"s^ 
 
 ^m 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT 
 FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY 
 
 HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE 
 
The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924021981034 
 
CRESSY 
 
 A TREASURE OF THE 
 REDWOODS 
 
 AND OTHER TALES 
 BY 
 
 ilret ^arte 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 (Stbc BiiliEwibE fines Cflmbtib(je 
 
 1 02 1 
 
 P.M. 
 
.'^f S^€.i s / 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1S96 AND I9O3, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
 COPYRIGHT, 1900, I9OI, AND I902, BY BRET HARTE 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 , I , I :-i |/| vi ;■) 
 VI ii-)i;-!ViMU 
 
 Y VI A MIS I I 
 
CRESSY 
 
 AND OTHER TALES 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Ckesst ..,,.,. 1 
 
 A Ward of the Golden Gate . ...... ]81 
 
 The Chatelaine op Bukkt Ridge 334 
 
 a m/ecenas of the pacific sl.ope 365 
 
 Colonel Starbottle's Client 408 
 
 In a Pioneer Restaurant . . . ^ . . . 454 
 
 Johnson's "Old Woman" . . o „ , , . . 47f) 
 
CRESSY AND OTHER TALES 
 
 CEESSY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 As the master of the Indian Spring school emerged from 
 the pine woods into the little clearing before the school- 
 house, he stopped whistling, put his hat less jauntily on 
 his head, threw away some wild flowers he had gathered on 
 his way, and otherwise assumed the severe demeanor of his 
 profession and his mature age — which was at least twenty. 
 Not that he usually felt this an assumption ; it was a firm 
 conviction of his serious nature that he impressed others, 
 a,s he did himself, with the blended austerity and ennui of 
 deep and exhausted experience. 
 
 The building which was assigned to him and his flock 
 by the Board of Education of Tuolumne County, Califor- 
 nia, had been originally a church. It still bore a faded 
 odor of sanctity, mingled, however, with a later and 
 slightly alcoholic breath of political discussion, the result 
 of its weekly occupation under the authority of the Board 
 as a Tribune for the enunciation of party principles and 
 devotion to the Liberties of the People. There were a few 
 dog-eared hymn-books on the teacher's desk, and the black- 
 .toard but imperfectly hid an impassioned appeal to the cit- 
 ifc«ns of Indian Spring to " Rally " for Stebbins as Super- 
 visor. The master had been struck with the size of the 
 
2 CEESSY 
 
 black type in which this placard was printed, and with a 
 shrewd perception of its value to the round wandering eyes 
 of his smaller pupils, allowed it to remain as a pleasing ex- 
 ample of orthography. Unfortunately, although subdivided 
 and spelt by them in its separate letters with painful and 
 perfect accuracy, it was collectively known as " Wally," and 
 its general import productive of vague hilarity. 
 
 Taking a large key from his pocket, the master unlocked 
 the door and threw it open, stepping back with a certain 
 precaution begotten of his experience in once finding a 
 small but sociable rattlesnake coiled up near the threshold. 
 A slight disturbance which followed his intrusion showed 
 the value of that precaution, and the fact that the room 
 had been already used for various private and peaceful 
 gatherings of animated nature. An irregular attendance of 
 yellow-birds and squirrels dismissed themselves hurriedly 
 through the broken floor and windows, but a golden lizard, 
 stiffened suddenly into stony fright on the edge of an open 
 arithmetic, touched the heart of the master so strongly by 
 its resemblance to some kept-in and forgotten scholar who 
 had succumbed over the task he could not accomplish, that 
 he was seized with compunction. 
 
 Recovering himself, and reestablishing, as it were, the 
 decorous discipline of the room by clapping his hands and 
 saying " Sho ! " he passed up the narrow aisle of benches, 
 replacing the forgotten arithmetic, and picking up from the 
 desks here and there certain fragmentary pieces of plaster 
 and crumbling wood that had fallen from the ceiling, as 
 if this grove of Academus had been shedding its leaves 
 overnight. When he reached his own desk he lifted the 
 lid and remained for some moments motionless, gazing into 
 it. His apparent meditation however was simply the com- 
 bined reflection of his own features in a small pocket-mir- 
 ror in its recesses and a perplexing doubt in his mind 
 whether the sacrifice of his budding mustache was not 
 
CRESSY 3 
 
 essential to the professional austerity of his countenance. 
 But he was presently aware of the sound of small voices, light 
 cries, and brief laughter scattered at vague and remote dis- 
 tances from the schoolhouse — not unlike the birds and 
 squirrels he had just dispossessed. He recognized by these 
 signs that it was nine o'clock, and his scholars were assem- 
 bling. 
 
 They came in their usual desultory fashion — the fash- 
 ion of country school-children the world over — irregularly, 
 spasmodically, and always as if accidentally ; a few hand- 
 in-hand, others driven ahead of or dropped behind their 
 elders ; some in straggling groups more or less coherent and 
 at times only connected by far-off intermediate voices 
 scattered on a space of half a mile, but never quite alone ; 
 always preoccupied by something else than the actual busi- 
 ness on hand ; appearing suddenly from ditches, behind 
 trunks, and between fence-rails ; cropping up in unexpected 
 places along the road after vague and purposeless detours — 
 seemingly going anywhere and everywhere but to school ! 
 So unlooked-for, in fact, was their final arrival that the 
 master, who had a few moments before failed to descry a 
 single torn straw hat or ruined sunbonnet above his visible 
 horizon, was always startled to find them suddenly under 
 his windows, as if, like the birds, they had alighted from 
 the trees. Kor was their moral attitude towards their duty 
 any the more varied ; they always arrived as if tired and 
 reluctant, with a doubting sulkiness that perhaps afterwards 
 beamed into a charming hypocrisy, but invariably temporizing 
 with their instincts until the last moment, and only relin- 
 quishing possible truancy on the very threshold. Even 
 after they were marshaled on their usual benches they 
 gazed at each other every morning with a perfectly fresh 
 astonishment and a daily recurring enjoyment of some hid- 
 -ien joke in this tremendous rencontre. 
 
 It had been the habit of the master to utilize these pre- 
 
4 CEESSY 
 
 limmary vagrancies of his little flock by inviting theffl on 
 aissembling to recount any interesting incident of their 
 jonfney hither; or failing this, from their not infrequent shy. 
 ness in expressing what had secretly interested them, any 
 event that had occurred within their knowledge since they 
 last met. He had done this, partly to give them time to 
 recover themselves in that more formal atmosphere, and 
 partly, I fear, because, notwithstanding his conscientious 
 gravity, it greatly amused him. It also diverted them from 
 their usual round-eyed, breathless contemplation of himself 
 — a regular morning inspection which generally embraced 
 every detail of his dress and appearance, and made every 
 change or deviation the subject of whispered comment or 
 stony astonishment. He knew that they knew him more 
 thoroughly than he did himself, and shrank from the intui- 
 tive vision of these small clairvoyants. 
 
 " Well ? '* said the master gravely. 
 
 There was the usual interval of bashful hesitation, verg- 
 ing on nervous hilarity or hypocritical attention. For the 
 last six months this question by the master had been invari- 
 ably received each morning as a veiled pleasantry which 
 might lead to baleful information or conceal some query 
 out of the dreadful books before him. Yet this very ele- 
 ment of danger had its fascinations. Johnny Filgee, a small 
 boy, blushed violently, and without getting up, began hur- 
 riedly in a high key, " Tige ith got," and then suddenly 
 subsided into a whisper. 
 
 " Speak up, Johnny," said the master encouragingly. 
 
 " Please, sir, it ain't anythin' he 's Seed — nor any real 
 news," said Eupert Eilgee, his elder brother, rising with fam- 
 ily concern and frowning openly upon Johnny ; " it 's jest his 
 foolishness ; he oughter be licked." Finding himself unex- 
 pectedly on his feet, and apparently at the end of a long 
 speech, he colored also, and then said hurriedly, " Jimmy 
 Sliyder — 7ie seed suthin'. Ask hivi / " and sat down — 
 a recognized hero. 
 
CKESSY 5 
 
 Every eye, including the master's, was turned oh tfimmy 
 Snyder. But that youthful observer, instantly diving his 
 head and slioulders into his desk, remained thert gurgling 
 as if under water. Two or three nearest him endeavored 
 with some struggling to bring him to an intelligible surface 
 ■ again. The master waited patiently. Johnny Filgee took 
 advantage of the diversion to begin again in a high key, 
 " Tige ith got thix," and subsided. 
 
 " Come, Jimmy," said the master, with a touch of per-, 
 emptoriness. Thus adjured, Jimmy Snyder came up glow- 
 ingly, and bristling with full stops and exclamation points. 
 " Seed a black b'ar comin' outer Daves' woods," he said 
 excitedly. " ISTigh to me ez you be. 'N big ez a hoos ; 'n 
 snarlin' ! 'n snappin' ! — like gosh ! Kem alqng — ker — 
 clump torords me. Reckoned he'd skeer me ! Did n't skeer 
 me worth a cent. I heaved a rock at him — I did now ! " 
 (in defiance of murmurs of derisive comment) — "'n he slid. 
 Ef he 'd kem up furder I 'd hev up with my slate and 
 swotted him over 'the snoot — bet your boots ! " 
 
 The master here thought fit to interfere, and gravely 
 point out that the habit of striking bears as large as a horse 
 with -a school-slate was equally dangerous to the slate 
 (which was also the property of Tuolumne County) and to 
 the striker ; and that the verb " to swot " and the noun 
 substantive " snoot " were likewise indefensible, and not 
 to be tolerated. Thus admonished, Jimmy Snyder, albeit 
 unshaken in his faith in his own courage, sat down. 
 
 A slight pause ensued. The youthful Filgee, taking 
 advantage of it, opened in a higher key, " Tige ith " — but 
 the master's attention was here diverted by the searching 
 eyes of Octavia Dean, a girl of eleven, who after the fashion 
 of her sex preferred a personal recognition of her presence 
 before she spoke. Succeeding in catching his eye, she threw 
 back her long hair from her shoulders with an easy habitual 
 gesture, rose, and, with a faint accession of color, said : — 
 
O CEESSY 
 
 " Cressy McKinstry came home from Sacramento. Mrs. 
 McKinstry told mother she 's comin' back here to school." 
 
 The master looked up with an alacrity perhaps inconsist- 
 ent with his cynical austerity. Seeing the young girl 
 curiously watching him with an expectant smile, he re- 
 gretted it. Cressy McKinstry, who was sixteen years old, 
 had been one of the pupils he had found at the school when 
 he first came. But as he had also found that she was there 
 in the extraordinary attitude of being "engaged" to one 
 Seth Davis, a fellow pupil of nineteen, and as most of the 
 courtship was carried on freely and unceremoniously during 
 school hours with the full permission of the master's prede- 
 cessor, the master had been obliged to point out to the 
 parents of the devoted couple the embarrassing effects of 
 this association on the discipline of the school. The result 
 had been the withdravral of the lovers, and possibly the 
 good will of the parents. The return of the young lady 
 was consequently a matter of some significance. Had the 
 master's protest been accepted, or had the engagement 
 itself been broken off ? Either was not improbable. His 
 momentary loss of attention was Johnny Klgee's great 
 gain. 
 
 "Tige," said Johnny, with sudden and alarming dis- 
 tinctness, " ith got thix pupths — mothly yaller." 
 
 In the laugh which followed this long withheld announce- 
 ment of an increase in the family of Johnny's yellow and 
 disreputable setter " Tiger," who usually accompanied him 
 to school and howled outside, the master joined with 
 marked distinctness. Then he said, with equally marked 
 severity, " Books ! " The little levee was ended, and 
 school began. 
 
 It continued for two hours with short sighs, corrugations 
 of small foreheads, the complaining cries and scratchings of 
 slate pencils over slates, and other signs of minor anguish 
 among the more youthful of the flock ; and with more or less 
 
ORESSY 7 
 
 ■whisperings, movements of the lips, and unconscious solilo- 
 quy among the older pupils. The master moved slowly up 
 and down the aisle with a word of encouragement or expla- 
 nation here and there, stopping with his hands behind him 
 to gaze abstractedly out of the windows to the wondering 
 envy of the little ones. A faint hum, as of invisible insects, 
 gradually pervaded the school ; the more persistent droning 
 of a large bee had become dangerously soporific. The hot 
 breath of the pines without had invaded the doors and 
 windows ; the warped shingles and weather-boarding at 
 times creaked and snapped under the rays of the vertical 
 and unclouded sun. A gentle perspiration broke out like a 
 mild epidemic in the infant class ; little curls became damp, 
 brief lashes limp, round eyes moist, and small eyelids 
 heavy. The master himself started, and awoke out of a 
 perilous dream of other eyes and hair to collect himself 
 severely. For the irresolute, half-embarrassed, half-lazy 
 figure of a man had halted doubtingly before the porch and 
 open door. Luckily the children, who were facing the 
 master with their backs to the entrance, did not see it. 
 
 Yet the figure was neither alarming nor unfamiliar. The 
 master at once recognized it as Ben Dabney, otherwise known 
 as " Uncle Ben," a good-humored but not over-bright miner, 
 who occupied a small cabin on an unambitious claim in the 
 outskirts of Indian Spring. His avuncular title was evi- 
 dently only an ironical tribute to his amiable incompetency 
 and heavy good nature, for he was still a young man with 
 no family ties, and by reason of his singular shyness not 
 even a visitor in the few families of the neighborhood. As 
 the master looked up, he had an irritating recollection that 
 Ben had been already haunting him for the last two days, 
 alternately appearing and disappearing in his path to and 
 from school as a more than usually reserved and bashful 
 ghost. This, to the master's cynical mind, clearly indicated 
 that, like most ghosts, he had something of essentially seU 
 
8 OEESSY 
 
 fish import to communicate. Catching the apparition's half- 
 appealing eye, he proceeded to exorcise it -svith a portentous 
 frown and shake of the head, that caused it to timidly -^vane 
 and fall away from the porch, only however to reappear and 
 wax larger a few minutes later at one of the side windows. 
 The infant class hailing his appearance as a heaven-sent 
 hoon, the master was obliged to walk to the door and com- 
 mand him sternly away, when, retreating to the fence, he 
 mounted the uppermost rail, and drawing a knife from his 
 pocket, cut a long splinter from the rail, and began to whit- 
 tle it in patient and meditative silence. Bat when recess 
 was declared, and the relieved feelings of the. little flock had 
 vent in the clearing around the schoolbouse, the few who 
 rushed to the spot found that Uncle Ben had already dis- 
 appeared. Whether the appearance of the children was too 
 inconsistent with his ghostly mission, or whether his heart 
 failed him at the last moment, the master could not deter- 
 mine. Yet, distasteful as the impending interview promised 
 to be, the master was vaguely and irritatingly disappointed. 
 
 A few hours later, when school was being dismissed, the 
 master found Octavia Dean lingering near his desk. Look- 
 ing into the girl's mischievous eyes, he good humoredly 
 answered their expectation by referring to her morning's 
 news. " I thought Miss McKinstry had been married by 
 this time," he said carelessly. 
 
 Octavia, swinging her satchel like a censer, as if she were 
 performing some act of thurification over her completed 
 tasks, replied demurely, " Oh no ! dear no ! — not that." 
 
 " So it would seem," said the master. 
 
 " I reckon she never kalkilated to, either," continued 
 Octavia, slyly looking up from the corner of her lashes. 
 
 " Indeed ! " 
 
 "No — she was just funning with Seth Davis — that's 
 all." 
 
 " Funning with him ? " 
 
CEESSY 9 
 
 " Yes, sir. Kinder foolin' him, you know." 
 
 " Kinder foolin' him ! " 
 
 For an instant the master felt it his professional duty to 
 protest against this most unmaideniy and frivolous treatment 
 of the matrimonial engagement, but a second glance at the 
 significant face of his youthful auditor made him conclude 
 that her instinctive knowledge of her own sex could be 
 better trusted than his imperfect theories. Pie turned to- 
 wards his desk without speaking. Octavia gave an extra 
 swing to her satchel, tossing it over her shoulder with a 
 certain small eoquettishness and moved towards the door. 
 As she did so the infant Tilgee from the safe vantage of 
 the porch where he had lingered was suddenly impelled to 
 a crowning audacity ! As if struck with an original idea, 
 but apparently addressing himself to space, he cried out, 
 " Crethy M'Kinthry likth teacher," and instantly vanished. 
 • Putting these incidents sternly aside, the master addressed 
 himself to the task of setting a few copies for the next day 
 as the voices of his departing flock faded from the porch. 
 Presently a silence fell upon the little schoolhouse. Through 
 the open door a cool, restful breath stole gently as if nature 
 were again stealthily taking possession of her own. A 
 squirrel boldly came across the porch, a few twittering birds 
 charging in stopped, beat the air hesitatingly for a momeut 
 with their wings, and fell back with bashfully protesting 
 breasts aslant against the open door and the unlooked-for 
 spectacle of the silent occupant. Then there was another 
 movement of intrusion, but this time human, and the mas- 
 ter looked up angrily to behold Uncle Ben. 
 
 He entered with a slow exasperating step, lifting his 
 large boots very high and putting them down again softly 
 as if he were afraid of some insecurity in the floor, or fig- 
 uratively recognized the fact that the pathways of knowledge 
 were thorny and difficult. Reaching the master's desk and 
 the ministering presence above it, he stopped awkwardly^ 
 
10 CEESSY 
 
 and with the rim of his soft felt hat endeavored to wipe 
 from his face the meek smile it had worn when he entered. 
 It chanced also that he had halted before the minute 
 stool of the infant Filgee, and his large figure instantly as- 
 sumed such Brobdingnagian proportions in contrast that he 
 became more embarrassed than ever. The master made no 
 attempt to relieve him, but regarded him vrith cold interro- 
 gation. 
 
 "I reckoned," he began, leaning one hand on the mas- 
 ter's desk with affected ease, as he dusted his leg with his 
 hat with the other, — "I reckoned — that is — I allowed — 
 I orter say — that I 'd find ye alone at this time. Ye gin- 
 'rally are, ye know. It 's a nice, soothin', restful, stoodious 
 time, when a man kin, so to speak, run back on his eddica- 
 tion and think of all he ever knowed. Ye 're jist like me, 
 and ye see I sorter spotted your ways to onct." 
 
 " Then why did you come here this morning and disturb 
 the school ? " demanded the master sharply. 
 
 " That 's so, I sorter slipped up thar, did n't I ? " said 
 Uncle Ben, with a smile of rueful assent. " You see, I 
 did n't allow to cortie in then, but on'y to hang round a 
 leetle and kinder get used to it, and it to me." 
 
 " Used to what ? " said the master impatiently, albeit 
 with a slight softening at his intruder's penitent expres- 
 sion. 
 
 Uncle Ben did not reply immediately, but looked around 
 as if for a seat, tried one or two benches and a desk with 
 his large hand as if testing their security, and finally aban- 
 doning the idea as dangerous, seated himself on the raised 
 platform beside the master's chair, having previously dusted 
 it with the flap of his hat. Finding, however, that the at- 
 titude was not conducive to explanation, he presently rose 
 again, and picking up one of the school-books from the mas- 
 ter's desk eyed it unskillfully upside down, and then said 
 hesitatingly ; — 
 
CRESS Y 11 
 
 " I reckon ye ain't usin' Dobell's 'Eithmetic here ? " 
 
 " No," said the master. 
 
 " That 's bad. 'Pears to be played out — that Dobell 
 feller. I was brought up on Dobell. And Parsings' Gram- 
 mar ? Ye don't seem to be a-using Parsings' Grammar 
 either ? " 
 
 " No," said the master, relenting still more as he glanced 
 at Uncle Ben's perplexed face with a faint smile. 
 
 " And I reckon you 'd be saying the same of Jones' 
 'Stronomy and Algebry ? Things hev changed. You 've 
 got all the new style here," he continued, with affected care- 
 lessness, but studiously avoiding the master's eye. " For a 
 man ez wos bro.ught up on Parsings, Dobell, and Jones, 
 thar don't appear to be much show nowadays." 
 
 The master did not reply. Observing several shades of 
 color chase each other on Uncle Ben's face, he bent his own 
 gravely over his books. The act appeared to relieve his 
 companion, who with his eyes still turned towards the win- 
 dow went on : — 
 
 " Ef you 'd had them books — which you have n't — I 
 had it in my mind to ask you suthin'. I had an idea of — 
 of — sort of reviewing my eddication. Kinder going over 
 the old books agin — jist to pass the time. Sorter running 
 in yer arter school hours and doin' a little practicin', eh ? 
 You looking on me as an extry scholar — and I payin' ye 
 as sich — but keepin' it 'twixt ourselves, you know — just 
 for a pastime, eh ? " — 
 
 As the master smilingly raised his head, he became sud- 
 denly and ostentatiously attracted to the window. 
 
 " Them jay-birds out there is mighty peart, coming right 
 up to the schoolhouse ! I reckon they think it sort o' rest>- 
 ful too." 
 
 " But if you really mean it, could n't you use these books, 
 Uncle Ben ? " said the master cheerfully. " I dare say 
 there 's little difference — the principle is the same, you 
 know." 
 
12 CEESSY 
 
 Upnle Ben's face, which had suddenly brightened, as 
 suddenly fell. He took the hook from the master's hand 
 without meeting his eyes, held it at arm's length, turned it 
 over, and then laid it softly down upon the desk as if it were 
 some excessively fragile article. " Certingly," he mur- 
 mured, with assumed reflective ease. " Certingly. The 
 principle 's all there." Nevertheless, he was quite breathless, 
 and a few heads of perspiration stood out upon his smooth, 
 blank forehead. 
 
 " And as to writing, for instance," continued the master 
 with increasing heartiness as he took notice of these phe- 
 nomena, " you know any copy-hook will do." 
 
 He handed his pen carelessly to Uncle Ben. The large 
 hand that took it timidly not only trembled, but grasped it 
 with such fatal and hopeless unfamiliarity that the master 
 was fain to walk to the window and observe the birds also. 
 
 "They're mighty bold — theYn jays," said Uncle Ben, 
 laying down the pen with scrupulous exactitude beside the 
 book, and gazing at his fingers as if he had achieved a 
 miracle of delicate manipulation. " They don't seem to be 
 afeard of nothing, do they ? " 
 
 There was another pause. The master suddenly turned 
 from the window. " I tell you what, Uncle Ben," he 
 said, with prompt decision and unshaken gravity, " the only 
 thing for you to do is to just throw over Dobell and Par- 
 sons and Jones and the old quill pen that I see you 're 
 accustomed to, and start in fresh as if you'd never known 
 them. Forget 'em all, you know. It will be mighty hard 
 of course to do that," he continued, looking out of the win- 
 dow, " but you must do it." 
 
 He turned back, the brightness that transfigured Uncle 
 Ben's face at that moment brought a slight moisture into 
 his own eyes. The humble seeker of knowledge said hur- 
 riedly that he would try. 
 
 "And begin again at the beginning," continued the 
 
CEESSY 13 
 
 master cheerfully. "Exactly like one Of those — in fact, 
 as if you really were a child again." 
 
 " That 's so," said Uncle Ben, ruhhing his hands de- 
 lightedly, " that 's me ! Why, that 's jest what I was 
 sayin' to Rupe " — 
 
 "Then you've already heen talking about it?" inter- 
 cepted the master in some surprise. " I thought you wanted 
 it kept secret ? " 
 
 "Well, yes," responded Uncle Ben dubiously. "But 
 you see I sorter agreed with Rupe Filgee that if you took 
 to my ideas and did n't object, I 'd give him two bits ' every 
 time he 'd kem here and help me of an arternoon when you 
 was away and kinder stand guard around the schoolhouse, 
 you know, so as to keep the fellows off. And Rupe's 
 mighty sharp for a boy, ye know." 
 
