — you know.”

“It’s not a bad idea,” he responded gravely. ‘ We
will see.”

On the next day, and the next, the rencontre seemed to
be forgotten. The herbarium was already filled with rare
specimens. Teresa had even overcome her feminine re
IN THE CARQUINEZ Woops 69

pugnance to “ bugs ” and creeping things so far as to assist
in his entomological collection. He had drawn from a
sacred cache in the hollow of a tree the few worn text-
books from which he had studied.

“They seem very precious,” she said, with a smile.

“Very,” he replied gravely. “There was one with
plates that the ants ate up, and it will be six months be-
fore I can afford to buy another.”

Teresa glanced hurriedly over his well-worn buckski..
suit, at his calico shirt with its pattern almost obliterated
by countless washings, and became thoughtful.

“TI suppose you couldn’t buy one at Indian Spring ?”
she said innocently.

For once Low was startled out of his phlegm. “ Indian
Spring!” he ejaculated ; “ perhaps not even in San Fran-
cisco. These came from the States.”

“How did you get them ?” persisted Teresa,

“T bought them for skins I got over the ridge.”

“T didn’t mean that — but no matter. Then you mean
to sell that bearskin, don’t you?” she added.

Low had, in fact, already sold it, the proceeds having
been invested in a gold ring for Miss Nellie, which she
scrupulously did not wear except in his presence. In his
singular truthfulness he would have frankly confessed it
to Teresa, but the secret was not his own. He contented
himself with saying that he had disposed of it at Indian
Spring. Teresa started, and communicated unconsciously
some of her nervousness to her companion. They gazed
in each other’s eyes with a troubled expression.

“Do you think it was wise to sell that particular skin,
which might be identified ? ” she asked timidly.

Low knitted his arched brows, but felt a strange sense
of relief. ‘Perhaps not,” he said carelessly; “ but it’s
too late now to mend matters,”

That afternoon she wrote several letters, and tore them
70 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

up. One, however, she retained, and handed it to Low to
post at Indian Spring, whither he was going. She called
his attention to the superscription being the same as the
previous letter, and added, with affected gayety, “ But if
the answer isn’t as prompt, perhaps it will be pleasanter
than the last.” Her quick feminine eye noticed a little
excitement in his manner and a more studious attention to
his dress. Only a few days before she would not have
allowed this to pass without some mischievous allusion to
his mysterious sweetheart ; it troubled her greatly now to
find that she could not bring herself to this household
pleasantry, and that her lip trembled and her eye grew
moist as he parted from her.

The afternoon passed slowly. He had said he might not
return to supper until late; nevertheless a strange restless-
ness took possession of her as the day wore on. She put
aside her work, — the darning of his stockings, — and ram-
bled aimlessly through the wovds. She had wandered she
knew not how far, when she was suddenly seized with the
same vague sense of a foreign presence which she had felt
before. Could it be Curson again, with a word of warning?
No! she knew it was not he; so subtle had her sense
become that she even fancied that she detected in the in-
visible aura projected by the unknown no significance or
relation to herself or Low, and felt no fear. Nevertheless
she deemed it wisest to seek the protection of her sylvan
bower, and hurried swiftly thither.

But not so quickly nor directly that she did not once or
twice pause in her flight to examine the new-comer from
behind a friendly trunk. He was a stranger —a young fel-
low with a brown mustache, wearing heavy Mexican spurs
in his riding-boots, whose tinkling he apparently did not
care to conceal. He had perceived her, and was evidently
pursuing her, but so awkwardly and timidly that she eluded
him with ease. When she had reached the security of the

 
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS fe

hollow tree, and had pulled the curtain of bark before the
narrow opening, with her eye to the interstices, she waited
his coming. He arrived breathlessly in the open space he-
fore the tree where the bear once lay; the dazed, bewil-
dered, and half-awed expression of his face, as he glanced
around him and through the openings of the forest aisles,
brought a faint smile to her saddened face. At last he
called in a half-embarrassed voice, —

‘Miss Nellie!”

The smile faded from Teresa’s cheek. Who was ‘“ Miss
Nellie”? She pressed her ear to the opening. ‘ Miss
Wynn!” the voice again called, but was lost in the echo-
jess woods. Devoured with a new and gratuitous curiosity,
in another moment Teresa felt she would have disclosed
herself at any risk, but the stranger rose and began to
retrace his steps. Long after his tinkling spurs were lost
in the distance, Teresa remained like a statue, staring at
the place where he had stood. Then she suddenly turned
like a mad woman, glanced down at the gown she was
wearing, tore it from her back as if it had been a polluted
garment, and stamped upon it in a convulsion of rage.
And then, with her beautiful bare arms clasped together
over her head, she threw herself upon her couch in a tem.
pest of tears.
CHAPTER VI

WueEn Miss Nellie reached the first mining extension.
of Indian Spring, which surrounded it like a fosse, she
descended for one instant into one of its trenches, opened
her parasol, removed her duster, hid it under a boulder,
and with a few shivers and cat-like strokes of her soft
hands not only obliterated all material traces of the stolen
cream of Carquinez Woods, but assumed a feline demure-
ness quite inconsistent with any moral dereliction. Unfor-
tunately, she forgot to remove at the same time a certain
ring from her third finger, which she had put on with her
duster and had worn at no other time. With this slight
exception, the benignant fate which always protected that
young person brought her in contact with the Burnham
girls at one end of the main street as the returning coach to
Excelsior entered the other, and enabled her to take leave
of them before the coach-office with a certain ostentation
of parting which struck Mr. Jack Brace, who was lingering
at the doorway, into a state of utter bewilderment.

Here was Miss Nellie Wynn, the belle of Excelsior,
calm, quiet, self-possessed, her chaste cambric skirts and
dainty shoes as fresh as when she had left her father’s
house ; but where was the woman of the brown duster,
and where the yellow-dressed apparition of the woods ?
He was feebly repeating to himself his mental adjuration
of a few hours before when he caught her eye, and was
taken with a blush and a fit of coughing. Could he have
been such an egregious fool, and was it not plainly written
on his embarrassed face for her to read ?
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 73

“Are we going down together?” asked Miss Nellie,
with an exceptionally gracious smile.

There was neither affectation nor coquetry in this ad-
vance. The girl had no idea of Brace’s suspicion of her,
nor did any uneasy desire to placate or deceive a possible
rival of Low’s prompt her graciousness. She simply
wished to shake off in this encounter the already stale
excitement of the past two hours, as she had shaken the
dust of the woods from her clothes. It was characteristic
of her irresponsible nature and transient susceptibilities
that she actually enjoyed the relief of change; more than
that, I fear, she looked upon this infidelity to a past dubi-
ous pleasure as a moral principle. A mild, open flirtation
with a recognized man like Brace, after her secret pas-
sionate tryst with a nameless nomad like Low, was an
ethical equipoise that seemed proper to one of her religious
education.

Brace was only too happy to profit by Miss Nellie’s
condescension; he at once secured the seat by her side,
and spent the four hours and a half of their return journey
to Excelsior in blissful but timid communion with her.
If he did not dare to confess his past suspicions, he was
equally afraid to venture upon the boldness he had pre-
meditated a few hours before. He was therefore obliged
to take a middle course of slightly egotistical narration of
his own personal adventures, with which he beguiled the
young girl’s ear. This he only departed from once, to
describe to her a valuable grizzly bearskin which he had
seen that day for sale at Indian Spring, with a view to
divining her possible acceptance of it for a “buggy robe ; ”
and once to comment upon a ring which she had inadver-
tently disclosed in pulling off her glove.

“Tt’s only an old family keepsake,” she added, with
easy mendacity; and affecting to recognize in Mr. Brace’s
zuriosity a not unnatural excuse for toying with her charm-
74 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

ing fingers, she hid them in chaste and virginal seclusion
in her lap, until she could re-cover the ring and resume her
glove.

A week passed —a week of peculiar and desiccating heat
for even those dry Sierra table-lands. The long days were
filled with impalpable dust and acrid haze suspended in the
motionless air; the nights were breathless and dewless;
the cold wind which usually swept down from the snow
line was Jaid to sleep over a dark monotonous level, whose
horizon was pricked with the eating fires of burning forest
crests. The lagging coach of Indian Spring drove up at
Excelsior, and precipitated its passengers with an accom-
panying cloud of dust before the Excelsior Hotel, As
they emerged from the coach, Mr. Brace, standing in the
doorway, closely scanned their begrimed and almost unre-
cognizable faces. They were the usual type of travelers:
a single professional man in dusty black, a few traders in
tweeds and flannels, a sprinkling of miners in red and gray
shirts, a Chinaman, a negro, and a Mexican packer or mule-
teer. This latter for a moment mingled with the crowd in
the bar-room, and even penetrated the corridor and dining:
room of the hotel, as if impelled by a certain semi-civilized
curiosity, and then strolled with a lazy, dragging step —
half impeded by the enormous leather leggings, chains, and
spurs, peculiar to his class down the main street. The
darkness was gathering, but the muleteer indulged in the
same childish scrutiny of the dimly lighted shops, maga-
zines, and. saloons, and even of the occasional groups ot
citizens at the street corners. Apparently young, as far as
the outlines of his figure could be seen, he seemed to show
even more than the usual concern of masculine Excelsior
in the charms of womankind. The few female figures
about at that hour, or visible at window or veranda, re
ceived his marked attention ;, he respectfully followed the
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 75

two auburn-haired daughters of Deacon Johnson on their
way to choir-meeting to the door of the church. Not con-
tent with that act of discreet gallantry, after they had
entered he managed to slip in unperceived behind them.

The memorial of the Excelsior gamblers’ generosity was
a modern building, large and pretentious for even Mr.
Wynn’s popularity, and had been good-humoredly known,
in the characteristic language of the generous donors, as one of
the “ bigeest religious bluffs’? on record. Its groined raf-
ters, which were so new and spicy that they still sugeested
their native forest aisles, seldom covered more than a hundred
devotees, and in the rambling choir, with its bare space for
the future organ, the few choristers, gathered round a small
harmonium, were lost in the deepening shadow of that summer
evening. The muleteer remained hidden in the obscurity
of the vestibule. After a few moments’ desultory conversa-
tion, in which it appeared that the unexpected absence of
Miss Nellie Wynn, their leader, would prevent their prac-
ticing, the choristers withdrew. The stranger, who had lis-
tened eaverly, drew back in the darkness as they passed
out, and remained for a few moments a vague and niotion-
less figure in the silent church. Then coming cautiously
to the window, the flapping broad-brimmed hat was put
aside, and the faint light of the dying day shone in the
black eyes of Teresa! Despite her face, darkened with
dye and disfigured with dust, the matted hair piled and
twisted around her head, the strange dress and boyish
figure, one swift glance from under her raised lashes be-
trayed her identity.

She turned aside mechanically into the first pew, picked
up and opened a hymn-book. Her eyes became riveted on
aname written on the title-page, “Nellie Wynn.” Her
name, and her book. The instinct that had guided her
kere was right; the slight gossip of her fellow passengers
was right; this was the clergyman’s daughter, whose praise
76 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

filled all mouths. This was the unknown girl the stranger
was seeking, but who in her turn perhaps had been seeking
Low — the girl who absorbed his fancy — the secret of his
absences, his preoccupation, his coldness! This was the
zirl whom to see, perhaps in his arms, she was now periling
her liberty and her life, unknown to him! A slight odor,
some faint perfume of its owner, came from the book : it
was the same she had noticed in the dress Low had given
her. She flung the volume to the ground, and, throwing
her arms over the back of the pew before her, buried her
face in her hands.

In that light and attitude she might have seemed some
rapt acolyte abandoned to self-communion. But whatever
yearning her soul might have had for higher sympathy or
deeper consolation, I fear that the spiritual tabernacle of
Excelsior and the Rev. Mr. Wynn did not meet that re-
quirement. She only felt the dry, oven-like heat of that
vast shell, empty of sentiment and beauty, hollow in its
pretense, and dreary in its desolation. She only saw in ita
chief altar for the glorification of this girl who had absorbed
even the pure worship of her companion, and converted
and degraded his sublime paganism to her petty creed.
With a woman’s withering contempt for her own art dis-
played in another woman, she thought how she herself
could have touched him with the peace that the majesty of
their woodland aisles — so unlike this pillared sham — had
taught her own passionate heart, had she but dared. Min-
gling with this imperfect theology, she felt she could have
proved to him also that a brunette and a woman of her ex-
perience was better than an immature blonde. She began to
loathe herself for coming hither, and dreaded to meet his
face. Here a sudden thought struck her. What if he had
not come here? What if she had been mistaken ? What if
her rash interpretation of his absence from the woods that
night was simple madness ? What if he should return — if
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 77

he had already returned? She rose to her feet, whitening,
yet joyful with the thought. She would return at once;
what was the girl to her now? Yet there was time to
satisfy herself if he were at her house. She had been told
where it was; she could find it in the dark ; an open door
or window would betray some sign or sound of the occu-
pants. She rose, replaced her hat over her eyes, knotted
her flaunting scarf around her throat, groped her way to
the door, and glided into the outer darkness.
‘CHAPTER VII

}v was quite dark when Mr. Jack Brace stopped hefore
Father Wynn’s open door. The windows were also invit-
ingly open to the wayfarer, as were the pastoral counsels of
Father Wynn, delivered to some favored guest within, in a
tone of voice loud enough for a pulpit. Jack Brace paused.
The visitor was the convalescent sheriff, Jim Dunn, who
had publicly commemorated his recovery by making his
first call upon the father of his inamorata. The Rev. Mr.
Wynn had been expatiating upon the unremitting heat
as a possible precursor of forest fires, and exhibiting some
catholic knowledge of the designs of a Deity in that regard,
and what should be the policy of the Legislature, when Mr.
Brace concluded to enter. Mr. Wynn and the wounded
man, who occupied an armchair by the window, were the
only oceupants of the room. But in spite of the former’s
ostentatious greeting, Brace could see that his visit was
inopportune and unwelcome. The sheriff nodded a quick,
impatient recognition, which, had it not been accompanied
by an anathema on the heat, might have been taken as a
personal insult. Neither spoke of Miss Nellie, although it
was patent to Brace that they were momentarily expecting
her —all of which went far to strengthen a certain waver-
ing purpose in his mind.

“Ah, ha! strong language, Mr. Dunn,” said Father
Wynn, referring to the sheriff’s adjuration; “ but ‘out of
the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh.’ Job, sir,
cursed, we are told, and even expressed himself in vigorous
Hebrew regarding his birthday. Ha, ha! I'm not op
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 79

posed to that. When I have often wrestled with the spirit
I confess I have sometimes said, ‘D—n you.’ Yes, sir,
‘D—n you.’”

There was something so unutterably vile in the reverend!
gentleman’s utterance and emphasis of this oath that the
two men, albeit both easy and facile blasphemers, felt
shocked ; as the purest of actresses is apt to overdo the
rakishness of a gay Lothario, Father Wynn’s inmaculate
conception of an imprecation was something terrible. But
he added, ‘The law ought to interfere with the reckless
use of camp-fires in the woods in such weather by packers
and prospectors.”

“Tt isn’t so much the work of white men,’ broke in
Brace, “as it is of Greasers, Chinamen, and Diggers, espe-
cially Diggers. There’s that blasted Low, ranges the
whole Carquinez Woods as if they were his. I reckon he:
ain’t particular just where he throws his matches.”

“But he’s not a Digger; he’s a Cherokee, and only a
half-breed at that,’ interpolated Wynn. “Unless,” he
added, with the artful suggestion of the betrayed trust of
a too credulous Christian, “he deceived me in this as in
other things.”

In what other things Low had deceived him he did not
say; but, to the astonishment of both men, Dunn growled
a dissent to Brace’s proposition. Either from some secret
irritation with that possible rival, or impatience at the pro-
longed absence of Nellie, he had ‘had enough of that sort
of hog-wash ladled out to him for genuine liquor.” As to
the Carquinez Woods, he [Dunn] “did n’t know why Low.
had n’t as much right there as if he’d grabbed it under a
preémption law and didn’t live there.” With this hint at.
certain speculations of Father Wynn in public lands for a
homestead, he added that “if they [Brace and Wynn] conld
bring him along any older American settler than an Indian,
they might rake down his [Dunn’s] pile.” Unprepared
80 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

for this turn in the conversation, Wynn hastened to explain
that he did not refer to the pure aborigine, whose gradual
extinction no one regretted more than himself, but to the
mongrel, who inherited only the vices of civilization.
“‘ There should be a law, sir, against the mingling of races.
There are men, sir, who violate the laws of the Most High
by living with Indian women —squaw men, sir, as they are
called.”

Dunn rose with a face livid with weakness and passion.
“Who dares say that? They are a d—d sight better
than sneaking Northern Abolitionists, who married their
daughters to buck niggers like”?— But a spasm of pain
withheld this Parthian shot at the politics of his two com-
panions, and he sank back helplessly in his chair.

An awkward silence ensued. The three men looked at
each other in embarrassment and confusion. Dunn felt
that he had given way to a gratuitous passion; Wynn had
a vague presentiment that he had said something that im-
periled his daughter’s prospects; and Brace was divided
between an angry retort and the secret purpose already
alluded to.

“Tt’s all the blasted heat,’ said Dunn, with a forced
smile, pushing away the whiskey which Wynn had osten-
tatiously placed before him.

“Of course,” said Wynn hastily; “only it’s a pity
Nellie ain’t here to give you her smelling-salts. She ought
to be back now,” he added, no longer mindful of Brace’s
presence ; “‘ the coach is over-due now, though J reckon the
heat made Yuba Bill take it easy at the up grade.”

“Tf you mean the coach from Indian Spring,” said
Brace quietly, “it’s in already; but Miss Nellie did n’t
come on it.”

Maybe she got out at the Crossing,” said Wynn
cheerfully ; “she sometimes does.”

“She didn’t take the coach at Indian Spring,’ returned
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 8\

Brace, “‘ because I saw it leave, and passed it on Buckskin
ten minutes ago, coming up the hills.”

“She ’s stopped over at Burnham’s,” said Wynn reflec-
tively. Then, in response to the significant silence of his
guests, he added, in a tone of chagrin which his forced
heartiness could not disguise, ‘‘ Well, boys, it’s a disap-
pointment all round; but we must take the lesson as it
comes. I’ll go over to the coach-office and see if she’s
sent any word. Make yourselves at home until I return.”

When the door had closed behind him, Brace arose and
took his hat as if to go. With his hand on the lock, he
turned to his rival, who, half-hidden in the gathering dark-
ness, still seemed unable to comprehend his ill luck.

“Tf you’re waiting for that bald-headed fraud to come
back with the truth about his daughter,” said Brace coolly,
“you’d better send for your things and take up your lodg-
ings here.”

“ What do you mean ?”’ said Dunn sternly.

“TI mean that’she’s not at the Burnhams’; I mean
that he does or does not know where she is, and that in
either case he is not likely to give you information. But
I can.”

“You can? ”

66 Yes.”’

“Then, where is she ?”

“Tn the Carquinez Woods, in the arms of the man you
were just defending — Low, the half-breed.”

The room had become so dark that from the road no-
thing could be distinguished. Only the momentary sound
of struggling feet was heard.

‘Sit down,” said Brace’s voice, “and don’t be a fool.
You’re too weak, and it ain’t a fair fight. Let go your
hold. I’m not lying —I wish to God I was!”

There was a silence, and Brace resumed, ‘“‘ We ’ve heen
rivals, 1 know. Maybe I thought my chance as gcod ag
82 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

yours. If what I say ain’t truth, we ’ll stand as we stood
before; and if you’re on the shoot, I’m your man when
you like, where you like, or on sight if you choose. But I
can’t see another man played upon as I’ve been played!
upon — given dead away as I have been. It ain’t on the
square.

“There,” he continued, after a pause, “that’s right;
now steady. Listen. A week ago that: girl went down
just like this to Indian Spring. It was given out, like
this, that she went to the Burnhams’. I don’t mind saying,
Dunn, that I went down myself, all on the square, think-
ing I might get a show to talk to her, just as you might
have done, you know, if you had my chance. I didn’t.
come across her anywhere. But two men that I met
thought they recognized her in a: disguise going into the
woods. Not suspecting anything, I went after her; saw
her at a distance in the middle of the woods in another:
dress that I can swear to, and was just coming up to her
when she vanished — went like a squirrel up: a tree, or
down like a gopher in the ground, but vanished.”

“Ts that all?” said Dunn’s voice. ‘And just because:
you were a d—d fool, or had taken a little too much.
whiskey, you thought ” —

“Steady! That’s just what I said to myself,” inter-
rupted Brace coolly, ‘particularly when. I saw her that
same afternoon in another dress, saying good-by to the
Burnhams, as fresh as a rose and as cold as those snow-
peaks. Only one thing — she had a ring on her finger she
never wore before, and did n’t expect me to see.”

“What if she did? She might have bought it. I-
reckon she has n’t to consult you,” broke in Dunn’s voice
sternly.

“She didn’t buy it,” continued Brace quietly. ‘“ Low
gave that Jew trader a bearskin in exchange for it, and
presented it to her. I found that out two days afterwards
IN THE CARQUINEZ Woops 83

¥

I found out that out of the whole afternoon she spent less
than an hour with the Burnhams. I found out that she
bought a duster like the disguise the two men saw her in.
I found the yellow dress she wore that day hanging up in
Low’s cabin — the place where I saw her go — the rendez-,
vous where she meets him. Oh, you’re listenin’, are you 2|
Stop! Sir pown!

‘JT discovered it by accident,” continued the voice of
Brace when all was again quiet; ‘it was hidden as only a
squirrel or an Injin can hide when they improve upon na-
ture. When I was satistied that the girl had been in the
woods, I was determined to find out where she vanished,
and went there again. Prospecting around, I picked up at
the foot of one of the biggest trees this yer old memoran-
dum-book, with grasses and herbs stuck in it. I remem-—
bered that I’d heard old Wynn say that Low, like the
d—d Digger that he was, collected these herbs; only he
pretended it was for science. I reckoned the book was
his and that he mightn’t be far away. I Jay low and
waited. Bimeby I saw a lizard running down the root.
When he got sight of me he stopped.”

“D—n the lizard! What’s that got to do with where
she is now? ”

“Everything. That lizard had a piece of sugar in his
mouth. Where did it come from? JI made him drop it,
and calculated he’d go back for more. He did. He
scooted up that tree and slipped in under some hanging
strips of bark. JI shoved ’em aside, and found an opening
to the hollow where they do their housekeeping.”

“ But you didn’t see her there — and how do you know
she is there now ?”

“I determined to make it sure. When she left to-day,
I started an hour ahead of her, and hid myself at the edge
of the woods. An hour after the coach arrived at Indian
Bpring, she came there in a brown duster, and was joined
84 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

by him. I’d have followed them, but the d—d hound has
the ears of a squirrel, and though I was five hundred yards,
from him he was on his guard.”

“Guard be blessed! Was n’t you armed ? Why didn’t
you go for him ?” said Dunn furiously.

“T reckoned I’d leave that for you,” said Brace coolly.
“Tf he’d killed me,—and if he’d even covered me with his
rifle, he’d be sure to let daylight through me at double the
distance, —I should n’t have been any better off, nor you
either. IfI’d killed him, it would have been your duty
as sheriff to put me in jail ; and I reckon it would n’t have
broken your heart, Jim Dunn, to have got rid of two rivals
instead of one. Hullo! Where are you going?”

“Going?” said Dunn hoarsely. ‘Going to the Car-
quinez Woods, by God! to kill him before her. J’1l risk
it, if you dare n’t. Let me succeed, and you can hang me,
and take the girl yourself.”

“Sit down, sit down. Don’t be a fool, Jim Dunn!
You would n’t keep the saddle a hundred yards. Did I
say I wouldn’t help you? No. If you’re willing, we’ll
run the risk together, but it must be in my way. Hear
me. [ll drive you down there in a buggy before daylight,
and we’ll surprise them in the cabin or as they leave the
wood. But you must come as if to arrest him for some
offense — say, as an escaped Digger from the Reservation, a
dangerous tramp, a destroyer of public property in the
forests, a suspected road agent, or anything to give you
the right to hunt him. The exposure of him and Nellie,
don’t you see, must be accidental. If he resists, kill him
on the spot, and nobody ’1l blame you; if he goes peaceably
with you, and you once get him in Excelsior jail, when the
story gets out that he’s taken the belle of Excelsior for his
squaw, if you’d the angels for your posse you could n’t
keep the boys from hanging him to the first tree. What’s
that ? ”
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 85

He walked to the window, and looked out cautiously.

“Tf it was the old man coming back and listening,” he
said, after a pause, “it can’t be helped. He’ll hear it soon
enough, if he don’t suspect something already.”

“Look yer, Brace,” broke in Dunn hoarsely. “ D—d
if I understand you, or you me. That dog Low has got
to answer to me, not to the daw/ I’ take my risk of
killing him, on sight and on the square. I don’t reckon
to handicap myself with a warrant, and I am not going
to draw him out with a lie. You hear me? That’s me
all the time!”

“Then you calkilate to go down thar,” said Brace con-
temptuously, “ yell out for him and Nellie, and let him line
you on a rest from the first tree as if you were a grizzly.”

There was a pause. ‘ What’s that you were saying
just now about a bearskin he sold ?” asked Dunn slowly,
as if reflecting.

“He exchanged a bearskin,” replied Brace, ‘ with a
single hole right over the heart. He’s a dead-shot, I tell
you.”

“D—n his shooting,” said Dunn. “I’m not thinking
of that. How long ago did he bring in that bearskin ? ”

“ About two weeks, I reckon. Why?”

“Nothing! Look yer, Brace, you mean well — thar’s
my hand. I’ll go down with you there, but not as the
sheriff. I’m going there as Jim Dunn, and you can
come along as a white man, to see things fixed on the
square. Come!”

Brace hesitated. “You ’ll think better of my plan before
you get there ; but I’ve said I’d stand hy you, and I will.
Come, then. There’s no time to lose.”

They passed out into the darkness together.

“What are you waiting for?” said Dunn impatiently,
as Brace, who was supporting him by the arm, suddenly
halted at the corner of the house. —
86 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

“Some one was listening —did you not see him? Was
it the old man ? ” asked Brace hurriedly.

“ Blast the old man! It was only one of them Mexican
packers chock-full of whiskey, and trying to hold up the
house. What are you thinking of ? We shall be late.”

In spite of his weakness, the wounded man hurriedly
urged Brace forward, until they reached the latter’s lodg-
ings. To his surprise, the horse and buggy were already
before the door.

“Then you reckoned to go, anyway?” said Dunn,
with a searching look at his companion.

“JT calkilated somebody would go,” returned Brace
evasively, patting the impatient’ Buckskin; ‘‘ but come in
and take a drink before we leave.”

Dunn started out of a momentary abstraction, put his
hand on his hip, and mechanically entered the house.
They had scarcely raised the glasses to their lips when a,
sudden rattle of wheels was heard in the street. Brace
set down his glass and ran to the window.

“Tt’s the mare bolted,’ he said, with an oath. “ We’ve
kept her too long standing. Follow me;” and he dashed
down the staircase into the street. Dunn followed with
difficulty ; when he reached the door he was confronted by
his breathless companion. ‘ She’s gone off on a run, and
T’ll swear there was a man in the buggy!” He stopped
and examined the halter-strap, still fastened to the fence.
“Cut! by God!”

Dunn turned pale with passion. ‘ Who’s got another
horse and buggy ?”’ he demanded.

“The new blacksmith in Main Street; but we won’t get
it by borrowing,” said Brace.

“How, then ?”’ asked Dunn savagely.

“Seize it, as the sheriff of Yuba and his deputy, pursu:
ing a confederate of the Injin Low — THE HORSE-THIEF !”
CHAPTER VIII

Tue brief hour of darkness that preceded the dawn was
that night intensified by a dense smoke, which, after blot-
ting out horizon and sky, dropped a thick veil on the high-
road and the silent streets of Indian Spring. As the buggy
containing Sheriff Dunn and Brace dashed through the
obscurity, Brace suddenly turned to his companion.

“Some one ahead!”

The two men bent forward over the dashboard. Above
the steady plunging of their own horsehoofs they could hear
the quicker, irregular beat of other hoofs in the darkness
hefore them. ,

“Tt’s that horse-thief !” said Dunn, in a savage whisper.
*Bear to the right, and hand me the whip.”

A dozen cuts of the cruel lash, and their maddened.
horse, bounding at each stroke, broke into a wild canter.
The frail vehicle swayed from side to side at each spring of
the elastic shafts. Steadying himself by one hand on the
low rail, Dunn drew his revolver with the other. “Sing
out to him to pull up, or we’ll fire. My voice is clean
gone,” he added, in a husky whisper.

They were so near that they could distinguish the bulk
of a vehicle careering from side to side in the blackness
ahead. Dunn deliberately raised his weapon. “Sing
out! ”? he repeated impatiently. But Brace, who was still
keeping in the shadow, suddenly grasped his companion’s
arm.

“Hush! It’s not Buckskin,” he whispered hurr‘edly.

“ Are you sure?”

ve
88 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

“ Dow t you see we’re gaining on him?” replied the
other contemptuously. Dunn grasped his companion’s hand
and pressed it silently. Even in that supreme moment this
horseman’s tribute to the fugitive Buckskin forestalled all
baser considerations of pursuit and capture!

In twenty seconds they were abreast of the stranger,
crowding his horse and buggy nearly into the ditch; Brace
keenly watchful, Dunn suppressed and pale. In half a
minute they were leading him a length; and when their
horse again settled down to his steady work, the stranger
was already lost in the circling dust that followed them.
But the victors seemed disappointed. The obscurity had
completely hidden all but the vague outlines of the myste-
rious driver.

“He’s not our game, anyway,” whispered Dunn.
“ Drive on.”

“But if it was some friend of his,’ suggested Brace
uneasily, ‘what would you do?”

“What I said I’d do,” responded Dunn savagely. “I
don’t want five minutes to do it in either; we’ll be half
an hour ahead of that d—d fool, whoever he is. Look
here; all you’ve got to do is to put me in the trail to that
cabin. Stand back of me, out of gunshot, alone, if you
like, as my deputy, or with any number you can pick up as
my posse. If he gets by me as Nellie’s lover, you may
shoot him or take him as a horse-thief, if you like.”

“Then you won’t shoot him on sight ?”

“Not till I’ve had a word with him.”

« But”? —

“T’ve chirped,” said the sheriff gravely. “ Drive on.”

For a few moments only the plunging hoofs and rattling
wheels were heard. A dull, lurid glow began to define the
horizon. They were silent until an abatement of the
smoke, the vanishing of the gloomy horizon line, and a
certain impenetrability in the darkness ahead showed them
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 89

they were nearing the Carquinez Woods. But they were
surprised on entering them to find the dim aisles alight
with a faint mystic aurora. The tops of the towering
spires above them had caught the gleam of the distant forest
fires, and reflected it as from a gilded dome.

“Tt would be hot work if the Carquinez Woods should
conclude to take a hand in this yer little game that’s going
on over on the Divide yonder,” said Brace, securing his
horse and glancing at the spires overhead. ‘J reckon I’d
rather take a back seat at Injin Spring when the show
commences.”

Dunn did not reply, but, buttoning his coat, placed one
hand on his companion’s shoulder, and sullenly bade him
“lead the way.” Advancing slowly and with difficulty,
the desperate man might have been taken for a peaceful
invalid returning from an early morning stroll. His right
hand was buried thoughtfully in the side pocket of his coat.
Only Brace knew that it rested on the handle of his pistol.

From time to time the latter stopped and consulted the
faint trail with a minuteness that showed recent careful
study. Suddenly he paused. ‘I made a blaze hereabouts
to show where to leave the trail. There it is,” he added,
pointing to a slight notch cut in the trunk of an adjoining
tree.

“But we’ve just passed one,” said Dunn, ‘if that’s
what you are looking after, a hundred yards back.”

Brace uttered an oath, and ran back in the direction
signified by his companion. Presently he returned with a
emile of triumph.

‘They ’ve suspected something. It’s a clever trick, but
it won’t hold water. That blaze which was done to muddle
you was cut with an axe; this which I made was done with
a bowie-knife. It’s the real one. Were not far off now.
Come on.”

They proceeded cautiously, at right angles with the
90 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

“blazed” tree, for ten minutes more. The heat was op-
pressive; drops of perspiration rolled from the foreliead of
the sheriff, and at times, when he attempted to steady his
uncertain limbs, his hands shrank from the heated, blister-
ing bark he touched with ungloved palms.

“Here we are,” said Brace, pausing at last. “ Do you
see that biggest tree, with the root stretching out halfway
across to the opposite one ? ”

“No; it’s further to the right and abreast of the dead
brush,” interrupted Dunn quickly, with a sudden revela-
tion that this was the spot where he had found the dead.
bear, the night Teresa escaped.

“That ’s so,” responded Brace, in astonishment.

“ And the opening is on the other side, opposite the
dead brush,” said Dunn.

“Then you know it?” said Brace suspiciously.

“T reckon!” responded Dunn grimly. “ That’s enough!
Fall back ! ”

To the surprise of his companion, he lifted his head
erect, and with a strong, firm step walked directly to the
tree. Reaching it, he planted himself squarely before the
opening.

“ Halloo!” he said.

There was no reply. A squirrel scampered away close’
to his feet. Brace, far in the distance, after an ineffectual
attempt to distinguish his companion through the interven-
ing trunks, took off his coat, leaned against a tree, and lit a
cigar.

“Come out of that cabin !”’ continued Dunn, in a clear,:
resonant voice. “Come out before I drag you out! ”

“ All right, ‘Captain Scott.’ Don’t shoot, and Ill come:
down,” said a voice as clear and as high as his own. The
hanging strips of bark were dashed aside, and a woman
leaped lightly to the ground.

- Dunn staggered back. ‘‘ Teresa! by the Eternal! ”
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 91

It was Teresa, — the old Teresa! — Teresa, a hundred
times more vicious, reckless, hysterical, extravagant, and
outrageous than before, — Teresa, staring with tooth and
eye, sunburnt and embrowned, her hair hanging down
her shoulders, and her shawl drawn tightly around her
neck.

“Teresa it is! the same old gal! Here we are again!
Return of the favorite in her original character! or two
weeks only! Houp la! Tshk!” and, catching her yellow
skirt with her fingers, she pirouetted before the astounded
man, and ended in a pose. Recovering himself with
an effort, Dunn dashed forward and seized her by the
wrist,

“ Answer me, woman! Is that Low’s cabin? ”

“Tt is.”

“Who occupies it besides ? ””

“cc I do,”

“ And who else ?”

“Well,” drawled Teresa slowly, with an extravagant affec-
tation of modesty, “nobody else but us, I reckon. Two’s
company, you know, and three ’s none.”

' “Stop! Will you swear that there isn’t a young girl,
his — his sweetheart — concealed there with you?”

The fire in Teresa’s eye was genuine as she answered
steadily, ‘ Well, it ain’t my style to put up with that sort
of thing; at least, it wasn’t over at Yolo, and you know
it, Jim Dunn, or I would n't be here.”

“Yes, yes,” said Dunn hurriedly. “But I’m a d—d
fool, or worse, the fool of a fool. Tell me, Teresa, is this
man Low your lover ?”

Teresa lowered her eyes as if in maidenly confusion.
“ Well, if I’d known that you had any feeling of your
own about it —if you ’d spoken sooner ”—

. “ Answer me, you devil!”

“ He is,””-
92 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

“And he has been with you here — yesterday — to
night ?”

“He has.”

“Enough.” He laughed a weak, foolish laugh, and,
turning pale, suddenly lapsed against a tree. He would
have fallen, but with a quick instinct Teresa sprang to his
side, and supported him gently to a root. The action over,
they both looked astounded.

“T reckon that was n’t much like either you or me,”
said Dunn slowly, “was it? But if you ’d let me drop
then you ’d have stretched out the biggest fool in the Sier-
ras.” He paused, and looked at her curiously. ‘‘ What’s
come over you; blessed if I seem to know you now.”

She was very pale again, and quiet — that was all.

“Teresa! d—n it, look here! When I was laid up
yonder in Excelsior I said I wanted to get well for only
two things. One was to hunt you down, the other to
marry Nellie Wynn. When I came here I thought that
last thing could never be. I came here expecting to find
her here with Low, and kill him — perhaps kill her too.
I never even thought of you; not once. You might have
Tisen up before me— between me and him—and I’d
have passed you by. And now that I find it ’s all a mis-
take, and it was you, not her, I was looking for, why’ —

“ Why,” she interrupted bitterly, “‘ you ’ll just take me,
of course, to save your time and earn your salary. I’m
ready.”

“But, [’m not, just yet,” he said faintly. ‘Help me
up.”’ She mechanically assisted him to his feet.

“Now stand where you are,” he added, “and don’t
move beyond this tree till I return.”

He straightened himself with an effort, clenclied his fists
until the nails were nearly buried in his palms, and strode
with a firm, steady step in the direction he had come. In
a few moments he returned and stood before her.
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 93

“T’ve sent away my deputy — the man who brought me
here, the fool who thought you were Nellie. He knows
now he made a mistake. But who it was he mistook for
Nellie he does not know, nor shall ever know, nor shalJ
any living being know, other than myself, And when I
leave the wood to-day I shall know it no longer. You are
safe here as far as I am concerned, but I cannot screen you
from others prying. Let Low take you away from here as
soon as he can.”

“Let him take me away? Ah, yes. For what?”

“To save you,” said Dunn. “Look here, Teresa!
Without knowing it, you lifted me out of hell just now ;
and because of the wrong I might have done her — for her
sake, I spare you and shirk my duty.”

“For her sake!” gasped the woman — “for her sake!
Oh, yes! Go on.”

“Well,” said Dunn gloomily, “I reckon perhaps you ’d
as lieve left me in hell, for all the love you bear me. And
maybe you ’ve grudge enough agin me still to wish I ‘d
found her and him together.”

“You think so?” she said, turning her head away.

“There, d—n it! I did n’t mean to make you cry.
Maybe you would n’t, then. Only tell that fellow to take ,
you out of this, and not run away the next time he sees a
man coming.”

“He didn’t run,” said Teresa, with flashing eyes. “T
—I—I sent him away,’ she stammered. Then, sud-
denly turning with fury upon him, she broke out, “Run!
Run from you! Ha, ha! You said just now I ’d a grudge
against you. Well, listen, Jim Dunn. Id only to bring
you in range of that young man’s rifle, and you ’d have
dropped in your tracks like ” —

“Like that b’ar, the other night,” said Dunn, with a
short laugh. “So that was your little game?” He
checked his laugh suddenly —a cloud passed over his face.
94 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

“‘ Look here, Teresa,’’ he said, with an assumption of care.
lessness that was as transparent as it was utterly incom:
patible with his frank, open selfishness. ‘‘ What became of
that b’ar? Theskin—eh? That was worth something ?”

“Yes,” said Teresa quietly. ‘Low exchanged it and
got a ring for me from that trader Isaacs. It was worth
more, you bet. And the ring did n’t fit either? —

“ Yes,” interrupted Dunn, with almost childish eagerness.

“ And I made him take it back, and get the value in
noney. I hear that Isaacs sold it again and made another
profit; but that’s like those traders.” The disingenuous
candor of Teresa’s manner was in exquisite contrast to
Dunn. He rose and grasped her hand so heartily she was
forced to turn her eyes away.

“ Good-by ! ” he said.

“You look tired,’ she murmured, with a sudden gentle-
ness that surprised him; “let me go with youa part of the
way.”

_ “It isn’t safe for you just now,” he said, thinking of
the possible consequences of the alarm Brace had raised.

“Not the way you came,” she replied; “but one known
only to myself.”

He hesitated only a moment. “ All right, then,” he
said finally; ‘let us go at once. It’s suffocating here,
and I seem to feel this dead bark crinkle under my feet.”

She cast a rapid glance around her, and then seemed to
sound with her eyes the far-off depths of the aisles, begin-
ning to grow pale with the advancing day, but still holding
a strange quiver of heat in the air. When she had finished
her half-abstracted scrutiny of the distance, she cast one
backward glance at her own cabin, and stopped.

“ Will you wait a moment for me?” she asked gently.

“ Yes — but — no tricks, Teresa! It isn’t worth the
time.”

, She looked him squarely in the eyes without a word.
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 95

“Enough,” he said; ‘ go!”

She was absent for some moments. He was beginning
to become uneasy, when she made her appearance agair
clad in her old faded black dress. Her face was very
pale, and her eyes were swollen, but she placed his hand
on her shoulder, and bidding him not tu fear to lean upon
her, for she was quite strong, led the way.

“ You look more like yourself now, and yet — blast it
all! —you don’t either,” said Dunn, looking down upon
her. ‘You’ve changed in some way. What is it? Is
it on account of that Injin? Could n’t you have found a
white man in his place?”

“T reckon he’s neither worse nor better for that,” she
replied bitterly ; ‘and perhaps he was n’t as particular
in his taste as a white man might have been. But,” she
added, with a sudden spasm of her old rage, “it’s a lie;
he’s not an Indian, no more than I am. Not unless be-
ing born of a mother who scarcely knew him, of a father
who never even saw him, and being brought up among
white men and wild beasts less cruel than they were,
could make him one!”

Dunn looked at her in surprise not unmixed with ad-
miration. “If Nellie,’ he thought, “could but love me
like that!” But he only said : —

“For all that, he’s an Injin. Why, look at his name.
Tt ain’t Low. It’s L’Eau Dormante, Sleeping Water, an
Injin name.”

« And what does that prove ?” returned Teresa. ‘Only
that Indians clap a nickname on any stranger, white or
red, who may camp with them. Why, even his own father,
a white man, the wretch who begot him and abandoned hin,
— he had an Indian name, — Loup Noir.”

“What name did you say ?”

“Le Loup Noir, the Black Wolf. I suppose you’d call
him an Indian, too? Eh? What’sthe matter? We’re:
96 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

walking too fast. Stop a moment and rest. There
there, lean on me!”

She was none too soon; for, after holding him upright
a moment, his limbs failed, and stooping gently she was
obliged to support him half reclining against a tree.

“Tt’s the heat!” he said. ‘Give me some whiskey
from my flask. Never mind the water,” he added faintly,
with a forced laugh, after he had taken a draught «f the
strong spirit. ‘Tell me more about the other water —
the Sleeping Water, you know. How do you know all
this about him and his — father ? ”

“Partly from him and partly from Curson, who wrote
to me about him,” she answered, with some hesitation.

But Dunn did not seem to notice this incongruity of
correspondence with a former lover. ‘And he told you? ”

“Yes; and I saw the name on an old memorandum-
book he has, which he says belonged to his father. It’s
full of old accounts of some trading-post on the frontier.
It’s been missing for a day or two, but it will turn up.
But I can swear I saw it.”

Dunn attempted to rise to his feet. “ Put your hand in
my pocket,” he said in a hurried whisper. ‘‘ No, there!
— bring out a book. There, I have n’t looked at it yet.
Is that it ?”’ he added, handing her the book Brace had
given him a few hours before.

“Yes,” said Teresa, in surprise. ‘ Where did you find it?”

“Never mind! Now let me see it quick. Open it, for
my sight is failing. There —thank you — that’s all! ”

“Take more whiskey,” said Teresa, with a strange
anxiety creeping over her. ‘ You are faint again.”

“ Wait! Listen, Teresa — lower — put your ear lower.
Listen! I came near killing that chap Low to-day.
Would n’t it have been ridiculous ? ”’

He tried to smile, but his head fell back. He had
fainted.
CHAPTER IX

For the first time in her life Teresa lost her presence of «
mind in an emergency. She could only sit staring at the
helpless man, scarcely conscious of his condition, her mind
filled with a sudden prophetic intuition of the significance
of his last words. In the light of that new revelation she
looked into his pale, haggard face for some resemblance to
Low, but in vain. Yet her swift feminine instinct met the
objection. “It’s the mother’s blood that would show,” she
murmured, “ not this man’s.”

Recovering herself, she began to chafe his hands and
temples, and moistened his lips with the spirit. When
his respiration returned with a faint color to his cheeks,
she pressed his hand eagerly and leaned over him.

“ Are you sure ?” she asked,

“Of what ? ” he whispered faintly.

“That Low is really your son ? ”

“ Who said so?” he asked, opening his round eyes upon
her.

“You did yourself, a moment ago,” she said quickly.
“Don’t you remember ?”

“Did 1?”

“You did. Is itso?”

He smiled faintly. “I reckon.”

She held her breath in expectation. But only the ludi-
crousness of the discovery seemed paramount to his weak-
ened faculties. ‘“Isn’t it just about the ridiculousest thing
all round ?”? he said, with a feeble chuckle. ‘ First you
nearly kill me before you know I am Low’s father; then
98 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

I’m just spoilin’ to kill him before I know he’s my son;
then that god-forsaken fool Jack Brace mistakes you for
Nellie, and Nellie for you. Ain’t it just the biggest thing
for the boys to get hold of ? But we must keep it darl
until after I marry Nellie, don’t you see? Then we’l
have a good time all round, and I’l] stand the drinks.
Think of it, Teresha! You don’ know me, I do’ know you,
nobody knowsh anybody elsh. I try kill Lo’. Lo’ wants
kill Nellie. No thash no’ ri—” But the potent liquor,
overtaking his exhausted senses, thickened, impeded, and
at last stopped his speech. His head slipped to her shoul-
der, and he became once more unconscious,

Teresa breathed again. In that brief moment she had
abandoned herself to a wild inspiration of hope which she
could scarcely define. Not that it was entirely a wild in-
spiration ; she tried to reason calmly. What if she re:
vealed the truth to him? What if she told the wretched
man before her that she had deceived him; that she had
overheard his conversation with Brace; that she had
stolen Brace’s horse to bring Low warning ; that, failing to
find Low in his accustomed haunts or at the camp-fire,
she had left a note for him pinned to the herbarium, im-
ploring him to fly with his companion from the danger that
was coming; and that, remaining on watch, she had seen
them both — Brace and Dunn — approaching, and had
prepared to meet them at the cabin? Would this miser-
able and maddened man understand her self-abnegation ?
Would he forgive Low and Nellie ? — she did not ask for
herself. Or would the revelation turn his brain, if it did
not kill him outright? She looked at the sunken orbits of
his eyes and hectic on his cheek, and shuddered.

Why was this added to the agony she already suffered ?
She had been willing to stand between them with her life,.
her liberty, and even —the hot blood dyed her cheek at
the thought — with the added shame of being thought the
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 99

cast-off mistress of that man’s son. Yet all this she had
taken upon herself in expiation of something — she kuew
not clearly what; no, for nothing— only for him. Ané
yet this very situation offered her that gleam of hope whicl
had thrilled her; a hope so wild in its improbahility, sc
degrading in its possibility, that at first she knew not
whether despair was not preferable to its shame. And yet
was it unreasonable? She was no longer passionate; she
would be calm and think it out fairly.

She would go to Low at once. She would find him
somewhere — and even if with that girl, what mattered ? —
and she would tell him all. When he knew that the life
,and death of his father lay in the scale, would he let his
brief, foolish passion for Nellie stand in the way? Even
if he were not influenced by filial affection or mere com-
passion, would his pride let him stoop to a rivalry with the
man who had deserted his youth ? Could he take Dunn’s
promised bride, who must have coquetted with him to have
brought him to this miserable plight? Was this like the
calm, proud young god she knew ? Yet she had an uneasy
instinct that calm, proud young gods and goddesses did
things like this, and felt the weakness of her reasoning flush
her own conscious cheek.

‘“* Teresa! ”

She started. Dunn was awake, and was gazing at her
curiously.

“T was reckoning it was the only square thing for Low
to stop this promiscuous picnicking here and marry you out
and out.”

“Marry me!” said Teresa in a voice that, with all her
efforts, she could not make cynical.

“Yes,” he repeated, ‘“‘after I’ve married Nellie; tote
you down to San Angeles, and there take my name like a
man, and give it to you. Nobody ’ll ask after Teresa, sure
—you bet your life. And if they do, and he can’t stop
* 100 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

their jaw, just you call on the old man. It’s mighty
queer, ain’t it, Teresa, to think of you being my daughter-
in-law ? ”

It seemed here as if he was about to lapse again into
unconsciousness over the purely ludicrous aspect of the sub-
ject, but he haply recovered his seriousness. ‘ He’ll have
as much money from me as he wants to go into business
with. What’s his line of business, Teresa ? ” asked this
prospective father-in-law, in a large, liberal way.

“ He is a botanist! ”’ said Teresa, with a sudden child-
ish animation that seemed to keep up the grim humor of
the paternal suggestion ; “and oh, he is too poor to buy
books! I sent for one or two for him myself the other
day !’? — she hesitated — “it was all the money I had, but
it was n’t enough for him to go on with his studies.”

Dunn looked at her sparkling eyes and glowing cheeks,
and became thoughtful. “Curson must have been a d—d
fool,” he said finally.

Teresa remained silent. She was beginning to be im-
patient and uneasy, fearing some mischance that might
delay her dreaded yet longed-for meeting with Low. Yet
she could not leave this sick and exhausted man, his father,
now: bound to her by more than mere humanity.

“Could n’t you manage,” she said gently, “to lean on
me a few steps further, until I could bring you to a cooler
spot and nearer assistance ? ”

He nodded. She lifted him almost like a child to his
feet. A spasm of pain passed over his face. ‘‘ How far is
it?”

“ Not more than ten minutes,” she replied.

“T can make a spurt for that time,” he said coolly, and
began to walk slowly but steadily on. Only his: face,
which was white and set, and the convulsive grip of his
hand on her arm, betrayed the effort. At the end of ten
minutes she stopped. They stood before the splintered,
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 101

lightning-scarred shaft in the opening of the woods, where
Low had built her first camp-fire. She carefully picked up
the herbarium, but her quick eye had already detected in
the distance, before she had allowed Dunn to enter the
opening with her, that her note was gone. Low had been
there before them; he had been warned, as his absence
from the cabin showed ; he would not return there. They
were free from interruption — but where had he gone ?

The sick man drew a long breath of relief as she seated
him in the clover-grown hollow where she had slept the
second night of her stay. “It’s cooler than those cursed
woods,” he said. ‘I suppose it’s because it’s a little like
a grave. What are you going to do now?” he added,
as she brought a cup of water and placed it at his side.

“T’m going to leave you here for a little while,” she
said cheerfully, but with a pale face and nervous hands.
“T’m going to leave you while I seek Low.”

The sick man raised his head. ‘I’m good for a spurt,
Teresa, like that I’ve just got through, but I don’t think
I’m up to a family party. Could n’t you issue cards later
on?”

“You don’t understand,” she said. ‘I’m going to get
Low to send some one of your friends to you here. I
don’t think he’ll begrudge leaving her a moment for
that,” she added to herself bitterly.

“What’s that you’re saying?’ he queried, with the
nervous quickness of an invalid.

“Nothing — but that I’m going now.” She turned
her face aside to hide her moistened eyes. ‘ Wish me
good luck, won’t you?” she asked, half sadly, half pet-
tishly.

“Come here!”

She came and bent over him. He suddenly raised his
hands, and, drawing her face down to his own, kissed her
forehead.
102 ‘IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

“Give that to him,” he whispered, “from me.”

She turned and fled, happily for her sentiment, not
hearing the feeble laugh that followed, as Dunn, in sheer
imbecility, again referred to the extravagant ludicrousness
of the situation. “It is about the biggest thing in the
way of a sell all round,” he repeated, lying on his back,
confidentially to the speck of smoke-obscured sky above
him. He pictured himself repeating it, not to Nellie —
her severe propriety might at last overlook the fact, but
would not tolerate the, joke — but to her father! It
would be just one of those characteristic Californian jokes
Father Wynn would admire.

To his exhaustion fever presently succeeded, and he
began to grow restless. The heat, too, seemed to invade
his retreat, and from time to time the little patch of blue
sky was totally obscured by clouds of smoke. He amused
himself with watching a lizard who.was investigating a
folded piece of paper, whose elasticity gave the little crea-
ture lively apprehensions of its vitality. At last he could
stand the stillness of his retreat and his supine position
no longer, and rolled himself out of the bed of leaves
that Teresa had so carefully prepared’ for him. He rose
to his feet stiff and sore, and, supporting himself by the
nearest tree, moved a few steps from the dead ashes of
the camp-fire. The movement frightened the lizard, who
abandoned the paper and fled. With a satirical recollection
of Brace and his “ridiculous” discovery through the me-
dium of this animal, he stooped and picked up the paper.
* Like as not,’ he said to himself with grim irony, “ these
yer lizards are in the discovery business, P’r’aps this
may lead to another mystery;” and he began to unfold
the paper with a smile. But the smile ceased as his eyes
suddenly caught his own name.

A dozen lines were written in pencil on what seemed to
be a blank leaf originally torn from some book. Hoe
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 104

trembled so that he was obliged to sit down to read these
words ; —

When you get this, keep away from the woods. Dunn
and another man are in deadly pursuit of you and your
companion. I overheard their plan to surprise you in our
cabin. ~Don’t go there, and I will delay them and put
them off the scent. Don’t mind me. God bless you; and
:f you never see me again, think sometimes of

TERESA.

His trembling ceased; he did not start, but rose in an
abstracted way, and made a few deliberate steps in the
direction Teresa had gone. Even then he was so confused
that he was obliged to refer to the paper again, but with
so little effect that he could only repeat the last words,
“think sometimes of Teresa.”? He was conscious that this.
was not all; he had a full conviction of being deceived,
and knew that he hela the proof in his hand, but he could
not formulate it beyond that sentence. ‘‘ Teresa’? — yes,
he would think of her. She would think of him. She
would explain it. And here she was returning.

_In that brief interval her face and manner had again
changed. She was pale and quite breathless. She cast
a swift glance at Dunn and the paper he mechanically held
out, walked up to him, and tore it from his hand.

“Well,” she said hoarsely, “what are you going to do
about it?”

He attempted to speak, but his voice failed him. Even
then he was conscious that if he had spoken he would have
only repeated, ‘think sometimes of Teresa.’”? He looked
longingly but helplessly at the spot where she had thrown
the paper, as if it had contained his unuttered words.

“‘ Yes,” she went on to herself, as if he was a mute,
indifferent spectator — “‘ yes, they ’re gone. That ends it
104 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

all. ‘The game’s played out. Well!” suddenly turning
upon him, “now you know it all. Your Nellie was here
with him, and is with him now. Do you hear? Make
the most of it; you ’ve lost them — but here I am.”

“Yes,” he said eagerly — “ yes, Teresa.”

She stopped, stared at him; then taking him by the
hand led him like a child back to his couch. ‘ Well,”
she said, in half-savage explanation, ‘I told you the truth
when I said the girl wasn’t at the cabin last night, and
that I didn’t know her. What are you glowerin’ at?
No! I haven’t lied to you, I swear to God, except in one
thing. Do you know what that was? To save him I took
upon me a shame I don’t deserve. I let you think I was
his mistress. You think so now, don’t you? Well, before
God to-day — and He may take me when He likes —I’m
no more to him than a sister! I reckon your Nellie can’t
say as much.”

She turned away, and with the quick, impatient stride
of some caged animal made the narrow circuit of the open-
ing, stopping a moment mechanically before the sick man,
and again, without looking at him, continuing her monot-
onous round. The heat had become excessive, but she held
her shawl with both hands drawn tightly over her shoulders.
Suddenly a wood-duck darted out of the covert blindly
into the opening, struck against the blasted trunk, fell half
stunned near her feet, and then, recovering, fluttered away.
She had scarcely completed another circuit before the irrup-
tion was followed by a whirring bevy of quail, a flight of
jays, and a sudden tumult of wings swept through the wood
like a tornado. She turned inquiringly to Dunn, who had
risen to his feet, but the next moment she caught convul-
sively at his wrist: a wolf had just dashed through the
underbrush not a dozen yards away, and on either side of
thém they could hear the scamper and rustle of hurrying
feet like the outburst of a summer shower. A cold wind
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 105

arose from the opposite direction, as if to contest this wild
exodus, but it was followed by a blast of sickening heat.
Teresa sank at Dunn’s feet in an agony of terror.

“Don’t let them touch me!” she gasped; ‘keep them
off! Tell me, for God’s sake, what has happened!”

He laid his hand firmly on her arm, and lifted her in his
turn to her feet like a child. In that supreme moment of
physical danger, his strength, reason, and manhood returned
in their plenitude of power. He pointed coolly to the trail
she had quitted, and said : —

“The Carquinez Woods are on fire! ”
CHAPTER X

Tue nest of the tuneful Burnhams, although in the
suburbs of Indian Spring, was not in ordinary weather
and seasons hidden from the longing eyes of the youth of
that settlement. That night, however, it was veiled in
the smoke that encompassed the great highway leading to
‘Excelsior. It is presumed that the Burnham brood had
long since folded their wings, for there was no sign of life
nor movement in the house as a rapidly driven horse and
buggy pulled up before it. Fortunately, the paternal Burn-
ham was an early bird, in the habit of picking up the first
stirring mining worm, and a resounding knock brought him
half dressed to the street door. He was startled at seeing
Father Wynn before him, a trifle flushed and abstracted.

“Ah ha! up betimes, I see, and ready. No sluggards
here — ha, ha!” he said heartily, slamming the door be-
hind him, and by a series of pokes in the ribs genially
backing his host into his own sitting-room. ‘I’m up, too,
and am here to see Nellie. She’s here, eh — of course ? ”
he added, darting a quick look at Burnham.

But Mr. Burnham was one of those large, liberal West-
ern husbands who classified his household under the gen-
eral title of ‘‘ woman folk,” for the integers of which he
was not responsible. He hesitated, and then propounded
over the balusters to the upper story the direct query,
‘You don’t happen to have Nellie Wynn up there, do ye? ”’

There was an interval of inquiry proceeding from half
a dozen reluctant throats, more or less cottony and muf-
fled, in those various degrees of grievance and mental
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 107

distress which indicate too early roused young womanhood,
The eventual reply seemed to be affirmative, albeit accom
panied with a suppressed giggle, as if the young lady hat
just been discovered as an answer to an amusing conun-
drum.

“All right,” said Wynn, with an apparent accession of
boisterous geniality. ‘Tell her I must see her, and I’ve
only got a few minutes to spare. Tell her to slip on any-
thing and come down; there ’s no one here but myself,
and I’ve shut the front door on Brother Burnham. Ha,
ha!” and suiting the action to the word, he actually
bundled the admiring Brother Burnham out on his own
doorstep. There was a light pattering on the staircase,
and Nellie Wynn, pink with sleep, very tall, very slim,
hastily draped in a white counterpane with a blue border
and a general classic suggestion, slipped into the parlor.
At the same moment the father shut the door behind her,
placed one hand on the knob, and with the other seized
her wrist.

“ Where were you yesterday ?” he asked.

Nellie looked at him, shrugged her shoulders, and said,
“ Here.”

“You were in the Carquinez Woods with Low Dorman ;
you went there in disguise ; you’ve met him there before.
He is your clandestine lover; you have taken pledges of
affection from him; you have”? —

“ Stop!” she said,

He stopped.

“Did he tell you this?” she asked, with an expressiot
of disdain.

“No; I overheard it. Dunn and Brace were at the
house waiting for you. When the coach did not bring you,
I went to the office to inquire. As I left our door I thought
I saw somebody listening at the parlor windows. It was
only a drunken Mexican muleteer leaning against the
108 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

house; but if Ae heard nothing, [ did. Nellie, I heard
Brace tell Dunn that he had tracked you in your disguise
to the woods — do you hear ? that when you pretended to
be here with the girls you were with Low— alone; that
you wear a ring that Low got of a trader here; that there
was a cabin in the woods”? —

“ Stop !”? she repeated.

Wynn again paused.

“ And what did you do ?” she asked.

“T heard they were starting down there to surprise you
and him together, and I harnessed up and got ahead of
them in my buggy.”

“ And found me here,” she said, looking full into his
eyes.

He understood her and returned the look. He recog-
nized the full importance of the culminating fact conveyed
in her words, and was obliged to content himself with its
logical and worldly significance. It was too late now to
take her to task for mere filial disobedience; they must
become allies.

“Yes,” he said hurriedly; ‘ but if you value your repu-
tation, if you wish to silence both these men, answer me
fully.”

“Go on,” she said.

“Did you go to the cabin in the woods yesterday ?”

6c No.”’

“Did you ever go there with Low ?”

“No; Ido not know even where it is.”

Wynn felt that she was telling the truth. Nellie knew
it; but as she would have heen equally satisfied with an
equally efficacious falsehood, her face remained unchanged.

“ And when did he leave you?”

“ At nine o’clock, here. He went to the hotel.”

‘He saved his life, then, for Dunn is on his way to the
woods to kill him.”
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 109

The jeopardy of her lover did not seem to affect the
young girl with alarm, although her eyes betrayed some
interest.

“Then Dunn has gone to the woods ?” she said thought-
fully.

“He has,” replied Wynn.

“Ts that all?” she asked.

“T want to know what you are going to do?”

“T was going back to bed.”

“This is no time for trifling, girl.”

“T should think not,” she said, with a yawn; “it’s too
early or too late.”

Wynn grasped her wrist more tightly. “Hear me!
Put whatever face you like on this affair, you are com-
promised —- and compromised with a man you can’t marry.”

“T don’t know that I ever wanted to marry Low, if you
mean him,” she said quietly.

“ And Dunn would n’t marry you now.”

“T?’m not so sure of that either.”

“Nellie,” said Wynn excitedly, “do you want to drive
me mad? Have you nothing to say— nothing to suggest ?”

“Oh, you want me to help you, do you? Why didn’t
you say that first ? Well, go and bring Dunn here.”

“ Are you mad ? The man has gone already in pursuit
of your lover, believing you with him.”

“Then he will the more readily come and talk with me
without him. Will you take the invitation — yes or no ?”

“Yes, but”? —

“Enough. On your way there you will stop at the
hotel and give Low a letter from me.”

“Nellie!”

“ You shall read it, of course,’ she said scornfully, “for
it will be your text for the conversation you will have with
him. Will you please take your hand from the lock and
open the door ?”
110 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

Wynn mechanically opened the door. The young girl
flew upstairs. Ina very few moments she returned with
two notes: one contained a few lines of formal invitation
to Dunn; the other read as follows : —

Dear Mr. Dorman, — My father will tell you how
deeply I regret that our recent botanical excursions in
the Carquitiez Woods have been a source of serious mis-
apprehension to those who had a claim to my considera-
tion, and that I shall be obliged to discontinue them for
the future. At the same time he wishes me to express
my gratitude for your valuable instruction and assistance
in that pleasing study, even though approaching events
may compel me to relinquish it for other duties. May I
beg you to accept the inclosed ring as a slight recognition
of my obligations to you?

Your grateful pupil,
NELLIE Wyny.

When he had finished reading the letter, she handed him
a ring, which he took mechanically. He raised his eyes to
hers with perfectly genuine admiration. ‘ You’re a good
girl, Nellie,” he said, and, in a moment of parental forget-
fulness, unconsciously advanced his lips towards her cheek.
But she drew back in time to recall him to a sense of that
human weakness.

“T suppose I’ll have time for a nap yet,” she said, as a
gentle hint to her embarrassed parent. -Hé nodded, and
turned towards the door.

“Tf I were you,’? she continued, repressing a yawn,
“T’d manage to be seen on good terms with Low at the
hotel; so perhaps you need not give the letter to him
until the last thing. Good-by.”

The sitting-room door opened and closed behind her as
she slipped upstairs, and her father, without the formality
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 111

of leave-taking, quietly let himself out by the front
door.

‘When he drove into the highroad again, however, an
overlooked possibility threatened for a moment to indefi-
nitely postpone his amiable intentions regarding Low. The
hotel was at the farther end of the settlement toward the
Carquinez Woods, and as Wynn had nearly reached it he
was recalled to himself by the sounds of hoofs and wheels
rapidly approaching from the direction of the Excelsior
turnpike. Wynn made no doubt it was the sheriff and
Brace. To avoid recognition at that moment, he whipped
up his horse, intending to keep the lead until he could
turn into the first cross-road. But the coming travelers’
had the fleetest horse ; and finding it impossible to distance
them, he drove close to the ditch, pulling up suddenly as
the strange vehicle was abreast of him, and forcing them to
pass him at full speed, with the result already chronicled.
When they had vanished in the darkness, Mr. Wynn, with
a heart overflowing with Christian thankfulness and univer-
sal benevolence, wheeled round, and drove back to the hotel
he had already passed. To pull up at the veranda with a
stentorian shout, to thump loudly at the deserted bar, to
hilariously beat the panels of the landlord’s door, and com-
mit a jocose assault and battery upon that half-dressed and
half-awakened man, was eminently characteristic of Wynn,
and part of his amiable plans that morning.

“Something to wash this wood smoke from my throat,
Brother Carter, and about as much again to prop open your
eyes,” he said, dragging Carter before the bar, “ and glasses
round for as many of the boys as are up and stirring after
a hard-working Christian’s rest. How goes the honest pub-
lican’s trade, and who have we here ?”

“Thar ’s Judge Robinson and two lawyers from Sacra-
mento, Dick Curson over from Yolo,” said Carter, “and
that ar young Injin yarb doctor from the Carquinez Woods.
112 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

I reckon he’s jist up —I noticed a light under his door ag
T passed.”

“He’s my man for a friendly chat before breakfast,”
said Wynn. ‘ You need n’t come up. I] find the way.
I don’t want a light; I reckon my eyes ain’t as bright nor
as young as his, but, they ’ll see almost as far in the dark —
he-he!”’ And, nodding to Brother Carter, he strode along
the passage, and with no other introduction than a playful
and preliminary “ Boo!” burst into one of, the rooms. Low,
who by the light of a single candle was bending over the
plates of a large quarto, merely raised his eyes and looked
at the intruder. The young man’s natural imperturbability,
always exasperating to Wynn, seemed accented that morn-
ing by contrast with his own over-acted animation.

“Ah ha! — wasting the midnight oil instead of imbibing
the morning dews,”’ said Father Wynn archly, illustrating
his metaphor with a movement of his hand to his lips.
“What have we here ?”

“An anonymous gift,” replied Low simply, recognizing
the father of Nellie by rising from his chair. “It’s a vol-
ume I’ve longed to possess, but never could afford to buy:
I cannot imagine who sent it to me.”

Wynn was fora moment startled by the thought that this.
recipient of valuable gifts might have influential friends..
But a glance at the bare room, which looked like a camp,
and the strange, unconventional garb of its occupant, re-
stored his former convictions. There might be a promise
of intelligence, but scarcely of prosperity, in the figure
before him.

“Ah! We must not forget that we are watched over
in the night season,” he said, laying his hand on Low’s
shoulder, with an illustration of celestial guardianship that.
would have been impious but for its palpable grotesqueness.
“ No, sir, we know not what a day may bring forth.”

Unfortunately, Low’s practical mind did not go beyond.
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 1138

a mere human interpretation. It was enough, however, to
put a new light in his eye and a faint color in his cheek.

“ Could it have been Miss Nellie ? ” he asked, with half-
boyish hesitation.

Mr. Wynn was too much of a Christian not to bow be-
fore what appeared to him the purely providential inter-
position of this suggestion. Seizing it and Low at the
same moment, he playfully forced him down again in his
chair.

“Ah, you rascal!” he said, with infinite archness ;
“that ’s your game, is it ? You want to trap poor Father
Wynn. You want to make him say ‘No.’ You want to
tempt him to commit himself. No, sir !— never, sir! —
no, no!”

Firmly convinced that the present was Nellie’s and that
her father only good-humoredly guessed it, the young man’s
simple, truthful nature was embarrassed. He longed to
express his gratitude, but feared to betray the young girl’s
trust. The Rev. Mr. Wynn speedily relieved his mind.

“No,” he continued, bestriding a chair, and familiarly
confronting Low over its back. “No, sir—no! And you
want me to say ‘No,’ don’t you, regarding the little walks
of Nellie and a certain young man in the Carquinez Woods ?
—ha, ha! You’d like me to say that I know nothing of
the botanizings, and the herb collectings, and the picnick-
ings there — he-he !— you sly dog! Perhaps you’d like
to tempt Father Wynn further, and make him swear he
knows nothing of his daughter disguising herself in a duster
and meeting another young man — isn’t it another young
man? —all alone, eh? Perhaps you want poor old
Father Wynn to say ‘No.’ No, sir, nothing of the kind
ever occurred. Ah, you young rascal!”

Slightly troubled, in spite of Wynn’s hearty manner,
Low, with his usual directness, however, said, ‘I do not
want any one to deny that I have seen Miss Nellie.”
4 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

“Certainly, certainly,” said Wynn, abandoning his:
method, considerably disconcerted by Low’s simplicity, and
a certain natural reserve that shook off his familiarity.
“ Certainly it’s a noble thing to be able to put your hand
on your heart and say to the world, ‘Come on, all of you!
Observe me; I have nothing to conceal. I walk with
Miss Wynn in the woods as her instructor — her teacher,
in fact. We cull a flower here and there; we pluck an
herb fresh from the hand of the Creator. We look, so to
speak, from Nature to Nature’s God.’ Yes, my young
friend, we should be the first to repel the foul calumny that’
could misinterpret our most innocent actions.”

“Calumny ? ” repeated Low, starting to his feet. ‘“ What
calumny ? ”

“My friend, my noble young friend, I recognize your
indignation. I know your worth. When I said to Nellie,
my only child, my perhaps too simple offspring — a mere
wildflower like yourself— when I said to her, ‘Go, my
child, walk in the woods with this young man, hand in
hand. Let him instruct you from the humblest roots, for
he has trodden in the ways of the Almighty. Gather
wisdom from his lips, and knowledge from his simple
woodsman’s craft. Make, in fact, a collection not only of
herbs, but of moral axioms and experience,’ —I knew I.
could trust you, and, trusting you, my young friend, I felt I
could trust the world. Perhaps I was weak, foolish. But
I thought only of her welfare. I even recall how that, to
preserve the purity of her garments, I bade her don asimple
duster; that, to secure her from the trifling companionship
of others, I bade her keep her own counsel, and seek you
at seasons known but to yourselves.”

“But —did Nellie — understand you?” interrupted Low
hastily.

“T see you read her simple nature. Understand me ?
No, not at first! Her maidenly instinct — perhaps her
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 115

duty to another — took the alarm. I remember her words.
‘But what will Dunn say ?’ she asked. ‘Will he not be
jealous ?’”

“Dunn! jealous! I don’t understand,” said Low, fix-
ing his eyes on Wynn. |

“That ’s just what I said to Nellie. ‘Jealous!’ Ii
said. ‘What, Dunn, your affianced husband, jealous of a
mere friend —a teacher, a guide, a philosopher. It is im-
possible.’ Well, sir, she was right. He is jealous. And,
more than that, he has imparted his jealousy to others!
In other words, he has made a scandal! ”

Low’s eyes flashed. ‘‘ Where is your daughter now ? ”
he said sternly.

“At present in bed, suffering from a nervous attack
brought on by these unjust suspicions. She appreciates
your anxiety, and, knowing that you could not see her,
told me to give you this.” He handed Low the ring and
the letter.

The climax had been forced, and, it must be confessed,
was by no means the one Mr. Wynn had fully arranged
in his own inner consciousness. He had intended to take
an ostentatious leave of Low in the bar-room, deliver the
letter with archness, and escape before a possible explosion.
He consequently backed towards the door for an emergency.
But he was again at fault. That unaffected stoical fortitude
in acute suffering, which was the one remaining pride and
glory of Low’s race, was yet to be revealed to Wynn’s
civilized eyes.

The young man took the letter, and read it without
changing a muscle, folded the ring in it, and dropped it
into his haversack. Then he picked up his blanket, threw
it over his shoulder, took his trusty rifle in his hand, and
turned toward Wynn as if coldly surprised that he was still
standing there.

‘* Are you —are you — going ? ” stammered Wynn.
116 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

“ Are you not?” replied Low dryly, leaning on his rifle
for a moment as if waiting for Wynn to precede him. The
preacher looked at him a moment, mumbled something, and
then shambled feebly and ineffectively down the staircase
before Low, with a painful suggestion to the ordinary ob.
server of being occasionally urged thereto by the moccasin
of the young man behind him.

On reaching the lower hall, however, he endeavored to
create a diversion in his favor by dashing into the bar-room
and clapping the occupants on the back with indiscriminate
playfulness. But here again he seemed to be disappointed.
To his great discomfiture, a large man not only returned
his salutation with powerful levity, but with equal playful-
ness seized him in his arms, and after an ingenious simula-
tion of depositing him in the horse-trough set him down in
affected amazement. “ Bletht if I did n’t think from the
weight of your hand it wath my old friend, Thacramento
Bill,” said Curson apologetically, with a wink at the by-
standers. “ That ’th the way Bill alwayth uthed to tackle
hith friendth, till he wath one day bounthed by a prithe-fighter
in Frithco, whom he had mithtaken for a mithionary.” As
Mr. Curson’s reputation was of a quality that made any
form of apology from him instantly acceptable, the amused
spectators made way for him as, recognizing Low, who was
just leaving the hotel, he turned coolly from them and
walked towards him.

“Ffalloo!”’ he said, extending his hand. ‘‘ You’re the
man I’m waiting for. Did you get a book from the
exthpreth offithe latht night ? ”

“T did. Why?”

“Tt ’th all right. Ath I’m rethponthible for it, I only
wanted to know.”

“Did you send it ?’’ asked Low, quickly fixing his eyes
on his face.

Well, not exactly me. But it’th not worth making a
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 117

mythtery of it. Teretha gave me a commithion to buy it
and thend it to you anonymouthly. That’th a woman’th
nonthenth, for how could thee get a retheipt for it?”

“Then it was her present,” said Low gloomily.

“Of courthe. It wathn’t mine, my boy. I’d have
thent you a Tharp’th rifle in plathe of that muthle-loader
you carry, or thomething thenthible. But, I thay! what’th
up? You look ath if you had been running all night.”

Low grasped his hand. ‘Thank you,” he said hur-
riedly ; ‘but it’s nothing. Only I must be back to the
woods early. Good-by.”

But Curson retained Low’s hand in his own powerful grip.

“T?ll go with you a bit further,” he said, ‘In fact,
I’ve got thomething to thay to you; only don’t be in
thuch a hurry; the woodth can wait till you get there.”
Quietly compelling Low to alter his own characteristic
Indian stride to keep pace with his, he went on: “I don’t
mind thaying I rather cottoned to you from the time you
acted like a white man — no offenthe — to Teretha. She
thayth you were left when a child lying round, jutht ath
promithcuouthly ath she wath; and if I can do anything
towardth putting you on the trail of your people, I’ll do it.
I know thome of the voyageurth who traded with the
Cherokeeth, and your father wath one—wasn’t he?”
He glanced at Low’s utterly abstracted and immobile face.
“JT thay, you don’t theem to take a hand in thith game,
pardner. What’th the row? Ith anything wrong over
there?” and he pointed to the Carquinez Woods, which
were just looming out of the morning horizon in the dis-
tance.

Low stopped. The last words of his companion seemed
to recall him to himself. He raised his eyes automatically
to the woods, and started.

“There is something wrong over there,’ he said breath-
lessly. “ Look!”
118 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

“T thee nothing,” said Curson, beginning to doubt Low’s
sanity ; “nothing more than I thaw an hour ago.”

“Look again. Don’t you see that smoke rising straight
up? It isn’t blown over from the Divide; it’s new
smoke! The fire is in the woods! ”

“‘T reckon that ’th so,” muttered Curson, shading his
eyes with his hand. ‘ But, hullo! wait a minute! We/’ll
get hortheth. I say!” he shouted, forgetting his lisp in
his excitement, “stop!’? But Low had already lowered
his head and darted forward like an arrow.

In a few moments he had left not only his companion
but the last straggling houses of the outskirts far behind
him, and had struck out in a long, swinging trot for the
disused “cut-off.” Already he fancied he heard the note
of clamor in Indian Spring, and thought he distinguished
the sound of hurrying hoofs on the great highway. But
the sunken trail hid it from his view. From the column
of smoke now plainly visible in the growing morning light
he tried to locate the scene of the conflagration. It was
evidently not a fire advancing regularly from the cuter skirt
of the wood, communicated to it from the Divide: it was a
local outburst near its centre. It was not in the direction
of his cabin in the tree. There was no immediate danger
to Teresa, unless fear drove her beyond the confines of the
wood into the hands of those who might recognize her.
The screaming of jays and ravens above his head quickened
his speed, as it heralded the rapid advance of the flames;
and the unexpected apparition of a bounding body, flattened
and flying over the yellow plain, told him that even the
secure retreat of the mountain wild-cat had been invaded.
A sudden recollection of Teresa’s uncontrollable terror that
first night smote him with remorse, and redoubled his
efforts. Alone in the track of these frantic and bewildered
beasts, to what madness might she not be driven !

The sharp crack of a rifle from the highroad turned his
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 119

course momentarily in that direction. The smoke was curl-
ing lazily over the heads of a party of men in the road,
while the huge bulk of a grizzly was disappearing in the
distance. A hattue of the escaping animals had com-
menced! In the bitterness of his heart he caught at the
horrible suggestion, and resolved to save her from them or
die with her there.