 The master reflected a moment and concluded that Uncle 
 Ben was probably right. Rupert Filgree, who was a hand- 
 some boy of fourteen, was also a strongly original character 
 whose youthful cynicism and blunt, honest temper had 
 always attracted him. He was a fair scholar, with a pos- 
 sibility of being a better one, and the proposed arrangement 
 with Uncle Ben would not interfere with the discipline 
 of school hours and might help them both. Nevertheless, 
 he asked good humoredlj', " But could n't you do this more 
 securely and easily in your own house ? I might lend you 
 the books, you know, and come to you twice a week." 
 
 Uncle Ben's radiant face suddenly clouded. " It would n't 
 be exactly the same kind o' game to me an' Rupe," he said 
 hesitatingly. " You see, thar 's the idea o' the schoolhouse, 
 ye know, and the restfulness and the quiet, and the gen'ral 
 air o' study. And the boys around town ez would n't think 
 nothin' o' traipsin' into my cabin if they spotted what I 
 was up to thar, would never dream o' hunting me here." 
 
 "Very well," said the master, "let it be here then." 
 1 Two bits, i. e., twenty-flve cents. 
 
14 CRESSY 
 
 Observing that his companion seemed to be struggling with 
 fin inarticulate gratitude and an apparently inextricable 
 buckskin purse in his pocket, he added quietly, " I '11 set 
 you a few copies to commence with," and began to lay out 
 a few unfinished examples of Master Johnny Klgee's scho- 
 lastic achievements. 
 
 " After thanking you, Mr. Ford," said Uncle Ben faintly, 
 " ef you '11 jest kinder signify, you know, what you con- 
 sider a fair " — 
 
 Mr. Ford turned quickly and dexterously offered his hand 
 to his companion in such a manner that he was obliged to 
 withdraw his own from his pocket to grasp it in return. 
 ''You're very welcome," said the master, "and as I can 
 only permit this sort of thing gratuitously, you'd better 
 not let me know that you propose giving Anything even 
 to Rupert." He shook Uncle Ben'.s perplexed hand again, 
 briefly explained what he had to do, and saying that he 
 would now leave him alone a few minutes, he took his hat 
 and walked towards the door. 
 
 " Then you reckon," said Uncle Ben slowly, regarding 
 the work before him, " that I 'd better jest chuck thc"j 
 Dobell fellers overboard?" 
 
 " I certainly should," responded the master, with infinite 
 gravity. 
 
 " And sorter waltz in fresh, like one o' them children ? " 
 
 " Like a child," nodded the master as he left the porch. 
 
 A few moments later, as he was finishing his cigar in the 
 clearing, he paused to glance in at the schoolroom window. 
 Uncle Ben, stripped of his coat and waistcoat, with his shirt- 
 sleeves rolled up on his powerful arms, had evidently cast 
 Dobell and all misleading extraneous aid aside, and with the 
 perspiration standing out on his foolish forehead, and his 
 perplexed face close to the master's desk, was painfully 
 groping along towards the light in the tottering and devious 
 tracks of Master Johnny Filgee, like a very child indeed J 
 
CHAPTEE II 
 
 As tbt children were slowly straggling to their places the 
 next morning, the master waited for an opportunity to speak 
 to Enpert. That beautiful but scarcely amiable youth was, 
 as usual, surrounded and impeded by a group of his small 
 female admirers, for whom, it is but just to add, he had a 
 supreme contempt. Possibly it was this healthy quality 
 that inclined the master towards him, and it was conse- 
 quently with some satisfaction that he overheard fragments 
 of his openly disparaging comments upon his worshipers. 
 
 " There ! " to Clarinda Jones, " don't flop ! And don't 
 you," to Octavia Dean, " go on breathir.g over my head like 
 that. If there 's anything I hate it 's having a girl breath- 
 ing round me. Yes, you were ! I felt it in my hair. 
 And you too — you 're always snoopin' and snoodgin'. 
 Oh yes, you want to know ivhy I 've got an extry copy- 
 liook and another 'Rithmetic, Miss Curiosity. Well, what 
 would you give to know ? Want to see if they 're pretty " 
 (with infinite scorn at the adjective). " No, they ain't 
 pretty. That's all you girls think about — v/hsit' a pretty 
 and what 's curious ! Quit now ! Come ! Don't ye see 
 teacher lookin' at you ? Ain't you ashamed ? " 
 
 He caught the master's beckoning eye and came forward, 
 slightly abashed, with a flush of irritation still on his hand- 
 some face, and his chestnut curls slightly rumpled. One 
 which Octavia had covertly accented by twisting round hei 
 forefinger, stood up like a crest on his head. 
 
 " I 've told Uncle Ben that you might help him here 
 after school hours," said the master, taking him aside. 
 
16 CEESSY 
 
 " You may therefore omit your writing exercise in the morn- 
 ing and do it in the afternoon." 
 
 The boy's dark eyes sparkled. " And if it would be all 
 the same to you, sir," he added earnestly, " you might sorter 
 give out in school that I was to be kept in." 
 
 " I 'm afraid that would hardly do," said the master, 
 much amused. " But why ? " 
 
 Rupert's color deepened. " So ez to keep them darned 
 girls from foolin' round me and followin' me back here." 
 
 '.' We will attend to that," said the master, smiling ; a 
 moment after he added more seriously, " I suppose your 
 father knows that you are to receive money for this ? And 
 he does n't object ? " 
 
 " He ! Oh no ! " returned Eupert, with a slight look of 
 astonishment, and the same general suggestion of patroniz- 
 ing his progenitor that he had previously shown to his 
 younger brother. " You need n't mind him." In reality 
 Filgee pere, a widower of two years' standing, had tacitly 
 allowed the discipline of his family to devolve upon Eupert. 
 Eemembering this, the master could only say, "Very well," 
 and good naturedly dismiss the pupil to his seat and the 
 subject from his mind. The last laggard had just slipped 
 in, the master had glanced over the occupied benches with 
 his hand upon his warning bell, when there was a quick 
 step on the gravel, a flutter of skirts like the sound of 
 alighting birds, and a young woman lightly entered. 
 
 In the rounded, untouched, and untroubled freshness of 
 her cheek and chin, and the forward droop of her slender 
 neck, she appeared a girl of fifteen ; in her developed figure 
 and the rtiaturer drapery of her full skirts she seemed a 
 woman ; in her combination of naive recklessness and per- 
 fect understanding of her person she was both. In spite of 
 a few school-hooks that jauntily swung from a strap in her 
 gloved hand, she bore no resemblance to a pupil ; in her 
 pretty gown of dotted muslin with bows of blue ribbon on 
 
CRESSY 17 
 
 tlie skirt and corsage, and a cluster of roses in her belt, she 
 was as inconsistent and incongruous to the others as a fash' 
 ion-plate would have been in the dry and dog-eared pages 
 before them. Yet she carried it off with a demure mingling 
 of the naivete of youth and the aplomb of a woman, and as 
 she sw3pt down the narrow aisle, burying a few small won- 
 dering heads in the overflow of her flounces, there was no 
 doubt of her reception in the arch smile that dimpled her 
 cheek. Dropping a half curtsy to the master, the only 
 suggestion of her equality with the others, she took her 
 place at one of the larger desks, and resting her elbow on 
 the lid began to quietly remove her gloves. It was Cressy 
 McKinstry. 
 
 Irritated and disturbed at the girl's unceremonious en- 
 trance, the master for the moment recognized her salutation 
 coldly, and affected to ignore her elaborate appearance. The 
 situation was embarrassing. He could not decline to receive 
 her as she was no longer accompanied by her lover, nor 
 could he plead entire ignorance of her broken engagement ; 
 ■while to point out the glaring inappropriateness of costume 
 would be a fresh interference he knew Indian Spring would 
 scarcely tolerate. He could only accept such explanation 
 as she might choose to give. He rang his bell as much to 
 avert the directed eyes of the children as to bring the scene 
 to a climax. 
 
 She had removed her gloves and was standing up. 
 
 " I reckon I can go on where I left off? " she said lazily, 
 pointing to the books she had brought with her. 
 
 " For the present," said the master dryly. 
 
 The first class was called. Later, when his duty brought 
 him to her side, he was surprised to find that she was evi- 
 dently already prepared with consecutive lessons, as if she 
 were serenely unconscious of any doubt of her return, and 
 as coolly as if she had only left school the day before. 
 Her studies were still quite elementary, for Cressy McKiiX' 
 
18 CKESSY 
 
 stry had never been a brilliant scholar, but he perceived, 
 with a cynical doubt of its permanency, that she had be- 
 stowed unusual care upon her present performance. There 
 was moreover a certain defiance in it, as if she had resolved 
 to stop any objection to her return on the score of deficien- 
 cies. He was obliged in self-defense to take particular note 
 of some rings she wore, and a large bracelet that ostenta- 
 tiously glittered on her white arm — which had already 
 attracted the attention of her companions, and prompted the 
 audible comment from Johnny Filgee that it was " truly 
 gold." Without meeting her eyes he contented himself 
 with severely restraining the glances of the children that 
 wandered in her direction. She had never been quite pop- 
 ular with the school in her previous role of fiancee, and 
 only Octavia Dean and one or two older girls appreciated 
 its mysterious fascination ; while the beautiful Kupert, 
 secure .in his avowed predilection for the middle-aged wife 
 of the proprietor of the Indian Spring hotel, looked upon 
 her as a precocious chit with more than the usual propensity 
 to objectionable " breathing." Nevertheless the master was 
 ».rritatingly conscious of her presence — a presence which 
 now had all the absurdity of her ridiculous love-experiences 
 superadded to it. He tried to reason with himself that it 
 was only a phase of frontier life, which ought to have 
 amused him. But it did not. The intrusion of this pre- 
 posterous girl seemed to disarrange the discipline of his life 
 as well as of his school. The usual vague, far-off dreams 
 in which he was in the habit of indulging during school 
 hours, dreams that were perhaps superinduced by the re- 
 moteness of his retreat and a certain restful sympathy in his 
 little auditors, which had made him — the grown-up dreamer 
 — acceptable to them in his gentle understanding of their 
 needs and weaknesses, now seemed to have vanished forever. 
 At recess, Octavia Dean, who had drawn near Cressy and 
 leached up to place her arm round the older girl's waist, 
 
CEESSY 19 
 
 glanced at her ■with a patronizing smile born of some rapid 
 freemasonry, and laughingly retired with the others. The 
 master at his desk and Cressy who had halted in the aisle 
 were left alone. 
 
 " I have had no intimation yet from your father or mother 
 that you were coming back to school again," he began. 
 " But I suppose they have decided upon your return ? " 
 
 An uneasy suspicion of some arrangement with her former 
 lover had prompted the emphasis. 
 
 The young girl looked at him with languid astonishment. 
 " I reckon paw and maw ain't no objection," she said, with 
 the same easy ignoring of paternal authority that had 
 characterized Rupert Pilgee, and which seemed to be a local 
 peculiarity. " Maw did offer to come yer and see you, but 
 I told her she need n't bother." 
 
 She rested her two hands behind her on the edge of a 
 desk, and leaned against it, looking down upon the toe of 
 her smart little shoe, which was describing a small semi- 
 circle beyond the hem of her gown. Her attitude, which 
 was half defiant, half indolent, brought out the pretty curves 
 of her vraist and shoulders. The master noticed it and 
 became a trifle more austere. 
 
 " Then I am to understand that this is a permanent 
 thing ? " he asked coldly. 
 
 " What 's that ? " said Cressy interrogatively. 
 
 " Am I to understand that you intend coming regularly 
 to school ? " repeated the master curtly, " or is this merely 
 an arrangement for a few days — until " — 
 
 " Oh," said Cressy comprehendingly, lifting her unabashed 
 blue eyes to his, "you mean that. Oh, that^s broke oif. 
 Yes," she added contemptuously, making a larger semicircle 
 with her foot, " that 's over — three weeks ago." 
 
 " And Seth Davis — does he intend returning too ? " 
 
 " He ! " She broke into a light girlish laugh. " I reckon 
 not much! S'long's I'm here, at least." She had just 
 
20 CEESSY 
 
 lifted herself to a sitting posture on the desk, so that her 
 little feet swung clear of the floor in their saucy dance. 
 Suddenly she brought her heels together and alighted. " So 
 that 's all ? " she asked. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Kin I go now ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 She laid her books one on the top of the other and 
 lingered an instant. 
 
 " Been quite well ? " she asked, with indolent politeness. 
 
 " Yes — thank you." 
 
 " You 're lookin' right peart." 
 
 She walked with a Southern girl's undulating languor to 
 the door, opened it, then charged suddenly upon Octavia 
 Dean, twirled her round in a wild waltz, and bore her away ; 
 appearing a moment after on the playground demurely walk- 
 ing with her arm around her companion's waist in an osten- 
 tatious confidence at once lofty, exclusive, and exasperating 
 to the smaller children. 
 
 When school was dismissed that afternoon and the master 
 had remained to show Eupert Filgee how to prepare Uncle 
 Ben's tasks, and had given his final instructions to his 
 youthful vicegerent, that irascible Adonis unburdened him- 
 self querulously : — 
 
 "Is Cressy McKinstry comin' reg'lar, Mr. Ford? " 
 
 " She is,'' said the master dryly. After a pause he asked, 
 " Why ? " 
 
 Eupert's curls had descended on his eyebrows in heavy 
 discontent. " It 's mighty rough, jest ez a feller reckons 
 he 's got quit of her and her jackass bo', to hev her prancin' 
 back inter school agin, and rigged out like ez if she 'd been 
 to a fire in a milliner's shop." 
 
 " You should n't allow your personal dislikes, Eupert, to 
 provoke you to speak of a fellow scholar in that way — and 
 a young lady too," corrected the master dryly. 
 
CKESSY 2i 
 
 " The woods is full o' sich feller scliolars and aich young 
 ladies, if yer keer to go a-gunning for 'era," said Rupert, 
 with dark and slangy significance. " Ef I 'd known she was 
 coniin' back 'I'd" — he stopped and brought his sunburnt 
 fist against the seam of his trousers with a boyish gesture 
 — "I'd Ijev jist" — 
 
 " What ? " said the master sharply. 
 
 " I 'd hev played hookey till she left school agin ! It 
 mout n't hev bin so long, neither," he added with a myste- 
 rious chuckle. 
 
 "That will do," said the master peremptorily. " For the 
 present you '11 attend to your duty and try to make Uncle 
 Ben see you 're something more than a foolish, prejudiced 
 schoolboy, or," he added significantly, " he and I may both 
 tepent our agreement. Let me have a good account of you 
 both when I return." 
 
 He took his hat from its peg on the wall, and in obedi- 
 ence to a suddenly formed resolution left the schoolroom 
 to call upon the parents of Cressy McKinstry. He was not 
 quite certain what he should say, but, after his habit, would 
 trust to the inspiration of the moment. At the worst he 
 could resign a situation that now appeared to require more 
 tact and delicacy than seemed consistent with his position, 
 and he was obliged to confess to himself that he had lately 
 suspected that his present occupation — the temporary 
 expedient of a poor but clever young man of twenty — was 
 Scarcely bringing him nearer a realization of his daily dreams, 
 For Mr. Jack Ford was a youthful pilgrim who had sought 
 his fortune in California so lightly equipped that even in 
 the matter of kin and advisers he was deficient. That 
 prospective fortune had already eluded him in San Francisco, 
 had apparently not waited for him in Sacramento, and 
 now seefned never to have been at Indian Spring. Never- 
 theless, when he was once out of sight of the schoolhouse 
 he lit a cigar, put his hands in his pockets, and strode on 
 
22 CEESSY 
 
 with the cheerfulness of that youth to which all things are 
 possible. 
 
 The children had already dispersed as mysteriously and 
 completely as they had arrived. Between him and the 
 straggling hamlet of Indian Spring the landscape seemed to 
 be without sound or motion. The wooded upland or ridge 
 on which the schoolhouse stood, half a mile further on, be- 
 gan to slope gradually towards the river, on whose banks, 
 seen from that distance, the town appeared to have been 
 scattered irregularly or thrown together hastily, as if cast 
 ashore by some overflow — the Cosmopolitan Hotel drifting 
 into the Baptist church, and dragging in its tail of wreckage 
 two saloons and a blacksmith's shop ; while the County 
 Court-house was stranded in solitary grandeur in a waste of 
 gravel half a mile away. The intervening flat was still 
 gashed and furrowed by the remorseless engines of earlier 
 gold-seekers. 
 
 Mr. Ford was in little sympathy with this unsuccessful 
 record of frontier endeavor — the fortune he had sought did 
 not seem to lie in that direction — and his eye glanced 
 quickly beyond it to the pine-crested hills across the river, 
 whose primeval security was so near and yet so inviolable, 
 or back again to the trail he was pursuing along the ridge. 
 The latter prospect still retained its semi-savage character in 
 spite of the occasional suburban cottages of residents, and 
 the few outlying farms or ranches of the locality. The 
 grounds of the cottages were yet uncleared of underbrush ; 
 bear and catamount still prowled around the rude fences 
 of the ranches; the late alleged experience of the infant 
 Snyder was by no means improbable or unprecedented. 
 
 A light breeze was seeking the heated fiat and river, and 
 thrilling the leaves around him with the strong vitality of 
 the forest. The vibrating cross-lights and tremulous che- 
 quers of shade cast by the stirred foliage seemed to weave a 
 fantastic net around him as he walked. The quaint odors 
 
CEESSY 23 
 
 of certain woodland herbs known to his scholars, and re- 
 ligiously kept in their desks, or left like votive offerings on 
 the threshold of the schoolhouse, recalled all the primitive 
 simplicity and delicious wildness of the little temple he 
 had left. Even in the mischievous glances of evasive squir- 
 rels and the moist eyes of the contemplative rabbits there 
 were faint suggestions of some of his own truants. The 
 woods were trembling with gentle memories of the inde- 
 pendence he had always known here — of that sweet and 
 grave retreat now so ridiculously invaded. 
 
 He began to hesitate, with one of those revulsions of 
 sentiment characteristic of his nature : Why should he 
 bother himself about this girl after all ? Why not make 
 up his mind to accept her as his predecessor had done ? 
 Why was it necessary for him to find her inconsistent with 
 his ideas of duty to his little flock and his mission to them ? 
 Was he not assuming a sense of decorum that was open to 
 misconception ? The absurdity of her school costume, and 
 any responsibility it incurred, rested not with him but with 
 her parents. What right had he to point it out to them, 
 and above all how was he to do it ? He halted irresolutely 
 at what he believed was his sober second thought, but 
 which, like most reflections that take that flattering title, 
 was only a reaction as impulsive and illogical as the emo« 
 tion that preceded it. 
 
 Mr. McKinstry's " snake rail " fence was already dis- 
 cernible in the lighter opening of the woods, not far from 
 where he had halted. As he stood there in hesitation, the 
 pretty figure and bright gown of Cressy MoKinstry suddenly 
 emerged from a more secluded trail that intersected his own 
 at an acute angle a few rods ahead of him. She was not 
 alone, but was accompanied by a male figure whose arm she 
 had evidently just dislodged from her waist. He was still 
 trying to resume his lost vantage ; she was as resolutely 
 evading him with a certain nymph-like agility, while the 
 
M CRESSy 
 
 sound of her half-laughing, half-irate protest could be faintly 
 heard. Without being able to identify the face or figure of 
 her companion at that distance, he could see that it was not 
 her former betrothed, Seth Davis. 
 
 A superior smile crossed his face ; he no longer hesitated, 
 but at once resumed his former path. For some time Cressy 
 and her companion moved on quietly before him. Then on. 
 reaching the rail-fence they turned abruptly to the right, 
 Were lost for an instant in the intervening thicket, and the 
 next moment Cressy appeared alone, crossing the meadow 
 in a shorter cut towards the house, having either scaled the 
 fence or slipped through some familiar gap. Her companion 
 had disappeared. Whether they had noticed that they were 
 observed he could not determine. He kept steadily aiong 
 the trail that followed the line of fence to the lane that led 
 directly to the farm-building, and pushed open the front 
 gate as Cressy's light dress vanished round an angle at the 
 rear of the house. 
 
 The house of the McKinstrys rose, or rather stretched, it- 
 self before him, in all the lazy ungainliness of Southwestern 
 architecture. A collection of temporary makeshifts of 
 boards, of logs, of canvas, prematurely decayed, and in some 
 instances abandoned for a newer erection, or degraded to 
 mere outhouses — it presented with singular frankness the 
 nomadic and tentative disposition of its founder. It had 
 been repaired without being improved ; its additions had 
 seemed to extend its primitive ugliness over a larger space. 
 Its roofs were roughly shingled or rudely boarded and bat- 
 tened, and the rafters of some of its " lean-to's " were 
 simply covered with tarred canvas. As if to settle any 
 doubt of the impossibility of this heterogeneous mass ever 
 taking upon itself any picturesque combination, a small 
 building of corrugated iron, transported in sections from 
 some remoter locality, had been set up in its centre. The 
 •McKinstry ranch had long been an eyesore to the master •; 
 
CBKSSY 25 
 
 even that morning he had been mutely wondering from what 
 convolution of that hideous chrysalis the bright butterfly 
 Cressy had emerged. It was with a renewal of this curios- 
 ity that he had just seen her flutter back to it again. 
 
 A yellow dog, who had observed him hesitating in doubt 
 where he should enter, here yawned, rose from the sunlight 
 where he had been blinking, approached the master with 
 languid politeness, and then turned towards the iron build- 
 ing as if showing him the vi^ay. Mr. Ford followed him 
 cautiously, painfully conscious that his hypocritical canine 
 introducer was only availing himself of an opportunity 
 to gain ingress into the house, and was leading him as a 
 responsible accomplice to probable exposure and disgrace. 
 His expectation was quickly realized : a lazily querulous, 
 feminine outcry, with the words, " Yer 's that darned hound 
 agin ! " came from an adjacent room, and his exposed and 
 abashed companion swiftly retreated past him into the road 
 again. Mr. Ford found himself alone in a plainly furnished 
 sitting-room confronting the open door leading to another 
 apartment at which the figure of a woman, preceded hastily 
 by a thrown dishcloth, had just appeared. It was Mrs. 
 McKinstry ; her sleeves were rolled up over her red but 
 still shapely arms, and as she stood there wiping them on 
 her apron, with her elbows advanced, and her closed hands 
 raised alternately in the air, there was an odd pugilistic 
 suggestion in her attitude. It was not lessened on her sud- 
 den discovery of the master by her retreating backwards 
 with her hands up and her elbows still well forward as if 
 warily retiring to an imaginary " corner." 
 
 Mr. Ford at once tactfully stepped back from the door- 
 way. " I beg your pardon," he said, delicately addressing 
 the opposite wall, " but I found the door open and I fol- 
 lowed the dog." 
 
 " That 's just one of his pizenous tricks," responded Mrs. 
 McKinstry dolefully from within. " On'y last week he let 
 
26 CRESSY 
 
 in a Chinaman, and in the nat'ral hustlin' that follered 
 he managed to help himself outer the pork bar'l. There 
 ain't no shade o' cussedness that or'nary hound ain't up to." 
 Yet notwithstanding this ominous comparison she presently 
 made her appearance with her sleeves turned down, her 
 black woolen dress " tidied," and a smile of fatigued but 
 not unkindly welcome and protection on her face. Dusting 
 a chair with her apron and placing it before the master, she 
 continued maternally, " Now that you 're here, set ye right 
 down and make yourself to home. My men folks are all 
 out o' door, but some of 'em 's sure to happen in soon for 
 suthin' ; that day ain't yet created that they don't come 
 huntin' up Mammy McKinstry every five minutes for this 
 thing or that." 
 
 The glow of a certain hard pride burned through the 
 careworn languor of her brown cheek. What she had said 
 was strangely true. This rawboned woman before him, 
 although scarcely middle-aged, had for years occupied a 
 self-imposed maternal and protecting relation, not only to 
 her husband and brothers, but to the three or four men, who 
 as partners, or hired hands, lived at the ranch. An inher- 
 ited and trained sympathy with what she called her " boys " 
 and her " men folk," and their needs, had partly unsexed 
 her. She was a fair type of a class not uncommon on the 
 Southwestern frontier ; women who were ruder helpmeets 
 of their rude husbands and brothers, who had shared their 
 privations and sufferings with surly, masculine endurance, 
 rather than feminine patience ; women who had sent their 
 loved ones to hopeless adventure or terrible vendetta as a 
 matter of course, or with partisan fury ; who had devotedly 
 nursed the wounded to keep alive the feud, or had received 
 back their dead dry-eyed and revengeful. Small wonder 
 that Cressy McKinstry had developed strangely under this 
 sexless relationship. Looking at the mother, albeit not 
 without a certain respect, Mr. Ford found himself con- 
 
CRESSY 27 
 
 trasting her with the daughter's graceful femininity, and 
 ■wondering ■where in Cressy's youthful contour the possibility 
 of the grim figure before him was even now hidden. 
 
 " Hiram allowed to go over to the schoolhouse and see 
 you this mornin'," said Mrs. McKinstry, after a pause ; 
 " but I reckon ez how he had to look up stock on the river. 
 The cattle are that wild this time o' year, huntin' water, 
 and hangin' round the tides, that my men are nigh worrited 
 out o' their butes with 'em. Hank and Jim ain't been off 
 their mustangs since sun-up, and Hiram, what with par- 
 trollen' the West Boundary all night, watchin' stakes whar 
 them low down Harrisons hev been trespassin' — has n't put 
 his feet to the ground in- fourteen hours. Mebbee you 
 noticed Hiram ez you kem along ? Ef so, ye did n't remem- 
 ber what kind o' shootin' irons he had with him ? I see 
 his rifle over yon. Like ez not he 's only got his six-shooter, 
 and them Harrisons are mean enough to lay for him at 
 long range. But," she added, returning to a less important 
 topic, " I s'pose Cressy came all right." 
 
 " Yes," said the master hopelessly. 
 
 "I reckon she looked so," continued Mrs. McKinstry, 
 with tolerant abstraction. " She allowed to do herself 
 credit in one of them new store gownds that she got at Sac- 
 ramento. At least that 's what some of our men said. 
 Late years, I ain't kept tech with the fashions myself." 
 She passed her fingers explanatorily down the folds of her 
 own coarse gown, but without regret or apology. 
 
 " She seemed well prepared in her lessons," said the 
 master, abandoning for the moment that criticism of his 
 pupil's dress, which he saw was utterly futile, " but am ] 
 to understand that she is coming regularly to school — tha'o 
 she is now perfectly free to give her entire attention to her 
 studies — that — that — her — engagement is broken off? " 
 
 " Why, did n't she tell ye ? " schoed Mrs. McKinstry in 
 languid surprise. 
 
28 CKESSY 
 
 " She certainly did," said tie master, with slight embap 
 rassment, " but " — 
 
 " Ef she said so," interrupted Mrs. McKinstry abstract- 
 edly, "she oughter know, and you kin tie to what she 
 says." 
 
 " But as I 'm responsible to parents and not to scholars 
 for the discipline of my school," returned the young man, a 
 little stifHy, " I thought it my duty to bear it from you." 
 
 "That's so," said Mrs. McKinstry meditatively ; "then 
 I reckon you 'd better see Hiram. That ar' Seth Davis 
 engagement was a matter of hern and her father's, and not 
 in ray line, I s'pose that Hiram nat'rally allows to set the 
 thing square to you and inquirin' friends." 
 
 " I hope you understand," said the master, slightly re- 
 senting the classification, " that my reason for inquiring 
 about the permanency of your daughter's attendance was 
 simply because it might be necessary to arrange her studies 
 in a way more suitable to her years ; perhaps even to sug- 
 gest to you that a young ladies' seminary might be more 
 satisfactory " — 
 
 " Sartain, sartain," interrupted Mrs. McKinstry hurriedly, 
 but whether from evasion of annoying suggestion or weari- 
 ness of the topic, the master could not determine, " You 'd 
 better speak to Hiram about it. On'y," she hesitated 
 slightly, " ez he 's got now sorter set and pinted towards 
 your school, and is a trifle worrited with stock and them 
 Harrisons, ye might tech it lightly. He oughter be along 
 yer now. I can't think what keeps him." Her eye 
 wandered again with troubled preoccupation to the corner 
 where her husband's Sharps' rijEle stood. Suddenly she 
 raised her voice as if forgetful of Mr. Ford's presence. 
 
 " Oh, Cressy ! " 
 
 " Oh, maw ! " 
 
 The response came from the inner room. The next mo- 
 ment Cressy appeared at the door with an odd half-lazy dofi- 
 
CEESSY 29 
 
 ance in her manner, which the master could not under- 
 stand except upon the hypothesis that she had been listen- 
 ing. She had already changed her elaborate toilet for a 
 long, clinging, coarse blue gown, that accented the graceful 
 curves of her slight, petticoatless figure. Nodding her 
 head towards the master, she said, " Howdy ? " and turned 
 to her mother, who practically ignored their personal ac- 
 quaintance. " Cressy," she said, " dad 's gone and left 
 his Sharps' yer, d' ye mind takin' it along to meet him, 
 afore he passes the Boundary corner? Ye might tell him 
 the teacher 's yer, wantin' to see him." 
 
 " One moment," said the master, as the young girl care- 
 lessly stepped to the corner and lifted the weapon. " Let 
 me take it. It's all on my way back to school, and I '11 
 meet him." 
 
 Mrs. McKinstry looked perturbed. Cressy opened her 
 clear eyes on the master with evident surprise. " No, 
 Mr. Ford," said Mrs. McKinstry, with her former mater- 
 nal manner. " Ye 'd better not mix yourself up with these 
 yer doin 's. Ye 've no call to do it, and Cressy has ; it 's 
 all in the family. But it 's outer your line, and them 
 Harrison whelps go to your school. Fancy the teacher 
 takin' weppins betwixt and between ! " 
 
 " It 's fitter work for the teacher than for one of his 
 scholars, and a young lady at that," said Mr. Ford gravely, 
 as he took the rifle from the hands of the half-amused, half- 
 reluctant girl. " It 's quite safe with me, and I promise 
 I shall deliver it into Mr. McKinstry's hands and none 
 other." 
 
 " Perhaps it would n't be ez likely to be gin'rally no- 
 ticed ez it would if one of us carried it," murmured Mrs. 
 McKinstry in confidential abstraction, gazing at her daugh- 
 ter, sublimely unconscious of the presence of a third party. 
 
 " You 're quite right," said the master composedly, 
 throwing the rifle over his shoulder and turning toward 
 
30 CEESSY 
 
 the door. " So I '11 say good-afternoon, and try and find 
 your husband." 
 
 Mrs. McKinstry constrainedly plucked at the folds of 
 her coarse gown. " Ye '11 like a drink afore ye go," she 
 said, in an ill-concealed tone of relief. " I clean forgot my 
 manners. Cressy, fetch out that demijohn." 
 
 " Not for me, thank you," returned Mr. Ford, smiling. 
 
 " Oh, I see — you 're temperance, nat'rally," said Mrs. 
 McKinstry, with a tolerant sigh. 
 
 " Hardly that," returned the master ; " I follow no rule. 
 I drink sometimes — but not to-day." 
 
 Mrs. McKinstry's dark face contracted. "Don't you 
 see, maw," struck in Cressy quickly. "Teacher drinks 
 sometimes, but he don't use whiskey. That 's all." 
 
 Her mother's face relaxed. Cressy slipped out of the 
 door before the master, and preceded him to the gate. 
 "When she had reached it she turned and looked into his 
 face. 
 
 " What did maw say to yer about seein' me just now ? " 
 
 "I don't understand you." 
 
 " To your seein' me and Joe Masters on the trail ? " 
 
 " She said nothing." 
 
 " Humph," said Cressy meditatively. " What was it 
 you told her about it ? " 
 
 "Nothing." 
 
 " Then you did n't see us ? " 
 
 " I saw you with some one — I don't know whom." 
 
 " And you did n't tell maw ? " 
 
 " I did not. It was none of my business." 
 
 He instantly saw the utter inconsistency of this speech 
 in connection with the reason he believed he had in com- 
 ing. But it was too late to recall it, and she was looking 
 at him with a bright but singular expression. 
 
 " That Joe Masters is the conceitedest fellow goin'. 
 I told him you could see his foolishness." 
 
CRESSY 31 
 
 " Ah, indeed." 
 
 Mr. Ford pushed open the gate. As the girl still lin- 
 gered, he was obliged to hold it a moment before passing 
 through. 
 
 " Maw could n't quite hitch on to your riot drinkin'. 
 She reckons you 're like everybody else about yer. That 's 
 where she slips up on you. And everybody else, I kalki- 
 late." 
 
 " I suppose she 's somewhat anxious about your father, 
 and I dare say is expecting me to hurry," returned the 
 master pointedly. 
 
 " Ob, dad 's all right," said Cressy mischievously ; " you '11 
 come across him over yon, in the clearing. But you're 
 looking right purty with that gun. It kinder sets you off. 
 You oughter wear one." 
 
 The master smiled slightly, said " Good-by," and took 
 leave of the girl, but not of her eyes, which were still fol- 
 lowing him. Even when he had reached the end of the 
 lane and glanced back at the rambling dwelling, she was 
 still leaning on the gate with one foot on the lower rail 
 and her chin cupped in the hollow of her hand. She made 
 a slight gesture, not clearly intelligible at that distance ; 
 it might have been a mischievous imitation of the way he 
 had thrown the gun over his shoulder, it might have been 
 a wafted kiss. 
 
 The master, however, continued his way in no very self- 
 satisfied mood. Although he did not regret having taken 
 the place of Cressy as the purveyor of lethal weapons be- 
 tween the belligerent parties, he knew he was tacitly min- 
 gling in the feud between people for whom he cared little 
 or nothing. It was true that the Harrisons sent their chil- 
 dren to his school, and that in the fierce partisanship of tha 
 locality this simple courtesy was open to misconstruction. 
 But he was more uneasily conscious that this mission, so 
 far as Mrs. McKinstry was concerned, was a miserable fail- 
 
82 CEESSY 
 
 ure. The strange relations of the mother and daughter 
 perhaps explained much of the girl's conduct, but it offered 
 no hope of future amelioration. Would the father, " wor- 
 rited by stock " and boundary quarrels — a man in the habit 
 of cutting Gordian knots with a bowie-knife — prove more 
 reasonable ? Was there any nearer sympathy between 
 father and daughter ? But she had said he would meet 
 McKinstry in the clearing : she was right, for here he was, 
 coming forward at a gallop ! 
 
CHAPTEE III 
 
 When within a dozen paces of the master, MoKinstry, 
 scarcely checking his mustang, threw himself from the 
 saddle, and with a sharp cut of his riata on the animal's 
 haunches sent him still galloping towards the distant house. 
 Then, with both hands deeply thrust in the side pockets of 
 his long, loose linen coat, he slowly lounged with clanking 
 spurs towards the young man. He was thick-set, of me- 
 dium height, densely and reddishly bearded, with heavy- 
 lidded pale blue eyes that wore a look of drowsy pain, and 
 after their first wearied glance at the master seemed to rest 
 anywhere but on him. 
 
 " Your wife was sending you your rifle by Cressy," said 
 the master, " but I offered to bring it myself, as I thought 
 it scarcely a proper erraud for a young lady. Here it is. I 
 hope you did n't miss it before and don't require it now," 
 he added quietly. 
 
 Mr. McKinstry took it in one hand with an air of slightly 
 embarrassed surprise, rested it against his shoulder, and 
 then with the same hand, and without removing the other 
 from his pocket, took off his soft felt hat, showed a bullet- 
 hole in its rim, and returned lazily, " It 's about half an 
 hour late, but them Harrisons reckoned I was fixed for 'em 
 and war too narvous to draw a clear bead on me." 
 
 The moment was evidently not a felicitous one for the 
 master's purpose, but he was determined to go on. He 
 hesitated an instant, when his companion, who seemed to 
 be equally but more sluggishly embarrassed, in a moment 
 of preoccupied perplexity withdrew from his pocket his 
 
54 CRESST 
 
 right hand swathed in a blood-stained bandage, and follow. 
 ing some instinctive habit, attempted, as if reflectively, to 
 scratch his head with two stiifened fingers. 
 
 "You are hurt," said the master, genuinely shocked, 
 " and here I am detaining you." 
 
 " I had my hand up — so," explained McKinstry, with 
 heavy deliberation, " and the ball raked off my little finger 
 after it went through my hat. But that ain't what I wanted 
 to say when I stopped ye. I ain't just kam enough yet," 
 h3 apologized in the calmest manner, " and I clean forgit 
 myself," he added, with perfect self-possession. " But I was 
 kalkilatin' to ask you " — he laid his bandaged hand famil- 
 iarly on the master's shoulder — " if Cressy kem all right ? " 
 
 " Perfectly," said the master. " But sha'n't I walk on 
 home with you, and we can talk together after your wound 
 is attended to ? " 
 
 " And she looked purty ? " continued McKinstry, with- 
 out moving. 
 
 "Very." 
 
 "And you thought them new store govmds of hers right 
 peart ? " 
 
 " Yes," said the master. " Perhaps a little too fine for 
 the school, you know," he added insinuatingly, " and " — 
 
 "Not for her — not for her," interrupted McKinstry. 
 " I reckon thar 's more whar that cam from ! Ye need n't 
 fear but that she kin keep up that gait ez long ez Iliram 
 McKinstry hez the runnin' of her." 
 
 Mr. Ford gazed hopelessly at the hideous ranch in the 
 distance, at the sky, and the trail before him ; then his 
 glance fell upon the hand still upon his shoulder, and he 
 struggled with a final effort. " At another time I 'd like 
 to have a long talk with you about your daughter, Mr. 
 McKinstry." 
 
 " Talk on," said McKinstry, putting his wounded hand 
 through the master's arm. " I admire to hear you. You 're 
 that kam, it does me good." 
 
CEESSY 35 
 
 Nevertheless the master was conscious that his own arm 
 was scarcely as firm as his companion's. It was, however, 
 useless to draw back now, and with as much tact as he 
 could command he relieved his mind of its purpose. Ad- 
 dressing the obtruding bandage before him, he dwelt upon 
 Cressy's previous attitude in the school, the danger of any 
 relapse, the necessity of her having a more clearly defined 
 position as a scholar, and even the advisability of her being 
 transferred to a more advanced school with a more mature 
 teacher of her own sex. " This is what I wished to say to 
 Mrs. McKinstry to-day," he concluded, "but she referred 
 me to you." 
 
 " In course, in course," said McKinstry, nodding com- 
 placently. " She 's a good woman in and around the 
 ranch, and in any doin's o' this kind," he lightly waved 
 his wounded arm in the air, " there ain't a better, though I 
 say it. She was Blair Rawlins' darter ; she and her brother 
 Clay bein' the only ones that kem out safe arter their twenty 
 years' fight with the McEntees in West Kaintuck. But 
 she don't understand gals ez you and me do. Not that I 'm 
 much, ez I orter be more kam. And the old woman jest 
 sized the hull thing when she said she had n't any hand in 
 Cressy's engagement. No more she had ! And ez far ez 
 that goes, no more did me, nor Seth Davis, nor Cressy." 
 He paused, and lifting his heavy-lidded eyes to the master 
 for the second time, said reflectively, " Ye must n't mind 
 my tellin' ye — ez betwixt man and man — that the one ez 
 is most responsible for the makin' and breakin' o' that 
 engagement is you ! " 
 
 " Me ! " said the master in utter bewilderment. 
 
 " You ! " repeated McKinstry quietly, reinstalling the 
 hand Ford had attempted to withdraw. " I ain't sayin' ye 
 either knowed it or kalkilated on it. But it war so. Ef 
 ye 'd hark to me, and meander on a little, I '11 tell ye how 
 it war. I don't mind walkin' a piece your way, for if we 
 
36 CRESSY 
 
 go towards the ranch, and the hounds see me, they '11 set 
 up a racket and bring out the old woman, and then good-by 
 to any confidential talk betwixt you and me. And I 'm, 
 somehow, kammer out yer." 
 
 He moved slowly down the trail, still holding Ford's 
 arm confidentially, although, owing to his large protecting 
 manner, he seemed to offer a ridiculous suggestion of sup- 
 porting him with his wounded member. 
 
 "When you first kem to Injin Spring," he began, "Seth 
 and Cressy was goin' to school, boy and girl like, and 
 nothin' more. They'd known each other from babies — ■ 
 the Davises bein' our neighbors in Kaintuck, and emigraten' 
 with us from St. Joe. Seth mout hev cottoned to Cress, 
 and Cress to him, in course o' time, and there was n't any- 
 thin' betwixt the families to hev kept 'em from marryin' 
 ■when they wanted. But there never war any words passed, 
 and no engagement." 
 
 " But," interrupted Ford hastily, " my predecessor, Mr. 
 Martin, distinctly told me that there was, and that it was 
 with your permission." 
 
 " That 's only because you noticed suthin' the first day 
 you looked over the school with Martin, ' Dad,' sez Cress 
 to me, ' that new teacher 's very peart ; and he 's that keen 
 about noticin' me and Seth that I reckon you 'd better give 
 out that we 're engaged.' ' But are you ? ' sez I. ' It '11 
 come to that in the end,' sez Cress, ' and if that yer teacher 
 hez come here with Northern ideas o' society, it's just ez 
 well to let him see Injin Spring ain't entirely in the woods 
 about them things either.' So I agreed, and Martin told 
 you it was all right ; Cress and Seth was an engaged couple, 
 and you was to take no notice. And then you ups and 
 objects to the hull thing, and allows that courtin' in school, 
 even among engaged pupils, ain't proper." 
 
 The master turned his eyes with some uneasiness to the 
 face of Cressy's father. It was heavy but impassive. 
 
CKESSY 37 
 
 "I don't mind tellin' you, now that it's over, what 
 happened. The trouble with me, Mr. Ford, is — I ain't 
 kam ! and you air, and that 's what got me. For when I 
 heard what you 'd said, I got on that mustang and started 
 for the schoolhouse to clean you out and give you five 
 minutes to leave Injin Spring. I don't know ez you remem- 
 ber that day. I 'd kalkilated my time so ez to ketch ye 
 comin' out o' school, but I was too airly. I hung around 
 out o' sight, and then hitched my boss to a buckeye and 
 peeped inter the winder to hev a good look at ye. It was 
 very quiet and kam. There was squirrels over the roof, 
 yellow-jackets and bees dronin' away, and kinder sleeping- 
 like all around in the air, and jay-birds twitterin' in the 
 shingles, and they never minded nie. You were moviu' up 
 and down among them little gals and boys, liftin' up their 
 heads and talkin' to 'em softly and quiet-like, ez if you was 
 one of them yourself. And they looked contented and kam. 
 And onct — I don't know if you remember it — you kem 
 close up to the winder with your hands behind you, and 
 looked out so kam and quiet and so far ofi", ez if everybody 
 else outside the school was miles away from you. It kem 
 to me then that I 'd given a heap to hev had the old woman 
 see you thar. It kem to me, Mr. Ford, that there was n't 
 any place for me thar ; and it kem to me, too — and a little 
 rough-like — that mebbee there was n't any place there for 
 i)iy Cress either ! So I rode away without disturbin' you 
 nor the birds nor the squirrels. Talkin' with Cress that 
 night, she said ez how it was a fair sample of what happened 
 every day, and that you 'd always treated her fair like the 
 others. So she allowed that she 'd go down to Sacramento, 
 and get some things agin her and Seth bein' married next 
 month, and she reckoned she would n't trouble you nor the 
 school agin. Hark till 1 've done, Mr. Ford," he continued, 
 as the young man made a slight movement of deprecation. 
 "Well, I agreed. But arter she got to Sacramento and 
 
38 CKESST 
 
 bought some fancy fixin's, she wrote to me and sez ez how 
 she 'd been thinkin' the hull thing over, and she reckoned 
 that she and Seth were too young to marry, and the engage- 
 ment had better be broke. And I broke it for her." 
 
 " But how ? " asked the bewildered master. 
 
 " Gin'rally with this gun," returned McKinstry, with slow 
 gravity, indicating the rifle he was carrying, " for I ain't 
 kam. I let on to Seth's father that if I ever found Seth 
 and Cressy together again, I 'd shoot him. It made a sort 
 o' coolness betwixt the families, and hez given some comfort 
 to them low-down Harrisons ; but even the law, I reckon, 
 recognizes a father's rights. And ez Cress sez, now ez Seth's 
 out o' the way, thar ain't no reason why she can't go back 
 to school and finish her eddication. And I reckoned she was 
 right. And we both agreed that ez she 'd left school to git 
 them store clothes, it was only fair that she 'd give the school 
 the benefit of 'em." 
 
 The case seemed more hopeless than ever. The master 
 knew that the man beside him might hardly prove as lenient 
 to a second objection at his hand. But that very reason, 
 perhaps, impelled him, now that he knew his danger, to 
 consider it more strongly as a duty, and his pride revolted 
 from a possible threat underlying McKinstry's confidences. 
 Nevertheless he began gently : — 
 
 " But you are quite sure you won't regret that you did n't 
 avail yourself of this broken engagement, and your daughter's 
 outfit — to send her to some larger boarding-school in Sacra- 
 mento or San Francisco ? Don't you think she may find it 
 dull, and soon tire of the company of mere children when 
 she has already known the excitement of " — he was about 
 to say " a lover," but checked himself, and added, " a young 
 girl's freedom ? " 
 
 "Mr. Ford," returned McKinstry, with the slow and 
 fatuous misconception of a one-idea'd man, " when I said 
 5ust now that, lookin' inter that kam, peaceful school of 
 
CRES8Y 39 
 
 yours, I did n't find a place for Cress, it warn't because I 
 did n't think she oughter hev a place thai. Thar was that 
 thar wot she never had ez a little girl with me and the old 
 woman, and that she couldn't find ez a grownd-up girl in 
 any boarding-school — the home of a child ; that kind o' 
 innocent foolishness that I sometimes reckon must hev 
 slipped outer our emigrant wagon comin' across the plains, 
 or got left behind at St. Joe. She was a grownd girl fit to 
 marry afore she was a child. She had young fellers 
 a-sparkin' her afore she ever played with 'em ez boy and 
 girl. I don't mind tellin' you that it wern't in the natur 
 of Blair Eawlins' darter to teach her own darter any better, 
 for all she 's been a mighty help to me. So if it 's all the 
 same to you, Mr. Ford, we won't talk about a grownd-up 
 school ; I 'd rather Cress be a little girl again among them 
 other children. I should be a powerful sight more kam if 
 I knowed that when I was away huntin' stock or fightin' 
 stakes with them Harrisons, that she was a-settin' there 
 with them and the birds and the bees, and listenin' to them 
 and to you. Mebbee there 's been a little too many scrim- 
 mages goin' on round the ranch sence she 's been a child ; 
 mebbee she orter know suthin' more of a man than a feller 
 who sparks her and fights for her." 
 
 The master was silent. Had this dull, narrow-minded 
 partisan stumbled upon a truth that had never dawned upon 
 his own broader comprehension ? Had this selfish savage 
 and literally red-handed frontier brawler been moved by 
 some dumb instinct of the power of gentleness to understand 
 his daughter's needs better than he ? For a moment he 
 was staggered. Then he thought of Cressy's later flirtations 
 with Joe Masters, and her concealment of their meeting 
 from her mother. Had she deceived her father also ? Or 
 was not the father deceiving him with this alternate sug- 
 gestion of thi'eat and of kindliness — of power and weakness. 
 He haii heard of this cruel phase of Southwestern cunning 
 
40 «RESSY 
 
 before. With the feeble sophistry of the cynic he mis- 
 trusted the good his skepticism could not understand. How- 
 beit, glancing sideways at the slumbering savagery of the 
 man beside him, and his -wounded hand, he did not care to 
 show his lack of confidence. He contented himself with 
 that equally feeble resource of weak humanity in such cases 
 — good-natured indiiference. " All right," he said care- 
 lessly ; " I '11 see what can be done. But are you quite 
 sure you are fit to go home alone ? Shall I accompany 
 you ? " As McKinstry waived the suggestion with a ges- 
 ture, he added lightly, as if to conclude the interview, 
 " I '11 report progress to you from time to time, if you 
 like." 
 