How fast he ran, or the time it took him to reach the
woods, has never been known, Their outlines were already
hidden when he entered them. ‘To a sense less keen, a
courage less desperate, and a purpose less unaltered than
Low’s, the wood would have been impenetrable. The cen-
tral fire was still confined to the lofty treetops, but the
downward rush of wind from time to time drove the smoke
into the aisles in blinding and suffocating volumes. To
simulate the creeping animals, and fall to the ground on
hands and knees, feel his way through the underbrush
when the smoke was densest, or take advantage of its mo-
inentary lifting, and without uncertainty, mistake, or hesi-
tation glide from tree to tree in one wndeviating course,
was possible only to an experienced woodsman. To keep
his reason and insight so clear as to be able in the midst
of this bewildering confusion to shape that course so as to
intersect the wild and unknown tract of an inexperienced,
frightened wanderer belonged to Low, and to Low alone.
He was making his way against the wind towards the fire.
He had reasoned that she was either in comparative safety
to windward of it, or he should meet her being driven
towards him by it, or find her succumbed and fainting at its
feet. To do this he must penetrate the burning belt, and
then pass under the blazing dome. He was already upon
it; he could see the falling fire dropping like rain or blown
like gorgeous blossoms of the conflagration across his path.
The space was lit up brilliantly. The vast shafts of dull
copper cast no shadow below, but there was no sign nor
120 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

token of any human being. For a moment the young man
was at fault. It was true this hidden heart of the forest
bore no undergrowth ; the cool matted carpet of the aisles
seemed to quench the glowing fragments as they fell.
Escape might be difficult, but not impossible; yet every
moment was precious. He leaned against a tree, and sent
his voice like a clarion before him: “Teresa!” There
was no reply. He called again. A faint cry at his back
from the trail he had just traversed made him turn. Only
a few paces behind him, blinded and staggering, but fol-
lowing like a beaten and wounded animal, Teresa halted,
knelt, clasped her hands, and dumbly held them out be
fore her. “Teresa!” he cried again, and sprang to her
side.

She caught him by the knees, and lifted her face im-
ploringly to his.

‘“‘ Say that again!” she cried passionately. ‘Tell me it
was Teresa you called, and no other! You have come back
for me! You would not let me die here alone!”

He lifted her tenderly in his arms, and cast a rapid
glance around him. It might have been his fancy, but
there seemed a dull glow in the direction he had come.

“ You do not speak!” she said. “Tell me! You did
not come here to seek her? ”

“Whom ?” he said quickly.

“Nellie!”

With a sharp ery he let her slip to the ground. All
the pent-up agony, rage, and mortification of the last hour
broke from him in that inarticulate outburst. Then, catch-
ing her hands again, he dragged her to his level.

‘‘ Fear me!’ he cried, disregarding the whirling smoke
and the fiery baptism that sprinkled them, — “hear me!
If you value your life, if you value your soul, and if you
do not want me to cast you to the beasts like Jezebel of
old, never— never take that accursed name again upon
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 121

your lips. Seek her—her? Yes! Seek her to tie her
like a witch’s daughter of hell to that blazing tree!” He
stopped. ‘Forgive me,’ he said in a changed voice.
“T’m mad, and forgetting myself and you. Come.”

Without noticing the expression of half-savage delight
that had passed across her face, he lifted her in his arms.

“Which way are you going ?” she asked, passing her
hands vaguely across his breast, as if to reassure herself of
his identity.

“To our camp by the scarred tree,’ he replied.

“Not there, not there,’ she said hurriedly. “I was
driven from there just now. I thought the fire began
there until I came here.”

Then it was as he feared. Obeying the same mysteri-
ous law that had launched this fatal fire like a thunder-
belt from the burning mountain crest five miles away into
the heart of the Carquinez Woods, it had again leaped a
mile beyond, and was hemming them between two narrow-
ing lines of fire. But Low was not daunted. Retracing
his steps through the blinding smoke, he strode off at right
angles to the trail near the point where he had entered the
wood. It was the spot where he had first lifted Nellie in
his arms to carry her to the hidden spring. If any recol-
lection of it crossed his mind at that moment, it was only
shown in his redoubled energy. He did not glide through
the thick underbrush, as on that day, but seemed to take
a savage pleasure in breaking through it with sheer brute
force. Once Teresa insisted upon relieving him of the
burden of her weight, but after a few steps she staggered
blindly against him, and would fain have recourse once
more to his strong arms. And so, alternately staggering,
bending, crouching, or bounding and crashing on, but always
in one direction, they burst through the jealous rampart,
and came upon the sylvan haunt of the hidden spring. The
great angle of the half-fallen tree acted as a barrier to the
122 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

wind and drifting smoke, and the cool spring sparkled and
bubbled in the almost translucent air. He laid her down
beside the water, and bathed her face and hands. As he
did so his quick eye caught sight of a woman’s handker-
chief lying at the foot of the disrupted root. Dropping
Teresa’s hand, he walked towards it, and with the toe of
his moccasin gave it one vigorous kick into the ooze at the
overflow of the spring. He turned to Teresa, but she
evidently had not noticed the act.

‘Where are you ?” she asked, with a smile.

Something in her movement struck him. He came to-
wards her, and bending down looked into her face.

“Teresa! Good God !— look at me! What has hap-
pened ?”

She raised her eyes to his. There was a slight film:
across them ; the lids were blackened ; the beautiful lashes
gone forever !

“ T see you a little now, I think,” she said, with a smile,
passing her hands vaguely over his face. ‘It must have
happened when he fainted, and I had to drag him through
the blazing brush ; both my hands were full, and I could’
not cover my eyes.”

“Drag whom ?” said Low quickly.

“Why, Dunn.”

“Dunn! He here?” said Low hoarsely.

“Yes; didn’t you read the note I left on the herba-
rium? Didn’t you come to the camp-fire?’”’? she asked
hurriedly, clasping his hands. ‘ Tell me quickly!”

c No ! ”

“Then you were not there —then you didn’t leave me
to die?”

“No! I swear it, Teresa!” the stoicism that had up-
held his own agony breaking down before her strong emotion.

“Thank God!” She threw her arms around him, and
hid her aching eyes in his troubled breast, J
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 123

“Tell me all, Teresa,” he whispered in her listening
ear. ‘Don’t move; stay there, and tell me all.”

With her face buried in his bosom, as if speaking to his
heart alone, she told him part, but not all. With her eyes
filled with tears, but a smile on her lips, radiant with new-
found happiness, she told him how she had overheard the:
plans of Dunn and Brace, how she had stolen their convey-
ance to warn him in time. But here she stopped, dreading
to say a word that would shatter the hopes she was build-:
ing upon his sudden revulsion of feeling for Nellie. She
could not bring herself to repeat their interview — that
would come later, when they were safe and out of danger ;
now not even the secret of his birth must come between
them with its distraction, to mar their perfect communion.
She faltered that Dunn had fainted from weakness, and.
that she had dragged him out of danger. ‘‘ He will never
interfere with us—TI mean,” she said softly, “ with me
again. I can promise you that as well as if he had sworn
it.”

“Let him pass now,’ said Low; “that will come later,
on,” he added, unconsciously repeating her thought in a
tone that made her heart sick. “But tell me, Teresa,
why did you go to Excelsior ? ”

She buried her head still deeper, as if to hide it. He
felt her broken heart beat against his own; he was con-.
scious of a depth of feeling her rival had never awakened
in him. The possibility of Teresa loving him had never.
occurred to his simple nature. He bent his head and
kissed her. She was frightened, and unloosed her cling-
ing arms; but he retained her hand, and said, “ We will
leave this accursed place, and you shall go with me as
you said you would; nor need you ever leave me, unless
you wish it.”

She could hear the beating of her own heart through his
words ; she longed to look at the eyes and lips that told her
124 IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS

this, and read the meaning his voice alone could not entirely
convey. For the first time she felt the loss of her sight,
She did not know that it was, in this moment of happiness,
the last blessing vouchsafed to her miserable life.

A few moments of silence followed, broken only by the

distant rumor of the conflagration and the crash of falling
boughs. ‘It may be an hour yet,” he whispered, “ before
the fire has swept a path for us to the road below. We
are safe here, unless some sudden current should draw
the fire down upon us. You are not frightened?” She
pressed his hand; she was thinking of the pale face of
Dunn, lying in the secure retreat she had purchased for
him at such a sacrifice. Yet the possibility of danger to
him now for a moment marred her present happiness and
security. ‘ You think the fire will not go north of where
you found me?” she asked softly.

“T think not,” he said; ‘but I will reconnoitre. Stay
where you are.”

They pressed hands, and parted. He leaped upon the
slanting trunk, and ascended it rapidly. She waited in
mute expectation.

There was a sudden movement of the root on which she
sat, a deafening crash, and she was thrown forward on her face.

The vast bulk of the leaning tree, dislodged from its
aerial support by the gradual sapping of the spring at its
roots, or by the crumbling of the bark from the heat, had
slipped, made a half revolution, and, falling, overbore the
lesser trees in its path, and tore, in its resistless momentum,
a broad opening to the underbrush.

With a cry to Low, Teresa staggered to her feet. There
was an interval of hideous silence, but no reply. She called
again. There was a sudden deepening roar, the blast of a
fiery furnace swept through the opening, a thousand lumi-
nous points around her burst into fire, and in an instant she
was lost in a whirlwind of smoke and flame! From the
IN THE CARQUINEZ WOODS 125

onset of its fury to its culmination twenty minutes did not
elapse ; but in that interval a radius of two hundred yards
around the hidden spring was swept of life and light and
motion.

For the rest of that day and part of the night a pall of
smoke hung above the scene of desolation. It lifted only
towards the morning, when the moon, riding high, picked
out in black and silver the shrunken and silent columns of
those roofless vaults, shorn of base and capital. It flickered
on the still, overflowing pool of the hidden spring, and shone
upon the white face of Low, who, with a rootlet of the
fallen tree holding him down like an arm across his breast,
seemed to be sleeping peacefully in the sleeping water.

Contemporaneous history touched him as briefly, but not
as gently. “It is now definitely ascertained,” said “The
Slumgullion Mirror,” “that Sheriff Dunn met his fate in
the Carquinez Woodsin the performance of his duty; that fear-
less man having received information of the concealment of
a band of horse-thieves in their recesses. The desperadoes
are presumed to have escaped, as the only remains found
are those of two wretched tramps, one of whom is said to
have been a Digger, who supported himself upon roots and
herbs, and the other a degraded half-white woman. It is
not unreasonable to suppose that the fire originated through
their carelessness, although Father Wynn of the First Bap-
tist Church, in his powerful discourse of last Sunday, pointed
at the warning and lesson of such catastrophes. It may not
be out of place here to say that the rumors regarding an en-
gagement between the pastor’s accomplished daughter anid
the late lamented sheriff are utterly without foundation, as
it has been an on dit for some time in all well-informed
circles that the indefatigable Mr. Brace, of Wells, Fargo &
Co.’s Express, will shortly lead the lady to the hymeneal
altar.”
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE
I

SHE was barely twenty-three years old. It is probable
that up to that age, and the beginning of this episode, her
life had been uneventful. Born to the easy mediocrity of
such compensating extremes as a small farmhouse and large
lands, a good position and no society, in that vast grazing
district of Kentucky known as the “Blue Grass” region,
all the possibilities of a Western American girl’s existence
lay befure her. A piano in the bare-walled house, the
latest patented mower in the limitless meadows, and a silk -
dress sweeping the rough floor of the unpainted “ meeting-
house,”’ were already the promise of those possibilities.
Beautiful she was, but the power of that beauty was
limited by being equally shared with her few neighbors.
There were small, narrow, arched feet besides her own that
trod the uncarpeted floors of outlying log cabins with equal
grace and dignity; bright, clearly opened eyes that were
equally capable of looking unabashed upon princes and
potentates, as a few later did, and the heiress of the county
judge read her own beauty without envy in the frank glances
and unlowered crest of the blacksmith’s daughter. Even-
tually she had married the male of her species, a young
stranger, who, as schoolmaster in the nearest town, had
utilized to some local extent a scant capital of education.
In obedience to the unwritten law of the West, after the
marriage was celebrated the doors of the ancestral home
cheerfully opened, and bride and bridegroom issued forth,
without regret and without sentiment, to seek the further
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 127

possibilities of a life beyond these already too familiar
voices. With their departure for California as Mr. and
Mrs. Spencer Tucker, the parental nest in the Blue Grass
meadows knew them no more.

They submitted with equal cheerfulness to the privations
and excesses of their new conditions. Within three years
the schoolmaster developed into a lawyer and capitalist, the.
Blue Grass bride supplying a grace and ease to these tran.
sitions that were all her own. She softened the abruptness
of sudden wealth, mitigated the austerities of newly acquired
power, and made the most glaring incongruity picturesque.
Only one thing seemed to limit their progress in the region
of these possibilities. They were childless. It was as if
they had exhausted the future in their own youth, leaving
little or nothing for another generation to do.

A southwesterly storm was beating against the dressing-
room windows of their new house in one of the hilly
suburbs of San Francisco, and threatening the unseason-
able frivolity of the stueco ornamentation of cornice and
balcony. Mrs. Tucker had been called from the contempla-
tion of the dreary prospect without by the arrival of a visi-
tor. On entering the drawing-room she found him engaged
in a half-admiring, half-resentful examination of its new
furniture and hangings. Mrs. Tucker at once recognized
Mr. Calhoun Weaver, a former Blue Grass neighbor; with
swift feminine intuition she also felt that his slight antago
nism was likely to be transferred from her furniture to her-
self. Waiving it with the lazy amiability of Southern
indifference, she welcomed him by the familiarity of a
Christian name.

“JT reckoned that mebbee you opined old Blue Grass
friends would n’t naturally hitch on to them fancy doin’s,”
he said, glancing around the apartment to avoid her clear
eyes, as if resolutely setting himself against the old charm
128 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

of her manner as he had against the more recent glory of
her surroundings; ‘‘ but I thought I’d just drop in for the
sake of old times.”

“Why should n’t you, Cal?” said Mrs. Tucker with a
frank smile. :

“Especially as I’m going up to Sacramento to-night with
some influential friends,” he continued, with an ostentation
calculated to resist the assumption of her charms and her
furniture. ‘Senator Dyce of Kentucky, and his cousin
Judge Briggs ; perhaps you know ’em, or maybe Spencer —
I mean Mr. Tucker — does.”

“T reckon,” said Mrs. Tucker smiling; ‘but tell me
something about the boys and girls at Vineville, and about
yourself. You’re looking well, and right smart too.”
She paused to give due emphasis to this latter recognition
of a huge gold chain with which her visitor was somewhat
ostentatiously trifling.

“T didn’t know as you cared to hear anything about
Blue Grass,’’ he returned, a little abashed. “I’ve been
away from there some time myself,’’ he added, his uneasy
vanity taking fresh alarn: at the faint suspicion of patronage
on the part of his hostess. “They ’re doin’ well though;
perhaps as well as some others.”

“ And you’re not married yet,” continued Mrs. Tucker,
oblivious of the innuendo. ‘ Ah, Cal,” she added archly,
“T am afraid you are as fickle as ever. What poor girl in
Vineville have you left pining ?”

The simple face of the man before her flushed with fool-
ish gratification at this old-fashioned, ambiguous flattery.
“Now look yer, Belle,’ he said, chuckling, “if you’re
talking of old times, and you think I bear malice agin
Spencer, why ’? —

But Mrs. Tucker interrupted what might have been an
inopportune sentimental retrospect with a finger of arch but
languid warning. “ That will do! I’m dying to know all
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 129

about it, and you must stay to dinner and tell me. It’s
right mean you can’t see Spencer too; but he isu’t back
from Sacramento yet.”

Grateful as a téte-a-téte with his old neighbor in her
niore prosperous surroundings would have been, if only for
the sake of later gossiping about it, he felt it would be
inconsistent with his pride and his assumption of present
business. More than that, he was uneasily conscious that
in Mrs. Tucker’s simple and unaffected manner there was a
greater superiority than he had ever noticed during their
previous acquaintance. He would have felt kinder to her
had she shown any “airs and graces,” which he could have
commented upon and forgiven. He stammered some vague
excuse of preoccupation, yet lingered in the hope of saying
something which, if not aggressively unpleasant, might at
feast transfer to her indolent serenity some of his own
irritation. ‘I reckon,” he said, as he moved hesitatingly
toward the door, “that Spencer has made himself easy and
secure in them business risks he’s taking. That ’ere Ala-
meda ditch affair they ’re talking so much about is a mighty
big thing, rather too big if it ever got to falling back on
him. But I suppose he’s accustomed to take risks ?”

‘Of course he is,” said Mrs. Tucker gayly. ‘‘ He mar-
ried me.”

The visitor smiled feebly, but was not equal to the op-
portunity offered for gallant repudiation. ‘But suppose
you ain’t accustomed to risks ? ”

“Why not? I married him,” said Mrs. Tucker.

Mr. Calhoun Weaver was human, and succumbed to this
last charming audacity. He broke into a noisy but genuine
laugh, shook Mrs. Tucker’s hand with effusion, said, ‘‘ Now
that’s regular Blue Grass and no mistake!” and retreated
under cover of his hilarity. In the hall he made a rallying.
stand to repeat confidentially to the servant who had over.
heard them, “ Blue Grass all over, you bet your life,” and,
130 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

‘opening the door, was apparently swallowed up in the tem.
pest.

Mrs. Tucker’s smile kept her lips until she had returned
to her room, and even then languidly shone in her eyes for
‘some minutes after, as she gazed abstractedly from her w‘n-
dow on the storm-tossed bay in the distance. Perhaps some
‘girlish vision of the peaceful Blue Grass plain momentarily
usurped the prospect; but it is to be doubted if there was
much romance in that retrospect, or that it was more inter-
esting to her than the positive and sharply cut outlines of
the practical life she now led. Howbeit she soon forgot this
fancy in lazily watching a boat that, in the teeth of the gale,
was beating round Alcatraz Island. Although ‘at times a
mere blank speck on the gray waste of foam, a closer scrutiny
showed it to be one of those lateen-rigged Italian fishing-
boats that so often flecked the distant bay. Lost in the
sudden darkening of rain, or reappearing beneath the lifted
curtain of the squall, she watched it weather the island, and
then turn its laboring but persistent course toward the open
channel, <A rent in the Indian-inky sky, that showed the
narrowing portals of the Golden Gate beyond, revealed un-
expetedly, as the destination of the little craft, a tall ship
that hitherto lay hidden in the mist of the Saucelito shore.
As the distance lessened between boat and ship, they were
again lost in the downward swoop of anotner squall. When
it lifted, the ship was creeping under the headland towards
the open sea, but the boat was gone. Mrs. Tucker in vain
rubbed the pane with her handkerchief — it had vanished.
Meanwhile the ship, as she neared the Gate, drew out from
the protecting headland, stood outlined for a moment with
spars and canvas hearsed in black against the lurid rent in
the horizon, and then seemed to sink slowly into the heav-
ing obscurity beyond. A sudden onset of rain against the
windows obliterated the remaining prospect; the entrance
of a servant completed the diversion.
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 131

“ Captain Poindexter, ma’am !”

Mrs. Tucker lifted her pretty eyebrows interrogatively,
Captain Poindexter was a legal friend of her husband, and
had dined there frequently; nevertheless she asked, ‘ Did
you tell him Mr. Tucker was not at home ? ”

“¢ Yes, 7m.”

“Did he ask for me?”

“ Yes, ’m.”

“Tell him I’ll be down directly.”

Mrs. Tucker’s quiet face did not betray the fact that this
second visitor was even less interesting than the first. In
her heart she did not like Captain Poindexter. With a
clever woman’s instinct, she had early detected the fact that
he had a superior, stronger nature than her husband ; as a
loyal wife, she secretly resented the occasional unconscious
exhibition of this fact on the part of his intimate friend in
their familiar intercourse. Added to this slight jealousy
there was a certain moral antagonism between herself and
the captain which none but themselves knew. They were
both philosophers, but Mrs. Tucker’s serene and languid
optimism would not tolerate the compassionate and kind-
hearted pessimisms of the lawyer. ‘ Knowing what Jack
Poindexter does of human nature,” her husband had once
said, “it’s mighty fine in him to be so kind and forgiving.
You ought to like him better, Belle.” ‘“ And qualify myself
to be forgiven,” said the lady pertly. ‘I don’t see what
you’re driving at, Belle; I give it up,” had responded the
puzzled husband. Mrs. Tucker kissed his high but foolish
forehead tenderly, and said, “I’m glad you don’t, dear.”

Meanwhile her second visitor had, like the first, em-
ployed the interval in a critical survey of the glories of the
new furniture, but with apparently more compassion than
resentment in his manner. Once only had his expression
changed. Over the fireplace hung a large photograph of
Mr. Spencer Tucker. It was retouched, refined, and ideal-
132 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

ized in the highest style of that polite and diplomatic art,
As Captain Poindexter looked upon the fringed hazel eyes,
the drooping raven mustache, the clustering ringlets, and
the Byronic full throat and turned-down collar of his friend,
a smile of exhausted humorous tolerance and affectionate
impatience curved his lips. ‘ Well, you are a fool, are n’t
you?” he apostrophized it half audibly.

He was standing before the picture as she entered. Even
in the trying contiguity of that peerless work he would
have been called a fine-looking man. As he advanced to
greet her, it was evident that his military title was not one
of the mere fanciful sobriquets of the locality. In his
erect figure and the disciplined composure of limb and atti-
tude there were still traces of the refined academic rigors of
West Point. The pliant adaptability of Western civili-
zation, which enabled him, three years before, to leave the
army and transfer his executive ability to the more profit-
able profession of the law, had loosed sash and shoulder-
strap, but had not entirely removed the restraint of the one,
nor the bearing of the other.

“Spencer is in Sacramento,’ began Mrs. Tucker in lan-
guid explanation, after the first greetings were over.

“T knew he was not here,’ replied Captain Poindexter
gently, as he drew the proffered chair towards her, “ but
this is business that concerns you both.” He stopped and
glanced upwards at the picture. “I suppose you know
nothing of his business ? Of course not,’ he added reas-
suringly, “nothing, absolutely nothing, certainly.” He
said this so kindly, and yet so positively, as if to promptly
dispose of that question before going further, that she as-
sented mechanically. ‘ Well, then, he’s taken some big
risks in the way of business, and — well, things have gone
bad with him, you know. Very bad! Really, they could n’t
be worse! Of course it was dreadfully rash and all that,”
he went on, as if commenting upon the amusing wayward:
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 134

ness of 2 child; ‘but the result is the usual smash-up of
everything, money, credit, and all!” He laughed, and
added, “ Yes, he’s got cut off — mules and baggage regu-
larly routed and dispersed! I’m in earnest.’ He raised
his eyebrows and frowned slightly, as if to deprecate any
corresponding hilarity on the part of Mrs. Tucker, or any
attempt to make too light of the subject, and then rising,
placed his hands behind his back, beamed half humorously
upon her from beneath her husband’s picture, and repeated,
“That ’s so.”

Mrs. Tucker instinctively knew that he spoke the truth,
and that it was impossible for him to convey it in any
other than his natural manner; but between the shock and
the singular influence of that manner she could at first only
say, ‘You don’t mean it!” fully conscious of the utter
inanity of the remark, and that it seemed scarcely less cold-
blooded than his own.

Poindexter, still smiling, nodded.

She arose with an effort. She had recovered from the
first shock, and pride lent her a determined calmness that
more than equaled Poindexter’s easy philosophy.

“Where is he ? ” she asked.

“At sea, and I hope by this time where he cannot be
found or followed.”

Was her momentary glimpse of the outgoing ship a coin-
cidence or only a vision? She was confused and giddy,
but, mastering her weakness, she managed to continue in a
lower voice : —

“You have no message for me from him? He told you
nothing to tell me? ”

‘‘ Nothing, absolutely nothing,” replied Poindexter. “Tt
was as much as he could do, I reckon, to get fairly away
before the crash came.”

“Then you did not see him go?”

“ Well, no,’ said Poindexter. “I’d hardly have mam
134 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

aged things in this way.” He checked himself, and added,
with a forgiving smile, ‘ But he was the best judge of what
he needed, of course.”

‘‘T suppose I will hear from him,” she said quietly, “as
soon as he is safe. He must have had enough else to think
about, poor fellow.”

She said this so naturally and quietly that Poindexter was
deceived. He had no idea that the collected woman before
him was thinking only of solitude and darkness, of her own
room, and madly longing to be there. He said, “ Yes, I
dare say,” in quite another voice, and glanced at the picture.
But as she remained standing, he continued more earnestly,
“TJ did n’t come here to tell you what you might read in the
newspapers to-morrow morning, and what everybody might
tell you. Before that time I want you to do something to
save a fragment of your property from the ruin; do you
understand ? I want you to make a rally, and bring off
something in good order.”

“ For him ?” said Mrs. Tucker, with brightening eyes.

“ Well, yes, of course — if you like — but as if for your-
self. Do you know the Rancho de los Cuervos ? ”

“cc T do.”’

“Tt’s almost the only bit of real property your husband
hasn’t sold, mortgaged, or pledged. Why it was exempt,
or whether only forgotten, I can’t say.”

“Tl tell you why,” said Mrs. Tucker, with a slight re-
turn of color. “It was the first land we ever bought, and
Spencer always said it should be mine, and he would build
a new house on it.”

Captain Poindexter smiled and nodded at the picture.
“Oh, he did say that, did he ? Well, that’sevidence. But
you see he never gave you the deed, and by sunrise to-mor-
zow his creditors will attach it — unless’? —

“TInless ”? — repeated Mrs. Tucker, with kindling eyes.

“ Unless,’”? continued Captain Poindexter, “they happen
to find zow in nossession.”

”
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 135

“T’ll go,” said Mrs. Tucker.

“Of course you will,” returned Poindexter pleasantly.
“ Only, as it’s a big contract to take, suppose we see how
you can fill it. It’s forty miles to Los Cuervos, and you
can’t trust yourself to steamboat or stage-coach. The steam-
boat left an hour ago.”

“Tf I had only known this then!” ejaculated Mrs.
Tucker.

“J knew it, but you had company then,” said Poindexter,
with ironical gallantry, “and I wouldn’t disturb you.”
Without saying how he knew it, he continued, “In the
stage-coach you might be recognized. You must go ina
private conveyance and alone; even I cannot go with you,
for I must go on before and meet you there. Can you drive
forty miles ?”

Mrs. Tucker lifted up her abstracted pretty lids. “T
once drove fifty — at home,” she returned simply.

“Good! And I dare say you did it then for fun. Do
it now for something real and personal, as we lawyers say.
You will have relays and a plan of the road. It’s rough
weather for a pasear, but all the better for that. Youll
have less company on the road.”

“How soon can I go?” she asked.

“The sooner the better. I’ve arranged everything for
you already,” he continued with a laugh. ‘Come now,
that’s a compliment to you, isn’t it?” He smiled a mo-
ment in her steadfast, earnest face, and then said more
gravely, “ You’ll do. Now listen.”

He then carefully detailed his plan. There was so little
of excitement or mystery in their manner that the servant,
who returned to light the gas, never knew that the ruin
and bankruptcy of the house was being told before her, or
that its mistress was planning her secret flight.

“ Good-afternoon. I will see you to-morrow then,” said
Poindexter, raising his eyes to hers as the servant opened
the door for him.
1386 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

“ Good-afternoon,” repeated Mrs. Tucker, quietly an-
swering his look. ‘You need not light the gas in my
room, Mary,” she continued in the same tone of voice as
the door closed upon him; “TI shall lie down fora few
moments, and then I may run over to the Robinsons for
the evening.”

She regained her room composedly. The longing desire
to bury her head in her pillow and “ think out” her posi-
tion had gone. She did not apostrophize her fate, she did
not weep; few real women do in the access of calamity, or
when there is anything else to be done. She felt that she
knew it all; she believed she had sounded the profoundest
depths of the disaster, and seemed already so old in her ex-
perience that she almost fancied she had been prepared for
it. Perhaps she did not fully appreciate it. To a life like
hers it was only an incident, the mere turning of a page of
the illimitable book of youth ; the breaking up of what she
_ mow felt had become a monotony. In fact, she was not
quite sure she had ever been satisfied with their present suc-
cess. Had it brought her all she expected? She wanted
to say this to her husband, not only to comfort him, poor
fellow, but that they might come to a better understanding
of life in the future. She was not perhaps different from
other loving women, who, believing in this unattainable goal
of matrimony, have sought it in the various episodes of
fortune or reverses, in the bearing of children, or the loss
of friends. In her childless experience there was no other
life that had taken root in her circumstances and might suffer
transplantation ; only she and her husband could lose o-
profit by the change. The “ better” understanding would
come under other conditions than these.

She would have gone superstitiously to the window to
gaze in the direction of the vanished ship, but another in-
stinct restrained her. She would put aside all yearning for
him until she had done something to help him, and earned
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 137

the confidence he seemed to have withheld. Perhaps it
was pride — perhaps she never really believed his exodus
was distant or complete.

With a full knowledge that to-morrow the various orna-
ments and pretty trifles around her would be in the hands
of the law, she gathered only a few necessaries for her
flight and some familiar personal trinkets. I am con-
strained to say that this self-abnegation was more fastidious
than moral. She had no more idea of the ethics of bank-
ruptecy than any other charming woman; she simply did
not like to take with her any contagious memory of the
chapter of the life just closing. She glanced around the
home she was leaving without a lingering regret; there
was no sentiment of tradition or custom that might be
destroyed ; her roots lay too near the surface to suffer dis-
location ; the happiness of her childless union had depended
upon no domestic centre, nor was its flame sacred to any
local hearthstone. It was without a sigh that, when night
had fully fallen, she slipped unnoticed down the staircase.
At the door of the drawing-room she paused, and then en-
tered with the first guilty feeling of shame she had known
that evening. Looking stealthily around, she mounted a
chair before her husband’s picture, kissed the irreproachable
mustache hurriedly, said, ‘‘ You foolish darling, you!” and
slipped out agan. With this touching indorsement of the
views of a rival philosopher, she closed the door softly, and
left her home forever.

II

The wind and rain had cleared the unfrequented suburb
of any observant lounger, and the darkness, lit only by far-
spaced, gusty lamps, hid her hastening figure. She had
varely crossed the second street when she heard the quick
elatter of hoofs behind her; a buggy drove up to the curb-
138 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

stone, and Poindexter leaped out. She entered quickly,
but for a moment he still held the reins of the impatient
horse. “ He’s rather fresh,” he said, eyeing her keenly ;
“are you sure you can manage him ? ”

“Give me the reins,” she said simply.

He placed them in the two firm, well-shaped hands that
reached from the depths of the vehicle, and was satisfied.
Yet he lingered.

*Tt’s rough work for a lone woman,” he said almost
eurtly. ‘J can’t go with you, but, speak frankly, is there
any man you know whom you can trust well enough to
take? It’s not tuo late yet; think a moment!”

He paused over the buttoning of the leather apron of the
vehicle.

“No, there is none,” answered the voice from the in-
terior; “and it’s better so. Is all ready ?”

“ One moment more.” He had recovered his half-ban-
tering manner. “You havea friend and countryman al-
ready with you, do you know ? Your horse is Blue Grass.
Good-night.”

With these words ringing in her ears she began her jour-
ney. The horse, as if eager to maintain the reputation
which his native district had given his race, as well as the
race of the pretty woman behind him, leaped impatiently
forward. But pulled together by the fine and firm fingers
that seemed to guide rather than check his exuberance, he
presently struck into the long, swinging pace of his kind,
and kept it throughout without “ break” or acceleration.
Over the paved streets the light buggy rattled, and the slen-
der shafts danced around his smooth barrel; but when they
touched the level highroad, horse and vehicle slipped for-
ward through the night, a swift and noiseless phantom.
Mrs. Tucker could see his graceful back dimly rising and
falling before her with tireless rhythm, and could feel the,
intelligent pressure of his mouth, until it seemed the respon-.
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 139

sive grasp of a powerful but kindly hand. The faint glow
of conquest came to her cold cheek; the slight stirrings of
pride moved her preoccupied heart. A soft light filled her
hazel eyes. A desolate woman, bereft of hushand and home,
and flying through storm and night, she knew not where,
she still leaned forward towards her horse. “ Was he Blue
Grass, then, dear old boy ?” she gently cooed at him in the
darkness. He evidently was, and responded by blowing
her an ostentations equine kiss. “And he would be good
to his own forsaken Belle,” she murmured earessingly,
“and would n’t let any one harm her?’ But here, over-
come by the lazy witchery of her voice, he shook his head
so violently that Mrs. Tucker, after the fashion of her sex,
had the double satisfaction of demurely restraining the
passion she had evoked.

To avoil the more traveled thoroughfare, while the even-
ing was still early, it had been arranged that she should at
first take a less direct but less frequented road. This was
a famous pleasure-drive from San Francisco, a graveled and
sanded stretch of eight miles to the sea, and an ultimate
“eocktail,” in a “stately pleasure-dome decreed” among
the surf and recks of the Pacific shore. It was deserted
now, and left to the unobstructed sweep of the wind and
rain. Mrs. Tucker would not have chosen this road. With
the instinctive jealousy of a bucolic inland race born by
great rivers, she did not like the sea; and again, the dim
and dreary waste tended to recall the vision connected with
her husband’s flight, upon which she had resolutely shut her
eyes. But when she had reached it the road suddenly
turned, following the trend of the beach, and she was ex«
posed to the full power of its dread fascinations. The com-
bined roar of sea and shore was in her ears. As the direct
force of the gale had compelled her to furl the protecting
hood of the buggy to keep the light vehicle from oversetting
or drifting to leeward, she could no longer shut out the
140 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

heaving chaos on the right, from which the pallid ghosts of
dead and dying breakers dimly rose and sank as if in awful
salutation. At times through the darkness a white sheet
appeared spread before the path and beneath the wheels of
the buggy, which, when withdrawn with a reluctant hiss,
seemed striving to drag the exhausted beach seaward with
it. But the blind terror of her horse, who swerved at
every sweep of the surge, shamed her own half-supersti-
tious fears, and with the effort to control his alarm she
regained her own self-possession, albeit with eyelashes wet
not altogether with the salt spray from the sea, This was
followed by a reaction, perhaps stimulated by her victory
over the beaten animal, when for a time, she knew not
how long, she felt only a mad sense of freedom and power,
oblivious of even her sorrows, her lost home and husband,
and with intense feminine consciousness she longed to be a
man. She was scarcely aware that the track turned again
inland until the beat of the horse’s hoofs on the firm ground
and an acceleration of: speed showed her she had left the
beach and the mysterious sea behind her, and she remem-
bered that she was near the end of the first stage of her
journey. Half an hour later the twinkling lights of the
roadside inn where she was to change horses rose out of the
darkness.

Happily for her, the hostler considered the horse, who
had a local reputation, of more importance than the un-
known muffled figure in the shadow of the unfurled hood,
and confined his attention to the animal. After a careful
examination of his feet and a few comments addressed
solely to the superior creation, he led him away. Mrs.
Tucker would have liked to part more affectionately from
her four-footed compatriot, and felt a sudden sense of lone-
liness at the loss of her new friend, but a recollection of
certain cautions of Captain Poindexter’s kept her mute.
Nevertheless, the hostler’s ostentatious adjuration of “ Now
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 141

then, are n’t you going to bring out that mustang for the
sefiora ?”’ puzzled her. It was not until the fresh horse
was put to, and she had flung a piece of gold into the
attendant’s. hand, that the “Gracias”? of his unmistakable
Saxon speech revealed to her the reason of the lawyer’s
caution. Poindexter had evidently represented her to these
people as a native Californian who did not speak English.
In her inconsistency her blood took fire at this first sug-
gestion of deceit, and burned in her face. Why should
he try to pass her off as anybody else? Why should she
not use her own, her husband’s name? She stopped and
bit her lip.

It was but the beginning of an uneasy train of thought.
She suddenly found herself thinking of her visitor, Cal-
houn Weaver, and not pleasantly. He would hear of their
ruin to-morrow, perhaps of her own flight. He would
remember his visit, and what would he think of her deceit-
ful frivolity ? Would he believe that she was then ignorant
of the failure? It was her first sense of any accounta-
bility to others than herself, but even then it was rather
owing to an uneasy consciousness of what her husband
must feel if he were subjected to the criticisms of men like
Calhoun. She wondered if others knew that he had kept
her in ignorance of his flight. Did Poindexter know it, or
had he only entrapped her into the admission? Why had
she not been clever enough to make him think that she
knew it already ? For the moment she hated Poindexter
for sharing that secret. Yet this was again followed by a
new impatience of her husband’s want of insight into her
ability to help him. Of course the poor fellow could not
bear to worry her, could not bear to face such men as Cal-
houn, or even Poindexter (she added exultingly to herself),
but he might have sent her a line as he fled, only to pre-
pare her to meet and combat the shame alone. It did not
occur to her unsophisticated singleness of nature that she
142 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

was accepting as an error of feeling what the world would
call cowardly selfishness.

At midnight the storm lulled, and a few stars trembled
through the rent clouds. Her eyes had become-accustomed
to the darkness, and her country instincts, a little overlaid
by the urban experiences of the last few years, came again’
to the surface. She felt the fresh, cool radiation from
outlying, upturned fields, the faint, sad odors from dim
stretches of pricking grain and quickening leaf, and won-
dered if at Los Cuervos it might be possible to reproduce
the peculiar verdure of her native district. She béguiled
her fancy by an ambitious plan of retrieving their fortunes
by farming; her comfortable tastes had lately rebelled
against the homeless mechanical cultivation of those des-
olate but teeming Californian acres, and for a moment
indulged in a vision of a vine-clad cottage home that in any
other woman would have been sentimental. Her cramped
limbs aching, she took advantage of the security of the
darkness and the familiar contiguity of the fields to get
down from the vehicle, gather her skirts together, and run
at the head of the mustang, until her chill blood was
thawed, night drawing a modest veil over this charming
revelation of the nymph and woman. But the sudden
shadow of a coyote checked the scouring feet of this swift
Camilla, and sent her back precipitately to the buggy.
Nevertheless, she was refreshed and able to pursue her
journey, until the cold gray of early morning found her at
the.end of her second stage.

Her route was changed again from the main highway,
rendered dangerous by the approach of day and the con-
tiguity of the neighboring rancheros. The road was rough
and hilly, her new horse and vehicle in keeping with the
rudeness of the route—by far the most difficult of her
whole journey. ‘The rare wagon tracks that indicated her
road were often scarcely discernible; at times they led
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 143

her through openings in the half-cleared woods, skirted
suspicious morasses, painfully climbed the smooth, dome-
like hills, or wound along perilous slopes at a dangerous
angle. Twice she had to alight and cling to the sliding
wheels on one of those treacherous inclines, or drag them
from impending ruts or immovable mire. In the growing
light she could distinguish the distant, low-lying marshes
eaten by encroaching sloughs and insidious channels, and
beyond them the faint gray waste of the lower bay. A
darker peninsula in the marsh she knew to be the extreme
boundary of her future home: the Rancho de los Cuervos.
In another hour she began to descend to the plain, and
once more to approach the main road, which now ran
nearly parallel with her track. She scanned it cautiously
for any early traveler! it stretched north and south in
apparent unending solitude. She struck into it boldly, and
urged her horse to the top of his speed, until she reached
the cross-road that led to the rancho. But here she paused
and allowed the reins to drop idly on the mustang’s back.
A singular and unaccountable irresolution seized her. The
difficulties of her journey were over; the rancho lay scarcely
two miles away; she had achieved the most important part
of her task in the appointed time; but she hesitated. What
had she come for ? She tried to recall Poindexter’s words,
even her own enthusiasm, but in vain. She was going to
take possession of her husband’s property, she knew, that
was all. But the means she had taken seemed now so
exageerated and mysterious for that simple end, that she
began to dread an impending something, or some vague
danger she had not considered, that she was rushing blindly
to meet. Full of this strange feeling, she almost mechan
ically stopped her horse as she entered the cross-road.

From this momentary hesitation a singular sound aroused
her. It seemed at first like the swift hurrying by of some
viewless courier of the air, the vague alarm of some invisi-
144 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

ble flying herald, or like the inarticulate cry that precedes
a storm. It seemed to rise and fall around her as if with
some changing urgency of purpose. Raising her eyes, she
suddenly recognized the two far-stretching lines of telegraph
wire above her head, and knew the exolian ery of the morn-
ing wind along its vibrating chords. Butit brought another
and more practical fear to her active brain. Perhaps even
now the telegraph might be anticipating her! Had Poin-
dexter thought of that? She hesitated no longer, but laying
the whip on the back of her jaded mustang, again hurried
forward.

As the level horizon grew more distinct, her attention
was attracted by the white sail of a small boat lazily thread-
ing the sinuous channel of the slough. It-might be Poin-
dexter arriving by the more direct route from the steamboat
that occasionally laid off the ancient embarcadero of the
Los Cuervos Rancho. But even while watching it her
quick ear caught the sound of galloping hoofs behind her.
She turned quickly and saw she was followed by a horseman.
But her momentary alarm was succeeded by a feeling of
relief as she recognized the erect figure and square shoul-
ders of Poindexter. Yet she could not help thinking that
he looked more like a militant scout, and less like a cau-
tious legal adviser, than ever.

With unaffected womanliness she rearranged her slightly
disordered hair as he drew up beside her. ‘I thought you
were in yonder boat,” she said.

“Not I,” he laughed; ‘I distanced you by the high-
toad two hours, and have been reconnoitring, until I saw
you hesitate at the cross-roads.”

“ But who is in the boat?” asked Mrs. Tucker, partly
to hide her embarrassment.

“Only some early Chinese market gardener, I dare say.
But you are safe now. You are on your own land. You
passed the boundary monument of the rancho five minutes
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 148

ago. Look! All you see before you is yours from the
embarcadero to yonder Coast Range.”

The tone of half raillery did not, however, cheer Mrs.
Tucker. She shuddered slightly, and cast her eyes over
the monotonous sea of tule and meadow.

“Tt doesn’t look pretty, perhaps,” continued Poindexter,
“but it’s the richest land in the State, and the embarcadero
will some day be a town. I suppose you’ll call it Blue
Grassville. But you seem tired!” he said, suddenly drop-
ping his voice to a tone of half-humorous sympathy.

Mrs. Tucker managed to get rid of an impending tear
under the pretense of clearing her eyes. ‘ Are we nearly
there ? ” she asked.

“Nearly. You know,” he added, with the same half-
mischievous, half-sympathizing gayety, ‘it’s not exactly
a palace you’re coming to,—hardly. It’s the old casa
that has been deserted for years, but I thought it better
you should go into possession there than take up your
abode at the shanty where your husband’s farm-hands are.
No one will know when you take possession of the casa,
while the very hour of your arrival at the shanty would be
known; and if they should make any trouble’? —

“Tf they should make any trouble?” repeated Mrs.
Tucker, lifting her frank, inquiring eyes to Poindexter.

His horse suddenly rearing from an apparently acci-
dental prick of the spur, it was a minute or two before he
was able to explain. ‘‘I mean if this ever comes up as a
matter of evidence, you know. But here we are! ”

What had seemed to be an overgrown mound rising
like an island out of the dead level of the grassy sea now
resolved itself into a collection of adobe walls, eaten and
incrusted with shrubs and vines, that bore some resem-
blance to the usual uninhbabited-looking exterior of a
Spanish-American dwelling. Apertures that might have
been lance-shaped windows or only cracks and fissures in
146 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

the walls were choked up with weeds and grass, and gave
no passing glimpse of the interior. Entering a ruinous
corral they came to a second entrance, which proved to be
the patio or courtyard. The deserted wooden corridor, with
beains, rafters, and floors whitened by the sun and wind,
contained a few withered leaves, dryly rotting skins, and
thongs of leather, as if undisturbed by human care. But
among these scattered débris of former life and habitation
there was no noisome or unclean suggestion of decay. <A
faint spiced odor of desiccation filled the bare walls. There
was no slime on stone or sun-dried brick. In place of
fungus or discolored moisture the dust of efflorescence
whitened in the obscured corners. The elements had
picked clean the bones of the old anc crumbling tenement
ere they should finally absorb it.

A withered old peon woman, who in dress, complexion,
and fibrous hair might have been an animated fragment of
the débris, rustled out of a low vaulted passage and wel.
comed them with a feeble crepitation. Following her inte
the dim interior, Mrs. Tucker was surprised to find some
slight attempt at comfort and even adornment in the two
or three habitable apartments. They were scrupulously
clean and dry, two qualities which in her feminine eyes
atoned for poverty of material.

“JT could not send anything from San Bruno, the near-
est village, without attracting attention,” explained Poin.
dexter; “but if you can manage to picnic here for a day
longer, IH get one of our Chinese friends here,” he pointed
to the slough, “to bring over, for his return cargo from
across the bay, any necessaries you may want. There is
no danger of his betraying you,’’ he added, with an ironi-
cal smile; “ Chinamen and Indians are, by an ingenious
provision of the statute of California, incapable of giving
evidence against a white person. You can trust your
handmaiden perfectly —even if she can’t trust you. That
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 147

is your sacred privilege under the constitution. And now,
as I expect to catch the up boat ten miles from hence, I
must say ‘good-by’ until to-morrow night. I hope to
bring you then some more definite plans for the future.
The worst is over.” He held her hand for a moment, and
with a graver voice continued, “ You have done it very|
well — do you know — very well!”

In the slight embarrassment produced by his sudden
change of manner she felt that her thanks seemed awkward
and restrained. ‘Don’t thank me,” he laughed, with a
prompt return of his former levity; ‘that’s my trade. I
only advised. You have saved yourself like a plucky
woman —shall I say like Blue Grass? Good-by!” He
mounted his horse, but, as if struck by an after-thought,
wheeled and drew up by her side again. ‘If I were you
I would n’t see many strangers for a day or two, and
listen to as little news as a woman possibly can.” He
laughed again, waved her a half-gallant, half-military sa~
lute, and was gone. The question she had been trying to
frame, regarding the probability of communication with her
husband, remained unasked. At least she had saved her
pride before him.

Addressing herself to the care of her narrow household,
she mechanically put away the few things she had brought
with her, and began to readjust the scant furniture. She
was a little discomposed at first at the absence of bolts, locks,
and even window-fastenings until assured, by Concha’s evi-
dent inability to comprehend her concern, that they were
quite unknown at Los Cuervos. Her slight knowledge of
Spanish was barely sufficient to make her wants known, so
that the relief of conversation with her only companion was
debarred her, and she was obliged to content herself with
the sapless, crackling smiles and withered genuflexions that
the old woman dropped like dead leaves in her path. It
was staring noon when, the house singing like an empty
148 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

shell in the monotonous wind, she felt she could stand the
solitude no longer, and, crossing the glaring patio and whis-
tling corridor, made her way to the open gateway.

But the view without seemed to intensify her desolation.
The broad expanse of the shadowless plain reached appar-
ently to the Coast Range, trackless and unbroken save by
one or two clusters of dwarfed oaks, which at that distance
were but mossy excrescences on the surface, barely raised
above the dead level. On the other side the marsh took
up the monotony and carried it, scarcely interrupted by un-
defined water-courses, to the faintly marked-out horizon line
of the remote bay. Scattered and apparently motionless
black spots on the meadows that gave a dreary significance
to the title of “The Crows ” which the rancho bore, and
sudden gray clouds of sandpipers on the marshes, that rose
and vanished down the wind, were the only signs of life.
Even the white sail of the early morning was gone.

She stood there until the aching of her straining eyes and
the stiffening of her limbs in the cold wind compelled her to
seek the sheltered warmth of the courtyard. Here she en-
deavored to make friends with a bright-eyed lizard, who was
sunning himself in the corridor; a graceful little creature in
blue and gold, from whom sbe felt at other times she might
have fled, but whose beauty and harmlessness solitude had
made known to her. With misplaced kindness she tempted
it with bread-crumbs, with no other effect than to stiffen it
into stony astonishment. She wondered if she should be-
come like the prisoners she had read of in books, who
poured out their solitary affections on noisome creatures,
and she regretted even the mustang, which with the buggy
had disappeared under the charge of some unknown retainer
on her arrival, Was she not a prisoner ? The shutterless
windows, yawning doors, and open gate refuted the sugges-
tion, but the encompassing solitude and ‘trackless waste still
held her captive. Poindexter had told her it was four miles
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 149

to the shanty; she might walk there. Why had she given
her word that she would remain at the rancho until he
returned ?

The long day crept monotonously away, and she wel-
comed the night which shut out the dreary prospect. But
it brought no cessation of the harassing wind without, nor
surcease of the nervous irritation its perpetual and even ac-
tivity wrought upon her. It haunted her pillow even in her
exhausted sleep, and seemed to impatiently beckon her to
rise and follow it. It brought her feverish dreams of her
husband, footsore and weary, staggering forward under its
pitiless lash and clamorous outcry; she would have gone to
his assistance, but when she reached his side and held out
her arms to him it hurried her past with merciless power,
and, bearing her away, left him hopelessly behind. Jt was
broad day when she awoke. The usual night showers of the
waning rainy season had left no trace in sky or meadow;
the fervid morning sun had already dried the patio ; only the
restless, harrying wind remained.

Mrs. Tucker arose with aresolve She had learned from
Concha on the previous evening that a part of the shanty
was used as a tienda or shop for the laborers and rancheros.
Under the necessity of purchasing some articles, she would
go there and for a moment mingle with those people, who
would not recognize her. Even if they did, her instinct told
her it would be less to be feared than the hopeless uncer-
tainty of another day. As she left the house the wind
seemed to seize her as in her dream, and hurry her along
with it, until in a few moments the walls of the low casa
sank into the earth again, and she was alone but for the
breeze on the solitary plain. The level distance glittered
in the sharp light, a few crows with slant wings dipped
and ran down the wind before her, and a passing gleam on
the marsh was explained by the far-off cry of a curlew.

She had walked for an hour, upheld by the stimulus of
150 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

light and morning air, when the cluster of scrub oaks, which
was her destination, opened enough to show two rambling
sheds, before one of which was a wooden platform contain-
ing a few barrels and bones. As she approached nearer,
she could see that one or two horses were tethered under
the trees, that their riders were lounging by a horse-trough,
and that over an open door the word “ Tienda” was rudely
painted on a board, and as rudely illustrated by the wares
displayed at door and window. Accustomed as she was to
the poverty of frontier architecture, even the crumbling
walls of the old hacienda she had just left seemed pictur-
esque to the rigid angles of the thin, blank, unpainted shell
before her. :

One of the loungers, who was reading a newspaper aloud
as she advanced, put it aside and stared at her; there was
an evident commotion in the shop as she stepped upon the
platform, and when she entered, with breathless lips and
beating heart, she found herself the object of a dozen
curious eyes. Her quick pride resented the scrutiny and
recalled her courage, and it was with a slight coldness in
her usual lazy indifference that she leaned over the counter
and asked for the articles she wanted.

The request was followed by a dead silence. Mrs.
Tucker repeated it with some hauteur.

“JT reckon you don’t seem to know this store is in the
hands of the sheriff,” said one of the loungers.

Mrs. Tucker was not aware of it.

“Well, I don’t know any one who’s a better right tc
know than Spence Tucker’s wife,’’ said another with a coarse
laugh. The laugh was echoed by the others. Mrs. Tucker
saw the pit into which she had deliberately walked, but did
not flinch.

“Is there any one to serve here ?” she asked, turning
her clear eyes full upon the bystanders.

* You ’d better ask the sheriff. He was the last one te
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 151

sarve here. He sarved an attachment,” replied the inevi-
table humorist of all Californian assemblages.

“Ts he here ?”? asked Mrs. Tucker, disregarding the re-
newed laughter which followed this subtle witticism.

The loungers at the door made way for one of their party
who was half dragged, half pushed into the shop. “ Here
he is,’ said half a dozen eager voices, in the fond belief that
his presence might impart additional humor to the situation.
He cast a deprecating glance at Mrs. Tucker, and said, “It’s
so, madam! This yer place ts attached; but if there’s
anything you’re wanting, why I reckon, boys,” — he
turned half appealingly to the crowd, — “we could oblige
a lady.” There was a vague sound of angry opposition and
remonstrance from the back door of the shop, but the
majority, partly overcome by Mrs. Tucker’s beauty, assented.
“ Only,” continued the officer explanatorily, “‘ez these yer
goods are in the hands of the creditors, they ought to be
represented by an equivalent in money. If you’re expect-
ing they should be charged ”? —

“ But I wish to pay for them,” interrupted Mrs. Tucker,
with a slight flush of indignation; ‘I have the money.”

“Oh, I bet you have!” screamed a voice, as, overturn-
ing all opposition, the malcontent at the back door, in the
shape of an infuriated woman, forced her way into the shop.
“T’'ll bet you have the money! Look at her, boys! Look
at the wife of the thief, with the stolen money in diamonds
in her ears and rings on her fingers. She’s got money if
we’ve none. She can pay for what she fancies, if we
have n’t a cent to redeem the bed that’s stolen from unde:
us. Oh, yes, buy it all, Mrs. Spencer Tucker! buy the
whole shop, Mrs. Spencer Tucker, do you hear? And if
you ain’t satisfied then, buy my clothes, my wedding ring,
the only things your husband has n’t stolen.”

“T don’t understand you,” said Mrs, Tucker coldly,
turning towards the door. But with a flying leap across
52 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

the counter her relentless adversary stood between her and
retreat.

“You don’t understand! Perhaps you don’t under-
stand that your husband not only stole the hard labor of
these men, but even the little money they brought here
and trusted to his thieving hands. Perhaps you don’t
know that he stole my husband’s hard earnings, mortgaged
these very goods you want to buy, and that he is to-day a
convicted thief, a forger, and a runaway coward. Perhaps,
if you can’t understand me, you can read the newspaper.
Look!”’ She exultingly opened the paper the sheriff had
been reading aloud, and pointed to the displayed headlines.
‘‘Look! there are the very words, ‘ Forgery, Swindling,
Embezzlement!’ Do you see? And perhaps you can’t
understand this. Look! ‘Shameful Flight. Abandons
his Wife. Runs off with a Notorious’ ”?’ —

“Kasy, old gal, easy now. D—n it! Will you dry,
up? Tsay. Stop!”

It was too late! The sheriff had dashed the paper fror
the woman’s hand, but not until Mrs. Tucker had read a
single line, a line such as she had sometimes turned from
with weary scorn in her careless perusal of the daily shame-
ful chronicle of domestic infelicity. Then she had coldly
wondered if there could be any such men and women. And
now! ‘The crowd fell back before her; even the virago
was silenced as she looked at her face. The humorist’s
face was as white, but not as immobile, as he gasped,
“Christ ! if I don’t believe she knew nothin’ of it!”

For a moment the full force of such a supposition, with
all its poignancy, its dramatic intensity, and its pathos,
possessed the crowd. In the momentary clairvoyance of
enthusiasm they caught a glimpse of the truth, and hy one
of the strange reactions of human passion they only waited
for a word of appeal or explanation from her lips to throw
themselves at her feet. Had she simply told her story
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 153

they would have believed her; had she cried, fainted, or
gone into hysterics, they would have pitied her. She did
neither. Perhaps she thought of neither, or indeed of any-
thing that was then before her eyes. She walked erect to
the door, and turned upon the threshold. “I mean what
I say,” she said calmly. “I don’t understand you. But
whatever just claims you have upon my husband will be
paid by me, or by his lawyer, Captain Poindexter.”

She had lost the sympathy but not the respect of her
hearers. ‘They made way for her with sullen deference as
she passed out on the platform. But her adversary, protit-
ing by the last opportunity, burst into an ironical laugh.

‘‘Captain Poindexter, is it 2? Well, perhaps he’s safe to
pay your bill; but as for your husband’s ”? —

“That ’s another matter,” interrupted a familiar voice
with the greatest cheerfulness; ‘ that’s what you were
going to say, wasn’t it? Ha, ha! Well, Mrs. Patter-
son,” continued Poindexter, stepping from his buggy, ‘‘ you
never spoke a truer word in your life. — One moment, Mrs.
Tucker. Let me send you back in the buggy. Don’t mind
me. I can get a fresh horse of the sheriff. I’m quite at
home here.’”’ Then, turning to one of the bystanders, “I
say, Patterson, step a few paces this way, will you? A
little further from your wife, please. That willdo. You’ve
got a claim of five thousand dollars against the property,
have n’t you?”

6c Yes.”’

“Well, that woman just driving away is your one soli-
tary chance of getting a cent of it. If your wife insults her
again, that chance is gone. And if you do” —

“Well?”

“As sure as there is a God in Israel and a Supreme
Court of the State of California, 1711 kill you in your
tracks ! — Stay!”

Patterson turned. The irrepressible look of humorous
154 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

tolerance of all human frailty had suffused Poindexter’s
black eyes with mischievous moisture. ‘If you think it
quite safe to confide to your wife this prospect of her im-
provement by widowhood, you may !”

III

Mr. Patterson did not inform his wife of the lawyer’s
personal threat to himself. But he managed, after Poin-
dexter had left, to make her conscious that Mrs. Tucker
might be a power to be placated and feared. “ You’ve
shot off your mouth at her,’”’ he said argumentatively, “ and
whether you ’ve hit the mark or not you’ve had your say.
Ef you think it ’s worth a possible five thousand dollars and
interest to keep on, heave ahead. Ef you rather have the
chance of getting the rest in cash, you ’l] let up on her.”
“ You don’t suppose,” returned Mrs. Patterson contemp-
tuously, “that she’s got anything but what that man of hers
— Poindexter — lets her have?” ‘The sheriff says,” re-
torted Patterson surlily, “that she’s notified him that she
claims the rancho as a gift from her husband three years
ago, and she’s in possession now, and was so when the exe-
cution was out. It don’t make no matter,” he added, with
gloomy philosophy, “ who ’s got a full hand as long as we
ain’t got the cards to chip in. I wouldn’t ’a’ minded it,”
he continued meditatively, “‘ ef Spence Tucker had dropped
a hint to me afore he put out.” ‘ And I suppose,’’ said
Mrs. Patterson angrily, “ you’d have put out too?” “TI
reckon,”

Twice or thrice during the evening he referred, more or
less directly, to this lack of confidence shown by his late
debtor and employer, and seemed to feel it more keenly
than the loss of property. He confided his sentiments
quite openly to the sheriff in possession, over the whiskey

said Patterson simply.
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 155

and euchre with which these gentlemen avoided the diffi-
culties of their delicate relations. He brooded over it as
he handed the keys of the shop to the sheriff when they
parted for the night, and was still thinking of it when the
house was closed, everybody gone to bed, and he was fetch-
ing a fresh jug of water from the well. The moon was at
times obscured by flying clouds, the avant-couriers of the
regular evening shower. He was stooping over the well,
when he sprang suddenly to his feet again. “ Who’s
there ?””? he demanded sharply.

“ Hush !”? said a voice so low and faint it might have
been a whisper of the wind in the palisades of the corral.
But, indistinct as it was, it was the voice of a man he was
thinking of as far away, and it sent a thrill of alternate awe
and pleasure through his pulses,

He glanced quickly round. The moon was hidden by a
passing cloud, and only the faint outlines of the house he
had just quitted were visible. ‘Is that you, Spence? ”
he said tremulously.

“Yes,” replied the voice, and a figure dimly emerged
from the corner of the corral.

“ Lay low, lay low, for God’s sake,” said Patterson, hur-
riedly throwing himself upon the apparition. “The sheriff
and his posse are in there.”

“But I must speak to you a moment,” said the figure.

“Wait,” said Patterson, glancing toward the building.
Its blank, shutterless windows revealed no inner light; a
profound silence encompassed it. ‘ Come quick,” he whis-
pered. Letting his grasp slip down to the unresisting hand
of the stranger, he half dragged, half led him, brushing
against the wall, into the open door of the deserted bar-room
he had just quitted, locked the inner door, poured a glass of
whiskey from a decanter, gave it to him, and then watched
him drain it at a single draught. The moon came out, and
falling through the bare windows full upon the stranger’s
156 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

face, revealed the artistic but slightly disheveled curls and
mustache of the fugitive, Spencer Tucker.

Whatever may have been the real influence of this unfor-
tunate man upon his fellows, it seemed to find expression
in a singular unanimity of criticism. Patterson looked at
him with a half-dismal, half-welcoming smile. ‘Well, you
are a h—ll of a fellow, ain’t you ?”

Spencer Tucker passed his hand through his hair and
lifted it from his forehead, with a gesture at once emotional
and theatrical. “I ama man with a price on me!” he
said bitterly. “Give me up to the sheriff, and you’ll get
five thousand dollars. Help me, and you’ll get nothing,
That’s my d—d luck, and yours too, I suppose.”

“JT reckon you’re right there,”’ said Patterson gloomily.
“But I thought you got clean away — went off in a ship” —

“Went off in a boat to a ship,” interrupted Tucker sav-
agely ; “‘ went off to a ship that had all my things on board
—everything. The cursed boat capsized in a squall just
off the Heads. The ship, d—n her, sailed away, the men
thinking I was drowned likely, and that they’d make a
good thing off my goods, I reckon.”

‘“ But the girl, Inez, who was with you, did n’t she make
a row?”

“ Quien sabe?” returned Tucker, with a reckless laugh.
s¢ Well, I hung on like grim death to that boat’s keel until
tne of those Chinese fishermen, in a ‘dug-out,’ hauled me
n opposite Saucelito. I chartered him and his dug-out to
bring me down here.”

‘““Why here?” asked Patterson, with a certain ostenta-
tious caution that ill concealed his pensive satisfaction.

“You may well ask,’ returned Tucker, with an equal
ostentation of bitterness, as he slightly waved his companion
away. But I reckoned I could trust a white man that
1’d been kind to, and who would n’t go back on me. No,
no, lei me go! Hand me over to the sheriff!”
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 157

Patterson had suddenly grasped both the hands of the
picturesque scamp before him, with an affection that for an
instant almost shamed the man who had ruined him. But
Tucker’s egotism whispered that this affection was only a
recognition of his own superiority, and felt flattered. He
was beginning to believe that he was really the injured
party.

“What I have and what I have had is yours, Spence,”
returned Patterson, with asad and simple directness that
made any further discussion a gratuitous insult. “I only
wanted to know what you reckoned to do here.”

“ T want to get over across the Coast Range to Monterey,”
said Tucker. “ Once there, one of those coasting schooners
will bring me down to Acapulco, where the ship will put
in,.”’

Patterson remained silent for a moment. ‘ There’s a
mustang in the corral you can take — leastways, I sha’n’t
know that it’s gone — until to-morrow afternoon. In an
hour from now,”’ he added, looking from the window, “ these
clouds will settle down to business. It will rain; there
will be light enough for you to find your way by the regular
trail over the mountain, but not enough for any one to know
you. If you can’t push through to-night, you can lie over
at the posada on the summit. Them greasers that keep it
won’t know you, and if they did they won’t go back on you.
And if they did go back on you, nobody would believe
them. It’s mighty curious,” he added, with gloomy philoso-
phy, “ but I reckon it’s the reason why Providence allows
this kind of cattle to live among white men and others made
in his image. ‘Take a piece of pie, won’t yon?’ he con-
tinued, abandoning this abstract reflection and producing half
a flat pumpkin pie from the bar. Spencer Tucker grasped
the pie with one hand and his friend’s fingers with the other,
and for a few moments was silent from the hurried degluti-
tion of viand and sentiment. ‘“‘ Yow’re a white man, Pat
158 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

terson, anyway,” he resumed. ‘1711 take your horse, and
put it down in our account at your own figure. As soon as
this cursed thing is blown over, I’ll be back here and see
you through, you bet! I don’t desert my friends, however
rough things go with me.”

‘“T see you don’t,” returned Patterson, with an uncon-
scious and serious simplicity that had the effect of the most
exquisite irony. ‘I was only just saying to the sheriff
that if there was anything I could have done for you, you
would n’t have cut away without letting me know.” Tucker
glanced uneasily at Patterson, who continued, “Ye ain’t
wanting anything else?’ Then observing that his former
friend and patron was roughly but newly clothed, and be-
trayed no trace of his last escapade, he added, “ I see you’ve
got a fresh harness.”

“That d—d Chinaman bought me these at the landing.
They ’re not much in style or fit,” he continued, trying to
get a moonlight view of himself in the mirror behind the
bar, “ but that don’t matter here.” He filled another glass
of spirits, jauntily settled himself back in his chair, and
added, “I don’t suppose there are any girls around, any-
way.”

“?Cept your wife; she was down here this afternoon,”
said Patterson meditatively.

Mr. Tucker paused with the pie in his hand. “ Ah,
yes!” He essayed a reckless laugh, but that evident simu-.
lation failed before Patterson’s melancholy. With an as-
sumption of falling in with his friend’s manner, rather than
from any personal anxiety, he continued, ‘‘ Well?”

“That man Poindexter was down here with her. Put
her in the hacienda to hold possession afore the news came
out.”

“Impossible!” said Tucker, rising hastily. ‘It don’t
belong — that is’? — he hesitated.

“ Yer thinking the creditors ’ll get it, mebbe,” returned
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 159

Patterson, gazing at the floor. “ Not as long as she’s in
it; no, sir! Whether it ’s really hers, or she’s only keep-
ing house for Poindexter, she’s a fixture, you bet. They
are a team when they pull together, they are! ”

The smile slowly faded from Tucker’s face, that now
looked quite rigid in the moonlight. He put down his
glass, and walked to the window as Patterson gloomily
continued: ‘‘ But that’s nothing to you. You’ve got
ahead of ’em both, and had your revenge by going off with
the gal. That ’s what I said all along. When folks — spe-
cially women folks — wondered how you could leave a wo-
man like your wife, and go off with a scallawag like that
gal, I allers said they ’d find out there was a reason, And
when your wife came flaunting down here with Poindexter
before she’d quite got quit of you, I reckon they began to
see the whole little game. No, sir! I knew it wasn’t cn
account of the gal! Why, when you came here to-night
and told me quite nat’ral-like and easy how she went off in
the ship, and then calmly ate your pie and drank your
whiskey after it, I knew you did n’t care for her. There’s
my hand, Spence; you’re a trump, even if you are a little
looney, eh? Why, what’s up?”

Shallow and selfish as Tucker was, Patterson’s words
seemed like a revelation, that shocked him as profoundly
as it might have shocked a nobler nature. The simple
vanity and selfishness that made him unable to conceive
any higher reason for his wife’s loyalty than his own per-
sonal popularity and success, now that he no longer pos-
sessed that éclat, made him equally capable of the lowest
suspicions, He was a dishonored fugitive, broken in for-
tune and reputation — why should she not desert him?
He had been unfaithful to her from wildness, from caprice,
from the effect of those fascinating qualities; it seemed to
him natural that she should be disloyal from more deliberate
motives, and he hugged himself with that belief. Yet
160 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

there was enough doubt, enough of haunting suspicion, that
he had lost or alienated a powerful affection, to make him
thoroughly miserable. He returned his friend’s grasp con-
vulsively, and buried his face upon his shoulder. But he
was not above feeling a certain exultation in the effect of his
misery upon the dog-like, unreasoning affection of Patterson,
nor could he entirely refrain from slightly posing his afflic-
tion before that sympathetic but melancholy man. Sud-
denly he raised his head, drew back, and thrust his hand
into his bosom with a theatrical gesture.

“What’s to keep me from killing Poindexter in his
tracks ? ” he said wildly.

“Nothin’ but Ais shooting first,” returned Patterson,
with dismal practicality. ‘“He’s mighty quick, like al]
them army men. It’s about even, I reckon, that he don’t
get me first,” he added in an ominous voice.

“No!” returned Tucker, grasping his hand again.
“This is not your affair, Patterson; leave him to me when
I come back.”

“Tf he ever gets the drop on me, I reckon he won’t
wait,” continued Patterson lugubriously. ‘‘He seems to
object to my passin’ criticism on your wife, as if she was a
queen or an angel.”

The blood came to Spencer’s cheek, and he turned un-
easily to the window. “ It’s dark enough now for a start,”
he said hurriedly, “and if I could get across the mountain
without lying over at the summit, it would be a day
gained.”

Patterson arose without a word, filled a flask of spirit,
handed it to his friend, and silently led the way through
the slowly falling rain and the now settled darkness, The
mustang was quickly secured and saddled ; a heavy poncho
afforded Tucker a disguise as well as a protection from the
rain. With a few hurried, disconnected words, and an
abstracted air, he once more shook his friend’s hand, and
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 161

issued cautivusly from the corral. When out of earshot
from the house he put spurs to the mustang, and dashed
into a gallop.

To intersect the mountain road he was obliged to trav-
erse part of the highway his wife had walked that after-
noon, and to pass within a mile of the casa where she was.
Long before he reached that point his eyes were straining
the darkness in that direction for some indication of the
house which was to him familiar. Becoming now accus-
tomed to the even obscurity, less trying to the vision than
the alternate light and shadow of cloud or the full glare of
the moonlight, he fancied he could distinguish its low walls
over the monotonous level. One of those impulses which
had so often taken the place of resolution in his character
suddenly possessed him to diverge from his course and
approach the house. Why, he could not have explained.
It was not from any feeling of jealous suspicion or con-
templated revenge —that had passed with the presence of
Patterson ; it was not from any vague lingering sentiment
for the woman he had wronged — he would have shrunk
from meeting her at that moment. But it was full of these
and more possibilities by which he might or might not be
guided, and was at least a movement towards some vague
end, and a distraction from certain thoughts he dared not
entertain and could not entirely dismiss. Inconceivable
and inexplicable to human reason, it might have been
acceptable to the Divine omniscience for its predestined
result.

He left the road at a point where the marsh encroached
upon the meadow, familiar to him already as near the spot
where he had debarked from the Chinaman’s boat the day
before. He remembered that the walls of the hacienda
were distinctly visible from the tules where he had hidden
all day, and he now knew that the figures he had observed
near the building, which had deterred his first attempts at
162 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

landing, must have been his wife and hisfriend. He knew
that a long tongue of the slough filled by the rising tide
followed the marsh, and lay between him and the hacienda.
The sinking of his horse’s hoofs in the spongy soil deter-
mined its proximity, and he made a détour to the right to
avoid it. In doing so, a light suddenly rose above the dis.
tant horizon ahead of him, trembled faintly, and then burned
with a steady lustre. It was a light at the hacienda.
Guiding his horse half abstractedly in this direction, his
progress was presently checked by the splashing of the ani-
mal’s hoofs in the water. But the turf below was firm, and
a salt drop that had spattered to his lips told him that it
was only the encroaching of the tide in the meadow. With
his eyes on the light, he again urged his horse forward.
The rain lulled, the clouds began to break, the landscape
alternately lightened and grew dark; the outlines of the
crumbling hacienda walls that enshrined the light grew more
visible. A strange and dreamy resemblance to the long
blue-grass plain before his wife’s paternal house, as seen by
him during his evening rides to courtship, pressed itself
upon him. He remembered, too, that she used to put a.
light in the window to indicate her presence. Following
this retrospect, the moon came boldly out, sparkled upon
the overflow of silver at his feet, seemed to show the dark,
opaque meadow beyond for a moment, and then disappeared.
It was dark now, but the lesser earthly star still shone
before him as a guide, and pushing towards it, he passed in
the all-embracing shadow.

IV

As Mrs. Tucker, erect, white, and rigid, drove away from
the tienda, it seemed to her to sink again into the monoto-
nous plain, with all its horrible realities. Except that there
was now a new and heart-breaking significance to the soli-
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 165

tude and loneliness of the landscape, all that had passed
might have been a dream. But as the blood came back to
her cheek, and little by little her tingling consciousness
returned, it seemed as if her life had been the dream, and
this last scene the awakening reality. With eyes smarting
with the moisture of shame, the scarlet blood at times dye-
ing her very neck and temples, she muffled her lowered
crest in her shawl, and bent over the reins. Bit by bit she
recalled, in Poindexter’s mysterious caution and_ strange
allusions, the corroboration of her husband’s shame and her
own disgrace. This was why she was brought hither — the
deserted wife, the abandoned confederate! The mocking
glitter of the concave vault above her, scoured by the in-
cessant wind, the cold stare of the shining pools beyond, the
hard outlines of the Coast Range,.and the jarring accom-
paniment of her horse’s hoofs and rattling buggy-wheels,
alternately goaded and distracted her. She found herself
repeating “No! no! no!” with the dogged reiteration of
fever. She scarcely knew when or how she reached the
hacienda. She was only conscious that as she entered the
patio the dusky solitude that had before filled her with un-
rest now came to her like balm. A benumbing peace
seemed to fall from the crumbling walls; the peace of utter
seclusion, isolation, oblivion, death ! Nevertheless, an hour
later, when the jingle of spurs and bridle were again heard
in the road, she started to her feet with bent brows and a
kindling eye, and confronted Captain Poindexter in the
corridor.

“ T would not have intruded upon you so soon again,” he
said gravely, “but I thought I might perhaps spare you
a repetition of the scene of this morning. Hear me out,
please,”? he added, with a gentle, half-deprecating gesture,
as she lifted the beautiful scorn of her eyes to his. “TI
have just heard that your neighbor, Don José Santierra, of
Los Gatos, is on his way to this house. He once claimed
16% A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

this land, and hated your husband, who bought of the rival
claimant, whose grant was confirmed. I tell you this,” he
added, slightly flushing as Mrs. Tucker turned impatiently.
away, “only to show you that legally he has no rights, and
you need not see him unless you choose. I could not stop
his coming without perhaps doing you more harm than
good ; but when he does come, my presence under this rovf
as your legal counsel will enable you to refer him to me.”
He stopped. She was pacing the corridor with short, im-
patient steps, her arms dropped, and her hands clasped
rigidly before her. ‘* Have I your permission to stay ? ”

She suddenly stopped in her walk, approached him
rapidly, and fixing her eyes on his, said, —

“Do I know all, now — everything ? ”

He could only reply that she had not yet told him what
she had heard.

“Well,” she said scornfully, ‘that my husband has
been cruelly imposed upon — imposed upon by some
wretched woman, who has made him sacrifice his property,
his friends, his honor — everything but me!”

“Everything but whom?” gasped Poindexter.

“ But mE!”

Poindexter gazed at the sky, the air, the deserted cor-
ridor, the stones of the patio itself, and then at the inex-
plicable woman before him. Then he said gravely, “TI
think you know everything.”

“Then if my husband has left me all he could — this
property,” she went on rapidly, twisting her handkerchief
between her fingers, “I can do with it what I like, can’t
r 2? a?

“ You certainly can.”

“Then sell it,’ she said with passionate vehemence.
“Sell it — all! everything! And sell these.” She darted
into her bedroom, and returned with the diamond rings she
had torn from her fingers and ears when she entered the
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 165

house. “Sell them for anything they ’ll bring, only sell
them at once.”

“But for what?” asked Poindexter, with demure lips
but twinkling eyes.

“To pay the debts that this — this — woman has led
him into; to return the money she has stolen!” she went
on rapidly ; “‘to keep him from sharing infamy! Can’t
you understand ? ”

“But, my dear madam,” began Poindexter, “even if
this could be done” —

“Don’t tell me ‘if it could’ —it must be done. Do
you think I could sleep under this roof, propped up by the
timbers of that ruined tienda? Do you think I could
wear those diamonds again, while that termagant shopwoman
can say that her money bought them? No! If you are
my husband’s friend, you will do this — for — for his sake.”
She stopped, locked and interlocked her cold fingers before
her, and said, hesitating and mechanically, “You meant
well, Captain Poindexter, in bringing me here, I know!
You must not think that I blame you for it, or for the mis-
erable result of it that you have just witnessed. But if I
have gained anything by it, for God’s sake let me reap it
quickly, that I may give it to these peopleand go! I have
a friend who can aid me to get to my husband or to my
home in Kentucky, where Spencer will yet find me, I
know. I want nothing more.” She stoppedagain. With
another woman the pause would have been one of tears.
But she kept her head above the flood that filled her heart,
and the clear eyes fixed upon Poindexter, albeit pained,
were undimmed.

“But this would require time,’ said Poindexter, with a
smile of compassionate explanation ; “you could not sell
now, nobody would buy. You are safe to hold this prop-
erty while you are in actual possession, but you are not
strong enough to guarantee it to another. There may still
166 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

be litigation ; your husband has other creditors than these pev-
ple you have talked with. But while nobody could cust you
— the wife who would have the sympathies of judge and jury
—it might be a different case with any one who derived
title from you. Any purchaser would know that you could
not sell, or if you did, it would be at a ridiculous sacrifice.”’

She listened to him abstractedly, walked to the end 0:
the corridor, returned, and without looking up, said, —

‘*T suppose you know her?”

“T beg your pardon ?”

“This woman. You have seen her?”

“ Never, to my knowledge.”

‘ And you are his friend! That’s strange.” She raised
her eyes to his. “‘ Well,’’ she continued impatiently, “‘ who
is she ? and what is she ? You know that surely.”

“T know no more of her than what I have said,” said
Poindexter. “She is a notorious woman.”

The swift color came to Mrs. Tucker’s face as if the
epithet had been applied to herself. ‘I suppose,” she said
in a dry voice, as if she were asking a business question,
but with an eye that showed her rising anger, — “I suppose
there is some law by which creatures of this kind can be
followed and brought to justice—some law that would
keep innocent people from suffering for their crimes ? ”

“T am afraid,” said Poindexter, “that arresting her
would hardly help these people over in the tienda.”

“Tam not speaking of them,” responded Mrs. Tucker,
with a sudden sublime contempt for the people whose
cause she had espoused; “I am talking of my husband.”

Poindexter bit his lip. ‘* You’d hardly think of bring-
ing back the strongest witness against him,” he said bluntly.

Mrs. Tucker dropped her eyes and was silent. A sudden
shame suffused Poindexter’s cheek; he felt as if he had
struck that woman a blow. ‘I beg your pardon,” he said
hastily ; “I am talking like a lawyer to a lawyer.” He
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 167

would have taken any other woman by the hand in the
honest fullness of his apology, but something restrained
him here. He only looked down gently on her lowered
lashes, and repeated his question if he should remain dur-
ing the coming interview with Don José. “I must beg
you to determine quickly,” he added, “ for I already hear
him entering the gate.”

“ Stay,” said Mrs. Tucker, as the ringing of spurs and
clatter of hoofs came from the corral. ‘One moment.”
She looked up suddenly, and said, “ How long had he
known her?” But before he could reply there was a
step in the doorway, and the figure of Don José Santierra
emerged from the archway.

He was a man slightly past middle age, fair, and well
shaven, wearing a black broadcloth serape, the deeply em-
broidered opening of which formed a collar of silver rays
around his neck, while a row of silver buttons down the
side seams of his riding-trousers, and silver spurs completed
his singular equipment. Mrs. Tucker’s swift feminine
glance took in these details, as well as the deep salutation,
more formal than the exuberant frontier politeness she was
accustomed to, with which he greeted her. It was enough
to arrest her first impulse to retreat. She hesitated and
stopped as Poindexter stepped forward, partly interposing
between them, acknowledging Don José’s distant recogni-
tion of himself with an ironical accession of his usual hu-
morous tolerance. The Spaniard did not seem to notice it,
but remained gravely silent before Mrs. Tucker, gazing at
her with an expression of intent and unconscious absorption.