 " To me" emphasized McKinstry ; " not over thar" 
 indicating the ranch. " But p'rhaps you would n't mind 
 my ridin' by and lookin' in at the schoolroom winder onct 
 in a while? Ah — you would," he added, with the first 
 deepening of color he had shown. " Well, never mind." 
 
 " You see it might distract the children from their 
 lessons,'' explained the master gently, who had however 
 contemplated with some concern the infinite delight which 
 a glimpse of McKinstry's fiery and fatuous face at the win- 
 dow would awake in Johnny Filgee's infant breast. 
 
 " Well, no matter ! " returned McKinstry slowly. " Ye 
 don't keer, I s'pose, to come over to the hotel and take 
 Buthin' ? A julep or a smash ? " 
 
 " I should n't think of keeping you a moment longer 
 from Mrs. McKinstry," said the master, looking at his com- 
 panion's wounded hand. " Thank you all the same. Good- 
 by." 
 
 They shook hands, McKinstry transferring his rifle to 
 the hollow of his elbow to offer his unwounded left. The 
 master watched him slowly resume his way towards the 
 ranch. Then with a half-uneasy and half-pleasurable sense 
 that he had taken some step whose consequences were mora 
 
CKESSY 41 
 
 important than he would at present understand, he turned 
 in the opposite direction to the schoolhouse. He was so- 
 preoccupied that it was not until he had nearly reached it 
 that he remembered Uncle Ben. With an odd recollection of 
 McKinstry's previous performance, he approached the school 
 from the thicket in the rear and slipped noiselessly to the 
 open window with the intention of looking in. But the 
 schoolhoUse, far from exhibiting that " kam " and studious 
 abstraction which had so touched the savage breast of 
 McKinstry, was filled with the accents of youthful and 
 unrestrained vituperation. The voice of Eupert Filgee 
 came sharply to the master's astonished ears. 
 
 " You need n't try to play off Dobell or Mitchell on me 
 — you hear ! Much you know of either, don't you ? 
 Look at that copy. If Johnny could n't do better than that, 
 1 'd lick him. Of course it 's the pen — it ain't your stodgy 
 fingers — oh no ! P'r'aps you 'd like to hev a few more 
 boxes o' quills and gold pens and Gillott's best thrown in, 
 for two bits a lesson ? I tell you what ! I '11 throw up 
 the contract in another minit ! There goes another quill 
 busted ! Look here, what you want ain't a pen, but a 
 clothes-pin and a split nail ! That '11 about jibe with your 
 dilikit gait." 
 
 The master at once stepped to the window and, unob- 
 served, took a quick survey of the interior. Following some 
 ingenious idea of his own regarding fitness, the beautiful 
 Filgee had induced Uncle Ben to seat himself on the floor 
 before one of the smallest desks, presumably his brother's, 
 in an attitude which, while it certainly gave him consider- 
 able elbow-room for those contortions common to immature 
 Penmanship, offered his youthful instructor a superior emi- 
 jence, from which he hovered, occasionally swooping down 
 upon his grown-up pupil like a mischievous but graceful 
 jay. But Mr. Ford's most distinct impression was that, far 
 from resenting the derogatory position and the abuse that 
 
42 CKESSY 
 
 accompanied it, Uncle Ben not only beamed upon his per- 
 secutor with unquenchable good humor, but with undis- 
 guised admiration, and showed not the least inclination to 
 accept his proposed resignation. 
 
 " Go slow, Eupe," he said cheerfully. " You was onct 
 a boy yourself. Nat'rally I kalkilate to stand all the dam- 
 ages. You 've got ter waste some powder over a blast like 
 this yer, way down to the bed rock. Next time I '11 bring 
 my own pens." 
 
 " Do. Some from the Dobell school you uster go to," 
 suggested the darkly ironical Eupert. " They was iron-clad 
 injin-rubber, warn't they ? " 
 
 " Never you mind wot they were," said Uncle Ben good 
 humoredly. " Look at that string of * C's ' in that line. 
 There 's nothing mean about them." 
 
 He put his pen between his teeth, raised himself slowly 
 on. his legs, and shading his eyes with his hand from the 
 severe perspective of six feet, gazed admiringly down upon 
 his work. Eupert, with his hands in his pockets and his 
 back to the window, cynically assisted at the inspection. 
 
 " Wot 's that sick worm at the bottom of the page ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 " Wot might you think it wos ? " said Uncle Ben beam- 
 ingly- 
 
 " Looks like one o' them snakeroots you dig up with 
 a little mud stuck to it," returned Eupert critically. 
 " That 's my name." 
 
 They both stood looking at it with their heads very much, 
 on one side. " It ain't so bad as the rest you 've done. It 
 might be your name. That ez, it don't look like anythin' 
 else," suggested Eupert, struck with a new idea that it 
 was perhaps more professional occasionally to encourage his 
 pupil. " You might get on in course o' time. But what 
 are you doin' all this for ? " he asked suddenly. 
 " Doin' what ? " 
 
CRESSY 43 
 
 " This yer comin' to school when you ain't sent, and you 
 ain't got no call to go — you, a grown-up man ! " 
 
 The color deepened in Uncle Ben's face to the back of 
 his ears. " Wot would you give to know, Rupe ? S'pose 
 I reckoned some day to make a strike and sorter drop inter 
 saciety easy — eh? S'pose I wanted to be ready to keep 
 up my end with the other fellers, when the time kem ? To 
 be able to sling po'try and read novels and sich — eh ? " 
 
 An expression of infinite and unutterable scorn dawned 
 in the eyes of Rupert. " You do ? Well," he repeated, 
 with slow and cutting deliberation, " I '11 tell you what 
 you 're comin' here for, and the only thing that makes 
 you come ! " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " It 's — some — girl ! " 
 
 Uncle Ben broke into a boisterous laugh that made the 
 roof shake, stamping about and slapping his legs till the 
 crazy floor trembled. But at that moment the master 
 stepped to the porch and made a quiet but discomposing 
 entrance. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 The return of Miss Cressida McKinstry to Indian Spring 
 and her interrupted studies was an event whose effects were 
 not entirely confined to the school. The broken engage- 
 ment itself seemed of little moment in the general estima- 
 tion compared to her resumption of her old footing as a 
 scholar. A few ill-natured elders of her own sex, and natu- 
 rally exempt from the discriminating retort of Mr. McKin- 
 stry's " shot-gun," alleged that the Seminary at Sacramento 
 had declined to receive her, but the majority accepted her 
 return with local pride as a practical compliment to the 
 educational facilities of Indian Spring. The Tuolumne 
 " Star," with a breadth and eloquence touchingly dispro- 
 portionate to its actual size and quality of type and paper, 
 referred to the possible " growth of a grove of Academus at 
 Indian Spring, under whose cloistered boughs future sages 
 and statesmen were now meditating," in a way that made 
 the master f^el exceedingly uncomfortable. For some days 
 the trail between the McKinstrys' ranch and the school- 
 house was lightly patrolled by reliefs of susceptible young 
 men, to whom the enfranchised Cressida, relieved from tl e 
 dangerous supervision of the Davis-McKinstry clique, was 
 an object of ambitious admiration. The young girl herself, 
 who, in spite of the master's annoyance, seemed to be follow- 
 ing some conscientious duty in consecutively arraying her- 
 self in the diiferent dresses she had bought, however she 
 may have tantalized her admirers by this revelation of 
 bridal finery, did not venture to bring them near the limits 
 of the playground. It struck the master with some sur- 
 
CRESSY 45 
 
 prise that Indian Spring did not seem to trouble itself in 
 regard to his own privileged relations with its rustic en- 
 chantress ; the young men clearly were not jealous of him ; 
 ao matron had suggested any indecorum in a young girl 
 of Cressy's years and antecedents being intrusted to the 
 teachings of a young man scarcely her senior. Notwith- 
 standing the attitude which Mr. Ford had been pleased to 
 assume towards her, this implied compliment to his sup- 
 posed monastic vocations affected him almost as uncomfort- 
 ably as the " Star's " extravagant eulogium. He was 
 obliged to recall certain foolish experiences of his own to 
 enable him to rise superior to this presumption of his 
 asceticism. 
 
 In pursuance of his promise to McKinstry, he had pro- 
 cured a few elementary books of study suitable to Cressy's 
 new position, vjnthout, however, taking her out of the smalh-r 
 classes or the discipline of the school. In a few weeki; he 
 was enabled to further improve her attitude by making her 
 a " monitor " over the smaller girls, thereby dividing cer- 
 tain functions with Rupert Filgee, whose ministrations to 
 the deceitful and " silly " sex had been characterized by 
 perhaps more vigilant scorn and disparagement than was 
 necessary. Cressy had accepted it as she had accepted her 
 new studies, with an indolent good humor, and at times a 
 frankly supreme ignorance of their abstract or moral purpose 
 that was discouraging. " What 's the good of that ? " she 
 would ask, lifting her eyes abruptly to the master. Mr. 
 Ford, somewhat embarrassed by her look, which always, 
 sooner or later, frankly confessed itself an excuse for a per- 
 fectly irrelevant examination of his features in detail, would 
 end in giving her some severely practical answer. Yet, if 
 the subject appealed to any particular idiosyncrasy of her 
 own, she would speedily master the study. A passing pre- 
 dilection for botany was provoked by a single incident. 
 The master, deeming this study a harmless young-ladylike 
 
46 CRESSY 
 
 occupation, had one day introduced the topic at recess, and 
 was met hy the usual answer. " But suppose," he contin- 
 ued artfully, " somebody sent you anonymously some 
 flowers ? " 
 
 " Her bo ! " suggested Johnny Filgee hoarsely, with bold 
 bad recklessness. Ignoring the remark and the kick with 
 which Rupert had resented it on the person of his brother, 
 the master continued : — 
 
 " And if you could n't find out who sent them, you would 
 want at least to know what they were and where they 
 grew." 
 
 " Ef they grew anywhere 'bout yer we could tell her 
 that," said a chorus of small voices. 
 
 The master hesitated. He was conscious of being on 
 delicate ground. He was surrounded by a dozen pairs of 
 little keen eyes from whom Nature had never yet succeeded 
 in hiding her secrets — eyes that had waited for and knew 
 the coming up of the earliest flowers ; little fingers that had 
 never turned the pages of a text-fiook, but knew where to 
 scrape away the dead leaves above the first anemone, or had 
 groped painfully among the lifeless branches in forgotten 
 hollows for the shy dog-rose ; unguided little feet that had 
 instinctively made their way to remote southern slopes for 
 the first mariposas, or had unerringly threaded the tule- 
 hidden banks of the river for flower-de-luce. Convinced 
 that he could not hold his own on their level, he shame- 
 lessly struck at once above it. 
 
 " Suppose that one of those flowers," he continued, " was 
 not like the rest ; that its stalks and leaves, instead of being 
 green and soft, were white and stringy like flannel as if to 
 protect it from cold, would n't it be nice to be able to say 
 at once that it had lived only in the snow, and that some 
 one must have gone all that way up there above the snow 
 line to pick it ? " The children, taken aback by this unfair 
 introduction of a floral stranger, were silent, Creesy 
 
CREssy 47 
 
 thoughtfully accepted botany on those possibilities. A week 
 later she laid on the master's desk a limp-looking plant 
 with a stalk like heavy frayed worsted yarn. " It ain't 
 much to look at after all, is it ? " she said. " I reckon 
 I could cut a better one with scissors outer an old cloth 
 jacket of mine." 
 
 " And you found it here ? " asked the master in sur= 
 prise. 
 
 " I got Masters to look for it when he was on the Sum- 
 mit. I described it to him. I did n't allow he had the 
 gumption to get it. But he did." 
 
 Although botany languished slightly after this vicarious 
 effort, it kept Cressy in fresh bouquets, and extending its 
 gentle influence to her friends and acquaintances became 
 slightly confounded with horticulture, led to the planting 
 of one or two gardens, and was accepted in school as an im- 
 plied concession to berries, apples, and nuts. In reading 
 and writing Cressy greatly improved, with a marked decrease 
 in grammatical solecisms, although she still retained certain 
 characteristic words, and always her own slow Southwestern, 
 half - musical intonation. This languid deliberation was 
 particularly noticeable in her reading aloud, and gave the 
 studied and measured rhetoric a charm of which her careless 
 colloquial speech was incapable. Even the " Fifth Reader," 
 with its imposing passages from the English classics care- 
 fully selected with a view of paralyzing small, hesitating, or 
 hurried voices, in Cressy's hands became no longer an unin- 
 telligible incantation. She had quietly mastered the diffi- 
 culties of pronunciation by some instinctive sense of eu~ 
 phony if not of comprehension. The master with his eyes 
 closed hardly recognized his pupil. Whether or not she 
 understood what she read he hesitated to inquire ; no doubt, 
 as with her other studies, she knew what attracted her. 
 Rupert Filgee, a sympathetic if not always a correct reader, 
 who boldly took four and five syllabled fences flying only 
 
48 CRESSY 
 
 to come to grief perhaps in the ditch of some rhetorical 
 pause beyond, alone expressed his scorn of her performance. 
 Octavia Dean, torn between her hopeless affection for this 
 beautiful but inaccessible boy and her soul-friendship for 
 this bigger but many-frocked girl, studied the master's face 
 with watchful anxiety. 
 
 It is needless to say that Hiram McKinstry was, in the 
 intervals of stake-driving and stock-hunting, heavily con- 
 tented with this latest evidence of his daughter's progress. 
 He even intimated to the master that her reading being an 
 accomplishment that could be exercised at home was condu- 
 cive to that " kam " in which he was so deficient. It was 
 also rumored that Cressy's oral rendering of Addison's 
 " Reflections in Westminster Abbey " and Burke's " Indict- 
 ment of Warren Hastings," had beguiled him one evening 
 from improving an opportunity to "plug" one of Harri- 
 son's boundary " raiders." 
 
 The master shared in Cressy's glory in the public eye. 
 But although Mrs. McKinstry did not materially change her 
 attitude of tolerant good nature towards him, he was pain- 
 fully conscious that she looked upon her daughter's studies 
 and her husband's interest in them as weaknesses that 
 might in course of time produce infirmity of homicidal pur- 
 pose and become enervating of eye and trigger-finger. And 
 when Mr. McKinstry got himself appointed as school trus- 
 tee, and was thereby obliged to mingle with certain East- 
 ern settlers, — colleagues on the Board, — this possible 
 weakening of the old sharply drawn sectional line between 
 " Yanks " and themselves gave her grave doubts of Hiram's 
 ^jhysical stamina. 
 
 " The old man's worrits hev sorter shook out a little of 
 
 his sand," she had explained. On those evenings when he 
 
 attended the Board, she sought higher consolation in prayer- 
 
 tneeting at the Southern Baptist Church, in whose exercises 
 
 >»• Northern and Eastern neighbors, thinly disguised as 
 
CEESSY 49 
 
 "Baal" and "Astaroth," were generally overthrown and 
 their temples made desolate. 
 
 If Uncle Ben's progress was slower, it was no less satis- 
 factory. Without imagination and even without enthusi- 
 asm, he kept on with a dtill laborious persistency. When 
 the irascible impatience of Rupert Filgee at last succumbed 
 to the obdurate slowness of his pupil, the master himself, 
 touched by Uncle Ben's perspiring forehead and perplexed 
 eyebrows, often devoted the rest of the afternoon to a gentle 
 elucidation of the mysteries before him, setting copies for 
 his heavy hand, or even guiding it with his own, like a 
 child's, across the paper. At times the appalling uselessness 
 of Uncle Ben's endeavors reminded him of Rupert's taunt- 
 ing charge. Was he really doing this from a genuine thirst 
 for knowledge ? It was inconsistent with all that Indian 
 Spring knew of his antecedents and his present ambitions ; 
 he was a simple miner without scientific or technical know- 
 ledge ; his already slight acquaintance with arithmetic and 
 the scrawl that served for his signature were more than suffi- 
 cient for his needs. Yet it was with this latter sign-man- 
 ual that he seemed to take infinite pains. The master, one 
 afternoon, thought fit to correct the apparent vanity of this 
 performance. 
 
 " If you took as much care in trying to form your letters 
 according to copy, you 'd do better. Your signature is fair 
 enough as it is." 
 
 "But it don't look right, Mr. Ford," said Uncle Ben, 
 eying it distru-stfully ; " somehow it ain't all there." 
 
 " V/hy, certainly it is. Look, D A B N E Y — not very 
 plain, it 's true, but there are all the letters." 
 
 " That 's just it, Mr. Ford ; them ain'i all the letters 
 that orier be there. I 've allowed to write it D A l'>]Sr E Y 
 to save time and ink, but it orter read D A U B I G N Y,'*' 
 said Uncle Ben, with painful distinctness. 
 
 « But that spells d'Aubigny ! " 
 
50 CRESSY 
 
 "It are." 
 
 " Is that your name ? " 
 
 " I reckon." 
 
 The master looked at Uncle Ben doubtfully. Was this 
 only another form of the Dobell illusion ? " "Was your fa- 
 ther a Frenchman ? " he asked finally. 
 
 Uncle Ben paused as if to recall the trifling circumstances 
 of his father's nationality. " No." 
 
 " Your grandfather ? " 
 
 " I reckon not. At least ye could n't prove it by me." 
 
 " Was your father or grandfather a voyageur or trapper, 
 or Canadian ? " 
 
 " They were from Pike County, Mizzoori." 
 
 The master regarded Uncle Ben still dubiously. " But 
 you call yourself Dabney. What makes you think your real 
 name is d'Aubigny ? " 
 
 " That 's the way it uster be writ in letters to me in the 
 States. Hold on. I '11 show ye." He deliberately began 
 to feel in his pockets, finally extracting his old purse from 
 which he produced a crumpled envelope, and carefully 
 smoothing it out, compared it with his signature. 
 
 " Thar, you see. It 's the same — d'Aubigny." 
 
 The master hesitated. After all, it was not impossible. 
 He recalled other instances of the singular transformation 
 of names in the Californian emigration. Yet he could not 
 help saying, " Then you concluded d'Aubigny was a better 
 name than Dabney ? " 
 
 " Do you think it 's better ? " 
 
 " Women might. I dare say your wife would prefer to 
 be called Mrs. d'Aubigny rather than Dabney." 
 
 The chance shot told. Unfile Ben suddenly flushed to 
 his ears. 
 
 " I did n't think o' that," he said hurriedly. " I had 
 another idee. I reckoned that on the matter o' holdin' 
 property and passin' in money it would be better to hev 
 
CKESSY 51 
 
 youT name put on the square, and to sorter go down to bed- 
 rock for it, eh ? If I wanted to take a hand in them lots 
 or Ditch shares, for instance — it would be only law to hev 
 it made out in the name o' d'Aubigny." 
 
 Mr. Ford listened with a certain impatient contempt. It 
 was bad enough for Uncle Ben to have exposed his weak- 
 ness in inventing fictions about his early education, but to 
 invest himself now with a contingency of capital for the 
 sake of another childish vanity was pitiable as it was pre- 
 posterous. There was no doubt that he had lied about his 
 school experiences ; it was barely probable that his name 
 was really d'Aubigny, and it was quite consistent with all 
 this — even setting apart the fact that he was perfectly well 
 known to be only a poor miner — that he should lie again. 
 Like most logical reasoners Mr. Ford forgot that humanity 
 might be illogical and inconsistent without being insincere. 
 He turned away without speaking as if indicating a wish to 
 hear no more. 
 
 " Some o' these days," said Uncle Ben, with dull persist- 
 ency T 11 tell ye suthin'." 
 
 " 1 'd advise you just now to drop it and stick to your 
 lessons," said the master sharply. 
 
 " That 's so," said Uncle Ben hurriedly, hiding himself 
 as it were in an all-encompassing blush. " In course lessons 
 first, boys, that 's the motto." He again took up his pen 
 and assumed his old laborious attitude. But after a few 
 moments it became evident that either the master's curt dis- 
 missal of his subject or his own preoccupation with it had 
 somewhat unsettled him. He cleaned his pen obtrusively, 
 going to the window for a better light, and whistling from 
 time to time with a demonstrative carelessness and a depress- 
 ing gayety. He once broke into a murmuring, meditative 
 chant evidently referring to the previous conversation, in 
 its — " That 's so — Yer we go — Lessons the first, boys, 
 Yo, heave 0." The rollicking marine character of this 
 
52 CEESSY 
 
 refrain, despite its utter incongruousness, apparently struck 
 him favorably, for he repeated it softly, occasionally glancing 
 behind him at the master who was coldly absorbed at, his 
 desk. Presently he arose, carefully put his books away, 
 symmetrically piling them in a pyramid beside Mr. Ford's 
 motionless elbow, and then lifting his feet with high but 
 gentle steps went to the peg where his coat and hat were 
 hanging. As he was about to put them on he appeared 
 suddenly struck with a sense of indecorousness in dressing 
 himself in the school, and taking them on his arm to the 
 porch resumed them outside. Then saying, " I clean dis- 
 remembered I 'd got to see a man. So long, till to-mor- 
 row," he disappeared whistling softly. 
 
 The old woodland hush fell back upon the school. It 
 seemed very quiet and empty. A faint sense of remorse 
 stole over the master. Yet he remembered that Uncle Ben 
 had accepted without reproach and as a good joke much 
 more direct accusations from Rupert Eilgee, and that he him- 
 self had acted from a conscientious sense of duty towards 
 the man. But a conscientious sense of duty to inflict pain 
 upon a fellow mortal for his own good does not always bring 
 perfect serenity to the inflicter — possibly because, in the 
 defective machinery of human compensation, pain is the 
 only quality that is apt to appear in the illustration. Mr. 
 Ford felt uncomfortable, and, being so, was naturally vexed 
 at the innocent cause. Why should Uncle Ben be offended 
 because he had simply declined to follow his weak fabrica- 
 tions any further ? This was his return for having toler- 
 ated it at first ! It would be a lesson to liim henceforth. 
 Nevertheless he got up and went to the door. The figure of 
 Uncle Ben was already indistinct among the leaves, but 
 from the motion of his shoulders he seemed to be still step- 
 ping high and softly as if not yet clear of insecure and en- 
 gulfing ground. 
 
 The silence still continuing, the master began meclianicallv 
 
CEESSY 53 
 
 to look over the desks for forgotten or mislaid articles, and 
 to rearrange the pupils' books and copies. A few heartsease 
 gathered by the devoted Octavia Dean, neatly tied with a 
 black thread and regularly left in the inkstand cavity of 
 Kupert's desk, were still lying on the floor where they had 
 been always hurled with equal regularity by that disdainful 
 Adonis. Picking up a slate from under a bench, his atten- 
 tion was attracted by a forgotten cartoon on the reverse side. 
 Mr. Ford at once re"-^nized it as the work of that youthful 
 but eminent caricaturist, Johnny Filgee. Broad in treat- 
 ment, comprehensive in subject, liberal in detail and slate- 
 pencil — it represented Uncle Ben lying on the floor with a 
 book in his hand, tyrannized over by Rupert Filgee, and 
 regarded in a striking profile of two features by Cressy 
 McKinstry. The daring realism of introducing the names 
 of each character on their legs — perhaps ideally enlarged 
 for that purpose — left no doubt of their identity. Equally 
 daring but no less effective was the rendering of a limited 
 but dramatic conversation between the parties by the aid 
 of emotional balloons attached to their mouths like a vis- 
 ible gulp bearing the respective legends : " I luv you," 
 " my," and " You git ! " 
 
 The master was for a moment startled at this unlooked-for 
 but graphic testimony to the fact that Uncle Ben's visits to 
 the school were not only known but commented upon. The 
 small eyes of those youthful observers had been keener than 
 his own. He had again been stupidly deceived, in spite of 
 his efforts. Love, albeit deficient in features and wearing 
 an improperly short bell-shaped frock, had boldly reentered 
 the peaceful school, and disturbing complications on abnor 
 mal legs were following at its heels. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 While this simple pastoral life was centred around the 
 schoolhouse in the clearing, broken only by an occasional 
 warning pistol-shot in the direction of the Harrison-Mc- 
 Kinstry boundaries, the more business part of Indian 
 Spring was overtaken by one of those spasms of enterprise 
 peculiar to all Californian mining settlements. The open- 
 ing of the Eureka Ditch and the extension of stage-coach com- 
 munication from Big Bluff were events of no small impor- 
 tance, and were celebrated on the same day. The double 
 occasion overtaxing even the fluent rhetoric of the editor 
 of the " Star " left him struggling in the metaphorical diflfi- 
 culties of a Pactoliau Spring, which he had rashly turned into 
 the Ditch, and obliged him to transfer the onerous duty of 
 writing the editorial on the Big Bluff Extension to the 
 hands of the Honorable Abner Dean, Assemblyman from 
 Angel's. The loss of the Honorable Mr. Dean's right eye 
 in an early pioneer fracas did not prevent him from looking 
 into the dim vista of the future and discovering with that 
 single unaided optic enough to fill three columns of the 
 " Star." " It is not too extravagant to say," he remarked, 
 with charming deprecation, " that Indian Spring, through 
 its own perfectly organized system of inland transportation, 
 the confluence of its North Fork with the Sacramento 
 Biver, and their combined effluence into the illimitable 
 Pacific, is thus put not only into direct communication 
 with far Cathay but even remoter Antipodean markets. 
 The citizen of Indian Spring taking the 9 A. m. Pioneer 
 Coach and arriving at Big Bins' at 2.40 is enabled to con- 
 
CEESSY 55 
 
 nect with, the through express to Sacramento the same even- 
 ing, reaching San Francisco per the Steam Navigation 
 Company's palatial steamers in time to take the Pacific 
 Mail Steamer to Yokohama on the following day at 3.30 
 p. M." Although no citizen of Indian Spring appeared to 
 avail himself of this admirable opportunity, nor did it ap- 
 pear at all likely that any would, everybody vaguely felt 
 that an inestimable boon lay in the suggestion, and even 
 the master, professionally intrusting the reading aloud of the 
 editorial to Bupert Filgee with ulterior designs of practice 
 in the pronunciation of five-syllable words, was somewhat 
 affected by it. Johnny Filgee and Jimmy Snyder, accept- 
 ing it as a mysterious something that made Desert Islands 
 accessible at a moment's notice and a trifling outlay, were 
 round-eyed and attentive. And the culminating informa- 
 tion from the master that this event would be commemo- 
 rated by a half-holiday, combined to make the occasion as 
 exciting to the simple schoolhouse in the clearing as it was 
 to the gilded saloon in the main street. 
 
 And so the momentous day arrived, with its two new 
 coaches from Big Bluff containing the specially invited 
 speakers — always specially invited to those occasions, and 
 yet strangely enough never before feeling the extreme " im- 
 portance and privilege " of it as they did then. Then 
 there were the firing of two anvils, the strains of a brass 
 band, the hoisting of a new flag on the liberty-pole, and 
 later the ceremony of the Ditch opening, when a distin- 
 guished speaker in a most unworkmanlike tall hat, black 
 frock coat, and white cravat, which gave him the general 
 air of a festive grave-digger, took a spade from the hands of 
 an apparently hilarious chief mourner and threw out the 
 first sods. There were anvils, brass bands, and a " colla- 
 tion " at the hotel. But everywhere — overriding the moat 
 extravagant expectation and even the laughter it provoked 
 — the spirit of indomitable youth and resistless enterprise 
 
56 CEESSY 
 
 intoxicated the air. It was the spirit that had made Cali- 
 fornia possible ; that had sown a thousand such ventures 
 broadcast through its wilderness ; that had enabled the 
 sower to stand half humorously among his scant or ruined 
 harvests without fear and without repining, and turn his 
 undaunted and ever hopeful face to further fields. What 
 mattered it that Indian Spring had always before its eyes 
 the abandoned trenches and ruined outworks of its earlier 
 pioneers ? What mattered it that the eloquent eulogist of 
 the Eureka Ditch had but a few years before as prodigally 
 scattered his adjectives and his fortune on the useless tun- 
 nel that confronted him on the opposite side of the river ? 
 The sublime forgetfulness of youth ignored its warning cr 
 recognized it as a joke. The master, fresh from his little 
 flock and prematurely aged by their contact, felt a s;cirring 
 of something like envy as he wandered among the scarcely 
 older enthusiasts. 
 
 Especially memorable was the exciting day to Johnny 
 Filgee, not only for the delightfully bewildering clamor of 
 the brass band, in which, between the trombone and the 
 bass drum, he had got inextricably mixed ; not only for the 
 half-frightening explosions of the anvils and the madden, 
 ing smell of the gunpowder which had exalted his infant 
 soul to sudden and irrelevant whoopings, but for a singular 
 occurrence that whetted his always keen perceptions. Hav- 
 ing been shamelessly abandoned on the veranda of the 
 Eureka Hotel while his brother Eupert paid bashful court 
 to the pretty proprietress by assisting her in her duties, 
 Johnny gave himself up to unlimited observation. The 
 rosettes of the six horses, the new harness, the length of the 
 driver's whiplash, his enormous buckskin gloves and the 
 way he held his reins; the fascinating odor of shining 
 varnish on the coach, the gold-headed cane of the Honora- 
 ble Abner Dean : all these were stored away in the secret re- 
 cesses of Johnny's memory, even as the unconsidered trifles 
 
CEESSY 57 
 
 he had picked up en route were distending his capacious 
 pockets. But when a young man had alighted from the 
 second or " Truly " coach among the real passengers, and 
 strolled carelessly and easily in the veranda as if the nov- 
 elty and the occasion were nothing to him, Johnny, with a 
 gulp of satisfaction, knew that he had seen a prince ! 
 Beautifully dressed in a white duck suit, with a diamond 
 ring on his finger, a gold chain swinging from his fob, and 
 a Panama hat with a broad black ribbon jauntily resting on 
 his curled and scented hair, Johnny's eyes had never rested 
 on a more resplendent vision. He was more romantic than 
 Yuba Bill, more imposing and less impossible than the 
 Honorable Abner Dean, more eloquent than the master — 
 far more beautiful than any colored print that he had ever 
 seen. Had he brushed him in passing Johnny would have 
 felt a thrill ; had he spoken to him he knew he would have 
 been speechless to reply. Judge then of his utter stupefac- 
 tion when he saw Uncle Ben — actually Uncle Ben ! — 
 approach this paragon of perfection, albeit with some embar- 
 rassment, and after a word or two of unintelligible conver- 
 sation walk away with him ! Need it be wondered that 
 Johnny, forgetful at once of his brother, the horses, and 
 even the collation with its possible " goodies," instantly 
 followed. 
 
 The two men turned into the side street, which, after a 
 few hundred yards, opened upon the deserted mining flat, 
 crossed and broken by the burrows and mounds made by the 
 forgotten engines of the early gold-seekers. Johnny, at 
 times hidden by these irregularities, kept closely in their 
 rear, sauntering whenever he came within the range of their 
 eyes in that sidelong, spasmodic, and generally diagonal 
 fashion peculiar to small boys, but ready at any moment to 
 assume utter unconsciousness and the appearance of going 
 somewhere else or of searching for something on the ground. 
 In this way appearing, if noticed at all, each time in some 
 
58 CRESSY 
 
 different position to the right or left of them, Johnny fol- 
 lowed them to the fringe of woodland which enabled him to 
 draw closer to their heels. 
 
 Utterly oblivious of this artistic " shadowing " in the in- 
 significant person of the small boy who once or twice even 
 crossed their path with aifected timidity, they continued an 
 apparently confidential previous interview. The words 
 " stocks " and " shares " were alone intelligible. Johnny 
 had heard them during the day, but he was struck by the 
 fact that Uncle Ben seemed to be seeking information from 
 the paragon and was perfectly submissive and humble. But 
 the boy was considerably mystified when after a tramp of 
 half an hour they arrived upon the debatable ground of the 
 Harrison-McKinstry boundary. Having been especially 
 warned never to go there, Johnny as a matter of course was 
 perfectly familiar with it. But what was the incomprehen- 
 sible stranger doing there ? Was he brought by Uncle Ben 
 with a view of paralyzing both of the combatants with the 
 spectacle of his perfections ? Was he a youthful sheriff, a 
 young judge, or maybe the son of the Governor of Califor- 
 nia ? Or was it that Uncle Ben was " silly " and did n't know 
 the locality ? Here was an opportunity for him, Johnny, 
 to introduce himself, and explain and even magnify the 
 danger, with perhaps a slight allusion to his own fearless 
 familiarity with it. Unfortunately, as he was making up 
 his small mind behind a tree, the paragon turned and with 
 the easy disdain that so well became him, said : — 
 
 " Well, I would n't offer a dollar an acre for the whole 
 ranch. But if you choose to give a fancy price — that 's 
 your lookout." 
 
 To Johnny's already prejudiced mind, Uncle Ben re- 
 ceived this just contempt submissively, as he ought, but 
 nevertheless he muttered something "silly " in reply, which 
 Johnny was really too disgusted to listen to. Ought he 
 not to step forward and inform the paragon that he was 
 
CKESSY 59 
 
 wasting time on a man who could n't even spell " ba-ker," 
 and who was taught his letters by his, Johnny's, brother ? 
 
 The paragon continued : — 
 
 " And of course you know that merely your buying the 
 title to the land don't give you possession. You '11 have 
 to fight these squatters and jumpers just the same. It '11 
 be three instead of two fighting — that 's all ! " 
 
 Uncle Ben's imbecile reply did not trouble Johnny. He 
 had ears now only for the superior intellect before him. It 
 continued coolly : — 
 
 " Now let 's take a look at that yield of yours. I have n't 
 much time to give you, as I expect some men to be looking 
 for me here — and I suppose you want this thing still kept 
 a secj'et. I don't see how you 've managed to do it so far. 
 Is your claim near ? You live on it — I think you 
 said ? " 
 
 But that the little listener was so preoccupied with the 
 stranger, this suggestion of Uncle Ben's having a claim 
 worth the attention of that distinguished presence would 
 have set him thinking ; the little that he understood he set 
 down to Uncle Ben's " gassin'." As the two men moved 
 forward again, he followed them until Uncle Ben's house 
 was reached. 
 
 It was a rude shanty of boards and rough boulders, half 
 burrowing in one of the largest mounds of earth and gravel 
 which had once represented the tailings or refuse of the 
 abandoned Indian Spring Placer. In fact, it was casually 
 alleged by some that Uncle Ben eked out the scanty " grub 
 wages," he made by actual mining, in reworking and sifting the 
 tailings at odd times — a degrading work hitherto only prac- 
 ticed by Chinese, and unworthy the Caucasian ambition. 
 The mining code of honor held that a man might accept the 
 smallest results of his daily labor, as long as he was sus- 
 tained by the prospect of a larger " strike," but condemned 
 his contentment with a modest certainty. Nevertheless a 
 
60 CEESSY 
 
 little of this suspicion encompassed his dwelling and conr 
 tributed to its loneliness, even as a long ditch, the former 
 tail-race of the claim, separated him from his neighbors. 
 Prudently halting at the edge of the wood, Johnny saw 
 his resplendent vision cross the strip of barren flat, and 
 enter the cabin with Uncle Ben like any other mortal. 
 He sat down on a stump and awaited its return, which he 
 fondly hoped might be alone ! At the end of half an hour 
 he made a short excursion to examine the condition of a 
 blackberry bramble, and returned to his post of observation. 
 But there was neither sound nor motion in the direction 
 of the cabin. When another ten minutes had elapsed, the 
 door opened and to Johnny's intense discomfiture, Uncle 
 Ben appeared alone and walked leisurely towards the woods. 
 Burning with anxiety Johnny threw himself in Uncle Ben's 
 way. But here occurred one of those surprising inconsist 
 encies known only to children. As Uncle Ben turned his 
 small gray eyes upon him in a half-astonished, half-question- 
 ing manner, the potent spirit of childish secretiveness sud- 
 denly took possession of the boy. Wild horses could not 
 now have torn from him that question which only a moment 
 before was on his lips. 
 
 " Hullo, Johnny ! What are ye doin' here ? " said 
 Uncle Ben kindly. 
 
 "Nothin'." After a pause, in which he walked all 
 round Uncle Ben's large figure, gazing up at him as if he 
 were a monument, he added, " Huntin' blackberrieth." 
 
 " Why ain't you over at the collation ? " 
 
 "Euperth there," he answered promptly. 
 
 The idea of being thus vicariously present in the person 
 of his brother seemed a sufficient excuse. He leap-frogged 
 over the stump on which he had been sitting as an easy 
 unembarrassing pause for the next question. But Uncle 
 Ben was apparently perfectly satisfied with Johnny's reply, 
 and nodding to him, walked away. 
 
CRESSY 61 
 
 When his figure had disappeared in the bushes, Johnny 
 cautiously approached the cabin. At a certain distance he 
 picked up a stone and threw it against the door, immedi- 
 ately taking to his heels and the friendly copse again. No 
 one appearing he repeated the experiment twice and even 
 thrice with a larger stone and at a nearer distance. Then 
 he boldly skirted the cabin and dropped into the raceway 
 at its side. Following it a few hundred yards he came upon 
 a long disused shaft opening into it, which had been covered 
 with a rough trap of old planks, as if to protect incautious 
 wayfarers from falling in. Here a sudden and inexplicable 
 fear overtook Johnny, and he ran away. When he reached 
 the hotel, almost the first sight that met his astounded eyes 
 was the spectacle of the paragon, apparently still in undis- 
 turbed possession of all his perfections — driving coolly oif 
 in a buggy with a fresh companion. 
 
 Meantime Mr. Ford, however touched by the sentimental 
 significance of the celebration, became slightly wearied of 
 its details. As his own room in the Eureka Hotel was 
 actually thrilled by the brass band without and the elo- 
 quence of speakers below, and had become redolent of gun- 
 powder and champagne exploded around it, he determined 
 to return to the schoolhouse and avail himself of its wood- 
 land quiet to write a few letters. 
 
 The change was grateful, the distant murmur of the 
 excited settlement came only as the soothing sound of wind 
 among the leaves. The pure air of the pines that filled 
 every cranny of the quiet schoolroom, and seemed to dis- 
 perse all taint of human tenancy, made the far-off celebra- 
 tions as unreal as a dream. The only reality of his life was 
 here. 
 
 He took from his pocket a few letters — one of which 
 was worn and soiled with frequent handling. He re-read 
 it in a half-methodical, half-patient way, as if he were 
 waiting for some revelation it inspired, which was slow that 
 
62 CKESSY 
 
 afternoon in coming. At other times it had called up a 
 youthful enthusiasm which was wont to transfigure his grave 
 and prematurely reserved face with a new expression. To- 
 day the revelation and expression were both wanting. He 
 put the letter back with a slight sigh, that sounded so pre- 
 posterous in the silent room that he could not forego an 
 embarrassed smile. But the next moment he set himself 
 seriously to work on his correspondence. 
 
 Presently he stopped ; once or twice he had been over- 
 taken by a vague undefiuable sense of pleasure, even to the 
 dreamy halting of his pen. It was a sensation in no way 
 connected with the subject of his correspondence, or even 
 his previous reflections — it was partly physical, and yet it 
 was in some sense suggestive. It must be the intoxicating 
 effect of the woodland air. He even fancied he had noticed 
 it before, at the same hour when the sun was declining and 
 the fresh odors of the undergrowth were rising. It cer- 
 tainly was a perfume. He raised his eyes. There lay the 
 cause on the desk before him — a little nosegay of wild 
 Californian myrtle encircling a rose-bud which had escaped 
 his notice. 
 
 There was nothing unusual in the circumstance. Th& 
 children were in the habit of making their offerings gen- 
 erally without particular reference to time or occasion, 
 and it might have been overlooked by him during school 
 hours. He felt a pity for the forgotten posy already begin- 
 ning to grow limp in its neglected solitude. He remem- 
 bered that in some folk-lore of the children's, perhaps a 
 tradition of the old association of the myrtle with Venus, 
 it was believed to be emblematic of the affections. He 
 remembered also that he had even told them of this pro- 
 bable origin of their superstition. He was still holding it 
 in his hand when he was conscious of a silken sensation 
 that sent a magnetic thrill through his fingers. Looking at 
 it more closely he saw that the sprigs were bound together, 
 
CEESSY 63 
 
 not by thread or ribbon, but by long filaments of soft 
 brown hair tightly wound around them. He unwound a 
 single hair and held it to the light. Its length, color, tex- 
 ture, and above all a certain inexplicable instinct, told him 
 it was Cressy McKinstry's. He laid it down quickly, as if 
 ho had, in that act, familiarly touched her person. 
 
 He finished his letter, but presently found himself again 
 looking at the myrtle and thinking about it. From the posi- 
 tion in which it had been placed it was evidently intended 
 for him ; the fancy of binding it with hair was also inten- 
 tional and not a necessity, as he knew his feminine scholars 
 were usually well provided with bits of thread, silk, or rib- 
 bon. If it had been some new absurdity of childish fashion 
 introduced in the school, he would have noticed it ere this. 
 For it was this intrusion of a personality that vaguely 
 troubled him. He remembered Cressy's hair ; it was cer- 
 tainly very beautiful, in spite of her occasional vagaries of 
 coiffure. He recalled how, one afternoon, it had come down 
 when she was romping with Octavia in the playground, and 
 was surprised to find what a vivid picture he retained of 
 her lingering in the porch to put it up : her rounded arma 
 held above her head, her pretty shoulders, full throat, and 
 glowing face thrown back, and a wisp of the very hair be- 
 tween her white teeth ! He began another letter. 
 
 When it was finished the shadow of the pine branch 
 before the window, thrown by the nearly level sun across 
 his paper, had begun slowly to reach the opposite wall. 
 He put his work away, lingered for a moment in hesitation 
 over the myrtle sprays, and then locked them in his desk 
 with an odd feeling that he had secured in some vague way 
 a hold upon Cressy's future vagaries ; then reflecting that 
 Uncle Ben, whom he had seen in town, would probabij 
 keep holiday with the others, he resolved to wait no longer, 
 but strolled back to the hotel. The act, however, had not 
 recalled Uncle Ben to him by any association of ideas, for 
 
64 CEESSY 
 
 since his discovery of Johnny Filgee's caricature he had 
 failed to detect anything to corroborate the caricaturist's 
 satire, and had dismissed the subject from his mind. 
 
 On entering his room at the hotel he found Rupert Fil- 
 gee standing moodily by the window, while his brother 
 Johnny, overcome by a repletion of excitement and colla- 
 tion, was asleep on the single armchair. Their presence 
 was not unusual, as Mr. Tord, touched by the loneliness of 
 these motherless boys, had often invited them to come to 
 his rooms to look over his books and illustrated papers. 
 
 " Well ? " he said cheerfully. 
 
 Rupert did not reply or change his position. Mr. Ford, 
 glancing at him sharply, saw a familiar angry light in the 
 boy's beautiful eyes, slightly dimmed by a tear. Laying 
 his hand gently on Rupert's shoulder he said, " What 's the 
 matter, Rupert ? " 
 
 "Nothin'," said the boy doggedly, with his eyes still 
 fixed on the pane. 
 
 " Has — has — Mrs. Tripp " (the fair proprietress) " been 
 unkind ? " he went on lightly. 
 
 No reply. 
 
 " You know, Rupe," continued Mr. Ford demurely, " she 
 must show some reserve before company — like to-day. It 
 won't do to make a scandal." 
 
 Rupert maintained an indignant silence. But the dimple 
 (which he usually despised as a feminine blot) on the cheek 
 nearer the master became slightly accented. Only for a 
 moment ; the dark eyes clouded again. 
 
 " I wish I was dead, Mr. Ford." 
 
 "Hallo!" 
 
 "Or — doin' suthin'." 
 
 " That 's better. What do you want to do ? " 
 
 "To work — make a livin' myself. Quit toten' wood 
 and water at home ; quit cookin' and makin' beds, like a 
 yaller Chinaman ; quit nussin' babies and dressin' 'em and 
 
CRESSY 65 
 
 undressin' 'em, like a girl. Look at him now," pointing 
 to the sweetly unconscious Johnny, " look at him. there. 
 Do you know what that means ? It means I 've got to 
 pack him home through the town jist ez he is thar, and then 
 make a fire and bile his food for him, and wash him and 
 undress him and put hi»ii to bed, and ' Now I lay me down 
 to sleep ' him, and tuck him up ; and dad all the while 
 scootin' round town with other idjits, jawin' about ' pro- 
 gress ' and the 'future of Injun Spring.' Much future 
 we 've got over our own house, Mr. Ford. Much future 
 he 's got laid up for me ! " 
 
 The master, to whom those occasional outbreaks from 
 Rupert were not unfamiliar, smiled, albeit with serious eyes 
 that belied his lips, and consoled the boy as he had often 
 done before. But he was anxious to know the cause of this 
 recent attack and its probable relations to the fascinating 
 Mrs. Tripp. 
 
 " I thought we talked all that over some time ago, Eupe. 
 In a few months you '11 be able to leave school, and I '11 
 advise your father about putting you into something to give 
 you a chance for yourself. Patience, old fellow ; you 're 
 doing very well. Consider — there 's your pupil, Uncle 
 Ben." 
 
 " Oh yes ! That 's another big baby to tot round in 
 school when I ain't niggerin' at home." 
 
 " And I don't see exactly what else you could do at In- 
 dian Spring," continued Mr. Ford. 
 
 " No," said Rupert gloomily, •' but I could get away to 
 Sacramento. Yuba Bill says they take boys no bigger nor 
 me in thar express offices or banks — and in a year or two 
 they 're as good ez anybody and get paid as big. Why, 
 there was a fellow here, just now, no older than you, Mr. 
 Ford, and not half your learnin', and he dressed to death 
 with jewelry, and everybody bowin' and scrapin' to him, 
 that it was perfectly sickenin'." 
 
66 CEKSSY 
 
 Mr. Ford lifted his eyebrows. " Oh, you mean the 
 young man of Benham and Co., who was talking to Mrs. 
 Tripp ? " be said. 
 
 A quick ilush of angry consciousness crossed Rupert's 
 face. "Maybe; he has just cheek enough for anythin'." 
 
 " And you want to be like him ? " said Mr. Ford. 
 
 " You know what I mean, Mr. Ford. Not like him. 
 Why, you 're as good as he is, any day," continued Kupert, 
 with relenting naivete ; " but if a jay-bird like that can 
 get on, why could n't I ? " 
 
 There was no doubt that the master here pointed out the 
 defectiveness of Rupert's logic and the beneficence of pa- 
 tience and study, as became their relations of master and 
 pupil, but with the addition of a certain fellow sympathy 
 and some amusing recital of his own boyish experiences, 
 that had the eifect of calling dimples into action again. 
 At the end of half an hour the boy had become quite tract- 
 able, and, getting ready to depart, approached his sleeping 
 brother with something like resignation. But Johnny's 
 nap seemed to have had the eifect of transforming him into 
 an inert jelly-like mass. It required the joint exertions of 
 both the. master and Eupert to transfer him bodily into 
 the latter's arms, where, with a single limp elbow encir- 
 cling his brother's neck, he lay with his unfinished slum- 
 ber still visibly distending his cheeks, his eyelids, and even 
 lifting his curls from his moist forehead. The master bade 
 Eupert " good-night," and returned to his room as the boy 
 descended the stairs with his burden. 
 
 But here Providence, with, I fear, its occasional disre- 
 gard of mere human morality, rewarded Rupert after his 
 own foolish desires. Mrs. Tripp was at the foot of the 
 stairs as Rupert came slowly down. He saw her, and was 
 covered with shame; she saw him and his burden, and 
 was touched with kindliness. Whether or not she was 
 also mischievously aware of Rupert's admiration, and was 
 
CRESSY 67 
 
 not altogether displeased with it, I cannot say. In a voice 
 that thrilled him, she said : — 
 
 " What ! Rupert, are you going so soon ? " 
 
 "Yes, ma'am — on account of Johnny." 
 