“You are quite right, Don José,” said Poindexter, with
ironical concern, ‘‘it is Mrs. Tucker. Your eyes do not
deceive you. She will be glad to do the honors of her
house,” he continued, with a simulation of appealing to
her, “ unless you visit her on business, when I need not
say I shall be only too happy to attend you, as before.”
168 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

Don José, with a slight lifting of the eyebrows, allowed
himself to become conscious of the lawyer’s meaning. “It
is not of business that I come to kiss the sefiora’s hand
to-day,” he replied, with a melancholy softness; ‘it is as
her neighbor, to put myself at her disposition. Ah! what
have we here fit for a lady?” he continued, raising his
eyes in deprecation of the surroundings; ‘a house of no-
thing, a place of winds and dry bones, without refreshments,
or satisfaction, or delicacy. The sefiora will not refuse to
make us proud this day to send her of that which we have
in our poor home at Los Gatos, to make her more complete.
Of what shall it be? Let her make choice. Or if she
would commemorate this day by accepting of our hospital-
ity at Los Gatos, until she shall arrange herself the more
to receive us here, we shall have too much honor.”

“The sefiora would only find it the more difficult to
return to this humble roof again, after once leaving it for
Don Josd’s hospitality,” said Poindexter, with a demure
glance at Mrs. Tucker. But the innuendo seemed to lapse
equally unheeded by his fair client and the stranger. Rais-
ing her eyes with a certain timid dignity which Don José’s
presence seemed to have called out, she addressed herself to
him.

“You are very kind and considerate, Mister Santierra,
and I thank you. Iknow that my husband ’”’ — she let the
clear beauty of her translucent eyes rest full on both men —
“ would thank you too. But I shall not be here long enough
to accept your kindness in this house nor in your own. I
have but one desire and object now. It is to dispose of this
property, and indeed all I possess, to pay the debt of my
husband. It is in your power, perhaps, to help me. I am
told that you wish to possess Los Cuervos,” she went on,
equally oblivious of the consciousness that appeared in Don
José’s face, and a humorous perplexity on the brow of
Poindexter. ‘If you can arrange it with Mr. Poindexter,
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 169

you will find me a liberal vendor. That much you can do,
and IT know you will believe I shall be grateful. You can
do no more, unless it be to say to your friends that Mrs.
Belle Tucker remains here only for that purpose, and to
carry out what she knows to be the wishes of her husband.”
She paused, bent her pretty crest, dropped a quaint curtsey
to the superior age, the silver braid, and the gentlemanly
bearing of Don José, and with the passing sunshine of a
smile disappeared from the corridor.

The two men remained silent fora moment, Don José
gazing abstractedly on the door through which she had van-
ished, until Poindexter, with a return of his tolerant smile,
said, “ You have heard the views of Mrs. Tucker. You
know the situation as well as she does.”

“ Ah, yes; possibly better.”

Poindexter darted a quick glance at the grave, sallow face
of Don Josd, but, detecting no unusual significance in his
manner, continued, ‘“ As you see, she leaves this matter in
my hands. Let us talk like business men. Have you any
idea of purchasing this property ? ”

“Of purchasing ? ah, no.”

Poindexter bent his brows, but quickly relaxed them with
a smile of humorous forgiveness. “If you have any other
idea, Don José, I ought to warn you, as Mrs. Tucker’s law-
yer, that she is in legal possession here, and that nothing
but her own act can change that position.”

“ Ah, so.”

Irritated at the shrug which accompanied this, Poindexter
continued haughtily, ‘If I am to understand, you have no-
thing to say ”? —

“To say, ah, yes, possibly. But’? —he glanced toward
the door of Mrs. Tucker’s room — “ not here.” He stopped,
appeared to recall himself, and, with an apologetic smile and
2 studied but graceful gesture of invitation, he motioned ta
the gateway, and said, “ Will you ride? ”
170 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

“‘ What can the fellow be up to? ”? muttered Poindexter,
as with an assenting nod he proceeded to remount his horse.
“Tf he was n’t an old hidalgo, I’d mistrust him. No mat-
ter! here’goes!”

The don also remounted his half-broken mustang; they
proceeded in solemn silence through the corral, and side by
side emerged on the open plain. Poindexter glanced round ;
no other being was in sight. It was not until the lonely
hacienda had also sunk behind them that Don José broke
the silence.

“ You say just now we shall speak as business men. I
say no, Don Marco; I will not. I shall speak, we shall
speak, as gentlemen.”

“Go on,” said Poindexter, who was beginning to be
amused.

“T say just now I will not purchase the rancho from the
sefiora. And why? Look you, Don Marco,” — he reined
in his horse, thrust his hand under his serape, and drew out
a folded document, — “ this is why.”

With a smile, Poindexter took the paper from his hand
and opened it. But the smile faded from his lips as he
read. With blazing eyes he spurred his horse beside the
Spaniard, almost unseating him, and said sternly, “ What
does this mean ?”

“What does it mean?” repeated Don José, with equally
flashing eyes; “I’ll tell you. It means that your client,
this man Spencer Tucker, is a Judas, a traitor! It means
that he gave Los Cuervos to his mistress a year ago, and
that she sold it to me —to me, you hear ! — me, José San-
tierra, the day before she left! It means that the coyote
of a Spencer, the thief, who bought these lands of a thief
and gave them to a thief, has tricked you all. Look,” he
said, rising in his saddle, holding the paper like a biton,
and defining with a sweep of his arm the whole level plain;
“all these lands were once mine — they are mine again to
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 171

day. Do I want to purchase Los Cuervos ? you ask, for
you will speak of the business. Well, listen. I have pur-
chased Los Cuervos, and here is the deed.”

“ But it has never been recorded,” said Poindexter, with
a carelessness he was far from feeling.

“ Of a verity, no. Do you wish that I should record
it?” asked Don José, with a return of his simple gravity.

Poindexter bit his lip. ‘ You said we were to talk like
gentlemen,” he returned. ‘ Do you think you have come
into possession of this alleged deed like a gentleman ? ”

Don José shrugged his shoulders. ‘I found it tossed
in the lap of a harlot. I bought it fora song. Eh, what
would you ? ”

‘Would you sell it again for a song ?”’ asked Poindexter.

“Ah! what is this ?’”’ said Don José, lifting his iron-
gray brows; ‘ but a moment ago we would sell everything,
for any money. Now we would buy. Is it so ?”

“One moment, Don José,” said Poindexter, with a bale-
ful light in his dark eyes. ‘“ Do I understand that you are
the ally of Spencer Tucker and his mistress, that you intend
to turn this doubly betrayed wife from the only roof she
has to cover her?”

“Ah, I comprehend not. You heard her say she wished
to go. Perhaps it may please me to distribute largess to
these cattle yonder, —I do not say no. More she does not
ask. But you, Don Marco, of whom are you advocate ?
You abandon your client’s mistress for the wife, is it so?”

“What I may do you will learn hereafter,” said Poin-
dexter, who had regained his composure, suddenly reining
up his horse. ‘As our paths seem likely to diverge, they
had better begin now. Good-morning.”

“Patience, my friend, patience! Ah, blessed St. An-
thony, what these Americans are! Listen. For what you
shall do, I do not inquire. The question is to me what I ”
—he emphasized the pronoun by tapping himself on the
172 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

breast — “TI, José Santierra, will do. Well, I shall tell
you, To-day, nothing. To-morrow, nothing. For a week,
for a month, nothing! After, we shall see.”

Poindexter paused thoughtfully. “ Will you give your
word, Don José, that you will not press the claim for a
month ? ”

“Truly, on one condition. Observe! I do not ask you
for an equal promise, that you will not take this time to
defend yourself.” He shrugged his shoulder. “No! It
is only this. You shall promise that during that time the
Sefiora Tucker shall remain ignorant of this document.”

Poindexter hesitated a moment. ‘I promise,’ he said
at last.

“Good. Adios, Don Marco.”

“¢ Adios, Don José.”

The Spaniard put spurs to his mustang and galloped off
in the direction of Los Gatos. The lawyer remained for
a moment gazing on his retreating but victorious figure.
For the first time the old look of humorous toleration with
which Mr. Poindexter was in the habit of regarding all hu-
man infirmity gave way to something like bitterness. “I
might have guessed it,’’ he said, with a slight rise of color.
“ He’s an old fool; and she — well, perhaps it’s all the
better for her!” He glanced backwards almost tenderly in
the direction of Los Cuervos, and then turned his head to-
wards the embarcadero.

As the afternoon wore on, a creaking, antiquated ox-cart
arrived at Los Cuervos, bearing several articles of furniture
and some tasteful ornaments from Los Gatos, at the same
time that a young Mexican girl mysteriously appeared in
the kitchen, as a temporary assistant to the decrepit Concha.
These were both clearly attributable to Don José, whose visit
was not so remote but that these delicate attentions might
have been already projected before Mrs, ‘Tucker had declined
them, and she could not, without marked discourtesy, return
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 173

them now. She did not wish to seem discourteous; she
would like to have been more tivil to this old gentleman,
who still retained the evidences of a picturesque and decor-
ous past, and a repose so different from the life that was
perplexing her. Reflecting that if he bought the estate
these things would be ready to his hand, and with a
woman’s instinct recognizing their value in setting off the
house to other purchasers’ eyes, she took a pleasure in taste-
fully arranging them, and even found herself speculating
how she might have enjoyed them herself had she been
able to keep possession of the property. After all, it would
not have been so lonely if refined and gentle neighbors, like
this old man, would have sympathized with her; she had
an instinctive feeling that, in their own hopeless decay and
hereditary unfitness for this new civilization, they would
have been more tolerant of her husband’s failure than his
own kind. She could not believe that Don José really hated.
her husband for buying of the successful claimant, as there
was no other legal title. Allowing herself to become inter-
ested in the guileless gossip of the new handmaiden, proud
of her broken English, she was drawn into a sympathy with
the grave simplicity of Don José’s character, a relic of that
true nobility which placed this descendant of the Castilians
and the daughter of a free people on the same level.

In this way the second day of her occupancy of Los
Cuervos closed, with dumb clouds along the gray horizon,
and the paroxysms of hysterical wind growing fainter and
fainter outside the walls; with the moon rising after night-
fall, and losing itself in silent and mysterious confidences
with drifting scud. She went to bed early, but woke past
midnight, hearing, as she thought, her own name called.
The impression was so strong upon her that she rose, and,
hastily enwrapping herself, went to the dark embrasures of
the oven-shaped windows and looked out. The dwarfed
oak beside the window was still dropping from a_ past
174 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

shower, but the level waste of marsh and meadow beyond
seemed to advance and recede with the coming and going of
the moon. Again she heard her name wailed, and this time
in accents so strangely familiar that with a slight cry she ran
into the corridor, crossed the patio, and reached the open gate.
The darkness that had, even in this brief interval, again
fallen upon the prospect, she tried in vain to pierce with eye
and voice. A blank silence followed. Then the veil was
suddenly withdrawn; the vast plain, stretching from the
mountain to the sea, shone as clearly as in the light of day;
the moving current of the channel glittered like black pearls,
the stagnant pools like molten lead; but not a sign of life
nor motion broke the monotony of the broad expanse. She
must have surely dreamed it. A chill wind drove her back
to the house again; she entered her bedroom, and in half
an hour she was in a peaceful sleep.

Vv

The two men kept their secret. Mr. Poindexter con-
vineed Mrs. Tucker that the sale of Los Cuervos could not
be effected until the notoriety of her husband’s flight had
been fairly forgotten, and she was forced to accept her fate.
The sale of her diamonds, which seemed to her to have real-
ized a singularly extravagant sum, enabled her to quietly
reinstate the Pattersons in the tienda and to discharge in full
her husband’s liabilities to the rancheros and his humbler
retainers.

Meanwhile the winter rains had ceased. It seemed tc
her as if the clouds had suddenly one night struck their
white tents and stolen away, leaving the unvanquished sun
to mount the vacant sky the next morning alone, and
possess it thenceforward unchallenged. One afternoon she
thought the long sad waste before her window had caught
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 175

some tint of grayer color from the sunset; a week later she
found it a blazing landseape of poppies, broken here and
there by blue lagoons of lupine, by pools of daisies, by
banks of dog-roses, by broad outlying shores of dandelions
that scattered their lavish gold to the foot of the hills, where
the green billows of wild oats carried it on and upwards
to the darker crests of pines. For two months she was
dazzled and bewildered with color. She had never before
been face to face with this spendthrift Californian Flora, in
her virgin wastefulness, her more than goddess-like prodi-
gality. The teeming earth seemed to quicken and throb
beneath her feet ; the few circuits of a plow around the out-
lying corral were enough to call outa jungle growth of giant
grain that almost hid the low walls of the hacienda. In
this glorious fecundity of the earth, in this joyous renewal
of life and color, in this opulent youth and freshness of soil
and sky, it alone remained, the dead and sterile Past, left
in the midst of buoyant rejuvenescence and resurrection, like
an empty churchyard skull upturned on the springing turf.
Its bronzed adobe walls mocked the green vine that em-
braced them, the crumbling dust of its courtyard remained
ungerminating and unfruitful; to the thousand stirring
voices without, its dry lips alone remained mute, unrespon-
sive, and unchanged.

During this time Don José had become a frequent vis-
itor at Los Cuervos, bringing with him at first his niece
and sister in a stately precision of politeness that was not
lost on the proud Blue Grass stranger. She returned their
visit at Los Gatos, and there made the formal acquaintance
of Don Jose’s grandmother, a lady who still regarded the
decrepit Concha as a giddy muchacha, and who herself glit-
tered as with the phosphorescence of refined decay. Through
this circumstance she learned that Don José was not yet
fifty, and that his gravity of manner and sedateness was
more the result of fastidious isolation and temperament than
176 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

years. She could not tell why the information gave her a feel-
ing of annoyance, but it caused her to regret the absence of
, Poindexter, and to wonder, also somewhat nervously, why
he had lately avoided her presence. The thought that he
might be doing so from a recollection of the innuendoes of
Mrs. Patterson caused a little tremor of indignation in her
pulses. ‘As if’?—but she did not finish the sentence
even to herself, and her eyes filled with bitter tears.

Yet she had thought of the husband who had so cruelly
wronged her less feverishly, less impatiently, than before.
For she thought she loved him now the more deeply, be-
cause, although she was not reconciled to his absence, it
seemed to keep alive the memory of what he had been
before his one wild act separated them. She had never
seen the reflection of another woman’s eyes in his; the past
contained no haunting recollection of waning or alienated
affection ; she could meet him again, and, clasping her arms
around him, awaken as if from a troubled dream without
reproach or explanation. Her strong belief in this made
her patient ; she no longer sought to know the particulars
of his flight, and never dreamed that her passive submission
to his absence was partly due to a fear that something in
his actual presence at that moment would have destroyed
that belief forever.

For this reason the delicate reticence of the people at
Los Gatos, and their seclusion from the world which knew
of her husband’s fault, had made her encourage the visits
of Don José, until from the instinct already alluded to she
one day summoned Poindexter to Los Cuervos, on the day
that Don José usually called. But to her surprise the two
men met more or less awkwardly and coldly, and her tact
as hostess was tried to the utmost to keep their evident
antagonism from heing too apparent. The effort to recon-
cile their mutual discontent, aud some other feeling she did
not quite understand, produced a nervous excitement which
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 17?

called the blood to her cheek and gave a dangerous bril-
liancy to her eyes, two circumstances not unnoticed nor un-
appreciated by her two guests. But instead of reuniting
them, the prettier Mrs. Tucker became, the more distant
and reserved grew the men, until Don José rose before his
usual hour, and with more than usual ceremoniousness
departed.

“Then my business does not seem to be with him,”
said Poindexter, with quiet coolness, as Mrs. Tucker turned
her somewhat mystified face towards him. ‘Or have you
anything to say to me about him in private ? ”

“TJ am sure I don’t know what you both mean,” she re-

turned with a slight tremor of voice. ‘I had no idea you
were not on good terms. I thought you were! It’s very
awkward.”” Without coquetry and unconsciously she raised
her blue eyes under her lids until the clear pupils coyly
and softly hid themselves in the corners of the brown
lashes, and added, “You have both been so kind to
me.”
“ Perhaps that is the reason,’’ said Poindexter gravely.
But Mrs. Tucker refused to accept the suggestion with
equal gravity, and began to laugh. The laugh, which was
at first frank, spontaneous, and almost child-like, was be-
coming hysterical and nervous as she went on, until it was
suddenly checked by Poindexter.

“JT have had no difficulties with Don José Santierra,’”’
he said, somewhat coldly ignoring her hilarity, “‘ but per-
haps he is not inclined to be as polite to the friend of the
husband as he is to the wife.”

“Mr. Poindexter!” said Mrs. Tucker quickly, her face
becoming pale again.

“T beg your pardon! ” said Poindexter, flushing, “but” —

“ You want to say,” she interrupted coolly, “that you
are not friends, I see. Is that the reason why you have
avoided this house ? ” she continued gently.
178 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

“T thought I could be of more service to you elsewhere,”
he replied evasively. ‘TI have been lately following up a
certain clue rather closely. I think I am on the track of a
confidante of — of — that woman.”

A quick shadow passed over Mrs. Tucker’s face. “ In-
leed!”? she said coldly. ‘Then I am to believe that you
drefer to spend your leisure moments in looking after that
creature to calling here ? ”

Poindexter was stupefied. Was this the woman who
only four months ago was almost vindictively eager to pur-
sue her husband’s paramour! There could be but one
answer to it—-Don José! Four months ago he would
have smiled compassionately at it from his cynical preémi-
nence. Now he managed with difficulty to stifle the bitter-
ness of his reply.

‘If you do not wish the inquiry carried on,’ he began,
“ of course ’? —

“1? What does it matter to me?” she said coolly.
“ Do as you please.”

Nevertheless, half an hour later, as he was leaving, she
said, with a certain hesitating timidity, “Do not leave me
so much alone here, and let that woman go.”

This was not the only unlooked-for sequel to her inno-
cent desire to propitiate her best friends. Don José did
not call again upon his usual day, but in his place came
Dofia Clara, his younger sister. When Mrs. Tucker had
politely asked after the absent Don José, Dofia Clara wound
her swarthy arms around the fair American’s waist and
replied, ‘‘ But why did you send for the abogado Poindexter
when my brother called ?”

“But Captain Poindexter calls as one of my friends,”
said the amazed Mrs. Tucker. ‘He is a gentleman, and
has been a soldier and an officer,” she added with some
warmth.

‘“‘ Ah, yes, a soldier of the law, what you call an oficial
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 179

de policia,a chief of gendarmes, my sister, but not a gentle-
man, — a camarero to protect a lady.”

Mrs. Tucker would have uttered a hasty reply, but the
perfect and good-natured simplicity of Dofia Clara withheld
her. Nevertheless, she treated Don José with a certain
reserve at their next meeting, until it brought the simple-
minded Castilian so dangerously near the point of demand-
ing an explanation which implied too much that she was
obliged to restore him temporarily to his old footing.
Meantime she had a brilliant idea. She would write to
Calhoun Weaver, whom she had avoided since that memora-
ble day. She would say she wished to consult him. He
would come to Los Cuervos; he might suggest something
to lighten this weary waiting ; at least she would show them
all that she had still old friends. Yet she did not dream of
returning to her Blue Grass home; her parents had died
since she left; she shrank from the thought of dragging her
ruined life before the hopeful youth of her girlhood’s com-
panions.

Mr. Calhoun Weaver arrived promptly, ostentatiously,
oracularly, and cordially, but a little coarsely. He had
—did she remember ? — expected this from the first.
Spencer had lost his head through vanity, and had at-
tempted too much. It required foresight and firmness,
as he himself —who had lately made successful “ combi-
nations’ which she might perhaps have heard of — well
knew. But Spencer had got the “big head.” “ As to
that woman —a devilish handsome woman, too! — well,
everybody knew that Spencer always had a weakness that
way, and he would say — But if she didn’t care to hear
any more about her —well, perhaps she was right. That
was the best way to take it.” Sitting before her, prosper-
ous, weak, egotistical, incompetent, unavailable, and yet
filled with a vague kindliness of intent, Mrs. Tucker loathed
him. A sickening perception of her own weakness in send-
180 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

ing for him, a new and aching sense of her utter isolation
and helplessness, seemed to paralyze her.

“‘ Nat?rally you feel bad,” he continued, with the large
air of a profound student of human nature. “‘ Nat’rally,
nat’rally you’re kept in an uncomfortable state, not know-
ing jist how you stand. There ain’t but one thing to do.
dist rise up, quiet like, and get a divorce agin Spencer.
Hold on! ‘There ain’t a judge or jury in California that
would n’t give it to you right off the nail, without asking
questions. Why, you’d get it by default if you wanted
to; you’d just have to walk over the course! And then,
Belle,’ he drew his chair still nearer her, ‘“ when you’ve
settled down again — well !—I don’t mind renewing that
offer I once made ye, before Spencer ever came round ye
—JI don’t mind, Belle, I swear I don’t! Honest Injin!
I’m in earnest, there ’s my hand.”

Mrs. Tucker’s reply has not been recorded. Enough
that half an hour later Mr. Weaver appeared in the courtyard
with traces of tears on his foolish face, a broken falsetto
voice, and other evidence of mental and moral disturbance.
His cordiality and oracular predisposition remained suffi-
ciently to enable him to suggest the magical words “ Blue
Grass’? mysteriously to Concha, with an indication of his
hand to the erect figure of her pale mistress in the door-
‘vay, who waved to him a silent but half-compassionate
sarewell.

At about this time a slight change in her manner was
noticed by the few who saw her more frequently. Her
apparently invincible girlishness of spirit had given way to
a certain matronly seriousness. She applied herself to her
household cares and the improvement of the hacienda with
a new sense of duty and a settled earnestness, until by de-
grees she wrought into it not only her instinctive delicacy
and taste, but part of her own individuality. Even the
rude rancheros and tradesmen who were permitted to enter
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 181

the walls in the exercise of their calling began to speak
mysteriously of the beauty of this garden of the almarjal.
She went out but seldom, and then, accompanied by one or
the other of her female servants, in long drives on unfre-
quented roads. On Sundays she sometimes drove to the
half-ruined mission church of Santa Inez, and hid herself,
during mass, in the dim monastic shadows of the choir.
Gradually the poorer people whom she met in these jour-
neys began to show an almost devotional reverence for
her, stopping in the roads with uncovered heads for her
to pass, or making way for her in the tienda or plaza of the
wretched town with dumb courtesy. She began to feel a
strange sense of widowhood, that, while it at times brought
tears to her eyes, was not without a certain tender solace.
In the sympathy and simpleness of this impulse she went
as far as to revive the mourning she had worn for her
parents, but with such a fatal accenting of her beauty, and
dangerous misinterpreting of her condition to eligible bach-
elors strange to the country, that she was obliged to put it
off again. Her reserved and dignified manner caused others
to mistake her nationality for that of the Santierras, and in
“Dofia Bella” the simple Mrs. Tucker was for a while for-
gotten. At times she even forgot it herself. Accustomed
now almost entirely to the accents of another language and
the features of another race, she would sit for hours in the
corridor, whose massive bronzed inclosure even her tasteful
care could only make an embowered mausoleum of the Past,
or gaze abstractedly from the dark embrasures of her win-
dows across the stretching almarjal to the shining lagoon
beyond that terminated the estuary. She had a strange
fondness for this tranquil mirror, which under sun or stars
always retained the passive reflex of the sky above, and
seemed to rest her weary eyes. She had objected to one
of the plans projected by Poindexter to redeem the land and
deepen the water at the embarcadero, as it would have
182 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

drained the lagoon, and the lawyer had postponed the im-
provement to gratify her fancy. So she kept it through
the long summer unchanged save by the shadows of passing
wings or the lazy files of sleeping sea-fowl.

On one of these afternoons she noticed a slowly moving
carriage leave the highroad and cross the almarjal skirting
the edge of the lagoon. If it contained visitors for Los
Cuervos, they had evidently taken a shorter cut without
waiting to go on to the regular road which intersected the
highway at right angles a mile farther on. It was with
some sense of annoyance and irritation that she watched
the trespass, and finally saw the vehicle approach the
house. A few moments later the servant informed her
that Mr. Patterson would like to see her alone. When
she entered the corridor, which in the dry season served as
a reception hall, she was surprised to see that Patterson
was not alone. Near him stood a well-dressed, handsome
woman, gazing about her with good-humored admiration of
Mrs. Tucker’s taste and ingenuity.

“Tt don’t look much like it did two years ago,” said the
stranger cheerfully. ‘‘ You’ve improved it wonderfully.”

Stiffening slightly, Mrs. Tucker turned inquiringly to
Mr. Patterson. But that gentleman’s usual profound mel-
ancholy appeared to be intensified by the hilarity of his
companion. He only sighed deeply, and rubbed his leg with
the brim of his hat in gloomy abstraction.

“ Well! go on, then,” said the woman, laughing and
nudging him. “Go on— introduce me, can’t you?
Don’t stand there like a tombstone. You won’t ? Well,
I’ll introduce myself.”? She laughed again, and then, with
an excellent imitation of Patterson’s lugubrious accents,
said, “Mr. Spencer Tucker’s wife that zs, allow me to in-
troduce you to Mr. Spencer Tucker’s sweetheart that was /
Hold on! I said that was. For true as I stand here,
ma’am, — and I reckon I would n’t stand here if it wasn’t
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 183

true, —I haven’t set eyes on him since the day he lett
you.”

“Tt ’s the gospel truth, every word,” said Patterson,
stirred into a sudden activity by Mrs. Tucker’s white and
rigid face. ‘It’s the frozen truth, and I kin prove it.
For I kin swear that when that there young woman was
sailin’ outer the Golden Gate, Spencer Tucker was in my
bar-room ; I kin swear that I fed him, lickered him, give
him a hoss, and set him in his road to Monterey that very
night.”

“Then, where is he now ?” said Mrs. Tucker, suddenly
facing them.

They looked at each other, and then looked at Mrs.
Tucker. Then both together replied slowly and in perfect
unison, ‘ That ’s — what — we — want — to — know.”
They seemed so satisfied with this effect that they as delib-
erately repeated, ‘ Yes, — that ’s — what — we — want —
to — know.”

Between the shock of meeting the partner of her hus-
band’s guilt and the unexpected revelation to her inexperi-
ence, that in suggestion and appearance there was nothing
beyond the recollection of that guilt that was really shocking
in the woman — between the extravagant extremes of hope
and fear suggested by their words, there was something so
grotesquely absurd in the melodramatic chorus that she with
difficulty suppressed an hysterical laugh.

“That’s the way to take it,’ said the woman, putting
her own good-humored interpretation upon Mrs. Tucker’s
expression. “Now, look here! Ill tell you all about it.”
She carefully selected the most comfortable chair, and sit-
ting down, lightly crossed her hands in her lap.“ Well, I
left here on the 18th of last January on the ship Argo,
calculating that your husband would join the ship just in-
side the Heads. That was our arrangement; but if anything
happened to prevent him, he was to join me at Acapulca.

 
184 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

Well! he didn’t come aboard, and we sailed without him,
But it appears now he did attempt to join the ship, but
his boat was capsized. There now, don’t be alarmed! he
was n’t drowned, as Patterson can swear to —no, catch
him! not a hair of him was hurt. But J— J was bundled
off to the end of the earth in Mexico alone, without a cent
to bless me. For true as you live, that hound of a captain,
when he found, as he thought, that Spencer was nabbed, ha
just confiscated all his trunks and valuables, and left me ir.
the lurch. If I had not met a man down there that offered
to marry me and brought me here, I might have died there,
I reckon. But I did, and here Iam. I went down there
as your husband’s sweetheart; I’ve come back as the wife
of an honest man, and I reckon it’s about square!”

There was something so startlingly frank, so hopelessly
self-satisfied, so contagiously good-humored in the woman’s
perfect moral unconsciousness, that even if Mrs. Tucker
had been less preoccupied her resentment would have
abated. But her eyes were fixed on the gloomy face of
Patterson, who was beginning to unlock the sepulchres of
his memory and disinter his deeply buried thoughts.

“You kin bet your whole pile on what this Mrs. Cap-
ting Baxter —ez used to be French Inez of New Orleans
—hez told ye. Ye kin take everything she’s onloaded.
And it’s only doin’ the square thing to her to say, she
hain’t done it out o’ no cussedness, but just to satisfy her.
self, now she’s a married woman and past such foolishness.
But that ain’t neither here nor there. The gist of the
whole matter is that Spencer Tucker was at the tienda the
day after she sailed and after his boat capsized.””’ He then
gave a detailed account of the interview, with the unneces-
sary but truthful minutiae of his class, adding to the par-
ticulars already known that the following week he visited
the Summit House, and was surprised to find that Spencer
had never been there, nor had he ever sailed from Monterey.
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 185

“But why was this not told to me before ? ” said Mrs.
Tucker suddenly. ‘ Why not at the time? Why,’ she
demanded almost fiercely, turning from the one to the
other, “‘ has this been kept from me ? ”

“J’ll tell ye why,” said Patterson, sinking with crushed
submission into a chair. ‘ When I found he was n’t where
he ought to be, I got to lookin’ elsewhere. I knew the
track of the hoss I lent him by a loose shoe. I examined,
and found he had turned off the highroad somewhere be-
yond the lagoon, jist as if he was makin’ a bee-line here.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Tucker breathlessly.

“Well,” said Patterson, with the resigned tone of an
accustomed martyr, “‘mebbe I’m a God-forsaken idiot, but
I reckon he did come yer. And mebbe I’m that much of
a habitooal lunatic but, thinking so, I calkilated you’d
know it without tellin’.”

With their eyes fixed upon her, Mrs. Tucker felt the
quick blood rush to her cheeks, although she knew not
why. But they were apparently satisfied with her igno-
rance, for Patterson resumed, yet more gloomily : —

“Then if he wasn’t hidin’ here beknownst to you, he
must have changed his mind agin, and got away by the em-
barcadero, The only thing wantin’ to prove that idea is to
know how he got a boat, and what he did with the hoss.
And thar’s one more idea, and ez that can’t be proved,”
continued Patterson, sinking his voice still lower, ‘‘ mebbe
it’s accordin’ to God’s laws.”

Unsympathetic to her as the speaker had always been
and still was, Mrs. Tucker felt a vague chill creep over
her, that seemed to be the result of his manner more than
his words. ‘“‘ And that idea is’? — she suggested with pale
lips.

“Tt’s this! Fust, I don’t say it means much to any-
body but me. I’ve heard of these warnings afore now, ez
comin’ only to folks ez hear them for themselves alone, and
186 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

I reckon I kin stand it, if it’s the will 0’ God. The idea
is then — that — Spencer Tucker — was drownded in-that
boat; the idea is”? — his voice was almost lost in a hoarse
whisper — “ that it was no living man that kem to me that
night, but a spirit that kem out of the darkness and went
back into it! No eye saw him but mine; no ears heard
him but mine. I reckon it were n’t intended it should.”
He paused, and passed the flap of his hat across his eyes.
“The pie, you ’ll say, is agin it,” he continued in the same
tone of voice; ‘‘the whiskey is agin it; a few cuss words
that dropped from him, accidental like, may have been agin
it. All the same they mout have been only the little signs
and tokens that it was him.”

But Mrs. Baxter’s ready laugh somewhat rudely dispelled
the infection of Patterson’s gloom. “I reckon the only
spirit was that which you and Spencer consumed,” she said
cheerfully. ‘I don’t wonder you ’re a little mixed. Like
as not you’ve misunderstood his plans.”

Patterson shook his head. “He’ll turn up yet, aliveand
kicking! Like as not, then, Poindexter knows where he is
all the time.”

“Tmpossible! He would have told me,” said Mrs.
Tucker quickly.

Mrs. Baxter looked at Patterson without speaking. Pat-
terson replied by a long lugubrious whistle.

“JT don’t understand you,” said Mrs. Tucker, drawing
back with cold dignity.

“You don’t?” returned Mrs. Baxter. ‘ Bless your in-
nocent heart! Why was he so keen to hunt me up at first,
shadowing my friends and all that, and why has he dropped
it now he knows I’m here, if he did n’t know where Spencer
was ?”

“T can explain that,” interrupted Mrs. Tucker hastily,
with a blush of confusion. ‘That is —I”’ —

“Then mebbe you kin explain too,” broke in Patterson
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 187

with gloomy significance, “why he has bought up most of
Spencer’s debts himself, and perhaps you ’re satisfied it is n’t
to hold the whip hand of him and keep him from coming
back openly. P’r’aps you know why he’s movin’ heaven
and earth to make Don José Santierra sell the ranch, and
why the don don’t see it all.”

“Don José sell Los Cuervos! Buy it, you mean?”
said Mrs. Tucker. “J offered to sell it to him.”

Patterson arose from the chair, looked despairingly around
him, passed his hand sadly across his forehead, and said:
“Tt’s come! I knew it would. It’s the warning! It’s
suthing betwixt jim-jams and doddering idjiocy. Here I’d
hev been willin’ to swear that Mrs. Baxter here told me she
had sold this yer ranch nearly two years ago to Don José,
and now you’? —

“Stop!” said. Mrs. Tucker, in a voice that chilled them.

She was standing upright and rigid, as if stricken to
stone. ‘I command you to tell me what this means!”
she said, turning only her blazing eyes upon the woman.

Even the ready smile faded from Mrs. Baxter’s lips as
she replied hesitatingly and submissively : “I thought you
knew already that Spencer had given this ranch tome. I
sold it to Don José to get the money for us to go away with.
It was Spencer's idea ’? —

“ You lie!” said Mrs. Tucker.

There was a dead silence. “‘he wrathful blood that had
quickly mounted to Mrs. Ba. er’s cheek, to Patterson’s ad-
ditional bewilderment, faded as quickly. She did not lift her
eyes again to Mrs. Tucker’s, but, slowly raising herself from
her seat, said, ‘I wish to God I did lie; but it’s true.
And it’s true that I never touched a cent of the money,
but gave it all to him!” She laid her hand on Patterson’s
arm, and said, ‘‘ Come! let us go,’’ and led him a few steps
toward the gateway. But here Patterson paused, and again
passed his hand over his melancholy brow. The necessity of
188 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

coherently and logically closing the conversation impressed
itself upon his darkening mind. ‘Then you don’t happen
to have heard anything of Spencer?” he said sadly, and
vanished with Mrs. Baxter through the gate.

Left alone to herself, Mrs. Tucker raised her hands above
her head with a little cry, interlocked her rigid fingers, and
slowly brought her palms down upon her upturned face and
eyes, pressing hard as if to crush out all light and sense of
life before her. She stood thus for a moment motionless
and silent, with the rising wind whispering without and
flecking her white morning dress with gusty shadows from
the arbor. Then, with closed eyes, dropping her hands
to her breast, still pressing hard, she slowly passed them
down the shapely contours of her figure to the waist, and
with another cry cast them off as if she were stripping
herself of some loathsome garment. Then she walked
quickly to the gateway, looked out, returned to the cor-
ridor, unloosening and taking off her wedding-ring from
her finger as she walked. Here she paused, then slowly
and deliberately rearranged the chairs and adjusted the
gay-colored rugs that draped them, and quietly reéntered
her chamber.

Two days afterwards the sweating steed of Captain Poin-
dexter was turned loose in the corral, and a moment later
the captain entered the corridor. Handing a letter to the
decrepit Concha, who seemed to be utterly disorganized by
its contents and the few curt words with which it was de-
livered, he gazed silently upon the vacant bower, still fresh
and redolent with the delicacy and perfume of its graceful
occupant, until his dark eyes filled with unaccustomed
moisture. But his reverie was interrupted by the sound
of jingling spurs without, and the old humor struggled
back into his eyes as Don José impetuously entered. The
Spaniard started back, but instantly recovered himself.
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 189

“So, I find you here. Ah! it is well!” he said pas-
sionately, producing a letter from his bosom. ‘ Look!
Do you call this honor? Look how you keep your com-
pact !”

Poindexter coolly took the letter. It contained a few
words of gentle dignity from Mrs. Tucker, informing Don
José that she had only that instant learned of his just
claims upon Los Cuervos, tendering him her gratitude for
his delicate intentions, but pointing out with respectful
firmness that he must know that a moment’s further accep-
tance of his courtesy was impossible.

‘She has gained this knowledge from no word of mine,”
said Poindexter calmly. ‘Right or wrong, I have kept
my promise to you. I have as much reason to accuse you
of betraying my secret in this,” he added coldly, as he
took another letter from his pocket, and handed it to Don
José.

It seemed briefer and colder, but was neither. It re-
minded Poindexter that as he had again deceived her she
must take the government of her affairs in her own hands
henceforth. She abandoned all the furniture and improve-
ments she had put in Los Cuervos to him, to whom she
now knew she was indebted for them. She could not thank
him for what his habitual generosity impelled him to do for
any woman, but she could forgive him for misunderstand-
ing her like any other woman, perhaps she should say, like
a child. When he received this she would be already on
her way to her old home in Kentucky, where she still
hoped to be able by her own efforts to amass enough to
discharge her obligations to him.

“She does not speak of her husband, this woman,” said
Don José, scanning Poindexter’s face. “It is possible she
rejoins him, eh ? ”

“Perhaps in one way she has never left him, Don José,”
said Poindexter, with grave significance.
190 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE

Don José’s face flushed, but he returned carelessly,
“ And the rancho — naturally you will not buy it now ?”

“On the contrary, I shall abide by my offer,’ said Poin-
dexter quietly.

Don José eyed him narrowly, and then said, “ Ah, we
shall consider of it.”

He did consider it, and accepted the offer. "With the full
control of the land, Captain Poindexter’s improvements, so
indefinitely postponed, were actively pushed forward. The
thick walls of the hacienda were the first to melt away
before them; the low lines of corral were effaced, and the
early breath of the summer trade-winds swept uninterrupt-
edly across the now leveled plain to the embarcadero, where
a newer structure arose. A more vivid green alone marked
the spot where the crumbling adobe walls of the casa had
returned to the parent soil that gave it. The channel was
deepened, the lagoon was drained, until one evening the
magic mirror that had so long reflected the weary waiting
of the Blue Grass Penelope lay dull, dead, lustreless, an
opaque quagmire of noisome corruption and decay to be put
away from the sight of man forever. On this spot the
crows, the titular tenants of Los Cuervos, assembled in
tumultuous congress, coming and going in mysterious clouds,
or laboring in thick and writhing masses, as if they were
continuing the work of improvement begun by human
agency. So well had they done the work that by the end
of a week only a few scattered white objects remained glit-
tering on the surface of the quickly drying soil. But they
were the bones of the missing outcast, Spencer Tucker !

The same spring a breath of war swept over a foul,
decaying quagmire of the whole land, before which such
passing deeds as these were blown as vapor. It called men
of all rank and condition to battle for a nation’s life, and
among the first to respond were those into whose boyish
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 191

hands had been placed the nation’s honor. It returned the
epaulets to Poindexter’s shoulder with the addition of a
double star, carried him triumphantly to the front, and left
him, at the end of a summer’s day and a hard-won fight,
sorely wounded, at the door of a Blue Grass farmhouse.
And the woman who sought him out and ministered to his
wants said timidly, as she left her hand in his, ‘I told you
I should live to repay you.”
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN
I

THERE was little doubt that the Lone Star claim was
“played out.” Not dug out, worked out, washed out, but
played out. For two years its five sanguine proprietors
had gone through the various stages of mining enthusiasm ;
had prospected and planned, dug and doubted. They had
borrowed money with hearty but unredeeming frankness,
established a credit with unselfish abnegation of all respon-
sibility, and had borne the disappointment of their creditors
with a cheerful resignation which only the consciousness of
some deep Compensating Future could give. Giving little
else, however, a singular dissatisfaction obtained with the
traders, and, being accompanied with a reluctance to make
further advances, at last touched the gentle stoicism of the
proprietors themselves. The youthful enthusiasm which had
at first lifted the most ineffectual trial, the most useless essay,
to the plane of actual achievement died out, leaving them
only the dull, prosaic record of half-finished ditches, purpose-
less shafts, untenable pits, abandoned engines, and meaning-
less disruptions of the soil upon the Lone Star claim, and
empty flour sacks and pork barrels in the Lone Star cabin.

They had borne their poverty, if that term could be ap-
plied to a light renunciation of all superfiuities in food, dress,
or ornament, ameliorated by the gentle depredations already
alluded to, with unassuming levity. More than that: having
segregated themselves from their fellow miners of Red Gulch,
and entered upon the possession of the little manzanita-thick-
eted valley five miles away, the failure of their enterprise
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN 193

had assumed in their eyes only the vague significance of the
decline and fall of a general community, and to that extent
relieved them of individual responsibility. It was easier
for them to admit that the Lone Star claim was “ played out”
than confess to a personal bankruptcy. Moreover, they still
retained the sacred right of criticism of government, and rose
superior in their private opinions to their own collective wis-
dom. Each one experienced a grateful sense of the entire
responsibility of the other four in the fate of their enterprise.

On December 24, 1863, a gentle rain was still falling over
the length and breadth of the Lone Starclaim. It had been
falling for several days, had already called a faint spring
color to the wan landscape, repairing with tender touches
the ravages wrought by the proprietors, or charitably cover-
ing their faults. The ragged seams in gulch and cafion lost
their harsh outlines, a thin green mantle faintly clothed the
torn and abraded hillside. A few weeks more, and a veil
of forgetfulness would be drawn over the feeble failures of
the Lone Star claim. The charming derelicts themselves,
listening to the raindrops on the roof of their little cabin,
gazed philosophically from the open door, and accepted the
prospect as a moral discharge from their obligations. Four
of the five partners were present. The Right and Left
Bowers, Union Mills, and the Judge.

It is scarcely necessary to say that not one of these titles
was the genuine name of its possessor. The Right and
Left Bowers were two brothers ; their sobriquets, a cheerful
wlaptation from the favorite game of euchre, expressing their
relative value in the camp. The mere fact that Union Mills
jad at one time patched his trousers with an old flour sack
legibly bearing that brand of its fabrication, was a tempting
baptismal suggestion that the other partners could not forego.
The Judge, a singularly inequitable Missourian, with no
knowledge whatever of the law, was an inspiration of gratu-
itous irony.
194 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN

Union Mills, who had been for some time sitting pla-
cidly on the threshold with one leg exposed to the rain,
from a sheer indolent inability to change his position, finally
withdrew that weather-beaten member, and stood up. The
movement more or less deranged the attitudes of the other
partners, and was received with cynical disfavor. It was
somewhat remarkable that, although generally giving the
appearance of healthy youth and perfect physical condition,
they one and all simulated the decrepitude of age and inva-
lidism, and after limping about for a few moments, settled
back again upon their bunks and stools in their former posi-
tions. The Left Bower lazily replaced a bandage that he
had worn around his ankle for weeks without any apparent
necessity, and the Judge scrutinized with tender solicitude
the faded cicatrix of a scratch upon his arm. A passive hy-
pochondria, born of their isolation, was the last ludicrously
pathetic touch of their situation.

The immediate cause of this commotion felt the necessity
of an explanation.

“Tt would have been just as easy for you to have stayed
outside with your business leg, instead of dragging it into
private life in that obtrusive way,” retorted the Right
Bower; “but that exhaustive effort isn’t going to fill the
pork barrel. The grocery man at Dalton says What ’s
that he said?” he appealed lazily to the Judge.

“Said he reckoned the Lone Star was about played out,
and he didn’t want any more in his—thank you!” re-
peated the Judge with a mechanical effort of memory utterly
devoid of personal or present interest.

““T always suspected that man, after Grimshaw begun to
deal with him,” said the Left Bower. ‘They ’re just mean
enough to join hands against us.” It was a fixed belief of
the Lone Star partners that they were pursued by personal
enmities.

“ More than likely those new strangers over in the Fork

 
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN 195

have been paying cash and filled him up with conceit,” said
Union Mills, trying to dry his leg by alternately beating it
or rubbing it against the cabin wall. “ Once begin wrong
with that kind of snipe, and you drag everybody down with
you.”

This vague conclusion was received with dead silence,
Everybody had become interested in the speaker’s peculiar
method of drying his leg, to the exclusion of the previous
topic. <A few offered criticism, no one assistance.

‘Who did the grocery man say that to?” asked the
Right Bower, finally returning to the question.

“The Old Man,” answered the Judge.

“ Of course,” ejaculated the Right Bower sarcastically.

“ Of course,’’ echoed the other partners together. “That’s
like him. The Old Man al! over!”

It did not appear exactly what was like the Old Man, or
why it was like him, but generally that he alone was respon-
sible for the grocery man’s defection. It was put more con-
cisely by Union Mills.

“That comes of letting him go there! It’s just a fair
provocation to any man to have the Old Man sent to him.
They can’t, sorter, restrain themselves at him. He’s
enough to spoil the credit of the Rothschilds.”

“That’s so,”’ chimed in the Judge. ‘“ And look at his
prospecting. Why, he was out two nights last week, all
night, prospecting in the moonlight for blind leads, just out
of sheer foolishness.”

“Tt was quite enough for me,” broke in the Left Bower,
“when the other day— you remember when — he pro-
posed to us white men to settle down to plain ground sluic-
ing, making ‘grub’ wages just like any Chinaman. It just
showed his idea of the Lone Star claim.”

“Well, I never said it afore,” added Union Mills, “ but
when that one of the Mattison boys came over here to
examine the claim with an eye to purchasin’, it was the
196 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN

Old Man that took the conceit out of him. He just as good
as admitted that a lot of work had got to be done afore any
pay ore could be realized. Never even asked him over to
the shanty here to jine us in a friendly game; just kept
him, so to speak, to himself. And naturally the Mattisons
did n’t see it.”

A silence followed, broken only by the rain monotonously
falling on the roof, and occasionally through the broad adobe
chimney, where it provoked a retaliating hiss and splutter
from the dying embers of the hearth. The Right Bower,
with a sudden access of energy, drew the empty barrel
before him, and taking a pack of well-worn cards from his
pocket, began to make a “ solitaire’? upon the lid, The
others gazed at him with languid interest.

‘Makin’ it for anythin’ ?” asked Mills.

The Right Bower nodded.

The Judge and Left Bower, who were partly lying in
their respective bunks, sat up to get a better view of the
game. Union Mills slowly disengaged himself from the
wall, and leaned over the “solitaire” player. The Right
Bower turned the last card in a pause of almost thrilling
suspense, and clapped it down on the lid with fateful em-
phasis.

“Tt went!” said the Judge in a voice of hushed respect.
“What did you make it for ? ” he almost whispered.

“To know if we’d make the break we talked about and
vamose the ranch. It’s the fifth time to-day,” continued
the Right Bower, in a voice of gloomy significance. “ And
it went agin bad cards too.”

“JT ain’t superstitious,” said the Judge, with awe and
fatuity beaming from every line of his credulous face,
“but it’s flyin’ in the face of Providence to go agin such
signs as that.”

‘Make it again, to see if the Old Man must go,” sug:
gested the Left Bower.
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN 197

The suggestion was received with favor, the three men
gathering breathlessly around the player. Again the fateful
cards were shuffled deliberately, placed in their mysterious
combination, with the same ominous result. Yet every-
body seemed to breathe more freely, as if relieved from
some responsibility, the Judge accepting this manifest ex-
pression of Providence with resigned self-righteousness.

“Yes, gentlemen,” resumed the Left Bower serenely,
as if a calm legal decision had just been recorded, “we
must not let any foolishness or sentiment get mixed up
with this thing, but look at it like business men. The
only sensible move is to get up and get out of the camp.”

“ And the Old Man ?” queried the Judge.

“The Old Man — Hush! he’s coming.”

The doorway was darkened by a slight lissome shadow.
It was the absent partner, otherwise known as the “Old
Man.” Need it be added that he was a doy of nineteen,
with a slight down just clothing his upper lip!

“ The creek is up over the ford, and I had to ‘shin’ up
a willow on the bank and swing myself across,” he said,
with a quick, frank laugh ; “ but all the same, boys, it’s going
to clear up in about an hour, you bet. It’s breaking away
over Bald Mountain, and there’s a sun-flash on a bit of
snow on Lone Peak. Look! you can see it from here.
It’s for all the world like Noah’s dove just landed on Mount
Ararat. It’s a good omen.”

From sheer force of habit the men had momentarily
brightened up at the Old Man’sentrance. But the unblush-
ing exhibition of degrading superstition shown in the last
sentence recalled their just severity. They exchanged mean-
ing glances. Union Mills uttered hopelessly to himself:
“ Well’s full of such omens.”’

Too occupied with his subject to notice this ominous re-
ception, the Old Man continued : ‘I reckon I struck a fresh
lead in the new grocery man at the Crossing. He says he ll
198 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN

let the Judge have a pair of boots dh credit, but he can’t
send them over here; and considering that the Judge has
got to try them anyway, it don’t seem to be asking too much
for the Judge to go over there. THe says he'll give us a
barrel of pork and a bag of flour if we ’1] give him the right
of using our tail-race and clean out the lower end of it.”

“It’s the work of a Chinaman, and a four days’ job,”
broke in the Left Bower.

“Tt took one white man only two hours to clean out
a third of it,” retorted the Old Man triumphantly, “ for I
pitched in at once with a pick he let me have on credit, and
did that amount of work this morning, and told him the
rest of you boys would finish it this afternoon.”

A slight gesture from the Right Bower checked an angry
exclamation from the Left. The Old Man did not notice
either, but, knitting his smooth young brow in a paternally
reflective fashion, went on: “‘ You ’ll have to get a new pair
of trousers, Mills, but as he doesn’t keep clothing, we ’ll
have to get some canvas and cut you outa pair. I traded
off the beans he let me have for some tobacco for the Right
Bower at the other shop, and got them to throw in a new
pack of cards. These are about played out. We’ll be
wanting some brushwood for the fire; there ’s a heap in the
hollow. Who’s going to bring it in? It’s the Judge’s
turn, isn’t it? Why, what’s the matter with you all?”

The restraint and evident uneasiness of his companions
had at last touched him. He turned his frank young eyes
upon them; they glanced helplessly ateach other. Yet his
first concern was for them, his first instinct paternal and
protecting. He ran his eyes quickly over them ; they were
all there, and apparently in their usual condition. “ Any-
thing wrong with the claim ?” he suggested.

Without looking at him the Right Bower rose, leaned
against the open door with his hands behind him and his
face towards the landscape, and said, apparently to the dis-
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN 199

tant prospect: ‘‘The claim’s played out, the partnership ’s
played out, and the sooner we skedaddle out of this the bet-
ter. If,” he added, turning to the Old Man, “ if you want
to stay, if you want to do Chinaman’s work at Chinaman’s
wages, if you want to hang on to the charity of the traders
at the Crossing, you can do it, and enjoy the prospects and
the Noah’s doves alone. But we’re calculatin’ to step out
of it.”

“ But I have n’t said I wanted to do it alone,’ protested
the Old Man with a gesture of bewilderment.

“Tf these are your general ideas of the partnership,”
continued the Right Bower, clinging to the established hypo-
thesis of the other partners for support, ‘it ain’t ours, and
the only way we can prove it is to stop the foolishness right
here. We calculated to dissolve the partnership and strike
out for ourselves elsewhere. You’re no longer responsible
for us, nor we for you. And we reckon it’s the square
thing to leave you the claim and the calvin and all it con-
tains. To prevent any trouble with the traders, we’ve
drawn up a paper here ” —

“ With a bonus of fifty thousand dollars each down, and the
rest to be settled on my children,” interrupted the Old Man,
with a half-uneasy laugh. “Ofcourse. But” — he stopped
suddenly, the blood dropped from his fresh cheek, and he
again glanced quickly round the group. ‘I don’t think —
I—TI quite sabe, boys,” he added, with a slight tremor of
voice and lip. “If it’s a conundrum, ask me an easier
one.”

Any lingering doubt he might have had of their meaning
was dispelled by the Judge. “It ’sabout the softest thing
you kin drop into, Old Man,” he said confidentially ; ‘if Z
had n’t promised the other boys to go with them, and if I
did n’t need the best medical advice in Sacramento for my
lungs, I’d just enjoy staying with you.”

“Tt gives a sorter freedom to a young fellow like you,
200 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN

Old Man, like goin’ into the world on your own capital,
that every Californian boy has n’t got,” said Union Mills
patronizingly.

“Of course it’s rather hard papers on us, you know,
givin’ up everything, so to speak; but it’s for your good,
and we ain’t goin’ back on you,” said the Left Bower; “are
we, boys?”

The color had returned to the Old Man’s face a little
more quickly and freely thanusual. He picked up the hat
he had cast down, put it on carefully over his brown curls,
drew the flap down on the side towards his companions,
and put his hands in his pockets. “ All right,’ he said
in a slightly altered voice. ‘ When do you go?”

“To-day,” answered the Left Bower. ‘ We calculate to
take a moonlight pasear over to the Cross-Roads and meet
the down stage at about twelve to-night. There’s plenty
of time yet,” he added, with a slight laugh; “it’s only
three o’clock now.”

There was a dead silence. Even the rain withheld its
continuous patter; a dumb, gray film covered the ashes of
the hushed hearth. For the first time the Right Bower ex-
hibited some slight embarrassment.

‘J reckon it’s held up fora spell,” he said, ostentatiously
examining the ‘weather, “and we might as well take a run
round the claim to see if we’ve forgotten nothing. Of
course, we ’ll be back again,’ he added hastily, without
jooking at the Old Man, ‘“ before we go, you know.”

The others began to look for their hats, but so awk-
wardly and with such evident preoccupation of mind that
it was not at first discovered that the Judge had his already
on. This raised a laugh, as did also a clumsy stumble of
Union Mills against the pork barrel, although that gentle-
man took refuge from his confusion and secured a decent
retreat by a gross exaggeration of his lameness, as he limped
after the Right Bower. The Judge whistled feebly. The
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN 201

Left Bower, in a more ambitious effort to impart a certain
gayety to his exit, stopped on the threshold and said, as if in
arch confidence to his companions, ‘‘ Darned if the Old Man
don’t look two inches higher since he became a proprietor,”
laughed patronizingly, and vanished.

If the newly made proprietor had increased in stature, he
had not otherwise changed his demeanor. He remained in
the same attitude until the last figure disappeared behind
the fringe of buckeye that hid the distant highway. Then
he walked slowly to the fireplace, and, leaning against the
chimney, kicked the dying embers together with his foot.
Something dropped and spattered in the film of hot ashes,
Surely the rain had not yet ceased !

His high color had already fled except for a spot on
either cheek-bone that lent a brightness to his eyes. He
glanced around the cabin. It looked familiar and yet
strange. Rather, it looked strange because still familiar,
and therefore incongruous with the new atmosphere that
surrounded it — discordant with the echo of their last meet-
ing, and painfully accenting the change. There were the
four “bunks,” or sleeping berths, of his companions, each
still bearing some traces of the individuality of its late
occupant with a dumb loyalty that seemed to make their
light-hearted defection monstrous. In the dead ashes of
the Judge’s pipe, scattered on his shelf, still lived his old
fire; in the whittled and carved edges of the Left Bower’s
bunk still were the memories of bygone days of delicious
indolence ; in the bullet-holes clustered round a knot of one
of the beams there was still the record of the Right Bower’s
old-time skill and practice ; in the few engravings of female
loveliness stuck upon each headboard there were the proofs
of their old extravagant devotion —all a mute protest to
the change.

He remembered how, a fatherless, truant schoolboy, he
had drifted into their adventurous, nomadic life, itself a life
202 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN

of grown-up truancy like his own, and became one of that
gypsy family. How they had taken the place of relations
and household in his boyish fancy, filling it with the un-
substantial pageantry of a child’s play at grown-up exist-
ence, he knew only too well. But how, from being a pet
and protégé, he had gradually and unconsciously asserted
his own individuality and taken upon his younger shoulders
not only a poet’s keen appreciation of that life, but its
actual responsibilities and half-childish burdens, he never
suspected. He had fondly believed that he was a neophyte
in their ways, a novice in their charming faith and indolent
creed, and they had encouraged it; now their renunciation
of that faith could only be an excuse for a renunciation of
him. The poetry that had for two years invested the ma-
terial and sometimes even mean details of their existence
was too much a part of himself to be lightly dispelled.
The lesson of those ingenuous moralists failed, as such les-
sons are apt to fail; their discipline provoked but did not
subdue; a rising indignation, stirred by a sense of injury,
mounted to his cheek and eyes. It was slow to come, but
was none the less violent that it had been preceded by the
benumbing shock of shame and pride.

I hope I shall not prejudice the reader’s sympathies if
my duty asa simple chronicler compels me to state, there-
fore, that the sober second thought of this gentle poet was
to burn down the cabin on the spot with all its contents.
This yielded to a milder counsel — waiting for the return
of the party, challenging the Right Bower, a duel to the
death, perhaps himself the victim, with the crushing ex-
planation in extremis, ‘‘It seems we are one too many.
No matter; it is settled now. Farewell!” Dimly remem-
bering, however, that there was something of this in the
last well-worn novel they had read together, ard that his
antagonist might recognize it, or even worse, anticipate it
himself, the idea was quickly rejected. Besides, the op-
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN 208

portunity for an apotheosis of self-sacrifice was past. No-
thing remained now but to refuse the proffered bribe of
claim and cabin by letter, for he must not wait their return.
He tore a leaf from a blotted diary, begun and ahandoned
long since, and essayed to write. Scrawl after scrawl was
torn up, until his fury had cooled down to a frigid third
personality. “Mr. John Ford regrets to inform his late
partners that their tender of house, of furniture,’ however,
seemed too inconsistent with the pork-barrel table he was
writing on; a more eloquent renunciation cf their offer be-
came frivolous and idiotic from a caricature of Union Mills,
label and all, that appeared suddenly on the other side of
the leaf; and when he at last indited a satisfactory and
impassioned exposition of his feelings, the legible addendum
of Oh, ain’t you glad you’re out of the wilderness ! ’’? —
the forgotten first line of a popular song, which no seratch-
ing would erase — seemed too like an ironical postscript to
be thought of fora moment. He threw aside his pen, and
cast the discordant record of past foolish pastime into the
dead ashes of the hearth.

How quiet it was! With the cessation of the rain the
wind too had gone down, and scarcely a breath of air came
through the open door. He walked to the threshold, and
gazed on the hushed prospect. In this listless attitude he
was faintly conscious of a distant reverb2ration, a mere phan-
tom of sound, — perhaps the explosion of a distant blast in
the hills, — that left the silence more marked and oppres-
sive. As he turned again into the cabin a change seemed
to have come over it. It already loaxed old and decayed.
The loneliness of years of desertion seemed to have taken
possession of it; the atmosphere of dry rot was in the beams
and rafters. To his excited fancy the few disordered blank-
ets and articles of clothing seemed dropping to pieces; in
one of the bunks there was a hideous resemblance in the
longitudinal heap of clothing to a withered and mummied
204 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN

corpse. So it might look in after-years when some passing
stranger — But he stopped. A dread of the place was be-
ginning to creep over him; a dread of the days to come,
when the monotonous sunshine should lay bare the lone-
liness of these walls; the long, long days of endless blue
and cloudless, overhanging solitude; summer days when the
wearying, incessant trade-winds should sing around that
empty shell and voice its desolation. He gathered together
hastily a few articles that were especially his own — rather
that the free communion of the camp, from indifference or
accident, had left wholly to him. He hesitated for a mo-
ment over his rifle, but, scrupulous in his wounded pride,
turned away and left the familiar weapon that in the dark
days had so often provided the dinner or breakfast of the
little household. Candor compels me to state that his equip-
ment was not large nor eminently practical. His scant pack
was a light weight for even his young shoulders, but I fear
he thought more of getting away from the Past than pro-
viding for the Future.

With this vague but sole purpose he left the cabin, and
almost mechanically turned his steps towards the creek he
had crossed that morning. He knew that by this route he
would avoid meeting his companions; its difficulties and
circuitousness would exercise his feverish limbs and give
him time for reflection. He had determined to leave the
claim, but whence he had not yet considered. He reached
the bank of the creek where he had stood two hours before;
it seemed to him two years. He looked curiously at his
reflection in one of the broad pools of overflow, and fancied
he looked older. He watched the rush and outset of the
turbid current hurrying to meet the South Fork, and to
eventually lose itself in the yellow Sacramento. Even in
his preoccupation he was impressed with a likeness to him-
self and his companions in this flood that had burst its
peaceful boundaries. In the drifting fragments of one of
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN 205

their forgotten flumes washed from the bank, he fancied he
saw an omen of the disintegration and decay of the Lone
Star claim.

The strange hush in the air that he had noticed before
—a calm so inconsistent with that hour and the season as
to seem portentous — became more marked in contrast to
the feverish rush of the turbulent watercourse. A few
clouds lazily huddled in the west apparently had gone to
rest with the sun on beds of somnolent poppies. There
was a gleam as of golden water everywhere along the hori-
zon, washing out the cold snow-peaks, and drowning even
the rising moon. The creek caught it here and there, until,
in grim irony, it seemed to bear their broken sluice-boxes
and useless engines on the very Pactolian stream they had
been hopefully created to direct and carry. But by some
peculiar trick of the atmosphere the perfect plenitude of
that golden sunset glory was lavished on the rugged sides
and tangled crest of the Lone Star Mountain. That isolated
peak, the landmark of their claim, the gaunt monument of
their folly, transfigured in the evening splendor, kept its
radiance unquenched long after the glow had fallen from
the encompassing skies ; and when at last the rising moon,
step by step, put out the fires along the winding valley and
plains, and crept up the bosky sides of the cafion, the van-
ishing sunset was lost only to reappear as a golden crown.

The eyes of the young man were fixed upon it with more
than a momentary picturesque interest. It had been the
favorite ground of his prospecting exploits, its lowest flank
had been scarred in the old enthusiastic days with hydraulic
engines, or pierced with shafts, but its central position in
the claim and its superior height had always given it a com-
manding view of the extent of their valley and its approaches,
and it was this practical preéminence that alone attracted
him at that moment. He knew that from its crest he would
be able to distinguish the figures of his companions, as they

 
206 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN

crossed the valley near the cabin, in the growing moonlight,
Thus he could avoid encountering them on his way to the
highroad, and yet see them, perhaps, for the last time. Even
in his sense of injury there was a strange satisfaction in the
thought.

The ascent was toilsome, but familiar. All along the dim
trail he was accompanied by gentler memories of the past,
that seemed, like the faint odor of spiced leaves and fra-
grant grasses wet with the rain and crushed beneath his
ascending tread, to exhale the sweeter perfume in his effort
to subdue or rise above them. There was the thicket of
manzanita, where they had broken noonday bread together ;
here was the rock beside their maiden shafts, where they
had poured a wild libation in boyish enthusiasm of success;
and here the ledge where their first flag, a red shirt heroic.
ally sacrificed, was displayed from a long-handled shovel
to the gaze of admirers below. When he at last reached
the summit, the mysterious hush was still in the air, as if
in breathless sympathy with his expedition. In the west,
the plain was faintly illuminated, but disclosed no moving
figures. He turned towards the rising moon, and moved
slowly to the eastern edge. Suddenly he stopped. Another
step would have been his last! He stood upon the erum-
bling edge of a precipice. A landslip had taken place on
the eastern flank, leaving the gaunt ribs and fleshless bones
of Lone Star Mountain bare in the moonlight. He under-
stood now the strange rumble and reverberation he had
heard; he understood now the strange hush of bird and
beast in brake and thicket !

Although a single rapid glance convinced him that the
slide had taken place in an unfrequented part of the moun-
tain, above an inaccessible cafion, and reflection assured him
his companions could not have reached that distance when
it took place, a feverish impulse led him to descend a few
rods in the track of the avalanche. The frequent recur
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN 207

rence of outcrop and angle made this comparatively easy.
Here he called aloud; the feeble echo of his own voice
seemed only a dull impertinence to the significant silence.
He turned to reascend; the furrowed flank of the mountain
before him lay full in the moonlight. To his excited fancy
a dozen luminous starlike points in the rocky crevices
started into life as he faced them. Throwing his arm over
the ledge above him, he supported himself for a moment by
what appeared to be a projection of the solid rock. It
trembled slightly. As he raised himself to its level, his
heart stopped beating. If was simply a fragment detached
from the outcrop, lying loosely on the ledge but upholding
him by its own weight only. THe examined it with trem-
bling fingers ; the encumbering soil fell from its sides and
left its smoothed and worn protuberances glistening in the
moonlight. It was virgin gold!

Looking back upon that moment afterwards, he remem-
bered that he was not dazed, dazzled, or startled. It did
not come to him as a discovery or an accident, a stroke of
chance or a caprice of fortune. He saw it all in that su-
preme moment; Nature had worked out their poor deduc-
tion. What their feeble engines had essayed spasmodically
and helplessly against the curtain of soil that hid the trea-
sure, the elements had achieved with mightier but more
patient forces. The slow sapping of the winter rains had
loosened the soil from the auriferous rock, even while the
swollen stream was carrying their impotent and shattered
engines to the sea. What mattered that his single arm
could not lift the treasure he had found; what mattered
that to unfix those glittering stars would still tax both skill
and patience! The work was done, the goal was reached!
Even his boyish impatience was content with’ that. He
rose slowly to his feet, unstrapped his long-handled shovel
from his back, secured it in the crevice, and quietly regained

the summit.
208° LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN

It was all his own! His own by right of discovery
under the law of the land, and without accepting a favor
from them. He recalled even the fact that it was his pro-
specting on the mountain that first suggested the existence
of gold in the outcrop and the use of the hydraulic. He
had never abandoned that belief, whatever the others had
done. He dwelt somewhat indignantly to himself on this
circumstance, and half unconsciously faced defiantly to-
wards the plain below. But it was sleeping peacefully in
the full sight of the moon, without life or motion. He
looked at the stars, it was still far from midnight. His
companions had no doubt long since returned to the cabin
to prepare for their midnight journey. They were dis-
cussing him, perhaps laughing at him, or worse, pitying
him and his bargain. Yet here was his bargain! A slight
laugh he gave vent to here startled him a little, it sounded
so hard and so unmirthful, and so unlike, as he oddly
fancied, what he really thought. But what did he think ?

Nothing mean or revengeful; no, they never would say
that. When he had taken out all the surface gold and
put the mine in working order, he would send them each
a draft for a thousand dollars. Of course, if they were
ever ill or poor he would do more. One of the first, the
very first things he should do would be to send them each
a handsome gun, and tell them that he only asked in return
the old-fashioned rifle that once was his. Looking back
at the moment in after-years, he wondered that, with this
exception, he made no plans for his own future, or the way
he should dispose of his newly acquired wealth. This was
the more singular as it had been the custom of the five
partners to lie awake at night, audibly comparing with each
other what they would do in case they made a strike. He
remembered how, Alnaschar-like, they nearly separated
once over a difference in the disposal of a hundred thou-
sand dollars that they never had, nor expected to have
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN 209

He remembered how Union Mills always began his career
as a millionaire by a “ square meal” at Delmonico’s; how
the Right Bower’s initial step was always a trip home “ to
see his mother;”’ how the Left Bower would immediately
placate the parents of his beloved with priceless gifts (it
may be parenthetically remarked that the parents and the
beloved one were as hypothetical as the fortune); and how
the Judge would make his first start as a capitalist by
breaking a certain faro bank in Sacramento. He himself
had been equally eloquent in extravagant fancy in those
penniless days, — he who now was quite cold and impassive
beside the more extravagant reality.

How different it might have been! If they had only
waited a day longer! if they had only broken their resolves
to him kindly and parted in good will! How he would
long ere this have rushed to greet them with the joyful
news! How they would have danced around it, sung
themselves hoarse, laughed down their enemies, and run up
the flag triumphantly on the summit of the Lone Star
Mountain! How they would have crowned him, the “ Old
Man,” ‘“‘the hero of the camp”! How he would have
told them the whole story; how some strange instinct had
impelled him to ascend the summit, and how another step
on that summit would have precipitated him into the cafion !
And how— But what if somebody else, Union Mills or the
Judge, had been the first discoverer? Might they not
have meanly kept the secret from him; have selfishly
helped themselves, and done —

“What you are doing now.”

The hot blood rushed to his cheek, as if a strange voice
were at his ear. For a moment he could not believe that
it came from his own pale lips until he found himself
speaking. He rose to his feet, tingling with shame, and
began hurriedly to descend the mountain.

He would go to them, tell them of his discovery, let them
210 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN

give him his share, and leave them forever. It was the
only thing to be done —strange that he had not thought
of it at once. Yet it was hard, very hard and cruel, to be
forced to meet them again. What had he done to suffer
this mortification ? For a moment he actually hated this
vulgar treasure that had forever buried under its gross pon-
derability the light and careless past, and utterly crushed
out the poetry of their old, indolent, happy existence.

He was sure to find them waiting at the Cross-Roads
where the coach came past. It was three miles away, yet
he could get there in time if he hastened. It was a wise
and practical conclusion of his evening’s work, a lame and
impotent conclusion to his evening’s indignation. No mat-
ter. They would perhaps at first think he had come to
weakly follow them, perhaps they would at first doubt his
story. No matter. He bit his lips to keep down the fool-
ish rising tears, but still went blindly forward.

He saw not the beautiful night, cradled in the dark hills,
swathed in luminous mists, and hushed in the awe of its
own loveliness! Here and there the moon had laid her
calm face on lake and overflow, and gone to sleep embracing
them, until the whole plain seemed to be lifted into infinite
quiet. Walking on as in a dream, the black, impenetrable
barriers of skirting thickets opened and gave way to vague
distances that it appeared impossible to reach, dim vistas
that seemed unapproachable. Gradually he seemed himself
to become a part of the mysterious night. He was becom-
ing as pulseless, as calm, as passionless,

What was that? A shot in the direction of the cabin!
yet so faint, so echoless, so ineffective in the vast silence,
that he would have thought it his fancy but for the strange
instinctive jar upon his sensitive nerves. Was it an acci-
dent, or was it an intentional signal to him? He stopped;
it was not repeated; the silence reasserted itself, but this
time with an ominous deathlike suggestion. A sudden and
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN 211

terrible thought crossed his mind. He cast aside his pack
and all encumbering weight, took a deep breath, lowered
his head, and darted like a deer in the direction of the
challenge.

I

The exodus of the seceding partners of the Lone Star
claim had been scarcely an imposing one. For the first five
minutes after quitting the cabin the procession was strag-
gling and vagabond. Unwonted exertion had exaggerated
the lameness of some, and feebleness of moral purpose
had predisposed the others to obtrusive musical exhibition.
Union Mills limped and whistled with affected abstraction ;
the Judge whistled and limped with affected earnestness.
The Right Bower led the way with some show of definite
design; the Left Bower followed with his hands in his
pockets. The two feebler natures, drawn together in uncon-
scious sympathy, looked vaguely at each other for support.

“You see,” said the Judge suddenly, as if triumphantly
concluding an argument, “ there ain’t anything better for a
young fellow than independence. Nature, so to speak,
points the way. Look at the animals.”

“There ’s a skunk hereabouts,’” said Union Mills, who
was supposed to be gifted with aristocratically sensitive
nostrils, ‘ within ten miles of this place; like as not cross-
ing the Ridge. It’s always my luck to happen out just at
such times. I don’t see the necessity anyhow of trapesing
round the claim now, if we calculate to leave it to-night.”

Both men waited to observe if the suggestion was taken
up by the Right and Left Bowers moodily plodding ahead.
No response following, the Judge shamelessly abandoned
his companion.

“You would n’t stand snoopin’ round instead of lettin’
the Old Man get used to the idea alone? No; I could see
212 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN

all along that he was takin’ it in, takin’ it in kindly but
slowly, and I reckoned the best thing for us to do was to
wit up and git until he ’d got round it.” The Judge’s voice
was slightly raised for the benefit of the two before him.

“Did n’t he say,” remarked the Right Bower, stopping
suddenly and facing the others, “didn’t he say that that
new trader was goin’ to let him have some provisions any-
way?”

Union Mills turned appealingly to the Judge; that gen-
tleman was forced to reply, ‘Yes; I remember distinctly
he said it. It was one of the things I was particular about
on his account,” responded the Judge, with the air of hav-
ing arranged it all himself with the new trader. “TI re-
member I was easier in my mind about it.”

“ But didn’t he say,’”’ queried the Left Bower, also stop-
ping short, “suthin’ about its being contingent on our doing
some work on the race ? ”

The Judge turned for support to Union Mills, who, how-
ever, under the hollow pretense of preparing for a long con-
ference, had luxuriously seated himself on a stump. The
Judge sat down also, and replied hesitatingly, “‘ Well, yes!
Us or him.”

“Us or him,” repeated the Right Bower, with gloomy
ivony. ‘ And you ain’t quite clear in your mind, are you,
if you haven’t done the work already? You’re just kill-
ing yourself with this spontaneous, promiscuous, and pre-
mature overwork ; that’s what’s the matter with you.”

“‘T reckon I heard somebody say suthin’ about its being
a Chinaman’s three-day job,” interpolated the Left Bower,
with equal irony; ‘but I ain’t quite clear in my mind about
that.”

“Tt li be a sorter distraction for the Old Man,” said
Union Mills feebly, — “kinder take his mind off his lone-
liness.”

Nobody taking the least notice of the remark, Union
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN 2:3

Mills stretched out his legs more comfortably and took out
his pipe. He had scarcely done so when the Right Bower,
wheeling suddenly, set off in the direction of the creek.
The Left Bower, after a slight pause, followed without a
word. The Judge, wisely conceiving it better to join the
stronger party, ran feebly after him, and left Union Mills
to bring up a weak and vacillating rear.

Their course, diverging from Lone Star Mountain, led
them now directly to the bend of the creek, the base of
their old ineffectual operations. Here was the beginning of
the famous tail-race that skirted the new trader’s claim, and
then lost its way in a swampy hollow. It was choked with
débris ; a thin, yellow stream that once ran through it seemed
to have stopped work when they did, and gone into green-
ish liquidation.

They had scarcely spoken during this brief journey, and
had received no other explanation from the Right Bower,
who led them, than that afforded by his mute example when
he reached the race. Leaping into it without a word, he at
once began to clear away the broken timbers and driftwood.
Fired by the spectacle of what appeared to be a new and
utterly frivolous game, the men gayly leaped after him, and
were soon engaged in a fascinating struggle with the impeded
race. The Judge forgot his lameness in springing over a
broken sluice- box; Union Mills forgot his whistle in a
happy imitation of a Chinese coolie’s song. Nevertheless,
after ten minutes of this mild dissipation, the pastime
flagged ; Union Mills was beginning to rub his leg, when a
distant rumble shook the earth. The men looked at each
other; the diversion was complete; a languid discussion of
the probabilities of its being an earthquake or a blast fol-
lowed, in the midst of which the Right Bower, who was
working a little in advance of the others, uttered a warning
ery and leaped from the race. His companions had barely
time to follow before a sudden and inexplicable rise in the
214 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN

waters of the creek sent a swift irruption of the flood
through the race. In an instant its choked and impeded
channel was cleared, the race was free, and the scattered dé-
bris of logs and timber floated upon its easy current. Quick
to take advantage of this labor-saving phenomenon, the
Lone Star partners sprang into the water, and by disentan-
gling and directing the eddying fragments completed their
work.

“The Old Man oughter been here to see this,” said the
Left Bower; “it’s just one o’ them climaxes of poetic
justice he’s always huntin’ up. It’s easy to see what’s
happened. One o’ them high-toned shrimps over in the Ex-
celsior claim has put a blast in too near the creek. He’s
tumbled the bank into the creek, and sent the backwater
down here just to wash out our race. That’s what I call
poetical retribution.”

“ And who was it advised us to dam the creek below the
race and make it do the thing?” asked the Right Bower
moodily.

‘That was one of the Old Man’s ideas, I reckon,” said
the Left Bower dubiously.

“And you remember,” broke in the Judge with anima-
tion, ‘I allus said, ‘Go slow, go slow. You just hold on,
and suthin’ will happen.’ And,” he added triumphantly,
“ you see suthin’ has happened. I don’t want to take credit
to myself, but I reckoned on them Excelsior boys bein’
fools, and took the chances.”

““ And what if I happen to know that the Excelsior boys
ain’t blastin’ to-day ? ” said the Right Bower sarcastically.

As the Judge had evidently based his hypothesis on the
alleged fact of a blast, he deftly evaded the point. “I
ain’t sayin’ the Old Man’s head ain’t level on some things;
he wants a little more sabe of the world. He’s improved a
good deal in euchre lately, and in poker —well! he’s got
that sorter dreamy, listenin’-to-the-angels kind o’ way that
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN 215

you can’t exactly tell whether he’s bluffin’ or has got a ful}
hand. Hasn’t he?” he asked, appealing to Union Mills.

But that gentleman, who had been watching the dark face
of the Right Bower, preferred to take what he believed to
be his cue from him, “ That ain’t the question,” he said
virtuously ; “we ain’t takin’ this step to make a card-sharp
out of him. We ’re not doin’ Chinamen’s work in this race
to-day for that. No, sir! We’re teachin’ him to paddle
his own canoe.” Not finding the sympathetic response he
looked for inthe Right Bower’s face, he turned to the Left.

“T reckon we were teachin’ him our canoe was too full,”
was the Left Bower’s unexpected reply. ‘‘That’s about
the size of it.”

The Right Bower shot a rapid glance under his brows at
his brother. The latter, with his hands in his pockets, stared
unconsciously at the rushing water, and then quietly turned
away. The Right Bower followed him. ‘ Are you goin’
back on us?” he asked.

“ Are you? ’’ responded the other.

“No!”

“ No, then, it is,” returned the Left Bower quietly. The
elder brother hesitated in half-angry embarrassment.

“Then what did you mean by saying we reckoned our
canoe was too full? ”

“ Was n’t that our idea?” returned the Left Bower i-
differently. Confounded by this practical expression of
his own unformulated good intentions, the Right Bower was
staggered.