 " But let me take him — I can keep him here to-night." 
 
 It was a great temptation, but Rupert had strength to 
 refuse, albeit with his hat pulled over his downcast eyes. 
 
 "Poor dear, how tired he looks." 
 
 She approached her still fresh and pretty face close to 
 Rupert and laid her lips on Johnny's cheek. Then she 
 lifted her audacious eyes to his brother, and pushing back 
 his well-worn chip hat from his clustering curls, she kissed 
 him squarely on the forehead. 
 
 " Good-night, dear." 
 
 The boy stumbled, and then staggered blindly forward 
 into the outer darkness. But with a gentleman's delicacy 
 he turned almost instantly into a side street, as if to keep 
 this consecration of himself from vulgar eyes. The path 
 he had chosen was rough and weary, the night was dark, 
 and Johnny was ridiculously heavy, but he kept steadily 
 on, the woman's kiss in the fancy of the foolish boy shin- 
 ing on his forehead and lighting him onward like a star. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 When the door closed on Rupert the master pulled down 
 the blind, and, trimming his lamp, tried to compose him- 
 self by reading. Outside, the " Great Day for Indian 
 Spring " was slowly evaporating in pale mists from the river, 
 and the celebration itself spasmodically taking flight here 
 and there in Roman candles and rockets. An occasional 
 outbreak from reyelers in the bar-room below, a stumbling 
 straggler along the planked sidewalk before the hotel, only 
 seemed to intensify the rustic stillness. Por the future of 
 Indian Spring was still so remote that Nature insensibly re- 
 invested its boundaries on the slightest relaxation of civic 
 influence, and Mr. Tord lifted his head from the glowing 
 columns of the " Star " to listen to the far-off yelp of a coy- 
 ote on the opposite shore. 
 
 He was also conscious of the recurrence of that vague, plea- 
 surable recollection, so indefinite that, when he sought to 
 identify it with anything, — even the finding of the myrtle 
 sprays on his desk, — it evaded him. He tried to work, 
 with the same interruption. Then an uneasy sensation that 
 he had not been sufficiently kind to Rupert in his foolish 
 love-troubles remorsefully seized him. A half - pathetic, 
 half-humorous picture of the miserable Rupert staggering 
 under the double burden of his sleeping brother and a mis- 
 placed affection, or possibly abandoning the one or both in 
 the nearest ditch in a reckless access of boyish frenzy and 
 fleeing his home forever, rose before his eyes. He seized 
 his hat with the intention of seeking him — or forgetting 
 him in some other occupation by the way. For Mr. Ford 
 
CRESSY 69 
 
 had the sensitive conscience of many imaginative people ; an 
 unfailing monitor, it was always calling his whole moral 
 being into play to evade it. 
 
 As he crossed the passage he came upon Mrs. Tripp hooded 
 and elaborately attired in a white ball dress, which however 
 did not, to his own fancy, become her as well as her ordi- 
 nary costume. He was passing her with a bow, when 
 she said, with complacent consciousness of her appearance, 
 " Are n't you going to the ball to-night ? " 
 
 He remembered then that " an opening ball " at the 
 Court-house was a part of the celebration. " No," he said 
 smiling ; " but it is a pity that Rupert could n't have seen 
 you in your charming array." 
 
 " Kupert," said the lady, with a slightly coquettish laugh ; 
 " you have made him as much a woman-hater as yourself. 
 I offered to take him in our party, and he ran away to you." 
 She paused, and giving him a furtive critical glance said, 
 with an easy mingling of confidence and audacity, " Why 
 don't you go ? Nobody '11 hurt you." 
 
 " I 'm not sure of that," replied Mr. Ford gallantly. 
 " There 's the melancholy example of Rupert always before 
 me." 
 
 Mrs. Tripp tossed her chignon and descended a step 
 of the stairs. " You 'd better go," she continued, looking 
 up over the balusters. "You can look on if you can't 
 dance." 
 
 Now Mr. Ford could dance, and it so chanced, rather 
 well, too. With this consciousness he remained standing 
 in half-indignant hesitation on the landing as she disap- 
 peared. Why should n't he go ? It was true, he had half- 
 tacitly acquiesced in the reserve with which he had been 
 treated, and had never mingled socially in the gatherings of 
 either sex at Indian Spring — but that was no reason. He 
 could at least dress himself, walk to the Court-house and-— 
 look on. 
 
70 CRESSy 
 
 Any black coat and white shirt was sufficiently de rigueur 
 for Indian Spring. Mr. Ford added the superfluous ele- 
 gance of a forgotten white waistcoat. When he reached the 
 sidewalk it was only nine o'clock, but the windows of the 
 Court-house were already flaring like a stranded steamer on 
 the barren bank where it had struck. On the way thither 
 he was once or twice tempted to change his mind, and hesi- 
 tated even at the very door. But the fear that his hesita- 
 tion would be noticed by the few loungers before it, and the 
 fact that some of them were already hesitating through 
 bashfulness, determined him to enter. 
 
 The clerks' office and judges' chambers on the lower floor 
 had been invaded by wraps, shawls, and refreshments, but 
 the dancing was reserved for the upper floor or court-room, 
 still unfinished. Flags, laurel wreaths, and appropriate 
 floral inscriptions hid its bare walls ; but the coat of arms 
 of the State, already placed over the judges' dais with its 
 illimitable golden sunset, its triumphant goddess, and its 
 implacable grizzly, seemed figuratively to typify the occasion 
 better than the inscriptions. The room was close and 
 crowded. The flickering candles in tin sconces against the 
 walls, or depending in rude chandeliers of barrel-hoops from 
 the ceiling, lit up the most astonishing diversity of female 
 costume the master had ever seen. Gowns of bygone fash- 
 ions, creased and stained with packing and disuse, toilets 
 of forgotten festivity revised with modern additions ; gar- 
 ments in and out of season — a fur-trimmed jacket and a 
 tulle skirt, a velvet robe under a pique sacque ; fresh young 
 faces beneath faded head-dresses, and mature and buxom 
 charms in virgin white. The small space cleared for the 
 dancers was continually invaded by the lookers-on, who in 
 files of three deep lined the room. 
 
 As the master pushed his way to the front, a young girl, 
 who had been standing in the sides of a quadrille, suddenly 
 darted with a nymph-like quickness among the crowd and 
 
CRESSY 71 
 
 was for an instant hidden. Without distinguishing either 
 face or figure, Mr. Eord recognized in the quick, impetuous 
 action a characteristic movement of Cressy's ; with an em- 
 barrassing instinct that he could not account for, he knew 
 she had seen him, and that, for some inexplicable reason, 
 he was the cause of her sudden disappearance. 
 
 But it was only for a moment. Even while he was 
 vaguely scanning the crowd she reappeared and took , her 
 place beside her mystified partner — the fascinating stranger 
 of Johnny's devotion and Rupert's dislike. She was pale ; 
 he had never seen her so beautiful. All that he had 
 thought distasteful and incongruous in her were but acces- 
 sories of her loveliness at that moment, in that light, in 
 that atmosphere, in that strange assembly. Even her full 
 pink gauze dress, from which her fair young shoulders 
 slipped as from a sunset cloud, seemed only the perfection 
 of virginal simplicity ; her girlish length of limb and the long 
 curves of her neck and back were now the outlines of 
 thorough breeding. The absence of color in her usually 
 fresh face had been replaced by a faint magnetic aurora 
 that seemed to him half spiritual. He could not take his 
 eyes from her ; he could not believe what he saw. Yet that 
 was Cressy McKinstry — his pupil ! Had he ever really seen 
 her ? Did he know her now ? Small wonder that all eyes 
 were bent upon her, that a murmur of unspoken admiration 
 or still more intense hush of silence moved the people 
 around him. He glanced hurriedly at them, and was oddl}' 
 relieved by this evident participation in his emotions. 
 
 She was dancing now, and with that same pale restraint 
 and curious quiet that had affected him so strongly. She 
 had not even looked in his direction, yet he was aware by 
 the same instinct that had at first possessed him that she 
 knew he was present. His desire to catch her eye was be- 
 coming mingled with a certain dread, as if in a single 
 interchange of glances the illusions of the moment would 
 
72 CKESSY 
 
 either vanish utterly or become irrevocably fixed. He 
 forced himself, when the set was finished, to turn away, 
 partly to avoid contact with some acquaintances who had 
 drifted before him, and whom politeness would have obliged 
 him to ask to dance, and partly to collect his thoughts. 
 He determined to make a tour of the rooms and then go 
 quietly home. Those who recognized him made way for 
 him with passive curiosity ; the middle-aged and older add- 
 ing a confidential sympathy and equality that positively 
 irritated him. For an instant he had an idea of seeking 
 out Mrs. Tripp and claiming her as a partner, merely to 
 show her that he danced. 
 
 He had nearly made the circuit of the room when he was 
 surprised by the first strains of a waltz. Waltzing was not 
 a strong feature of Indian Spring festivity, partly that the 
 Church people had serious doubts if David's saltatory per- 
 formances before the Ark included " round dances," and 
 partly that the young had not yet mastered its difficulties. 
 When he yielded to his impulse to look again at the dancers 
 he found that only three or four couples had been bold 
 enough to take the floor. Cressy McKinstry and her 
 former partner were one of them. In his present exaltation 
 he was not astonished to find that she had evidently picked 
 up the art in her late visit, and was now waltzing with quiet 
 grace and precision, but he was surprised that her partner 
 was far from being equally perfect, and that after a few 
 turns she stopped and smilingly disengaged her waist from 
 his arm. As she stepped back she turned with unerring 
 instinct to that part of the room where the master stood, 
 and raised her eyes through the multitude of admiring faces 
 to his. Their eyes met in an isolation as supreme as if 
 they had been alone. It was an attraction the more dan- 
 gerous because unformulated — a possession without previous 
 pledge, promise, or even intention — a love that did not 
 require to be " made." 
 
CRESSY 73 
 
 He approached her quietly and even more coolly than he 
 thought possible. " Will you allow me a trial ? " he asked. 
 
 She looked in his face, and as if she had not heard the 
 question but was following her own thought, said, " I knew 
 you would come ; I saw you when you first came in." 
 Without another word she put her hand in his, and as if it 
 were part of an instinctive action of drawing closer to him, 
 caught with her advancing foot the accent of the waltz, and 
 the next moment the room seemed to slip away from them 
 into whirling space. 
 
 The whole thing had passed so rapidly from the moment 
 he approached her to the first graceful swing of her full 
 skirt at his side, that it seemed to him almost like the 
 embrace of a lovers' meeting. He had often been as near 
 her before, had stood at her side at school, and even leaned 
 over her desk, but always with an irritated instinct of reserve 
 that had equally affected her, and which he now understood. 
 With her conscious but pale face so near his own, with the 
 faint odor of her hair clinging to her, and with the sweet 
 confusion of the half-lingering, half-withheld contact of her 
 hand and arm, all had changed. He did not dare to reflect 
 that he could never again approach her except with this 
 feeling. He did not dare to think of anything ; he abandoned 
 himself to the sense that had begun with the invasion of her 
 hair-bound mj^rtle in the silent schoolroom, and seemed to 
 have at last led her to his arms. They were moving now 
 in such perfect rhythm and unison that they seemed scarcely 
 conscious of motion. Once when they neared the open 
 window he caught a glimpse of the round moon rising above 
 the solemn heights of the opposite shore, and felt the cool 
 breath of mountain and river sweep his cheek and mingle a 
 few escaped threads of her fair hair with his own. With 
 that glimpse and that sensation the vulgarity and the 
 tawdriness of their surroundings, the guttering candles in 
 their sconces, the bizarre figures, the unmeaning faces seemed 
 
74 CEESSY 
 
 to be whirled far into distant space. They were alone with 
 night and Nature ; it was they who were still ; all else had 
 receded in a vanishing perspective of dull reality, in which 
 they had no part. 
 
 Play on, waltz of Strauss ! Whirl on, love and 
 youth ! For you cannot whirl so swiftly but that this 
 receding world will return again with narrowing circle to 
 hem you in. Faster, cracked clarionet ! Louder, too 
 brazen bassoon ! Keep back, dull and earthy environ- 
 ment, till master and pupil have dreamed their foolish 
 dream ! 
 
 They are in fancy alone on the river-bank, only the round 
 moon above them and their linked shadows faintly fluttering 
 in the stream. They have drawn so closely together now 
 that her arm is encircling his neck, her soft eyes uplifted 
 like the moon's reflection and drowning into his ; closer and 
 closer till their hearts stop beating and their lips have met 
 in a first kiss. Faster, little feet ! swing clear, Cressy's 
 skirt and keep the narrowing circle back ! . . . They are 
 again alone ; the judges' dais and the emblazoning of the 
 State caught in a single whirling flash of consciousness are 
 changed to an altar, seen dimly through the bridal veil that 
 covers her fair head. There is the murmur of voices 
 mingling two lives in one. They turn and pass proudly 
 down between the aisles of wondering festal faces. Ah ! 
 the circle is drawing closer. One more quick whirl to keep 
 them back, flying skirt and dainty-winged feet ! Too late ! 
 The music stops. The tawdry walls shut in again, the 
 vulgar crowds return, they stand pale and quiet, the centre 
 of a ring of breathless, admiring, frightened, or forbidding 
 faces. Her arms fold like wings at her side. The waltz is 
 over. 
 
 A shrill feminine chorus assail her with praises, struck 
 here and there with a metallic ring of envy ; a dozen all- 
 daring cavaliers, made reckless by her grace and beauty. 
 
CRESSY 75 
 
 clamor for her hand in the next waltz. She replies, not to 
 them, but to him, " Not again," and slips away in the crowd 
 with that strange new shyness that of all her transformations 
 seems the .most delicious. Yet so conscious are they of their 
 mutual passion that they do not miss each other, and he 
 turns away as if their next meeting were already an appointed 
 tryst. A few congratulate him on his skill. Johnny's 
 paragon looks after him curiously ; certain elders shake 
 hands with him perplexedly, as if not quite sure of the 
 professional consistency of his performance. Those charm- 
 ing tide-waiters on social success, the fair, artfully mingling 
 expectation with compliment, only extract from him the 
 laughing statement that this one waltz was the single 
 exception allowed him from the rule of his professional 
 conduct, and he refers them to his elder critics. A single 
 face, loutish, looming, and vindictive, stands out among the 
 crowd — the face of Seth Davis. He had not seen him since 
 he left the school ; he had forgotten his existence ; even now 
 he only remembered his successor, Joe Masters, and he 
 looked curiously around to see if that later suitor of Cressy's 
 was present. It was not until he reached the door that he 
 began to think seriously of Seth Davis's jealous face, and 
 was roused to a singular indignation. " Why had n't this 
 great fool vented his jealousy on the openly compromising 
 Masters," he thought. He even turned and walked back 
 with some vaguely aggressive instinct, but the young man 
 had disappeared. With this incident still in his mind he 
 came upon Uncle Ben and Hiram McKinstry, standing 
 among the spectators in the doorway. Why might not 
 Uncle Ben be jealous too ? and if his single waltz had really 
 appeared so compromising, why should not Cressy's father 
 object ? But both men — albeit, McKinstry usually ex- 
 hibited a vague unreasoning contempt for Uncle Ben — 
 were unanimous in their congratulations and outspoken 
 admiration. 
 
re CRESSY 
 
 " When I seed you sail in, Mr. Ford," said Uncle Bea 
 with abstract reflectiveness, " I sez to the fellers, ' lie low, 
 boys, and you '11 see style.' And when you put on them 
 first steps, I sez, ' that 's French — the latest high-toned 
 French style — outer the best masters, and — outer the 
 best books. For why ? ' sez I. ' It 's the same long, slid- 
 ing stroke you see in his copies. There 's that long up 
 sweep, and that easy curve to the right with no hitch. 
 That 's the sorter swing he hez in readin' po'try too. 
 That 's why it 's called the po'try of motion,' sez I. * And 
 you ken bet your boots, boys, it 's all in the trainin' o' 
 education.' " 
 
 " Mr. Ford," said Mr. McKinstry gravely, slightly wav- 
 ing a lavender-colored kid glove, with which he had elected 
 to conceal his maimed hand, and at the same moment indi- 
 cate a festal occasion, " I hev to thank ye for the way you 
 took out that child o' mine, like ez she woz an ontried filly, 
 and put her through her paces. I don't dance myself, par- 
 tikly in that gait — which I take to be suthin' betwixt a 
 lope and a canter — and I don't get to see much dancin' now- 
 adays on account o' bein' worrited by stock, but seein' you 
 two together just now, suthin' came over me, and I don't 
 think I ever felt so kam in my life." 
 
 The blood rushed to the master's cheek with an unex- 
 pected consciousness of guilt and shame. " But," he stam- 
 mered awkwardly, " your daughter dances beautifully her- 
 self ; she has certainly had practice." 
 
 " That," said McKinstry, laying his gloved hand impres- 
 sively on the master's shoulder, with the empty little finger 
 still more emphasized by being turned backward in the act, 
 " that may be ez it ez, but I wanted to say that it was the 
 simple, easy, fammily touch that you gev it, that took me. 
 Toward the end, when you kinder gathered her up and she 
 sorter dropped her head into your breast pocket, and seemed 
 to go to sleep, like ez ef she was still a little girl, it so 
 
CEESSY 77 
 
 reminded me of the times when I used to tote her myself 
 walkin' by the waggin at Piatt River, that it made me wish 
 the old woman was here to see it." 
 
 Still coloring, the master cast a rapid, sidelong glance at 
 McKinstry's dark red face and beard, but in the slow satis- 
 faction of his features there was no trace of that irony which 
 the master's self-consciousness knew. 
 
 " Then your wife is not here ? " said Mr. Ford abstract- 
 edly. 
 
 " She war at church. She reckoned that I 'd do to look 
 arter Cressy — she bein', so to speak, under conviction. 
 D' ye mind walkin' this way a bit ; I want to speak a word 
 with ye ? " He put his maimed hand through the master's 
 arm, after his former fashion, and led him to a corner. 
 
 " Did ye happen to see Seth Davis about yer ? " 
 
 " I believe I saw him a moment ago," returned Mr. Ford 
 half contemptuously. 
 
 " Did he get off anythin' rough on ye ? " 
 
 " Certainly not," said the master haughtily. " Why 
 should he dare ? " 
 
 "That's so," said McKinstry meditatively. " You had 
 better keep right on in that line. That 's your gait, remem- 
 ber. Leave him — or his father — it's the same thing — 
 to ine. Don't you let yourself be roped in to this yer row 
 betwixt me and the Davises. You ain't got no call to do 
 it. It 's already been on my mind your bringin' that gun 
 to me in the Harrison row. The old woman had n't oughter 
 let you. -^ nor Cress either. Hark to me, Mr. Ford! I 
 reckon to stand between you and both the Davises till the 
 cows come home — only — mind you give him the go-by 
 when he happens to meander along towards you." 
 
 "I. 'm very much obliged to you," said Ford, with dis- 
 proportionately sudden choler ; " but I don't propose to 
 alter my habits for a ridiculous schoolboy whom I have 
 dismissed." The unjust and boyish petulance of hia 
 
78 CRESSY 
 
 speech instantly flashed upon him, and he felt his cheek 
 burn again. 
 
 McKinstry regarded him with dull, red, slumbrous eyes. 
 " Don't you go to lose your best holt, Mr. Ford — and 
 that's kam. Keep your kam — and you 've alius got the 
 dead-wood on Injin Springs, /ain't got it," he continued 
 iu his slowest, most passionless manner, " and a row more 
 or less ain't much account to me — but you, you keep your 
 kam." fie paused, stepped back, and regarding the mas- 
 ter, with a slight wave of his crippled hand over his whole 
 person, as if indicating some personal adornment, said, " It 
 sets you off! " 
 
 He nodded, turned, and reentered the ballroom. Mr. 
 Ford, without trusting himself to further speech, elbowed 
 his way through the crowded staircase to the street. But 
 even there his strange anger, as well as the equally strange 
 remorse, which had seized him in McKinstry's presence, 
 seemed to evaporate in the clear moonlight and soft sum- 
 mer air. There was the river-bank, with the tremulous 
 river glancing through the dreamy mist, as they had seen 
 it from the window together. He even turned to look 
 back on the lighted ballroom, as if she might have been 
 looking out, too. But he knew lie should see her again to- 
 morrow, and he hurriedly put aside all reserve, all thought 
 of the future, all examination of his conduct, to walk 
 home enwrapped in the vaguer pleasure of the past. Eu- 
 pert Filgee, to whom he had never given a second thought, 
 now peacefully slumbering beside his baby brother, had not 
 gone home in more foolish or more dangerous company. 
 
 When he reached the hotel, he was surprised to find it 
 only eleven o'clock. No one had returned, the building 
 was deserted by all but the bar-keeper and a flirting cham- 
 bermaid, who regarded him with aggrieved astonishment. 
 He began to feel very foolish, and half regretted that he 
 had not stayed to dance with Mrs. Tripp ; or, at least, re- 
 
GKESSY 79 
 
 maiiied as a quiet onlooker apart from the others. With a 
 hasty excuse about returning to write letters for the morn- 
 ing's post, he took a candle and slowly remounted the 
 stairs to his room. But on entering he found himself un- 
 prepared for that singular lack of sympathy with which 
 familiar haunts always greet our new experiences ; ho could 
 hardly believe that he had left that room only two hours 
 before ; it seemed so uncongenial and strange to the sensa- 
 tion that was still possessing him. Yet there were his 
 table, his books, his armchair, his bed as he had left 
 them ; even a sticky fragment of gingerbread that had 
 fallen from Johnny's pocket. He had not yet reached that 
 stage of absorbing passion where he was able to put the 
 loved one in his own surroundings ; she as yet had no 
 place in this quiet room ; he could scarcely think of her 
 here, and he must think of her, if he had to go elsewhere. 
 An extravagant idea of walking the street until his restless 
 dream was over seized him, but even in his folly the lacka- 
 daisical, moonstruck quality of such a performance was too 
 obvious. The schoolhouse ! He would go there ; it was 
 only a pleasant walk, the night was lovely, and he could 
 bring the myrtle spray from his desk. It was too signifi- 
 cant now — if not too precious — to be kept there. Per- 
 haps he had not examined it closely, nor the place where it 
 had lain ; there might be an additional sign, word, or token 
 he had overlooked. The thought thrilled him, even while 
 he was calmly arguing to himself that it was an instinc) 
 of caution. 
 
 The air was quieter and warmer than usual, though still 
 characteristic of the locality in its dry, dewless clarity. 
 The grass was yet warm from the day-long sun, and when 
 he entered the pines that surrounded the schoolhouse, they 
 had scarcely yet lost their spicy heat. The moon, riding 
 high, filled the dark aisles with a delicious twilight that 
 lent itself to his waking dreams. It was not long before 
 
80 CEESSY 
 
 to-morrov/ ; he could easily manage to bring her here in 
 the grove at recess, and would speak with her there. It 
 did not occur to him what he should say, or why he should 
 say it ; it did not occur to hira that he had no other provo- 
 cation than her eyes, her conscious manner, her eloquent 
 silence, and her admission that she had expected him. It 
 did not occur to him that all this was inconsistent with what 
 he knew of her antecedents, her character, and her habits. 
 It was this very inconsistency that charmed and convinced 
 him. We are always on the lookout for these miracles of 
 passion. We may doubt the genuineness of an aifection 
 that is first-hand, but never of one that is transferred. 
 
 He approached the schoolhouse and unlocking the door 
 closed it behind him, not so much to keep out human intru- 
 sion as the invasion of bats and squirrels. The nearly 
 vertical moon, while it perfectly lit the playground and 
 openings in the pines around the house, left the interior in 
 darkness, except the reflection upon the ceiling from the 
 shining gravel without. Partly from a sense of precaution 
 and partly because he was familiar with the position of the 
 benches, he did not strike a light, and reached his own desk 
 unerringly, drew his chair before it and unlocked it, groped 
 in its dark recess for the myrtle spray, felt its soft silken 
 binding with an electrical thrill, drew it out, and in the 
 security of the darknfess, raised it to his lips. 
 
 To make room for it in his breast pocket he was obliged 
 to take out his letters — among them the well-worn one he 
 had tried to read that morning. A mingling of pleasure and 
 remorse came over him as he felt that it was already of the 
 past, and as he dropped it carelessly into the empty desk it 
 fell with a faint, hollow sound as if it were ashes to ashes. 
 
 What was that ? 
 
 The noise of steps upon the gravel, light laughter, the 
 moving of two or three shadows on the ceiling, the sound 
 of voices, a man's, a child's, and hers 1 
 
CRESSY 81 
 
 Could it be possible ? Was not he mistaken ? No ! the 
 man's voice was Master's ; the child's, Octavia's ; the 
 woman's, hers. 
 
 He remained silent in the shadow. The schoolroom was 
 not far from the trail where she would have had to pass 
 going home from the ball. But why had she come there ? 
 had they seen him arrive ? and were mischievously watch- 
 ing him ? The sound of Cressy's voice and the lifting of 
 the unprotected window near the door convinced him to the 
 contrary. 
 
 " There, that '11 do. Now you two can step aside. 'Tave, 
 take him over to yon fence, and keep him there till I get 
 in. No — thank you, sir — I can assist myself. I've done 
 it before. It ain't the first time I 've been through this 
 window, is it, 'Tave ? " 
 
 Ford's heart stopped beating. There was a moment of 
 laughing expostulation, the sound of retreating voices, the 
 sudden darkening of the window, the billowy sweep of a 
 skirt, the faint quick flash of a little ankle, and Cressy 
 McKinstry swung herself into the room and dropped lightly 
 on the floor. 
 
 She advanced eagerly up the moonlit passage between the 
 two rows of benches. Suddenly she stopped ; the master 
 rose at the same moment with outstretched warning hand to 
 check the cry of terror he felt sure would rise to her lips. 
 But he did not know the lazy nerves of the girl before him. 
 She uttered no outcry. And even in the faint dim light he 
 could see only the same expression of conscious understand- 
 ing come over her face that he had seen in the ballroom, 
 mingled with a vague joy that parted her breathless lips. 
 As he moved quickly forward their hands met ; she caught 
 his with a quick significant pressure and darted back to the 
 window. 
 
 " Oh, 'Tave ! " (very languidly.) 
 
 "Yes." 
 
82 CRESSY 
 
 "You two had better wait for me at the edge of the trail 
 yonder, and keep a lookout for folks going by. Don't let 
 them see you hanging round so near. Do you hear ? I'm 
 all right." 
 
 With her hand still meaningly lifted, she stood gazing 
 at the two figures until they slowly receded towards the 
 distant trail. Then she turned as he approached her, the 
 reflection of the moonlit road striking up into her shining 
 eyes and eager waiting face. A dozen questions were upon 
 his lips, a dozen replies were ready upon hers. But they 
 were never uttered, for the next moment her eyes half 
 closed, she leaned forward and fell — into a kiss. 
 
 She was the first to recover, holding his face in her 
 hands, turned towards the moonlight, her own in passion- 
 ate shadow. " Listen," she said quickly. " They think I 
 came here to look for something I left in my desk. They 
 thought it high fun to come with me — these two. I did 
 come to look for something — not in my desk, but yours." 
 
 " Was it this ? " he whispered, taking the myrtle from 
 his breast. She seized it with a light cry, putting it first 
 to her lips and then to his. Then clasping his face again 
 between her soft palms, she turned it to the window and 
 said, *' look at them and not at me." 
 
 He did so — seeing the two figures slowly walking in the 
 trail. And holding her there firmly against his breast, it 
 seemed a blasphemy to ask the question that had been upon 
 his lips. 
 
 " That 's not all," she murmured, moving his face back- 
 wards and forwards to her lips as if it were something to 
 which she was giving breath. " When we came to the 
 woods I felt that you would be here." 
 
 " And feeling that, you brought him ? " said Ford, draw- 
 ing back. 
 
 " Why not ? " she replied indolently. " Even if he had 
 seen you, I could have managed to have you walk home 
 with me." 
 
CRESSY 83 
 
 " But do you think it 's quite fair ? Would he like 
 it ? " 
 
 " Would lie like it ? " she echoed lazily. 
 
 •'' Cressy," said the young man earnestly, gazing into 
 her shadowed face. " Have you given him any right to 
 object ? Do you understand me ? " 
 
 She stopped as if thinking. " Do you want me to call 
 him in ? " she said quietly, but without the least trace of 
 archness or coquetry. " Would you rather he were here — 
 or shall we go out now and meet him ? I '11 say you just 
 came as I was going out." 
 
 What should he say ? " Cressy," he asked almost curtly, 
 " do you love me ? " 
 
 It seemed such a ridiculous thing to ask, holding her 
 thus in his arms, if it were true ; it seemed such a villain- 
 ous question, if it were not. 
 
 " I think I loved you when you first came," she said 
 slowly. " It must have been that that made me engage 
 myself to him," she added simply. " I knew I loved you, 
 and thought only of you when I was away. I came back 
 because I loved you. I loved you the day you came to see 
 maw — even when I thought you came to tell her of Mas- 
 ters, and to say that you could n't take me back." 
 
 " But you don't ask me if / love you ? " 
 
 " But you do — you could n't help it now," she said 
 confidently. 
 
 What could he do but reply as illogically with a closer 
 embrace, albeit a slight tremor, as if a cold wind had blown 
 across the open window, passed over him. She may have 
 felt it too, for she presently said, " Kiss me and let me 
 go." 
 
 "But we must have a longer talk, darling — when — 
 when — others are not waiting." 
 
 " Do you know the far barn near the boundary ? " she 
 asked. 
 
84 CEESSY 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I used to take your books there, afternoons to — to- 
 be with you," she whispered, " and paw gave orders that 
 no one was to come nigh it while I was there. Come to- 
 morrow, just before sundown." 
 
 A long embrace followed, in which all that they had not 
 said seemed, to them at least, to become articulate on their 
 tremulous and clinging lips. Then they separated, he un- 
 locking the door softly to give her egress that way. She 
 caught up a book from a desk in passing, and then slipped 
 like a rosy shaft of the coming dawn across the fading 
 moonlight, and a moment after her slow voice, without a 
 tremor of excitement, was heard calling to her compani:>ns. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 The conversation which Johnny Filgee had overheard 
 between Uncle Ben and the gorgeous stranger, although 
 unintelligible to his infant mind, was fraught with some 
 signiiicanee to the adult settlers of Indian Spring. The 
 town itself, like most interior settlements, was originally 
 a mining encampment, and as such its founders and set- 
 tlers derived their possession of the soil under the mining 
 laws that took precedence of all other titles. But although 
 that title was held to be good even after the abandonment 
 of their original occupation, and the establishment of shops, 
 offices, and dwellings on the site of the deserted places, the 
 suburbs of the town and outlying districts were more pre- 
 cariously held by squatters, under the presumption of their 
 being public land open to preemption, or the settlement of 
 school-land warrants upon them. Few of the squatters had 
 taken the trouble to perfect even these easy titles, merely 
 holding " possession " for agricultural or domiciliary pur- 
 poses, and subject only to the invasion of "jumpers," a 
 class of adventurers who, in the abeyance of recognized 
 legal title, "jumped " or forcibly seized such portions of a 
 squatter's domains as were not protected by fencing or su- 
 perior force. It was therefore with some excitement that 
 Indian Spring received the news that a Mexican grant of 
 three square leagues, which covered the whole district, had 
 been lately confirmed by the government, and that action 
 would be taken to recover possession. It was understood 
 that it would not affect the adverse possessions held by the 
 town under the mining laws, but it would compel the 
 
86 CEESSY 
 
 adjacent squatters like McKinstry, Davis, Masters, and 
 Filgee, and jumpers like the Harrisons, to buy the legal 
 title, or defend a slow but losing lawsuit. The holders of 
 the grant — rich capitalists of San Francisco — were open 
 to compromise to those in actual possession, and in the ben- 
 Bfits of this compromise the unscrupulous " jumper," who 
 had neither sown nor reaped, but simply dispossessed the 
 squatter who had done both, shared equally with him. 
 
 A diversity of opinion as to the effect of the new claim 
 naturally obtained ; the older settlers still clung to their 
 experiences of an easy aboriginal holding of the soil, and 
 were skeptical both as to the validity and justice of these 
 revived alien grants ; but the newer arrivals hailed this 
 certain tenure of legal titles as a guarantee to capital and 
 an incentive to improvement. There was also a growing 
 and influential party of Eastern and Northern men, who 
 were not sorry to see a fruitful source of dissension and 
 bloodshed removed. The feuds of the McKinstrys and 
 Harrisons, kept alive over a boundary to which neither had 
 any legal claim, would seem to bring them hereafter within 
 the statute law regarding ordinary assaults without any 
 ethical mystification. On the other hand McKinstry and 
 Harrison would each be able to arrange any compromise with 
 the new title holders for the lands they possessed, or make 
 over that " actual possession " for a consideration. It was 
 feared that both men, being naturally lawless, would unite 
 to render any legal eviction a long and dangerous process, and 
 that they would either be left undisturbed till the last, or 
 would force a profitable concession. But a greater excite- 
 ment followed when it was known that a section of the land 
 had already been sold by the owners of the grant, that this 
 section exactly covered the debatable land of the McKinstry- 
 Harrison boundaries, and that the new landlord would at 
 once attempt its legal possession. The inspiration of genius 
 that had thus effected a division of the Harrison-McKinstry 
 
CEESST 87 
 
 combination at its one weak spot excited even the admiration 
 Df the skeptics. No one in Indian Spring knew its real 
 author, for the suit was ostensibly laid in the name of a 
 San Francisco banker. But the intelligent reader of Johnny 
 Filgee's late experience during the celebration will have 
 already recognized Uncle Ben as the man, and it becomes a 
 part of this veracious chronicle at this moment to allow him 
 to explain, not only his intentions, but the means by which 
 he carried them out, in his own words. 
 
 It was one afternoon at the end of his usual solitary les- 
 son, and the master and Uncle Ben were awaiting the 
 arrival of Rupert. Uncle Ben's educational progress lately, 
 through dint of slow tenacity, had somewhat improved, and 
 he had just completed from certain forms and examples in 
 a book before him a " Letter to a Consignee " informing 
 him that he. Uncle Ben, had just shipped " 2 cwt. Ivory 
 Elephant Tusks, 80 peculs of rice and 400bbls. prime mess 
 pork from Indian Spring ; " and another beginning " Hon- 
 ored Madam," and conveying in admirably artificial phrase- 
 ology the " lamented decease " of the lady's husband from 
 yellow fever, contracted on the Gold Coast, and Uncle Ben 
 was surveying his work with critical satisfaction when the 
 master, somewhat impatiently, consulted his watch. Uncle 
 Ben looked up. 
 
 " I oughter told ye that Eupe did n't kalkilate to come 
 to-day." 
 
 " Indeed — why not ? " 
 
 "I reckon because I told him he needn't. I allowed to 
 — to hev a little private talk with ye, Mr. Ford, if ye 
 didn't mind." 
 
 Mr. Ford's face did not shine with invitation. "Very 
 well," he said, " only remember I have an engagement this 
 afternoon." 
 
 " But that ain't until about sundown," said Uncle Ben 
 quietly. " I won't keep ye ez long ez that." 
 
88 CEESSY 
 
 Mr. Ford glanced quickly at Uncle Ben with a rising color. 
 " What do you know of my engagements ? " he said sharply. 
 
 " Nothin', Mr. Ford," returned Uncle Ben simply ; " but 
 hevin' bin layin' round, lookin' for ye here and at the hotel 
 for four or five days alius about that time and not findin' 
 you, I rather kalkilated you might hev suthin' reg'lar on 
 hand." 
 
 There was certainly nothing in his face or manner to indi- 
 cate the least evasion or deceit, or indeed anything but his 
 usual naivete, perhaps a little perturbed and preoccupied by 
 what he was going to say. " I had an idea of writin' you a 
 letter," he continued, " kinder combinin' practice and confi- 
 dential information, you know. To be square with you, 
 Mr. Ford, in pint of fact, I 've got it here. But ez it don't 
 seem to entirely gibe with the facts, and leaves a heap o' things 
 onsaid and onseen, perhaps it 's just ez wall ez I read it to 
 you myself — putten' in a word here and there, and ex- 
 plainin' it gin'rally. Do you sabe ? " 
 
 The master nodded, and Uncle Ben drew from his desk 
 a rude portfolio made from the two covers of a dilapidated 
 atlas, and took from between them a piece of blotting-paper, 
 which through inordinate application had acquired the color 
 and consistency of a slate, and a few pages of copy-book 
 paper, that to the casual glance looked like sheets of ex- 
 ceedingly difficult music. Surveying them with a blending 
 of chirographic pride, orthographic doubt, and the bashful 
 consciousness of a literary amateur, he traced each line with 
 a forefinger inked to the second joint, and slowly read aloud 
 as follows : — 
 
 " ' Mr. Ford, Teacher. 
 
 " ' Dear Sir, — Yours of the 12th rec'd and contents 
 noted.' " (" I did n't," explained Uncle Ben parenthetically, 
 " receive any letter of yours, but I thought I might heave 
 in that beginning from copy for practice. The rest is me.") 
 
 " ' In refference to my having munney,' " continued Uncle 
 
CRESSY 89 
 
 Ben, reading and pointing each word as he read, " ' and 
 being able to buy Ditch Stocks an' Land ' " — 
 
 " One moment," said Mr. Ford interrupting, " I thought 
 j'ou were going to leave out copy. Come to what you have 
 to say. " 
 
 " But I hev — this is all real now. Hold on and you '11 
 see," said Uncle Ben. He resumed with triumphant em- 
 phasis : — 
 
 " ' When it were gin' rally allowed that I haddent a red 
 cent, I want to explain to you Mister Ford for the first 
 time a secret. This here is how it was done. When I fir.st 
 came to Injian Spring, I settled down into the old Palmetto 
 claim, near a heap of old tailings. Knowin' it were against 
 rools, and reg'lar Chinyman's bizness to work them I 
 didd n't let on to enyboddy what I did — witch wos to turn 
 over some of the quarts what I thought was likely and 
 Orrifferus. Doing this I kem uppon some pay ore which 
 them Palmetto fellers had overlookt, or more likely had 
 kaved in uppon them from the bank onknown. Workin' 
 at it in od times by and large, sometimes afore sun-up and 
 sometimes after sundown, and all the time keeping up a day's 
 work on the clame for a show to the boys, I emassed a honist 
 fortun in 2 years of 50,000 dolers and still am. But it will 
 be askd by the incredjulos Eeeder How did you never let 
 out anything to Injian Spring, and How did you get rid of 
 your yeald ? Mister Ford, the Anser is I took it twist a 
 month on hossback over to La Port and sent it by express to 
 a bank in Sacramento, giviu' the name of Daubigny, witcli no 
 one in La Port took for mo. The Ditch Stok and the Land 
 was all took in the saine name, hens the secret was onreviled 
 to the General Eye — stop a minit,' " he interrupted him- 
 self quickly as the master in an accession of impatient skep- 
 ticism was about tp break in upon him, "it ain't all." 
 Then dropping his voice to a tremulous and almost funereal 
 climax, he went on : — 
 
90 CRESSY 
 
 " ' Thus we see that pashent indurstry is Eewarded in 
 Spite of Mining Eools and Eeggylashuns, and Predgudisses 
 agin Furrin Labor is played out and fleeth like a shad-oi 
 contenueyeth not long in One Spot, and that a Man may 
 appear to be off no Account and yet Emass that which is 
 far abov rubles and Fadith not Away. 
 
 " ' Hoppin' for a continneyance 
 " ' of your fevors I remain, 
 " ' Yours to command, 
 
 '"Benj D'Aubigny.'" 
 
 The gloomy satisfaction with which Uncle Ben regarded 
 this peroration — a satisfaction that actually appeared to be 
 equal to the revelation itself — only corroborated the master's 
 indignant doubts. 
 
 " Come," he said, impulsively taking the paper from 
 Uncle Ben's reluctant hand, " how much of this is a concoc- 
 tion of yours and Eupe's — and how much is a true story ? 
 Do you really mean " — 
 
 " Hold on, Mr. Ford ! " interrupted Uncle Ben, suddenly 
 fumbling in the breast pocket of his red shirt, " I reckoned 
 on your being a little hard with me, remembering our first 
 talk 'bout these things — so I allowed I. 'd bring you some 
 proof." Slowly extracting a long legal envelope from his 
 pocket, he opened it, and drew out two or three crisp certifi- 
 cates of stock, and handed them to the master. 
 
 " Ther 's one hundred shares made out to Benj Daubigny. 
 I 'd hev brought you over the deed of the land too, but ez 
 it 's rather hard to read off-hand, on account of the law 
 palaver, I 've left it ap at the shanty to tackle at odd times 
 by way of practicing. But ef you like we '11 go up thar, 
 and I '11 show it to you." 
 
 Still haunted by his belief in Uncle Ben's small duplici- 
 ties, Mr. Ford hesitated. These were certainly bona fide 
 certificates of stock made out to " Daubigny." But he had 
 
CRESSY 91 
 
 never actually accepted Uncle Ben's statement of his iden- 
 tity Avith that person, and now it was offered as a corrobo- 
 ration of a still more improbable story. He looked at Uncle 
 Ben's simple face slightly deepening in color under his 
 scrutiny — ■ perhaps with conscious guilt. 
 
 " Have you made anybody your confidant ? Kupe, for 
 instance ? " he asked significantly. 
 
 " In course not," replied Uncle Ben, with a slight stiffen- 
 ing of wounded pride. " On'y yourself, Mr. Ford, and the 
 young fellow Stacey from the bank — ez was obligated to 
 know it. In fact, I wos kalkilatin' to ask you to help me 
 talk to him about that yer boundary land." 
 
 Mr. Ford's skepticism was at last staggered. Any prac- 
 tical joke or foolish complicity between the agent of the bank 
 and a man like Uncle Ben was out of the question, and if the 
 story were his own sole invention, he would have scarcely 
 dared to risk so accessible and uncompromising a denial as 
 the agent had it in his power to give. 
 
 He held out his hand to Uncle Ben. " Let me congrat- 
 ulate you," he said heartily, " and forgive me if your story 
 really sounded so wonderful I could n't quite grasp it. 
 Now let me ask you something more. Have you had any 
 reason for keeping this a secret, other than your fear of con- 
 fessing that you violated a few bigoted and idiotic mining 
 rules — which, after all, are binding only upon sentiment 
 
 — and which your success has proved to be utterly im- 
 practical ? " 
 
 " There tvas another reason, Mr. Ford," said Uncle Ben, 
 wiping away an embarrassed smile with the back of his 
 hand, " that is, to be square with you, why I thought of 
 consultin' you. I did n't keer to have McKinstry, and " 
 
 — he added hurriedly, " in course Harrison, too, know that 
 I bought up the title to thar boundary." 
 
 " I understand," nodded the master. " I should n't think 
 you would." 
 
92 CEESSY 
 
 " Why should n't ye ? " asked UBcle Ben quickly. 
 
 " Well — I don't suppose you care to quarrel with two 
 passionate men." 
 
 Uncle Ben's face changed. Presently, however, with his 
 hand to his face, he managed to manipulate another smile, 
 only it appeared for the purpose of heing as awkwardly 
 wiped away. 
 
 " Say one passionate man, Mr. Ford." 
 
 " Well, one if you like," returned the master cheerfully. 
 " But for the matter of that, why any ? Come — do you 
 mind telling me why you hought the land at all ? You 
 know it 's of little value to any but McKinstry and Harri- 
 Bon." 
 
 " Soppose," said Uncle Ben slowly, with a great affecta- 
 tion of wiping his ink-spotted desk with his sleeve, — " sop- 
 pose that I had got kinder tired of seein' McKinstry and 
 Harrison alius fightin' and scrimmagin' over their boundary 
 line. Soppose I kalkilated that it warn't the sort o' thing 
 to induce folks to settle here. Soppose I reckoned that 
 by gettin' the real title in my hands I 'd have the dead-wood 
 on both o' them, and settle the thing my own way, eh ? " 
 
 " That certainly was a very laudable intention," returned 
 Mr. Ford, observing Uncle Ben curiously, " and from what 
 you said just now about one passionate man, I suppose you 
 have determined already wJw to favor. I hope your public 
 spirit will be appreciated by Indian Spring at least — if it 
 is n't by those two men." 
 
 " You lay low and keep dark and you '11 see," returned 
 his companion, with a hopefulness of speech which his 
 somewhat anxious eagerness however did not quite bear out. 
 " But you're not goin' yet, surely," he added, as the master 
 again absently consulted his watch. " It 's on'y half past 
 four. It 's true thar ain't any more to tell," he added simply, 
 " but I had an idea that you might hev took to this yer 
 little story of mine more than you 'pear to be, and might 
 
CEESSY 93 
 
 be askin' questions and kinder bedevlin' me with jokes ez 
 to what I was goin' to do — and all that. But p'r'aps it 
 don't seem so wonderful to you arter all. Come to think 
 of it — squarely now," he said, with a singular despond- 
 ency, " I 'm rather sick of it myself — eh ? " 
 
 " My dear old boy," said Ford, grasping both his hands, 
 with a swift revulsion of shame at his own utterly selfish 
 abstraction, " I am overjoyed at your good luck. More than 
 that, I can say honestly, old fellow, that it could n't have 
 fallen in more worthy hands, or to any one whose good 
 fortune would have pleased me more. There ! And if I 've 
 been slow and stupid in taking it in, it is because it's so 
 wonderful, so like a fairy tale of virtue rewarded — as if 
 you were a kind of male Cinderella, old man ! " He had 
 no intention of lying — he had no belief that he was ; he 
 had only forgotten that his previous impressions and hesita- 
 tions had arisen from the very fact that he did doubt the 
 consistency of the story with his belief in Uncle Ben's 
 weakness. But he thought himself now so sincere that the 
 generous reader, who no doubt is ready to hail the perfect 
 equity of his neighbor's good luck, will readily forgive him. 
 
 In the plenitude of this sincerity, Ford threw himself at 
 full length on one of the long benches, and with a gesture 
 invited Uncle Ben to make himself equally at his ease. 
 " Come," he said, with boyish gayety, " let 's hear your plans, 
 old man. To begin with, who 's to share them with you ? 
 Of course there are ' the old folks at home ' first ; then you 
 have brothers — and perhaps sisters?" He stopped and 
 glanced with a smile at Uncle Ben ; the idea of there being 
 a possible female of his species struck his fancy. 
 
 Uncle Ben, who had hitherto always exercised a severe 
 restraint — partly from respect and partly from caution — 
 over his long limbs in the schoolhouse, here slowly lifted one 
 leg over another bench, and sat himself astride of it, leaning 
 forward on his elbow, his chin resting between his hands. 
 
94 CEESSY 
 
 " As far as the old folks goes, Mr. Tord, I 'm a kind of 
 orphan." 
 
 " A kind of orphan ? " echoed Ford. 
 
 " Yes," said Uncle Ben, leaning heavily on his chin, so 
 that the action of his jaws with the enunciation of each word 
 slightly jerked his head forward as if he were imparting 
 confidential information to the bench before him. " Yes, 
 that is, you see, I 'm all right ez far as the old man goes — 
 he 's dead ; died way back in Mizzouri. But ez to my 
 mother, it's sorter betwixt and between — kinder unsartain. 
 You see, Mr. Ford, she went off with a city feller — an 
 entire stranger to me — afore the old man died, and that 's 
 wot broke up my schoolin'. Now whether she 's here, there, 
 or yon, can't be found out, though Squire Tompkins allowed 
 
 — and he were a lawyer — that the old man could get 
 a divorce if he wanted, and that you see would make me a 
 whole orphan, ef I keerd to prove title, ez the lawyers say. 
 Well — that sorter lets the old folks out. Then my brother 
 was onc't drowned in the North Piatt, and I never had any 
 sisters. That don't leave much family for plannin' about 
 
 — does it ? " 
 
 " No," said the master reflectively, gazing at Uncle Ben, 
 " unless you avail yourself of your advantages now and have 
 one of your own. I suppose now that you are rich, you '11 
 marry." 
 