“ Speakin’ of the Old Man,” broke in the Judge, with
characteristic infelicity, “I reckon he’ll sort o’ miss us,
times like these. We were allers runnin’ him and bedev-
ilin’ him, after work, just to get him excited and amusin’,
and he’ll kinder miss that sort o’ stimulatin’. I reckon
we’ll miss it too, somewhat. Don’t you remember, boys,
the night we put up that little sell on him and made him
216 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN

believe we ’d struck it rich in the bank of the creek, and
got him so conceited h3 wanted to go off and settle all our
debts at once?”

“ And how I came bustin’ into the cabin with a pan full
ot iron pyrites and black sand,” chuckled Union Mills, con-
tinuing the reminiscences, ‘‘ and how them big gray eyes of
his nearly bulged out of his head. Well, it’s some satis.
faction to know we did our duty by the young fellow even
in those little things.” He turned for confirmation of their
general disinterestedness to the Right Bower, but he was
already striding away, uneasily conscious of the lazy follow-
ing of the Left Bower, like a laggard conscience at his back.
This movement again threw Union Millsand the Judge into
feeble complicity in the rear, as the procession slowly strag-
gled homeward from the creek.

Night had fallen. Their way lay through the shadow of
Lone Star Mountain, deepened here and there by the slight,
bosky ridges that, starting from its base, crept across the
plain like vast roots of its swelling trunk. The shadows
were growing blacker as the moon began to assert itself over
the rest of the valley, when the Right Bower halted sud-
denly on one of these ridges. The Left Bower lounged up
to him, and stopped also, while the two others came up and
completed the group.

“There ’s no light in the shanty,” said the Right Bower
in a low voice, half to himself and half in answer to their
inquiring attitude. The men followed the direction of his
finger. In the distance the black outline of the Lone Star
cabin stood owt distinctly in the illumined space. There
was the black, sightless, external glitter of moonlight on its
two windows that seemed to reflect its dim vacancy, empty
alike of light and warmth and motion.

“That ’s sing’lar,” said the Judge in an awed whisper.

The Left Bower, by simply altering the position of his
hands in his trousers’ pockets, managed to suggest that he
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN 217

knew perfectly the meaning of it, had always known it;
but that being now, so to speak, in the hands of Fate, he
was callous to it. This much, at least, the elder brother
read in his attitude. But anxiety at that moment was the
controlling impulse of the Right Bower, as a certain super-
stitious remorse was the instinct of the two others; and with-
out heeding the cynic, the three started at a rapid pace for
the cabin.

They reached it silently, as the moon, now riding high
in the heavens, seemed to touch it with the tender grace
and hushed repose of a tomb. It was with something of
this feeling that the Right Bower softly pushed open the
door; it was with something of this dread that the two
others lingered on the threshold, until the Right Bower,
after vainly trying to stir the dead embers on the hearth
into life with his foot, struck a match and lit their solitary
candle. Its flickering light revealed the familiar interior
unchanged in aught but one thing. The bunk that the Old
Man had occupied was stripped of its blankets; the few
cheap ornaments and photographs were gone; the rude
poverty of the bare boards and scant pallet looked up at
them unrelieved by the bright face and gracious youth that
had once made them tolerable. In the grim irony of that
exposure, their own penury was doubly conscious. The lit-
tle knapsack, the tea-cup, and coffee-pot that had hung near
his bed were gone also. The most indignant protest, the
most pathetic of the letters he had composed and rejected,
whose torn fragments still littered the floor, could never
have spoken with the eloquence of this empty space! The
men exchanged no words; the solitude of the cabin, instead
of drawing them together, seemed to isolate each one in
selfish distrust of the others. Even the unthinking gar-
tulity of Union Mills and the Judge was checked. A
moment later, when the Left Bower entered the cabin, his
presence was scarcely noticed.
218 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN

The silence was broken by a joyous exclamation from
the Judge. He had discovered the Old Man’s rifle in the
corner, where it had been at first overlooked. “He ain’t
gone yet, gentlemen — for yer’s his rifle,” he broke in,
with a feverish return of volubility, and a high excited
falsetto. ‘He wouldn’t have left this behind. No! I
knowed it from the first. He’s just outside a bit, foraging
for wood and water. No, sir! Coming along here I said
to Union Mills — didn’t I? —‘ Bet your life the Old
Man’s not far off, even if he ain’t in the cabin.’ Why, the
moment I stepped foot ’” —

“And I said coming along,” interrupted Union Mills,
with equally reviving mendacity, ‘ Like as not he’s hangin’
round yer and lyin’ low just to give usa surprise.’ He!
ho!”

“He ’s gone for good, and he left that rifle here on pur-
pose,” said the Left Bower in a low voice, taking the weapon
almost tenderly in his hands.

“ Drop it, then! ” said the Right Bower. The voice was
that of his brother, but suddenly changed with passion.
The two other partners drew back in alarm.

“T’ll not leave it here for the first comer,” said the Left
Bower calmly, ‘because we’ve been fools, and he, too,
It ’s too good a weapon for that.”

“ Drop it, I say!” said the Right Bower, with a savage
stride towards him.

The younger brother brought the rifle to a half charge
with a white face but a steady eye.

“Stop where you are!” he said collectedly. “ Don’t
row with me, because you haven’t either the grit to stick
to your ideas or the heart to confess them wrong. We’ve
followed your lead, and—here we are! The camp’s
broken up — the Old Man’s gone — and we’re going. And
as for the d—d rifle’? —

“Drop it, do you hear!’ shouted the Right Bower,
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN 219

clinging to that one idea with the blind pertinacity of rage
and a losing cause. ‘ Drop it!”

The Left Bower drew back, but his brother had seized
the barrel with both hands. There was a momentary strug-
gle, a flash through the half-lighted cabin, and a shattering
report. The two men fell back from each other; the rifle
dropped on the floor between them.

The whole thing was over so quickly that the other two
partners had not had time to obey their common impulse
to separate them, and consequently even now could scarcely
understand what had passed. It was over so quickly that
the two actors themselves walked back to their places,
scarcely realizing their own act.

A dead silence followed. The Judge and Union Mills
looked at each other in dazed astonishment, and then ner-
vously set about their former habits, apparently in that
fatuous belief common to such natures, that they were ig-
noring a painful situation. The Judge drew the tarrel
towards him, picked up the cards, and began mechanically
to “make a patience,” on which Union Mills gazed with
ostentatious interest. but with eyes furtively conscious of
the rigid figure of the Right Bower by the chimney and
the abstracted face of the Left Bower at the door. Ten
minutes had passed in this occupation, the Judge and Union
Mills conversing in the furtive whispers of children una-
voidably but fascinatedly present at a family quarrel, when
a light step was heard upon the crackling brushwood out-
side, and the bright panting face of the Old Man appeared
upon the threshold. There was a shout of joy; in another
moment he was half buried in the bosom of the Right
Bower’s shirt, half dragged into the lap of the Judge, upset-
ting the barrel, and completely encompassed by the Left
Bower and Union Mills. With the enthusiastic utterance
of his name the spell was broken.

Happily unconscious of the previous excitement that had
220 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN

provoked this spontaneous unanimity of greeting, the Old
Man, equally relieved, at once broke into a feverish an-
nouncement of his discovery. He painted the details, with,
I fear, a slight exaggeration of coloring, due partly to his
own excitement, and partly to justify their own. But he
was strangely conscious that these bankrupt men appeared
less elated with their personal interest in their stroke of
fortune than with his own success. ‘I told you he’d do
it,” said the Judge, with a reckless unscrupulousness of the
statement that carried everybody with it; ‘look at him!
the game little pup.” “Oh, no! he ain’t the right breed,
is he?” echoed Union Mills with arch irony, while the
Right and Left Bower, grasping either hand, pressed a
proud but silent greeting that was half new to him, but
wholly delicious. It was not without difficulty that he
could at last prevail upon them to return with him to the
scene of his discovery, or even then restrain them from at-
tempting to carry him thither on their shoulders on the
plea of his previous prolonged exertions. Once only there
was a momentary embarrassment. ‘Then you fired that
shot to bring me back ? ” said the Old Man gratefully. In
the awkward silence that followed, the hands ‘of the two
brothers sought and grasped each other penitently. “ Yes,”
interposed the Judge, with delicate tact, “ye see the Right
and Left Bower almost quarreled to see which should be
the first to fire for ye. I disremember which did ” — “I
never touched the trigger,’ said the Left Bower hastily.
With a hurried backward kick, the Judge resumed, “ It
went off sorter spontaneous.”

The difference in the sentiment of the procession that
once more issued from the Lone Star cabin did not fail
to show itself in each individual partner according to his
temperament. The subtle tact of Union Mills, however,
in expressing an awakened respect for their fortunate part-
ner by addressing him, as if unconsciously, as “ Mr. Ferd”
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN 221

was at first discomposing, but even this was forgotten in
their breathless excitement as they neared the base of the
mountain. When they had crossed the creek the Right
Bower stopped reflectively.

“ You say you heard the slide come down before you left
the cabin ?” he said, turning to the Old Man.

“Yes; but I did not know then what it was. It was
about an hour and a half after you left,” was the reply.

“Then look here, boys,” continued the Right Bower
with superstitious exultation ; “it was the slide that tum-
bled into the creek, overflowed it, and helped ws clear out
the race!”

It seemed so clear that Providence had taken the part-
ners of the Lone Star directly in hand that they faced the
toilsome ascent of the mountain with the assurance of con-
querors. They paused only on the summit to allow the
Old Man to lead the way to the slope that held their trea-
sure. He advanced cautiously to the edge of the crumbling
cliff, stopped, looked bewildered, advanced again, and then
remained white and immovable. In an instant the Right
Bower was at his side.

“Js anything the matter? Don’t — don’t look so, Old
Man, for God’s sake!”

The Old Man pointed to the dull, smooth, black side of
the mountain, without a crag, break, or protuberance, and
said with ashen lips, —

“Tt’s gone!”

And it was gone! A second slide had taken place, strip-
ping the flank of the mountain, and burying the treasure
and the weak implement that had marked its side deep
under a chaos of rock and débris at its base.

“Thank God!” The blank faces of his companions
turned quickly to the Right Bower. ‘Thank God!” he
repeated, with his arm round the neck of the Old Man
222 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN

“Had he stayed behind he would have been buried too.”
He paused, and, pointing solemnly to the depths below,
said, ‘‘ And thank God for showing us where we may oe
labor for it in hope and patience like honest men.”

The men silently bowed their heads and slowly aeuen
the mountain. But when they had reached the plain one
of them called out to the others to watch a star that seemed
to be rising and moving towards them over the hushed and
sleeping valley.

““Tt’s only the stage-coach, boys,” said the Left Bower,
smiling; “ the coach that was to take us away.”

In the security of their new-found fraternity they re-
solved to wait and see it pass. As it swept by with flash
of light, beat of hoofs, and jingle of harness, the only real
presence in the dreamy landscape, the driver shouted a
hoarse greeting to the phantom partners, audible only to
the Judge, who was nearest the vehicle.

“Did you hear —did you hear what he said, boys? ”
he gasped, turning to his companions. ‘No? Shake
hands all round, boys! God bless you all, boys! To
think we did n’t know it all this while!”

“ Know what ? ”

“ Merry Christmas! ”
A SHIP OF 749
I

Ir had rained so persistently in San Francisco during the
first week of January, 1854, that a certain quagmire in the
roadway of Long Wharf had become impassable, and a
plank was thrown over its dangerous depth. Indeed, so
treacherous was the spot that it was alleged, on good au-
thority, that a hastily embarking traveler had once hope-
lessly lost his portmanteau, and was fain to dispose of his
entire interest in it for the sum of two dollars and fifty
cents to a speculative stranger on the wharf. As the stran-
ger’s search was rewarded afterwards only by the discovery
of the body of a casual Chinaman, who had evidently en-
deavored wickedly to anticipate him, a feeling of commer-
cial insecurity was added to the other eccentricities of the
locality.

The plank led to the door of a building that was a mar-
vel even in the chaotic frontier architecture of the street.
The houses on either side — irregular frames of wood or
corrugated iron— bore evidence of having been quickly
thrown together, to meet the requirements of the goods and
passengers who were once disembarked on what was the
muddy beach of the infant city. But the building in ques-
tion exhibited a certain elaboration of form and design ut-
terly inconsistent with this idea. The structure obtruded
a bowed front to the street, with a curving line of small
windows, surmounted by elaborate carvings and scrollwork
of vines and leaves, while below, in faded gilt letters, ap-
peared the legend ‘Pontiac — Marseilles.” The effect of
224 A SHIP OF '49

this incongruity was startling. It is related that an inebri-
ated miner, impeded by mud and drink before its door,
was found gazing at its remarkable facade with an expres.
sion of the deepest despondency. ‘‘I hev lived a free life,
pardner,” he explained thickly to the Samaritan who suc-
cored him, “and every time since I’ve been on this six
weeks’ Jamboree might have kalkilated it would come ta
this. Snakes I’ve seen afore now, and rats I’m not un-
familiar with, but when it comes to the starn of a ship ris-
in’ up out of the street, I reckon it’s time to pass in my
checks.”

“Tt ds a ship, you blasted old soaker,” said the Samari-
tan curtly.

It was indeed a ship. A ship run ashore and abandoned
on the beach years before by her gold-seeking crew, with
the débris of her scattered stores and cargo, overtaken by
the wild growth of the strange city and the reclamation of
the muddy flat, wherein she lay hopelessly imbedded; her
retreat cut off by wharves and quays and breakwater,
jostled at first by sheds, and then impacted in a block of
solid warehouses and dwellings, her rudder, port, and coun-
ter boarded in, and now gazing hopelessly through her cabin
windows upon the busy street before her. But stiil a ship
despite her transformation. The faintest line of contour
yet left visible spoke of the buoyancy of another element;
the balustrade of her roof was unmistakably a taffrail.
The rain slipped from her swelling sides with a certain
lingering touch of the sea; the soil around her was still
treacherous with its suggestions, and even the wind whis-
tled nautically over her chimney. If, in the fury of some
southwesterly gale, she had one night slipped her strange
moorings and left a shining track through the lower town
to the distant sea, no one would have been surprised.

Least of all, perhaps, her present owner and _ possessor,
Mr. Abner Nott. For by the irony of circumstances, Mr,
A SHIP or ’49 225

Nott was a Far Western farmer who had never seen a ship
before, nor a larger stream of water than a tributary ofthe
Missouri River. In a spirit, half of fascination, half of
speculation, he had bought her at the time of her aban-
donment, and had since mortgaged his ranch at Petaluma
with his live stock, to defray the expenses of filling in the
land where she stood, and the improvements of the vicin-
ity. He had transferred his household goods and his only
daughter to her cabin, and had divided the space “ between
decks” and her hold into lodging-rooms, and lofts for the
storage of goods. It could hardly be said that the invest-
ment had been profitable. His tenants vaguely recognized
that his occupancy was a sentimental rather than a commer-
cial speculation, and often generously lent themselves to
the illusion by not paying their rent. Others treated their
own tenancy as a joke, —a quaint recreation born of the
childlike familiarity of frontier intercourse. A few had
left; carelessly abandoning their unsalable goods to their
landlord, with great cheerfulness and a sense of favor.
Occasionally Mr. Abner Nott, in a practical relapse, raged
against the derelicts, and talked of dispossessing them, or
even dismantling his tenement, but he was easily placated
by a compliment to the “dear old ship,” or an effort made
by some tenant to idealize his apartment. A photographer
who had ingeniously utilized the forecastle for a gallery
(accessible from the bows in the next street) paid no fur-
ther tribute than a portrait of the pretty face of Rosey
Nott. The superstitious reverence in which Abner Nott
held his monstrous fancy was naturally enhanced by his
purely bucolic exaggeration of its real functions and its na-
tive element. ‘This yer keel has sailed and sailed and
sailed,” he would explain, with some incongruity of illustra-
tion, “in a bee line, makin’ tracks for days runnin’. I
reckon more storms and blizzards hez tackled her than you
ken shake a stick at. She ’s stampeded whales afore now,
226 A SHIP OF 749

and sloshed round with pirates and freebooters in and oute~
the Spanish Main, and across lots from Marcelleys where
she was rared. And yer she sits peaceful-like just ez if
she’d never been outer a pertater patch, and hadn’t
ploughed the sea with fo’sails and studdin’ sails and them
things cavortin’ round her masts.”

Abner Nott’s enthusiasm was shared by his daughter,
but with more imagination, and an intelligence stimulated
by the scant literature of her father’s emigrant wagon and
the few books found on the cabin shelves. But to her the
strange shell she inhabited suggested more of the great
world than the rude, chaotic civilization she saw from the
cabin windows or met in the persons of her father’s lodgers.
Shut up for days in this quaint tenement, she had seen it
change from the enchanted playground of her childish fancy
to the theatre of her active maidenhood, but without losing
her ideal romance in it. She had translated its history in
her own way, read its quaint nautical hieroglyphics after
her own fashion, and possessed herself of its secrets. She
had in fancy made voyages in it to foreign lands, had
heard the accents of a softer tongue on its decks, and on
summer nights, from the roof of the quarter-deck, had seen
mellower constellations take the place of the hard metallic
glitter of the Californian skies. Sometimes, in her isola-
tion, the long, cylindrical vault she inhabited seemed, like
some vast seashell, to become musical with the murmur-
ings of the distant sea. So completely had it taken the
place of the usual instincts of feminine youth that she had
forgotten she was pretty, or that her dresses were old in
fashion and scant in quantity. After the first surprise of
admiration her father’s lodgers ceased to follow the ab-
stracted nymph except with their eyes, — partly respecting
her spiritual shyness, partly respecting the jealous super-
vision of the paternal Nott. She seldom penetrated the
crowded centre of the growing city; her rare excursions
A SHIP oF 749 227

were confined to the old ranch at Petaluma, whence she
brougnt flowers and plants, and even extemporized a hang-
ing-garden on the quarter-deck.

It was still raining, and the wind, which had increased
‘o a gale, was dashing the drops against the slanting cabin
windows with a sound like spray when Mr. Abner Nott sat
before a table seriously engaged with his accounts. For it
was “steamer night,” — as that momentous day of reckon-
ing before the sailing of the regular mail steamer was briefly
known to commercial San Francisco, —and Mr. Nott was
subject at such times to severely practical relapses. A
swinging light seemed to bring into greater relief that
peculiar encased casket-like security of the low-timbered,
tightly fitting apartment, with its toy-like utilities of space,
and made the pretty oval face of Rosey Nott appear a char-
acteristic ornament. The sliding door of the cabin commu-
nicated with the main deck, now roofed in and partitioned
off so as to form a small passage that led to the open star-
board gangway, where a narrow, inclosed staircase built on
the ship’s side took the place of the ship’s ladder under
her counter, and opened in the street.

A dash of rain against the window caused Rosey to lift
her eyes from her book.

“Tt’s much nicer here than at the ranch, father,” she
said coaxingly, ‘‘even leaving alone its being a beautiful
ship instead of a shanty; the wind don’t whistle through
the cracks and blow out the candle when you’re reading,
nor the rain spoil your things hung up against the wall.
And you look more like a gentleman sitting in his own —
ship — you know, looking over his bills and getting ready
to give his orders.”

Vague and general as Miss Rosey’s compliment was.
it had its full effect upon her father, who was at time.
dimly conscious of his hopeless rusticity and its incongru-
ity with his surroundings. “Yes,” he said awkwardly,
228 A SHIP oF 749

with a slight relaxation of his aggressive attitude; ‘yes,
in course it’s more bang-up style, but it don’t pay — Rosey
—it don’t pay. Yer’s the Pontiac that oughter be bringin’
in, ez rents go, at least three hundred a month, don’t make
her taxes. JI bin thinkin’ seriously of sellin’ her.”

As Rosey knew her father had experienced this serious
contemplation on the’'first of every month for the last twe
years, and cheerfully ignored it the next day, she only said,
“T’m sure the vacant rooms and lofts are all rented, father.”

“That’s it,” returned Mr. Nott thoughtfully, plucking
at his bushy whiskers with his fingers and thumb as if he
were removing dead and sapless incumbrances in their
growth, ‘“‘that’s just what it is—them’s ez in it them-
selves don’t pay, and them ez haz left their goods — the
goods don’t pay. The feller ez stored them iron sugar
kettles in the forehold, after trying to get me to make an-
other advance on ’em, sez he believes he ’ll have to sacrifice
‘em to me after all, and only begs I’d give him a chance
of buying back the half of ’em ten years from now, at
double what I advanced him. The chap that left them
five hundred cases of hair-dye ’tween decks, and then
skipped out to Sacramento, met me the other day in the
street and advised me to use a bottle ez an advertisement,
or try it on the starn of the Pontiac for fireproof paint.
That foolishness ez all he’s good for. And yet thar might
be suthin’ in the paint, if a feller had nigger luck. Ther’s
that New York chap ez bought up them damaged boxes of
plug terbakker for fifty dollars a thousand, and sold ’em for
foundations for that new building in Sansome Street at a
thousand clear profit. It’s all luck, Rosey.”

The girl’s eyes had wandered again to the pages of her
book. Perhaps she was already familiar with the text of
her father’s monologue. But recognizing an additional
querulousness in his voice, she laid the book aside and pa<
tiently folded her hands in her lap.
A SHIP OF 749 229

“That ’s right —for I’ve suthin’ to tell ye. The fact
is Sleight wants to buy the Pontiac out and out just ez she
stands with the two fifty vara lots she stands on.”

“Sleight wants to buy her? Sleight?” echoed Rosey
incredulously.

“You bet! Sleight—the big financier, the smartest
man in ’ Frisco.”

“What does he want to buy her for?” asked Rosey,
knitting her pretty brows.

The apparently simple question suddenly puzzled Mr.
Nott. He glanced feebly at his daughter’s face, and
frowned in vacant irritation. ‘‘That’s so,” he said, draw-
ing a long breath; “‘there’s suthin’ in that.”

“What did he say?” continued the young girl impa-
tiently.

“Not much. ‘ You’ve got the Pontiac, Nott,’ sez he.
“You bet!’ sez I. ‘ What’ll you take for her and the lot
she stands on?’ sez he, short and sharp. Some fellers,
Rosey,” said Nott, with a cunning smile, “would hev
blurted out a big figger and been cotched. That ain’t my
style. I just looked at him. ‘I’ll wait fur your figgers
until next steamer day,’ sez he, and off he goes like a shot.
He ’s awfully sharp, Rosey.”

“But if he is sharp, father, and he really wants to buy
the ship,” returned Rosey thoughtfully, “it’s only be-
cause he knows it’s valuable property, and not because he
likes it as we do. He can’t take that value away even if
we don’t sell it to him, and all the while we have the com-
fort of the dear old Pontiac, don’t you see?”

This exhaustive commercial reasoning was so sympathetic
to Mr. Nott’s instincts that he accepted it as conclusive.
He, however, deemed it wise to still preserve his practical
attitude. “But that don’t make it pay by the month,
Rosey. Suthin’ must be done. I’m thinking I'll clean
out that photographer.”
230 A SHIP OF 749

“Not just after he’s taken such a pretty view of the
cabin front of the Pontiac from the street, father! No!
He’s going to give us a copy, and put the other in a shop
window in Montgomery Street.”

“That ’s so,” said Mr. Nott musingly; “it’s no slouch
of an advertisement. ‘The Pontiac,’ the property of A.
Nott, Esq., of St. Jo, Missouri. Send it on to your aunj
Pheebe; sorter make the old folks open their eyes — oh?
Well, seein’ he’s been to some expense fittin’ up an en-
trance from the other street, we’ll let him slide. But as
to that d—d old Frenchman Ferrers, in the next loft, with
his stuck-up airs and highfalutin’ style, we must get quit
of him; he’s regularly gouged me in that ere horsehair
spekilation.”

“How can you say that, father!” said Rosey, with a
slight increase of color. “It was your own offer. You
know those bales of curled horsehair were left behind by
the late tenant to pay his rent. When Mr. De Ferriéres
rented the room afterwards, you told him you’d throw
them in in the place of repairs and furniture. It was your
own offer.”

“Yes, but I didn’t reckon ther’d ever be a big price
per pound paid for the darned stuff for sofys and cushions
and sich.”

“How do you know he knew it, father?” responded
Rosey.

“Then why did he look so silly at first, and then put
on airs when I joked him about it, eh?”

“Perhaps he didn’t understand your joking, father.
He’s a foreigner, and shy and proud, and—not like the
others. I don’t think he knew what you meant then, any
more than he believed he was making a bargain before.
He may be poor, but I think he ’s been — a — a — gentle-
man.”

The young girl’s animation penetrated even Mr. Nott’s
A SHIP OF 49 231

slow comprehension. Her novel opposition, and even the
prettiness it enhanced, gave him a dull premonition of pain.
His small round eyes became abstracted, his mouth re-
mained partly open, even his fresh color slightly paled.

“You seem to have been takin’ stock of this yer man,
Rosey,” he said, with a faint attempt at archness; ‘if he
warn’t ez old ez a crow, for all his young feathers, I’d
think he was makin’ up to you.”

But the passing glow had faded from her young cheeks,
and her eyes wandered again to her book. ‘He pays his
rent regularly every steamer night,” she said quietly, as if
dismissing an exhausted subject, “and he’ll be here in a
moment, I dare say.” She took up her book, and leaning
her head on her hand, once more became absorbed in its
pages.

An uneasy silence followed. The rain beat against the
windows, the ticking of a clock became audible, but still
Mr. Nott sat with vacant eyes fixed on his daughter’s face,
and the constrained smile on his lips. He was conscious
that he had never seen her look so pretty before, yet he
could not tell why this was no longer an unalloyed satis-
faction. Not but that he had always accepted the admira-
tion of others for her as a matter of course, but for the first
time he became conscious that she not only had an interest
in others, but apparently a superior knowledge of them.
How did she know these things about this man, and why
had she only now accidentally spoken of them? He would
have done so. All this passed so vaguely through his
unreflective mind, that he was unable to retain any decided
impression but the far-reaching one that his lodger had
obtained some occult influence over her through the ex-
hibition of his baleful skill in the horsehair speculation.
“Them tricks is likely to take a young girl’s fancy. I
must look arter her,” he said to himself softly.

A slow, regular step in the gangway interrupted his pater.
232 A SHIP OF 749

nal reflections. Hastily buttoning across his chest the pea-
jacket which he usually wore at home as a single conces-
sion to his nautical surroundings, he drew himself up with
something of the assumption of a shipmaster, despite cer-
tain bucolic suggestions of his boots and legs. The foot-
steps approached nearer, and a tall figure suddenly stood in
the doorway.

It was a figure so extraordinary that even in the strange
masquerade of that early civilization it was remarkable; a
figure with whom father and daughter were already familiar
without abatement of wonder — the figure of a rejuvenated
old man, padded, powdered, dyed, and painted to the
verge of caricature, but without a single suggestion of ludi-
crousness or humor. A face so artificial that it seemed al-
most a mask, but, like a mask, more pathetic than amus-
ing. He was dressed in the extreme of fashion of a dozen
years before; his pearl-gray trousers strapped tightly over
his varnished boots, his voluminous satin cravat and high
collar embraced his rouged cheeks and dyed whiskers, his
closely buttoned frock coat clinging to a waist that seemed
accented by stays.

He advanced two steps into the cabin with an upright
precision of motion that might have hid the infirmities of
age, and said deliberately with a foreign accent: —

“You-r-r ac-coumpt? ”

In the actual presence of the apparition Mr. Nott’s dig-
nified resistance wavered. But glancing uneasily at his
daughter and seeing her calm eyes fixed on the speaker
without embarrassment, he folded his arms stiffly, and
with a lofty simulation of examining the ceiling, said: —

“Ahem! Rosa! The gentleman’s account.”

It was an infelicitous action, For the stranger, who evi-
dently had not noticed the presence of the young girl be-
fore, started, took a step quickly forward, bent stiffly but
profoundly over the little hand that held the account,
A SHIP OF 749 238

raised it to his lips, and with “a thousand pardons, ma-
demoiselle,” laid a small canvas bag containing the rent
before the disorganized Mr. Nott and stiffly vanished.

The night was a troubled one to the simple-minded _pro-
prietor of the good ship Pontiac. Unable to voice his
uneasiness by further discussion, but feeling that his late
discomposing interview with his lodger demanded some
marked protest, he absented himself on the plea of business
during the rest of the evening, happily to his daughter’s
utter obliviousness of the reason. Lights were burning
brilliantly in counting-rooms and offices, the feverish life
of the mercantile city was at its height. With a vague
idea of entering into immediate negotiations with Mr.
Sleight for the sale of the ship, as a direct way out of his
present perplexity, he bent his steps towards the finan-
cier’s office, but paused and turned back before reaching
the door, He made his way to the wharf and gazed ab-
stractedly at the lights reflected in the dark, tremulous,
jelly-like water. But wherever he went he was accom-
panied by the absurd figure of his lodger —a figure he had
hitherto laughed at or half pitied, but which now, to his
bewildered comprehension, seemed to have a fateful signifi-
cance. Here a new idea seized him, and he hurried back
to the ship, slackening his pace only when he arrived at
his own doorway. Here he paused a moment and slowly
ascended the staircase. When he reached the passage he
coughed slightly and paused again. Then he pushed open
the door of the darkened cabin and called softly : —

“ Rosey!”

“What is it, father?” said Rosey’s voice from the little
stateroom on the right — Rosey’s own bower.

“Nothing!” said Mr. Nott, with an affectation of lan-
guid calmness; “I only wanted to know if you was comes
fortable. It’s an awful busy night in town.”

“Yes, father.”
234 A SHIP oF 749

“T reckon thar’s tons o’ gold goin’ to the States to-
morrow.”

“Yes, father.”

“Pretty comfortable, eh?”

“Yes, father.”

“Well, I’ll browse round a spell, and turn in myself
soon.”

“Yes, father.”

Mr. Nott took down a hanging lantern, lighted it, and
passed out into the gangway. Another lamp hung from
the companion hatch to light the tenants to the lower
deck, whence he descended. This deck was divided fore
and aft by a partitioned passage, — the lofts or apartments
being lighted from the ports, and one or two by a door cut
through the ship’s side communicating with an alley on
either side. This was the case with the loft occupied by
Mr. Nott’s strange lodger, which, besides a door in the
passage, had this independent communication with the
alley. Nott had never known him to make use of the
latter door; on the contrary, it was his regular habit to
issue from his apartment at three o’clock every afternoon,
dressed as he has been described, stride deliberately
through the passage to the upper deck, and thence into the
street, where his strange figure was a feature of the princi-
pal promenade for two or three hours, returning as regu-
larly at eight o’clock to the ship and the seclusion of his
loft. Mr. Nott paused before the door, under the pretense
of throwing the light before him into the shadows of the
forecastle: all was silent within. He was turning back
when he was impressed by the regular recurrence of a pe-
culiar rustling sound which he had at first referred to the
rubbing of the wires of the swinging lantern against his
clothing. He set down the light and listened; the sound
was evidently on the other side of the partition; the sound
of some prolonged, rustling, scraping movement, with regu-
A SHIP OF °49 235

lar intervals. Was it due to another of Mr. Nott’s un-
profitable tenants—the rats? No. A bright idea flashed
upon Mr. Nott’s troubled mind. It was De Ferrivres
snoring! He smiled grimly. ‘“ Wonder if Rosey ’d call
him a gentleman if she heard that,” he chuckled to him-
self as he slowly made his way back to the cabin and the
small stateroom opposite to his daughter’s. During the
rest of the night he dreamed of being compelled to give
Rosey in marriage to his lodger, who added insult to the
outrage by snoring audibly through the marriage service.

Meantime, in her cradle-like nest in her nautical bower,
Miss Rosey slumbered as lightly. Waking from a vivid
dream of Venice —a child’s Venice — seen from the swell-
ing deck of the proudly riding Pontiac, she was so im-
pressed as to rise and cross on tiptoe to the little slanting
port-hole. Morning was already dawning over the flat,
straggling city, but from every counting-house and magazine
the votive tapers of the feverish worshipers of trade and
mammon were still flaring fiercely.

II

The day following “steamer night” was usually stale
and flat at San Francisco. The reaction from the feverish
exaltation of the previous twenty-four hours was seen in
the listless faces and lounging feet of promenaders, and
was notable in the deserted offices and warehouses still
redolent of last night’s gas, and strewn with the dead ashes
of last night’s fires. There was a brief pause before the
busy life which ran its course from “steamer day” to
steamer day was once more taken up. In that interval
a few anxious speculators and investors breathed freely,
some critical situation was relieved, or some impending
catastrophe momentarily averted. In particular, a singu-
lar stroke of good fortune that morning befell Mr. Nott.
He not only secured a new tenant, but, as he sagaciously
236 A SHIP OF 749

believed, introduced into the Pontiac a counteracting in-
fluence to the subtle fascinations of De Ferriéres.

The new tenant apparently possessed a combination of
business shrewdness and brusque frankness that strongly
impressed his landlord. “You see, Rosey,” said Nott,
complacently describing the interview to his daughter,
“when I sorter intimated in a keerless kind 0’ way that
sugar kettles and hair-dye was about played out ez securi-
ties, he just planked down the money for two months in
advance. ‘There,’ sez he, ‘that’s your security — now
where’s mine?’ ‘I reckon I don’t hitch on, pardner,’
sez I; ‘security what for?’ ‘’Spose you sell the ship?’
sez he, ‘afore the two months is up. I’ve heard that old
Sleight wants to buy her.’ ‘Then you gets back your
money,’ sez I. ‘And lose my room,’ sez he; ‘not much,
old man. You sign a paper that whoever buys the shir
inside 0’ two months hez to buy me ez a tenant with it;
that’s on the square.’ So I sign the paper. It was
mighty cute in the young feller, wasn’t it?” he said, scan-
ning his daughter’s pretty puzzled face a little anxiously:
“and don’t you see, ez I ain’t goin’ to sell the Pontiac,
it’s just about ezcute in me, eh? He’s a contractor some.
where around yer, and wants to be near his work. So he
takes the room next to the Frenchman, that that ship cap.
tain quit for the mines, and succeeds naterally to his chest
and things. He’s mighty peart looking, that young fel-
ler, Rosey —long black mustaches, all his own color,
Rosey —and he’s a regular high-stepper, you bet. [
reckon he’s not only been a gentleman, but ez now,
Some o’ them contractors are very high-toned! ”

“T don’t think we have any right to give him the cap-
tain’s chest, father,” said Rosey; “there may be some pri-
vate things in it. There were some letters and photographs
in the hair-dye man’s trunk that you gave the photo-
grapher.”
A SHIP OF 49 237

“That’s just it, Rosey,” returned Abner Nott with
sublime unconsciousness, ‘“‘ photographs and love-letters you
can’t sell for cash, and I don’t mind givin’ ’em away, if
they kin make a feller creature happy.”

“But, father, have we the right to give ’em away?”

“They ’re collateral security, Rosey,” said her father
grimly. “Co-la-te-ral,” he continued, emphasizing each
syllable by tapping the fist of one hand in the open palm
of the other. ‘“Co-la-te-ral is the word the big business
sharps yer about call ‘em. You can’t get round that.”
He paused a moment, and then, as a new idea seemed to
be painfully borne in his round eyes, continued cau-
tiously: ‘‘Was that the reason why you would n’t touch
any of them dresses from the trunks of that opery gal ez
skedaddled for Sacramento? And yet them trunks I regu-
larly bought at auction — Rosey —at auction, on spec —
and they didn’t realize the cost of drayage.”

A slight color mounted to Rosey’s face. ‘‘No,” she
said hastily, ‘“‘not that.”  Hesitating a moment, she then
drew softly to his side, and placing her arms around his
neck, turned his broad foolish face towards her own.
“Father,” she began, “when mother died, would you have
liked anybody to take her trunks and paw round her things
and wear them?”

“When your mother died, just this side 0’ Sweetwater,
Rosey,” said Mr. Nott, with beaming unconsciousness,
“she hadn’t any trunks. JI reckon she hadn’t even an
extra gown hanging up in the wagin, ’cept the petticoat
ez she had wrapped around yer. It was about ez much ez
we could do to skirmish round with Injins, alkali, and
cold, and we sorter forgot to dress for dinner. She never
thought, Rosey, that you and me would live to be inhab-
itin’ a paliss of a real ship. Ef she had she would have
died a proud woman.”

He turned his small, loving, boar-like eyes upon her as
238 A SHIP OF ’49

a preternaturally innocent and trusting companion of Ulys-
ses might have regarded the transforming Circe. Rosey
turned away with the faintest sigh. The habitual look of
abstraction returned to her eyes as if she had once more
taken refuge in her own ideal world. Unfortunately the
change did not escape either the sensitive observation or
the fatuous misconception of the sagacious parent. ‘Yell
be mountin’ a few furbelows and fixin’s, Rosey, I reckon,
ez only natural. Mebbe ye’ll have to prink up a little
now that we’ve got a gentleman contractor in the ship.
I’ll see what I kin pick up in Montgomery Street.” And
indeed he succeeded a few hours later in accomplishing
with equal infelicity his generous design. When she re-
turned from her household tasks she found on her berth a
purple velvet bonnet of extraordinary make and a pair of
white satin slippers. “They ’ll do for a start-off, Rosey,”
he explained, “and I got ’em at my figgers.”

“But I go out so seldom, father; and a bonnet ” —

“That ’s so,” interrupted Mr. Nott complacently, “it
might be jest ez well for a young gal like yer to appear
ez if she did go out, or would go out if she wanted to. So
you kin be wearin’ that ar headstall kinder like this even-
ing when the contractor’s here, ez if you’d jest come in
from a pasear.”

Miss Rosey did not, however, immediately avail herself of
her father’s purchase, but contented herself with the usual
searlet ribbon that like a snood confined her brown hair
when she returned to her tasks. The space between the
galley and the bulwarks had been her favorite resort in
summer when not actually engaged in household work. It
was now lightly roofed over with boards and tarpaulin
against the winter rain, but still afforded her a veranda-
like space before the galley door, where she could read or
sew, looking over the bow of the Pontiac to the tossing
bay or the farther range of the Contra Costa hills.
A SHIP oF 749 239

Hither Miss Rosey brought the purple prodigy, partly
to please her father, partly with a view of subjecting it to
violent radical changes. But after trying it on before the
tiny mirror in the galley once or twice, her thoughts wan-
dered away, and she fell into one of her habitual reveries
seated on a little stool before the galley door.

She was aroused from it by the slight shaking and rat-
tling of the doors of a small hatch on the deck not a dozen
yards from where she sat. It had been evidently fastened
from below during the wet weather; but as she gazed the
fastenings were removed, the doors were suddenly lifted,
and the head and shoulders of a young man emerged from
the deck. Partly from her father’s description, and partly
from the impossibility of its being anybody else, she at
once conceived it to be the new lodger. She had time to
note that he was young and good looking, graver, perhaps,
than became his sudden pantomimie appearance; but before
she could observe him closely, he had turned, closed the
hatch with a certain familiar dexterity, and walked slowly
towards the bows. Even in her slight bewilderment she
observed that his step upon the deck seemed different to
her father’s or the photographer’s, and that he laid his
hand on various objects with a half-caressing ease and
habit. Presently he paused and turned back, and glancing
at the galley door for the first time encountered her won-
dering eyes.

It seemed so evident that she had been a curious specta-
tor of his abrupt entrance on deck that he was at first dis-
concerted and confused. But after a second glance at her
he appeared to resume his composure, and advanced a little
defiantly towards the galley.

“T suppose I frightened you, popping up the fore hatch
just now?”

“The what?” asked Rosey.

“The fore hatch,” he repeated impatiently, indicating it
with a gesture.
240 A SHIP oF °49

“And that’s the fore hatch?” she said abstractedly.
“You seem to know ships.”

“Yes—a little,” he said quietly. ‘I was below, and
unfastened the hatch to come up the quickest way and
take a look round. I’ve just hired a room here,” he
added explanatorily.

“T thought so,” said Rosey simply; “you’re the con-
tractor?”

“The contractor! — oh yes! You seem to know it all.”

“Father ’s told me.”

“Oh, he’s your father — Nott? Certainly. I see now,”
he continued, looking at her with a half-repressed smile.
“Certainly Miss Nott, good-morning,” he half added and
walked towards the companionway. Something in the
direction of his eyes as he turned away made Rosey lift
her hands to her head. She had forgotten to remove her
father’s baleful gift.

She snatched it off and ran quickly to the companion-
way.

“Sir!” she called.

The young man turned halfway down the steps and
looked up. There was a faint color in her cheeks, and her
pretty brown hair was slightly disheveled from the hasty
removal of the bonnet.

“Father ’s very particular about strangers being on this
deck,” she said a little sharply.

“Oh —ah—JI’m sorry I intruded.”

“T—I— thought I'd tell you,” said Rosey, frightened
by her boldness into a feeble anticlimax.

“Thank you.”

She came back slowly to the galley and picked up the
unfortunate bonnet with a slight sense of remorse. Why
should she feel angry with her poor father’s unhappy offer-
ing? And what business had this strange young man to
use the ship so familiarly? Yet she was vaguely conscious
A SHIP OF 749 241

that she and her father, with all their love and their do-
mestic experience of it, lacked a certain instinctive ease in
its possession that the half-indifferent stranger had shown
on first treading its deck. She walked to the hatchway
and examined it with a new interest. Succeeding in lift-
ing the hatch, she gazed at the lowerdeck. As she already
knew the ladder had long since been removed to make room
for one of the partitions, the only way the stranger could
have reached it was by leaping to one of the rings. To
make sure of this, she let herself down holding on to the
rings, and dropped a couple of feet to the deck below.
She was in the narrow passage her father had penetrated
the previous night. Before her was the door leading to
De Ferriéres’ loft, always locked. It was silent within;
it was the hour when the old Frenchman made his habitual
promenade in the city. But the light from the newly
opened hatch allowed her to see more of the mysterious
recesses of the forward bulkhead than she had known be-
fore, and she was startled by observing another yawning
hatchway at her feet, from which the closely fitting door
had been lifted, and which the new lodger had evidently
forgotten to close again. The young girl stooped down
and peered cautiously into the black abyss. Nothing was
to be seen, nothing heard but the distant gurgle and click
of water in some remoter depth. She replaced the hatch:
and returned by way of the passage to the cabin.

When her father came home that night she briefly re-
counted the interview with the new lodger, and her discov-
ery of his curiosity. She did this with a possible increase
of her usual shyness and abstraction, and apparently more
as a duty than a colloquial recreation. But it pleased Mr.
Nott also to give it more than his usual misconception.
“Qooking round the ship, was he — eh, Rosey?” he said,
with infinite archness. “Tn course, kinder sweepin’
round the galley, and offerin’ to fetch you wood and water,
242 A SHIP OF 749

eh?” Even when the young girl had picked up her book,
with the usual faint smile of affectionate tolerance, and
then drifted away in its pages, Mr. Nott chuckled audibly.
“T reckon old Frenchy didn’t come by when the young
one was bedevlin’ you there.”

“What, father?” said Rosey, lifting her abstracted eyes
to his face.

At the moment it seemed impossible that any human
intelligence could have suspected deceit or duplicity in
Rosey’s clear gaze. But Mr. Nott’s intelligence was super-
human. “) was sayin’ that Mr. Ferriéres didn’t happen
in while the young feller was there-— eh?”

“No, father,” answered Rosey, with an effort to follow
him out of the pages of her book. “Why?”

But Mr. Nott did not reply. Later in the evening he
awkwardly waylaid the new lodger before the cabin door as
that gentleman would have passed on to his room.

“T’m afraid,” said the young man, glancing at Rosey,
“that I intruded upon your daughter to-day. I was a lit-
tle curious to see the old ship, and I didn’t know what
part of it was private.”

“There ain’t no private part to this yer ship — that ez
cepting the rooms and lofts,” said Mr. Nott authorita-
tively. Then subjecting the anxious look of his daughter
‘to his usual faculty for misconception, he added: “Thar
ain’t no place whar you have n’t as much right to go ez any
other man; thar ain’t any man, furriner or Amerykan,
young or old, dyed or undyed, ez hev got any better

.Tights. You hear me, young fellow. Mr. Renshaw —
my darter. My darter— Mr. Renshaw. Rosey, give the
gentleman a chair. She’s only jest come in from a prom-
eynade, and hez jest taken off her bonnet,” he added, with
an arch look at Rosey and a hurried look around the cabin,
as if he hoped to see the missing gift visible to the general
eye. “So take a seat a minit, won’t ye?”
A SHIP OF 749 243

But Mr. Renshaw, after an observant glance at the
young girl’s abstracted face, brusquely excused himself,
“T’ve got a letter to write,” he said, with a half bow to
Rosey. “ Good-night.”

He crossed the passage to the room that had been as-
signed to him, and closing the door gave way to some irri-
tability of temper in his efforts to light the lamp and ad-
just his writing materials; for his excuse to Mr. Nott
was more truthful than most polite pretexts. He had,
indeed, a letter to write, and one that, being yet young in
duplicity, the near presence of his host rendered difficult.
For it ran as follows: —

Dear Sreieut, — As I found I couldn’t get a chance
to make any examination of the ship except as occasion
offered, I just went in to rent lodgings in her from the
God-forsaken old ass who owns her, and here I am a
tenant for two months. I contracted for that time in case
the old fool should sell out to some one else before. Ex-
cept that she’s cut up a little between decks by the parti-
tions for lofts that that Pike County idiot has put into her,
she looks but little changed, and her forehold, as far as
I can judge, is intact. It seems that Nott bought her just
as she stands, with her cargo half out, but he wasn’t here
when she broke cargo. If anybody else had bought her
but this cursed Missourian, who has n’t got the hayseed
out of his hair, I might have found out something from
him, and saved myself this kind of fooling, which isn’t in
my line. If I could get possession of a loft on the main
deck, well forward, just over the forehold, I could satisfy
myself in a few hours; but the loft is rented by that crazy
Frenchman who parades Montgomery Street every after-
noon, and though old Pike County wants to turn him out,
I’m afraid I can’t get it for a week to come.

If anything should happen to me, just you waltz down
244 A SHIP OF 749

here and corral my things at once, for this old frontier
pirate has a way of confiscating his lodgers’ trunks.
Yours, Dick.

Tit

If Mr. Renshaw indulged in any further curiosity re-
garding the interior of the Pontiac, he did not make his
active researches manifest to Rosey. Nor, in spite of her
father’s invitation, did he again approach the galley —a
fact which gave her her first vague impression in his favor.
He seemed also to avoid the various advances which Mr,
Nott appeared impelled to make, whenever they met in the
passage, but did so without seemingly avoiding her, and
marked his half-contemptuous indifference to the elder
Nott by an increase of respect to the young girl. She
would have liked to ask him something about ships, and
was sure his conversation would have been more interesting
than that of old Captain Bower, to whose cabin he had
succeeded, who had once told her a ship was the “devil’s
hencoop.” She would have liked also to explain to him
that she was not in the habit of wearing a purple bonnet.
But her thoughts were presently engrossed by an experi-
ence which interrupted the even tenor of her young life.

She had been, as she afterwards remembered, impressed
with a nervous restlessness one afternoon which made it
impossible for her to perform her ordinary household du-
ties, or even to indulge her favorite recreation of reading or
castle-building. She wandered over the ship, and im-
pelled by the same vague feeling of unrest, descended to
the lower deck and the forward bulkhead, where she had
discovered the open hatch. It had not been again dis-
turbed, nor was there any trace of further exploration. <A
little ashamed, she knew not why, of revisiting the scene
of Mr. Renshaw’s researches, she was turning back when
she noticed that the door which communicated with De
A SHIP oF 749 245

Ferritres’ loft was partly open. The circumstance was so
unusual that she stopped before it in surprise. There was
no sound from within; it was the hour when its queer oc-
cupant was always absent; he must have forgotten to lock
the door, or it had been unfastened by other hands. After
a moment of hesitation she pushed it farther open and
stepped into the room.

By the dim light of two port-holes she could see that the
floor was strewn and piled with the contents of a broken
bale of curled horsehair, of which a few untouched bales
still remained against the wall. A heap of morocco skins,
some already cut in the form of chair-cushion covers, and
a few cushions unfinished and unstutfed, lay in the light
of the ports, and gave the apartment the appearance of a
cheap workshop. A rude instrument for combining the
horsehair, awls, buttons, and thread, heaped on a small
bench, showed that active work had been but recently
interrupted. A cheap earthenware ewer and basin on the
floor, and a pallet made of an open bale of horsehair, on
which a ragged quilt and blanket were flung, indicated that
the solitary worker dwelt and slept beside his work.

The truth flashed upon the young girl’s active brain,
quickened by seclusion and fed by solitary books. She
read with keen eyes the miserable secret of her father’s
strange guest in the poverty-stricken walls, in the mute
evidences of menial handicraft performed in loneliness
and privation, in this piteous adaptation of an accident to
save the conscious shame of premeditated toil, She knew
now why he had stammeringly refused to receive her fa-
ther’s offer to buy back the goods he had given him; she
knew now how hardly gained was the pittance that paid
his rent and supported his childish vanity and grotesque
pride. From a peg in the corner hung the familiar mas-
querade that hid his poverty —the pearl-gray trousers,
the black frock coat, the tall shining hat — in hideous con-
246 A SHIP OF 49

trast to the penury of his surroundings. But if they were
here, where was he, and in what new disguise had he es-
caped from his poverty? A vague uneasiness caused her
to hesitate and return to the open door. She had nearly
reached it when her eye fell on the pallet which it partly
illuminated. A singular resemblance in the ragged heap
made her draw closer. The faded quilt was a dressing-
gown, and clutching its folds lay a white, wasted hand.
The emigrant childhood of Rose Nott had been more
than once shadowed by scalping-knives, and she was ac-
quainted with Death. She went fearlessly to the couch,
and found that the dressing-gown was only an enwrapping
of the emaciated and lifeless body of De Ferriéres. She
did not retreat or call for help, but examined him closely.
He was unconscious, but not pulseless; he had evidently
been strong enough to open the door for air or succor, but
had afterwards fallen into a fit on the couch. She flew to
her father’s locker and the galley fire, returned and shut
the door behind her, and by the skillful use of hot water
and whiskey soon had the satisfaction of seeing a faint color
take the place of the faded rouge in the ghastly cheeks.
She was still chafing his hands when he slowly opened his
eyes. With a start, he made a quick attempt to push
aside her hand and rise. But she gently restrained him.
“Eh — what!” he stammered, throwing his face back
from hers with an effort and trying to turn it to the wall.
“You have been ill,” she said quietly. “Drink this.”
With his face still turned away he lifted the cup to his
chattering teeth. When he had drained it he threw a
trembling glance round the room and at the door.
“There’s no one been here but myself,” she said
quickly. “I happened to see the door open as I passed.
I didn’t think it worth while to call any one.”
The searching look he gave her turned into an expres-
sion of relief, which, to her infinite uneasiness, again feebly
A SHIP OF 749 247

lightened into one of antiquated gallantry. He drew the
dressing-gown around him with an air.

“Ah! it is a goddess, mademoiselle, that has deigned
to enter the cell where — where—JI amuse myself. It is
droll, is it not? I came here to make — what you call —
the experiment of your father’s fabric. I make myself —
ha! ha!—like a workman. Ah, bah! the heat, the dark-
ness, the plebeian motion make my head to go round. I
stagger, I faint, I cry out, I fall. But what of that? The
great God hears my cry and sends me an angel. Voila!”

He attempted an easy gesture of gallantry, but overbal-
anced himself and fell sideways on the pallet with a gasp.
Yet there was so much genuine feeling mixed with his gro-
tesque affectation, so much piteous consciousness of the inef-
fectiveness of his falsehood, that the young girl, who had
turned away, came back and laid her hand upon his arm.

“You must lie still and try to sleep,” she said gently.
“T will return again. Perhaps,” she added, “there is
some one I can send for?”

He shook his head violently. Then in his old manner
added, ‘‘ After mademoiselle — no one.”

“T mean ” —she hesitated; ‘have you no friends?”

“Friends, —ah! without doubt.” He shrugged his
shoulders. ‘‘But mademoiselle will comprehend ” —

“You are better now,” said Rosey quickly, ‘‘and no one
need know anything if you don’t wish it. Try to sleep.
You need not lock the door when I go; I will see that no

-one comes in.”

He flushed faintly and averted his eyes. “It is too
droll, mademoiselle, is it not?”

“Of course it is,” said Rosey, glancing round the miser-
able room. ,

“ And mademoiselle is an angel.”

He carried her hand to his lips humbly —his first
purely unaffected action. She slipped through the door,
and softly closed it behind her.
248 A SHIP oF °49

Reaching the upper deck she was relieved to find her
fatner had not returned, and her absence had been unno-
ticed. For she had resolved to keep De Ferriéres’ secret
to herself from the moment that she had unwittingly dis-
covered it, and to do this and still be able to watch over
him without her father’s knowledge required some caution,
She was conscious of his strange aversion to the unfortu
nate man without understanding the reason; but as she was
in the habit of entertaining his caprices more from affec-
tionate tolerance of his weakness than reverence of his
judgment, she saw no disloyalty to him in withholding a
contidence that might be disloyal to another. ‘It won’t
do father any good to know it,” she said to herself, “and
if it did it ought n’t to,” she added, with triumphant femi-
nine logic. But the impression made upon her by the
spectacle she had just witnessed was stronger than any
other consideration. The revelation of De Ferriéres’ se-
cret poverty seemed a chapter from a romance of her own
weaving; for a moment it lifted the miserable hero out of
the depths of his folly and selfishness. She forgot the
weakness of the man in the strength of his dramatic sur-
roundings. It partly satisfied a craving she had felt; it
was not exactly the story of the ship, as she had dreamed
it, but it was an episode in her experience of it that broke
its monotony. That she should soon learn, perhaps from
De Ferriéres’ own lips, the true reason of his strange seclu-
sion, and that it involved more than appeared to her now,
she never for a moment doubted.

At the end of an hour she again knocked softly at the
door, carrying some light nourishment she had prepared for
him. He was asleep, but she was astounded to find that
in the interval he had managed to dress himself completely
in his antiquated finery. It was a momentary shock to the
illusion she had been fostering, but she forgot it in the
pitiable contrast between his haggard face and his poma-
«a SHIP OF 749 249

tumed hair and beard, the jauntiness of his attire, and the
collapse of his invalid figure. When she had satisfied her-
self that his sleep was natural, she busied herself softly in
arranging the miserable apartment. With a few feminine
touches she removed the slovenliness of misery, and placed
the loose material and ostentatious evidences of his work
on one side. Finding that he still slept, and knowing the
importance of this natural medication, she placed the re-
freshment she had brought by his side and _noiselessly
quitted the apartment. Hurrying throagh the gathering
darkness between decks, she once or twice thought she
heard footsteps, and paused, but, encountering no one, at-
tributed the impression to her over-consciousness. Yet she
thought it prudent to go to the galley first, where she lin-
gered a few moments before returning to the cabin. On
entering she was a little startled at observing a figure seated
at her father’s desk, but was relieved at finding it was Mr.
Renshaw.

He rose and put aside the book he had idly picked up.
“JT am afraid I am an intentional intruder this time, Miss
Nott. But I found no one here, and I was tempted to
‘look into this ship-shape little snuggery. You see, the
temptation got the better of me.”

His voice and smile were so frank and pleasant, so free
from his previous restraint, yet still respectful, so youthful
yet manly, that Rosey was affected by them even in her
preoccupation. Her eyes brightened and then dropped be-
fore his admiring glance. Had she known that the excite-
ment of the last few hours had brought a wonderful charm
into her pretty face, had aroused the slumbering life of her
half-wakened beauty, she would have been more confused.
As it was, she was only glad that the young man should
turn out to be “nice.” Perhaps he might tell her some-
thing about ships; perhaps if she had only known him
longer she might, with De Ferriéres’ permission, have

‘
250 A SHIP OF 749

shared her confidence with him, and enlisted his sympathy
and assistance. She contented herself with showing this
anticipatory gratitude in her face as she begged him, with
the timidity of a maiden hostess, to resume his seat.

But Mr. Renshaw seemed to talk only to make her talk,
and I am forced to admit that Rosey found this almost as
pleasant. It was not long before he was in possession of
her simple history from the day of her baby emigration to
California to the transfer of her childish life to the old ship,
and even of much of the romantic fancies she had woven
into her existence there. Whatever ulterior purpose he
had in view, he listened as attentively as if her artless
chronicle was filled with practical information. Once,
when she had paused for breath, he said gravely, “I must
ask you to show me over this wonderful ship some day, that
I may see it with your eyes.”

“But I think you know it already better than I do,”
said Rosey, with a smile.

Mr. Renshaw’s brow clouded slightly. ‘‘ Ah,” he said,
with a touch of his former restraint; “and why?”

“Well,” said Rosey timidly, “I thought you went round
and touched things in a familiar way as if you had handled
them before.”

The young man raised his eyes to Rosey’s and kept them
there long enough to bring back his gentler expression.
“Then, because I found you trying on a very queer bonnet
the first day I saw you,” he said mischievously, “I ought
to believe you were in the habit of wearing one.”

In the first flush of mutual admiration young people are
apt to find a laugh quite as significant as a sigh for an ex-
pression of sympathetic communion, and this master-stroke
of wit convulsed them both. In the midst of it Mr. Nott
entered the cabin. But the complacency with which he
viewed the evident perfect understanding of the pair was
destined to suffer some abatement. Rosey, suddenly con-
A SHIP oF ’49 251

scious that she was in some way participating in the ridicule
of her father through his unhappy gift, became embarrassed.
Mr. Renshaw’s restraint returned with the presence of
the old man. In vain, at first, Abner Nott strove with
profound levity to indicate his arch comprehension of the
situation, and in vain, later, becoming alarmed he endea-
vored, with cheerful gravity, to indicate his utter oblivious-
ness of any but a business significance in their téte-d-téte.

“T ought n’t to hev intruded, Rosey,” he said, ‘when
you and the gentleman were talkin’ of contracts, mebbe;
but don’t mind me. I’m on the fly anyhow, Rosey dear,
hevin’ to see a man round the corner.”

But even the attitude of withdrawing did not prevent
the exit of Renshaw to his apartment and of Rosey to the
galley. Left alone in the cabin, Abner Nott felt in the
knots and tangles of his beard for a reason. Glancing
down at his prodigious boots, which, covered with mud and
gravel, strongly emphasized his agricultural origin and
gave him a general appearance of standing on his own broad
acres, he was struck with an idea. “It’s them boots,” he
whispered to himself softly; ‘they somehow don’t seem
*xactly to trump or follow suit in this yer cabin; they
don’t hitch into anythin’ but jist slosh round loose, and
so to speak play it alone. And them young critters nat’-
rally feels it and gets out o’ the way.” Acting upon this
instinct with his usual precipitate caution, he at once pro-
ceeded to the nearest second-hand shop, and purchasing a
pair of enormous carpet slippers, originally the property of
a gouty sea-captain, reappeared with a strong suggestion
of newly upholstering the cabin. The improvement, how-
ever, was fraught with a portentous circumstance. Mr.
Nott’s footsteps, which usually announced his approach all
over the ship, became stealthy and inaudible.

Meantime Miss Rosey had taken advantage of the ab-
sence of her father to visit her patient. To avoid attract:
252 A SHIP oF 749

ing attention she did not take a light, but groped her way
to the lower deck and rapped softly at the door. It was
instantly opened by De Ferrieres. He had apparently
appreciated the few changes she had already made in the
room, and had himself cleared away the pallet, from which
he had risen to make two low seats against the wall. Two
bits of candle placed on the floor illuminated the beams
above, the dressing-gown was artistically draped over the
solitary chair, and a pile of cushions formed another seat.
With elaborate courtesy he handed Miss Rosey to the
chair. He looked pale and weak, though the gravity of
the attack hal evidently passed. Yet he persisted in re-
maining standing. “If I sit,” he explained with a ges-
ture, “I shall again disgrace myself by sleeping in made-
moiselle’s presence. Yes! I shall sleep —I shall dream
—and wake to find her gone!”

More embarrassed by his recovery than when he was ly-
ing helplessly before her, she said hesitatingly that she was
glad he was better, and that she hoped he liked the broth.

“Tt was manna from heaven, mademoiselle. See, I
have taken it all— every precious drop. What else could
I have done for mademoiselle’s kindness?”

He showed her the empty bowl. A swift conviction
caine upon her that the man had been suffering from want
of food. The thought restored her self-possession even
while it brought the tears to her eyes. “I wish you would
let me speak to father —or some one,” she said impul-
sively, and stopped.

A quick and half-insane gleam of terror and suspicion
lit up his deep eyes. ‘‘For what, mademoiselle! For an
accident — that is nothing — absolutely nothing, for I am
strong and well now —see!” he said tremblingly. “Or
for a whim — for a folly you may say, that they will mis-
understand. No, mademoiselle is good, is wise. She
will say to herself, ‘I understand, my friend Monsieur de
A SHIP OF 749 253

Ferritres for the moment has a secret. He would seem
poor, he would take the rédle of artisan, he would shut
himself up in these walls — perhaps I may guess why, but
it is his secret. I think of it no more.’” He caught her
hand in his with a gesture that he would have made one of
gallantry, but that in its tremulous intensity became a pit-
eous supplication.

“T have said nothing, and will say nothing, if you wish
it,” said Rosey hastily; “but others may find out how you
live here. This is not fit work for you. You seem to be
a—a gentleman. You ought to be a lawyer, or a doctor,
or in a bank,” she continued timidly, with a vague enumer-
ation of the prevailing degrees of local gentility.”

He dropped her hand. “Ah! does not mademoiselle
comprehend that it is decwwse I am a gentleman that there
is nothing between it and this? Look!” he continued al-
most fiercely. ‘‘ What if I told you it is the lawyer, it is
the doctor, it is the banker, that brings me, a gentleman,
to this, eh? Ah, bah! What do I say? This is honest,
what Ido! But the lawyer, the banker, the doctor, what
are they?” He shrugged his shoulders, and pacing the
apartment with a furtive glance at the half-anxious, half-
frightened girl, suddenly stopped, dragged a small port-
manteau from behind the heap of bales, and opened it.
“Look, mademoiselle,” he said, tremulously lifting a hand-
ful of worn and soiled letters and papers. ‘‘ Look — these
are the tools of your banker, your lawyer, your doctor.
With this the banker will make you poor, the lawyer will
prove you a thief, the doctor will swear you are crazy, eh?
What shall you call the work of a gentleman — this” —
he dragged the pile of cushions forward — “or this?”

To the young girl’s observant eyes some of the papers
appeared to be of a legal or official character, and others
like bills of lading, with which she was familiar. Their
half-theatrical exhibition reminded her of some play she
254 A SHIP oF 749

had seen; they might be the clue to some story, or the
mere worthless hoardings of some diseased fancy. What-
ever they were, De Ferritres did not apparently care to
explain further; indeed, the next moment his manner
changed to his old absurd extravagance. ‘But this is
stupid for mademoiselle to hear. What shall we speak
of? Ah! what should we speak of in mademoiselle’s pre-
sence?”

“But are not these papers valuable?” asked Rosey,
partly to draw her host’s thoughts back to their former
channel.

“Perhaps.”

He paused and regarded the young girl fixedly. “‘ Does
mademoiselle think so?”

“T don’t know,” said Rosey. ‘‘ How should I?”

“Ah! if mademoiselle thought so — if mademoiselle
would deign’””— He stopped again and placed his hand
upon his forehead. ‘It might be so!” he muttered.

“JT must go now,” said Rosey hurriedly, rising with an
awkward sense of constraint. ‘Father will wonder where
I am.”

“T shall explain. I will accompany you, mademoi-
selle.”

“No, no,” said Rosey quickly; “he must not know 1
have been here!” She stopped. The honest blush flew
lo her cheek, and then returned again, because she had
blushed.

De Ferriéres gazed at her with an exalted look. Then
drawing himself to his full height, he said, with an exag-
gerated and indescribable gesture, ‘Go, my child, go. Tell
your father that you have been alone and unprotected in
the abode of poverty and suffering, but — that it was in
the presence of Armand de Ferriéres, ”

He threw open the door with a bow that nearly swept
the ground, but did not again offer to take her hand. At
A SHIP OF ‘49 255

once impressed and embarrassed at this crowning incongru-
ity, her pretty lips trembled between a smile and a cry as
she said, “Good-night,” and slipped away into the dark-
ness.

Erect and grotesque De Ferritres retained the same at-
titude until the sound of her footsteps was lost, when he
slowly began to close the door. But a strong arm arrested
it from without, and a large carpeted foot appeared at the
bottom of the narrowing opening. ‘The door yielded, and
Mr. Abner Nott entered the room.

IV

With an exclamation and a hurried glance around him,
De Ferriéres threw himself before the intruder. But
slowly lifting his large hand, and placing it on his lodger’s
breast, he quietly overbore the sick man’s feeble resistance
with an impact of power that seemed almost as moral as
it was physical. He did not appear to take any notice
of the room or its miserable surroundings; indeed, scarcely
of the occupant. Still pushing him, with abstracted eyes
and immobile face, to the chair that Rosey had just quitted,
he made him sit down, and then took up his own position
on the pile of cushions opposite. His usually underdone
complexion was of watery blueness; but his dull, abstracted
glance appeared to exercise a certain dumb, narcotic fasci-
nation on his lodger.

“JT mout,” said Nott slowly, “hev laid ye out here on
sight, without enny warnin’, or dropped ye in yer tracks
in Montgomery Street, wherever there was room to work
a six-shooter in comf’ably. Johnson, of Petaluny —
him, ye know, ez hed a game eye — fetched Flynn comin’
outer meetin’ one Sunday, and it was only on account of
his wife, and she a second-hand one, so to speak. There
was Walker, of Contra Costa, plugged that young Sacra-
mento chap, whose name I disremember, full o’ holes jest
256 A SHIP OF °49

ez he was sayin’ ‘good-by’ to his darter. I mout hey
done all this if it had settled things to please me. For
while you and Flynn and that Sacramento chap ez all about
the same sort o’ men, Rosey ‘s a different kind from their
sort o’? women.”

“Mademoiselle is an angel!” said De Ferritres, sud-
denly rising, with an excess of extravagance. ‘A saint!
Look! I cram the lie, ha! down his throat who chal-
lenges it.”

“Hf by mam’selle ye mean my Rosey,” said Nott, qui-
etly laying his powerful hands on De Ferriéres’ shoulders,
and slowly pinning him down again upon his chair, “ye ’re
about right, though she ain’t mam/’selle yet. Ez I was
sayin’, I might hev killed you off-hand ef I hed thought
it would hev been a good thing for Rosey.”

“For her? Ah, well! Look, I am ready,” interrupted
De Ferritres, again springing to his feet and throwing
open his coat with both hands, ‘See! here at my heart
— fire!”

“Hz I was sayin’,” continued Nott, once more pressing
the excited man down in his chair, “I might hev wiped ye
out — and mebbe ye would n’t hev keered — or you might
hev wiped me out, and I mout hev said, ‘ Thank’e,’ but
I reckon this ain’t a case for what ’s comf’able for you and
me. It’s what’s good for Rosey. And the thing to kal-
kilate is, what ’s to be done.”

His small round eyes for the first time rested on De
Ferriéres’ face, and were quickly withdrawn. It was evi-
dent that this abstracted look, which had fascinated his
lodger, was merely a resolute avoidance of De Ferriéres’
glance, and it became apparent later that this avoidance was
due to a ludicrous appreciation of De Ferrieres’ attractions.

“And after we’ve done that we must kalkilate what
Rosey 7s, and what Rosey wants. P’r’aps, ye allow, you
know what Rosey is? P’r’aps you’ve seen her prance
A SHIP OF 749 257

round in velvet bonnets and white satin slippers, and sich,
P’r’aps you ’ve seen her readin’ tracks and v’yages, with-
out waitin’ to spell a word, or catch her breath. But that
ain’t the Rosey ez J knows. It’s a little child ez uster
ceawl in and out the tailboard of a Mizzouri wagon on the
alkali-pizoned plains, where there wasn’t another bit of
God’s mercy on yearth to be seen for miles and miles. It’s
a little gal as uster hunger and thirst ez quiet and man-
nerly ez she now eats and drinks in plenty; whose voice
was ez steady with Injins yellin! round yer nest in the
leaves on Sweetwater ez in her purty cabin up yonder.
That’s the gal ez I knows! That’s the Rosey ez my ole
woman puts into my arms one night arter we left Laramie
when the fever was high, and sez, ‘ Abner,’ sez she, ‘ the
chariot is swingin’ low for me to-night, but thar ain’t room
in it for her or you to git in or hitch on. ‘fake her and
rare her, so we kin all jine on the other shore,’ sez she.
And I’d knowed the other shore wasn’t no Californy.
And that night, p’r’aps, the chariot swung lower than ever
before, and my ole woman stepped into it, and left me and
Rosey to creep on in the old wagon alone. It’s them kind
o’ things,” added Mr. Nott thoughtfully, “that seem to
pint to my killin’ you on sight ez the best thing to be
done. And yet Rosey mightn’t like it.”

He had slipped one of his feet out of his huge carpet
slippers; and as he reached down to put it on again, he
added calmly, ‘‘ And ez to yer marrying her it ain’t to be
done.”

The utterly bewildered expression which transfigured De
Ferritres’ face at this announcement was unobserved by
Nott’s averted eyes, nor did he perceive that his listener
the next moment straightened his erect figure and adjusted
his cravat.

“Ef Rosey,” he continued, “hez read in v’yages and
tracks in Eyetalian and French countries of such chaps ez
258 A SHIP OF 749

you and kalkilates you ’re the right kind to tie to, mebbe
it mout hev done if you ’d been livin’ over thar in a paliss,
but somehow it don’t jibe in over here and agree with a
ship — and that ship lying comf’able ashore in San Fran-
eisco. You don’t seem to suit the climate, you see, and
your general gait is likely to stampede the other cattle.
Agin,” said Nott, with an ostentation of looking at his
companion, but really gazing on vacancy, “this fixed-up,
antique style of yours goes better with them ivy-kivered
ruins in Rome and Palmyry that Rosey’s mixed you up
with, than it would yere. I ain’t sayin’,” he added, as
De Ferrieres was about to speak, — “TI ain’t sayin’ ez that
child ain’t smitten with ye. It ain’t no use to lie and say
she don’t prefer you to her old father, or young chaps of
her own age and kind. I’ve seed it afor now. I suspi-
cioned it afor I seed her slip out o’ this place to-night.
Thar! keep your hair on, such ez it is!” he added, as De
Ferriéres attempted a quick deprecatory gesture. “TI ain’t
askin’ yer how often she comes here, nor what she sez to
you nor you to her. I ain’t asked her and I don’t ask
you. I’ll allow ez youve settled all the preliminaries and
bought her the ring and sich; I’m only askin’ you now,
kalkilatin’ you’ve got all the keerds in your own hand,
what you ’ll take to step out and leave the board?”

The dazed look of De Ferrieres might have forced itself
even upon Nott’s one-idea’d fatuity, had it not been a part
of that gentleman’s system delicately to look another way
at that moment so as not to embarrass his adversary’s cal-
culation. ‘ Pardon,” stammered De Ferriéres, “but I do
not comprehend!” He raised his hand to his head. “I
am not well—TI am stupid. Ah, mon Dieu!”

“T ain’t sayin’,” added Nott more gently, “ez you
don’t feel bad. It’s nat’ral, But it ain’t business.
I’m asking you,” he continued, taking from his breast
pocket a large wallet, “how much you ’ll take in cash now,
A SHIP OF '49 259

and the rest next steamer day, to give up Rosey and leave
the ship.”

De Ferritres staggered to his feet despite Nott’s re-
straining hand. ‘To leave mademoiselle and leave the
ship?” he said huskily, “is it not?”

“In course, Yer can leave things yer just ez you found
“em when you came, you know,” continued Nott, for the
first time looking round the miserable apartment. “It’s a
business job. I'll take the bales back agin, and you kin
reckon up what you’re out, countin’ Rosey and loss 0’
time.”

“He wishes me to go—he has said,” repeated De
Ferriéres to himself thickly.

“Ef you mean me when you say him, and ez thar ain’t
any other man around, I reckon you do —‘ yes!’ ”

“And he asks me — he — this man of the feet and the
daughter — asks me — De Ferritres — what I will take,”
continued De Ferritres, buttoning his coat. “No! it is
adream!” He walked stiffly to the corner where his port-
manteau lay, lifted it, and going to the outer door, a cut
through the ship’s side that communicated with the alley,
unlocked it and flung it open to the night. A thick mist
like the breath of the ocean flowed into the room.

“You ask me what I shall take to go,” he said, as he
stood on the threshold. ‘I shall take what yow cannot
give, monsieur, but what I would not keep if I stood here
another moment. I take my honor, monsieur, and — I
take my leave!”

For a moment his grotesque figure was outlined in the
opening, and then disappeared as if he had dropped into
an invisible ocean below. Stupefied and disconcerted at
this complete success of his overtures, Abner Nott remained
speechless, gazing at the vacant space until a cold influx of
the mist recalled him. Then he rose and shuffled quickly

to the door.
260 A SHIP oF 49

“Hil Ferrers! Look yer — Say! Wot’s your hurry,
pardner ?”

But there was no response. The thick mist, which hid
the surrounding objects, seemcd to deaden all sound also.
After a moment’s pause he closed the door, but did not
lock it, and retreating to the centre of the room remained
blinking at the two candles and plucking some perplexing
problem from his beard. Suddenly an idea seized him.
Rosey! Where was she? Perhaps it had been a precon-
certed plan, and she had fled with him. Putting out the
lights he stumbled hurriedly through the passage to the
gangway above. The cabin door was open; there was the
sound of voices — Renshaw’s and Rosey’s. Mr. Nott felt
relieved but not unembarrassed. He would have avoided
his daughter’s presence that evening. But even while
making this resolution with characteristic infelicity he
blundered into the room. Rosey looked up with a slight
start; Renshaw’s animated face was changed to its former
expression of inward discontent.

“You came in so like a ghost, father,” said Rosey, with
a slight peevishness that was new to her. ‘And I thought
you were in town. Don’t go, Mr. Renshaw.”

But Mr. Renshaw intimated that he had already tres-
passed upon Miss Nott’s time, and that no doubt her father
wanted to talk with her. To his surprise and annoyance,
however, Mr. Nott insisted on accompanying him to his
room, and without heeding Renshaw’s cold ‘‘ Good-night,”
entered and closed the door behind him.

“P’r’aps,” said Mr. Nott, with a troubled air, “you dis-
remember that when you first kem here you asked me i?
you could hev that ‘ere loft that the Frenchman had down.
stairs.”

“No, I don’t remember it,” said Renshaw almost rudely.
“But,” he added, after a pause, with the air of a man
obliged to revive a stale and unpleasant memory, “‘if I did
what about it?”
A SHIP OF 49 261

“Nuthin’, only that you kin hev it to-morrow, ez that
‘ere Frenchman is movin’ out,” responded Nott. “I
thought you was sorter keen about it when you first kem.”

“Umph! we’ll talk about it to-morrow.” Something
in the look of wearied perplexity with which Mr. Nott
was beginning to regard his own malapropos presence ar-
rested the young man’s attention. “What’s the reason
you did n’t sell this old ship long ago, take a decent house
in the town, and bring up your daughter like a lady?” he
asked, with a sudden blunt good humor. But even this
implied blasphemy against the habitation he worshiped did
not prevent Mr. Nott from his usual misconstruction of
the question.

“T reckon, now, Rosey ’s got high-flown ideas of livin’
in a castle with ruins, eh?” he said cunningly.

“Have n’t heard her say,” returned Renshaw abruptly.
“Good-night.”

Firmly convinced that Rosey had been unable to con-
ceal from Mr. Renshaw the influence of her dreams of a
castellated future with De Ferrieres, he regained the cabin.
Satisfying himself that his daughter had retired, he sought
his own couch. But not to sleep. The figure of De
Ferriéres, standing in the ship side and melting into the
outer darkness, haunted him, and compelled him in dreams
to rise and follow him throvgh the alleys and byways of
the crowded city. Again, it was a part of his morbid sus-
picion that he now invested the absent man with a poten-
‘jal significance and an unknown power. What deep-laid
vlans might he not form to possess himself of Rosey, of
which he, Abner Nott, would be ignorant? Unchecked by
the restraint of a father’s roof, he would now give full
license to his power. ‘Said he’d take his honor with
him,” muttered Abner to himself in the dim watches of
the night; “lookin’ at that sayin’ in its right light, it
looks bad.”
262 A SHIP OF 749

Vv

The elaborately untruthful account which Mr. Nott gave
his daughter of De Ferritres’ sudden departure was more
fortunate than his usual equivocations. While it disap-
pointed and slightly mortified her, it did not seem to her
inconsistent with what she already knew of him. “Said
his doctor had ordered him to quit town under an hour,
owing to a comin’ attack of hay-fever, and he had a friend
from furrin parts waitin’ him at the Springs, Rosey,” ex-
plained Nott, hesitating between his desire to avoid his
daughter’s eyes and his wish to observe her countenance,

“Was he worse?— I mean did he look badly, father?”
inquired Rosey thoughtfully.

“T reckon not exactly bad. Kinder looked as if he
mout be worse soon ef he didn’t hump hisself.”

“Did you see him?—jin his room?” asked Rosey anx-
iously. Upon the answer to this simple question depended
the future confidential relations of father and daughter. If
her father had himself detected the means by which his
lodger existed, she felt that her own obligations to secrecy
had been removed. But Mr. Nott’s answer disposed of
this vain hope. It was a response after his usual fashion
to the question he imagined she artfully wished to ask,
ai. e., if he had discovered their rendezvous of the previous
night. This it was part of his peculiar delicacy to ignore.
Yet his reply showed that he had been unconscious of the
one miserable secret that he might have read easily.

“T was there an hour or so—him and me alone — dis-
cussin’ trade. JI reckon he’s got a good thing outer that
curled horsehair, for I see he’s got in an invoice o’ cush-
ions. I’ve stowed ’em all in the forrard bulkhead until
he sends for ’em, ez Mr. Renshaw hez taken the loft.”

But although Mr. Renshaw had taken the loft, he did
not seem in haste to occupy it. He spent part of the morn-
A SHIP OF 749 ‘ 263

ing in uneasily pacing his room, in occasional sallies into
the street from which he purposelessly returned, and once
or twice in distant and furtive contemplation of Rosey at
work in the galley. ‘his last observation was not unno-
ticed by the astute Nott, who at once conceiving that he
was nourishing a secret and hopeless passion for Rosey,
began to consider whether it was not his duty to warn the
young man of her preoccupied affections. But Mr. Ren-
shaw’s final disappearance obliged him to withhold his con-
fidence till morning.

This time Mr. Renshaw left the ship with the evident
determination of some settled purpose. He walked rapidly
until he reached the counting-house of Mr. Sleight, when
he was at once shown into a private office. In a few mo-
ments Mr. Sleight, a brusque but passionless man, joined
him.

“Well,” said Sleight, closing the door carefully. “What
news?”

“None,” said Renshaw bluntly. ‘‘ Look here, Sleight,”
he added, turning to him suddenly. ‘Let me out of this
game. I don’t like it.”

“Does that mean you’ve found nothing?” asked
Sleight sarcastically.

“Tt means that I haven’t looked for anything, and that
I don’t intend to without the full knowledge of that d—d
fool who owns the ship.”

“You ’ve changed your mind since you wrote that let-
ter,” said Sleight coolly, producing from a drawer the note
already known to the reader. Renshaw mechanically ex-
tended his hand to take it. Mr. Sleight dropped the letter
back into the drawer, which he quietly locked. The
apparently simple act dyed Mr. Renshaw’s cheek with
color, but it vanished quickly, and with it any token of
his previous embarrassment. He looked at Sleight with
the convinced air of a resolute man who had at last taken
264 . A SHIP OF 49

a disagreeable step, but was willing to stand by the conse-
quences.

“T have changed my mind,” he said coolly. “I found
out that it was one thing to go down there as a skilled
prospector might go to examine a mine that was to be val-
ued according to his report of the indications, but that it
was entirely another thing to go and play the spy in a
poor devil’s house in order to buy something he didn’t
know he was selling and would n’t sell if he did.”

“And something that the man he bought of didn’t
think of selling; something he himself never paid for, and
never expected to buy,” sneered Sleight.

“But something that we expect to buy from our know-
ledge of all this, and it is that which makes all the differ-
ence.”

“But you knew all this before.”

“T never saw it in this light before. I never thought
of it until I was living there face to face with the old fool
I was intending to overreach. I never was sure of it un-
til this morning, when he actually turned out one of his
lodgers that I might have the very room I required to play
off our little game in comfortably. When he did that, I
made up my mind to drop the whole thing, and I’m here
to do it.”

“And let somebody else take the responsibility — with
the percentage — unless you’ve also felt it your duty to
warn Nott too,” said Sleight, with a sneer.

“You only dare say that to me, Sleight,” said Renshaw
quietly, ‘“‘because you have in that drawer an equal evi-
dence of my folly and my confidence; but if you are wise
you will not presume too far on either. Let us see how
we stand. Through the yarn of a drunken captain and a
mutinous sailor you became aware of an unclaimed ship-
ment of treasure concealed in an unknown ship that entered
this harbor. You are enabled, through me, to corroborate
A SHIP oF 749 263

some facts and identify the ship. You proposed to me, as
a speculation, to identify the treasure if possible before
you purchased the ship. I accepted the offer without eon-
sideration; on consideration I now decline it, but without
prejudice or loss to any one but myself. As to your insin-
uation IT need not remind you that my presence here to-
day refutes it. I would not require your permission tu
make a much better bargain with a good-natured fool like
Nott than I could with you. Or if I did not care for the
business I could have warned the girl’? —

“The girl — what girl?”

Renshaw bit his lip, but answered boldly: “The old
man’s daughter — a poor girl — whom this act would rob as
well as her father.”

Sleight looked at his companion attentively. “You
might have said so at first, and let up on this camp-meetin’
exhortation. Well, then—admitting you’ve got the old
man and the young girl on the same string, and that
you ‘ve played it pretty low down in the short time you ’ve
been there, —I suppose, Dick Renshaw, I’ve got to see
your bluff. Well, how much is it? What’s the figure
you and she have settled on?”

For an instant Mr. Sleight was in physical danger.
But before he had finished speaking Renshaw’s quick
sense of the ludicrous had so far overcome his first indig-
nation as to enable him even to admire the perfect moral
insensibility of his companion. As he rose and walked to-
wards the door, he half wondered that he had ever treated
the affair seriously. With a smile he replied: —

“Far from bluffing, Sleight, I am throwing my cards on
the table. Consider that I’ve passed out. Let some other
man take my hand. Rake down the pot if you like, old
man, Z leave for Sacramento to-night. Adios.”

When the door had closed behind him Mr. Sleight sum-
moned his clerk.
266 A SHIP OF 749

“Ts that petition for grading Pontiac Street ready?”

“T?ve seen the largest property-holders, sir; they ’re
only waiting for you to sign first.” Mr. Sleight paused and
then affixed his signature to the paper his clerk laid before
him. “Get the other names and send it up at once.”

“Tf Mr. Nott doesn’t sign, sir?”

“No matter. He will be assessed all the same.” Mr.
Sleight took up his hat.

“The Lascar seaman that was here the other day has
been wanting to see you, sir. I said you were busy.”

Mr. Sleight put down his hat. “Send him up.”

Nevertheless Mr. Sleight sat down and at once abstracted
himself so completely as to be apparently in utter oblivion
of the man who entered. He was lithe and Indian-look.
ing; bearing in dress and manner the careless slouch with.
out the easy frankness of a sailor.

“Well!” said Sleight, without looking up.

“T was only wantin’ to know ef you had any news for
me, boss?”

“News?” echoed Sleight, as if absently ; ‘news of what?”

“That little matter of the Pontiac we talked about, boss,”
returned the Lascar, with an uneasy servility in the whites
of his teeth and eyes.

“Oh,” said Sleight, “that’s played out. It’s a regular
fraud. It’s an old forecastle yarn, my man, that you
can’t reel off in the cabin.”

The sailor’s face darkened.

“The man who was looking into it has thrown the whole
thing up. I tell you it’s played out!” repeated Sleight,
without raising his head.

“Tt’s true, boss— every word,” said the Lascar, with
an appealing insinuation that seemed to struggle hard with
savage earnestness. ‘‘ You can swear me, boss; I would n’t
lie to a gentleman like you. Your man hasn’t half looked,
or else — it must be there, or”? —
A SHIP OF 749 267

“That ’s just it,” said Sleight slowly; ‘‘who’s to know
that your friends have n’t been there already — that seems
to have been your style.”

“But no one knew it but me, until I told you, I swear
to God. JI ain’t lying, boss, and I ain’t drunk. Say —
don’t give it up, boss. That man of yours likely don’t
believe it, because he don’t know anything about it. Ido
— I could find it.”

A silence followed. Mr. Sleight remained completely
absorbed in his papers for some moments. Then glancing
at the Lascar, he took his pen, wrote a hurried note, folded
it, addressed it, and holding it between his fingers, leaned
back in his chair.

“Tf you choose to take this note to my man, he may
give it another show. Mind, I don’t say that he will.
He ’s going to Sacramento to-night, but you could go down
there and find him before he starts. He’s got a room
there, I believe. While you ‘re waiting for him, you might
keep your eyes open to satisfy yourself.”

“Ay, ay, sir,” said the sailor, eagerly endeavoring to
catch the eye of his employer. But Mr. Sleight looked
straight before him, and he turned to go.

“The Sacramento boat goes at nine,” said Mr. Sleight
quietly.

This time their glances met, and the Lascar’s eye glis-
tened with subtle intelligence. The next moment he was
gone, and Mr. Sleight again became absorbed in his papers.

Meanwhile Renshaw was making his way back to the
Pontiac with that light-hearted optimism that had charac-
terized his parting with Sleight. It was this quality of his
nature, fostered perhaps by the easy civilization in which
he moved, that had originally drawn him into relations
with the man he had just quitted; a quality that had been
troubled and darkened by those relations, yet, when they
were broken, at once returned. It consequently did not
268 A SHIP OF °49

occur to him that he had only selfishly compromised with
the difficnlty; it seemed to him enough that he had with-
drawn from a compact he thought dishonorable; he was
not called upon to betray his partner in that compact merely
to benefit others. He had been willing to incur suspicion
and loss to reinstate himself in his self-respect, more he
could not do without justifying that suspicion. The view
taken by Sleight was, after all, that which most business
men would take—which even the unbusinesslike Nott
would take —which the girl herself might be tempted to
listen to. Clearly he could do nothing but abandon the
Pontiac and her owner to the fate he could not in honor
avert. And even that fate was problematical. It did not
follow that the treasure was still concealed in the Pontiac,
nor that Nott would be willing to sell her. He would
make some excuse to Nott—he smiled to think he would
probably be classed in the Jong line of absconding tenants
— he would say good-by to Rosey, and leave for Sacramento
that night. He ascended the stairs to the gangway with
a freer breast than when he first entered the ship.

Mr. Nott was evidently absent; and after a quick glance
at the half-open cabin door, Renshaw turned towards the
galley. But Miss Rosey was not in her accustomed haunt,
and with a feeling of disappointment, which seemed in-
consistent with so slight a cause, he crossed the deck im-
patiently and entered his room. He was about to close
the door when the prolonged rustle of a trailing skirt in
the passage attracted his attention. The sound was so
unlike that made by any garment worn by Rosey that he
remained motionless, with his hand on the door. The
sound approached nearer, and the next moment a white
veiled figure with a trailing skirt slowly swept past the:
room. Renshaw’s pulses halted for an instant in half-
superstitious awe. As the apparition glided on and van-
ished in the cabin door he could only see that it was the
A SHIP OF 749 269

form of a beautiful and graceful woman — but nothing
more. Bewildered and curious, he forgot himself so far
as to follow it and impulsively entered the cabin. The
figure turned, uttered a little cry, threw the veil aside, and
showed the half-troubled, half-blushing face of Rosey.

“T— beg — your pardon,” stammered Renshaw; “I
didn’t know it was you.”

“T was trying on some things,” said Rosey, recovering
her composure and pointing to an open trunk that seemed
to contain a theatrical wardrobe — “‘some things father gave
me long ago. I wanted to see if there was anything I
could use. I thought I was all alone in the ship, but
fancying I heard a noise forward, I came out to see what it
was. I suppose it must have been you.”

She raised her clear eyes to his, with a slight touch of
womanly*reserve that was so incompatible with any vulgar
vanity or girlish coquetry that he became the more embar-
rassed. Her dress, too, of a slightly antique shape, rich
but simple, seemed to reveal and accent a certain repose of
gentle womanliness, that he was now wishing to believe he
had always noticed. Conscious of a superiority in her
that now seemed to change their relations completely, he
alone remained silent, awkward, and embarrassed before
the girl who had taken care of his room, and who cooked
in the galley! What he had thoughtlessly considered a
merely vulgar business intrigue against her stupid father,
now to his extravagant fancy assumed the proportions of
a sacrilege to herself.

“You ’ve had your revenge, Miss Nott, for the fright
I once gave you,” he said a little uneasily, “for you quite
startled me just now as you passed. I began to think the
Pontiac was haunted. JI thought you were a ghost. I
don’t know why such a ghost should frighten anybody,”
he went on with a desperate attempt to recover his posi-
tion hy gallantry. “Let me see — that’s Donna Elvira’s
dress —is it not?”
270 A SHIP OF 749

“T don’t think that was the poor woman’s name,” said
Rosey simply; “she died of yellow fever at New Orleans
as Signora Somebody.”

Her ignorance seemed to Mr. Renshaw so plainly to
partake more of the nun than the provincial, that he hesi-
tated to explain to her that he meant the heroine of an
opera.

“Tt seems dreadful to put on the poor thing’s clothes,
doesn’t it?” she added.

Mr. Renshaw’s eyes showed so plainly that he thought
otherwise, that she drew a little austerely towards the door
of her stateroom.

“T must change these things before any one comes,”
she said dryly.

“That means I must go, I suppose. But couldn’t you
let me wait here or in the gangway until then, Miss Nott?
I am going away to-night, and I mayn’t see you again.”
He had not intended to say this, but it slipped from his
embarrassed tongue. She stopped with her hand on the
door.

“You are going away?”

“JT — think —I must leave to-night. I have some im-
portant business in Sacramento.”

She raised her frank eyes to his. The unmistakable
look of disappointment that he saw in them gave his heart
a sudden throb and sent the quick blood to his cheeks.

“Tt’s too bad,” she said abstractedly. ‘‘ Nobody ever
seems to stay here long. Captain Bower promised to tell
me all about the ship, and he went away the second week.
The photographer left before he finished the picture of the
Pontiac; Monsieur de Ferriéres has only just gone; and
now you are going.”

“Perhaps, unlike them, I have finished my season of
usefulness here,” he replied, with a bitterness he would
have recalled the next moment. But Rosey, with a faint
A SHIP oF 749 271

sigh, saying, ‘I won’t be long,” entered the stateroom and
closed the door behind her.

Renshaw pulled at the long silken threads of his. mus
tache and bit his lip until it smarted. Why had he not
gone at once? Why was it necessary to say he might not
see her again—and if he had said it, why should he add
anything more? What was he waiting for now? ‘To en-
deavor to prove to her that he really bore no resemblance
to Captain Bower, the photographer, the crazy French-
man De Ferriéres? Or would he be forced to tell her that
he was running away from a conspiracy to defraud her
father — merely for something to say? Was there ever
such folly? Rosey was “not long,” as she had said, but he
was beginning to pace the narrow cabin impatiently when
the door opened and she returned.

She had resumed her ordinary calico gown, but such was
the impression left upon Renshaw’s fancy that she seemed
to wear it with a new grace. At any other time he might
have recognized the change as due to a new corset, which
strict veracity compels me to record Rosey had adopted
for the first time that morning. Howbeit, her slight co-
quetry seemed to have passed, for she closed the open trunk
with a return of her old listless air, and sitting on it rested
her elbows on her knees and her oval chin in her hands,

“JT wish you would do me a favor,” she said, after a re-
flective pause.

“Let me know what it is and it shall be done,” replied
Renshaw quickly.

“Tf you should come across Monsieur de Ferriéres, or
hear of him, I wish you would let me know. He was
very poorly when he left here, and I should like to know
if he is better. He didn’t say where he was going. At
least, he did n’t tell father; but I fancy he and father don’t
agree.”

“T shall be very glad of having even that opportunity
272 A SHIP oF 749

of making you remember me, Miss Nott,” returned Ren-
shaw, with a faint smile. ‘I don’t suppose either that
it would be very difficult to get news of your friend —
everybody seems to know him.”

“But not as I did,” said Rosey, with an abstracted little
sigh.

Mr. Renshaw opened his brown eyes upon her. Was
he mistaken? Was this romantic girl only a little coquette
playing her provincial airs on him? ‘You say he and
your father didn’t agree? That means, I suppose, that
you and he agreed ?— and that was the result.”

“T don’t think father knew anything about it,” said
Rosey simply.

Mr. Renshaw rose. And this was what he had been
waiting to hear! “Perhaps,” he said grimly, “you would
also like news of the photographer and Captain Bower, or
did your father agree with them better?”

“No,” said Rosey quietly. She remained silent for a
moment, and, lifting her lashes, said, ‘‘Father always
seemed to agree with you, and that” — she hesitated.

“That ’s why you don’t.”

“T didn’t say that,” said Rosey, with an incongruous
increase of coldness and color. “I only meant to say it
was that which makes it seem so hard you should go now.”

Notwithstanding his previous determination Renshaw
found himself sitting down again. Confused and pleased,
wishing he had said more — or less — he said nothing, and
Rosey was forced to continue.

“It’s strange, isn’t it — but father was urging me this
morning to make a visit to some friends at the old Ranch.
I didn’t want to go. I like it much better here.”

“But you cannot bury yourself here forever, Miss Nott,”
said Renshaw, with a sudden burst of honest enthusiasm.
“Sooner or later you will be forced to go where you will
be properly appreciated, where you will be admired anc
A SHIP OF ’49 273

courted, where your slightest wish will be law. Believe
me, without flattery, you don’t know your own power.”

“Tt doesn’t seem strong enough to keep even the little
I like here,” said Rosey, with a slight glistening of the
eyes. ‘‘But,” she added hastily, “you don’t know how
much the dear old ship is to me. It’s the only home
I think I ever had.”

“But the Ranch?” said Renshaw.

“The Ranch seemed to be only the old wagon halted in
the road. It was a very little improvement on outdoors,”
said Rosey, with a little shiver. ‘‘ But this is so cosy and
snug, and yet so strange and foreign. Do you know I
think I began to understand why I like it so since you
taught me so much about ships and voyages. Before that
I only learned from books. Books deceive you, I think
more than people do. Don’t you think so?”

She evidently did not notice the quick flush that cov-
ered his cheeks and apparently dazzled his troubled eyelids,
for she went on confidentially : —

“T was thinking of you yesterday. I was sitting by the
galley door, looking forward. You remember the first
day I saw you when you startled me by coming up out of
the hatch?”

“T wish you wouldn’t think of that,” said Renshaw,
with more earnestness than he would have made apparent.

“T don’t want to, either,” said Rosey gravely, “for
I’ve had a strange fancy about it. I saw once, when I was
younger, a picture in a print shop in Montgomery Street
that haunted me. I think it was called ‘The Pirate.’
There were a number of wicked-looking sailors lying around
the deck, and coming out of the hatch was one figure, with
his hands on the deck and a cutlass in his mouth.”

“Thank you,” said Renshaw.

“You don’t understand. He was horrid-looking, not at
all like you. I never thought of him when I first saw
974 A SHIP OF 749

you; but the other day I thought how dreadful it would
have been if some one like him and not like you had come
up then. That made me nervous sometimes of being alone.
I think father is too. He often goes about stealthily at
night, as if he was watching for something.”

Renshaw’s face grew suddenly dark. Could it be pos-
sible that Sleight kad always suspected him, and set spies
to watch — or was he guilty of some double intrigue?

“He thinks,” continued Rosey, with a faint smile,
‘that some one is looking round the ship, and talks of set-
ting bear-traps. I hope you’re not mad, Mr. Renshaw,”
she added, suddenly catching sight of his changed expres-
sion, ‘‘at my foolishness in saying you reminded me of the
pirate. I meant nothing.”

“T know you're incapable of meaning anything but
good to anybody, Miss Nott, perhaps to me more than I
deserve,” said Renshaw, with a sudden burst of feeling.
“T wish—I wish—you would do me a favor. You
asked me one just now.” He had taken her hand. It
seemed so like a mere illustration of his earnestness, that
she did not withdraw it. ‘Your father tells you every-
thing. If he has any offer to dispose of the ship, will you
write to me at once before anything is concluded?” He
winced a little—the sentence of Sleight, “What’s the
figure you and she have settled on?” flashed across his
mind. He scarcely noticed that Rosey had withdrawn her
hand coldly.

“Perhaps you had better speak to father, as it is his
business. Besides, I shall not be here. I shall be at the
Ranch.”

“But you said you didn’t want to go.”

“T?’ve changed my mind,” said Rosey listlessly. “I
shall go to-night.”

She rose as if to indicate that the interview was ended.
With an overpowering instinct that his whole future happi
A SHIP OF 749 275

ness depended upon his next act, he made a step towards
her, with eager, outstretched hands. But she slightly lifted
her own with a warning gesture. “I hear father coming —
you will have a chance to talk business with him,” she
said, and vanished into her stateroom.

VI

The heavy tread of Abner Nott echoed in the passage.
Confused and embarrassed, Renshaw remained standing at
the door that had closed upon Rosey as her father entered
the cabin. Providence, which always fostered Mr. Nott’s
characteristic misconceptions, left that perspicacious parent
but one interpretation of the situation, Rosey had evi-
dently just informed Mr. Renshaw that she loved another!

“Twas just saying good-by to Miss Nott,” said Ren-
shaw, hastily regaining his composure with an effort. “TI
am going to Sacramento to-night, and will not return.
[as

“In course, in course,” interrupted Nott soothingly ;
“that ’s wot you say now, and that’s wot you allow to do.
That ’s wot they allus do.”

“T mean,” said Renshaw, reddening at what he con-
ceived to be an allusion to the absconding propensities of
Nott’s previous tenants, —“‘I mean that you shall keep
the advance to cover any loss you might suffer through my
giving up the rooms.”

“Certingly,” said Nott, laying his hand with a large
sympathy on Renshaw’s shoulder; “but we’ll drop that
just now. We won’t swap hosses in the middle of the
river. Well square up accounts in your room,” he added,
raising his voice that Rosey might overhear him, after a
preliminary wink at the young man. “Yes, sir, well
just square up and settle in there. Come along, Mr. Ren-
shaw.” Pushing him with paternal gentleness from the
cabin, with his hand still upon his shoulder, he followed
276 A SHIP OF 49

him into the passage. Half annoyed at his familiarity,
yet not altogether displeased by this illustration of Rosey’s
belief of his preference, Renshaw wonderingly accompanied
him. Nott closed the door, and pushing the young man into
a chair, deliberately seated himself at the table opposite.
“Tt’s jist as well that Rosey reckons that you and me is
settlin’ our accounts,” he began cunningly, “and mebbe
it’s just ez well ez she should reckon you ’re goin’ away.”

“But I am going,” interrupted Renshaw impatiently.
“T leave to-night.”

“Surely, surely,” said Nott gently, “that’s wot you
kalkilate to do; that’s just nat’ral in a young feller.
That ’s about what I reckon Z’d hev done to her mother if
anythin’ like this hed ever cropped up, which it didn’t,
Not but what Almiry Jane had young fellers enough round
her, but, ’cept ole Judge Peter, ez was lamed in the War
of 1812, there ain’t no similarity ez I kin see,” he added
musingly.

“JT am afraid I can’t see any similarity either, Mr.
Nott,” said Renshaw, struggling between a dawning sense
of some impending absurdity and his growing passion for
Rosey. ‘For Heaven’s sake, speak out if you ’ve got any-
thing to say.”

Mr. Nott leaned forward and placed his large hand on
the young man’s shoulder. ‘That’s it. That’s what I
sed to myself when I seed how things were pintin’. ‘Speak
out,’ sez I, ‘Abner! Speak out if you ’ve got anything to
say. You kin trust this yer Mr. Renshaw. He ain’t the
kind of man to creep into the bosom of a man’s ship for
pupposes of his own. He ain’t a man that would hunt
round until he discovered a poor man’s treasure, and then
try to rob’ ” —

“Stop!” said Renshaw, with a set face and darkening
eyes. ‘ What treasure? what man are you speaking of?”

“Why Rosey and Mr. Ferrers,” returned Nott simply.
A SHIP OF 749 277

Renshaw sank into his seat again. But the expression
of relief which here passed swiftly over his face gave way
to one of uneasy interest as Nott went on.

“P’r’aps it’s a little highfalutin’ talkin’ of Rosey ez a
treasure. But considerin’, Mr. Renshaw, ez she’s the only
prop’ty I’ve kept by me for seventeen years ez hez paid
interest and increased in valoo, it ain’t sayin’ too much
to call her so. And ez Ferrers knows this, he oughter
been content with gougin’ me in that horsehair spec,
without goin’ for Rosey. P’r’aps yer surprised at hearing
me speak o’ my own flesh and blood ez if I was talkin’
hoss-trade, but you and me is bus’ness men, Mr. Renshaw,
and we discusses ez such. We ain’t goin’ to slosh
round and slop over in po’try and sentiment,” continued
Nott, with a tremulous voice, and a hand that slightly
shook on Renshaw’s shoulder. ‘‘ We ain’t goin’ to git up
and sing, ‘Thou ’st larned to love another thou ’st broken
every vow we ’ve parted from each other and my bosom’s
lonely now oh is it well to sever such hearts as ourn for-
ever kin I forget thee never farewell farewell farewell.’
Ye never happened to hear Jim Baker sing that at the
moosic hall on Dupont Street, Mr. Renshaw,” continued
Mr. Nott enthusiastically, when he had recovered from
that complete absence of punctuation which alone suggested
verse to his intellect. ‘‘ He sorter struck water down here,”
indicating his heart, ‘‘every time.”

“But what has Miss Nott to do with M. de Ferriéres?”
asked Renshaw, with a faint smile.

Mr. Nott regarded him with dumb, round, astonished
eyes. “Hezn’t she told yer?”

“Certainly not.”

“And she didn’t let on anythin’ about him?” he con-
tinued feebly.

“She said she’d like to know where” — He stopped,
with the reflection that he was betraying her confidences.
278 A SHIP OF 749

A dim foreboding of some new form of deceit, to which
even the man before him was a consenting party, almost
paralyzed Nott’s faculties. “Then she didn’t tell yer that
she and Ferrers was sparkin’ and keepin’ kimpany to-
gether; that she and him was engaged, and was kalkilatin’
to run way to furrin parts; that she cottoned to him more
than to the ship or her father?”

“She certainly did not, and I should n’t believe it,” said
Renshaw quickly.

Nott smiled. He was amused; he astutely recognized
the usual trustfulness of love and youth. There was
clearly no deceit here! Renshaw’s attentive eyes saw the
smile, and his brow darkened.

“T like to hear yer say that, Mr. Renshaw,” said Nott,
‘and it’s no more than Rosey deserves, ez it’s suthing on.
nat’ral and spell-like that ’s come over her through Ferrers,
It ain’t my Rosey. But it’s Gospel truth, whether she’s
bewitched or not; whether it’s them damn fool stories
she reads—and it’s like ez not he’s just the kind o’
snipe to write ’em hisself, and sorter advertise hisself,
don’t yer see—she’s allus stuck up for him. They ‘ve
had clandesent interviews, and when I taxed him with it
he ez much ¢z allowed it was so, and reckoned he must
leave, so ez he could run her off, you know — kinder
stampede her with ‘honor.’ Them’s his very words.”

“But that is all past; he is gone, and Miss Nott does
not even know where he is!” said Renshaw, with a laugh,
which, however, concealed a vague uneasiness.

Mr. Nott rose and opened the door carefully. When
he had satisfied himself that no one was listening, he
came back and said in a whisper, ““That’s a lie. Not ez
Rosey means to lie, but it’s a trick he’s put upon that
poor child. That man, Mr. Renshaw, hez been hangin’
round the Pontiac ever since. I’ve seed him twice with
my own eyes pass the cabin windys. More than that,
A SHIP OF 749 279

I’ve heard strange noises at night, and seen strange faces
in the alley over yer. And only jist now ez I kem in I
ketched sight of a furrin-lookin’ Chinee nigger slinking
round the back door of what useter be Ferrers’ loft.”

“Did he look like a sailor?” asked Renshaw quickly,
with a return of his former suspicion.

“Not more than I do,” said Nott, glancing complacently
at his pea-jacket. “He had rings on his yeers like a
wench.”

Mr. Renshaw started. But seeing Nott’s eyes fixed on
him, he said lightly, “But what have these strange faces
and this strange man— probably only a Lascar sailor out
of a job —to do with Ferritres? ”

“Friends o’ his — feller furrin citizens — spies on Rosey,
don’t you see? But they can’t play the old man, Mr.
Renshaw. I’ve told Rosey she must make a visit to the
old Ranch. Once I’ve got her thar safe, I reckon I kin
manage Mr. Ferrers and any number of Chinee niggers he
kin bring along.”

Renshaw remained for a few moments lost in thought.
Then rising suddenly, he grasped Mr. Nott’s hand with
a frank smile but determined eyes. “I haven’t got the
hang of this, Mr. Nott—the whole thing gets me! I
only know that I’ve changed my mind. I’m no¢ going to
Sacramento. I shall stay here, old man, until I see you
safe through the business, or my name’s not Dick Ren-
shaw. TThere’s my hand on it! Don’t say a word.
Maybe it is no more than I ought to do — perhaps not half
enough. Only remember, not a word of this to your
daughter. She must believe that I leave to-night. And
the sooner you get her out of this cursed ship the better.”

“Deacon Flint’s girls are goin’ up in to-night’s boat.
I’ll send Rosey with them,” said Nott, with a cunning
twinkle. Renshaw nodded. Nott seized his hand with a
wink of unutterable significance.
280 A SHIP OF 749

Left to himself, Renshaw tried to review more calmly the
circumstances in these strange revelations that had impelled
lim to change his resolution so suddenly. That the ship
was under the surveillance of unknown parties, and that
the description of them tallied with his own knowledge
of a certain Lascar sailor who was one of Sleight’: inform-
ants, seemed to be more than probable. That this seemed
{o point to Sleight’s disloyalty to himself while he was
acting as his agent, or a double treachery on the part of
Sleight’s informants, was in either case a reason and an
excuse for his own interference. But the connection of
the absurd Frenchman with the case, which at first seemed
a characteristic imbecility of his landlord, bewildered him
the more he thought of it. Rejecting any hypothesis of
the girl’s affection for the antiquated figure whose sanity
was a question of public criticism, he was forced to the
equally alarming theory that Ferrieres was cognizant of the
treasure, and that his attentions to Rosey were to gain
possession of it by marrying her. Might she not be daz-
zled by a picture of this wealth? Was it not possible that
she was already in part possession of the secret, and her
strange attraction to the ship, and what he had deemed
her innocent craving for information concerning it, a con-
sequence? Why had he not thought of this before? Per-
haps she had detected his purpose from the first, and had
deliberately checkmated him. The thought did not increase
his complacency as Nott softly returned: —

“Tt’s all right,” he began, with a certain satisfaction in
this rare opportunity for Machiavelian diplomacy, “it’s
all fixed now. Rosey tumbled to it at once, partiklerly
when I said you was bound to go. ‘But wot makes Mr.
Renshaw go, father,’ sez she; ‘wot makes everybody run
away from the ship?’ sez she, rather peart-like and sassy
for her. ‘Mr. Renshaw hez contractin’ business,’ sez I;
*got a big thing up in Sacramento that’ll make his for.
A SHIP OF 749 281

tun’,’ sez I — for I wasn’t goin’ to give yer away, don’t ye

see? ‘He had some business to talk to you about the
ship,’ sez she, lookin’ at me under the corner of her
pocket-handkerchief. ‘ Lots o’ business,’ sez I. ‘Then
I reckon he don’t care to hev me write to him,’ sez she.
‘Not a bit,’ sez I; ‘he wouldn’t answer ye if ye did.
Ye ’ll never hear from that chap agin.’ ”

“But what the devil’ — interrupted the young man
impetuously.

“Keep yer hair on!” remonstrated the old man with
dark intelligence. ‘Ef you’d seen the way she flounced
into her stateroom! — she, Rosey, ez allus moves ez softly
ez a spirit—you’d hev wished I’d hev unloaded a little
more. No, sir, gals is gals in some things all the time.”

Renshaw rose and paced the room rapidly. ‘“‘ Perhaps
I’d better speak to her again before she goes,” he said im-
pulsively.

“P’r’aps you’d better not,” replied the imperturbable
Nott.

Irritated as he was, Renshaw could not avoid the reflec-
tion that the old man was right. What, indeed, could he
say to her with his present imperfect knowledge? How
could she write to him if that knowledge was correct?

“Ef,” said Nott kindly, with a laying on of large bene-’
dictory and paternal hands, — “‘ef ye ’re willin’ to see Rosey
agin, without speakin’ to her, I reckon I ken fix it for
yer. I’m goin’ to take her down to the boat in half an
hour. Ef yer should happen — mind, ef yer should hap-
pen to be down there, seein’ some friends off and sorter
promenadin’ up and down the wharf like them high-toned
chaps on Montgomery Street — ye might ketch her eye un-
conscious like. Or, ye might do this!” He rose after a
moment’s cogitation and with a face of profound mystery
opened the door and beckoned Renshaw to follow him.
Leading the way cautiously, he brought the young man
282 A SHIP OF 749

into an open unpartitioned recess beside her stateroom.
It seemed to be used as a storeroom, and Renshaw’s eye
was caught by a trunk the size and shape of the one that
had provided Rosey with the materials of her masquerade.
Pointing to it, Mr. Nott said in a grave whisper: ‘This
yer trunk is the companion trunk to Rosey’s. She’s got
the things them opery women wears; this yer contains the
he things, the duds and fixin’s o’ the men o’ the same
stripe.” Throwing it open, he continued: ‘Now, Mr.
Renshaw, gals is gals; it’s nat’ral they should be took by
fancy dress and store clothes on young chaps as on their-
selves. That man Ferrers hez got the dead-wood on all of
ye in this sort of thing, and hez been playing, so to speak,
a lone hand all along. And ef thar’s anythin’ in thar,” he
added, lifting part of a theatrical wardrobe, “that you
think you ’d fancy — anythin’ you’d like to put on when
ye promenade the wharf down yonder — it’s yours, Don’t
ye be bashful, but help yourself.”

It was fully a minute before Renshaw fairly grasped the
old man’s meaning. But when he did— when the sug-
gested spectacle of himself arrayed & la Ferritres, gravely
promenading the wharf as a last gorgeous appeal to the
affections of Rosey, rose before his fancy, he gave way to
a fit of genuine laughter. The nervous tension of the past
few hours relaxed; he laughed until the tears came into
his eyes; he was still laughing when the door of the cabin
suddenly opened and Rosey appeared cold and distant on
the threshold.

“T— beg your pardon,” stammered Renshaw hastily.
“T did n’t mean — to disturb you —I” —

Without looking at him Rosey turned to her father.
“T am ready,” she said coldly, and closed the door again.

A glance of artful intelligence came into Nott’s eyes,
which had remained blankly staring at Renshaw’s ap-
parently causeless hilarity. Turning to him he winked
A SHIP OF 749 283

solemnly. ‘That keerless kind o’ hoss-laff jist fetched
her,” he whispered, and vanished before his chagrined
companion could reply.

When Mr. Nott and his daughter departed, Renshaw
was not in the ship, neither did he make a spectacular
appearance on the wharf as Mr. Nott had fondly expected,
nor did he turn up again until after nine o’clock, when he
found the old man in the cabin awaiting his return with
some agitation. ‘“‘A minit ago,” he said, mysteriously
closing the door behind Renshaw, “I heard a voice in the
passage, and goin’ out, who should I see agin but that
darned furrin nigger ez I told yer ‘bout, kinder hidin’ in
the dark, his eyes shinin’ like a catamount. I was jist
reachin’ for my weppins when he riz up with a grin and
handed me this yer letter. I told him I reckoned you’d
gone to Sacramento, but he said he wez sure you was in
your room, and to prove it I went thar. But when I kem
back the d—d skunk had vamosed— got frightened, I
reckon — and wasn’t nowhar to be seen.”

Renshaw took the letter hastily. It contained only a
line in Sleight’s hand. “If you change your mind, the
bearer may be of service to you.”

He turned abruptly to Nott. “You say it was the same
Lascar you saw before?”

“Tt was.”

“Then all I can say is, he is no agent of De Ferriéres’,”
said Renshaw, turning away with a disappointed air. Mr.
Nott would have asked another question, but with an
abrupt ‘“Good-night” the young man entered his room,
locked the door, and threw himself on his bed to reflect
without interruption.

But if he was in no mood to stand Nott’s fatuous con-
jectures, he was less inclined to be satisfied with his
own. Had he been again carried away through his im-
pulses evoked by the caprices of a pretty coquette and
284 A SHIP OF ’49

the absurd theories of her half-imbecile father? Had he
broken faith with Sleight and remained in the ship for
nothing, and would not his change of resolution appear to
be the result of Sleight’s note? But why had the Lascar
been haunting the ship before? In the midst of these
conjectures he fell asleep.

Vil

Between three and four in the morning the clouds broke
over the Pontiac; and the moon, riding high, picked out
in black and silver the long hulk that lay cradled between
the iron shells and warehouses and the wooden frames and
tenements on either side. The galley and covered gang-
way presented a mass of undefined shadow, against which
the white deck shone brightly, stretching to the forecastle
and bows, where the tiny glass roof of the photographer
glistened like a gem in the Pontiac’s crest. So peaceful
and motionless she lay that she might have been some
petrifaction of a past age now first exhumed and laid bare
to the cold light of the stars.

Nevertheless, this calm security was presently invaded
by a sense of stealthy life and motion. What had seemed
a fixed shadow suddenly detached itself from the deck and
vegan to slip stanchion by stanchion along the bulwarks
toward the companionway. At the cabin door it halted
and crouched motionless. Then rising, it glided forward
with the same staccato movement until opposite the slight
elevation of the fore hatch. Suddenly it darted to the
hatch, unfastened and lifted it with a swift, familiar dex-
terity, and disappeared in the opening. But as the moon
shone upon its vanishing face, it revealed the whitening
eyes and teeth of the Lascar seaman.

Dropping to the lower deck lightly, he felt his way
through the dark passage between the partitions, evidently
Jess familiar to him, halting before each door to listen,
A SHIP OF 749 285

Returning forward he reached the second hatchway that
had attracted Rosey’s attention, and noiselessly unclosed
its fastenings. A penetrating smell of bilge arose from the
opening. Drawing a small bull’s-eye lantern from his
breast he lit it, and unhesitatingly let himself down to the
further depth. The moving flash of his light revealed the
recesses of the upper hold, the abyss of the well amidships,
and glanced from the shining backs of moving zigzags of
rats that seemed to outline the shadowy beams and tran-
soms. Disregarding those curious spectators of his move-
ments, he turned his attention eagerly to the inner casings
of the hold, that seemed in one spot to have been strength-
ened by fresh timbers. Attacking this stealthily with the
aid of some tools hidden in his oilskin clothing, in the
light of the lantern he bore a fanciful resemblance to the
predatory animals around him. The low, continuous sound
of rasping and gnawing of timber which followed heightened
the resemblance. At the end of a few minutes he had
succeeded in removing enough of the outer planking to
show that the entire filling of the casing between the
stanchions was composed of small boxes. Dragging out
one of them with feverish eagerness to the light, the Lascar
forced it open. In the rays of the bull’s-eye, a wedged
mass of discolored coins showed with a lurid glow. The
story of the Pontiac was true — the treasure was there!
But Mr. Sleight had overlooked the logical effect of this
discovery on the natural villainy of his tool. In the very
moment of his triumphant execution of his patron’s sug-
gestions the idea of keeping the treasure to himself flashed
upon his mind. He had discovered it— why should he
give it up to anybody? He had run all the risks; if he
were detected at that moment, who would believe that his
purpose there at midnight was only to satisfy some one
else that the treasure was still intact? No. The circum-
stances were propitious; he would get the treasure out of
286 A SHIP OF 49

the ship at once, drop it over her side, hastily conceal it
in the nearest lot adjacent, and take it away at his con-
venience. Who would be the wiser for it?

But it was necessary to reconnoitre first. He knew that
the loft overhead was empty. He knew that it communi-
cated with the alley, for he had tried the door that morning.
He would convey the treasure there and drop it into the
alley. The boxes were heavy. Each one would require a
separate journey to the ship’s side, but he would at least
secure something if he were interrupted. He stripped the
casing, and gathered the boxes together in a pile.

Ah, yes, it was funny too that he — the Lascar hound
— the d—d nigger — should get what bigger and bullier
men than he had died for! The mate’s blood was on
those boxes, if the salt water had not washed it out. It
was a hell of a fight when they dragged the captain —— Oh,
what was that? Was it the splash of a rat in the bilge,
or what?

A superstitious terror had begun to seize him at the
thought of blood. The stifling hold seemed again filled
with struggling figures he had known, the air thick with
cries and blasphemies that he had forgotten. He rose to
his feet, and running quickly to the hatchway, leaped to
the deck above. All was quiet. The door leading to the
empty loft yielded to his touch. He entered, and, gliding
through, unbarred and opened the door that gave upon the
alley. The cold air and moonlight flowed in silently; the
way of escape was clear. Bah! He would go back for
‘the treasure.

He had reached the passage when the door he had just
opened was suddenly darkened. Turning rapidly, he was
conscious of a gaunt figure, grotesque, silent, and erect,
looming on the threshold between him and the sky. Hid-
den in the shadow, he made a stealthy step towards it,
with an iron wrench in his uplifted hand. But the next
A SHIP OF 749 287

moment his eyes dilated with superstitious horror; the iron
fell from his hand, and with a scream, like a frightened
animal, he turned and fled into the passage. In the first
access of his blind terror he tried to reach the deck above
through the fore hatch, but was stopped by the sound of a
heavy tread overhead. The immediate fear of detection
now overcame his superstition; he would have even faced
the apparition again to escape through the loft; but before
he could return there, other footsteps approached rapidly
from the end of the passage he would have to traverse.
There was but one chance of escape left now — the forehold
he had just quitted. He might hide there until the alarm
was over. He glided back to the hatch, lifted it, and
closed it softly over his head as the upper hatch was simul-
taneously raised, and the small round eyes of Abner Nott
peered down upon it. The other footsteps proved to be
Renshaw’s, but attracted by the open door of the loft, he
turned aside and entered. As soon as he disappeared Mr.
Nott cautiously dropped through the opening to the deck
below, and going to the other hatch through which the
Lascar had vanished, deliberately refastened it. In a few
moments Renshaw returned with a light, and found the
old man sitting on the hatch.

“The loft door was open,” said Renshaw. “There’s
little doubt whoever was here escaped that way.”

“Surely,” said Nott. ‘There was a peculiar look of
Machiavelian sagacity in his face which irritated Renshaw.

“Then you’re sure it was Ferritres you saw pass by
your window before you called me?” he asked.

Nott nodded his head with an expression of infinite pro-
fundity.

“But you say he was going from the ship. Then it
could not have been he who made the noise we heard down
here.”

“Mebbe no, and mebbe yes,” returned Nott cautiously.
288 A SHIP OF °49

“But if he was already concealed inside the ship, as
that open door, which you say you barred from the inside,
would indicate, what the devil did he want with this?”
said Renshaw, producing the monkey-wrench he had picked
up.

Mr. Nott examined the tool carefully, and shook his
head with momentous significance. Nevertheless, his eyes
wandered to the hatch on which he was seated.

“Did you find anything disturbed there?” said Ren-
shaw, following the direction of his eye. ‘ Was that hatch
fastened as it is now?”

“Tt was,” said Nott calmly. “But ye wouldn’t mind
fetchin’ me a hammer and some o’ them big nails from the
locker, would yer, while I hang round here just so ez to
make sure against another attack.”

Renshaw complied with his request; but as Nott pro-
ceeded to gravely nail down the fastenings of the hatch,
he turned impatiently away to complete his examination
of the ship. The doors of the other lofts and their fasten-
ings appeared secure and undisturbed. Yet it was undeni-
able that a felonious entrance had been made, but by whom
or for what purpose still remained uncertain. Even now
Renshaw found it difficult to accept Nott’s theory that De
Ferriéres was the aggressor and Rosey the object, nor could
he justify his own suspicion that the Lascar had obtained
a surreptitious entrance under Sleight’s directions. With
a feeling that if Rosey had been present he would have
confessed all, and demanded from her an equal confidence,
he began to hate his feeble, purposeless, and inefficient al-
liance with her father, who believed but dared not tax his
daughter with complicity in this outrage. What could be
done with a man whose only idea of action at such a mo-
ment was to nail up an undisturbed entrance in his invaded
house! He was so preoccupied with these thoughts that
when Nott rejoined him in the cabin he scarcely heeded
A SHIP OF 749 289

his presence, and was entirely oblivious of the furtive looks
which the old man from time to time cast upon his face.

“JT reckon ye would n’t mind,” broke in Nott sud-
denty, “ef I asked a favor of ye, Mr. Renshaw. Mebbe
ye 1l allow it’s askin’ too much in the matter of expense;
mebbe ye ll allow it’s askin’ too much in the matter o’
time. But J kalkilate to pay all the expense, and if
you ’d let me know what yer vally yer time at I reckon I
could stand that. What I’d be askin’ is this. Would ye
mind takin’ a letter from me to Rosey and bringin’ back
an answer?”

Renshaw stared speechlessly at this absurd realization of
his wish of -a moment before, “I don’t think I under-
stand you,” he stammered.

“P’r’aps not,” returned Nott, with great gravity
“But that ’s not so much matter to you ez your time anc
expenses.”

“T meant I should be glad to go if I can be of any ser.
vice to you,” said Renshaw hastily.

“You kin ketch the seven o’clock boat this morning,
and you ’ll reach San Rafael at ten ” —

“But I thought Miss Rosey went to Petaluma,” inter-
rupted Renshaw quickly.

Nott regarded him with an expression of patronizing
superiority. ‘“That’s what we ladled out to the public
gin’rally, and to Ferrers and his gang in partickler. We
said Petalumey, but if you go to Madrofio Cottage, San
Rafael, you ’ll find Rosey thar.”

If Mr. Renshaw required anything more to convince him
of the necessity of coming to some understanding with
Rosey at once, it would have been this last evidence of her
father’s utterly dark and supremely inscrutable designs.
He assented quickly, and Nott handed him a note.

“Yell be partickler to give this inter her own hands
and wait for an answer,” said Nott gravely.
290 A SHIP OF 749

Resisting the proposition to enter then and there into an
elaborate calculation of the value of his time and the ex-
penses of the trip, Renshaw found himself at seven o’clock
on the San Rafael boat. Brief as was the journey, it
gave him time to reflect upon his coming interview with
Rosey. He had resolved to begin by confessing all; the
attempt of last night had released him from any sense of
duty to Sleight. Besides, he did not doubt that Nott’s let-
ter contained some reference to this affair only known to
Nott’s dark and tortuous intelligence.

Vil

Madrofio Cottage lay at the entrance of a little cafiada
already green with the early winter rains, and nestled in a
thicket of the harlequin painted trees that gave it a name.
The young man was a little relieved to find that Rosey had
gone to the post-office a mile away, and that he would
probably overtake her or meet her returning — alone. The
road — little more than a trail — wound along the crest of
the hill looking across the cafiada to the long, dark,
heavily wooded flank of Mount Tamalpais that rose from
the valley a dozen miles away. A cessation of the warm
rain, a rift in the sky, and the rare spectacle of cloud
scenery, combined with a certain sense of freedom, re-
stored that light-hearted gayety that became him most.
At a sudden turn of the road he caught sight of Rosey’s
figure coming towards him, and quickened his step with
the impulsiveness of a boy. But she suddenly disap-
peared, and when he again saw her she was on the other
side of the trail, apparently picking the leaves of a man-
zanita. She had already seen him.

Somehow the frankness of his greeting was checked. She
looked up at him with cheeks that retained enough of their
color to suggest why she had hesitated, and said, ‘ You
here, Mr. Renshaw? I thought you were in Sacramento.”
A SHIP OF 749 291

“And I thought you were in Petaluma,” he retorted
gayly. “Ihave a letter from your father. The fact is,
one of those gentlemen who have been haunting the ship
actually made an entry last night. Who he was, and
what he came for, nobody knows. Perhaps your father
gives you his suspicions.” He could not help looking at
her narrowly as he handed-her the note. Except that her
pretty eyebrows were slightly raised in curiosity she seemed
undisturbed as she opened the letter. Presently she raised
her eyes to his.

“Ts this all father gave you?”

“ All. ”

“You re sure you have n’t dropped anything?”

“Nothing. I have given you all he gave me.”

“And that is all it is.” She exhibited the missive, a
perfectly blank sheet of paper folded like a note!

Renshaw felt the angry blood glow in his cheeks.
“This is unpardonable! I assure you, Miss Nott, there
must be some mistake. He himself has probably forgotten
the inclosure,” he continued, yet with an inward conviction
that the act was perfectly premeditated on the part of the
old man.

The young girl held out her hand frankly. ‘Don’t
think any more of it, Mr. Renshaw. Father is forgetful
at times. But tell me about last night.”

In a few words Mr. Renshaw briefly but plainly related
the details of the attempt upon the Pontiac, from the mo-
ment that he had been awakened by Nott, to his discovery
of the unknown trespasser’s flight by the open door to the
loft. When he had finished, he hesitated, and then, tak-
ing Rosey’s hand, said impulsively, “You will not be
angry with me ifI tell you all? Your father firmly be-
lieves that the attempt was made by the old Frenchman,
De Ferriéres, with a view of carrying you off.”

A dozen reasons other than the one her father would
292 A SHIP oF ’49

have attributed it to might have called the blood to her
face. But only innocence could have brought the look of
astonished indignation to her eyes as she answered
quickly : —

“So that was what you were laughing at?”

“Not that, Miss Nott,” said the young man eagerly;
“though I wish to God I could accuse myself of nothing
more disloyal. Do not speak, I beg,” he added impa-
tiently, as Rosey was about to reply. “I have no right
to hear you; I have no right to even stand in your pre-
sence until I have confessed everything. I came to the
Pontiac; I made your acquaintance, Miss Nott, through a
fraud as wicked as anything your father charges to De
Ferriéres. I am not a contractor, I never was an honest
lodger in the Pontiac. I was simply a spy.”

“But you didn’t mean to be —it was some mistake,
wasn’t it?” said Rosey, quite white, but more from sym-
pathy with the offender’s emotion than horror at the
offense.

“T am afraid I did mean it. But bear with me for a
few moments longer and you shall know all. It’s a long
story. Will you walk on, and—take my arm? You do
not shrink from me, Miss Nott. Thank you. I scarcely
deserve the kindness.”

Indeed so little did Rosey shrink that he was conscious
of a slight reassuring pressure on his arm as they moved
forward, and for the moment I fear the young man felt
like exaggerating his offense for the sake of proportionate
sympathy. ‘Do you remember,” he continued, ‘one
evening when I told you some sea tales, you said you al-
ways thought there must be some story about the Pontiac}
There was a story of the Pontiac, Miss Nott —a wicked
story —a terrible story — which I might have told you,
which I ought to have told you— which was the story
that brought me there. You were right, too, in saying
A SHIP OF 749 293

that you thought I had known the Pontiac before 1 stepped
first on her deck that day. I had.”

He laid his disengaged hand across lightly on Rosey’s,
as if to assure himself that she was listening.

“T was at that time a sailor. I had been fool enough
to run away from college, thinking it a fine romantic thing
to ship before the mast for a voyage round the world. I
was a little disappointed, perhaps, but I made the best of
it, and in two years I was the second mate of a whaler
lying in a little harbor of one of the uncivilized islands of
the Pacific. While we were at anchor there a French trad-
ing-vessel put in, apparently for water. She had the dregs
of a mixed crew of Lascars and Portuguese, who said they
had lost the rest of their men by desertion, and that the
captain and mate had been carried off by fever. There
was something so queer in their story that our skipper took
the law in his own hands, and put me on board of her
with a salvage crew. But that night the French crew
mutinied, cut the cables, and would have got to sea if we
had not been armed and prepared, and managed to drive
them below. When we had got them under hatches for a
few hours they parleyed, and offered to go quietly ashore.
As we were short of hands and unable to take them with
us, and as we had no evidence against them, we let them
go, took the ship to Callao, turned her over to the authori-
ties, lodged a claim for salvage, and continued our voyage.
When we returned we found the truth of the story was
known. She had been a French trader from Marseilles,
owned by her captain; her crew had mutinied in the Pacific,
killed their officers and the only passenger — the owner of
the cargo. They had made away with the cargo and a
treasure of nearly half a million of Spanish gold for trad-
ing purposes which belonged to the passenger. In course
ot time the ship was sold for salvage and put into the
South American trade until the breaking out of the Cali-
294 A SHIP OF 749

fornian gold excitement when she was sent with a cargo to
San Francisco. That ship was the Pontiac, which your
father bought.”

A slight shudder ran through the girl’s frame. “I
wish —I wish you had n’t told me,” she said. ‘T shall
never close my eyes again comfortably on board of her, I
know.”

“T would say that you had purified her of ad stains of
her past — but there may be one that remains. And that
in most people’s eyes would be no detraction. You look
puzzled, Miss Nott — but I am coming to the explanation
and the end of my story. A ship of war was sent to the
island to punish the mutineers and pirates, for such they
were, but they could not be found. A private expedition
was sent to discover the treasure which they were supposed
to have buried, but in vain. About two months ago Mr.
Sleight told me one of his shipmasters had sent him a
Lascar sailor who had to dispose of a valuable secret re-
garding the Pontiac for a percentage. That secret was that
the treasure was never taken by the mutineers out of the
Pontiac! They were about to land and bury it when we
boarded them. They took advantage of their imprison-
ment under hatches to bury it in the ship. They hid it
in the hold so securely and safely that it was never de-
tected by us or the Callao authorities. I was then asked,
as one who knew the vessel, to undertake a private exam-
ination of her, with a view of purchasing her from your
father without awakening his suspicions. I assented.
You have my confession now, Miss Nott. You know
my crime. I am at your mercy.”

Rosey’s arm only tightened around his own. Her eyes
sought his. “And you didn’t find anything?” she said.

The question sounded so oddly like Sleight’s that Ren-
shaw returned a little stiffly: —

“T didn’t look.”
A SHIP OF “49 295

“Why?” asked Rosey simply.

“Because,” stammered Renshaw, with an uneasy con-
sciousness of having exaggerated his sentiment, “it didn’t
seem honorable; it didn’t seem fair to you.”

“Oh, you silly! you might have looked and told me.”

“But,” said Renshaw, ‘do you think that would have
been fair to Sleight?”

“As fair to himas tous. For, don’t you see, it would n’t
belong to any of us. It would belong to the friends or the
family of the man who lost it.”

“But there were no heirs,” replied Renshaw. “That
was proved by some impostor who pretended to be his
brother, and libeled the Pontiac at Callao, but the courts
decided he was a lunatic.”

“Then it belongs to the poor pirates who risked their
own lives for it, rather than to Sleight, who did nothing.”
She was silent for a moment, and then resumed with en-
ergy, ‘“‘I believe he was at the bottom of that attack last
night.”

“T have thought so too,” said Renshaw.

“Then I must go back at once,” she continued impul-
sively. ‘Father must not be left alone.”

“Nor must you,” said Renshaw quickly. ‘Do let me
return with you, and share with you and your father the
trouble I have brought upon you. Do not,” he added in a
lower tone, “deprive me of the only chance of expiating
my offense, of making myself worthy your forgiveness. ”

“T am sure,” said Rosey, lowering her lids and half
withdrawing her arm, — “I am sure I have nothing to for-
give. You did not believe the treasure belonged to us any
more than to anybody else, until you knew me” —

“That is true,” said the young man, attempting to take
her hand.

“T mean,” said Rosey, blushing, and showing a dis-
tracting row of little teeth in one of her infrequent laughs,
296 A SHIP OF 49

“oh, you know what I mean.” She withdrew her arm
gently, and became interested in the selection of certain
wayside bay leaves as they passed along. ‘All the same,
I don’t believe in this treasure,” she said abruptly, as if
to change the subject. ‘I don’t believe it ever was hid-
den inside the Pontiac.”

“That can be easily ascertained now,” said Renshaw.

“But it’s a pity you didn’t find it out while you were
about it,” said Rosey. ‘It would have saved so much
talk and trouble.”

“T have told you why I didn’t search the ship,” re-
sponded Rerishaw, with a slight bitterness. “But it seems
I could only avoid being a great rascal by becoming a great
fool.”

“You never intended to be a rascal,” said Rosey ear-
nestly, “and you couldn’t be a fool, except in heeding
what a silly girl says. JI only meant if you had taken me
into your confidence it would have been better.”

“Might I not say the same to you regarding your friend,
the old Frenchman?” returned Renshaw. ‘‘ What if I
were to confess to you that I lately suspected him of know-
ing the secret, and of trying to gain your assistance?”

Instead of indignantly repudiating the suggestion to the
young man’s great discomfiture, Rosey only knit her pretty
brows, and remained for some moments silent. Presently
she asked timidly: —

“Do you think it wrorg to tell another person’s secret
for their own good?”

“No,” said Renshaw promptly.

“Then I’ll tell you Monsieur de Ferriéres’! But only
because I believe from what you have just said that he
will turn out to have some right to the treasure.”

Then with kindling eyes, and a voice eloquent with
sympathy, Rosey told the story of her accidental discovery
of De Ferriéres’ miserable existence in the loft. Clothing
A SHIP OF 49 297

‘it with the unconscious poetry of her fresh, young imagi-
nation, she lightly passed over his antique gallantry and
grotesque weakness, exalting only his lonely sufferings and
mysterious wrongs. Renshaw listened, lost between shame
for his late suspicions and admiration for her thoughtful
delicacy, until she began to speak of De Ferriéres’ strange
allusions to the foreign papers in his portmanteau. ‘I
think some were law papers, and I am almost certain I saw
the word Callao printed on one of them.”

“Tt may be so,” said Renshaw thoughtfully. “The old
Frenchman has always passed for a harmless, wandering
eccentric. I hardly think public curiosity has ever even
sought to know his name, much less his history. But had
we not better first try to find if there is any property be-
fore we examine his claims to it?”

“As you please,” said Rosey, with a slight pout; “but
you will find it much easier to discover him than his trea-
sure. It’s always easier to find the thing you ’re not look-
ing for.”

“Until you want it,” said Renshaw, with sudden grav-
ity.

“How pretty it looks over there,” said Rosey, turning
her conscious eyes to the opposite mountain.

“Very.”

They had reached the top of the hill, and in the near
d\stance the chimney of Madrofio Cottage was even now
visible. At the expected sight they unconsciously stopped
— unconsciously disappointed. Rosey broke the embar-
rassing silence.

“There’s another way home, but it’s a roundabout
way,’ she said timidly.

“Let us take it,” said Renshaw.

She hesitated. “The boat goes at four, and we must
return to-night.”

“The more reason why we should make the most of our
298 A SHIP OF ’49

time now,” said Renshaw, with a faint smile. “To-morrow
all things may be changed; to-morrow you may find your-
self an heiress, Miss Nott. To-morrow,” he added, with a
slight tremor in his voice, “I may have earned your for-
giveness, only to say farewell to you forever. Let me keep
this sunshine, this picture, this companionship with you
long enough to say now what perhaps I must not say to-
morrow.”

They were silent for a moment, and then by a common
instinct turned together into a narrow trail, scarce wide
enough for two, that diverged from the straight practical
path before them. It was indeed a roundabout way home,
so roundabout, in fact, that as they wandered on it seemed
even to double on its track, occasionally lingering long and
becoming indistinct under the shadow of madrofio and
willow; at one time stopping blindly before a fallen tree
in the hollow, where they had quite lost it, and had to sit
down to recall it; a rough way, often requiring the mu-
tual help of each other’s hands and eyes to tread together in
security; an uncertain way, not to be found without whis-
pered consultation and concession, and yet a way eventually
bringing them hand in hand, happy and hopeful, to the
gate of Madrofio Cottage. And if there was only just
time for Rosey to prepare to take the boat, it was due to
the deviousness of the way. If a stray curl was lying
loose on Rosey’s cheek, and a long hair had caught in Ren-
shaw’s button, it was owing to the roughness of the way;
and if in the tones of their voices and in the glances of
their eyes there was a maturer seriousness, it was due to
the dim uncertainty of the path they had traveled, and
would hereafter tread together.

IX

‘When Mr. Nott had satisfied himself of Renshaw’s de-
parture, he coolly bolted the door at the head of the com-
A SHIP OF 49 299

panionway, thus cutting off any communication with the
lower deck. Taking a long rifle from the rack above his
berth, he carefully examined the hammer and cap, and then
cautiously let himself down through the fore hatch to the
deck below. After a deliberate survey of the still intact
fastenings of the hatch over the forehold, he proceeded
quietly to unloose them again with the aid of the tools that
still lay there. When the hatch was once more free he
lifted it, and withdrawing a few feet from the opening,
sat himself down, rifle in hand. A profound silence
reigned throughout the lower deck.

“Ye kin rize up out o’ that,” said Nott gently.

There was a stealthy rustle below that seemed to ap-
proach the hatch, and then with a sudden bound the Lascar
leaped on the deck. But at the same instant Nott covered
him with his rifle. A slight shade of disappointment and
surprise had crossed the old man’s face, and clouded his
small round eyes at the apparition of the Lascar, but his
hand was none the less firm upon the trigger as the fright-
ened prisoner sank on his knees, with his hands clasped in
the attitude of supplication for mercy.

“Ef you’re thinkin’ o’ skippin’ afore I’ve done with
yer,” said Nott, with labored gentleness, “I oughter warn
ye that it’s my style to drop Injins at two hundred yards,
and this deck ain’t anywhere more’n fifty. It’s an un-
comfortable style, a nasty style—but it’s my style. I
thought I’d tell yer, so yer could take it easy where you
air. Where’s Ferrers?”

Even in the man’s insane terror, his utter bewilder-
ment at the question was evident. “Ferrers?” he gasped;
“don’t know him, I swear to God, boss.”

“P’y’aps,” said Nott, with infinite cunning, “yer don’t
know the man ez kem into the loft from the alley last
night — p’r’aps yer didn’t see an airy Frenchman with a
dyed mustache, eh? I thought that would fetch ye!” he
300 A SHIP OF 749

continued, as the man started at the evidence that his vi-
sion of last night was a living man, ‘“P’r’aps youand him
did n’t break into this ship last night, jist to run off with
my darter Rosey? P’r’aps yer don’t know Rosey, eh?
P’r’aps yer don’t know ez Ferrers wants to marry her, and
hez been hangin’ round yer ever since he left — eh?”

Scarcely believing the evidence of his senses that the
old man whose treasure he had been trying to steal was
utterly ignorant of his real offense, and yet uncertain of
the penalty of the other crime of which he was accused, the
Lascar writhed his body and stammered vaguely, ‘Mercy!
Mercy!” ,

“Well,” said Nott cautiously, “ez I reckon the hide of
a dead Chinee nigger ain’t any more vallyble than that
of a dead Injin, I don’t care ef I let up on yer—seein’
the cussedness ain’t yours. But ef I let yer off this once,
you must take a message to Ferrers from me.”

“Let me off this time, boss, and I swear to God I will,”
said the Lascar eagerly.

“Ye kin say to Ferrers—let me see” — deliberated
Nott, leaning on his rifle with cautious reflection. “Ye
kin say to Ferrers like this — sez you, ‘ Ferrers,’ sez you,
‘the old man sez that afore you went away you sez to him,
sez you, “I take my honor with me,” sez you’ — have you
got that?” interrupted Nott suddenly.

“Yes, boss.”

“¢F take my honor with me,’ sez you,” repeated Nott
slowly. ‘ ‘Now,’ sez you — ‘the old man sez, sez he —
tell Ferrers, sez he, that his honor havin’ run away agin,
he sends it back to him, and ef he ever ketches it around
after this, he ’ll shoot it on sight.’ Hev yer got that?”

“Yes,” stammered the bewildered captive.

“Then git!”

The Lascar sprang to his feet with the agility of a pan-
ther, leaped through the hatch above him, and disappeared
A SHIP OF ’49 301

over the bow of the ship with an unhesitating directness
that showed that every avenue of escape had been already
contemplated by him. Slipping lightly from the cut-
water to the ground, he continued his flight, only stopping
at the private office of Mr. Sleight.

When Mr. Renshaw and Rosey Nott arrived on board
the Pontiac that evening, they were astonished to find
the passage before the cabin completely occupied with
trunks and boxes, and the bulk of their household goods
apparently in the process of removal. Mr. Nott, who was
superintending the work of two Chinamen, betrayed not
only no surprise at the appearance of the young people, but
not the remotest recognition of their own bewilderment ati
his occupation.

“Kalkilatin’,” he remarked casually to his daughter,
“you’d rather look arter your fixin’s, Rosey, I’ve left
‘em till the last. P’r’aps yer and Mr. Renshaw would n’t
mind sittin’ down on that locker until I’ve strapped this
yer box.”

“But what does it all mean, father?” said Rosey, tak-
ing the old man by the lapels of his pea-jacket, and
slightly emphasizing her question. “ What in the name of ,
goodness are you doing?”

“ Breakin’ camp, Rosey dear, breakin’ camp, jist ez we
uster,” replied Nott, with cheerful philosophy. “Kinder
like ole times, ain’t it? Lord, Rosey,” he continued,
stopping and following up the reminiscence, with the end
of the rope in his hand as if it were a clue, “don’t ye mind
that day we started outer Livermore Pass, and seed the
hull o’ the Californy coast stretchin’ yonder—eh? But
(lon’t ye be skeered, Rosey dear,” he added quickly, as if
in recognition of the alarm expressed in her face. “T ain’t
turning ye outer house and home; I ’ve jist hired that ‘ere
Madre*> Cottage from the Peters ontil we kin look round.”

“But you’re not leaving the ship, father,” continued
302 A SHIP OF 749

Rosey impetuously. ‘You haven’t sold it to that man
Sleight?”

Mr. Nott rose and carefully closed the cabin door. Then
drawing a large wallet from his pocket, he said, “It’s sin-
g lar ye should hev got the name right the first pop, ain’t
it, Rosey? but it’s Sleight sure enough, all the time.
This yer check,” he added, producing a paper from the
depths of the wallet, — ‘this yer check for $25,000 is wot
he paid for it only two hours ago.”

“But,” said Renshaw, springing to his feet furiously,
“you ’re duped, swindled — betrayed! ”

“Young man,” said Nott, throwing a certain dignity
into his habitual gesture of placing his hands on Renshaw’s
shoulders, “I bought this yer ship five years ago jist ez
she stood for $8000. Kalkilatin’ wot she cost me in
repairs and taxes, and wot she brought me in since then,
accordin’ to my figgerin’, I don’t call a clear profit of
$15,000 much of a swindle.”

“Tell him all,” said Rosey quickly, more alarmed at
Renshaw’s despairing face than at the news itself. “Tell
him everything, Dick — Mr. Renshaw; it may not be too
late.”

In a voice half choked with passionate indignation Ren-
shaw hurriedly repeated the story of the hidden treasure,
and the plot to rescue it, prompted frequently by Rosey’s
tenacious memory and assisted by her deft and tactful ex-
planations. But to their surprise the imperturbable counte-
nance of Abner Nott never altered; a slight moisture of
kindly paternal tolerance of their extravagance glistened
in his little eyes, but nothing more.

“Ef there was a part 0’ this ship, a plank or a bolt ez
1 don’t know, ez I hevn’t touched with my own hand,
and looked into with my own eyes, thar might be suthin’
in that story. I don’t let on to be a sailor like you, but
ez I know the ship ez a boy knows his first hoss, as a wo-
A SHIP OF 749 803

man knows her first babby, I reckon thar ain’t no treasure
yer onless it was brought into the Pontiac last night by
them chaps.”

“But are you mad? Sleight would not pay three times
the value of the ship to-day if he were not positive! And
that positive knowledge was gained last night by the villair
who broke into the Pontiac — no doubt the Lascar.”

“Surely,” said Nott meditatively. “The Lascar !
There ’s suthin’ in that. That Lascar I fastened down in
the hold last night unbeknownst to you, Mr. Renshaw,
and let him out again this morning ekally unbeknownst.”

“And you let him carry his information to Sleight —
withcut a word!” said Renshaw, with a sickening sense of
Nott’s utter fatuity.

“T sent him back with a message to the man he kem
from,” said Nott, winking both his eyes at Renshaw sig-
nificantly, and making signs behind his daughter’s back.

Rosey, conscious of her lover’s irritation, and more eager
to soothe his impatience than from any faith in her sugges-
tion, interfered. ‘“‘ Why not examine the place where he
was concealed? he may have left some traces of his search.”

The two men looked at each other. ‘Seein’ ez I’ve
turned the Pontiac over to Sleight jist as it stands, I don’t
know ez it’s ’zactly on the square,” said Nott doubtfully.

“You ’ve a right to know at least what you deliver to
him,” interrupted Renshaw brusquely. “ Bring a lantern.”

Followed by Rosey, Renshaw and Nott hurriedly sought
the lower deck and the open hatch of the forehold. The
two men leaped down first with the lantern, and then as-
sisted Rosey to descend. Renshaw took a step forward and
uttered a cry.

The rays of the lantern fell on the ship’s side. The
Lascar had, during his forced seclusion, put back the boxes
of treasure and replaced the planking, yet not so carefully
but that the quick eye of Renshaw had discovered it. The
304 A SHIP OF ’49

next moment he had stripped away the planking again,
and the hurriedly restored box which the Lascar had found
fell to the deck, scattering part of its ringing contents,
Rosey turned pale; Renshaw’s eyes flashed fire; only Abner
Nott remained quiet and impassive.

“Are you satisfied you have been duped?” said Ren-
shaw passionately.

To their surprise Mr. Nott stooped down, and picking
up one of the coins, handed it gravely to Renshaw.
“Would ye mind heftin’ that ’ere coin in your hand —
feelin’ it, bitin’ it, scrapin’ it with a knife, and kinder
seein’ how it compares with other coins?”

““What do you mean?” said Renshaw.

“JT mean that that yer coin — that add the coins in this
yer box, that all the coins in them other boxes — and
thar’s forty on “em —is all and every one of ’em coun-
terfeits!”

The piece dropped unconsciously from Renshaw’s hand,
and striking another that lay on the deck, gave out a dull,
suspicious ring.

“They waz counterfeits got up by them Dutch super-
cargo sharps for dealin’ with the Injins and cannibals and
South Sea heathens ez bows down to wood and stone. It
satisfied them ez well ez them buttons ye puts in mission-
ary boxes, I reckon, and, ’cepting ez freight, don’t cost
nothin’. I found ’em tucked in the ribs o’ the old Pontiac
when I bought her, and I nailed ’*em up in thar lest they
should fall into dishonest hands. It’s a lucky thing, Mr.
Renshaw, that they comes into the honest fingers of a
square man like Sleight — ain’t it?”

He turned his small, guileless eyes upon Renshaw with
such childlike simplicity that it checked the hysterical
laugh that was rising to the young man’s lips.

“But did any one know of this but yourself?”

“T reckon not. I once suspicioned that old Cap’en
A SHIP OF 749 305

Bower, who was always foolin’ round the hold yer, must
hev noticed the bulge in the casin’, but when he took to
axin’ questions I axed others — ye know my style, Rosey ?
Come.”

He led the way grimly back to the cabin, the young
people following; but turning suddenly at the companion-
way, he observed Renshaw’s arm around the waist of his
daughter. He said nothing until they had reached the
cabin, when he closed the door softly, and, looking at them
both gently, said with infinite cunning: —

“Ef it isn’t too late, Rosey, ye kin tell this young
man ez how I forgive him for havin’ diskivered THE
TREASURE of the Pontiac.”

It was nearly eighteen months afterwards that Mr. Nott
one morning entered the room of his son-in-law at Ma-
drofio Cottage. Drawing him aside, he said, with his old
air of mystery, ‘‘ Now ez Rosey ’s ailin’ and don’t seem to
be so eager to diskiver what ’s become of Mr. Ferrers, I
don’t mind tellin’ ye that over a year ago I heard he died
suddenly in Sacramento. Thar was suthin’ in the paper
about his bein’ a lunatic and claimin’ to be a relation to
somebody on the Pontiac; but likes ez not it’s only the
way those newspaper fellows got hold of the story of his
wantin’ to marry Rosey.”
AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES

I

On October 10, 1856, about four hundred people were
camped in Tasajara Valley, California. It could not have
been for the prospect, since a more barren, dreary, monot-
onous, and uninviting landscape never stretched before
human eye; it could not have been for convenience or con-
tiguity, as the nearest settlement was thirty miles away; it
could not have been for health or salubrity, as the breath
of the ague-haunted tules in the outlying Stockton marshes
swept through the valley; it could not have been for space
or comfort, for, encamped on an unlimited plain, men and
women were huddled together as closely as in an urban
tenement-house, without the freedom or decency of rural
isolation; it could not have been for pleasant companion-
ship, as dejection, mental anxiety, tears, and lamentation
were the dominant expression; it was not a hurried flight
from present or impending calamity, for the camp had been
deliberately planned, and for a week pioneer wagons had
been slowly arriving; it was not an irrevocable exodus, for
some had already returned to their homes that others might
take their places. It was simply a religious revival of one
or two denominational sects, known as a “ camp-meeting.”

A large central tent served for the assembling of the
principal congregation; smaller tents served for prayer-
meetings and class-rooms, known to the few unbelievers as
“side-shows;” while the actual dwellings of the worship-
ers were rudely extemporized shanties of boards and canvas,
sometimes mere corrals or inclosures open to the cloudless
AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES 307

sky, or more often the unhitched covered wagon which
had brought them there. The singular resemblance to a
circus, already profanely suggested, was carried out by a
straggling fringe of boys and half-grown men on the out-
skirts of the encampment, acrimonious with disappointed
curiosity, lazy without the careless ease of vagrancy, and
vicious without the excitement of dissipation, For the
coarse poverty and brutal economy of the larger arrange-
ments, the dreary panorama of unlovely and unwholesome
domestic details always before the eyes, were hardly excit-
ing to the senses. The circus might have been more dan-
gerous, but scarcely more brutalizing. The actors them-
selves, hard and aggressive through practical struggles,
often warped and twisted with chronic forms of smaller
diseases, or malformed and crippled through carelessness
and neglect, and restless and uneasy through some vague
mental distress and inquietude that they had added to their
burdens, were scarcely amusing performers. The rheu-
matic Parkinsons, from Green Springs; the ophthalmic
Filgees, from Alder Creek; the ague-stricken Harneys,
from Martinez Bend; and the feeble-limbed Steptons,
from Sugar Mill, might, in their combined families, have
suggested a hospital, rather than any other social assem-
blage. Even their companionship, which had little of
cheerful fellowship in it, would have been grotesque but
for the pathetic instinct of some mutual vague appeal from
the hardness of their lives and the helplessness of their
conditions that had brought them together. Nor was this
appeal to a Higher Power any the less pathetic that it bore
no reference whatever to their respective needs or deficien-
cies, but was always an invocation for a light which, when
they believed they had found it, to unregenerate eyes
searcely seemed to illumine the rugged path in which their
feet were continually stumbling. One might have smiled
at the idea of the vendetta-following Ferguses praying for
808 AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES

“justification by Faith,” but the actual spectacle of old
Simon Fergus, whose shot-gun was still in his wagon,
offering up that appeal with streaming eyes and agonized
features, was painful beyond a doubt. To seek and obtain
an exaltation of feeling vaguely known as “It,” or less
vaguely veiling a sacred name, was the burden of the gen-
eral appeal.

The large tent had been filled, and between the exhorta-
tions a certain gloomy enthusiasm had been kept up by
singing, which had the effect of continuing in an easy,
rhythmical, impersonal, and irresponsible way the sympa-
thies of the meeting. This was interrupted by a young
man who rose suddenly with that spontaneity of impulse
which characterized the speakers; but unlike his predeces-
sors, he remained for a moment mute, trembling, and irreso-
lute. The fatal hesitation seemed to check the unreason-
ing, monotonous flow of emotion and to recall to some
extent the reason and even the criticism of the worshipers.
He stammered a prayer whose earnestness was undoubted,
whose humility was but too apparent, but his words fell on
faculties already henumbed by repetition and rhythm. A
slight movement of curiosity in the rear benches, and a
whisper that it was the maiden effort of a -new preacher,
helped to prolong the interruption. A heavy man of
strong physical expression sprang to the rescue with a hys-
terical cry of Glory!” and a tumultuous fluency of epi-
thet and sacred adjuration. Still the meeting wavered.
With one final paroxysmal cry, the powerful man threw
his arms around his nearest neighbor and burst into silent
tears. An anxious hush followed; the speaker still con-
tinued to sob on his neighbor’s shoulder. Almost before
the fact could be commented upon, it was noticed that the
entire rank of worshipers on the bench beside him were
crying also ; the second and third rows were speedily dis-
solved in tears, until even the very youthful scoffers in the
AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES 309

last benches suddenly found their half-hysterical laughter
turned to sobs. The danger was averted, the reaction was
complete; the singing commenced, and in a few moments
the hapless cause of the interruption and the man who had
retrieved the disaster stood together outside the tent. A
horse was picketed near them.

The victor was still panting from his late exertions,
and was more or less diluvial in eye and nostril, but
neither eye nor nostril bore the slightest tremor of other
expression. His face was stolid and perfectly in keeping
with his physique, — heavy, animal, and unintelligent.

“Ye oughter trusted in the Lord,” he said to the young
preacher.

“But I did,” responded the young man earnestly.

“That ’s it. Justifyin’ yourself by works instead 0’
leanin’ onto Him! Find Him, sez you! Git Him, sez
you! Works is vain. Glory! glory!” he continued, with
fluent vacuity and wandering, dull, observant eyes.

“But if I had a little more practice in class, Brother
Silas, more education?”

“The letter killeth,” interrupted Brother Silas. Here
his wandering eyes took dull cognizance of two female faces
peering through the opening of the tent. “No, yer mishun,
Brother Gideon, is to seek Him in the byways, in the
wilderness, — where the foxes hev holes and the ravens
hev their young, — but not in the Temples of the people.
Wot sez Sister Parsons?”

One of the female faces detached itself from the tent
flaps, which it nearly resembled in color, and brought for-
ward an angular figure clothed in faded fustian that had
taken the various shades and odors of household service.

“Brother Silas speaks well,” said Sister Parsons, with
stridulous fluency. “It’s foreordained. Fore-ordinashun
is better nor ordinashun, saith the Lord. He shall go
forth, turnin’ neither to the right hand nor the left hand,
310 AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES

and seek Him among the lost tribes and the ungodly. He
shall put aside the temptashun of Mammon and the flesh.”
Her eyes and those of Brother Silas here both sought the
other female face, which was that of a young girl of seven-
teen.

“Wot sez little Sister Meely, — wot sez Meely Parsons?”
continued Brother Silas, as if repeating an unctuous for-
mula.

The young girl came hesitatingly forward, and with a
nervous cry of ‘Oh, Gideon!” threw herself on the breast
of the young man.

For a moment they remained locked in each other’s
arms. In the promiscuous and fraternal embracings which
were a part of the devotional exercises of the hour, the act
passed without significance. The young man gently raised
her face. She was young and comely, albeit marked with
a half-frightened, half-vacant sorrow. “Amen!” said
Brother Gideon gravely.

He mounted his horse and turned to go. Brother Silas
had clasped his powerful arms around both women, and
was holding them in a ponderous embrace.

“Go forth, young man, into the wilderness.”

The young man bowed his head, and urged his horse
forward in the bleak and barren plain. In half an hour
every vestige of the camp and its unwholesome surround-
ings was lost in the distance. It was as if the strong desic-
cating wind, which seemed to spring up at his horse’s feet,
had cleanly erased the flimsy structures from the face of the
plain, swept away the lighter breath of praise and plaint,
and dried up the easy flowing tears. The air was harsh
but pure; the grim economy of form and shade and color
in the level plain was coarse but not vulgar; the sky above
him was cold and distant but not repellent, the moisture
that had been denied his eyes at the prayer-meeting over-
flowed them here; the words that had choked his utterance
AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES 311

an hour ago now rose to his lips. He threw himself from
his horse, and kneeling in the withered grass, —a mere
atom in the boundless plain, — lifted his pale face against
the irresponsive blue and prayed.

He prayed that the unselfish dream of his bitter boy-
hood, his disappointed youth, might come to pass. He
prayed that he might in higher hands become the humble
instrument of good to his fellow man. He prayed that the
deficiencies of his scant education, his self-taught learning,
his helpless isolation, and his inexperience might be over-
looked or reinforced by grace. He prayed that the Infinite
Compassion might enlighten his ignorance and solitude
with a manifestation of the Spirit; in his very weakness
he prayed for some special revelation, some sign or token,
some visitation or gracious unbending from that coldly
lifting sky. The low sun burned the black edge of the
distant tules with dull eating fires as he prayed, lit the
dwarfed hills with a brief but ineffectual radiance, and
then died out. The lingering trade winds fired a few
volleys over its grave, and then lapsed into a chilly silence.
The young man staggered to his feet; it was quite dark
now, but the coming night had advanced a few starry ve-
dettes so near the plain they looked like human watch-
fires. For an instant he could not remember where he was.
Then a light trembled far down at the entrance of the val-
ley. Brother Gideon recognized it. It was in the lonely
farmhouse of the widow of the last Circuit preacher.

Il
The abode of the late Reverend Marvin Hiler remained
in the disorganized condition he had left it when removed
from his sphere of earthly uselessness and continuous ac-
cident. The straggling fence that only half inclosed the
house and barn had stopped at that point where the two
deacons who had each volunteered to do a day’s work on
812 AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES

it had completed their allotted time. The building of the
barn had been arrested when the half load of timber con-
tributed by Sugar Mill brethren was exhausted, and three
windows given by “Christian Seekers” at Martinez pain-
fully accented the boarded spaces for the other three that
“Unknown Friends” in Tasajara had promised but not yet
supplied. In the clearing some trees that had been felled
but not taken away added to the general incompleteness.

Something of this unfinished character clung to the
Widow Hiler and asserted itself in her three children, one
of whom was consistently posthumous. Prematurely old
and prematurely disappointed, she had all the inexperience
of girlhood with the cares of maternity, and kept in her
family circle the freshness of an old maid’s misogynistic
antipathies with a certain guilty and remorseful conscious-
ness of widowhood. She supported the meagre house-
hold to which her husband had contributed only the extra
mouths to feed with reproachful astonishment and weary
incapacity. She had long since grown tired of trying to
make both ends meet of which she declared ‘‘the Lord had
taken one.” During her two years’ widowhood she had
waited on Providence, who by a pleasing local fiction had
been made responsible for the disused and cast-off furni-
ture and clothing which, accompanied with scriptural texts,
found their way mysteriously into her few habitable rooms.
The providential manna was not always fresh; the ravens
who fed her and her little ones with flour from the Sugar
Mills did not always select the best quality. Small won-
der that, sitting by her lonely hearthstone, —a borrowed
stove that supplemented the unfinished fireplace, — sur-
rounded by her mismatched furniture and clad in misfitting
garments, she had contracted a habit of sniffling during her
dreary watches. In her weaker moments she attributed it
to grief; in her stronger intervals she knew that it sprang
from damp and draught.
AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES 313

In her apathy the sound of horses’ hoofs at her unpro-
tected door even at that hour neither surprised nor alarmed
her. She lifted her head as the door opened, and the pale
face of Gideon Deane looked into the room. She moved
aside the cradle she was rocking, and taking a saucepan
and teacup from a chair beside her, absently dusted it with
her apron, and pointing to the vacant seat, said, “Take a
chair” as quietly as if he had stepped from the next room
instead of the outer darkness.

“Tl put up my horse first,” said Gideon gently.

“So do,” responded the widow briefly.

Gideon led his horse across the inclosure, stumbling over
the heaps of rubbish, dried chips, and weather-beaten shav-
ings with which it was strewn, until he reached the unfin-
ished barn, where he temporarily bestowed his beast.
Then taking a rusty axe, by the faint light of the stars, he
attacked one of the fallen trees with such energy that at
the end of ten minutes he reappeared at the door with an
armful of cut boughs and chips, which he quietly deposited
behind the stove. Observing that he was still standing as
if looking for something, the widow lifted her eyes and
said, “Ef it’s the bucket, I reckon ye’ll find it at the
spring, where one of them foolish Filgee boys left it.
I’ve been that tuckered out sens sundown, I ain’t had the
ambition to go and tote it back.” Without a word Gideon
tepaired to the spring, filled the missing bucket, replaced
the hoop on the loosened staves of another he found lying
useless beside it, and again returned to the house. The
widow once more pointed to the chair, and Gideon sat
down. ‘It’s quite a spell sens you wos here,” said the
Widow Hiler, returning her foot to the cradle-rocker;
“not sens yer was ordained. JBe’n practicin’, I reckon,
at the meetin’.”

A slight color came into his cheek. ‘My place is not
there, Sister Hiler,” he said gently; “it’s for those with
314 AN APOSTLE OF .THE TULES

the gift o’ tongues. I go forth only a common laborer in
the vineyard.” He stopped and hesitated; he might have
said more, but the widow, who was farniliar with that kind
of humility as the ordinary perfunctory expression of her
class, suggested no sympathetic interest in his mission.

“Thar’s a deal o’ talk over there,” she said dryly,
“and thar’s folks ez thinks thar ’s a deal o’ money spent in
picnicking the Gospel that might be given to them ez wish
to spread it, or to their widows and children. But that
don’t consarn you, Brother Gideon. Sister Parsons hez
money enough to settle her darter Meely comfortably on
her own land; and I’ve heard tell that you and Meely was
only waitin’ till you was ordained to be jined together.
You ll hev an easier time of it, Brother Gideon, than poor
Marvin Hiler had,” she continued, suppressing her tears
with a certain astringency that took the place of her lost
pride; “but the Lord wills that some should be tried and
some not.”

“But I am not going to marry Meely Parsons,” said
Gideon quietly.

The widow took her foot from the rocker. “Not marry
Meely!” she repeated vaguely. But relapsing into her de-
spondent mood, she continued: “Then I reckon it’s true
what other folks sez of Brother Silas Braggley makin’ up
to her and his powerful exhortin’ influence over her ma.
Folks sez ez Sister Parsons hez just resigned her soul inter
his keepin’.”

“Brother Silas hez a heavenly gift,” said the young man,
with gentle enthusiasm; “and perhaps it may be so. If
it is, it is the Lord’s will, But I do not marry Meely be-
cause my life and my ways henceforth must lie far beyond
her sphere of strength. I oughtn’t to drag a young, inex-
perienced soul with me to battle and struggle in the thorny
paths that I must tread.”

“T reckon you know your own mind,” said Sister Hiler
AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES 315

grimly. “But thar’s folks ez might allow that Meely
Parsons ain’t any better than others, that she should n’t
have her share o’ trials and keers and crosses. Riches and
bringin’ up don’t exempt folks from the shadder. J mar-
ried Marvin Hiler outer a house ez good ez Sister Parsons’,
and at a time when old Cyrus Parsons had n’t a roof to his
head but the cover of the emigrant wagon he kem across
the plains in. I might say ez Marvin knowed pretty well
wot it was to have a helpmeet in his ministration, if it
wasn’t vanity of sperit to say it now. But the flesh is
weak, Brother Gideon.” Her influenza here resolved itself
ito unmistakable tears, which she wiped away with the
first article that was accessible in the work-bag before her.
As it chanced to be a black silk neckerchief of the deceased
Hiler, the result was funereal, suggestive, but practically
ineffective.

“You were a good wife to Brother Hiler,” said the
young man gently. ‘‘ Everybody knows that.”

“Tt’s suthin’ to think of since he’s gone,” continued
the widow, bringing her work nearer to her eyes to adjust
it to their tear-dimmed focus. “It’s suthin’ to lay to
heart in the lonely days and nights when thar’s no man
round to fetch water and wood and lend a hand to doin’
chores; it’s suthin’ to remember, with his three children
to feed, and little Selby, the eldest, that vain and useless
that he can’t even tote the baby round while I do the work
of a hired man.”

“Tt’s a hard trial, Sister Hiler,” said Gideon, “but the
Lord has His appointed time.”

Familiar as consolation by vague quotation was to Sister
Hiler, there was an occult sympathy in the tone in which
this was offered that lifted her for an instant out of her
narrower self. She raised her eyes to his. The personal
abstraction of the devotee had no place in the deep dark
eyes that were lifted from the cradle to hers with a sad,
316 AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES

discriminating, and almost womanly sympathy. Surprised
out of her selfish preoccupation, she was reminded of her
apparent callousness to what might be his present disap-
pointment. Perhaps it ssemed strange to her, too, that
those tender eyes shoul@ go a-begging.

“Yer takin’ a Christian view of yer own disappoint-
ment, Brother Gideon,” she said, with less astringency of
manner; “but every heart knoweth its own sorrer. I’ll
be gettin’ supper now that the baby’s sleepin’ sound, and
yell sit by and eat.”

“Tf you let me help you, Sister Hiler,” said the young
man with a cheerfulness that belied any overwhelming
heart affection, and awakened in the widow a feminine
curiosity as to his real feelings to Meely. But her further
questioning was met with a frank, amiable, and simple
brevity that was as puzzling as the most artful periphrase
of tact. Accustomed as she was to the loquacity of grief
and the confiding prolixity of disappointed lovers, she could
not understand her guest’s quiescent attitude. Her curi-
osity, however, soon gave way to the habitual contempla-
tion of her own sorrows, and she could not forego the
opportune presence of a sympathizing auditor to whom she
could relieve her feelings. The preparations for the even-
ing meal were therefore accompanied by a dreary monotone
of lamentation. She bewailed her lost youth, her brief
courtship, the struggles of her early married life, her pre-
mature widowhood, her penurious and helpless existence,
the disruption of all her present ties, the hopelessness of
the future. She rehearsed the unending plaint of those
long evenings, set to the music of the restless wind around
her bleak dwelling, with something of its stridulous reitera-
tion. The young man listened, and replied with softly
assenting eyes, but without pausing in the material aid that
he was quietly giving her. He had removed the cradle
of the sleeping child to the bedroom, quieted the sudden
AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES 317

wakefulness of “Pinkey,” rearranged the straggling fur-
niture of the sitting-room with much order and tidiness,
repaired the hinges of a rebellious shutter and the lock of
an unyielding door, and yet had apparently retained an
unabated interest in her spoken woes. Surprised once
more into recognizing this devotion, Sister Hiler abruptly
arrested her monologue.

“Well, if you ain’t the handiest man I ever seed about
a house!”

“Am I?” said Gideon, with suddenly sparkling eyes.
“Do you really think so?”

“TL do. ”

“Then you don’t know how glad I am.” His frank
face so unmistakably showed his simple gratification that
the widow, after gazing at him for a moment, was sud-
denly seized with a bewildering fancy. The first effect of
it was the abrupt withdrawal of her eyes, then a sudden
effusion of blood to her forehead that finally extended to
her cheek-bones, and then an interval of forgetfulness
where she remained with a plate held vaguely in her hand.
When she succeeded at last in putting it on the table in-
stead of the young man’s lap, she said in a voice quite
unlike her own: —

“Sho!”

“T mean it,” said Gideon cheerfully. After a pause,
in which he unostentatiously rearranged the table which
the widow was abstractedly disorganizing, he said gently,
“ After tea, when you ’re not so much flustered with work
and worry, and more composed in spirit, we 71] have a little
talk, Sister Hiler. I’m in no hurry to-night, and if you
don’t mind I’l] make myself comfortable in the barn with
my blanket until sunup to-morrow. I can get up early
enough to do some odd chores round the lot before I go.”

“You know best, Brother Gideon,” said the widow
faintly, “and if you think it’s the Lord’s will, and ne
818 AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES

speshal trouble to you, so do. But sakes alive! it’s time
I tidied myself a little,” she continued, lifting one hand
to her hair, while with the other she endeavored to fasten
a buttonless collar; “leavin’ alone the vanities o’ dress,
it’s ez much as one can do to keep a clean rag on with the
children climbin’ over ye. Sit by, and I’ll be back ina
minit.” She retired to the back room, and in a few mo-
ments returned with smoothed hair and a palm-leaf broché
shawl thrown over her shoulders, which not only concealed
the ravages made by time and maternity on the gown be.
neath, but to some extent gave her the suggestion of being
a casual visitor in her own household. It must be con.
fessed that for the rest of the evening Sister Hiler rather
lent herself to this idea, possibly from the fact that it tem.
porarily obliterated the children, and quite removed her from
any responsibility in the. unpicturesque household. This
effect was only marred by the absence of any impression
upon Gideon, who scarcely appeared to notice the change,
and whose soft eyes seemed rather to identify the miserable
woman under her forced disguise. He prefaced the meal
with a fervent grace, to which the widow listened with
something of the conscious attitude she had adopted at
church during her late husband’s ministration, and during
the meal she ate with a like consciousness of “company
manners. ”

Later that evening Selby Hiler woke up in his little
truckle bed, listening to the rising midnight wind, which
in his childish fancy he confounded with the sound of voices
that came through the open door of the living-room. He
recognized the deep voice of the young minister, Gideon,
and the occasional tearful responses of his mother, aud he
was fancying himself again at church when he heard a
step, and the young preacher seemed to enter the room,
and going to the bed leaned over it and kissed him on the
forehead, and then bent over his little brother and sister
AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES 319

and kissed them too. Then he slowly reéntered the living-
room. Lifting himself softly on his elbow, Selby saw him
go up towards his mother, who was crying, with her head
on the table, and kiss her also on the forehead. Then he
said “Good-night,” and the front door closed, and Selby
heard his footsteps crossing the lot towards the barn. His
mother was still sitting with her face buried in her hands
when he fell asleep.

She sat by the dying embers of the fire until the house
was still again; then she rose and wiped her eyes. ‘“Et’s
a good thing,” she said, going to the bedroom door, and
looking in upon her sleeping children; ‘et ’s a mercy and
a blessing for them and—for—me. But— but—he
might — hev — said — he — loved me!”

iI

Although Gideon Deane contrived to find a nest for his
blanket in the mouldy straw of the unfinished barn loft, he
could not sleep. He restlessly watched the stars through
the cracks of the boarded roof, and listened to the wind
that made the half-open structure as vocal as a sea-shell,
until past midnight. Once or twice he had fancied he
heard the tramp of horse-hoofs on the far-off trail, and
now it seemed to approach nearer, mingled with the sound
of voices. Gideon raised his head and looked through the
doorway of the loft. He was not mistaken; two men had
halted in the road before the house, and were examining
it as if uncertain if it were the dwelling they were seeking,
and were hesitating if they should rouse the inmates.
Thinking he might spare the widow this disturbance to her
slumbers, and possibly some alarm, he rose quickly, and
descending to the inclosure walked towards the house. As
he approached the men advanced to meet him, and by acci-
dent or design ranged themselves on either side. A glance
showed him they were strangers to the locality.
320 AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES

“We're lookin’ fer the preacher that lives here,” said
one, who seemed to be the elder. ‘‘A man by the name o
Hiler, I reckon!”

“Brother Hiler has been dead two years,” responded
Gideon. ‘His widow and children live here.”

The two men looked at each other. The younger one
laughed; the elder mumbled something about its being
“three years ago,” and then turning suddenly on Gideon,
said ; — :

“P’r’aps you ’re a preacher?”

“Tam.”

“Can you come to a dying man?”

“T will.”

The two men again looked at each other. “But,” con-
tinued Gideon softly, ‘‘you’ll please keep quiet so as not
to disturb the widow and her children while I get my
horse.” He turned away; the younger man made a move-
ment as if to stop him, but the elder quickly restrained his
hand. “He isn’t goin’ to run away,” he whispered.
“Look,” he added, as Gideon a moment later reappeared
mounted and equipped.

“Do you think we’ll be in time?” asked the young
preacher as they rode quickly away in the direction of the
tules.

The younger repressed a laugh; the other answered
grimly, “TI reckon.”

“And is he conscious of his danger?”

*T reckon.”

Gideon did not speak again. But as the onus of that
silence seemed to rest upon the other two, the last speaker,
after a few moments’ silent and rapid riding, continued
abruptly, “You don’t seem curious?”

“Of what?” said Gideon, lifting his soft eyes to the
speaker. ‘You tell me of a brother at the point of death,
who seeks the Lord through an humble vessel like myself.
He will tell me the rest.”
AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES 321

_ A silence still more constrained on the part of the two
strangers followed, which they endeavored to escape from
by furious riding; so that in half an hour the party had
reached a point where the tules began to sap the arid plain,
while beyond them broadened the lagoons of the distant
river. In the foreground, near a clump of dwarfed wil-
lows, a camp-fire was burning, around which fifteen or
twenty armed men were collected, their horses picketed in
an outer circle guarded by two mounted sentries. A
blasted cottonwood with a single black arm extended over
the tules stood ominously against the dark sky.

The circle opened to receive them and closed again.
The elder man dismounted, and leading Gideon to the
blasted cottonwood, pointed to a pinioned man seated at
its foot with an armed guard over him. He looked up at
Gideon with an amused smile.

“You said it was a dying man,” said Gideon, recoiling.

“He will be a dead man in half an hour,” returned the
stranger.

“And you?”

“We are the Vigilantes from Alamo. This man,”
pointing to the prisoner, “is a gambler who killed a man
yesterday. We hunted him here, tried him an hour ago,
and found him guilty. The last man we hung here, three
years ago, asked for a parson. We brought him the man
who used to live where we found you. So we thought
we ’d give this man the same show, and brought you.”

“And if I refuse?” said Gideon.

The leader shrugged his shoulders.

“That ’s his lookout, not ours. We’ve given him the
chance. Drive ahead, boys,” he added, turning to the
others; “the parson allows he won’t take a hand.”

“One moment,” said Gideon, in desperation, “one mo-
ment, for the sake of that God you have brought me here
to invoke in behalf of this wretched man. One moment,
522 AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES

for the sake of Him in whose presence you must stand one
day as he does now.” With passionate earnestness he
pointed out the vindictive impulse they were mistaking for
Divine justice; with pathetic fervency he fell upon his
knees and implored their mercy for the culprit. But in
vain, As at the camp-meeting of the day before, he was
chilled to find his words seemed to fall on unheeding and
unsympathetic ears. He looked around on their abstracted
faces; in their gloomy savage enthusiasm for expiatory
sacrifice, he was horrified to find the same unreasoning
exaltation that had checked his exhortations then. Only
one face looked upon his, half mischievously, half compas-
sionately. It was the prisoner’s.

“Yer wastin’ time on us,” said the leader dryly;
“wastin’ his time. Hadn’t you better talk to him?”

Gideon rose to his feet, pale and cold. ‘He may have
something to confess. May I speak with him alone?” he
said gently.

The leader motioned to the sentry to fall back. Gideon
placed himself before the prisoner so that in the faint light
of the camp-fire the man’s figure was partly hidden by his
own. ‘You meant well with your little bluff, pardner,”
said the prisoner, not unkindly, “but they ’ve got the cards
to win.”

“Kneel down with your back to me,” said Gideon in
a low voice. The prisoner fell on his knees. At the same
time he felt Gideon’s hand and the gliding of steel behind
his back, and the severed cords hung loosely on his arms
and legs,

“When I lift my voice to God, brother,” said Gideon
softly, “drop on your face and crawl as far as you can in a
straight line in my shadow, then break for the tules. I
will stand between you and their first fire.”

“Are you mad?” said the prisoner. “Do you think
they won’t fire lest they should hurt you? Man! they nl
kill you, the first thing.”
_ AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES 323

“So be it —if your chance is better.”

Still on his knees, the man grasped Gideon’s two hands
in his own and devoured him with his eyes.

“You mean it?”

ey do. ”

“Then,” said the prisoner quietly, “I reckon I ’ll stop
and hear what you’ve got to say about God until they ’re
ready.”

“You refuse to fly?”

“T reckon I was never better fitted to die than now,”
said the prisoner, still grasping his hand. After a pause
he added in a lower tone, “I can’t pray — but —I think,”
he hesitated —“TI think I could manage to ring in ina
hymn.”

“Will you try, brother?”

“ Yes. ”

With their hands tightly clasped together, Gideon lifted
his gentle voice. The air was a common one, familiar in
the local religious gatherings, and after the first verse one
or two of the sullen lookers-on joined not unkindly in the
refrain. But as he went on the air and words seemed to
offer a vague expression to the dull, lowering animal emo-
tion of the savage concourse; and at the end of the second
verse the refrain, augmented in volume and swelled by
every voice in the camp, swept out over the hollow plain.

It was met in the distance by a far-off cry. With an
oath taking the place of his supplication, the leader sprang
to his feet. But too late! The cry was repeated as a
nearer slogan of defiance — the plain shook — there was the
tempestuous onset of furious hoofs — a dozen shots — the
scattering of the embers of the camp-fire into a thousand
vanishing sparks even as the lurid gathering of savage hu-
manity was dispersed and dissipated over the plain, and
Gideon and the prisoner stood alone. But as the sheriff of
Contra Costa with his rescuing posse swept by, the man
824 AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES

they had come to save fell forward in Gideon’s arms with
a bullet in his breast — the Parthian shot of the flying Vigi-
lante leader.

The eager crowd that surged around him with out-
stretched, helping hands would have hustled Gideon aside,
But the wounded man roused himself, and throwing an arm
around the young preacher’s neck, warned them back with
the other. ‘‘Stand back!” he gasped. ‘He risked his
life for mine! Look at him, boys! Wanted ter stand
up ’twixt them hounds and me and draw their fire on him-
self! Ain’t he just hell?” he stopped; an apologetic smile
crossed his lips. ‘I clean forgot, pardner; but it’s all
right. I said I was ready to go; and Jam.” His arm
slipped from Gideon’s neck; he slid to the ground; he
had fainted.

A dark, military-looking man pushed his way through
the crowd —the surgeon, one of the posse, accompanied by
a younger man fastidiously dressed. The former bent
over the unconscious prisoner, and tore open his shirt; the
latter followed his movements with a flush of anxious in-
quiry in his handsome, careless face. After a moment’s
pause the surgeon, without looking up, answered the young
man’s mute questioning. ‘Better send the sheriff here
at once, Jack.”

“He is here,” responded the official, joining the group.

The surgeon looked up at him. “I am afraid they ’ve
put the case out of your jurisdiction, sheriff,” he said
grimly. “It’s only a matter of a day or two at best — per-
haps only a few hours. But he won’t live to be taken
back to jail.”

“Will he live to go as far as Martinez?” asked the
young man addressed as Jack.

“With care, perhaps.”

“Will you be responsible for him, Jack Hamlin?” said
the sheriff suddenly.
AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES 325

“T will.”

“Then take him. Stay, he’s coming to.”

The wounded man slowly opened his eyes. They fell
upon Jack Hamlin with a pleased look of recognition, but
almost instantly and anxiously glanced around as if seeking
another. Leaning over him, Jack said gayly, ‘They ’ve
passed you over to me, old man; are you willing?”

The wounded man’s eyes assented, but still moved rest-
lessly from side to side.

“Ts there any one you want to go with you?”

“Yes,” said the eyes.

“The doctor, of course?” ,

The eyes did not answer. Gideon dropped on his knees
beside him. A ray of light flashed in the helpless man’s
eyes and transfigured his whole face.

“You want him?” said Jack incredulously.

“Yes,” said the eyes.

“What — the preacher?”

The lips struggled to speak. Everybody bent down to
hear his reply.

“You bet,” he said faintly.

IV

It was early morning when the wagon containing the
wounded man, Gideon, Jack Hamlin, and the surgeon crept
slowly through the streets of Martinez and stopped before
the door of the “Palmetto Shades.” The upper floor of
this saloon and hostelry was occupied by Mr. Hamlin as
his private lodgings, and was fitted up with the usual lux-
ury and more than the usual fastidiousness of his extrava-
gant class. As the dusty and travel-worn party trod the
soft carpets and brushed aside the silken hangings in their
slow progress with their helpless burden to the lace-cano-
pied and snowy couch of the young gambler, it seemed al-
most a profanation of some feminine seclusion. Gideon,
326 AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES

to whom such luxury was unknown, was profoundly
troubled. The voluptuous ease and sensuousness, the re-
finements of a life of irresponsible indulgence, affected him
with a physical terror to which in his late moment of real
peril he had been a stranger; the gilding and mirrors
blinded his eyes; even the faint perfume seemed to him
an unhallowed incense, and turned him sick and giddy.
Accustomed as he had been to disease and misery in their
humblest places and meanest surroundings, the wounded
desperado lying in laces and fine linen seemed to him mon-
strous and unnatural. It required all his self-abnegation,
all his sense of duty, all his deep pity, and all the instine-
tive tact which was born of his gentle thoughtfulness for
others, to repress a shrinking. But when the miserable
cause of all again opened his eyes and sought Gideon’s
hand, he forgot it all. Happily, Hamlin,‘who had been
watching him with wondering but critical eyes, mistook
his concern, ‘Don’t you worry, about that gin-mill and
hash-gymnasium downstairs,” he said. “I’ve given the
proprietor a thousand dollars to shut up shop as long as
this thing lasts.” That this was done from some delicate
sense of respect to the preacher’s domiciliary presence, and
not entirely to secure complete quiet and seclusion for the
invalid, was evident from the fact that Mr. Hamlin’s
drawing and dining rooms, and even the hall, were filled
with eager friends and inquirers. It was discomposing to
Gideon to find himself almost an equal subject of interest
and curiosity to the visitors. The story of his simple de-
votion had lost nothing by report; hats were doffed in his
presence that might have grown to their wearers’ heads;
the boldest eyes dropped as he passed by; he had only
to put his pale face out of the bedroom door and the loud-
est discussion, heated by drink or affection, fell to a whis-
per. The surgeon, who had recognized the one dominant
wish of the hopelessly sinking man, gravely retired, leav-
AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES 327

ing Gideon a few simple instructions and directions for their
use. ‘‘He’ll last as long as he has need of you,” he said
respectfully. ‘My art is only second here. God help you
both! When he wakes, make the most of your time.”

In a few moments he did waken, and as before turned
his fading look almost instinctively on the faithful, gentle
eyes that were watching him. How Gideon made the
most of his time did not transpire, but at the end of an
hour, when the dying man had again lapsed into uncon-
sciousness, he softly opened the door of the sitting-room.

Hamlin started hastily to his feet. He had cleared the
room of his visitors, and was alone. He turned a moment
towards the window before he faced Gideon with inquir-
ing but curiously shining eyes.

“Well?” he said hesitatingly.

“Do you know Kate Somers?” asked Gideon.

Hamlin opened his brown eyes. “ Yes.”

“Can you send for her?”

“What, here?”

“Yes, here.”

“What for?”

“To marry him,” said Gideon gently. ‘“There’s no
time to lose.”

“To marry him?”

‘He wishes it.”

“But say — oh, come, now,” said Hamlin confidentially,
leaning back with his hands on the top of a chair. “ Ain’t
this playing it a little —just a little — too lowdown? Of
course you mean well, and all that; but come, now, say
—couldn’t you just let up on him there? Why, she” —
Hamlin softly closed the door — ‘“‘she’s got no character.”

“The more reason he should give her one.”

A cynical knowledge of matrimony imparted to him by
the wives of others evidently colored Mr. Hamlin’s views.
“Well, perhaps it’s all the same if he’s going to die

8
328 AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES

But isn’t it rather rough on her? I don’t know,” he
added reflectively ; ‘‘she was sniveling round here a little
while ago, until I sent her away.”

“You sent her away!” echoed Gideon.

“T did.”

“Why?”

“Because you were here.”

Nevertheless Mr. Hamlin departed, and in half an
hour reappeared with two brilliantly dressed women. One,
hysterical, tearful, frightened, and pallid, was the destined
bride; the other, highly colored, excited, and pleasedly
observant, was her friend. ‘Two men hastily summoned
from the anteroom as witnesses completed the group that
moved into the bedroom and gathered round the bed.

The ceremony was simple and brief. It was well, for
of all who took part in it none was more shaken by emo-
tion than the officiating priest. The brilliant dresses of
the women, the contrast of their painted faces with the
waxen pallor of the dying man; the terrible incongruity of
their voices, inflections, expressions, and familiarity; the
mingled perfume of cosmetics and the faint odor of wine;
the eyes of the younger woman foliowing his movements
with strange absorption, so affected him that he was glad
when he could fall on his knees at last and bury his face
in the pillow of the sufferer. The hand that had been
placed in the bride’s cold fingers slipped from them and
mechanically sought Gideon’s again. The significance of
the unconscious act brought the first spontaneous tears into
the woman’s eyes. It was his last act, for when Gideon’s
voice was again lifted in prayer, the spirit for whom it
was offered had risen witi: it, as it were, still lovingly hand
in hand, from the earth forever.

The funeral was arranged for two days later, and Gideon
found that his services had been so seriously yet so humbly
counted upon by the friends of the dead man that he could
AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES 329

scarce find it in his heart to tell them that it was the func-
tion of the local preacher — an older and more experienced
man than himself. “If it is,” said Jack Hamlin coolly,
“T’m afraid he won’t get a yaller dog to come to his
church; but if you say you’ll preach at the grave, there
ain’t a man, woman, or child that will be kept away.
Don’t you go back on your luck, now; it’s something
awful and nigger-like. You’ve got this crowd where the
hair is short; excuse me, but it’s so. Talk of revivals!
You could give that one-horse show in Tasajara a hundred
points; and skunk them easily.” Indeed had Gideon been
accessible to vanity, the spontaneous homage he met with
everywhere would have touched him more sympathetically
and kindly than it did; but in the utter unconsciousness
of his own power and the quality they worshiped in him,
he felt alarmed and impatient of what he believed to be
their weak sympathy with his own human weakness. In
the depth of his unselfish heart, lit, it must be confessed,
only by the scant, inefficient lamp of his youthful experi-
ence, he really believed he had failed in his apostolic mis-
sion because he had been unable to touch the hearts of the
Vigilantes by oral appeal and argument. Feeling thus,
the reverence of these irreligious people that surrounded
him, the facile yielding of their habits and prejudices to
his half-uttered wish, appeared to him only a temptation of
the flesh. No one had sought him after the manner of the
camp-meeting; he had converted the wounded man through
a common weakness of their humanity. More than that,
he was conscious of a growing fascination for the truthful-
ness and sincerity of that class; particularly of Mr. Jack
Hamlin, whose conversion he felt he could never attempt,
yet whose strange friendship alternately thrilled and
frightened him.

It was the evening before the funeral. The coffin, half
smothered in wreaths and flowers, stood upon trestles in
330 AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES

the anteroom, a large silver plate bearing an inscription on
which for the second time Gideon read the name of the
man he had converted. It was a name associated on the
frontier so often with reckless hardihood, dissipation, and
blood, that even now Gideon trembled at his presumption,
and was chilled by a momentary doubt of the efficiency of
his labor. Drawing unconsciously nearer to the mute sub-
ject of his thoughts, he threw his arms across the coffin and
buried his face between them.

A stream of soft music, the echo of some forgotten song,
seemed to Gideon to suddenly fill and possess the darkened
room, and then to slowly die away like the opening and
shutting of a door upon a flood of golden radiance. He
listened with hushed breath and a heating heart. He had
never heard anything like it before. Again the strain
arose, the chords swelled round him, until from their midst
a tenor voice broke high and steadfast, like a star in
troubled skies. Gideon scarcely breathed. It was a hymn
—but such a hymn. He had never conceived there could
be such beautiful words, joined to such exquisite melody,
and sung with a grace so tender and true. What were all
other hymns to this ineffable yearning for light, for love,
and for infinite rest? Thrilled and exalted, Gideon felt
his doubts pierced and scattered by that illuminating cry.
Suddenly he rose, and with a troubled thought pushed
open the door to the sitting-room. It was Mr. Jack Ham-
lin sitting before a parlor organ. The music ceased.

“It was you,” stammered Gideon.

Jack nodded, struck a few chords by way of finish, and
then wheeled round on the music-stool towards Gideon.
His face was slightly flushed. “Yes. I used to be the
organist and tenor in our church in the States. I used to
snatch the sinners bald-headed with that. Do you know
I reckon I’ll sing that to-morrow, if you like, and maybe
afterwards we ’ll — but” — he stopped — “we ’ll talk of
AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES 331

that after the funeral. It’s business.” Seeing Gideon still
glancing with a troubled air from the organ to himself, he
said: “Would you like to try that hymn with me? Come
on!”

He again struck the chords. As the whole room seemed
to throb with the music, Gideon felt himself again carried
away. Glancing over Jack’s shoulders, he could read the
words but not the notes; yet, having a quick ear for
rhythm, he presently joined in with a deep but uncultivated
baritone. Together they forgot everything else, and at the
end of an hour were only recalled by the presence of a
silently admiring concourse of votive-offering friends who
had gathered round them.

The funeral took place the next day at the grave dug in
the public cemetery — a green area fenced in by the pali-
sading tules. The words of Gideon were brief but humble;
the strongest partisan of the dead man could find no fault
in aconfession of human frailty in which the speaker
humbly confessed his share; and when the hymn was
started by Hamlin and taken up by Gideon, the vast mul-
titude, drawn by interest and curiosity, joined as in a sol-
emn Amen.

Later, when those two strangely assorted friends had re-
turned to Mr. Hamlin’s rooms previous to Gideon’s de-
parture, the former, in a manner more serious than his
habitual cynical good humor, began: “TI said I had to talk
business with you. The boys about here want to build a
church for you, and are ready to plank the money down
if you’ll say it’s a go. You understand they aren’t ask-
ing you to run in opposition to that Gospel sharp — excuse
me — that’s here now, nor do they want you to run a side
show in connection with it. They want you to be inde-
pendent. They don’t pin you down to any kind of re-
ligion, you know; whatever you care to give them—
Methodist, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian—is mighty
332 AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES

good enough for them, if you’ll expound it. You might
give a little of each, or one on one day and one another —
they ’ll never know the difference if you only mix the
drinks yourself. They ’ll give you a house and guarantee
you fifteen hundred dollars the first year.”

He stopped and walked towards the window. The sun-
light that fell upon his handsome face seemed to call back
the careless smile to his lips and the reckless fire to his
brown eyes. “I don’t suppose there ’s a man among them
that would n’t tell you all this in a great deal better way
than I do. But the darned fools — excuse me — would
have me break it to you. Why, I don’t know. I need n’t
tell you I like you—not only for what you did for
George — but I like you for your style—for yourself.
And I want you to accept. | You could keep these rooms
till they got a house ready for you. Together—gyou and
me — we ’d make that organ howl. But because I like it
—— because it’s everything to us—and nothing to you, it
don’t seem square for me to ask it. Does it?”

Gideon replied by taking Hamlin’s hand. His face
was perfectly pale, but his look collected. He had not
expected this offer, and yet when it was made he felt as
if he had known it before — as if he had been warned of it
—as if it was the great temptation of his life. Watching
him with an earnestness only slightly overlaid by his
usual manner, Hamlin went on: —

“T know it would be lonely here, and a man like you
ought to have a wife for” — he slightly lifted his eyebrows
— ‘for example’s sake. JI heard there was a young lady
in the case over there in Tasajara— but the old people
did n’t see it on account of your position. They ’d jump
at it now. Eh? No? Well,” continued Jack, with
a decent attempt to conceal his cynical relief, ‘“ perhaps
those boys have been so eager to find out all they could do
for you that they’ve been sold. Perhaps we ’re making
AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES 333

equal fools of ourselves now in asking you to stay. But
don’t say no just yet — take a day or a week to think of
it.”

Gideon still pale Sut calm, cast his eyes around the ele-
gant room, at the magic organ, then upon the slight hand-
some figure before him. “TI wild think of it,” he said in
a low voice, as he pressed Jack’s hand. ‘“‘ And if I accept
you will find me here to-morrow afternoon at this time;
if I do not you will know that I keep with me wherever I
go the kindness, the brotherly love, and the grace of God
that prompts your offer, even though He withholds from
me His blessed light, which alone can make me know His
wish.” He stopped and hesitated. “If you love me,
Jack, don’t ask me to stay, but pray for that light which
alone can guide my feet back to you, or take me hence for-
ever.” He once more tightly pressed the hand of the
embarrassed man before him and was gone,

Passers-by on the Martinez road that night remembered
a mute and ghostly rider who, heedless of hail or greeting,
moved by them as in a trance or vision. But the Widow
Hiler the next morning, coming from the spring, found
no abstraction or preoccupation in the soft eyes of Gideon
Deane as he suddenly appeared before her, and gently re-
lieved her of the bucket she was carrying. A quick flush
of color over her brow and cheek-bones, as if a hot iron had
passed there, and a certain astringent coyness, would have
embarrassed any other man than him.

“Sho, it’s you. I reck’ned I’d seen the last of you.”

“You don’t mean that, Sister Hiler?” said Gideon,
with a gentle smile.

“Well, what with the report of your goin’s on at Marti-
nez and improvin’ the occasion of that sinner’s death, and
leadin’ a revival, I reckoned you’d hev forgotten low folks
at Tasajara. And if your goin’ to be settled there in a
crew church, with new hearers, I reckon you’ll want new
334 AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES

surroundings too. Things change and young folks change
with ’em.”

They had reached the house. Her breath was quick
and short as if she and not Gideon had borne the burden.
He placed the bucket in its accustomed place and then
gently took her hand in his, The act precipitated the last
drop of feeble coquetry she had retained, and the old tears
took its place. Let us hope for the last time. For as
Gideon stooped and lifted her ailing babe in his strong
arms, he said softly, ‘Whatever God has wrought for me
since we parted, I know now He has called me to but one
work.”

“And that work?” she asked tremulously.

“To watch over the widow and fatherless. And with
God’s blessing, sister, and His holy ordinance, I am here
to stay.”
DEVIL'S FORD

CHAPTER I

Ir was a season of unequaled prosperity in Devil’s
Ford. The half a dozen cabins scattered along the banks
of the North Fork, as if by some overflow of that capricious
river, had become augmented during a week of fierce ex-
citement by twenty or thirty others, that were huddled to-
gether on the narrow gorge of Devil’s Spur, or cast up on
its steep sides. So sudden and violent had been the
change of fortune, that the dwellers in the older cabins had
not had time to change with it, but still kept their old
habits, customs, and even their old clothes. The flour-
pan in which their daily bread was mixed stood on the rude
table side by side with the “prospecting pans,” half full
of gold washed up from their morning’s work; the front
windows of the newer tenements looked upon the one
single thoroughfare, but the back door opened upon the un-
cleared wilderness, still haunted by the misshapen bulk of
bear or the nightly gliding of catamount.

Neither had success as yet affected their boyish simpli-
city and the frankness of old frontier habits; they played
with their new-found riches with the naive delight of chil-
dren, and rehearsed their glowing future with the impor-
tance and triviality of schoolboys.

“T’ve bin kalklatin’,” said Dick Mattingly, leaning on
his long-handled shovel with lazy gravity, “that when I
go to Rome this winter, Ill get one o’ them marble sharps
to chisel me a statoo o’ some kind to set up on the spot
where we made our big strike. Suthin’ to remember it by,

you know.”
336 DEVIL'S FORD

“What kind o’ statoo— Washington or Webster?”
asked one of the Kearney brothers, without looking up
from his work.

“No—I reckon one o’ them fancy groups —one o’
them Latin goddesses that Fairfax is always gassin’ about,
sorter leadin’, directin’, and bossin’ us where to dig.”

“You ’d make a healthy-lookin’ figger in a group,” re-
sponded Kearney, critically regarding an enormous patch
in Mattingly’s trousers. ‘Why don’t you have a fountain
instead ?”

“Where Il you get the water?” demanded the first
speaker, in return. ‘‘ You know there ain’t enough in the
North Fork to do a week’s washing for the camp — to say
nothin’ of its color.”

“Leave that to me,” said Kearney, with self-possession.
“When I’ve built that there reservoir on Devil’s Spur,
and bring the water over the ridge from Union Ditch,
there ll be enough to spare for that.”

“Better mix it up, I reckon — have suthin’ half statoo,
half fountain,” interposed the elder Mattingly, better
known as ‘‘ Maryland Joe,” ‘and set it up afore the Town
Hall and Free Library I’m kalklatin’ to give. Do that,
and you can count on me.”

After some further discussion, it was gravely settled
that Kearney should furnish water brought from the
Union Ditch twenty miles away, at a cost of two hundred
thousand dollars, to feed a memorial fountain erected by
Mattingly, worth a hundred thousand dollars, as a crown-
ing finish to public buildings contributed by Maryland Joe,
to the extent of half a million more. The disposition of
these vast sums by gentlemen wearing patched breeches
awakened no sense of the ludicrous, nor did any doubt, re-
servation, or contingency enter into the plans of the charm-
ing enthusiasts themselves. The foundation of their airy
castles lay already before them in the strip of rich alluvium
DEVIL’S FORD 337

on the river bank, where the North Fork, sharply curving
round the base of Devil’s Spur, had for centuries swept
the detritus of gulch and cafion. They had barely crossed
the threshold of this treasure-house, to find themselves rich
men; what possibilities of affluence might be theirs when
they had fully exploited their possessions! So confident
were they of that ultimate prospect, that the wealth already
thus obtained was religiously expended in engines and
machinery for the boring of wells and the conveyance of
that precious water which the exhausted river had long
since ceased to yield. It seemed as if the gold they had
taken out was by some ironical compensation gradually
making its way back to the soil again through ditch and
flume and reservoir.

Such was the position of affairs at Devil’s Ford on the
13th of August, 1860. It was noon of a hot day. What-
ever movement there was in the stifling air was seen rather
than felt in a tremulous, quivering, upward-moving dust
along the flank of the mountain, through which the spires
of the pines were faintly visible. There was no water in
the bared and burning bars of the river to reflect the verti-
cal sun, but under its direct rays one or two tinned roofs
and corrugated zinc cabins struck fire, a few canvas tents
became dazzling to the eye, and the white wooded corral
of the stage office and hotel insupportable. For two hours
no one ventured in the glare of the open, or even to cross
the narrow, unshadowed street, whose dull red dust seemed
to glow between the lines of straggling houses. The heated
shells of these green unseasoned tenements gave out a pun-
gent odor of scorching wood and resin. The usual hurried,
feverish toil in the claim was suspended; the pick and
shovel were left sticking in the richest “pay gravel;” the
toiling millionaires themselves, ragged, dirty, and perspir-
ing, lay panting under the nearest shade, where their pipes
went out listlessly, and conversation sank to monosyllables.
338 DEVIL’S FORD

“There ’s Fairfax,” said Dick Mattingly, at last, with a
lazy effort. His face was turned to the hillside, where a
man had just emerged from the woods, and was halting
irresolutely before the glaring expanse of upheaved gravel
and glistening boulders that stretched between him and the
shaded group. ‘ He’s going to make a break for it,” he
added, as the stranger, throwing his linen coat over his
head, suddenly started into an Indian trot through the
pelting sunbeams toward them. This strange act was per-
fectly understood by the group, who knew that in that in-
tensely dry heat the danger of exposure was lessened by
active exercise and the profuse perspiration that followed
it. In another moment the stranger had reached their side,
dripping as if rained upon, mopping his damp curls and
handsome bearded face with his linen coat, as he threw
himself pantingly on the ground.

“T struck out over here first, boys, to give you a little
warning,” he said, as soon as he had gained breath,
“That engineer will be down here to take charge as soon as
the six o’clock stage comes in. Hes an oldish chap, has
got a family of two daughters, and —I—am—d—d if
he is not bringing them down here with him.”

“Oh, go ’long!”? exclaimed the five men in one voice,
raising themselves on their hands and elbows, and glaring
at the speaker.

“Fact, boys! Soon as I found it out I just waltzed into
that Jew shop at the Crossing and bought up all the
clothes that would be likely to suit you fellows, before any-
body else got a show. I reckon I cleared out the shop.
The duds are a little mixed in style, but I reckon they ’re
elean and whole, and a man might face a lady in ’em. I
left them round at the old Buckeye Spring, where they ‘re
handy without attracting attention. You boys can go
there for a general wash-up, rig yourselves up without say-
ing anything, and then meander back careless and easy
DEVIL’S FORD 339

in your store clothes, just as the stage is coming in,
sabe ?”

“Why didn’t you let us know earlier?” asked Mat-
tingly aggrievedly; “you’ve been back here at least an
hour.”

“T’ve been getting some place ready for them,” re-
turned the neweomer. ‘We might have managed to put
the man somewhere, if he’d been alone, but these women
want family accommodation. There was nothing left for
me to do but to buy up Thompson’s saloon.”

“No?” interrupted his audience, half in incredulity,
half in protestation.

“Fact! You boys will have to take your drinks under
canvas again, I reckon! But I made Thompson let those
gold-framed mirrors that used to stand behind the bar go
into the bargain, and they sort of furnish the room. You
know the saloon is one of them patent houses you can take
to pieces, and I’ve been reckoning you boys will have to
pitch in and help me to take the whole shanty over to the
laurel bushes, and put it up agin Kearney’s cabin.”

“What ’s all that?” said the younger Kearney, with an
odd mingling of astonishment and bashful gratification.

“Yes, I reckon yours is the cleanest house, because it’s
the newest, so you ’ll just step out and let us knock in one
o’ the gables, and clap it on to the saloon, and make one
house of it, don’t you see? There’ll be two rooms, one
for the girls and the other for the old man.”

The astonishment and bewilderment of the party had
gradually given way to a boyish and impatient interest.

“Had n’t we better do the job at once?” suggested Dick
Mattingly.

“Or throw ourselves into those new clothes, so as to be
ready,” added the younger Kearney, looking down at his
ragged trousers. ‘‘I say, Fairfax, what are the girls like,
eh?”
840 DEVIL’S FORD

All the others had been dying to ask the question, yet
one and all laughed at the conscious manner and blushing
cheek of the questioner.

“Youll find out quick enough,” returned Fairfax,
whose curt carelessness did not, however, prevent a slight
increase of color on his own cheek. ‘“‘ We’d better get that
job off our hands before doing anything else. So, if you ’re
ready, boys, we’ll just waltz down to Thompson’s and
pack up the shanty. He’s out of it by this time, I
reckon. You might as well be perspiring to some purpose
over there as gaspin’ under this tree. We won’t go back
to work this afternoon, but knock off now, and call it half
a day. Come! Hump yourselves, gentlemen. Are you
ready? One, two, three, and away!”

In another instant the tree was deserted; the figures of.
the five millionaires of Devil’s Ford, crossing the fierce
glare of the open space, with boyish alacrity, glistened in
the sunlight, and then disappeared in the nearest fringe of
thickets.
CHAPTER II

S1x hours later, when the shadow of Devil’s Spur had
crossed the river, and spread a slight coolness over the flat
beyond, the Pioneer coach, leaving the summit, began also
to bathe its heated bulk in the long shadows of the descent.
Conspicuous among the dusty passengers, the two pretty
and youthful faces of the daughters of Philip Carr, mining
superintendent and engineer, looked from the windows with
no little anxiety towards their future home in the strag-
gling settlement below, that occasionally came in view at
the turns of the long zigzagging road. A slight look of
comical disappointment passed between them as they gazed
upon the sterile flat, dotted with unsightly excrescences
that stood equally for cabins or mounds of stone and gravel.
It was so feeble and inconsistent a culmination to the
beautiful scenery they had passed through, so hopeless and
imbecile a conclusion to the preparation of that long pic-
turesque journey, with its glimpses of sylvan and pastoral
glades and cafions, that, as the coach swept down the last
incline, and the remorseless monotony of the dead level
spread out before them, furrowed by ditches and indented by
pits, under cover of shielding their cheeks from the impal-
pable dust that rose beneath the plunging wheels, they buried
their faces in their handkerchiefs, to hide a few half-hys-
terical tears. Happily, their father, completely absorbed
in a practical, scientific, and approving contemplation of
the topography and material resources of the scene of his
future labors, had no time to notice their defection. It
was not until the stage drew up before a rambling tene
842 DEVIL'S FORD

ment bearing the inscription, ‘“‘ Hotel and Stage Office,” that
he became fully aware of it.

“We can’t stop here, papa,” said Christie Carr decid-
edly, with a shake of her pretty head. ‘You can’t expect
that.”

Mr. Carr looked up at the building; it was half grocery,
half saloon. Whatever other accommodation it contained
must have been hidden in the rear, as the flat roof above
was almost level with the raftered ceiling of the shop.

“Certainly,” he replied hurriedly; “we ’Il see to that in
amoment. I dare say it’s all right. I told Fairfax we
were coming. Somebody ought to be here.”

“But they ‘re not,” said Jessie Carr indignantly; “and
the few that were here scampered off like rabbits to their
burrows as soon as they saw us get down.”

It was true. The little group of loungers before the
building had suddenly disappeared. There was the flash
of a red shirt vanishing in an adjacent doorway; the fading
apparition of a pair of high boots, and blue overatls in an-
other; the abrupt withdrawal of a curly blonde head from
a sashless window over the way. Even the saloon was de-
serted, although a back door in the dim recess seemed to
creak mysteriously. The stage-coach, with the other pas-
sengers, had already rattled away.

“T certainly think Fairfax understood that I” — began
Mr. Carr.

He was interrupted by the pressure of Christie’s fingers
on his arm and a subdued exclamation from Jessie, whe
was staring down the street.

“What are they?” she whispered in her sister’s ear.
“Nigger minstrels, a circus, or what?”

The five millionaires of Devil’s Ford had just turned the
corner of the straggling street, and were approaching in
single file. One glance was sufficient to show that they
had already availed themselves of the new clothing bought
DEVIL’S FORD 343

by Fairfax, had washed, and one or two had shaved. But
the result was startling.

Through some fortunate coincidence in size, Dick Mat-
tingly was the only one who had achieved an entire suit.
But it was of funereal black cloth, and although relieved
at one extremity by a pair of high riding-boots, in which
his too short trousers were tucked, and at the other by a
tall white hat, and cravat of aggressive yellow, the effect
was depressing. In agreeable contrast, his brother, Mary-
land Joe, was attired in a thin fawn-colored summer over-
coat, lightly worn open, so as to show the unstarched bosom
of a white embroidered shirt, and a pair of nankeen trou-
sers and pumps. The Kearney brothers had divided a suit
between them, the elder wearing a tightly fitting, single-
breasted blue frock coat and a pair of pink striped cotton
trousers, while the younger candidly displayed the trousers
of his brother’s suit, as a harmonious change to a shining
black alpaca coat and crimson neckerchief. Fairfax, who
brought up the rear, had, with characteristic unselfishness,
contented himself with a French workman’s blue blouse
and a pair of white duck trousers. Had they shown the
least consciousness of their finery, or of its absurdity, they
would have seemed despicable. But only one expression
beamed on the five sunburnt and shining faces —a look of
unaffected boyish gratification and unrestricted welcome,

They halted before Mr. Carr and his daughters, simul
taneously removed their various and remarkable head cov-
erings, and waited until Fairfax advanced and severally
presented them. Jessie Carr’s half-frightened smile took
refuge in the trembling shadows of her dark lashes; Chris-
tie Carr stiffened slightly, and looked straight before her.

“We reckoned — that is — we intended to meet you and
the young ladies at the grade,” said Fairfax, reddening a
little as he endeavored to conceal his too ready slang, ‘‘and
save you from trapesing —from dragging yourselves up
grade again to your house.”
844 DEVIL'S FORD

“Then there 7s a house?” said Jessie, with an alarmingly
frank laugh of relief, that was, however, as frankly re-
flected in the boyishly appreciative eyes of the young men,

“Such as it is,” responded Fairfax, with a shade of
anxiety, as he glanced at the fresh and pretty costumes of
the young women, and dubiously regarded the two Saratoga
trunks resting hopelessly on the veranda. ‘I’m afraid it
isn’t much, for what you’re accustomed to. But,” he
added more cheerfully, ‘it will do for a day or two, and
perhaps you ’ll give us the pleasure of showing you the way
there now.”

The procession was quickly formed. Mr. Carr, alive
only to the actual business that had brought him there, at
once took possession of Fairfax, and began to disclose his
plans for the working of the mine, occasionally halting to
look at the work already done in the ditches, and to ex-
amine the field of his future operations. Fairfax, not dis-
pleased at being thus relieved of a lighter attendance: on
Mr. Carr’s daughters, nevertheless from time to time cast
a paternal glance backwards upon their escorts, who had
each seized a handle of the two trunks, and were carrying
them in couples at the young ladies’ side. The occupation
did not offer much freedom for easy gallantry, but no sign
of discomfiture or uneasiness was visible in the grateful
faces of the young men. The necessity of changing hands
at times with their burdens brought a corresponding
change of cavalier at the lady’s side, although it was ob-
served that the younger Kearney, for the sake of continu-
ing a conversation with Miss Jessie, kept his grasp of the
handle nearest the young lady until his hand was nearly cut
through, and his arm worn out by exhaustion.

“The only thing on wheels in the camp is a mule wagon,
and the mules are packin’ gravel from the river this after-
noon,” explained Dick Mattingly apologetically to Christie,
“or we’d have toted——I mean carried —you and your
DEVIL’S FORD 345

baggage up to the shant — the — your house. Give us two
weeks more, Miss Carr— only two weeks to wash up our
work and realize — and we ’ll give you a pair of 2.40 step-
pers and a skeleton buggy to meet you at the top of the
hill and drive you over to the cabin. Perhaps you’d pre-
fer a regular carriage; some ladies do. And a nigger
driver. But what’s the use of planning anything? Afore
that time comes we ’l] have run you up a house on the hill,
and you shall pick out the spot. It wouldn’t take long
—unless you preferred brick. I suppose we could get
brick over from La Grange, if you cared for it, but it would
take longer. If you could put up for a time with some-
thing of stained glass and a mahogany veranda” —

In spite of her cold indignation, and the fact that she
could understand only a part of Mattingly’s speech, Chris-
tie comprehended enough to make her lift her clear eyes to
the speaker, as she replied freezingly that she feared she
would not trouble them long with her company.

“Oh, you’ll get over that,” responded Mattingly, with
an exasperating confidence that drove her nearly frantic,
from the manifest kindliness of intent that made it impos-
sible for her to resent it. “I felt that way myself at first.
Things will look strange and unsociable for a while, until
you get the hang of them. You’ll naturally stamp round
and cuss a little” — he stopped in conscious consternation.

With ready tact, and before Christie could reply, Mary-
land Joe had put down the trunk and changed hands with
his brother.

“You must n’t mind Dick, or he’ll go off and kill him-
self with shame,” he whispered laughingly in her ear.
“He means all right, but he’s picked up so much slang
here he’s about forgotten how to talk English, and it’s
nigh on to four years since he ’s met a young lady.”

Christie did not reply. Yet the laughter of her sister in
advance with the Kearney brothers seemed to make the
346 DEVIL’S FORD

reserve with which she tried to crush further familiarity
only ridiculous.

“Do you know many operas, Miss Carr?”

She looked at the boyish, interested, sunburnt face so
near to her own, and hesitated. After all, why should she
add to her other real disappointments by taking this absurd
creature seriously ?

“In what way?” she returned, with a half smile.

“To play. On the piano, of course. There isn’t one
nearer here than Sacramento; but I reckon we could get a
small one by Thursday. You couldn’t do anything on a
banjo?” he added doubtfully; “Kearney ’s got one.”

“T imagine it would be very difficult to carry a piano
over those mountains,” said Christie laughingly, to avoid
the collateral of the banjo.

“We gota billiard-table over from Stockton,” half bash-
fully interrupted Dick Mattingly, struggling from his end
of the trunk to recover his composure, ‘“‘and it had to be
brought over in sections on the back of a mule, so I don’t
see why ’?— He stopped short again in confusion, at a
sign from his brother, and then added, “I mean, of course,
that a piano is a heap more delicate, and valuable, and all
that sort of thing, but it’s worth trying for.”

“Fairfax was always saying he’d get one for himself, so
I reckon it’s possible,” said Joe.

“Does he play?” asked Christie.

“You bet,” said Joe, quite forgetting himself in his en-
thusiasm. ‘He can snatch Mozart and Beethoven bald-
headed.”

In the embarrassing silence that followed this speech the
fringe of pine wood nearest the flat was reached. Here
there was a rude “clearing,” and beneath an enormous pine
stood the two recently joined tenements. There was no
attempt to conceal the point of junction between Kearney’s
cabin and the newly transported saloon from the flat — ne
DEVIL’S FORD 347

architectural illusion of the palpable collusion of the two
buildings, which seemed to be telescoped into each other.
The front room or living-room occupied the whole of
Kearney’s cabin. It contained, in addition to the neces-
sary articles for housekeeping, a “bunk” or berth for Mr.
Carr, so as to leave the second building entirely to the
occupation of his daughters as bedroom and boudoir.

There was a half-humorous, half-apologetic exhibition of
the rude utensils of the living-room, and then the young
men turned away as the two girls entered the open door
of the second room. Neither Christie nor Jessie could
for a moment understand the delicacy which kept these
young men from accompanying them into the room they had
but afew moments before decorated and arranged with their
own hands, and it was not until they turned to thank their
strange entertainers that they found that they were gone.

The arrangement of the second room was rude and
bizarre, but not without a singular originality and even
tastefulness of conception. What had been the counter or
“bar” of the saloon, gorgeous in white and gold, now sawn
in two and divided, was set up on opposite sides of the
room as separate dressing-tables, decorated with huge
bunches of azaleas, that hid the rough earthenware bowls,
and gave each table the appearance of a vestal altar.

The huge gilt plate-glass mirror which had hung behind
the bar still occupied one side of the room, but its length
was artfully divided by an enormous rosette of red, white,
and blue muslin—one of the surviving Fourth of July
decorations of Thompson’s saloon. On either side of the
door two pathetic-looking, convent-like cots, covered with
spotless sheeting, and heaped up in the middle, like a snow-
covered grave, had attracted their attention. They were still
staring at them when Mr. Carr anticipated their curiosity.

“TI ought to tell you that the young men confided to me
the fact that there was neither bed nor mattress to be had
348 DEVIL'S FORD

on the Ford. They have filled some flour-sacks with clean
dry moss from the woods, and put half a dozen blankets
on the top, and they hope you can get along until the
messenger who starts to-night for La Grange can bring
some bedding over.”

Jessie flew with mischievous delight to satisfy herself ot
the truth of this marvel, ‘It’s so, Christie,” she said
laughingly — “three flour-sacks apiece; but I’m jealous:
yours are all marked ‘ superfine,’ and mine ‘ middlings.’ ”

Mr. Carr had remained uneasily watching Christie’s
shadowed face.

“What matters?” she said dryly. “The accommoda-
tion is all in keeping.”

“Tt will be better in a day or two,” he continued, cast-
ing a longing look towards the door —the first refuge of
masculine weakness in an impending domestic emergency.
“T’ll go and see what can be done,” he said feebly, with
a sidelong impulse towards the opening and freedom.
“T’ve got to see Fairfax again to-night anyway.”

“One moment, father,” said Christie wearily. “Did
you know anything of this place and these — these people
— before you came?”

“Certainly —of course I did,” he returned, with the
sudden testiness of disturbed abstraction. ‘‘ What are you
thinking of? I knew the geological strata and the — the
report of Fairfax and his partners before I consented to
take charge of the works. And I can tell you that there
is a fortune here. I intend to make my own terms, and
share in it.”

“And not take a salary or some sum of money down?”
said Christie, slowly removing her bonnet in the same
resigned way.

“T am not a hired man, or a workman, Chiistie,” said
her father sharply. “You ought not to oblige me to
remind you of that.”
DEVIL’S FORD 349

“But the hired men — the superintendent and his work-
men — were the only ones who ever got anything out of
your last experiment with Colonel Waters at La Grange,
and — and we at least lived among civilized people there.”

“These young men are not common people, Christie;
even if they have forgotten the restraints of speech and
manners, they ‘re gentlemen.”

“Who are willing to live like — like negroes.”

“You can make them what you please.”

Christie raised her eyes. There was a certain cynical
ring in her father’s voice that was unlike his usual hesitat-
ing abstraction. It both puzzled and pained her.

“JT mean,” he said hastily, “that you have the same
opportunity to direct the lives of these young men into
more regular, disciplined channels that I have to regulate
and correct their foolish waste of industry and material
here. It would at least beguile the time for you.”

Fortunately for Mr. Carr’s escape and Christie’s uneasi-
ness, Jessie, who had been examining the details of the
Jiving-room, broke in upon this conversation.

“T’m sure it will be as good as a perpetual picnic.
George Kearney says we can have a cooking-stove under
the tree outside at the back, and as there will be no rain
for three months we can do the cooking there, and that
will give us more room for —for the piano when it comes;
and there ’s an old squaw to do the cleaning and washing-
up any day — and — and — it will be real fun.”

She stopped breathlessly, with glowing cheeks and
sparkling eyes —a charming picture of youth and trustful-
ness. Mr. Carr had seized the opportunity to escape.

“Really, now, Christie,” said Jessie confidentially,
when they were alone, and Christie had begun to unpack
her trunk, and to mechanically put her things away,
“they ’re not so bad.”

“Who?” asked Christie.
250 DEVIL’S FORD

“Why, the Kearneys, and Mattinglys, and Fairfax, and
the lot, provided you don’t look at their clothes. And
think of it! they told me — for they tell one everything in
the most alarming way — that those clothes were bought to
please us. A scramble of things bought at La Grange,
without reference to size or style. And to hear these
creatures talk, why, you’d think they were Astors or
Rothschilds. Think of that little one with the curls —I
don’t believe he’s over seventeen, for all his baby mus-
tache — says he’s going to build an assembly hall for us to
give a dance in next month; and apologizes the next
breath to tell us that there isn’t any milk to be had
nearer than La Grange, and we must do without it, and
use syrup in our tea to-morrow.”

“ And where is all this wealth?” said Christie, forcing
herself to smile at her sister’s animation.

“Under our very feet, my child, and all along the river.
Why, what we thought was pure and simple mud is what
they call ‘ gold-bearing cement.’ ”

“T suppose that is why they don’t brush their boots and
trousers, it’s so precious,” returned Christie dryly. “ And
have they ever translated this precious dirt into actual
coin?”

“Bless you, yes. Why, that dirty little gutter, you
know, that ran along the side of the road and followed us
down the hill all the way here, that cost them — let me
see — yes, nearly sixty thousand dollars. And fancy!
papa’s just condemned it — says it won’t do; and they ’ve
got to build another.”

An impatient sigh from Christie drew Jessie’s attention
to her troubled eyebrows.

“Don’t worry about our disappointment, dear. It is n’t
so very great. I dare say well be able to get along here
in some way, until papa is rich again. You know they
intend to make him share with them.”
DEVIL’S FORD 351

“Tt strikes me that he is sharing with them already,”
said Christie, glancing bitterly round the cabin; “sharing
everything — ourselves, our lives, our tastes.”

“Ye-e-s!” said Jessie, with vaguely hesitating assent.
“Yes, even these: ” she showed two dice in the palm of
her little hand. “I found ’em in the drawer of our dress-
ing-table,”

“Throw them away,” said Christie impatiently.

But Jessie’s small fingers closed over the dice. “TI’ll
give them to the little Kearney. I dare say they were the
poor boy’s playthings.”

The appearance of these relics of wild dissipation, how-
ever, had lifted Christie out of her sublime resignation.
“For Heaven’s sake, Jessie,” she said, “look around and
see if there is anything more! ”

To make sure, they each began to scrimmage; the
broken-spirited Christie exhibiting both alacrity and pene-
tration in searching obscure corners. In the dining-
room, behind the dresser, three or four books were discov-
ered: an odd volume of Thackeray, another of Dickens, a
memorandum-book or diary. ‘This seems to be Latin,”
said Jessie, fishing out a smaller book. “I can’t read it.”

“Tt ’s just as well you should n’t,” said:Christie shortly,
whose ideas of a general classical impropriety had been
gathered from the pages of Lempriere’s dictionary. “Put
it back directly.”

Jessie returned certain odes of one Horatius Flaccus to
the corner, and uttered an exclamation. ‘Oh, Christie!
here are some letters tied up with a ribbon.”

They were two or three prettily written letters, exhaling
a faint odor of refinement and of the pressed flowers that
peeped from between the loose leaves. “I see, ‘My dar-
ling Fairfax.’ It’s from some woman.”

“J don’t think much of her, whosoever she is,” said
Christie, tossing the intact packet back into the corner.
352 DEVIL’S FORD

“Nor I,” echoed Jessie.

Nevertheless, by some feminine inconsistency, evidently
the circumstance did make them think more of him, for
a minute later, when they had reéntered their own room,
Christie remarked, “The idea of petting a man by his
family name! Think of mamma ever having called papa
‘ darling Carr’!”

“Oh, but his family name isn’t Fairfax,” said Jessie
hastily; “that’s his first name, his Christian name. I
forget what ’s his other name, but nobody ever calls him
by it.”

“Do you mean,” said Christie, with glistening eyes and
awful deliberation— ‘do you mean to say that we ’re
expected to fall in with this insufferable familiarity? I
suppose they ’ll be calling ws by our Christian names
next,”

“Oh, but they do!” said Jessie mischievously.

“What!”

“They call me Miss Jessie; and Kearney, the little one,
asked me if Christie played.”

“ And what did you say?”

“T said that you did,” answered Jessie, with an affecta-
tion of cherubic simplicity. ‘You do, dear; don’t yout

. There, don’t get angry, darling; I could n’t flare up
all of a sudden in the face of that poor little creature; he
looked so absurd — and so—so honest.”

Christie turned away, relapsing into her old resigned
manner, and assuming her household duties in a quiet,
temporizing way that was, however, without hope or ex-
pectation.

Mr. Carr, who had dined with his friends under the
excuse of not adding to the awkwardness of the first day’s
housekeeping, returned late at night with a mass of papers
and drawings, into which he afterwards withdrew, but not
until he had delivered himself of a mysterious package
DEVIL’S FORD 853

intrusted to him by the young men for his daughters. It
contained a contribution to their board in the shape of a
silver spoon and battered silver mug, which Jessie chose
to facetiously consider as an affecting reminiscence of the
youthful Kearney’s christening days — which it probably
was.

The young girls retired early to their white snow-
drifts: Jessie not without some hilarious struggles with
hers, in which she was, however, quickly surprised by the
deep and refreshing sleep of youth; Christie to lie awake
and listen to the night wind, that had changed from the
first cool whispers of sunset to the sturdy breath of the
mountain. At times the frail house shook and trembled.
‘Wandering gusts laden with the deep resinous odors of the
wood found their way through the imperfect jointure of
the two cabins, swept her cheek and even stirred her long,
wide-open lashes. A broken spray of pine needles rustled
along the roof, or a pine cone dropped with a quick rever-
berating tap-tap that for an instant startled her. Lying
thus, wide awake, she fell into a dreamy reminiscence of
the past, hearing snatches of old melody in the moving
pines, fragments of sentences, old words, and familiar epi-
thets in the murmuring wind at her ear, and even the fain:
breath of long-forgotten kisses on her cheek. She remem-
bered her mother —a pallid creature, who had slowly faded
out of one of her father’s vague speculations in a vaguer
speculation of her own, beyond his ken — whose place she
had promised to take at her father’s side. The words,
“Watch over him, Christie; he needs a woman’s care,”
again echoed in her ears, as if borne on the night wind
from the lonely grave in the lonelier cemetery by the dis-
tunt sea. She had devoted herself to him with some little
sacrifices of self, only remembered now for their uselessness
in saving her father the disappointment that sprang from
iis sanguine and one-idea’d temperament. She thought
854 DEVIL'S FORD

of him lying asleep in the other room, ready on the morrow
to devote those fateful qualities to the new enterprise, that
with equally fateful disposition she believed would end in
failure. It did not occur to her that the doubts of her own
practical nature were almost as dangerous and illogical as
his enthusiasm, and that for that reason she was fast losing
what little influence she possessed over him. With the
example of her mother’s weakness before her eyes, she had
become an unsparing and distrustful critic, with the sole
effect of awakening his distrust and withdrawing his confi-
dence from her. He was beginning to deceive her as he
had never deceived her mother. Even Jessie knew more
of this last enterprise than she did herself.

All that did not tend to decrease her utter restlessness.
It was already past midnight when she noticed that the
wind had again abated. The mountain breeze had by this
time possessed the stifling valleys and heated bars of the
river in its strong, cold embraces; the equilibrium of na-
ture was restored, and a shadowy mist rose from the hollow.
A stillness, more oppressive and intolerable than the pre-
vious’ commotion, began to pervade the house and the
surrounding woods. She could hear the regular breathing
of the sleepers; she even fancied she could detect the faint
pulses of the more distant life in the settlement. The far-
off barking of a dog, a lost shout, the indistinct murmur
of some nearer watercourse — mere phantoms of sound —
made the silence more irritating. With a sudden resolu-
tion she arose, dressed herself quietly and completely, threw
a heavy cloak over her head and shoulders, and opened the
door between the living-room and her own. Her father
was sleeping soundly in his bunk in the corner. She
passed noiselessly through the room, opened the lightly
fastened door, and stepped out into the night.

In the irritation and disgust of her walk hither, she had
never noticed the situation of the cabin, as it nestled on
DEVIL’S FORD 355

the slope at the fringe of the woods; in the preoccupation
of her disappointment and the mechanical putting away of
her things, she had never looked once from the window of
her room, or glanced backward ont of the door that she
had entered. The view before her was a revelation —a
reproach, a surprise that took away her breath. Over her
shoulders the newly risen moon poured a flood of silvery
light, stretching from her feet across the shining bars of
the river to the opposite bank, and on up to the very
crest of the Devil’s Spur — no longer a huge bulk of crush-
ing shadow, but the steady exaltation of plateau, spur, and
terrace clothed with replete and unutterable beauty. In
this magical light that beauty seemed to be sustained and
carried along by the river winding at its base, lifted again
to the broad shoulder of the mountain, and lost only in the
distant vista of deathlike, overcrowning snow. Behind
and above where she stood the towering woods seemed to
be waiting with opened ranks to absorb her with the little
cabin she had quitted, dwarfed into insignificance in the
vast prospect; but nowhere was there another sign or in-
dication of human life and habitation. She looked in vain
for the settlement, for the rugged ditches, the scattered
cabins, and the unsightly heaps of gravel. In the glamour
of the moonlight they had vanished; a veil of silver-gray
vapor touched here and there with ebony shadows masked
its site. A black strip beyond was the river bank. All
else was changed. With a sudden sense of awe and lone-
liness she turned to the cabin and its sleeping inmates — all
that seemed left to her in the vast and stupendous domina-
tion of rock and wood and sky.

But in another moment the loneliness passed. A new
and delicious sense of an infinite hospitality and friendli-
ness in their silent presence began to possess her. This
same slighted, forgotten, uncomprehended, but still foolish
and forgiving Nature seemed to be bending over her
356 DEVIL’S FORD

frightened and listening ear with vague but thrilling mur.
murings of freedom and independence. She felt her heart
expand with its wholesome breath, her soul fill with ite
sustaining truth. She felt —

What was that?

An unmistakable outburst of a drunken song at the
foot of the slope: —

“Oh, my name it is Johnny from Pike,
I’m h—I] on a spree or a strike.” . .

She stopped as crimson with shame and indignation as
if the viewless singer had risen before her.

“T knew when to bet, and get up and get!”’

“Wush! D—n it all, Don’t you hear?”

There was the sound of hurried whispers, a “No” and
“Yes,” and then a dead silence.

Christie crept nearer to the edge of the slope in the
shadow of a buckeye. In the clearer view she could dis-
tinguish a staggering figure in the trail below who had evi-
dently been stopped by two other expostulating shadows
that were approaching from the shelter of a tree.

“Sho! — didn’t know!”

The staggering figure endeavored to straighten itself, and
then slouched away in the direction of the settlement.
The two mysterious shadows retreated again to the tree, and
were lost in its deeper shadow. Christie darted back to the
cabin, and softly reéntered her room.

“T thought I heard a noise that woke me, and I missed
you,” said Jessie, rubbing her eyes. ‘“‘ Did you see any-
thing?”

“No,” said Christie, beginning to undress.

“You were n’t frightened, dear?”

“Not in the least,” said Christie, with a strange little
laugh. “Go to sleep.”
CHAPTER III

THE five impulsive millionaires of Devil’s Ford fulfilled
not a few of their most extravagant promises. In less
than six weeks Mr. Carr and his daughters were installed
in a new house, built near the site of the double cabin,
which was again transferred to the settlement, in order to
give greater seclusion to the fair guests. It was a long,
roomy, one-storied villa, with a not unpicturesque com-
bination of deep veranda and trelliswork, which relieved
the flat monotony of the interior and the barrenness of the
freshly cleared ground. An upright piano, brought from
Sacramento, occupied the corner of the parlor. <A suite of
gorgeous furniture, whose pronounced and extravagant
glories the young girls instinctively hid under home-made
linen covers, had also been spoils from afar. Elsewhere
the house was filled with ornaments and decorations that
in their incongruity forcibly recalled the gilded plate-glass
mirrors of the bedroom in the old cabin. In the hasty
furnishing of this Aladdin’s palace, the slaves of the ring
had evidently seized upon anything that would add to its
glory, without reference always to fitness.

“T wish it didn’t look so cussedly like a robber’s cave,”
said George Kearney, when they were taking a quiet pre-
liminary survey of the unclassified treasures, before the
Carrs took possession.

“Or a gambling hell,” said his brother reflectively.

“Tt’s about the same thing, I reckon,” said Dick Mat-
tingly, who was supposed, in his fiery youth, to have en-
countered the similarity.
358 DEVIL’S FORD

Nevertheless, the two girls managed to bestow the heter-.
ogeneous collection with tasteful adaptation to their needs,
A erystal chandelier, which had once lent a fascinating
illusion to the game of monte, hung unlighted in the broad
hall, where a few other bizarre and public articles were
relegated. A long red sofa or bench, which had done duty
beside a billiard-table, found a place here also. Indeed. it
is to be feared that some of the more rustic and bashful
youths of Devil’s Ford, who had felt it incumbent upon
them to pay their respects to the newcomers, were more
at ease in this vestibule than in the arcana beyond, whose
glories they could see through the open door. To others,
it represented a recognized state of probation before their
re-entrée into civilization again. ‘‘I reckon, if you don’t
mind, miss,” said the spokesman of one party, “‘ez this is
our first call, we ’ll sorter hang out in the hall yer, until
you’re used to us.” On another occasion, one Whiskey
Dick, impelled by a sense of duty, paid a visit to the new
house and its fair occupants, in a fashion frankly recounted
by him afterwards at the bar of the Tecumseh Saloon.

“You see, boys, I dropped in there the other night,
when some of you fellows was doin’ the high-toned
‘thank’e, marm’ business in the parlor. I just came to
anchor in the corner of the sofy in the hall, without let-
tin’ on to say that I was there, and took up a Webster’s
Dictionary that was on the table and laid it open — keer-
less like, on my knees, ez if I was sorter consultin’ it —
and kinder dozed off there, listenin’ to you fellows gassin’
with the young ladies, and that yer Miss Christie just
snakin’ music outer that pianner, and I reckon I fell
asleep. Anyhow, I was there nigh on to two hours. It’s
mighty soothin’, them fashionable calls; sorter knocks the
old camp dust outer a fellow, and sets him up again.”

It would have been well if the new life of the Devil’s
Ford had shown no other irregularity than the harmless
DEVIL'S FORD 359

eccentricities of its original locators. But the news of its
sudden fortune, magnified by report, began presently to
flood the settlement with another class of adventurers. A
tide of waifs, strays, and malcontents of old camps along
the river began to set towards Devil’s Ford, in very much
the same fashion as the débris, drift, and alluvium had
been carried down in bygone days and cast upon its banks.
A few immigrant wagons, diverted from the highways of
travel by the fame of the new diggings, halted upon the
slopes of Devil’s Spur and on the arid flats of the Ford,
and disgorged their sallow freight of alkali-poisoned, pre-
maturely aged women and children and maimed and fever-
stricken men. Against this rude form of domesticity were
opposed the chromo-tinted dresses’ and extravagant com-
plexions of a few single unattended women — happily seen
more often at night and behind gilded bars than in the
garish light of day —and an equal number of pale-faced,
dark-mustached, well-dressed, and suspiciously idle men.
A dozen rivals of Thompson’s saloon had sprung up along
the narrow main street. There were two new hotels — one
a “Temperance House,” whose ascetic quality was confined
only to the abnegation of whiskey —a rival stage office,
and a small one-storied building, from which the “ Sierran
Banner” fluttered weekly, for “ten dollars a year, in ad-
vance.” Insufferable in the glare of a Sabbath sun, bleak,
windy, and flaring in the gloom of a Sabbath night, and
hopelessly depressing on all days of the week, the First
Presbyterian Church lifted its blunt steeple from the bar-
renest area of the flats, and was hideous! The civic im-
provements so enthusiastically contemplated by the five
millionaires in the earlier pages of this veracious chronicle
— the fountain, reservoir, town-hall, and free library — had
not yet been erected. Their sites had been anticipated by
more urgent buildings and mining works, unfortunately not
considered in the sanguine dreams of the enthusiasts, and,
360 DEVIL’S FORD

more significant still, their cost and expense had been
also anticipated by the enormous outlay of their earnings
in the work upon Devil’s Ditch.

Nevertheless, the liberal fulfillment of their promise in
the new house in the suburbs blinded the young girls’ eyes
to their shortcomings in the town. Their own remoteness
and elevation above its feverish life kept them from the
knowledge of much that was strange, and perhaps disturb-
ing to their equanimity. As they did not mix with the
immigrant women — Miss Jessie’s good-natured intrusion
into one of their half-nomadic camps one day having been
met with rudeness and suspicion — they gradually fell into
the way of trusting the responsibility of new acquaintances
to the hands of their original hosts, and of consulting them
in the matter of local recreation. It thus occurred that
one day the two girls, on their way to the main street for
an hour’s shopping at the Ville de Paris and Variety Store,
were stopped by Dick Mattingly a few yards from their
house with the remark that, as the county election was
then in progress, it would be advisable for them to defer
their intention for a few hours. As he did not deem it
necessary to add that two citizens, in the exercise of a
freeman’s franchise, had been supplementing their ballots
with bullets, in front of an admiring crowd, they knew
nothing of the accident that removed from Devil’s Ford an
entertaining stranger, who had only the night before par-
taken of their hospitality.

A week or two later, returning cne morning froma stroll
in the forest, Christie and Jessie were waylaid by George
Kearney and Fairfax, and, under pretext of being shown
a new and romantic trail, were diverted from the regular
path. This enabled Mattingly and Maryland Joe to cut
down the body of a man hanged by the Vigilance Commit-
tee a few hours before on the regular trail, and to remon-
strate with the committee on the intompatibility of such
exhibitions with a maidenly worship of nature.
DEVIL’S FORD 361

“With the whole county to hang a man in,” expostu-
lated Joe, “you might keep clear of Carr’s woods.”

It is needless to add that the young girls never knew of
this act of violence, or the delicacy that kept them in
ignorance of it. Mr. Carr was too absorbed in business to
give heed to what he looked upon as a convulsion of society
as natural as a geological upheaval, and too prudent to
provoke the criticism of his daughters by comment in their
presence.

An equally unexpected confidence, however, took its
place. Mr. Carr having finished his coffee one morning, lin-
gered a moment over his perfunctory paternal embraces, with
the awkwardness of a preoccupied man endeavoring by the
assumption of a lighter interest to veil another abstraction.

“And what are we doing to-day, Christie?” he asked,
as Jessie left the dining-room,.

“Oh, pretty much the usual thing — nothing in particu-
lar. If George Kearney gets the horses from the summit,
we ‘re going to ride over to Indian Spring to picnic. Fair-
fax — Mr. Munroe —I always forget that man’s real name
in this dreadfully familiar country — well, he’s coming to
escort us, and take me, I suppose —that is, if Kearney
takes Jessie.”

“A very nice arrangement,” returned her father, with a
slight nervous contraction of the corners of his mouth and
eyelids to indicate mischievousness. “I’ve no doubt
they ’ll both be here. You know they usually are — ha!
ha! And what about the two Mattinglys and Philip Kear-
ney, eh?” he continued; ‘‘won’t they be jealous?”

“Tt isn’t their turn,” said Christie carelessly; ‘‘ besides,
they ’ll probably be there.”

“And I suppose they ’re beginning to be resigned,” said
Carr, smiling.

“What on earth are you talking of, father?”

She turned her clear brown eyes upon him, and was re«
362 DEVIL'S FORD

garding him with such manifest unconsciousness of the drift
of his speech, and, withal, a little vague impatience of hig
archness, that Mr. Carr was feebly alarmed. It had the
effect. of banishing his assumed playfulness, which made
his serious explanation the more irritating.

“Well, I rather thought that — that young Kearney was
paying considerable attention to — to — to Jessie,” replied
her father, with hesitating gravity.

“What! that boy?”

“Young Kearney is one of the original locators, and an
equal partner in the mine. A very enterprising young fel-
low. In fact, much more advanced and bolder in his con-
ceptions than the others. I find no difficulty with him.”

At another time Christie would have questioned the con-
vineing quality of this proof, but she was too much shocked
at her father’s first suggestion to think of anything else.

“You don’t mean to say, father, that you are talking
seriously of these men — your friends — whom we see every
‘lay — and our only company?”

“No, no!” said Mr. Carr hastily; “you misunderstand,
I don’t suppose that Jessie or you” —

“Or me/ Am J included?”

“You don’t let me speak, Christie. I mean, I am not
talking seriously,” continued Mr. Carr, with his most
serious aspect, “of you and Jessie in this matter; but it
may be a serious thing to these young men to be thrown
continually in the company of two attractive girls.”

“T understand — you mean that we should not see so
much of them,” said Christie, with a frank expression of
relief so genuine as to utterly discompose her father.
“Perhaps you are right, though I fail to discover any-
thing serious in the attentions of young Kearney to Jessie
— or — whoever it may be —to me. But it will be very
easy to remedy it, and see less of them. Indeed, we might
begin to-day with some excuse.”
DEVIL'S FORD 363

“Yes —certainly. Of course!” said Mr. Carr, fully
convinced of his utter failure, but, like most weak crea-
tures, consoling himself with the reflection that he had not
shown his hand or committed himself. ‘Yes; but it
would perhaps be just as well for the present to let things
go on as they were. Well talk of it again—I’m ina
hurry now,” and edging himself through the door, he
slipped away.

“What do you think is father’s last idea?” said Chris-
tie, with, I fear, a slight lack of reverence in her tone, as
her sister reéntered the room. “He thinks George Kear-
ney is paying you too much attention.”

“No!” said Jessie, replying to her sister’s half-inter-
rogative, half-amused glance with a frank, unconscious smile.

“Yes, and he says that Fairfax —I think it’s Fairfax
— is equally fascinated with me.”

Jessie’s brow slightly contracted as she looked curiously
at her sister.

“Of all things,” she said, “I wonder if any one has
put that idea into his dear old head. He could n’t have
thought it himself.”

“T don’t know,” said Christie musingly; “but perhaps
it’s just as well if we kept a little more to ourselves for a
while. ”

“Did father say so?” said Jessie quickly.

“No, but that is evidently what he meant.”

“Ye-es,” said Jessie slowly, ‘unless ”” —

“Unless what?” said Christie sharply. “Jessie, you
don’t for a moment mean to say that you could possibly
conceive of anything else?”

“T mean to say,” said Jessie, stealing her arm around
her sister’s waist demurely, “that you are perfectly right.
We'll keep away from these fascinating Devil’s Forders,
and particularly the youngest Kearney. I believe there
has been some ill-natured gossip. I remember that the
864 DEVIL'S FORD

other day, when we passed the shanty of that Pike County
family on the slope, there were three women at the door,
and one of them said something that made poor little
Kearney turn white and pink alternately, and dance with
suppressed rage. I suppose the old lady — M’Corkle, that’s
her name — would like to have a share of our cavaliers
for her Euphemy and Mamie. I dare say it’s only right;
I would lend them the cherub occasionally, and you might
let them have Mr. Munroe twice a week.”

She laughed, but her eyes sought her sister’s with a cer-
tain watchfulness of expression.

Christie shrugged her shoulders, with a suggestion of

. disgust.

“Don’t joke. We ought to have thought of all this
before.”

“But when we first knew them, in the dear old cabin,
there wasn’t any other woman and nobody to gossip, and
that ’s what made it so nice. I don’t think so very much
of civilization, do you?” said the young lady pertly.

Christie did not reply. Perhaps she was thinking the
same thing. It certainly had been very pleasant to enjoy
the spontaneous and chivalrous homage of these men, with
no further suggestion of recompense or responsibility than
the permission to be worshiped; but beyond that she
racked her brain in vain to recall any look or act that pro-
claimed the lover. These men, whom she had found so
relapsed into barbarism that they had forgotten the most
ordinary forms of civilization; these men, even in whose
extravagant admiration there was a certain loss of self-
respect, that as a woman she would never forgive; these
men, who seemed to belong to another race — impossible!
Yet it was so.

“What construction must they have put upon her fa-
ther’s acceptance of their presents — of their company —
‘of her freedom in their presence? No! they must have
DEVIL’S FORD 365

understood from the beginning that she and her sister had
never looked upon them except as transient hosts and
chance acquaintances. Any other idea was preposterous,
And yet” —

It was the recurrence of this “yet” that alarmed her.
For she remembered now that but for their slavish devo-
tion they might claim to be her equal. According to her
father’s account, they had come from homes as good as
their own; they were certainly more than her equal in for-
tune; and her father had come to them as an employee, un-
til they had taken him into partnership. If there had only
been sentiment of any kind connected with any of them!
But they were all alike, brave, unselfish, humorous — and
often ridiculous. If anything, Dick Mattingly was funni-
est by nature, and made her laugh more. Maryland Joe,
his brother, told better stories (sometimes of Dick), though
not so good a mimic as the other Kearney, who had a fairly
sympathetic voice in singing. They were all good looking
enough; perhaps they set store on that — men are so vain!

And as for her own rejected suitor, Fairfax Munroe,
except for a kind of grave and proper motherliness about
his protecting manner, he absolutely was the most indis-
tinctive of them all. He had once brought her some rare
tea from the Chinese camp, and had taught her how to
make it; he had cautioned her against sitting under the
trees at nightfall; he had once taken off his coat to wrap
around her. Really, if this were the only evidence of
devotion that could be shown, she was safe!

“Well,” said Jessie, ‘it amuses you, I see.”

Christie checked the smile that had been dimpling the
cheek nearest Jessie, and turned upon her the face of an
elder sister.

“Tell me, have you noticed this extraordinary attention
of Mr. Munroe to me?”

“Candidly?” asked Jessie, seating herself comfortably
366 DEVIL’S FORD

on the table sideways, and endeavoring to pull her skirf
over her little feet. ‘‘ Honest Injun?”

“Don’t be idiotic, and, above all, don’t be slangy! Of
course, candidly.”

“Well, no. I can’t say that I have.”

“Then,” said Christie, “why in the name of all that’s
preposterous, do they persist in pairing me off with the
least interesting man of the lot?”

Jessie leaped from the table.

“Come now,” she said, with a little nervous laugh,
“he’s not so bad as all that. You don’t know him. But
what does it matter now, as long as we ‘re not going to see
them any more?”

“They ’re coming here for the ride to-day,” said Chris-
tie resignedly. ‘‘ Father thought it better not to break it
off at once.”

“Father thought so!” echoed Jessie, stopping, with her
hand on the door.

“Yes; why do you ask?”

But Jessie had already left the room, and was singing ip
the hall,
CHAPTER IV

THE afternoon did not, however, bring their expected
visitors. It brought, instead, a brief note by the hands of
Whiskey Dick from Fairfax, apologizing for some business
that kept him and George Kearney from accompanying the
ladies. It added that the horses were at the disposal of
themselves and any escort they might select, if they would
kindly give the message to Whiskey Dick.

The two girls looked at each other awkwardly; Jessie
did not attempt to conceal a slight pout.

“Tt looks as if they were anticipating us,” she said,
with a half-forced smile. ‘I wonder, now, if there really
has been any gossip? But no! They wouldn’t have
stopped for that, unless”— She looked curiously at her
sister.

“Unless what?’ repeated Christie; “you are horribly
mysterious this morning.”

“Am I? It’s nothing. But they ’re wanting an an-
swer. Of course you ’ll decline.”

“ And intimate we only care for their company! No!
We’ll say we’re sorry they can’t come, and — accept
their horses. We can do without an escort, we two.”

“Capital!” said Jessie, clapping her hands. “We’ll
show them ” —

“We’ll show them nothing,” interrupted Christie de-
sidedly. ‘In our place there ’s only the one thing to do.
Where is this — Whiskey Dick?”

“Tn the parlor.”

“The parlor!” echoed Christie. ‘Whiskey Dick?

What — is he ” —
368 DEVIL’S FORD

“Yes; he’s all right,” said Jessie confidently. “He’s
been here before, but he stayed in the hall; he was so shy.
I don’t think you saw him.”

“T should think not — Whiskey Dick!”

“Oh, you can call him Mr. Hall, if you like,” said Jes-
sie, laughing. “His real name is Dick Hall. If you
want to be funny, you can say Alky Hall, as the others
do.”

Christie’s only reply to this levity was a look of su-
perior resignation as she crossed the hall and entered the
parlor.

Then ensued one of those surprising, mystifying, and
utterly inexplicable changes that leave the masculine being
so helpless in the hands of his feminine master. Before
Christie opened the door her face underwent a rapid trans-
formation: the gentle glow of a refined woman’s welcome
suddenly beamed in her interested eyes; the impulsive
courtesy of an expectant hostess eagerly seizing a long-
looked-for opportunity broke in a smile upon her lips as she
swept across the room, and stopped with her two white
outstretched hands before Whiskey Dick.

It needed only the extravagant contrast presented by
that gentleman to complete the tableau. Attired in a suit
of shining black alpaca, the visitor had evidently prepared
himself with some care for a possible interview. He was
seated by the French window opening upon the veranda,
as if to secure a retreat in case of an emergency. Scrupu-
lously washed and shaven, some of the soap appeared to
have lingered in his eyes and inflamed the lids, even while
it lent a sleek and shining lustre, not unlike his coat, to
his smooth black hair. Nevertheless, leaning back in his
chair, he had allowed a large white handkerchief to depend
gracefully from his fingers —a pose at once suggesting easy
and elegant languor.

“How kind of you to give me an opportunity to make
DEVIL’S FORD 369

up for my misfortune when you last called! I was so sorry
to have missed you. But it was entirely my fault! You
were hurried, I think — you conversed with others in the
hall — you ” —

She stopped to assist him to pick up the handkerchief
that had fallen, and the Panama hat that had rolled from
his lap towards the window when he had started suddenly
to his feet at the apparition of grace and beauty. As he
still nervously retained the two hands he had grasped, this
would have been a difficult feat, even had he not endea-
vored at the same moment, by a backward furtive kick, to
propel the hat out of the window, at which she laughingly
broke from his grasp and flew to the rescue.

“Don’t mind it, miss,” he said hurriedly. ‘It is not
worth your demeaning yourself to touch it. Leave it out-
side thar, miss. I wouldn’t have toted it in, anyhow, if
some of those highfalutin’ fellows hadn’t allowed, the
other night, ez it were the reg’lar thing to do; as if, miss,
any gentleman kalkilated to ever put on his hat in the
house afore a lady!”

But Christie had already possessed herself of the unlucky
object, and had placed it upon the table. This compelled
Whiskey Dick to rise again, and as an act of careless good
breeding to drop his handkerchief in it. He then leaned
one elbow upon the piano, and crossing one foot over the
other, remained standing in an attitude he remembered to
have seen in the pages of an illustrated paper as portraying
the hero in some drawing-room scene. It was easy and
effective, but seemed to be more favorable to reverie than
conversation. Indeed, he remembered that he had forgot-
ten to consult the letterpress as to which it represented.

“T see youagree with me, that politeness is quite a mat-
ter of intention,” said Christie, “and not of mere fashion
and rules. Now, for instance,” she continued, with a
dazzling smile, ‘I suppose, according to the rules, I ought
870 DEVIL’S FORD

to give you a note to Mr. Munroe, accepting his offer.
That is all that is required; but it seems so much nicer —
don’t you think ? — to tell it to you for him, and have the
pleasure of your company and a little chat at the same
time.”

“That ’s it, that’s just it, Miss Carr; you ’ve hit it in the
centre this time,” said Whiskey Dick, now quite convinced
that his attitude was not intended for eloquence, and
shifting back to his own seat, hat and all; “that’s tanta-
mount to what I said to the boys just now. ‘You want
an excuse,’ sez IJ, ‘for not goin’ out with the young ladies.
So, accorden’ to rules, you writes a letter allowin’ buzzi-
ness and that sorter thing detains you. But wot’s the
facts? You're a gentleman, and as gentlemen you and
George comes to the opinion that you’re rather playin’ it
for all it’s worth in this yer house, you know — comin’
here night and day, off and on, reg’lar sociable and fam’ly
like, and makin’ people talk about things they ain’t any
call to talk about, and, what’s a darned sight more, you
fellows ain’t got any right yet to allow ’em to talk about,
d’ ye see?’ ”’ He paused, out of breath.

It was Miss Christie’s turn to move about. In changing
her seat to the piano-stool, so as to be nearer her visitor,
she brushed down some loose music, which Whiskey Dick
hastened to pick up.

“Pray don’t mind it,” she said, ‘pray don’t, really —
let it be”— But Whiskey Dick, feeling himself on safe
ground in this attention, persisted to the bitter end of a dis-
integrated and well-worn “Trovatore.” “So that is what
Mr. Munroe said,” she remarked quietly.

“Not just then, in course, but it’s what’s bin on his
mind and in his talk for days off and on,” returned Dick,
with a knowing smile and a nod of mysterious confidence.
“Bless your soul, Miss Carr, folks like you and me don’t
need to have them things explained. That’s what I said
DEVIL’S FORD 371

to him, sez I. ‘Don’t send no note, but just go up there
and hev it out fair and square, and say what you do mean.’
But they would hev the note, and I kalkilated to bring it.
But when I set my eyes on you, and heard you express
yourself as you did just now, I sez to myself, sez I, ‘ Dick,
yer ’s a young lady, and a fash’nable lady at that, ez don’t
go foolin’ round on rules and etiketts ’— excuse my free- -
dom, Miss Carr — ‘and you and her,’ sez I, ‘ kin just dis-
cuss this yer matter in a sociable, off-hand, fash’nable way.’
They ‘re a good lot o’ boys, Miss Carr, a square lot —
white men all of ’em; but they ’re a little soft and green,
maybe, from livin’ in these yer pine woods along o’ the
other sap. They just worship the ground you and your
sister tread on — certain! of course! of course!” he added
hurriedly, recognizing Christie’s half-conscious, deprecating
gesture with more exaggerated deprecation. “I understand.
But what I wanter say is that they ’d be willin’ to be that
ground, and he down and let you walk over them — so to
speak, Miss Carr, so to speak —if it would keep the hem
of your gown from gettin’ soiled in the mud o’ the camp.
But it would n’t do for them to make a reg’lar curderoy
road o’ themselves for the huol camp to trapse over, on
the mere chance of your some time passin’ that way, would
it now?”

“VVon’t you let me offer you some refreshment, Mr.
Hall?” said Christie, rising, with a slight color, “I’m
really ashamed of my forgetfulness again, but I’m afraid
it’s partly your fault for entertaining me to the exclu-
sion of yourself. No, thank you, let me fetch it for
you.”

She turned to a handsome sideboard near the door, and
presently faced him again with a decanter of whiskey and
a glass in her hand, and a return of the bewitching smile
she had worn on entering.

“But perhaps you don’t take whiskey?” suggested the
372 DEVIL'S FORD

arch deceiver, with a sudden affected but pretty perplexity
of eye, brow, and lips.

For the first time in his life Whiskey Dick hesitated
between two forms of intoxication. But he was still ner-
vous and uneasy; habit triumphed, and he took the whis-
key. He, however, wiped his lips with a slight wave

‘of his handkerchief, to support a certain easy elegance
which he firmly believed relieved the act of any vulgar
quality.

“Yes, ma’am,” he continued, after an exhilarated pause.
“Ez I said afore, this yer’s a matter you and me kin dis-
cuss after the fashion o’ society. My idea is that these yer
boys should kinder let up on you and Miss Jessie for a
while, and do a little more permiskus attention round the
Ford. There’s one or two families yer with grown-up
gals ez oughter be squared; that is—the boys mighter put
in a few fancy touches among them—kinder take ’em
buggy riding—or to church — once in a while — just to
take the pizen outer their tongues, and make a kind o’ bluff
to the parents, d’ ye see? That would sorter divert their
own minds; and even if it didn’t, it would kinder get ’em
accustomed agin to the old style and their own kind. I
want to warn ye agin an idea that might occur to you in
a giniral way. I don’t say you hev the idea, but it’s kind
o’ nat’ral you might be thinkin’ of it some time, and I
thought I’d warn you agin it.”

“JT think we understand each other too well to differ
much, Mr. Hall,” said Christie, still smiling; ‘but what is
the idea?”

The delicate compliment to their confidential relations
and the slight stimulus of liquor had tremulously exalted
Whiskey Dick. Affecting to look cautiously out of the
window and around the room, he ventured to draw nearer
the young woman with a half-paternal, half-timid familiar-
ity.
DEVIL'S FORD 373,

“Tt might have occurred to you,” he said, laying his
hand lightly, holding his handkerchief as if to veil mere
vulgar contact, on Christie’s shoulder, “that it would be a
good thing on your side to invite down some of your
high-toned gentlemen friends from ’Frisco to visit you and
escort you round. It seems quite nat’ral like, and I don’t
say it ain’t, but —the boys would n’t stand it.”

In spite of her self-possession Christie’s eyes suddenly
darkened, and she involuntarily drew herself up. But
Whiskey Dick, guiltily attributing the movement to his
own indiscreet gesture, said, ‘“‘ Excuse me, miss,” recovered
himself by lightly dusting her shoulder with his handker-
chief, as if to remove the impression, and her smile re-
turned.

“They would n’t stand it,” said Dick, “and there ’d be
some shooting! Not afore you, miss —not afore you, in
course! But they ’d adjourn to the woods some morning
with them city folks, and hev it out with rifles at a hun-
dred yards. Or, seein’ ez they’re city folks, the boys
would do the square thing with pistols at twelve paces.
They ’re good boys, as I said afore; but they ’re quick and
tetchy — George, being the youngest, nat’rally is the tetch-
iest. You know how it is, Miss Carr; his pretty, gal-like
face and little mustaches haz cost him half a dozen scrim-
mages already. He’z had a fight for every hair that’s
growed in his mustache since he kem here.”

“Say no more, Mr. Hall!” said Christie, rising and
pressing her hands lightly on Dick’s tremulous fingers.
“Tf I ever had any such idea, I should abandon it now;
you are quite right in this as in your other opinions. I
shall never cease to be thankful to Mr. Munroe and Mr.
Kearney that they intrusted this delicate matter to your
hands.”

“Well,” said the gratified and reddening visitor, “it
ain’t perhaps the square thing to them or myself to say
874 DEVIL'S FORD

that they reckoned to have me discuss their delicate affairs
for them, but” —

“T understand,” interrupted Christie. “They simply
gave you the letter as a friend. It was my good fortune
to find you a sympathizing and liberal man of the world.”
The delighted Dick, with conscious vanity beaming from
every feature of his shining face, lightly waved the com-
pliment aside with his handkerchief, as she continued, “ But
I am forgetting the message. We accept the horses. Oz
course we could do without an escort; but, forgive my
speaking so frankly, are you engaged this afternoon?”

“Excuse me, miss, I don’t take””—stammered Dick,
scarcely believing his ears.

“Could you give us your company as an escort?” re-
peated Christie, with a smile.

Was he awake or dreaming, or was this some trick of
liquor in his often distorted fancy? He, Whiskey Dick!
the butt of his friends, the chartered oracle of the bar-
rooms, even in whose wretched vanity there was always the
haunting suspicion that he was despised and scorned; he,
who had dared so much in speech, and achieved so little
in fact! he, whose habitual weakness had even led him into
the wildest indiscretion here; he —now offered a reward
for that indiscretion! He, Whiskey Dick, the solicited
escort of these two beautiful and peerless girls! What
would they say at the Ford? What would his friends
think? It would be all over the Ford the next day. His
past would be vindicated, his future secured. He grew
erect at the thought. It was almost in other voice, and
with no trace of his previous exaggeration, that he said,
“With pleasure.”

“Then, if you will bring the horses at once, we shall
be ready when you return.”

In another instant he had vanished, as if afraid to trust
the reality of his good fortune to the dangers of delay.
DEVIL'S FORD 375

At the end of half an hour he reappeared, leading the twa
horses, himself mounted on a half-broken mustang. A
pair of large, jingling silver spurs and a stiff sombrero, bor-
rowed with the mustang from some mysterious source, were
donned to do honor to the occasion,

The young girls were not yet ready, but he was shown
hy the Chinese servant into the parlor to wait for them.
The decanter of whiskey and glasses were still invitingly
there. He was hot, trembling, and flushed with triumph.
He walked to the table and laid his hand on the decanter,
when an odd thought flashed upon him. He would not
drink this time. No, it should not be said that he, the
selected escort of the élite of Devil’s Ford, had to fill him-
self up with whiskey before they started. The boys might
turn to each other in their astonishment, as he proudly
passed with his fair companions, and say, “It’s Whiskey
Dick,” but he’d be d—d if they should add, “and full as
ever.” No, sir! Nor when he was riding beside these
real ladies, and leaning over them at some confidential
moment, should they even know it from his breath! No.

. Yet a thimbleful, taken straight, only a thimbleful,
would n’t be much, and might help to pull him together.
He again reached his trembling hand for the decanter,
hesitated, and then, turning his back upon it, resolutely
walked to the open window. Almost at the same instant
he found himself face to face with Christie on the veranda.

She looked into his bloodshot eyes, and cast a swift
glance at the decanter.

“Won’t you take something before you go?” she said
sweetly.

“T— reckon —not, jest now,” stammered Whiskey
Dick, with a heroic effort.

“You're right,” said Christie. “TI see you are lke
me. It’s too hot for anything fiery. Come with me.”

She led him to the dining-room, and pouring out a
376 DEVIL’S FORD

glass of iced tea handed it to him. Poor Dick was not pre-
pared for this terrible culmination. Whiskey Dick and
iced tea! But under pretense of seeing if it was properly
flavored, Christie raised it to her own lips.

“Try it, to please me.”

He drained the goblet.

“Now, then,” said Christie gayly, “let ’s find Jessie, and
be off!”
CHAPTER V

WHATEVER might have been his other deficiencies as an
escort, Whiskey Dick was a good horseman, and in spite
of his fractious brute, exhibited such skill and confidence as
to at once satisfy the young girls of his value to them in
the management of their own horses, to whom side-saddles
were still an alarming novelty. Jessie, who had probably
already learned from her sister the purport of Dick’s confi-
dences, had received him with equal cordiality and perhaps
a more unqualified amusement; and now, when fairly lifted
into the saddle by his tremulous but respectful hands, made
a very charming picture of youthful and rosy satisfaction.
And when Christie, more fascinating than ever in her rid-
ing-habit, took her place on the other side of Dick, as they
sallied from the gate, that gentleman felt his cup of hap-
piness complete. His triumphal entrée into the world of
civilization and fashion was secure. He did not regret the
untasted liquor; here was an experience in after years to
lean his back against comfortably in bar-rooms, to entrance
or defy mankind. He had even got so far as to formulate
in fancy the sentence: “I remember, gentlemen, that one
afternoon, being on a pasear with two fash’nable young
ladies,” etc., ete.

At present, however, he was obliged to confine himself
to the functions of an elegant guide and cicerone — when
not engaged in “having it out” with his horse. Their way
lay along the slope, crossing the highroad at right angles,
to reach the deeper woods beyond. Dick would have lin-
gered on the highway — ostensibly to point out to his com-
378 DEVIL'S FORD

panions the new flume that had taken the place of the con-
demned ditch, but really in the hope of exposing himself in
his glory to the curious eyes of the wayfaring world. Un-
happily the road was deserted in the still powerful sunlight,
and he was obliged to seek the cover of the woods, with
a passing compliment to the parent of his charges. Wav-
ing his hand towards the flume, he said, “Look at that
work of your father’s; there ain’t no other man in Cali-
forny but Philip Carr ez would hev the grit to hold up such
a bluff agin natur and agin luck ez that yer flume stands
for. I don’t say it ‘cause you’re his daughters, ladies!
That ain’t the style, ez yow know, in sassiety, Miss Carr,”
he added, turning to Christie as the more socially experi.
enced. “No! but there ain’t another man to be found ez
could do it. It cost already two hundred thousand; it’ll
cost five hundred thousand afore it’s done; and every cent
of it is got out of the yearth beneath it, or hez got to be
out of it. ’Tain’t ev’ry man, Miss Carr, ez hev got the
pluck to pledge not only what he’s got, but what he
reckons to git.”

“But suppose he don’t get it?” said Christie, slightly
contracting her brows.

“Then there ’s the flume to show for it,” said Dick.

“But of what use is the flume, if there isn’t any more
gold?” continued Christie, almost angrily.

“That ’s good from you, miss,” said Dick, giving way to
a fit of hilarity. ‘That’s good for a fash’nable young lady
—own daughter of Philip Carr. She sez, says she,” con-
tinued Dick, appealing to the sedate pines for appreciation
of Christie’s rare humor, “‘ Wot’s the use of a flume, when
gold ain’t there?’ I must tell that to the boys.”

“ And what’s the use of the gold in the ground when
the flume isn’t there to work it out?” said Jessie to her
sister, with a cautioning glance towards Dick.

But Dick did not notice the look that passed between the
DEVIL’S FORD 379

‘sisters The richer humor of Jessie’s retort had thrown
him into convulsions of laughter.

“And now she says, wot’s the use o’ the gold without
the flume? ’Xcuse me, ladies, but that’s just puttin’ the
hull questin that ’s agitatin’ this yer camp inter two speeches
as clear as crystal. There ’s the hull crowd outside — and
some on ‘em inside like Fairfax, hez their doubts — ez says
with Miss Christie; and there’s all of us inside, ez holds
Miss Jessie’s views.”

“T never heard Mr. Munroe say that the flume was
wrong,” said Jessie quickly.

“Not to you, nat’rally,” said Dick, with a confidential
look at Christie; “but I reckon he’d like some of the
money it cost laid out for suthin’ else. But what’s the
odds? The gold is there, and we’re bound to get it.”

Dick was the foreman of a gang of paid workmen, who
had replaced the millionaires in mere manual labor, and
the we was a polite figure of speech.

The conversation seemed to have taken an unfortunate
turn, and both the girls experienced a feeling of relief when
they entered the long gulch or defile that led to Indian
Spring. The track now becoming narrow, they were obliged
to pass in single file along the precipitous hillside, led by this
escort. This effectually precluded any further speech, and
Christie at once surrendered herself to the calm, obliterat-
ing influences of the forest. The settlement and its gossip
were far behind and forgotten. In the absorption of na-
ture, her companions passed out of her mind, even as they
sometimes passed out of her sight in the windings of the
shadowy trail. As she rode alone, the fronds of breast-
high ferns seemed to caress her with outstretched and
gently detaining hands; strange wild-flowers sprang up
through the parting underbrush; even the granite rocks
that at times pressed closely upon the trail appeared as if
cushioned to her contact with star-rayed mosses, or lightly
380 DEVIL’S FORD

flung after her long lassoes of delicate vines. She recalled
the absolute freedom of their al-fresco life in the old double
cabin, when she spent the greater part of her waking hours
under the mute trees in the encompassing solitude, and
half regretting the more civilized restraints of this newer
and more ambitious abode, forgot that she had ever rebelled
against it. The social complication that threatened her now
seemed to her rather the outcome of her half-civilized par-
lor than of the sylvan glade. How easy it would have
been to have kept the cabin, and then to have gone away
entirely, than for her father to have allowed them to be
compromised with the growing fortunes of the settlement!
The suspicions and distrust that she had always felt of
their fortunes seemed to grow with the involuntary admis-
sion of Whiskey Dick that they were shared by others who
were practical men. She was fain to have recourse to the
prospect again to banish these thoughts, and this opened
her eyes to the fact that her companions had been missing
from the trail ahead of her for some time. She quickened
her pace slightly to reach a projecting point of rock that
gave her a more extended prospect. But they had evi-
dently disappeared.

She was neither alarmed nor annoyed. She could easily
overtake them soon, for they would miss her, and return or
wait for her at the spring. At the worst she would have no
difficulty in retracing her steps home. In her present mood,
she could readily spare their company; indeed, she was not
sorry that no other being should interrupt that sympathy
with the free woods which was beginning to possess her.

She was destined, however, to be disappointed. She
had not proceeded a hundred yards before she noticed the
moving figure of a man beyond ber in the hillside chaparral
above the trail. He seemed to be going in the same di-
rection as herself, and, as she fancied, endeavoring to avoid
her. This excited her curiosity to the point of urging her
DEVIL’S FORD 381

horse forward until the trail broadened into the level forest
again, which she now remembered was a part of the envi-
rons of Indian Spring. The stranger hesitated, pausing
once or twice with his back towards her, as if engaged in
carefully examining the dwarf willows to select a switch.
Christie slightly checked her speed as she drew nearer;
when, as if obedient to a sudden resolution, he turned and
advanced towards her. She was relieved and yet surprised
to recognize the boyish face and figure of George Kearney.
He was quite pale and agitated, although attempting, by
a jaunty swinging of the switch he had just cut, to assume
the appearance of ease and confidence.

Here was an opportunity. Christie resolved to profit by
it. She did not doubt that the young fellow had already
passed her sister on the trail, but, from bashfulness, had
not dared to approach her. By inviting his confidence, she
would doubtless draw something from him that would deny
or corroborate her father’s opinion of his sentiments. It
he was really in love with Jessie, she would learn what
reasons he had for expecting a serious culmination of his
suit, and perhaps she might be able delicately to open his
eyes to the truth. If, as she believed, it was only a boy-
ish fancy, she would laugh him out of it with that ca-
maraderie which had always existed between them. A
half-motherly sympathy, albeit born quite as much from a
contemplation of his beautiful yearning eyes as from his
interesting position, lightened the smile with which she
greeted him.

“So you contrived to throw over your stupid business
and join us, after all,” she said; “or was it that you
changed your mind at the last moment?” she added mis-
chievously. ‘‘I thought only we women were permitted
that!” Indeed, she could not help noticing that there was
really a strong feminine suggestion in the shifting color and
slightly conscious eyelids of the young fellow.
882 DEVIL'S FORD

“Do young girls always change their minds?” asked
George, with an embarrassed smile.

“Not always; but sometimes they don’t know their own
mind — particularly if they are very young; and when
they do at last, you clever creatures of men, who have in-
terpreted their ignorance to please yourselves, abuse them
for being fickle.” She stopped to observe the effect of
what she believed a rather clear and significant exposition
of Jessie’s and George’s possible situation. But she was
not prepared for the look of blank resignation that seemed
to drive the color from his face and moisten the fire of his
dark eyes.

“T reckon you ’re right,” he said, looking down.

“Oh! we ’re not accusing you of fickleness,” said Chris-
tie gayly; ‘‘although you didn’t come, and we were obliged
to ask Mr. Hall to join us. I suppose you found him and
Jessie just now?” ‘

But George made no reply. The color was slowly com-
ing back to his face, which, as she glanced covertly at him,
seemed to have grown so much older that his returning
blood might have brought two or three years with it.

“Really, Mr. Kearney,” she said dryly, ‘‘one would
think that some silly, conceited girl” — she was quite ear-
nest in her epithets, for a sudden, angry conviction of some
eoquetry and disingenuousness in Jessie had come to her in
contemplating its effects upon the young fellow at her side
—‘‘some country jilt, had been trying her rustic hand
upon you.”

“She is not silly, conceited, nor countrified,” said
George, slowly raising his beautiful eyes to the young girl
half reproachfully. “It is I who am all that. No, she is
tight, and you know it.”

Much as Christie admired and valued her sister’s charms,
she thought this was really going too far. What had Jes-
sie ever done — what was Jessie — to provoke and remain
DEVIL'S FORD 383

insensible to such a blind devotion as this? And really,
looking at him now, he was not so very young for Jessie;
whether his unfortunate passion had brought out all his
latent manliness, or whether he had hitherto kept his seri-
ous nature in the background, certainly he was not a boy.
And certainly his was not a passion that he could be
laughed out of. It was getting very tiresome. She wished
she had not met him —at least until she had had some
clearer understanding with her sister. He was still walk-
ing beside her, with his hand on her bridle rein, partly to
lead her horse over some boulders in the trail, and partly
to conceal his first embarrassment. When they had fairly
reached the woods, he stopped.

“T am going to say good-by, Miss Carr.”

“Are you not coming further? We must be near In-
dian Spring, now; Mr. Hall and — and Jessie — cannot be
faraway. You will keep me company until we meet them?”

“No,” he replied quietly. ‘I only stopped you to say
good-by. I am going away.”

“Not from Devil’s Ford?” she asked, in half-incredulous
astonishment. “At least, not for long?”

“T am not coming back,” he replied.

“But this is very abrupt,” she said hurriedly, feeling
that in some ridiculous way she had precipitated an
equally ridiculous catastrophe. ‘Surely you are not going
away in this fashion, without saying good-by to Jessie and
—and father?”

“T shall see your father, of course —and you will give
my regards to Miss Jessie.”

He evidently was in earnest. Was there ever anything
so perfectly preposterous? She became indignant.

“Of course,” she said coldly, “I won’t detain you; your
business must be urgent, and I forgot —at least I had for-
gotten until to-day —that you have other duties more
important than that of squire of dames. Iam afraid this
384 DEVIL’S FORD

forgetfulness made me think you would not part from us
in quite such a business fashion. I presume, if you had
not met me just now, we should none of us have seen
you again?”

He did not reply.

“Will you say good-by, Miss Carr?”

He held out his hand.

“One moment, Mr. Kearney. If I have said anything
which you think justifies this very abrupt leave-taking, I
beg you will forgive and forget it — or, at least, let it have
no more weight with you than the idle words of any wo-
man. I only spoke generally. You know —I—I might
be mistaken.”

His eyes, which had dilated when she began to speak,
darkened; his color, which had quickly come, as quickly
sank when she had ended.

“Don’t say that, Miss Carr. It is not like you, and —
it is useless. | You know what I meant a moment ago.
I read it in your reply. You meant that I, like others,
had deceived myself. Did you not?”

She could not meet those honest eyes with less than
equal honesty. She knew that Jessie did not love him —
would not marry him — whatever coquetry she might have
shown.

“JT did not mean to offend you,” she said hesitatingly ;
“T only half suspected it when I spoke.”

“ And you wish to spare me the avowal!” he said bit-
terly.

“To me, perhaps, yes, by anticipating it. I could not
tell what ideas you might have gathered from some indis-
creet frankness of Jessie — or my father,” she added, with
almost equal bitterness.

“T have never spoken to either,” he replied quickly. He
stopped, and added, after a moment’s mortifying reflection,
“T’ve been brought up in the woods, Miss Carr, and I
DEVIL’S FORD 885

suppose I have followed my feelings, instead of the eti-
quette of society.”

Christie was too relieved at the rehabilitation of Jessie’s
truthfulness to notice the full significance of his speech.

“Good-by,” he said again, holding out his hand.

“ Good-by!”

She extended her own, ungloved, with a frank smile,
He held it for a moment, with his eyes fixed upon hers.
Then suddenly, as if obeying an uncontrollable impulse, he
crushed it like a flower again and again against his burning
lips, and darted away.

Christie sank back in her saddle with a little cry, half
of pain and half of frightened surprise. Had the poor boy
suddenly gone mad, or was this vicarious farewell a part of
the courtship of Devil’s Ford? She looked at her little
hand, which had reddened under the pressure, and suddenly
felt the flush extending to her cheeks and the roots of her
hair. This was intolerable.

“Christie! ”

It was her sister emerging from the wood to seek her.
In another moment she was at her side.

“We thought you were following,” said Jessie. ‘Good
heavens! how you look! What has happened?”

“Nothing. I met Mr. Kearney a moment ago on the
trail. He is going away, and—-and”— She stopped,
furious and flushing.

“ And,” said Jessie, with a burst of merriment, “he told
you at last he loved you. Oh, Christie!”
CHAPTER VI

Tue abrupt departure of George Kearney from Devil’s
Ford excited but little interest in the community, and was
soon forgotten. It was generally attributed to differences
between himself and his partners on the question of further
outlay of their earnings on mining improvements — he and
Philip Carr alone representing a sanguine minority whose
faith in the future of the mine accepted any risks. It was
alleged by some that he had sold out to his brother; it was
believed by others that he had simply gone to Sacramento
to borrow money on his share, in order to continue the
improvements on his own responsibility. The partners
themselves were uncommunicative; even Whiskey Dick,
who since his remarkable social elevation had become less
oracular, much to his own astonishment, contributed no-
thing to the gossip except a suggestion that as the fiery
temper of George Kearney brooked no opposition, even
from his brother, it was better they should separate before
the estrangement became serious.

Mr. Carr did not disguise his annoyance at the loss of
his young disciple and firm ally. But an unlucky allusion
to his previous remarks on Kearney’s attentions to Jessie,
and a querulous regret that he had permitted a disruption
of their social intimacy, brought such an ominous and frigid
opposition, not only from Christie, but even from the friv-
olous Jessie herself, that Carr sank back in a crushed and
terrified silence. ‘I only meant to say,” he stammered
after a pause, in which he, however, resumed his aggrieved
manner, “that Fairfax seems to come here still, and he is
not such a particular friend of mine.”
DEVIL’S FORD 387°

“But he is—and has your interest entirely at heart,”
said Jessie stoutly, “and he only comes here to tell us how
things are going on at the works.”

“And criticise your father, I suppose,” said Mr. Carr,
with an attempt at jocularity that did not, however, dis-
guise an irritated suspiciousness. ‘He really seems to
have supplanted meas he has poor Kearney in your esti-
mation.” |

“Now, father,” said Jessie, suddenly seizing him by the
shoulders in affected indignation, but really to conceal a
certain embarrassment that sprang quite as much from her
sister’s quietly observant eye as her father’s speech, “you
promised to let this ridiculous discussion drop. You will
make me and Christie so nervous that we will not dare to:
open the door to a visitor, until he declares his innocence
of any matrimonial intentions. You don’t want to give
color to the gossip that agreement with your views about
the improvements is necessary to getting on with us.”

“Who dares talk such rubbish?” said Carr, reddening ;
“is that the kind of gossip that’ Fairfax brings here?”

“Hardly, when it’s known that he don’t quite agree
with you, and does come here. That's the best denial of
the gossip.”

Christie, who had of late loftily ignored these discus-
sions, waited until her father had taken his departure.

“Then that is the reason why you still see Mr. Mun-
roe, after what you said,” she remarked quietly to Jessie.

Jessie, who would have liked to escape with her father,
was obliged to pause on the threshold of the door, with a
pretty assumption of blank forgetfulness in her blue eyes
and lifted eyebrows.

“Said what? when?” she asked vacantly.

“When — when Mr. Kearney that day —in the woods
— went away,” said Christie, faintly coloring.

“Oh! that day,” said Jessie briskly; “the day he just
388 DEVIL’S FORD

gloved your hand with kisses, and then fled wildly into
the forest to conceal his emotion.”

“The day he behaved very foolishly,” said Christie,
with reproachful calmness, that did not, however, prevent
a suspicion of indignant moisture in her eyes — “when
you explained ” —

“That it wasn’t meant for me,” interrupted Jessie.

“That it was to you that Mf. Munroe’s attentions were
directed. And then we agreed that it was better to pre-
vent any further advances of this kind by avoiding any
familiar relations with either of them.”

“Yes,” said Jessie, “I remember; but you ’re not con-
founding my seeing Fairfax occasionally now with that sort
of thing. He doesn’t kiss my hand like anything,” she
added, as if in abstract reflection.

“Nor run away, either,” suggested the trodden worm,
turning.

There was an ominous silence.

“Do you know we are nearly out of coffee?” said Jes-
sie, choking, but moving towards the door with Spartan-
like calmness.

“Yes. And something must be done this very day
about the washing,” said Christie, with suppressed emo-
tion, going towards the opposite entrance.

Tears stood in each other’s eyes with this terrible ex-
change of domestic confidences. Nevertheless, after a
moment’s pause, they deliberately turned again, and facing
each other with frightful calmness, left the room by pur-
poseless and deliberate exits other than those they had
contemplated — a crushing abnegation of self, that, to some
extent, relieved their surcharged feelings.

Meantime the material prosperity of Devil’s Ford in-
creased, if a prosperity based upon no visible foundation
but the confidence and hopes of its inhabitants could be
called material. Few, if any, stopped to consider that
DEVIL’S FORD 389

the improvements, buildings, and business were simply the
outlay of capital brought from elsewhere, and as yet the
settlement or town, as it was now called, had neither pro-
duced nor exported capital of itself equal to half the amount
expended. It was true that sorhe land was cultivated on
the further slope, some mills erected and lumber furnished
from the inexhaustible forest; but the consumers were the
inhabitants themselves, who paid for their produce in bor-
rowed capital or unlimited credit. It was never discovered
that while all roads led to Devil’s Ford, Devil’s Ford led
to nowhere. The difficulties overcome in getting things
into the settlement were never surmounted for getting
things out of it. The lumber was practically valueless
for export to other settlements across the mountain roads,
which were equally rich in timber. The theory so enthusi-
astically held by the original locators, that Devil’s Ford
was a vast sink that had, through ages, exhausted and
absorbed the trickling wealth of the adjacent hills and
valleys, was suffering an ironical corroboration.

One morning it was known that work was stopped at the
Devil’s Ford Ditch — temporarily only, it was alleged, and
many of the old workmen simply had their labor for the
present transferred to excavating the river-banks, and the
collection of vast heaps of ‘‘pay gravel.” Specimens from
these mounds, taken from different localities, and at differ-
ent levels, were sent to San Francisco for more rigid assay
and analysis. It was believed that this would establish
the fact of the permanent richness of the drifts, and not
only justify past expenditure, but a renewed outlay of
credit and capital. The suspension of engineering work
gave Mr. Carr an opportunity to visit San Francisco on
general business of the mine, which would not, however,
prevent him from arranging further combinations with capi-
tal. His two daughters accompanied him. It offered an
admirable opportunity for a shopping expedition, a change
390 DEVIL’S FORD

of scene, and a peaceful solution of their perplexing and
anomalous social relations with Devil’s Ford. In the first
flush of gratitude to their father for this opportune holiday,
something of harmony had been restored to the family
circle that had of late been’ shaken by discord.

But their sanguine hopes of enjoyment were not entirely
fulfilled. Both Jessie and Christie were obliged to confess
to a certain disappointment in the aspect of the civilization
they were now reéntering. They at first attributed it to
the change in their own habits during the last three months,
and their having become barbarous and countrified in their
seclusion, Certainly in the matter of dress they were he-
hind the fashions as revealed in Montgomery Street. But
when the brief solace afforded them by the modiste and
dressmaker was past, there seemed little else to be gained.

They missed at first, I fear, the chivalrous and loyal devo-
tion that had only amused them at Devil’s Ford, and were

the more inclined, I think, to distrust the conscious and
more civilized gallantry of the better dressed and more care-
fully presented men they met. For it must be admitted
that, for obvious reasons, their criticisms were at first con-
fined to the sex they had been most in contact with. They
could not help noticing that the men were more eager,
annoyingly feverish, and self-asserting in their superior
elegance and external show than their old associates were
in their frank, unrestrained habits. It seemed to them that
the five millionaires of Devil’s Ford, in their radical simpli-
city and thoroughness, were perhaps nearer the type of true
gentlemanhood than these citizens who imitated a civiliza-
tion they were unable yet to reach.

The women simply frightened them, as being, even more
than the men, demonstrative and excessive in their fine
looks, their fine dresses, their extravagant demand for
excitement. In less than a week they found themselves
regretting — not the new villa on the slope of Devil’s Ford,
DEVILS FORD 391

which even in its own bizarre fashion was exceeded by the
barbarous ostentation of the villas and private houses around
them — but the double cabin under the trees, which now
seemed to them almost aristocratic in its grave simplicity
and abstention. In the mysterious forest of masts that
thronged the city’s quays they recalled the straight shafts
of the pines on Devil’s slopes, only to miss the sedate re-
pose and infinite calm that used to environ them. In the
feverish, pulsating life of the young metropolis they often
stopped oppressed, giddy, and choking; the roar of the
streets and thoroughfares was meaningless to them, except
to revive strange memories of the deep, unvarying mono-
tone of the evening wind over their humbler roof on the
Sierran hillside. Civic bred and nurtured as they were,
the recurrence of these sensations perplexed and alarmed
them.

“Tt seems so perfectly ridiculous,” said Jessie, ‘for us
to feel as out of place here as that Pike County servant
girl in Sacramento who had never seen a steamboat before ;
do you know, I quite had a turn the other day at seeing
aman on the Stockton wharf in a red shirt, with a rifle
on his shoulder.”

“ And you wanted to go and speak to him?” said Chris-
tie, with a sad smile.

“No, that’s just it; I felt awfully hurt and injured
that he did not come up and speak to me/ I wonder if
we got any fever or that sort of thing up there; it makes
one quite superstitious.”

Christie did not reply; more than once before she had
felt that inexplicable misgiving. It had sometimes seemed
to her that she had never been quite herself since that
memorable night when she had slipped out of their sleep-
ing-cabin, and stood alone in the gracious and commanding
presence of the woods and hills. In the solitude of night,
with the hum of the great city rising below her — at times
392 DEVIL'S FORD

even in theatres or crowded assemblies of men and women
— she forgot herself, and again stood in the weird brilliancy
of that moonlight night in mute worship at the foot of that
slowly rising mystic altar of piled terraces, hanging forests,
and lifted plateaus that climbed forever to the lonely skies.
Again she felt before her the expanding and opening arms
of the protecting woods. Had they really closed upon her
in some pantheistic embrace that made her a part of them?
Had she been baptized in that moonlight as a child of the
great forest? It was easy to believe in the myths of the
poets of an idyllic life under those trees, where, free from
conventional restrictions, one loved and was loved. If she,
with her own worldly experience, could think of this now,
why might not George Kearney have thought? . . . She
stopped, and found herself blushing even in the darkness.
As the thought and blush were the usual sequel of her
reflections, it is to be feared that they may have been at
times the impelling cause.

Mr. Carr, however, made up for his daughters’ want of
sympathy with metropolitan life. To their astonishment,
he not only plunged into the fashionable gayeties and
amusements of the town, but in dress and manner assumed
the role of a leader of society. The invariable answer to
their half-humorous comment was the necessities of the
mine, and the policy of frequenting the company of capi-
talists, to enlist their support and confidence. There was
something in this so unlike their father, that what at any
other time they would have hailed as a relief to his habit-
ual abstraction now half alarmed them. Yet he was not
dissipated — he did not drink nor gamble. There certainly
did not seem any harm in his frequenting the society of
ladies, with a gallantry that appeared to be forced and a
pleasure that to their critical eyes was certainly apocryphal.
He did not drag his daughters into the mixed society of
that period; he did not press upon them the company of
DEVIL’S FORD 393

those he most frequented, and whose aecepted position in
that little world of fashion was considered equal to their
own. When Jessie strongly objected to the pronounced
manners of a certain widow, whose actual present wealth
and pecuniary influence condoned for a more uncertain pre-
historic past, Mr. Carr did not urge a further acquaintance.
“ As long as you ‘re not thinking of marrying again, papa,”
Jessie had said finally, “I don’t see the necessity of our
knowing her.” “But suppose I were,” had replied Mr.
Carr, with affected humor. ‘Then you certainly would n’t
care for any one like her,” his daughter had responded
triumphantly. Mr. Carr smiled, and dropped the sub-
ject, but it is probable that his daughters’ want of sym-
pathy with his acquaintances did not in the least interfere
with his social prestige. A gentleman in all his relations
and under all circumstances, even his cold scientific abstrac-
tion was provocative; rich men envied his lofty ignorance
of the smaller details of money-making, even while they
mistrusted his judgment. A man still well preserved,
and free from weakening vices, he was a dangerous rival to
younger and faster San Francisco, in the eyes of the sex, whe
knew how to value a repose they did not themselves possess.

Suddenly Mr. Carr announced his intention of proceed-
ing to Sacramento, on further business of the mine, leav-
ing his two daughters in the family of a wealthy friend
until he should return for them. He opposed their ready
suggestion to return to Devil’s Ford with a new and un-
necessary inflexibility: he even met their compromise to
accompany him to Sacramento with equal decision.

“You will only be in my way,” he said curtly. ‘‘ Enjoy
yourselves here while you can.”

Thus left to themselves, they tried to accept his advice.
Possibly some slight reaction to their previous disappoint-
ment may have already set in; perhaps they felt any dis-
traction to be a relief to their anxiety about their father.
394 “DEVIL'S FORD

They went out more; they frequented concerts and parties;
they accepted, with their host and his family, an invitation
to one of those opulent and barbaric entertainments with
which a noted San Francisco millionaire distracted his rare
moments of reflection in his gorgeous palace on the hills,
Here they would at least be once more in the country they
loved, albeit of a milder and less heroic type, and a little
degraded by the overlapping tinsel and scattered spangles
of the palace.

It was a three days’ féte; the style and choice of amuse-
ments left to the guests, and an equal and active participa-
tion by no means necessary or indispensable. Consequently,
when Christie and Jessie Carr proposed a ride through the
adjacent cafion on the second morning, they had no difficulty
in finding horses in the well-furnished stables of their
opulent entertainers, nor cavaliers among the other guests,
who were too happy. to find favor in the eyes of two pretty
girls who were supposed to be abnormally fastidious and
vefined. Christie’s escort was a good-natured young banker,
shrewd enough to avoid demonstrative attentions, and lucky
enough to interest her during the ride with his clear and
half-humorous reflections on some of the business specula-
tions of the day. If his ideas were occasionally too clever,
and not always consistent with a high sense of honor, she
was none the less interested to know the ethics of that world
of speculation into which her father had plunged, and the
more convinced, with a mingled sense of pride and anxiety,
that his still dominant gentlemanhood would prevent. his
coping with it on equal terms. Nor could she help contrast-
ing the conversation of the sharp-witted man at her side
with what she still remembered of the vague, touching,
boyish enthusiasm of the millionaires of Devil’s Ford. Had
her escort guessed the result of this contrast, he would
hardly have been as gratified as he was with the grave
attention of her beautiful eyes.
DEVIL'S FORD 395

The fascination of a gracious day and the leafy solitude
of the cafion led them to prolong their ride beyond the pro-
posed limit, and it became necessary towards sunset for
them to seek some shorter cut home.

“There ’s a vaquero in yonder field,” said Christie’s
escort, who was riding with her a little in advance of the
others, ‘‘and those fellows know every trail that a horse
ean follow. I’ ride on, intercept him, and try my Span-
ish on him. If I miss him, as he’s galloping on, you
might try your hand on him yourself. He’ll understand
your eyes, Miss Carr, in any language.”

As he dashed away, to cover his first audacity of com-
pliment, Christie lifted the eyes thus apostrophized to the
opposite field. The vaquero, who was chasing some cattle,
was evidently too preoccupied to heed the shouts of her
companion, and wheeling round suddenly to intercept one
of the deviating fugitives, permitted Christie’s escort to
dash past him before that gentleman could rein in his ex-
cited steed. This brought the vaquero directly in her path.
Perceiving her, he threw his horse back on its haunches, to
prevent a collision. Christie rode up to him, suddenly
uttered a cry, and halted. For before her, sunburnt in
cheek and throat, darker in the free growth of mustache
and curling hair, clad in the coarse, picturesque finery of
his class, undisguised only in his boyish beauty, sat George
Kearney.

The blood that had forsaken her astonished face rushed
as quickly back. His eyes, which had suddenly sparkled
with an electrical glow, sank before hers. His hand
dropped, and his cheek flushed with a dark embarrassment.

“Vou here, Mr. Kearney? How strange! — but how
glad I am to meet you again!”

She tried to smile; her voice trembled, and her little
hand shook as she extended it to him.

He raised his dark eyes quickly, and impulsively urged
396 DEVIL’S FORD

his horse to her side. But, as if suddenly awakening te
the reality of the situation, he glanced at her hurriedly,
down at his barbaric finery, and threw a searching look
towards her escort.

In an instant Christie saw the infelicity of her position,
and its dangers. The words of Whiskey Dick, “He
would n’t stand that,” flashed across her mind. There was
no time to lose. The banker had already gained control
over his horse, and was approaching them, all unconscious
of the fixed stare with which George was regarding him.
Christie hastily seized the hand which he had allowed to
fall at his side, and said quickly: —

“Will you ride with me a little way, Mr. Kearney?”

He turned the same searching look upon her. She met
it clearly and steadily; he even thought reproachfully.

“Do!” she said hurriedly. ‘“Iask it as a favor. I
want to speak to you. Jessie and Tare herealone. Father
is away. Yow are one of our oldest friends.”

He hesitated. She turned to the astonished young
banker, who rode up.

“T have just met an old friend. Will you please ride
back as quickly as you can, and tell Jessie that Mr. Kear-
ney is here, and ask her to join us?”

She watched her dazed escort, still speechless from the
spectacle of the fastidious Miss Carr ¢éte-d-téte with a com-
mon Mexican vaquero, gallop off in the direction of the
cafion, and then turned to George.

“Now take me home, the shortest way, as quick as you
ean.”

“Home?” echoed George.

“T mean to Mr. Prince’s house. Quick! before they can
come up to us.”

He mechanically put spurs to his horse; she followed.
They presently struck into a trail that soon diverged again
into a disused logging track through the woods.
DEVIL’S FORD 397

“This is the short cut to Prince’s, by two miles,” he
said, as they entered the woods.

As they were still galloping, without exchanging a word,
Christie began to slacken her speed; George did the same.
They were safe from intrusion at the present, even if the
others had found the short cut. Christie, bold and self-
reliant a moment ago, suddenly found herself growing weak
and embarrassed. What had she done?

She checked her horse suddenly.

‘Perhaps we had better wait for them,” she said timidly.

George had not raised his eyes to hers.

“You said you wanted to hurry.home,” he replied
gently, passing his hand along his mustang’s velvety neck,
‘and — and you had something to say to me.”

“Certainly,” she answered, with a faint laugh. “I’m so
astonished at meeting you here. I’m quite bewildered.
You are living here; you have forsaken us to buy a
ranch?” she continued, looking at him attentively.

His brow colored slightly.

“No, I’m living here, but I have bought no ranch.
I’m only a hired man on somebody else’s ranch, to look
after the cattle.”

He saw her beautiful eyes fill with astonishment and
—something else. His brow cleared; ke went on, with
his old boyish laugh.

“No, Miss Carr. The fact is, I’m dead broke. I’ve
lost everything since I saw you last. But as I know how
to ride, and I’m not afraid of work, I manage to keep
along.”

“ You have lost money in — in the mines?” said Christie
suddenly.

“No” —he replied quickly, evading her eyes. ‘My
brother has my interest, you know. I’ve been foolish on
my own account solely. You know I’m rather inclined
to that sort of thing. But as long as my folly don’t affect
others, I can stand it.”
398 DEVIL’S FORD

“But it may affect others — and they may not think of
it as folly” — She stopped short, confused by his brighten-
ing color and eyes. “I mean — Oh, Mr. Kearney, I want
you to be frank with me. I know nothing of business,
but I know there has been trouble about the mine at Devil’s
Ford. Tell me honestly, has my father anything to do
with it? If I thought that, through any imprudence of
his, you had suffered —if I believed that you could trace
any misfortune of yours to him — to ws—TI should never
forgive myself” — she stopped and flashed a single look at
him — “T should never forgive you for abandoning us.”

The look of pain which had at first shown itself in his
face, which never concealed anything, passed, and a quick
smile followed her feminine anticlimax.

“Miss Carr,” he said, with boyish eagerness, “if any
man suggested to me that your father wasn’t the brightest
and best of his kind—too wise and clever for the fools
about him to understand —I’d—I/’d shoot him.”

Confused by his ready and gracious disclaimer of what
she had no¢ intended to say, there was nothing left for her
but to rush upon what she really intended to say, with
what she felt was shameful precipitation.

“One word more, Mr. Kearney,” she. began, looking
down, but feeling the color come to her face as she spoke.
“When you spoke to me the day you left, you must have
thought me hard and cruel. When I tell you that I
thought you were alluding to Jessie and some feeling you
had for her” —

“For Jessie!” echoed George.

“You will understand that — that”? —

“That what?” said George, drawing nearer to her.

“That I was only speaking as she might have spoken
had you talked to her of me,” added Christie hurriedly,
slightly backing her horse away from him.

But this was not so easy, as George was the better rider,
DEVIL’S FORD 399

and by an imperceptible movement of his wrist and foot
had glued his horse to her side. ‘He will go now,” she
had thought, but he didn’t.

“We must ride on,” she suggested faintly.

“No,” he said, with a sudden dropping of his boyish
manner and a slight lifting of his head. ‘We must ride
together no further, Miss Carr. I must go back to the
work I am hired to do, and you must go on with your
party, whom I hear coming. But when we part here you
must bid me good-by —not as Jessie’s sister—but as
Christie — the one —the only woman that I love, or that
I ever have loved.”

He held out his hand. With the recollection of their
previous parting, she tremblingly advanced her own.
He took it, but did not raise it to his lips. And it was
she who found herself half confusedly retaining his hand
in hers, until she dropped it with a blush.

“Then is this the reason you give for deserting us as
you have deserted Devil’s Ford?” she said coldly.

He lifted his eyes to her with a strange smile, and said,
“Yes,” wheeled his horse, and disappeared in the forest.

He had left her thus abruptly once before, kissed, blush-
ing, and indignant. He was leaving her now, unkissed,
but white and indignant. Yet she was so self-possessed
when the party joined her, that the singular rencontre and
her explanation of the stranger’s sudden departure excited
no further comment. Only Jessie managed to whisper in
her ear: —

“JT hope you are satisfied now that it wasn’t me he
meant?”

“Not at all,” said Christie coldly.
CHAPTER VII

A Few days after the girls had returned to San Fran-
cisco they received a letter from their father. His busi-
ness, he wrote, would detain him in Sacramento some days
longer. There was no reason why they should return to
Devil’s Ford in the heat of the summer; their host had
written to beg him to allow them a more extended visit,
and if they were enjoying themselves, he thought it would
be well not to disoblige an old friend. He had heard they
had a pleasant visit to Mr. Prince’s place, and that a cer-
tain young banker had been very attentive to Christie.

“Do you know what all this means, dear?” asked Jes-
sie, who had been watching her sister with an unusually
grave face.

Christie, whose thoughts had wandered from the letter,
replied carelessly : —

“‘T suppose it means that we are to wait here until fa-
ther sends for us.”

“It means a good deal more. It means that papa has
had another reverse; it means that the assay has turned out
badly for the mine — that the further they go from the flat
the worse it gets—that all the gold they will probably
ever see at Devil’s Ford is what they have already found
or will find on the flat; it means that all Devil’s Ford is
only a ‘ pocket,’ and not a ‘lead.’” She stopped, with
unexpected tears in her eyes.

“Who told you this?” asked Christie breathlessly.

“Fairfax — Mr. Munroe,” stammered her sister, “ writes
to me as if we already knew it — tells me not to be alarmed,
that it isn’t so bad — and all that.”
DEVIL’S FORD 401

“How long has this happened, Jessie?” said Christie,
taking her hand, with a white but calm face.

“Nearly ever since we’ve been here, I suppose. It
must be so, for he says poor papa is still hopeful of doing
something yet.”

“And Mr. Munroe writes to you?” said Christie ab-
stractedly.

“Of course,” said Jessie quickly. “He feels interested
in — us.”

“Nobody tells me anything,” said Christie.

“Did n’t ? —

“No,” said Christie bitterly.

“What on earth did you talk about? But people don’t
confide in you because they ’re afraid of you. You’re
so OB, e,

“So what?”

“So gently patronizing, and so ‘ I-don’t-suppose-you-can-
help-it,-poor-thing,’ in your general style,” said Jessie, kiss-
ing her. “There! I only wish I was hke you. What do
you say if we write to father that we ’ll go back to Devil’s
Ford? Mr. Munroe thinks we will be of service there just
now. If the men are dissatisfied, and think we ’re spend-
ing money ” —

“T’m afraid Mr. Munroe is hardly a disinterested ad-
viser. At least, I don’t think it would look quite decent
for you to fly back without your father, at his suggestion,”
said Christie coldly. ‘He is not the only partner. We ’re
spending no money. Besides, we have engaged to go to
Mr. Prince’s again next week.”

“As you like, dear,” said Jessie, turning away to hide
a faint smile.

Nevertheless, when they returned from their visit to
Mr. Prince’s, and one or two uneventful rides, Christie
looked grave. It was only a few days later that Jessie
burst upon her one morning.
402 DEVIL’S FORD

“You were saying that nobody ever tells you anything.
Well, here ’s your chance. Whiskey Dick is below.”

“Whiskey Dick?” repeated Christie. ‘‘ What does he
want!”

“ You, love. Who else? You know he always scorns
me as not being high-toned and elegant enough for his
social confidences. He asked for you only.”

With an uneasy sense of some impending revelation,
Christie descended to the drawing-room. As she opened
the door, a strong flavor of that toilet soap and eau de Co-
logne with which Whiskey Dick was in the habit of grace-
fully effacing the traces of dissipation made known his
presence. In spite of a new suit of clothes, whose pristine
folds refused to adapt themselves entirely to the contour
of his figure, he was somewhat subdued by the unexpected
elegance of the drawing-room of Christie’s host. Buta
glance at Christie’s sad, but gracious face quickly reassured
him. Taking from his hat a three-cornered parcel, he
unfolded a handsome saffrona rose, which he gravely pre-
sented to her. Having thus reéstablished his position, he
sank elegantly into a téte-d-téte ottoman. Finding the
position inconvenient to face Christie, who had seated
herself on a chair, he transferred himself to tle other side
of the ottoman, and addressed her over its back as from a
pulpit.

“Ts this really a fortunate accident, Mr. Hall, or did you
try to find us?” said Christie pleasantly.

“Partly promiskuss, and partly coincident, Miss Chris-
tie, one up and t’other down,” said Dick lightly. “‘ Work
being slack at present at Devil’s Ford I reck’ned I’d take
a pasear down to ’Frisco, and dip into the vortex o’ fash’na-
ble society and out again.” He lightly waved a new hand-
kerchief to illustrate his swallow-like intrusion. “This
yer minglin’ with the bo-tong is apt to be wearisome, ez
you and me knows, unless combined with experience and
DEVIL’S FORD 403

judgment. So when them boys up there allows that
there ’s a little too much fash’nable society and San Fran-
cisco capital and highfalutin’ about the future goin’ on fer
square surface mining, I sez, ‘ Look yere, gentlemen,’ sez I,
“you don’t see the pint. The pint is, to get the pop’lar
eye fixed, so to speak, on Devil’s Ford. When a fash’n-
able star rises above the ’Frisco horizon — like Miss Carr
—and, so to speak, dazzles the gineral eye, people want
to know who she is. And when people say that’s the
accomplished daughter 0’ the accomplished superintendent
of the Devil’s Ford claim — otherwise known as the Star-
eyed Goddess 0’ Devil’s Ford — every eye is fixed on the
mine, and Capital, so to speak, tumbles to her.’ And
when they sez that the old man — excuse my freedom, but
that’s the way the boys talk of your father, meaning no
harm — the old man, instead o’ trying to corral rich wid-
ders — grass or otherwise —to spend their money on the
big works for the gold that ain’t there yet — should stay in
Devil’s Ford and put all his sabe and genius into grindin’
out the little gold that is there, I sez to them that it ain’t
your father’s style. ‘ His style,’ sez I, ‘ez to go in and
build them works.’ When they ’re done he turns round
to Capital, and sez he — ‘ Look yer,’ sez he, ‘thar’s all
the works you want, first quality — cost a million; thar ’s
all the water you want, onlimited — cost another million ;
thar ’s all the pay gravel you want in and outer the ground
—call it two millions more. Now my time’s too vally-
’*ble; my professhun ’s too high-toned to work mines. I
make ’em. Hand me over a check for ten millions and
call it square and work it for yourself.’ So Capital hands
over the money and waltzes down to run the mine, and
you original locators walks round with yer hands in yer
pockets atop of your six million profit, and you lets Capi-
tal take the work and the responsibility.”

Preposterous as this seemed from the lips of Whiskey
404 DEVIL’S FORD

Dick, Christie had a haunting suspicion that it was not
greatly unlike the theories expounded by the clever young
banker who had been her escort. She did not interrupt
his flow of reminiscent criticism; when he paused for
breath, she said quietly: —

“T met Mr. George Kearney the other day in the coun-
try.”

Whiskey Dick stopped awkwardly, glanced hurriedly at
Christie, and coughed behind his handkerchief.

“Mr. Kearney — eh — er — certengly — yes — er — met
him, you say. Was he — er — er — well?”

“In health, yes; but otherwise he has lost everything,”
said Christie, fixing her eyes on the embarrassed Dick.

“Yes — er — in course — in course ”? — continued Dick,
nervously glancing round the apartment as if endeavoring
to find an opening to some less abrupt statement of the fact.

“ And actually reduced to take some menial employment,”
added Christie, still regarding Dick with her clear glance.

“That ’s it — that’s just it,” said Dick, beaming as he
suddenly found his delicate and confidential opportunity.
“That ’s it, Miss Christie; that’s just what I was sayin’
to the boys. ‘ Ez it the square thing,’ sez I, ‘ jest because
George hez happened to hypothecate every dollar he has,
or expects to hev, to put into them works, only to please
Mr. Carr, and just because he don’t want to distress that
intelligent gentleman by letting him see he’s dead broke
—for him to go and demean himself and Devil’s Ford by
rushing away and hiring out as a Mexican vaquero on Mex-
ican wages? Look,’ sez I, ‘at the disgrace he brings upon
a high-toned, fash’nable girl, at. whose side he’s walked
and danced, and passed rings, and sentiments, and bokays
in the changes o’ the cotillion and the mizzourka. And
wot,’ sez I, ‘if some day, prancing along in a fash’nable
cavalcade, she all of a suddents comes across him drivin’
a@ Mexican steer?’ That’s what I said to the boys.
DEVIL’S FORD 405

And so you met him, Miss Christie, as usual,” continued
Dick, endeavoring under the appearance of a large social
experience to conceal an eager anxiety to know the details
— ‘‘so you met him; and, in course, you didn’t let on yer
knew him, so to speak, nat’rally, or p’r’aps you kinder like
asked him to fix your saddle-girth, and give him a five-
dollar piece — eh?”

Christie, who had risen and gone to the window, sud-
denly turned a very pale face and shining eyes on Dick.

“Mr. Hall,” she said, with a faint attempt at a smile,
“we are old friends, and I feel I can ask youa favor. You
once before acted as our escort — it was for a short but a
happy time — will you accept a larger trust? My father is
busy in Sacramento for the mine: will you, without saying
anything to anybody, take Jessie and me back at once to
Devil’s Ford?”

“Will I? Miss Christie,” said Dick, choking between
an intense gratification and a desire to keep back its vulgar
exhibition, “I shall be proud!”

““When I say keep it a secret’? —she hesitated — “I
don’t mean that I object to your letting Mr. Kearney, if
you happen to know where he is, understand that we are
going back to Devil’s Ford.”

“Cert’nly — nat’rally,” said Dick, waving his hand
gracefully; ‘‘sorter drop him a line, saying that bizness of
a social and delicate nature — being the escort of Miss
Christie and Jessie Carr to Devil’s Ford — prevents my
having the pleasure of calling.”

“That will do very well, Mr. Hall,” said Christie,
faintly smiling through her moist eyelashes. ‘Then will
you go at once and secure tickets for to-night’s boat, and
bring them here? Jessie and I will arrange everything
else.”

“Cert’nly,” said Dick impulsively, and preparing te
take a graceful leave.
406 DEVIL'S FORD

“We ’ll be impatient until you return with the tickets,”
said Christie graciously.

Dick shook hands gravely, got as far as the door, and
paused,

“You think it better to take the tickets now?” he said
dubiously.

‘By all means,” said Christie impetuously. “I’ve set
my heart on going to-night — and unless you secure berths
early ” —

“In course —in course,” interrupted Dick nervously,
“But” —

“But what?” said Christie impatiently.

Dick hesitated, shut the door carefully, and looking
round the room, lightly shook out his handkerchief, appar-
ently flicked away an embarrassing suggestion, and said, with
a little langh: —

“Tt’s ridiklous, perfectly ridiklous, Miss Christie; but
not bein’ in the habit of carryin’ ready money, and havin’
omitted to cash a draft on Wells, Fargo & Co.” —

“Of course,” said Christie rapidly. ‘How forgetful I
am! Pray forgive me, Mr. Hall. I didn’t think. I'll
run up and get it from our host; he will be glad to be our
banker.”

“One moment, Miss Christie,” said Dick lightly, as his
thumb and finger relaxed in his waistcoat pocket over the
only piece of money in the world that had remained to him
after his extravagant purchase of Christie’s saffrona rose,
“one moment: in this yer monetary transaction, if you
like, you are at liberty to use my name.”
CHAPTER VIII

As Christie and Jessie Carr looked from the windows of
the coach, whose dust-clogged wheels were slowly dragging
them, as if reluctant, nearer the last stage of their journey
to Devil’s Ford, they were conscious of a change in the
landscape, which they could not entirely charge upon their
changed feelings. The few bared open spaces on the up-
land, the long stretch of rocky ridge near the summit, so
vivid and so velvety during their first journey, were now
burnt and yellow; even the brief openings in the forest
were seared as if by a hot iron in the scorching rays of a
half year’s sun. The pastoral slopes of the valley below
were cloaked in lustreless leather: the rare watercourses
along the road had faded from the waiting eye and ear; it
seemed as if the long and dry summer had even invaded
the close-set ranks of pines, and had blown a simoom breath
through the densest woods, leaving its charred red ashes
on every leaf and spray along the tunneled shade. As
they leaned out of the window and inhaled the half-dead
spices of the evergreens, they seemed to have entered the
atmosphere of some exhausted passion— of some fierce
excitement that was even now slowly burning itself out.

It was a relief at last to see the straggling houses of
Devil’s Ford far below come once more into view, as they
rounded the shoulder of Devil’s Spur and began the long
descent. But as they entered the town a change more
ominous and startling than the desiccation of the landscape
forced itself upon them. The town was still there, but
where were the inhabitants? Four months ago they had
408 DEVIL’S FORD

left the straggling street thronged with busy citizens —
groups at every corner, and a chaos of merchandise and trad-
ers in the open plaza or square beside the Presbyterian
church. Now, all was changed. Only a few wayfarers
lifted their heads lazily as the coach rattled by, crossing the
deserted square littered with,empty boxes, and gliding past
empty cabins or vacant shop windows, from which not
only familiar faces, but even the window-sashes themselves,
were gone. The great unfinished serpent - like flume,
crossing the river on gigantic trestles, had advanced as far
as the town, stooping over it like some enormous reptile
that had sucked its life-blood and was gorged with its prey.

Whiskey Dick, who had left the stage on the summit to
avail himself of a shorter foot trail to the house, that
would give him half an hour’s grace to make preparations,
met them at the stage office with a buggy. A glance at
the young girls, perhaps, convinced him that the graces of
elegant worldly conversation were out of place with the
revelation he read on their faces. Perhaps he, too, was a
trifle indisposed. The short journey to the house was
made in profound silence.

The villa had been repainted and decorated, and it
looked fresher, and even, to their preoccupied minds, ap-
peared more attractive than ever. Thoughtful hands had
taken care of the vines and rose-bushes on the trellises;
water — that precious element in Devil’s Ford — had not
been spared in keeping green through the long drought the
plants which the girls had so tenderly nurtured. It was
the one oasis in which the summer still lingered; and yet
a singular sense of loss came over the girls as they once
more crossed its threshold. It seemed no longer their own.

“Hf I was you, Miss Christie, I’d keep close to the house
for a day or two, until — until — things is settled,” said
Dick; “there ’s a heap o’ tramps and sich cattle traipsin’
round. P’r’aps you wouldn’t feel so lonesome if you
DEVIL'S FORD 409

was nearer town —for instance, ’bout wher’ you useter
live.”

“Tn the dear old cabin,” said Christie quickly; ‘I re-
member it; I wish we were there now.”

“Do you really? Do you?” said Whiskey Dick, with
suddenly twinkling eyes. “That’s like you to say it.
That ’s what J allus said,” continued Dick, addressing space
generally; “if there’s any one ez knows how to come
square down to the bottom.rock without flinchin’, it’s your
high-toned, fash’nable gals. But I must meander back to
town, and let the boys know you ’re in possession, safe and
sound. It’s right mean that Fairfax and Mattingly had to
go down to La Grange on some low business yesterday,
but they ’ll be back to-morrow. So long.”

Left alone, the girls began to realize their strange posi-
tion. They had conceived no settled plan. The night
they left San Francisco they had written an earnest letter
to their father, telling him that on learning the truth about
the reverses of Devil’s Ford, they thought it their duty to
return and share them with others, without obliging him
to prefer the request, and with as little worry to him as
possible. He would find them ready to share his trials,
and in what must be the scene of their work hereafter.

“Tt will bring father back,” said Christie; “he won’t
leave us here alone; and then together we must come to
some understanding with him — with them — for somehow
I feel as if this house belonged to us no longer.”

Her surmise was not far wrong. When Mr. Carr arrived
hurriedly from Sacramento the next evening, he found the
house deserted. His daughters were gone; there were
indications that they had arrived, and, for some reason,
suddenly departed. The vague fear that had haunted his
guilty soul after receiving their letter, and during his
breathless journey, now seemed to be realized. He was
turning from the empty house, whose reproachful solitude
410 DEVIL'S FORD

frightened him, when he was confronted on the threshold
by the figure of Fairfax Munroe.

“T came to the stage office to meet you,” he said; “you
must have left the stage at the summit.”

“T did,” said Carr angrily. ‘I was anxious to meet my
daughters quickly, to know the reason of their foolish alarm,
and to know also who had been frightening them. Where
are they?”

“They are safe in the old cabin beyond, that has been
put up ready to receive them again,” said Fairfax quietly.

“But what is the meaning of this? Why are they not
here?”? demanded Carr, hiding his agitation in a burst of
querulous rage.

“Do you ask, Mr. Carr?” said Fairfax sadly. “Did
you expect them to remain here until the sheriff took pos-
session? No one knows better than yourself that the
money advanced you on the deeds of this homestead has
never been repaid.”

Carr staggered, but recovered himself with feeble vio-
lence.

“Since you know so much of my affairs, how do you
know that this claim will ever be pressed for payment?
How do you know it is not the advance of a — a — friend?”

‘Because I have seen the woman who advanced it,”
said Fairfax hopelessly. ‘“‘She was here to look at the
property before your daughters came.”

“Well?” said Carr nervously.

“Well! You force me to tell you something I should
like to forget. You force me to anticipate a disclosure I
expected to make to you only when J came to ask permis-
sion to woo your daughter Jessie; and when I tell you
what it is, you will understand that I have no right to
criticise your conduct. Iam only explaining my own.”

“Go on,” said Carr impatiently.

“When I first came to this country, there was a woman
DEVIL’S FORD 411

I loved passionately. She treated me as women of her
kind only treat men like me, she ruined me, and left me.
That was four years ago. I love your daughter, Mr. Carr,
but she has never heard it from my lips. I would not
woo her until I had told you all. I have tried to do it
ere this, and failed. Perhaps I should not now, but” —

“But what?” said Carr furiously; “speak out!”

“But this. Look!” said Fairfax, producing from his
pocket the packet of letters Jessie had found; “perhaps
you know the handwriting?”

“What do you mean?” gasped Carr.

“That woman —my mistress —is the woman who ad-
vanced you money, and who claims this house.”

The interview, and whatever came of it, remained a
secret with the two men. When Mr. Carr accepted the
hospitality of the old cabin again, it was understood that he
had sacrificed the new house and its furniture to some of
the more pressing debts of the mine, and the act went far
to restore his waning popularity. But a more genuine
feeling of relief was experienced by Devil’s Ford when it
was rumored that Fairfax Munroe had asked for the hand
of Jessie Carr, and that some promise, contingent upon the
equitable adjustment of the affairs of the mine, had been
given by Mr. Carr. To the superstitious mind of Devil’s
Ford and its few remaining locators, this new partnership
seemed to promise that unity of interest and stability of
fortune that Devil’s Ford had lacked. But nothing could
be done until the rainy season had set fairly in; until the
long-looked-for element that was to magically separate the
gold from the dross in those dull mounds of dust and gravel
lad come of its own free will, and in its own appointed chan-
nels, independent of the feeble auxiliaries that had hope-
lessly riven the rocks on the hillside, or hung incomplete
and unfinished in lofty scaffoldings above the settlement.
412 DEVIL'S FORD

The rainy season came early. At first in gathered mists
on the higher peaks that were lifted in the morning sun
only to show a fresher field of dazzling white below; in
white clouds that at first seemed to be mere drifts blown
across from those fresh snow-fields, and obscuring the clear
blue above; in far-off murmurs in the hollow hills and
gulches; in nearer tinkling melody and baby prattling in
the leaves. It came with bright flashes of sunlight by day,
with deep, monotonous shadow at night; with the onset of
heavy winds, the roar of turbulent woods, the tumultuous
tossing of leafy arms, and with what seemed the silent
dissolution of the whole landscape in days of steady and
uninterrupted downfall. It came extravagantly, for every
cafion had grown into a torrent, every gulch a waterspout,
every watercourse a river, and all pouring into the North
Fork, that, rushing past the settlement, seemed to threaten
it with lifted crest and flying mane. It came dangerously,
for one night the river, leaping the feeble barrier of Devil’s
Ford, swept away houses and banks, scattered with uncon-
scious irony the laboriously collected heaps of gravel left for
hydraulic machinery, and spread out a vast and silent lake
across the submerged flat.

In the hurry and confusion of that night, the girls had
thrown open their cabin to the escaping miners, who hur-
ried along the slope that was now the bank of the river.
Suddenly Christie felt her arm grasped, and she was half
led, half dragged, into the inner room. Her father stood
before her.

“Where is George Kearney?” he asked tremulously.

“George Kearney!” echoed Christie, for a moment
believing the excitement had turned her father’s brain.
“You know he is not here; he is in San Francisco.”

“He is here—TI tell you,” said Carr impatiently; “he
has been here ever since the high water, trying to save the
flume.and reservoir.”
DEVIL'S FORD 413

“‘George — here! ” Christie could only gasp.

“Yes! He passed here a few moments ago, to see if
you were all safe, and he has gone on towards the flume.
But what he is trying to do is madness. If you see him,
implore him to dono more, Let him abandon the accursed
flume to its fate. It has worked already too much woe
upon us all; why should it carry his brave and youthful
soul down with it?”

The words were still ringing in her ears, when he sud-
denly passed away, with the hurrying crowd. Scarcely
knowing what she did, she ran out, vaguely intent only on
one thought, seeking only the one face, lately so dear in
recollection that she felt she would die if she never saw it
again. Perplexed by confused voices in the woods, she
lost track of the crowd, until the voices suddenly were raised
in one loud outcry, followed by the crashing of timber, the
splashing of water, a silence, and then a dull, continuous
roar. She ran vaguely on in the direction of the reservoir,
with her father’s injunction still in her mind, until a ter-
rible idea displaced it, and she turned at right angles sud-
denly, and ran towards the slope leading down to the sub-
merged flat. She had barely left the shelter of the trees
behind her before the roar of water seemed to rise at her
very feet. She stopped, dazed, bewildered, and horror-
stricken, on the edge of the slope. It was the slope no
longer, but the bank of the river itself!

Even in the gray light of early morning, and with inex-
perienced eyes, she saw all too clearly now. The trestle-
work had given way; the curving mile of flume, fallen into
the stream, and crushed and dammed against the opposite
shore, had absolutely turned the whole river through the
half-finished ditch and partly excavated mine in its way, a
few rods further on to join the old familiar channel. The
bank of the river was changed; the flat had become an
island, between which and the slope where she stood the
414 DEVIL’S FORD

North Fork was rolling its resistless yellow torrent. As
she gazed spellbound, a portion of the slope beneath her
suddenly seemed to sink and crumble, and was swallowed
up in the rushing stream. She heard a cry of warning
behind her, but, rooted to the spot by a fearful fascination,
she heeded it not. Again there was a sudden disruption,
and another part of the slope sank to rise no more; but this
time she felt herself seized by the waist and dragged back.
It was her father standing by her side.

He was flushed and excited, gazing at the water with
a strange exultation. ,

“Do you see it? Do you know what has happened?”
he asked quickly.

“The flume has fallen and turned the river,” said Chris-
tie hurriedly.“ But—have you seen him — is he safe?”

“He — who?” he answered vacantly.

“George Kearney!”

“He is safe,” he said impatiently. “But, do you see,
Christie? Do you know what this means?”

He pointed with his tremulous hand to the stream before
them.

“Tt means we are ruined,” said Christie coldly.

“Nothing of the kind! It means that the river is doing
the work of the flume. It is sluicing off the gravel, deep-
ening the ditch, and altering the slope which was the old
bend of the river. It will do in ten minutes the work that
would take us a year. If we can stop it in time, or control
it, we are safe; but if we cannot, it will carry away the
bed and deposit with the rest, and we are ruined again.”

With a gesture of impotent fury, he dashed away in the
direction of an equally excited crowd, that on a point of
the slope nearer the island were gesticulating and shouting
to a second group of men, who on the opposite shore were
clambering on over the choked débris of the flume that had
dammed and diverted the current. It was evident that the
DEVIL'S FORD 415

same idea had occurred to them, and they were risking
their lives in the attempt to set free the impediments.
Shocked and indignant as Christie had been at the degrad-
ing absorption of material interests at such a moment, the
element of danger lifted the labors of these men into hero-
ism, and she began to feel a strange exultation as she
watched them. Under the skillful blows of their axes, in
a few moments the vast body of drift began to disintegrate,’
and then to swing round and move towards the old chan-
nel. A cheer went up, but as suddenly died away again.
An overlapping fringe of wreckage had caught on the point
of the island and arrested the whole mass.

The men, who had gained the shore with difficulty,
looked back with a cry of despair. But the next moment
from among them leaped a figure, alert, buoyant, invincible,
and, axe in hand, once more essayed the passage. Spring-
ing from timber to timber he at last reached the point of
obstruction. A few strokes of the axe were sufficient to
clear it; but at the first stroke it was apparent that the
striker was also losing his hold upon the shore, and that
he must inevitably be carried away with the tossing débris.
But this consideration did not seem to affect him; the last
blow was struck, and as the freed timbers rolled on, over
and over, he boldly plunged into the flood. Christie gave
a little ery — her heart had bounded with him; it seemed
as if his plunge had splashed the water in her eyes. He
did not come to the surface until he had passed the point
below where her father stood, and then struggling feebly,
as if stunned or disabled by a blow. It seemed to her that
he was trying to approach the side of the river where she
was. Would he doit? Could she help him? She was alone;
he was hidden from the view of the men on the point,
and no succor could come from them. There was a fringe
of alder nearly opposite their cabin that almost overhung
the stream. She ran to it, clutched it with a frantic hand,
416 DEVIL'S FORD

and leaning’ over the boiling water, uttered for the first
timme his name.

“George!”

As if called to the surface by the magic of her voice, he
rose a few yards from her in mid-current, and turned his
fading eyes towards’ the bank. In another moment he
would have been swept beyond her reach, but with a su-
preme effort he turned on one side; the current, striking
him sideways, threw him towards the bank, and she caught
him by his sleeve. For an instant it seemed as if she
would be dragged down with him. For one dangerous
moment she did not care, and almost yielded to the spell;
but as the rush of water pressed him against the bank, she
recovered herself, and managed to lift him beyond its reach.
And then she sat down, half fainting, with his white face
and damp curls upon her breast.

“George, darling, speak to me! Only one word! Tell
me, have I saved you?”

His eyes opened. A faint twinkle of the old days came
to them — a boyish smile played upon his lips.

“For yourself — or Jessie?”

She looked around her with a little frightened air.
They were alone. There was but one way of sealing those
mischievous lips, and she found it!

“That ’s what I allus said, gentlemen,” lazily remarked
Whiskey Dick, a few weeks later, leaning back against the
bar, with his glass in his hand. “‘ George,’ sez I, ‘ it ain’t
what you say to a fash’nable, high-toned young lady; it’s
what you does ez makes or breaks you.’ And that’s what
I sez gin’rally o’ things in the Ford. It ain’t what Carr
and you boys allows to do; it’s the gin’ral average 0’
things ez iz done that gives tone to the hull, and hez
brought this yer new. luck to you all!”
A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL

I

As Mr. Herbert Bly glanced for the first time at the
house which was to be his future abode in San Francisco
he was somewhat startled. In that early period of feverish
civic improvement the street before it had been repeatedly
graded and lowered until the dwelling — originally a pioneer
suburban villa perched upon a slope of Telegraph Hill —
now stood sixty feet above the sidewalk, superposed like
some Swiss chalet on successive galleries built in the sand-
hill, and connected by a half-dozen distinct zigzag flights of
wooden staircase. Stimulated, however, by the thought
that the view from the top would be a fine one, and that
existence there would have all the quaint originality of
Robinson Crusoe’s tree-dwelling, Mr. Bly began cheer-
fully to mount the steps. It should be premised that, al-
though a recently appointed clerk in a large banking house,
Mr. Bly was somewhat youthful and imaginative, and
regarded the ascent as part of that “Excelsior” climbing
pointed out by a great poet as a praiseworthy function of
ambitious youth.

Reaching at last the level of the veranda, he turned to
the view. The distant wooded shore of Contra Costa, the
tossing whitecaps and dancing sails of the bay between, and
the foreground at his feet of wharves and piers, with their
reedlike jungles of masts and cordage, made up a bright, if
somewhat material, picture. To his right rose the crest of
the hill, historic and memorable as the site of the old sem-
aphoric telecraph, the tossing of whose gaunt arms formerly
418 A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL

thrilled the citizens with tidings from the sea. Turning
to the house, he recognized the prevailing style of light
cottage architecture, although incongruously confined to
narrow building plots and the civic regularity of a precise
street frontage. Thus a dozen other villas, formerly scat-
tered over the slope, had been laboriously displaced and
moved to the rigorous parade line drawn by the street sur-
veyor, no matter how irregular and independent their de-
sign and structure. Happily, the few scrub-oaks and low
bushes which formed the scant vegetation of this vast sand-
dune offered no obstacle and suggested no incongruity.
Beside the house before which Mr. Bly now stood, a prolific
madeira vine, quickened by the six months’ sunshine, had
alone survived the displacement of its foundations, and in
its untrimmed luxuriance half hid the upper veranda from
his view.

Still glowing with his exertion, the young man rang the
bell and was admitted into a fair-sized drawing - room,
whose tasteful and well-arranged furniture at once prepos-
sessed him. An open piano, a sheet of music carelessly
left on the stool, a novel lying face downwards on the table
beside a skein of silk, and the distant rustle of a vanished
skirt through an inner door, gave a suggcstion of refined
domesticity to the room that touched the fancy of the
homeless and nomadic Bly. He was still enjoying, in half
embarrassment, that vague and indescribable atmosphere of
a refined woman’s habitual presence, when the door opened
and the mistress of the house formally presented herself.

She was a faded but still handsome woman. Yet she
wore that peculiar long, limp, formless house shawl which
in certain phases of Anglo-Saxon spinster and widowhood
assumes the functions of the recluse’s veil and announces
the renunciation of worldly vanities and a resigned indiffer-
ence to external feminine contour. The most audacious
masculine arm would shrink from clasping that shapeless
A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL 419

void in which the flatness of asceticism or the heavings of
passion might alike lie buried. She had also in some mys-
terious way imported into the fresh and pleasant room a
certain bombaziny shadow of the past, and a suggestion
of that appalling reminiscence known as “better days.”
Though why it should be always represented by ashen
memories, or why better days in the past should be sup-
posed to fix their fitting symbol in depression in the pre-
sent, Mr. Bly was too young and too preoccupied at the
moment to determine. He only knew that he was a little
trightened of her, and fixed his gaze with a hopeless fasci-
nation on a letter which she somewhat portentously carried
under the shawl, and which seemed already to have yel-
lowed in its arctic shade.

“Mr. Carstone has written to me that you would call,”
said Mrs. Brooks, with languid formality. ‘Mr. Carstone
was a valued friend of my late husband, and I suppose has
told you the circumstances—the only circumstances —
which admit of my entertaining his proposition of taking
anybody, even temporarily, under my roof. The absence
of my dear son for six months at Portland, Oregon, enables
me to place his room at the disposal of Mr. Carstone’s
young protégé, who, Mr. Carstone tells me, and I have
every reason to believe, is, if perhaps not so seriously in-
clined nor yet a church communicant, still of a character and
reputation not unworthy to follow my dear Tappington in
our little family circle as he has at his desk in the bank.”

The sensitive Bly, struggling painfully out of an abstrac-
tion as to how he was ever to offer the weekly rent of his
lodgings to such a remote and respectable person, and also
somewhat embarrassed at being appealed to in the third
person, here started and bowed.

“The name of Bly is not unfamiliar to me,” continued
Mrs. Brooks, pointing to a chair and sinking resignedly
into another, where her baleful shawl at once assumed tha
420 A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL’

appearance of a dust-cover; ‘some of my dearest friends
were intimate with the Blys of Philadelphia. They were
a branch of the Maryland Blys of the eastern shore, one of
whom my Uncle James married. Perhaps you are dis-
tantly related?”

Mrs. Brooks was perfectly aware that her visitor was of
unknown Western origin, and a poor but clever protégé of
the rich banker; but she was one of a certain class of
American women who, in the midst of a fierce democracy,
ate more or less catlike conservators of family pride and
lineage, and more or less felinely inconsistent and treach-
erous to republican principles. Bly, who had just settled
in his mind to send her the rent anonymously — as a weekly
valentine — recovered himself and his spirits in his usual
boyish fashion. :

“Tam afraid, Mrs. Brooks,” he said gayly, “I cannot lay
clainy to any distinguished relationship, even to that ‘ Nelly
Bly’ who, you remember, ‘ winked her eye when she went
to sleep.’”? He stopped in consternation. The terrible
conviction flashed upon him that this quotation from a
popular negro-minstrel song could not possibly be remem-
bered by a lady as refined as his hostess, or even known to
her superior son. The conviction was intensified hy Mrs.
Brooks rising with a smileless face, slightly shedding the
possible vulgarity with a shake of her shawl, and remarking
that she would show him her son’s room, led the way
upstairs to the apartment recently vacated by the perfect
Tappington.

Preceded by the same distant flutter of unseen skirts in
the passage which he had first noticed on entering the draw-
ing-room, and which evidently did not proceed from his
companion, whose self-composed cerements would have re-
pressed any such indecorous agitation, Mr. Bly stepped
timidly into the room. It was a very pretty apartment,
suggesting the same touches of tasteful refinement in its
A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL 421

furniture and appointments, and withal so feminine in its
neatness and regularity, that, conscious of his frontier
habits and experience, he felt at once repulsively incongru-
ous. “T cannot expect, Mr. Bly,” said Mrs. Brooks re-
signedly, “that you can share my son’s extreme sensitive-
ness to disorder and irregularity; but I must beg you to
avoid as much as possible disturbing the arrangement of the
bookshelves, which, you observe, comprise his books cf
serious reference, the Biblical commentaries, and the ser.
mons which were his habitual study. I must beg you to
exercise the same care in reference to the valuable offerings
from his Sabbath-school scholars which are upon the man-
tel. The embroidered book-marker, the gift of the young
ladies of his Bible class in Dr. Stout’s church, is also, you
perceive, kept for ornament and affectionate remembrance.
The harmonium —even if you are not yourself given to
sacred song —I trust you will not find in your way, nor
object to my daughter continuing her practice during your
daily absence. Thank you. The door you are looking at
leads by a flight of steps to the side street.”

“A very convenient arrangement,” said Bly hopefully,
who saw a chance for an occasional unostentatious escape
from a too protracted contemplation of Tappington’s per-
fections. ‘I mean,” he added hurriedly, ‘to avoid dis-
turbing you at night.”

“T believe my son had neither the necessity nor desire to
use it for that purpose,” returned Mrs. Brooks severely ;
“although he found it sometimes a convenient short cut to
church on Sabbath when he was late.”

Bly, who in his boyish sensitiveness to external impres-
sions had by this time concluded that a life divided be-
tween the past perfections of Tappington and the present
renunciations of Mrs. Brooks would be intolerable, and was
again abstractedly inventing some delicate excuse for with-
drawing without committing himself further, was here sud
422 A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL

denly attracted by a repetition of the rustling of the unseen
skirt. This time it was nearer, and this time it seemed to
strike even Mrs. Brooks’s remote preoccupation. ‘My
daughter, who is deeply devoted to her brother,” she said,
slightly raising her voice, ‘‘ will take upon herself the care
of looking after Tappington’s precious mementos, and spare
you the trouble. Cherry, dear! this way. This is the
young gentleman spoken of by Mr. Carstone, your papa’s
friend. My daughter Cherubina, Mr. Bly.”

The fair owner of the rustling skirt, which turned out to
be a pretty French print, had appeared at the doorway.
She was a tall, slim blonde, with a shy, startled manner,
as of a penitent nun who was suffering for some conventual
transgression —a resemblance that was heightened by her
short-cut hair, that might have been cropped as if for pun-
ishment. A certain likeness to her mother suggested that
she was qualifying for that saint’s ascetic shawl — sub-
ject, however, to rebellious intervals, indicated in the oc-
casional sidelong fires of her gray eyes. Yet the vague
impression that she knew more of the world than her
mother, and that she did not look at all as if her name
was Cherubina, struck Bly in the same momentary glance.

“Mr. Bly is naturally pleased with what he has seen of
our dear Tappington’s appointments; and as I gather from
Mr. Carstone’s letter that he is anxious to enter at once
and make the most of the dear boy’s absence, you will see,
my dear Cherry, that Ellen has everything ready for him?”

Before the unfortunate Bly could explain or protest the
young girl lifted her gray eyes to his. Whether she had
perceived and understood his perplexity he could not tell;
but the swift shy glance was at once appealing, assuring,
and intelligent. She was certainly unlike her mother and
brother. Acting with his usual impulsiveness, he forgot
his previous resolution, and before he left had engaged to
begin his occupation of the room on the following day.
A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL 423

The next afternoon found him instalied. Yet, after he
had unpacked his modest possessions and put them away,
after he had placed his few books on the shelves, where
they looked glaringly trivial and frivolous beside the late
tenant’s severe studies; after he had set out his scanty
treasures in the way of photographs and some curious me-
mentos of his wandering life, and then quickly put them
back again with a sudden angry pride at exposing them to
the unsympathetic incongruity of the other ornaments, he,
nevertheless, felt ill at ease. He glanced in vain around
the pretty room. It was not the delicately flowered wall-
paper; it was not the white and blue muslin window-cur-
tains gracefully tied up with blue and white ribbons; it was
not the spotless bed, with its blue and white festooned
mosquito-net and flounced valances, and its medallion por-
trait of an unknown bishop at the back; it was not the few
tastefully framed engravings of certain cardinal virtues,
“The Rock of Ages,” and “The Guardian Angel;” it was
not the casts in relief of “Night” and ‘Morning;” it
was certainly not the cosy dimity-covered armchairs and
sofa, nor yet the clean-swept polished grate with its cheer-
ful fire sparkling against the chill afternoon sea-fogs with-
out; neither was it the mere feminine suggestion, for that
touched a sympathetic chord in his impulsive nature; nor
the religious and ascetic influence, for he had occupied a
monastic cell in a school of the padres at an old mission,
and slept profoundly ;—it was none of those, and yeta
part of all. Most habitations retain a cast or shell of their
previous tenant that, fitting tightly or loosely, is still able
to adjust itself to the newcomer; in most occupied apart-
ments there is still a shadowy suggestion of the owner’s in-
dividuality ; there was nothing here that fitted Bly — nor
was there either, strange to say, any evidence of the past
proprietor in this inhospitality of sensation. It did not
strike him at the time that it was this very lack of indi-
424 A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL

viduality which made it weird and unreal, that it wag
strange only because it was artificial, and that a real Tap-
pington had never inhabited it.

He walked to the window — that never-failing resource
of the unquiet mind —and looked out. He was a little
surprised to find, that, owing to the grading of the house,
the scrub-oaks and bushes of the hill were nearly on the
level of his window, as also was the adjoining side street
on which his second door actually gave. Opening this,
the sudden invasion of the sea-fog and the figure of a pe-
destrian casually passing along the disused and abandoned
pavement not a dozen feet from where he had been com-
fortably seated, presented such a striking contrast to the
studious quiet and cosiness of his secluded apartment that
he hurriedly closed the door again with a sense of indis-
creet exposure. Returning to the window, he glanced to
the left, and found that he was overlooked by the side
veranda of another villa in the rear, evidently on its way
to take position on the line of the street. Although in
actual and deliberate transit on rollers across the back yard
and still occulting a part of the view, it remained, after
the reckless fashion of the period, inhabited. Certainly,
with a door fronting a thoroughfare, and a neighbor grad-
ually approaching him, he would not feel lonely or lack
excitement,

He drew his armchair to the fire and tried to realize
the all-pervading yet evasive Tappington. There was no
portrait of him in the house, and although Mrs. Brooks
had said that he “favored” his sister, Bly had, without
knowing why, instinctively resented it. He had even
timidly asked his employer, and had received the vague
reply that he was “good looking enough,” and the practi-
cal but discomposing retort, “What do you want to know
for?” As he really did not know why, the inquiry had
dropped. He stared at the monumental crystal inkstand
A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL 425

half full of ink, yet spotless and free from stains, that
stood on the table, and tried to picture Tappington daintily
dipping into it to thank the fair donors — ‘daughters of
Rebecca.” Who were they? and what sort of man would
they naturally feel grateful to?

What was that?

He turned to the window, which had just resounded to
a slight tap.or blow, as if something soft had struck it.
With an instinctive suspicion of the propinquity of the ad-
joining street he rose, but a single glance from the window
satisfied him that no missile would have reached it from
thence. He scanned the low bushes on the level before
him; certainly no one could be hiding there. He lifted
his eyes toward the house on the left; the curtains of the
nearest window appeared to be drawn suddenly at the same
moment. Could it have come from there? Looking down
upon the window-ledge, there lay the mysterious missile —
a little misshapen ball. He opened the window and took
it up. It was a small handkerchief tied into a soft knot,
and dampened with water to give it the necessary weight
as a projectile.

Was it apparently the trick of a mischievous child? or —

But here a faint knock on the door leading into the hall
checked his inquiry. He opened it sharply in his excite-
ment, and was embarrassed to find the daughter of his
hostess standing there, shy, startled, and evidently equally
embarrassed by his abrupt response.

“Mother only wanted me to ask you if Ellen had put
everything to rights,” she said, making a step backwards.

“Oh, thank you. Perfectly,” said Herbert, with effu-
sion. ‘Nothing could be better done. In fact” —

“Youre quite sure she hasn’t forgotten anything? or
that there isn’t anything you would like changed?” she
continued, with her eyes leveled on the floor.

“Nothing, I assure you,” he said, looking at her down
426 A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL

cast lashes. As she still remained motionless, he continued
cheerfully, ‘Would you — would you — care to look round
and see?”

“No; I thank you.”

There was an awkward pause. He still continued to
hold the door open. Suddenly she moved forward with a
schoolgirl stride, entered the room, and going to the har-
monium, sat down upon the music-stool beside it, slightly
bending forward, with one long, slim, white hand. on top
of the other, resting over her crossed knees.

Herbert was a little puzzled. It was the awkward and
brusque act of a very young person, and yet nothing now
could be more gentle and self-composed than her figure
and attitude.

“Yes,” he continued, smilingly; ‘I am only afraid
that I may not be able to live quite up to the neatness and
regularity of the example I find here everywhere. You
know I am dreadfully careless and not at all orderly. I
shudder to think what may happen; but you and your
mother, Miss Brooks, I trust, will make up your minds to
overlook and forgive a good deal. I shall do my best to
be worthy of Mr. Tap — of my predecessor — but even then
I am afraid you’ll find me a great bother.”

She raised her shy eyelids. The faintest ghost of a long-
buried dimple came into her pale cheek as she said softly,
to his utter consternation: —

“Rats!”

Had she uttered an oath he could not have been more
startled than he was by this choice gem of Western saloon-
slang from the pure lips of this Evangeline - like figure
before him. He sat gazing at her with a wild hysteric
desire to laugh. She lifted her eyes again, swept him
with a slightly terrified glance, and said: —

“Tap says you all say that when any one makes-believe
politeness to you.”
A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL 427

“Oh, your brother says that, does he?” said Herbert,
laughing.

“Yes, and sometimes ‘ Old rats.’ But,” she continued
hurriedly, “he doesn’t say it; he says you all do. My
brother is very particular, and very good. Dr. Stout loves
him. He is thought very much of in all Christian circles.
That bookmark was given to him by one of his classes.”

Every trace of her dimples had vanished. She looked
so sweetly grave, and withal so maidenly, sitting there
slightly smoothing the lengths of her pink fingers, that
Herbert was somewhat embarrassed.

“But I assure you, Miss Brooks, I was not making-
believe. Iam really very careless, and everything is so
proper —I mean so neat and pretty — here, that I” —
he stopped, and observing the same backward wandering
of her eye as of a filly about to shy, quickly changed the
subject. ‘You have, or are about to have, neighbors?”
he said, glancing towards the windows as he recalled the
incident of a moment before.

“Yes; and they’re not at all nice people. They are
from Pike County, and very queer. They came across the
plains in 50. They say ‘Stranger;’ the men are vulgar,
and the girls very forward. Tap forbids my ever going to
the window and looking at them. They’re quite what
you would call * off color.’ ”

Herbert, who did not dare to say that he never would
have dreamed of using such an expression in any young
girl’s presence, was plunged in silent consternation.

“Then your brother does n’t approve of them?” he said,
at last, awkwardly.

“Oh, not at all. He even talked of having ground
glass put in all these windows, only it would make the
light bad.”

Herbert felt very embarrassed. If the mysterious missile
came from these objectionable young persons, it was evi-
428 A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILE

dently because they thought they had detected a more ac-
cessible and sympathizing individual in the stranger who
now occupied the room. He concluded he had better not
say anything about it.

Miss Brooks’s golden eyelashes were bent towards the
floor. “Do you play sacred music, Mr. Bly?” she said,
without raising them.

“T am afraid not.”

“Perhaps you know only negro-minstrel songs?”

“T am afraid — yes.”

“T know one.” The dimples faintly came back again.
“It’s called ‘The Ham-fat Man.’ Some day when mother
isn’t inI’]] play it for you.”

Then the dimples fled again, and she immediately looked
so distressed that Herbert came to her assistance.

“T suppose your brother taught you that too?”

“Oh, dear, no!” she returned, with her frightened
glance; “I only heard him say some people preferred that
kind of thing to sacred music, and one day I saw a copy
of it in a music-store window in Clay Street, and bought
it. Ohno! Tappington did n’t teach it to me.”

In the pleasant discovery that she was at times indepen-
dent of her brother’s perfections, Herbert smiled, and sym-
pathetically drew a step nearer to her. She rose at once,
somewhat primly holding back the sides of her skirt,
schoolgirl fashion, with thumb and finger, and her eyes cast
down.

“ Good-afternoon, Mr. Bly.”

“Must you go? Good-afternoon.”

She walked directly to the open door, looking very tall
and stately as she did so, but without turning towards him.
When she reached it she lifted her eyes; there was the
slightest suggestion of a return of her dimples in the re-
laxation of her grave little mouth. Then she said, ‘“ Good-
by, Mr. Bly,” and departed.
A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL 429

The skirt of her dress rustled for an instant in the pas-
sage. Herbert looked after her. ‘TI wonder if she skipped
then — she looks like a girl that might skip at such a time,”
he said to himself. ‘How very odd she is—and how
simple! But I must pull her up in that slang when I know
her better. Fancy her brother telling her that/ What a
pair they must be!” Nevertheless, when he turned back
into the room again he forbore going to the window to in-
dulge further curiosity iu regard to his wicked neighbors. A
certain new feeling of respect to his late companion — and
possibly to himself —held him in check. Much as he
resented Tappington’s perfections, he resented quite as
warmly the presumption that he was not quite as perfect,
which was implied in that mysterious overture. He
glanced at the stool on which she had been sitting with a
half-brotherly sniile, and put it reverently on one side with
a very vivid recollection of her shy maidenly figure. In
some mysterious way too the room seemed to have lost its
formal strangeness; perhaps it was the touch of individual-
ity — hers — that had been wanting? He began thought-
fully to dress himself for his regular dinner at the Poodle
Dog Restaurant, and when he left the room he turned
back to look once more at the stool where she had sat.
Even on his way to that fast and famous café of the period,
he felt, for the first time in his thoughtless but lonely life,
the gentle security of the home he had left behind him.

II

It was three or four days before he became firmly ad-
justed to his new quarters. During this time he had met
Cherry casually on the staircase, in going or coming, and
received her shy greetings; but she had not repeated her
visit, nor again alluded to it. He had spent part of a for-
mal evening in the parlor in company with a calling deacon,
who, unappalled by the Indian shawl for which the widow
430 A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL

had exchanged her household cerements on such occasions,
appeared to Herbert to have remote matrimonial designs, as
far at least as a sympathetic deprecation of the vanities of
the present, an echoing of her sighs like a modest encore, a
preternatural gentility of manner, a vague allusion to the
necessity of bearing ‘fone another’s burdens,” and an
everlasting “promise ” in store, would seem to imply. To
Herbert’s vivid imagination, a discussion on the doctrinal
points of last Sabbath’s sermon was fraught with delicate
suggestion; and an acceptance by the widow of an appoint-
ment to attend the Wednesday evening “Lectures” had all
the shy reluctant yielding of a granted rendezvous. Oddly
enough, the more formal attitude seemed to be reserved
for the young people, who, in the suggestive atmosphere of
this spiritual flirtation, alone appeared to preserve the pro-
prieties, and, to some extent, decorously chaperon their
elders. Herbert gravely turned the leaves of Cherry’s
music while she played and sang one or two discreet but
depressing songs expressive of her unalterable but proper
devotion to her mother’s clock, her father’s armchair,
and her aunt’s Bible; and Herbert joined somewhat boy-
ishly in the soul-subduing refrain. Only once he ventured
to suggest in a whisper that he would like to add her music-
stool to the adorable inventory; but he was met by such a
disturbed and terrified look that he desisted. ‘‘ Another
night of this wild and reckless dissipation will finish me,”
he said lugubriously to himself when he reached the soli-
tude of his room. ‘I wonder how many times a week I'd
have to help the girl play the spiritual gooseberry down-
stairs before we could have any fun ourselves?”

Here the sound of distant laughter, interspersed with
vivacious feminine shrieks, came through the open window.
He glanced between the curtains. His neighbor’s house
was brilliantly lit, and the shadows of a few romping fig-
ures were chasing each other across the muslin shades of
A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL 431

the windows. The objectionable young women were evi-
dently enjoying themselves. In some conditions of the
mind there is a certain exasperation in the spectacle of un-
meaning enjoyment, and he shut the window sharply. At
the same moment some one knocked at his door.

It was Miss Brooks, who had just come upstairs.

“Will you please let me have my music-stool ?”

He stared at her a moment in surprise, then recovering
himself, said, ‘‘ Yes, certainly,” and brought the stool. For
an instant he was tempted to ask why she wanted it, but
his pride forbade him.

“Thank you. Good-night.”

“ Good-night! ”

“T hope it was n’t in your way?”

“Not at all.”

“Good-night! ”

“ Good-night.”

She vanished. Herbert was perplexed. Between young
ladies whose naive exuberance impelled them to throw hand-
kerchiefs at this window and young ladies whose equally
naive modesty demanded the withdrawal from his bed-
room of a chair on which they had once sat, his lot seemed
to have fallen in a troubled locality. Yet a day or two
later he heard Cherry practicing on the harmonium as he
was ascending the stairs on his return from business; she
had departed before he entered the room, but had left the
music-stool behind her. It was not again removed.

One Sunday, the second or third of his tenancy, when
Cherry and her mother were at church, and he had finished
some work that he had brought from the bank, his former
restlessness and sense of strangeness returned. The regu-
lar afternoon fog had thickened early, and driving him back
from a cheerless, chilly ramble on the hill, had left him
still more depressed and solitary. In sheer desperation he
moved some of the furniture, and changed the disposition
432 A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL

of several smaller ornaments. Growing bolder, he even .
attacked the sacred shelf devoted to Tappington’s serious
literature and moral studies. At first glance the book of
sermons looked suspiciously fresh and new for a volume of
habitual reference, but its leaves were carefully cut, and
contained one or two bookmarks. It was only another
evidence of that perfect youth’s care and neatness. As he
was replacing it he noticed a small object folded in white
paper at the back of the shelf. To put the book back into
its former position it was necessary to take this out. He
did so, but its contents slid from his fingers and the paper
to the floor. To his utter consternation, looking down he
saw a pack of playing-cards strewn at his feet!

He hurriedly picked them up. They were worn and
slippery from use, and exhaled a faint odor of tobacco.
Had they been left there by some temporary visitor un-
known to Tappington and his family, or had they been
hastily hidden by a servant? Yet they were of a make
and texture superior to those that a servant would possess;
looking at them carefully, he recognized them to be of a
quality used by the better-class gamblers. Restoring them
carefully to their former position, he was tempted to take
out the other volumes, and was rewarded with the further
discovery of a small box of ivory counters, known as
“poker-chips.” It was really very extraordinary! It was
quite the cache of some habitual gambler. Herbert smiled
grimly at the irreverent incongruity of the hiding-place
selected by its unknown and mysterious owner, and amused
himself by fancying the horror of his sainted predecessor had
he made the discovery. He determined to replace them,
and to put some mark upon the volumes before them in order
to detect any future disturbance of them in his absence.

Ought he not to take Miss Brooks in his confidence?
Or should he say nothing about it at present, and trust to
chance to discover the sacrilegious hider? Could it pos-
A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL 433

sibly be Cherry herself, guilty of the same innocent curios-
ity that had impelled her to buy the “Ham-fat Man’?
Preposterous! Besides, the cards had been used, and she
could not play poker alone!

He watched the rolling fog extinguish the line of Rus-
sian Hill, the last bit of far perspective from his window.
He glanced at his neighbor’s veranda, already dripping
with moisture ; the windows were blank; he remembered
to have heard the girls giggling in passing down the side
street on their way to church, and had noticed from be-
hind his own curtains that one was rather pretty. This
led him to think of Cherry again, and to recall the quaint
yet melancholy grace of her figure as she sat on the stool
opposite. Why had she w’thdrawn it so abruptly; did
she consider his jesting allusion to it indecorous and pre-
suming? Had he really meant it seriously; and was he
beginning to think too much about her? Would she ever
come again? How nice it would be if she returned from
church alone early, and they could have a comfortable chat
together here! Would she sing the ‘“‘Ham-fat Man” for
him? Would the dimples come back if she did? Should
he ever know more of this quaint repressed side of her na-
ture? After all, what a dear, graceful, tantalizing, lovable
creature she was! Ought he not at all hazards try to know
her better? Might it not be here that he would find a
perfect realization of his boyish dreams, and in her all that
— what nonsense he was thinking!

Suddenly Herbert was startled by the sound of a light
but hurried foot upon the wooden outer step of his second
door, and the quick but ineffective turning of the door-
handle. He started to his feet, his mind still filled with a
vision of Cherry. Then he as suddenly remembered that
he had locked the door on going out, putting the key in
his overcoat pocket. He had returned by the front door,
and his overcoat was now hanging in the lower hall.
434 A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL

The door again rattled impetuously. Then it was sup.
plemented by a female voice in a hurried whisper: “Open
quick, can’t you? do hurry!”

He was confounded. ‘The voice was authoritative, not
unmusical; but it was not Cherry’s. Nevertheless he
salled out quickly, “‘One moment, please, and I’ll get the
key!” dashed downstairs and up again, breathlessly un-
locked the door and threw it open.

Nobody was there!

He ran out into the street. On one side it terminated
abruptly on the cliff on which his dwelling was perched;
on the other, it descended more gradually into the next
thoroughfare; but up and down the street, on either hand,
no one was to be seen. A slightly superstitious feeling for
an instant crept over him. Then he reflected that the
mysterious visitor could in the interval of his getting the
key have easily slipped down the steps of the cliff or en-
tered the shrubbery of one of the adjacent houses. But
why had she not waited? And what did she want? As
he reéntered his door he mechanically raised his eyes to the
windows of his neighbor’s. This time he certainly was
not mistaken. The two amused, mischievous faces that
suddenly disappeared behind the curtain as he looked up
showed that the incident had not been unwitnessed. Yet
it was impossible that it could have been either of them.
Their house was only accessible by a long détour. It might
have been the trick of a confederate; but the tone of half
familiarity and half entreaty in the unseen visitor’s voice
dispelled the idea of any collusion. He entered the room
and closed the door angrily. A grim smile stole over his
face as he glanced around at the dainty saintlike appoint-
ments of the absent Tappington, and thought what that ir-
reproachable young man would have said to the indecorous
intrusion, even though it had been a mistake. "Would those
shameless Pike County girls have dared to laugh at him?
A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL 435

But he was again puzzled to know why he himself
should have been selected for this singular experience.
Why was he considered fair game for these girls? And,
for the matter of that, now that he reflected upon it, why
had even this gentle, refined, and melancholy Cherry
thought it necessary to talk slang to him on their first ac-
quaintance, and offer to sing him the “Ham-fat Man”?
It was true he had been a little gay, but never dissipated.
Of course he was not a saint, like Tappington — oh, that
was it! He believed he understood it now. He was
suffering from that extravagant conception of what worldli-
ness consists of, so common to very good people with no
knowledge of the world. Compared to Tappington he was
in their eyes, of course, a rake and aroud. The explana-
tion pleased him. He would not keep it to himself. He
would gain Cherry’s confidence and enlist her sympathies.
Her gentle nature would revolt at this injustice to their
lonely lodger. She would see that there were degrees of
goodness besides her brother’s. She would perhaps sit on
that stool again and not sing the ‘“‘ Ham-fat Man.”

A day or two afterwards the opportunity seemed offered
to him. As he was coming home and ascending the long
hilly street, his eye was taken by a tall graceful figure just
preceding him. It was she. He had never before seen
her in the street and was now struck with her ladylike
bearing and the grave superiority of her perfectly simple
attire. Ina thoroughfare haunted by handsome women
and striking toilets, the refined” grace of her mourning
costume, and a certain stateliness that gave her the look
of a young widow, was a contrast that evidently attracted
others than himself. It was with an odd mingling of
pride and jealousy that he watched the admiring yet re-
spectful glances of the passers-by, some of whom turned te
look again, and one or two to retrace their steps and follow
her at a decorous distance. This caused him to quicken
436 A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL

his own pace, with a new anxiety and a remorseful sense of
wasted opportunity. What a booby he had been, not to
have made more of his contiguity to this charming girl — to
have been frightened at the naive decorum of her maid-
enly instincts! He reached her side, and raised his hat
with a trepidation at her new-found graces — with a bold-
ness that was defiant of her other admirers. She blushed
slightly.

“T thought you ’d overtake me before,” she said naively.
“T saw you ever so long ago.”

He stammered, with an equal simplicity, that he had
not dared to.

She looked a little frightened again, and then said hur-
riedly: “I only thought that I would meet you on Mont-
gomery Street, and we would walk home together. I don’t
like to go out alone, and mother cannot always go with me.
Tappington never cared to take me out—TIJ don’t know
why. I think he didn’t like the people staring and stop-
ping us. But they stare more — don’t you think ?— when
one is alone. So I thought if you were coming straight
home we might come together — unless you have something
else to do?”

Herbert impulsively reiterated his joy at meeting her,
and averred that no other engagement, either of business or
pleasure, could or would stand in his way. Looking up,
however, it was with some consternation that he saw they
were already within a block of the house.

“Suppose we take a turn around the hill and come back
by the old street down the steps?’ he suggested earnestly.

The next moment he regretted it. The frightened look
returned to her eyes; her face became melancholy and
formal again.

“No!” she said quickly. ‘That would be taking a
walk with you like these young*girls and their young men
on Saturdays. That’s what Ellen does with the butcher’s
A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL 437

boy on Sundays. Tappington often used to meet them.
Doing the ‘ Come, Philanders,’ as he says you call it.”

It struck Herbert that the didactic Tappington’s method
of inculeating a horror of slang in his sister’s breast was
open to some objection; but they were already on the
steps of their house, and he was too much mortified at the
reception of his last unhappy suggestion to make the con-
fidential disclosure he had intended, even if there had still
been time.

“There ’s mother waiting for me,” she said, after an
awkward pause, pointing to the figure of Mrs. Brooks dimly
outlined on the veranda. “I suppose she was beginning
to be worried about my being out alone. She’ll be so glad
I met you.” It didn’t appear to Herbert, however, that
Mrs. Brooks exhibited any extravagant joy over the occur-
rence, and she almost instantly retired with her daughter
into the sitting-room, linking her arm in Cherry’s, and,
as it were, empanoplying her with her own invulnerable
shawl. Herbert went to his room more dissatisfied with
himself than ever.

Two or three days clapsed without his seeing Cherry;
even the well-known rustle of her skirt in the passage was
missing. On the third evening he resolved to bear the
formal terrors of the drawing-room again, and stumbled
upon a decorous party consisting of Mrs. Brooks, the dea-
con, and the pastor’s wife— but not Cherry. It struck
him on entering that the momentary awkwardness of the
company and the formal beginning of a new topic indicated
that he had been the subject of their previous conversation.
In this idea he continued, through that vague spirit of op-
position which attacks impulsive people in such circum-
stances, to generally disagree with them on all subjects,
and to exaggerate what he chose to believe they thought
objectionable in him. He did not remain long, but learned
in that brief interval that Cherry had gone to visit a friend
438 A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL

in Contra Costa, and would be absent a fortnight; and he
was conscious that the information was conveyed to him
with a peculiar significance.

The result of which was only to intensify his interest in
the absent Cherry, and for a week to plunge him in a sea
of conflicting doubts and resolutions. At one time he
thought seriously of demanding an explanation from Mrs,
Brooks, and of confiding to her—as he had intended to
do to Cherry — his fears that his character had been misin-
terpreted, and his reasons for believing so. But here he
was met by the difficulty of formulating what he wished to
have explained, and some doubts as to whether his confi-
dences were prudent. At another time he contemplated a
serious imitation of Tappington’s perfections, a renunciation
of the world, and an entire change in his habits. He
would go regularly to church — her church, and take up
Tappington’s desolate Bible class. But here the torturing
doubt arose whether a young lady who betrayed a certain
secular curiosity, and who had evidently depended upon
her brother for a knowledge of the world, would entirely
like it. At times he thought of giving up the room and
abandoning forever this doubly dangerous proximity; but
here again he was deterred by the difficulty of giving a
satisfactory reason to his employer, who had procured it as
a favor. His passion — for such he began to fear it to be
—Jled him once to the extravagance of asking a day’s holi-
day from the bank, which he vaguely spent in the streets
of Oakland in the hope of. accidentally meeting the exiled
Cherry.

III
The fortnight slowly passed. She returned, but he did
not see her. She was always out or engaged in her room
with some female friend when Herbert was at home. This
was singular, as she had never appeared to him as a young
A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL 439

girl who was fond of visiting or had ever affected female
friendships. In fact, there was little doubt now that,
wittingly or unwittingly, she was avoiding him.

He was moodily sitting by the fire one evening, having

zturned early from dinner. In reply to his habitual but

affectedly careless inquiry, Ellen had told him that Mrs.
Brooks was confined to her room by a slight headache,
and that Miss Brooks was out. He was trying to read,
and listening to the wind that occasionally rattled the case-
ment and caused the solitary gas-lamp that was visible in
the side street to flicker and leap wildly. Suddenly he
heard the same footfall upon his outer step and a light tap
at the door. Determined this time to solve the mystery,
he sprang to his feet and ran to the door; but to his anger
and astonishment it was locked and the key. was gone.
Yet he was positive that He had not taken it out.

The tap was timidly repeated. In desperation he called
out, “Please don’t go away yet. The key is gone; but
I’ll find it ina moment.” Nevertheless he was at his
wits’ end.

There was a hesitating pause and then the sound of a
key cautiously thrust into the lock. It turned; the door
opened, and a tall figure, whose face and form were com-
pletely hidden in a veil and long gray shawl, quickly glided
into the room and closed the door behind it. Then it sud-
denly raised its arms, the shawl was parted, the veil fell
aside, and Cherry stood before him!

Her face was quite pale. Her eyes, usually downcast,
frightened, or coldly clear, were bright and beautiful with
excitement. The dimples were faintly there, although the
smile was sad and half hysterical. She.remained standing,
erect and tall, her arms dropped at her side, holding the
veil and shawl that still depended from her shoulders.

“So—I’ve caught you!” she said, with a strange
little laugh. ‘Oh yes. ‘Please don’t go away yet. I’il
440 A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL

get the key in a moment,’ ” she continued, mimicking his
recent utterance.

He could only stammer, “Miss Brooks— then it was
you?”

“Yes; and you thought it was she, didn’t you? Well,
and you’re caught! I didn’t believe it; I would n’t be-
lieve it when they said it. I determined to find it out
myself. And I have; and it’s true.”

Unable to determine whether she was serious or jesting,
and conscious only of his delight at seeing her again, he
advanced impulsively. But her expression instantly
changed: she became at once stiff and schoolgirlishly
formal, and stepped back towards the door.

‘Don’t come near me, or I’’ll go,” she said quickly, with
her hand upon the lock.

“But not before you tell me what you mean,” he said,
half laughingly, half earnestly. ‘Who is she? and what
would n’t you have believed? For upon my honor, Miss
Brooks, I don’t know what you are talking about.”

His evident frankness and truthful manner appeared to
puzzle her. “You mean to say you were expecting no
one?” she said sharply.

“‘T assure you I was not.”

“ And—and no woman was ever here —at that door?”

He hesitated. ‘Not to-night—not for a long time;
not since you returned from Oakland.”

““Then there was one?”

“T believe so.”

“You believe — you don’t know?”

“T believed it was a woman from her voice; for the door
was locked, and the key was downstairs. When I fetched it
and opened the door, she — or whoever it was — was gone.”

“And that’s why you said so imploringly, just now,
“Please don’t go away yet’? You see, I’ve caught you.
Ah! I don’t wonder you blush!”
A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL 44]

If he had, his cheeks had caught fire from her brilliant
eyes and the extravagantly affected sternness—as of a
schoolgirl monitor —in her animated face. Certainly he
had never seen such a transformation.

“Yes; but, you see, I wanted to know who the intruder
was,” he said, smiling at his own embarrassment.

“You did — well, perhaps that will tell you? It was
found under your door before I went away.” She sud-
denly produced from her pocket a folded paper and handed
it to him. It was a misspelt scrawl, and ran as fol-
lows: —

“Why are you so cruel? Why do you keep me dansing
on the stepps before them gurls at the windows? Was it
that stuck-up Saint, Miss Brooks, that you were afraid of,
my deer? Oh, you faithless trater! Wait till I ketch
you! I[’ll tear your eyes out and hern!”

It did not require great penetration for Herbert to be
instantly convinced that the writer of this vulgar epistle
and the owner of the unknown voice were two very differ-
ent individuals. The note was evidently a trick. A sus-
picion of its perpetrators flashed upon him.

“Whoever the woman was, it was not she who wrote the
note,” he said positively. ‘Somebody must have seen her
at the door. I remember now that those girls — your
neighbors — were watching me from their window when
I came out. Depend upon it, that letter comes from
them.”

Cherry’s eyes opened widely with a sudden childlike
perception, and then shyly dropped. “Yes,” she said
slowly, “they did watch you. They know it, for it was
they who made it the talk of the neighborhood, and that’s
how it came to mother’s ears.” She stopped, and with
a frightened look, stepped back towards the door again.

“Then that was why your mother ” —

Oh yes,” interrupted Cherry quickly. “That was why
442 A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL

I went over to Oakland, and why mother forbade my walk-
ing with you again, and why she had a talk with friends
about your conduct, and why she came near telling Mr.
Carstone all about it until I stopped her.” She checked
herself — he could hardly believe his eyes — the pale, nun-
like girl was absolutely blushing.

“T thank you, Miss Brooks,” he said gravely, “for your
thoughtfulness, although I hope I could have still proven
my innocence to Mr. Carstone, even if some unknown
woman tried my door by mistake, and was seen doing it,
But I am pained to think that yow could have believed me
capable of so wanton and absurd an impropriety — and such
a gross disrespect to your mother’s house.”

“But,” said Cherry, with childlike nazveté, “you know
you don’t think anything of such things, and that’s what
I told mother.”

“You told your mother that?”

“Oh yes—I told her Tappington says it’s quite com-
mon with young men. Please don’t laugh — for it’s very
dreadful. ‘Tappington didn’t laugh when he told it to me
as a warning. He was shocked.”

“But, my dear Miss Brooks ” —

“There — now you ’re angry —and that’s as bad. Are
you sure you didn’t know that woman?”

“Positive!”

“Yet you seemed very anxious just now that she should
wait till you opened the door.”

“That was perfectly natural.”

“J don’t think it was natural at all.”

“But — according to Tappington ” —

“Because my brother is very good you need not make
fun of him.”

“T assure you I have no such intention. But what more
can I say? I give you my word that I don’t know who
that unlucky woman was. No doubt she may have been
A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL 443

some nearsighted neighbor who had mistaken the house,
and I dare say was as thoroughly astonished at my voice as
I was at hers. Can I say more? Is it necessary for me
to swear that since I have been here no woman has ever
entered that door — but ” —

“But who?”

** Yourself.”

“J know what you mean,” she said hurriedly, with her
old frightened look, gliding to the outer door. “It’s
shameful what I’ve done. But I only did it because —
because I had faith in you, and didn’t believe what they
said was true.” She had already turned the lock. There
were tears in her pretty eyes.

“Stop,” said Herbert gently. He walked slowly
towards her, and within reach of her frightened figure
stopped with the timid respect of a mature and genuine
passion. ‘ You must not be seen going out of that door,”
he said gravely. ‘You must let me go first, and when
I am gone, lock the door again and go through the hall to
your own room. No one must know that I was in the
house when you came in at that door. Good-night.”

Without offering his hand he lifted his eyes to her face.
The dimples were all there—and something else. He
bowed and passed out.

Ten minutcs later he ostentatiously returned to the house
by the front door, and proceeded up the stairs to his own
room. As he cast a glance around he saw that the music-
stool had been moved before the fire, evidently with the
view of attracting his attention. Lying upon it, carefully
folded, was the veil that she had worn. There could be
no doubt that it was left there purposely. With a smile
at this strange girl’s last characteristic act of timid but com-
promising recklessness, after all his precautions, he raised
it tenderly to his lips, and then hastened to hide it from
the reach of vulgar eyes. But had Cherry known that its
444 A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL

temporary resting-place that night was under his pillow she
might have doubted his superior caution.

When he returned from the bank the next afternoon,
Cherry rapped ostentatiously at his door. “ Mother wishes
me to ask you,” she began, with a certain prim formality,
which nevertheless did not preclude dimples, ‘if you would
give us the pleasure of your company at our Church Festi-
val to-night? There will be a concert and a collation. You
could accompany us there if you cared. Our friends and
Tappington’s would be so glad to see you, and Dr. Stout
would be delighted to make your acquaintance.”

“Certainly!” said Herbert, delighted and yet astounded.
“Then,” he added in a lower voice, “your mother no longer
believes me so dreadfully culpable?”

“Oh no,” said Cherry in a hurried whisper, glancing up
and down the passage; “I’ve been talking to her about it,
and she is satisfied that it is all a jealous trick and slander
of these neighbors. Why, I told her that they had even
said that Z was that mysterious woman; that I came that
way to you because she had forbidden my seeing you
openly.”

“What! You dared say that?”

“Yes; don’t you see? Suppose they said they had
seen me coming in last night — that answers it,” she said
triumphantly.

“Oh, it does?” he said vacantly.

“Perfectly. Sc you see she’s convinced that she ought
to put you on the same footing as Tappington, before every-
body; and then there won’t be any trouble. You’ll come,
won’t you? It won’t be so very good. And then, I’ve
told mother that as there have been so many street-fights,
and so much talk about the Vigilance Committee lately, I
ought to have somebody for an escort when I am coming
home. And if you ’re known, you see, as one of us, there ’Il
be no harm in you ‘re meeting me.”
A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL 445

“Thank you,” he said, extending his hand gratefully.

Her fingers rested a moment in his. ‘‘ Where did you
put it?” she said demurely.

“It? Oh! it’s all safe,” he said quickly, but some-
what vaguely.

“But I don’t call the upper drawer of your bureau
safe,” she returned poutingly, “where everybody can go.
So you ’ll find it now inside the harmonium, on the key-
board.”

“Oh, thank you.”

“Tt’s quite natural to have left it there accidentally —
isn’t it?” she said imploringly, assisted by all her dimples.
Alas, she had forgotten that he was still holding her hand,
Consequently, she had not time to snatch it away and van-
ish, with a stifled little cry, before it had been pressed two
or three times to his lips. A little ashamed of his own
boldness, Herbert remained for a few moments in the door-
way listening, and looking uneasily down the dark passage.
Presently a slight sound came over the fanlight of Cherry’s
room. Could he believe his ears? The saintlike Cherry
—no doubt tutored, for example’s sake, by the perfect
Tappington — was softly whistling.

In this simple fashion the first pages of this little idyl
were quietly turned. The book might have been closed or
laid aside even then. But it so chanced that Cherry was
an unconscious prophet; and presently it actually became a
prudential necessity for her to have a masculine escort
when she walked out. For a growing state of lawlessness
and crime culminated one day the deep tocsin of the Vigi-
lance Committee, and at its stroke fifty thousand peaceful
men, reverting to the first principles of social safety, sprang
to arms, assembled at their quarters, or patrolled the streets.
In another hour the city of San Francisco was in the hands
of a mob — the most peaceful, orderly, well organized, and
temperate the world had ever known, and yet in concep-
446 A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL

tion as lawless, autocratic, and imperious as the conditions
it opposed.
IV

Herbert, enrolled in the same section with his em-
ployer and one or two fellow clerks, had participated in
the meetings of the committee with the light heartedness
and irresponsibility of youth, regretting only the loss of his
usual walk with Cherry and the hours that kept him from
her house. He was returning from a protracted meeting
one night, when the number of arrests and searching for
proscribed and suspected characters had been so large as to
induce fears of organized resistance and rescue, and on
reaching the foot of the hill found it already so late, that to
avoid disturbing the family he resolved to enter his room
directly by the door in the side street. On inserting his
key in the lock it met with some resisting obstacle, which,
however, yielded and apparently dropped on the mat in-
side. Opening the door and stepping into the perfectly
dark apartment, he trod upon this object, which proved to
be another key. The family must have procured it for
their convenience during his absence, and after locking the
door had carelessly left it in the lock. It was lucky that
it had yielded so readily.

The fire had gone out. He closed the door and lit the
gas, and after taking off his overcoat moved to the door
leading into the passage to listen if anybody was still stir-
ring. To his utter astonishment he found it locked. What
was more remarkable—the key was also inside! An
inexplicable feeling took possession of him. He glanced
suddenly around the room, and then his eye fell upon the
bed. Lying there, stretched at full length, was the recum-
bent figure of a man.

He was apparently in the profound sleep of utter exhaus-
tion. The attitude of his limbs and the order of his dress
— of which only his collar and cravat had been loosened —
A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL 447

showed that sleep must have overtaken him almost in-
stantly. In fact, the bed was scarcely disturbed beyond
the actual impress of his figure. He seemed to be a hand-
some, matured man of about forty; his dark straight hair
was a little thinned over the temples, although his long
heavy mustache was still youthful and virgin. His clothes,
which were elegantly cut and of finer material than that
in ordinary use, the delicacy and neatness of his linen, the
whiteness of his hands, and, more particularly, a certain
dissipated pallor of complexion and lines of recklessness
on the brow and cheek, indicated to Herbert that the man
before him was one of that desperate and suspected class —
some of whose proscribed members he had been hunting —
the professional gambler!

Possibly the magnetism of Herbert’s intent and aston-
ished gaze affected him. He moved slightly, half opened
his eyes, said “Halloo, Tap,” rubbed them again, wholly
opened them, fixed them with a lazy stare on Herbert, and
said : —

“Now, who the devil are you?”

“T think J have the right to ask that question, consid-
ering that this is my room,” said Herbert sharply.

“ Your room?”

“Yes!”

The stranger half raised himself on his elbow, glanced
round the room, settled himself slowly back on the pillows,
with his hands clasped lightly behind his head, dropped
his eyelids, smiled, and said: —

“ Rats!”

“What?” demanded Herbert, with a resentful sense of
sacrilege to Cherry’s virgin slang.

“Well, old rats then! D’ ye think I don’t know this
shebang. Look here, Johnny, what are you putting on
all this side for, eh? What’s your little game? Where’s
Tappington ? ”
448 A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL

“Tf you mean Mr. Brooks, the son of this house, who
formerly lived in this room,” replied Herbert, with a for-
mal precision intended to show a doubt of the stranger’s
knowledge of Tappington, giyou ought to know that he
has left town.”

“Left town!” echoed the stranger, raising himself again,
“Oh, I see! getting rather too warm for him here?
Humph! I ought to have thought of that. Well, you
know, he did take mighty big risks, anyway!” He was
silent a moment, with his brows knit and a rather danger-
ous expression in his handsome face. “So some d—d
hound gave him away — eh?”

“T hadn’t the pleasure of knowing Mr. Brooks except
by reputation, as the respected son of the lady upon whose
house you have just intruded,” said Herbert frigidly, yet
with a creeping consciousness of some unpleasant revelation.

The stranger stared at him for a moment, again looked
carefully round the room, and then suddenly dropped his
head back on the pillow, and with his white hands over
his eyes and mouth tried to restrain a spasm of silent
laughter. After an effort he succeeded, wiped his moist
eyes, and sat up.

“So you didn’t know Tappington, eh?” he said, lazily
buttoning his collar.

“No.”

“No more do I.”

He retied his cravat, yawned, rose, shook himself per-
fectly neat again, and going to Herbert’s dressing-table
quietly took up a brush and began to lightly brush himself,
occasionally turning to the window to glance out. Pre-
sently he turned to Herbert and said: —

Well, Johnny, what ’s your name?”

“T am Herbert Bly, of Carstone’s Bank.”

“So, and a member of this same Vigilance Committee, I
reckon,” he continued.
A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL 449

ce Yes. ”

“Well, Mr. Bly, I owe you an apology for coming here,
and some thanks for the only sleep I’ve had in forty-eight
hours. I struck this old sheb<’.g at about ten o’clock, and’
it ’s now two, so I reckon I’ve put in about four hours’
square sleep. Now, look here.” He beckoned Herbert
towards the window. ‘‘Do you see those three men stand-
ing under that gaslight? Well, they ’re part of a gang
of Vigilantes who ’ve hunted me to the hill, and are wait-
ing to see me come out of the bushes, where they reckon
I’m hiding. Go to them and say that I’m here! Tell
them you've got Gentleman George — George Dornton,
the man they ’ve been hunting for a week —in this room.
I promise you I won’t stir, nor kick up a row, when they ‘ve
come. Do it, and Carstone, if he’s a square man, will
raise your salary for it, and promote you.” He yawned
slightly, and then slowly looking around him, drew the
easy-chair towards him and dropped comfortably in it,
gazing at the astounded and motionless Herbert with a lazy
smile.

“You ’re wondering what my little game is, Johnny,
ain’t you? Well, I’ll tell you. What with being hunted
from pillar to post, putting my old pards to no end of
trouble, and then slipping up on it whenever I think I ‘ve
got a sure thing like this,” — he cast an almost affectionate
glance at the bed, —‘“‘I’ve come to the conclusion that
it’s played out, and I might as well hand in my checks,
It’s only a question of my being run out of ’Frisco,
hiding until I can slip owt myself; and I’ve reckoned {£
might as well give them the trouble and expense of trans-
portation. And if I can put a good thing in your way in
doing it — why, it will sort of make things square with you
for the fuss I’ve given you.”

Even in the stupefaction and helplessness of knowing
that the man before him was the notorious duelist and
450 A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL

gambler George Dornton, one of the first marked for de-
portation by the Vigilance Committee, Herbert recognized
all he had heard of his invincible coolness, courage, and
almost philosophic fatalism. For an instant his youth-
ful imagination checked even his indignation. When he
recovered himself he said with rising color and boyish
vehemence : —

“Whoever you may be, I am neither a police officer nor
aspy. You have no right to insult me by supposing that
I would profit by the mistake that made you my guest, or
that I would refuse you the sanctuary of the roof that cov-
ers your insult as well as your blunder.”

The stranger gazed at him with an amused expression,
and then rose and stretched out his hand.

“Shake, Mr. Bly! You’re the only man that ever
kicked George Dornton when he deserved it. | Good-
night!” He took his hat and walked to the door.

“Stop!” said Herbert impulsively; “the night is al-
ready far gone; go back and finish your sleep.”

“You mean it?”

“T do.”

The stranger turned, walked back to the bed, unfasten-
ing his coat and collar as he did so, and laid himself down
in the attitude of a moment before.

“T will call you in the morning,” continued Herbert.
“By that time,” —he hesitated, —“‘by that time your
pursuers may have given up their search. One word more.
You will be frank with me?”

Go on.”

“Tappington and you are — friends?”

“Well — yes.”

“His mother and sister know nothing of this?”

“T reckon he didn’t boast of it. J didn’t. Is that
all?” sleepily.

“Yes.”
A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL 451

“Don’t you worry about him. Good-night.”

“ Good-night. ”

But even at that moment George Dornton had dropped
off in a quiet, peaceful sleep.

Bly turned down the light, and drawing his easy-chair
to the window, dropped into it in bewildering reflection.
This then was the secret — unknown to mother and daugh-
ter — unsuspected by all! This was the double life of
Tappington, half revealed in his flirtation with the neigh-
bors, in the hidden cards behind the books, in the myste-
rious visitor — still unaccounted for —and now wholly
exploded by this sleeping confederate, for whom, somehow,
Herbert felt the greatest sympathy! What was to be
done? What should he say to Cherry — to her mother ~
to Mr. Carstone? Yet he had felt he had done right. From
time to time he turned to the motionless recumbent shadow
on the bed and listened to its slow and peaceful respira-
tion. Apart from that undefinable attraction which all
original natures have for each other, the thrice-blessed
mystery of protection of the helpless, for the first time in
his life, seemed to dawn upon him through that night.

Nevertheless, the actual dawn came slowly. Twice he
nodded and awoke quickly with a start. The third time
it was day. The street-lamps were extinguished, and with
them the moving, restless watchers seemed also to have
vanished. Suddenly a formal deliberate rapping at the
door leading to the hall startled him to his feet.

It must be Ellen. So much the better; he could
quickly get rid of her. He glanced at the bed; Dornton
slept on undisturbed. He unlocked the door cautiously,
and instinctively fell back before the erect, shawled, and
decorous figure of Mrs. Brooks. But an utterly new reso-
lution and excitement had supplanted the habitual resigna-
tion of her handsome features, and given them an angry
sparkle of expression.
452 A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL

Recollecting himself, he instantly stepped forward ints
the passage, drawing to the door behind him, as she, with
equal celerity, opposed it with her hand.

“Mr. Bly,” she said deliberately, “Ellen has just told
me that your voice has been heard in conversation with
some one in this room late last night. Up to this moment
I have foolishly allowed my daughter to persuade me that
certain infamous scandals regarding your conduct here were
false. JI must ask you as a gentleman to let me pass now
and satisfy myself.”

“But, my dear madam, one moment. Let me first ex-
plain — I beg ” — stammered Herbert, with a half-hysterical
laugh. ‘I assure you a gentleman friend ” —

But she had pushed him aside and entered precipitately.
With a quick feminine glance round the room she turned
to the bed, and then halted in overwhelming confusion.

“Tt’s a friend,” said Herbert in a hasty whisper. “A
friend of mine who returned with me late, and whom, on
account of the disturbed state of the streets, I induced to
stay here all night. He was so tired that I have not had
the heart to disturb him yet.”

“Oh, pray don’t! —I beg” — said Mrs. Brooks, with a

-certain youthful vivacity, but still gazing at the stranger’s
handsome features as she slowly retreated. “Not for
worlds! ”

Herbert was relieved; she was actually blushing.

“You see, it was quite unpremeditated, I assure you.
We came in together,” whispered Herbert, leading her
to the door, “and I” —

“Don’t believe a word of it, madam,” said a lazy voice
from the bed, as the stranger leisurely raised himself up-
right, putting the last finishing touch to his cravat as he
shook -himself neat again. “I’m an utter stranger to
him, and he knows it. He found me here, hiding from
the Vigilantes, who were chasing me on the hill. I got
A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL 453

in at that door, which happened to be unlocked. He let
me stay because he was a gentleman —and—I wasn’t. I
beg your pardon, madam, for having interrupted him be-
fore you; but it was a little rough to have him lic on my
account when he wasn’t the kind of man to lie on his own.
You ’ll forgive him —won’t you, please? — and, as I’m
taking myself off now, perhaps you ’ll overlook my intru-
sion too,”

It was impossible to convey the lazy frankness of this
speech, the charming smile with which it was accom-
panied, or the easy yet deferential manner with which, tak-
ing up his hat, he bowed to Mrs. Brooks as he advanced
toward the door.

“But,” said Mrs, Brooks, hurriedly glancing from Her.
bert to the stranger, “it must be the Vigilantes who are
now hanging about the street. Ellen saw them from her
window, and thought they were your friends, Mr. Bly.
This gentleman — your friend” — she had become a little
confused in her novel excitement — “really ought not to
go out now. It would be madness,”

“Tf you would n’t mind his remaining a little longer, it
certainly would be safer,” said Herbert, with wondering
gratitude.

“T certainly should n’t consent to his leaving my house
now,” said Mrs. Brooks, with dignity ; ‘‘and if you would n’t
mind calling Cherry here, Mr. Bly — she’s in the din-
ing-room — and then showing yourself for a moment in the
street and finding out what they wanted, it would be the
best thing to do.”

Herbert flew downstairs; in a few hurried words he
gave the same explanation to the astounded Cherry that he
had given to her mother, with the mischievous addition
that Mrs. Brooks’s unjust suspicions had precipitated her
into becoming an amicable accomplice, and then ran out
into the street. Here he ascertained from one of the Vigi-
154 A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL

lantes, whom he knew, that they were really seeking Dorn-
ton; but that, concluding that the fugitive had already es-
eaped to the wharves, they expected to withdraw their sur-
veillance at noon. Somewhat relieved, he hastened back,
to find the stranger calmly seated on the sofa in the parlor
with the same air of frank indifference, lazily relating the
incidents of his flight to the two women, who were listen-
ing with every expression of sympathy and interest. ‘‘ Poor
fellow!” said Cherry, taking the astonished Bly aside into
the hall, “‘I don’t believe he’s half as bad as they say he
is — or as even he makes himself out to be. But did you
notice mother?”

Herbert, a little dazed, and, it must be confessed, a trifle
uneasy at this ready acceptance of the stranger, abstractedly
said he had not.

“Why, it’s the most ridiculous thing. She’s actually
going round without her shawl, and doesn’t seem to know
it.”

Vv

When Herbert finally reached the bank that morning
he was still in a state of doubt and perplexity. He had
parted with his grateful visitor, whose safety in a few hours
seemed assured, but without the least further revelation or
actual allusion to anything antecedent to his selecting Tap-
pington’s room as refuge. More than that, Herbert was
convinced from his manner that he had no intention of
making a confidante of Mrs. Brooks, and this convinced him
that Dornton’s previous relations with Tappington were
not only utterly inconsistent with that young man’s deco-
rous reputation, but were unsuspected by the family. The
stranger’s familiar knowledge of the room, his mysterious
allusions to the “risks” Tappington had taken, and his
sudden silence on the discovery of Bly’s ignorance of the
whole affair — all pointed to some secret that, innocent or
not, was more or less perilous, not only to the son but to
A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL 455

the mother and sister. Of the latter’s ignorance he had
no doubt—but had he any right to enlighten them?
Admitting that Tappington had deceived them with the
others, would they thank him for opening their eyes to it?
If they had already a suspicion, would they care to Enow
that it was shared by him? Halting between his frankness
and his delicacy, the final thought that in his budding re-
lations with the daughter it might seem a cruel bid for her
confidence, or a revenge for their distrust of him, inclined
him to silence. But an unforeseen occurrence took the
matter from his hands. At noon he was told that Mr. Car-
stone wished to see him in his private room!

Satisfied that his complicity with Dornton’s escape was
discovered, the unfortunate Herbert presented himself,
pale but self-possessed, before his employer. That brief
man of business bade him be seated, and standing himself
before the fireplace, looked down curiously, but not un-
kindly, upon his employee.

“Mr. Bly, the bank does not usually interfere with the
private affairs of its employees, but for certain reasons
which I prefer to explain to you later, I must ask you-to
give me a straightforward answer to one or two questions.
I may say that they have nothing to do with your rela-
tions to the bank, which are to us perfectly satisfactory.”

More than ever convinced that Mr. Carstone was about
to speak of his visitor, Herbert signified his willingness to
reply.

“You have been seen a great deal with Miss Brooks
lately — on the street and elsewhere — acting as her escort,
and evidently on terms of intimacy. To do you both jus-
tice, neither of you seemed to have made it a secret or
avoided observation; but I must ask you directly if it is
with her mother’s permission ? ”

Considerably relieved, but wondering what was coming,
Herbert answered, with boyish frankness, that it was.
456 A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL

“‘ Are you — engaged to the young lady?”

“No, sir.”

“Are you— well, Mr. Bly — briefly, are you what is
called ‘in love’ with her?” asked the banker, with a cer-
tain brusque hurrying over of a sentiment evidently incom-
patible with their present business surroundings.

Herbert blushed. It was the first time he had heard
the question voiced, even by himself.

“T am,” he said resolutely.

* And you wish to marry her?”

“Tf I dared ask her to accept a young man with no posi-
tion as yet,” stammered Herbert.

“People don’t usually consider a young man in Car-
stone’s Bank of no position,” said the banker dryly; ‘and
I wish for your sake that were the only impediment. For
Iam compelled to reveal to you asecret.” He paused, and
folding his arms, looked fixedly down upon his clerk.
“Mr. Bly, Tappington Brooks, the brother of your sweet-
heart, was a defaulter and embezzler from this bank!”

Herbert sat dumfounded and motionless.

“Understand two things,” continued Mr. Carstone
quickly. ‘First, that no purer or better women exist than
Miss Brooks and her mother. Secondly, that they know
nothing of this, and that only myself and one other man
are in possession of the secret.”

He slightly changed his position, and went on more de-
liberately. ‘‘Six weeks ago Tappington sat in that chair
where you are sitting now, a convicted hypocrite and thief.
Luckily for him, although his guilt was plain, and the
whole secret of his double life revealed to me, a sum of
money advanced in pity by one of his gambling confeder-
ates had made his accounts good and saved him from sus-
picion in the eyes of his fellow clerks and my partners.
At first he tried to fight me on that point; then he blustered
and said his mother could have refunded the money; and
A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL 457

asked me what was a paltry five thousand dollars! I told
him, Mr. Bly, that it might be five years of his youth in
state prison; that it might be five years of sorrow and
shame for his mother and sister; that it might be an ever-
lasting stain on the name of his dead father — my friend.
He talked of killing himself: I told him he was a cowardly
fool. He asked me to give him up to the authorities: I
told him I intended to take the law in my own hands and
give him another chance; and then he broke down. I
transferred him that very day, without giving him time to
communicate with anybody, to our branch office at Port-
iand, with a letter explaining his position to our agent, and
the injunction that for six months he should be under
strict surveillance. I myself undertook to explain his sud-
den departure to Mrs. Brooks, and obliged him to write to
her from time to time.” He paused, and then continued:
“So far I believe my plan has been successful: the secret
has been kept; he has broken with the evil associates that
ruined him here — to the best of my knowledge he has had
no communication with them since; even a certain woman
here who shared his vicious hidden life has abandoned
him.”

“ Are you sure?” asked Herbert involuntarily, as he
recalled his mysterious visitor.

“T believe the Vigilance Committee has considered it
a public duty to deport her and her confederates beyond
the State,” returned Carstone dryly.

Another idea flashed upon Herbert. “And the gambler
who advanced the money to save Tappington?” he said
breathlessly.

‘Was n’t such a hound as the rest of his kind, if report
says true,” answered Carstone. ‘‘He was well known here
as George Dornton — Gentleman George —a man capable
ot better things. But he was before your time, Mr. Bly
— you don’t know him.”
458 A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL

Herbert didn’t deem it a felicitous moment to correct
his employer, and Mr. Carstone continued: “I have now
told you what I thought it was my duty to tell you. I
must leave you to judge how far it affects your relations
with Miss Brooks.”

Herbert did not hesitate. ‘‘I should be very sorry, sir,
to seem to undervalue your consideration or disregard your
warning; but I am afraid that even if you had been less
merciful to Tappington, and he were now a convicted felon,
I should change neither my feelings nor my intentions to
his sister.”

“And you would still marry her?” said Carstone
sternly; “you, an employee of the bank, would set the ex-
ample of allying yourself with one who had robbed it?”

“T—am afraid I would, sir,” said Herbert slowly.

“Even if it were a question of your remaining here?”
said Carstone grimly.

Poor Herbert already saw himself dismissed and again
taking up his weary quest for employment; but, neverthe-
less, he answered stoutly : —

“Yes, sir.”

“ And nothing will prevent you marrying Miss Brooks?”

“Nothing — save my inability to support her.”

“Then,” said Mr. Carstone, with a peculiar light in his
eyes, “it only remains for the bank to mark its opinion of
your conduct by increasing your salary to enable you to
do so. Shake hands, Mr. Bly,” he said, laughing. “TI
think you ’ll do to tie to—-and I believe the young lady
will be of the same opinion. But not a word to either her
or her mother in regard to what you have heard. And
now I may tell you something more. J am not without
hope of Tappington’s future, nor —d—n it! — without
some excuse for his fault, sir. He was artificially brought
up. When my old friend died, Mrs. Brooks, still a hand-
some woman, like all her sex wouldn’t rest until she had
A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL 459

another devotion, and wrapped herself and her children up
in the Church. Theology may be all right for grown
people, but it’s apt to make children artificial; and Tap-
pington was pious before he was fairly good. He drew on
a religious credit before he had a moral capital behind it,
He was brought up with no knowledge of the world, and
when he went into it — it captured him. I don’t say there
are not saints born into the world occasionally; but for
every one you'll tind a lot of promiscuous human nature.
My old friend Josh Brooks had a heap of it, and it would n’t
be strange if some was left in his children, and burst
through their strait-lacing in a queer way. That’s all!
Good-morning, Mr. Bly. Forget what I’ve told you for
six months, and then I shouldn’t wonder if Tappington
was on hand to give his sister away.”

Mr. Carstone’s prophecy was but half realized. At the
end of six months Herbert Bly’s discretion and devotion
were duly rewarded by Cherry’s hand. But Tappington
did not give her away. That saintly prodigal passed his
period of probation with exemplary rectitude, but, either
from a dread of old temptation or some unexplained reason,
he preferred to remain in Portland, and his fastidious nest
on Telegraph Hill knew him no more. The key of the
little door on the side street passed, naturally, into the keep-
ing of Mrs. Bly.

Whether the secret of Tappington’s double life was ever
revealed to the two women is not known to the chronicler.
Mrs. Bly is reported to have said that the climate of
Oregon was more suited to her brother’s delicate constitu-
tion than the damp fogs of San Francisco, and that his tastes
were always opposed to the mere frivolity of metropolitan
society. The only possible reason for supposing that the
mother may have become cognizant of her son’s youthful
errors was in the occasional visits to the house of the hand-
460 A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL

some George Dornton, who, in the social revolution that
followed the brief reign of the Vigilance Committee, char-
acteristically returned as a dashing stockbroker, and the
fact that Mrs. Brooks seemed to have discarded her ascetic
shawl forever. But as all this was contemporaneous with
the absurd rumor, that owing to the loneliness induced by
the marriage of her daughter she contemplated a similar
zhange in her own condition, it is deemed unworthy the
serious consideration of this veracious chronicle.