 Uncle Ben slightly changed his position, and then with 
 his finger and thumb began to apparently feed himself with 
 certain crumbs which had escaped from the children's 
 luncheon-baskets and were still lying on the bench. Intent 
 on thie occupation and without raising his eyes to the master, 
 he returned slowly, "Well, you see, I'm sorter married 
 already." 
 
 The master eat up quickly. 
 
 " What, you married — now ? " 
 
 " Well, perhaps that 's a question. It 's a good deal like 
 
CEESSY 93 
 
 my beein' an orphan — oncertain and onsettled." He 
 paused to pursue an evasive crumb to the end of the bench 
 and having captured it, vrent on : " It was when I was 
 younger than you be, and she warn't very old neither. 
 But she knew a heap more than I did ; and ez to readin' 
 and writin', she was thar, I tell you, every time. You 'd 
 hev admired to see her, Mr. Ford." As he paused here as 
 if he had exhausted the subject, the master said impatiently, 
 " Well, where is she now ? " 
 
 Uncle Ben shook his head slowly. " I ain't seen her 
 sens I left Mizzouri, goin' on five years ago." 
 
 " But why have n't you ? What was the matter ? " 
 persisted the master. 
 
 " Well — you see — I runned away. Not she, you know, 
 but / — -/scooted, skedaddled out here." 
 
 " But what for ? " asked the master, regarding Uncle Ben 
 with hopeless wonder. " Something must have happened. 
 What was it ? Was she " — 
 
 " She was a good schollard," said Uncle Ben gravely, 
 " and allowed to be sech, by all. She stood about so high," 
 he continued, indicating with his hand a medium height. 
 " War little and dark complected." 
 
 " But you must have had some reason for leaving her ? " 
 
 " I 've sometimes had an idea," said Uncle Ben cautiously, 
 " that mebbee runnin' away ran in some fam'lies. Now, 
 there war my mother run oif with an entire stranger, and 
 yer 's me ez run off by myself. And what makes it the 
 more one-like is that jest as dad alius allowed he could get 
 a devorce agin mother, so my wife could hev got one 
 agin me for leavin' her. And it 's almost an even-handed 
 game that she hez. It 's there where the oncertainty comes 
 in." 
 
 " Biit are you satisfied to remain in this doubt ? or do 
 you propose, now that you are able, to institute a thorough 
 search for her ? " 
 
96 CEESSY 
 
 '■* I was kalkilatin' to look around a little," said Uncle 
 Ben simply. 
 
 " And return to her if you find her ? " continued the 
 master. 
 
 " I did n't say that, Mr. Ford." 
 
 " But if she has n't got a divorce from you that 's what 
 you '11 have to do, and what you ought to do — if I under- 
 stand your story. For by your own showing, a more cause- 
 less, heartless, and utterly inexcusable desertion than yours 
 I never heard of." 
 
 " Do you think so ? " said Uncle Ben, with exasperating 
 simplicity. 
 
 " Do / think so ? " repeated Mr. Ford indignantly. 
 " Everybody '11 think so. They can't think otherwise. 
 You say you deserted her, and you admit she did nothing 
 to provoke it." 
 
 "No," returned Uncle Ben quickly, " nothin'. Did I 
 tell you, Mr. Ford, that she could play the planner and 
 Bing ? " 
 
 " ISTo," said Mr. Ford curtly, rising impatiently and 
 crossing the room-. He was more than half convinced that 
 Uncle Ben was deceiving him. Either under the veil of 
 his hide-bound simplicity he was an utterly selfish, heart- 
 less, secretive man, or else he was telling an idiotic false- 
 hood. 
 
 " I 'm sorry I can neither congratulate you nor condole 
 with you on what you have just told me. I cannot see 
 that you have the least excuse for delaying a single mo- 
 ment to search for your wife and make amends for your 
 conduct. And if you want my opinion it strikes me as 
 being a much more honorable way of employing your new 
 riches than mediating in your neighbors' squabbles. But 
 it 's getting late and I 'm afraid we must bring our talk to 
 an end. I hope you '11 think this over before we meet again 
 >— and think difi'erently." 
 
CRESSY 97 
 
 Nevertheless, as they both left the ichoolhouse, Mr. 
 Ford lingered over the locking of the door to give Uncle 
 Ben a final chance for further explanation. But none 
 came. The new capitalist of Indian Spring regarded him 
 with an intensification of his usual half-sad, half-embar- 
 rassed smile, and only said, " You understand this yer 'a 
 a secret, Mr. Ford ? " 
 
 " Certainly," said Ford, with ill-concealed irritation. 
 
 " 'Bout my bein' sorter married ? " 
 
 " Don't be alarmed," he responded dryly ; " it 's not a 
 taking story." 
 
 They separated ; Uncle Ben, more than ever involved in 
 his usual unsatisfactory purposes, wending his way towards 
 his riches ; the master lingering to observe his departure 
 before he plunged, in virtuous superiority, into the woods 
 that fringed the Harrison and McKinstry boundaries. 
 
CHAPTEE VIII 
 
 The religious attitude which Mrs. McKinstry had as- 
 sumed towards her husband's weak civilized tendencies was 
 not entirely free from human rancor. That strong loyal 
 nature which had unsexed itself in the one idea of duty, now 
 that duty seemed to be no longer appreciated took refuge 
 in her forgotten womanhood and in the iniinitesimally small 
 arguments, resources, and manoeuvres at its command. She 
 had conceived a singular jealousy of this daughter who had 
 changed her husband's nature, and who had supplanted the 
 traditions of the household life ; she had acquired an exag- 
 gerated depreciation of those feminine charms which had 
 never been a factor in her own domestic happiness. She 
 saw in her husband's desire to mitigate the savage austeri- 
 ties of their habits only a weak concession to the powers of 
 beauty and adornment — degrading vanities she had never 
 known in their lifelong struggle for frontier supremacy 
 — that had never brought them victorious out of that 
 struggle. " Frizzles," " furblows," and '■' fancy fixin's " had 
 never helped them in their exodus across the plains; had 
 nevor taken the place of swift eyes, quick ears, strong hands, 
 and endurance ; had never nursed the sick or bandaged the 
 wounded. When envy or jealousy invades the female 
 heart after forty it is apt to bring a bitterness which knows 
 no attenuating compensation in that coquetry, emulation, 
 passionate appeal, or innocent tenderness, which makes 
 tolerable the jealous caprices of the younger woman. The 
 struggle for rivalry is felt to be hopeless, the power of imi- 
 tation is gone. Of her forgotten womanhood Mrs. McKin- 
 
CEESSY 99 
 
 stry revived only a capacity to suffer meanly and inflict 
 mean suffering upon others. In the ruined castle of her 
 youth, and the falling in of bauqueting-hall and bower, the 
 dungeon and torture-chamber appeared to have been left, or, 
 to use her own metaphor, she had querulously complained 
 to the parson that, " accordin' to some folks, she mout hev 
 bin the barren fig-tree e-lected to bear persimmums." 
 
 Her methods were not entirely different from those em- 
 ployed by her suffering sisterhood in like emergencies. 
 The unlucky Hiram, " worrited by stock," was hardly pla- 
 cated or consoled by learning from her that it was only the 
 result of his own weakness, acting upon the cussedness of 
 the stock-dispersing Harrisons ; the perplexity into which he 
 was thrown by the news of the new legal claim to his land 
 was not soothed by the suggestion that it was a trick of 
 that Yankee civilization to which he was meanly succumb- 
 ing. She who had always been a rough but devoted nurse 
 in sickness was now herself overtaken by vague irregular 
 disorders which involved the greatest care and the absence of 
 all exciting causes. The attendance of McKinstry and Cressy 
 at a " crazy quilting party " had brought on " blind chills ; " 
 the importation of a melodeon for Cressy to play on had 
 superinduced an " innerd rash," and a threatened attack 
 of " palsy creeps " had only been warded off by the timely 
 postponement of an evening party suggested by her daughter. 
 The old nomadic instinct, morbidly excited by her discon- 
 tent, caused her to lay artful plans for a further emigration. 
 She knew she had the germs of " mash fever " caught from 
 the adjacent river ; she related mysterious information, 
 gathered in "class meeting," of the superior facilities for 
 stock raising on the higher foot-hills ; she resuscitated her 
 dead and gone Missouri relations in her daily speech, to a 
 manifest invidious comparison with the living ; she revived 
 even the incidents of her early married life with the same 
 baleful intent. The acquisition of a few " biled shirts " 
 
100 CEESSY 
 
 by Hiram for festive appearances with Cressy painfully 
 reminded her that he had married her in " hickory ; " she 
 further accented the change by herself appearing in her 
 oldest clothes, on the hypothesis that it was necessary for 
 some one to keep up the traditions of the past. 
 
 Her attitude towards Cressy would have been more 
 decided had she ever possessed the slightest influence over 
 her, or had even understood her with the intuitive sympa- 
 thies of the maternal relations. Yet she went so far as to 
 even openly regret the breaking off of the match with Seth 
 Davis, whose family, at least, still retained the habits and 
 traditions she revered ; but she was promptly silenced by 
 her husband informing her that words " that had to be tuk 
 back " had already passed between him and Seth's father, 
 and that, according to those same traditions, blood was more 
 likely to be spilled than mingled. Whether she was only 
 withheld from attempting a reconciliation herself through 
 lack of tact and opportunity remains to be seen. For the 
 present she encouraged Masters's attentions under a new and 
 vague idea that a flirtation which distracted Cressy from 
 her studies was displeasing to McKinstry and inimical to 
 his plans. Blindly ignorant of Mr. Ford's possible relations 
 to her daughter, and suspecting nothing, she felt towards 
 him only a dull aversion as being the senseless pivot of her 
 troubles. Seeing no one, and habitually closing her ears to 
 any family allusion to Cressy's social triumphs, she was 
 unaware of even the popular admiration their memorable 
 waltz had excited. 
 
 On the morning of the day that Uncle Ben had confided 
 to the master his ingenious plan for settling the boundary 
 disputes, the barking of McKinstry's yellow dog announced 
 the approach of a stranger to the ranch. It proved to be 
 Mr. Stacey — not only as dazzlingly arrayed as when he 
 first rose above Johnny Filgee's horizon, but wearing, 
 in addition to his jaunty business air, a look of complacent 
 
CRESS Y 101 
 
 expectation of the pretty girl whom he had met at the ball. 
 He had not seen her for a month. It was a happy inspira- 
 tion of his own that enabled him to present himself that 
 morning in the twin functions of a victorious Mercury and 
 Apollo. 
 
 McKinstry had to be summoned from an adjacent meadow, 
 while Cressy, in the mean time, undertook to entertain the 
 gallant stranger. This was easily done. It was part of her 
 fascinations that, disdaining the ordinary, real, or assumed 
 ignorance of the inr/enue of her class, she generally exhib- 
 ited to her admirers (with perhaps the single exception of 
 the master) a laughing consciousness of the state of mind 
 into which her charms had thrown them. She understood 
 their passion if she covild not accept it. This to a bashful 
 rustic community was helpful, but in the main unsatisfac- 
 tory ; with advances so promptly unmasked, the most stra- 
 tegic retreat was apt to become an utter rout. Leaning 
 against the lintel of the door, her curved hand shading the 
 sparkling depths of hpr eyes, and the sunlight striking 
 down upon the pretty curves of her languid figure, she 
 awaited the attack. 
 
 " I have n't seen you. Miss Cressy, since we danced 
 together — a month ago." 
 
 " That was mighty rough papers," said Cressy, who was 
 purposely dialectical to strangers, " considering that you 
 traipsed up and down the lane, past the house, twice yester- 
 day." 
 
 " Then you saw me ? " said the young man, with a slightly 
 discomfited laugh. 
 
 " I did. And so did the hound, and so, I reckon, did 
 Joe Masters and the hired man. And when you pranced 
 back on the home stretch, there was the hound. Masters, 
 the hired man, and maw all on your trail, and paw bringin' 
 up the rear with a shot-gun. There was about a half a 
 mile of you altogether." She removed her hand from her 
 
102 CRESSY 
 
 eyes to indicate with a lazily graceful sweep this somewhat 
 imaginative procession, and lavighed. 
 
 " You are certainly well guarded," said Stacey hesitat- 
 ingly ; " and looking at you. Miss Cressy," he added boldly, 
 " I don't wonder at it." 
 
 " Well, it is reckoned that next to paw's boundaries I 'm 
 pretty well protected from squatters and jumpers." 
 
 Forceful and quaint as her language was, the lazy sweet 
 ness of her intonation, and the delicate refinement of her 
 face, more than atoned for it. It was unconventional and 
 picturesque as her gestures. So at least thought Mr. Stacey, 
 and it emboldened him to further gallantry. 
 
 "Well, Miss Cressy, as my business with your father 
 to-day was to try to effect a compromise of his boundary 
 claims, perhaps you might accept my services in your own 
 behalf." 
 
 " Which means," responded the young lady pertly, " ths 
 same thing to me as to paw. No trespassers but yourself. 
 Thank you, sir." She twirled lightly on her heel and 
 dropped him that exaggerated curtsy known to the school- 
 children as a " cheese." It permitted in its progress the 
 glimpse of a pretty little slipper which completed his subju- 
 gation. 
 
 " Well, if it 's only a fair compromise," he began laugh- 
 ingly. 
 
 " Compromise means somebody giving up. Who is it ? " 
 she asked. 
 
 The infatuated Stacey had reached the point of thinking 
 this repartee if possible more killing than his own. 
 
 " Ha ! That 's for Miss Cressy to say." 
 
 But the young lady leaning back against the lintel with 
 the comfortable ease of being irresponsibly diverted, sagely 
 pointed out that that was the function of the arbitrator. 
 
 " Ah well, suppose we begin by giving up Seth Davis, 
 eh ? You see that I 'm pretty well posted, Miss Cressy." 
 
CRESSY 103 
 
 " You alarm me," said Cressy sweetly. " But I reckon 
 he had given up." 
 
 " He was in the running that night at the hall. Looked 
 half savage while I was dancing with you. Wanted to eat 
 me." 
 
 " Poor Seth ! And he used to he so particular in his 
 food," said the witty Cressy. 
 
 Mr. Stacey was convulsed. " And there 's Mr. Dabney 
 . — Uncle Ben," he coutinaed, " eh ? Very quiet hut very 
 sly. A dark horse, eh ? Pretends to take lessons for the 
 sake of being near some one, eh ? Would he were a hoy 
 igain because somebody else is a girl ? " 
 
 " I should be frightened of you if you lived here always," 
 returned Cressy, with invincible naivete; " but perhaps then 
 you would n't know so much." 
 
 Stacey simply accepted this as a compliment. " And 
 there 's Masters," he said insinuatingly. 
 
 " Not Joe ? " said Cressy, with a low laugh, turning her 
 syes to the door. 
 
 " Yes," said Stacey, with a quick, uneasy smile. " Ah ! 
 I see we must n't drop him. Is he out there ? " he added, 
 trying to follow the direction of her eyes. 
 
 But the young girl kept her face studiously averted. "Is 
 that all ? " she asked after a pause. 
 
 "Well — there's that solemn schoolmaster, who cut me 
 out of the waltz with you — that Mr. Ford." 
 
 Had he been a perfect) y cool and impartial observer he 
 would have seen the slight tremor cross Cressy's soft eyelids 
 even in profile, followed by that momentary arrest of her 
 whole face, mouth, dimples, and eyes, which had overtaken 
 it the night the master entered the ballroom. But he was 
 neither, and it passed quickly and unnoticed. Her usual 
 lithe but languid play of expression and color came back, 
 and she turned her head lazily towards the speaker. 
 " There 's paw coming. I suppose you would n't mind 
 
104 CEESSY 
 
 giving me a sample of your style of arbitrating with him, 
 before you try it on me ? " 
 
 " Certainly not," said Staoey, by no means displeased at 
 the prospect of having so pretty and intelligent a witness in 
 the daughter of what he believed would form an attractive 
 display of his diplomatic skill and graciousness to the father. 
 " Don't go away. I 've got nothing to say Miss Cressy 
 could not understand and answer." 
 
 The jingling of spurs, and the shadow of McKinstry and 
 his shot>gun falling at this moment between the speaker and 
 Oressy, spared her the necessity of a reply. McKinstry cast 
 an uneasy glance around the apartment, and not seeing Mrs. 
 McKinstry looked relieved, and even the deep traces of the 
 loss of a valuable steer that morning partly faded from his 
 Indian-red complexion. He placed his shot-gun carefully 
 in the corner, took his soft felt hat from his head, folded it, 
 and put it in one of the capacious pockets of his jacket, 
 turned to his daughter, and laying his maimed hand famil- 
 iarly on her shoulder, said gravely, without looking at 
 Stacey, " What might the stranger be wantin'. Cress ? " 
 
 " Perhaps I 'd better answer that myself," said Stacey 
 briskly. "I'm acting for Benham and Co., of San Fran- 
 cisco, who have bought the Spanish title to part of this 
 property. I " — 
 
 " Stop there ! " said McKinstry in a voice dull but 
 distinct. He took his hat from his pocket, put it on, walked 
 to the corner and took up his gun, looked at Stacey for the 
 first time with narcotic eyes that seemed to drowsily absorb 
 his slight figure, then put the gun back half contemptuously, 
 and with a wave of his hand towards the door, said, " We '11 
 settle this yer outside. Cress, you stop in here. There 's 
 man's talk goin' on." 
 
 "But, paw," said Cressy, laying her hand languidly on 
 her father's sleeve withovit the least change of color or 
 amused expression, " this gentleman has come over here on 
 a compromise." 
 
CRESSY 105 
 
 "On a — which?" said McKinstry, glancing scornfully 
 out of the door for some rare species of mustang vaguely 
 suggested to him in that unfamiliar word. 
 
 " To see if we could n't come to some fair settlement," 
 said Stacey. "I've no objection to going outside with you, 
 but I think we can discuss this matter here just as well." 
 His fine feathers had not made him a coward, although his 
 heart had beaten a little faster at this sudden recollection of 
 the dangerous reputation of his host. 
 
 " Go on," said McKinstry. 
 
 " The plain facts of the case are these," continued Stacey, 
 with more confidence. " We have sold a strip of thiij 
 property covering the land in dispute between you and 
 Harrison. We are bound to put our purchaser in peaceable 
 possession. Now to save time we are willing to buy that 
 possession of any man who can give it. We are told that 
 you can." 
 
 " Well, considerin' that for the last four years I 've been 
 fightin' night and day agin them low-down Harrisons for it, 
 I reckon you 've been lied to," said McKinstry deliberately. 
 " Why — except the clearing on the north side, whar I put 
 up a barn, thar ain't an acre of it as has n't been shifted 
 first this side and then that as fast ez I druv boundary 
 stakes and fences, and the Harrisons pulled 'em up agin. 
 Thar ain't more than fifty acres ez I 've hed a clear hold on, 
 and I would n't hev had that ef it had n't bin for the barn, 
 the raisin' alone o' which cost me a man, two horses, and 
 this yer little finger." 
 
 " Put us in possession of even that fifty acres, and we 'il 
 undertake to hold the rest and eject those Harrisons from 
 it," returned Stacey complacently. " You understand that 
 the moment we 've made a peaceable entrance to even a 
 foothold on your side, the Harrisons are only trespassers, 
 and with the title to back us we can call on the whole 
 sheriff's posse to put them off. That 's the law." 
 
106 CEESSY 
 
 " That ar the law ? " repeated McKinstry meditatively. 
 
 " Yes," said Stacey. " So," he continued, with a self- 
 satisfied smile to Cressy, " far from being hard on you, Mr. 
 McKinstry, we 're rather inclined to put you on velvet. 
 We offer you a fair price for the only thing you can give 
 us — actual possession ; and we help you with your old 
 grudge against the Harrisons. We not only clear them 
 out, but we pay you for even the part they held adversely 
 to you." 
 
 Mr. McKinstry passed his three whole fingers over his 
 forehead and eyes as if troubled by a drowsy aching. 
 " Then you don't reckon to hev anythin' to say to them 
 Harrisons ? " 
 
 " We don't propose to recognize them in the matter at 
 all," returned Stacey. 
 
 " Nor allow 'em anythin' ? " 
 
 " Not a cent ! So you see, Mr. McKinstry," he con- 
 tinued magnanimously, yet with a mischievous smile to 
 Cressy, " there is nothing in this amicable discussion that 
 requires to be settled outside." 
 
 " Ain't there ? " said McKinstry in a dull, deliberate 
 voice, raising his eyes for the second time to Stacey. They 
 were bloodshot, with a heavy, hanging furtiveness, not un- 
 like one of his own hunted steers. " But I ain't kam 
 enuff in yer." He moved to the door with a beckoning of 
 his fateful hand. " Outside a minit — ef you please." 
 
 Stacey started, shrugged his shoulders, and half defiantly 
 stepped beyond the threshold. Cressy, unchanged in color 
 or expression, lazily followed to the door. 
 
 " Wot," said McKinstry, slowly facing Stacey — " wot ef 
 I refoose ? Wot ef I say I don't allow any man, or any 
 bank, or any compromise, to take up my quo'ls ? Wot 
 ef I say that low down and mean as them Harrisons is, 
 they don't begin to be ez mean, ez low down, ez under- 
 handed, ez sneakin' ez that yer compromise ? Wot ef I 
 
CRESSY lOV 
 
 say that ef that 's the kind o' hogwash that law and snivel- 
 ization offers me for peace and quietness, I '11 take the 
 lightin', and the law-breakin', and the sheriff, and all 
 h — 11 for his posse instead ? Wot ef I say that ? " 
 
 " It will only be my duty to repeat it," said Stacey, with 
 an affected carelessness which, however, did not conceal 
 his surprise and his discomfiture. " It's no affair of 
 mine." 
 
 " Unless," said Cressy, assuming her old position against 
 the lintel of the door, and smoothing the worn bear-skin 
 that served as a mat with the toe of her slipper, — " unless 
 you 've mixed it up with your other arbitration, you 
 know." 
 
 " Wot other arbitration ? " asked McKinstry suddenly, 
 with murky eyes. 
 
 Stacey cast a rapid, half-indignant glance at the young 
 girl, who received it with her hands tucked behind her 
 back, her lovely head bent submissively forward, and a pro- 
 longed little laugh. 
 
 " Oh, nothing, paw," she said, " only a little private 
 foolishness betwixt me and the gentleman. You 'd admir" 
 to hear him talk, paw — about other things than business. 
 He 's just that chipper and gay." 
 
 Kevertheless, as with a muttered " good-morning " the 
 young fellow turned away, she quietly brushed past her 
 father, and followed him — with her hands still penitently 
 behind her, and the rosy palms turned upward — as far as 
 the gate. Her single long Marguerite braid of hair, trail- 
 ing down her back nearly to the hem of her skirt, appeared 
 to accent her demure reserve. At the gate she shaded her 
 eyes with her hand, and glanced upward. 
 
 " It don't seem to be a good day for arbitrating. A 
 trifle early in the season, ain't it ? '' 
 
 " Good-morning, Miss McKinstry." 
 
 She held out her hand. He took it with an affected 
 
108 CRESSY 
 
 ease but cautiously, as if it had. b6en the velvet paw of a 
 young panther who had scratched him. After all, what 
 was she but the cub of the untamed beast, McKinstry ? 
 He was well out of it ! He was not revengeful — but 
 business was business, and he had given them the first 
 chance. 
 
 As his figure disappeared behind the buckeyes of the 
 lane, Cressy cast a glance at the declining sun. She reen- 
 tered the house, and went directly to her room. As she 
 passed the window, she could see her father already re- 
 mounted galloping towards the tules, as if in search of 
 that riparian " kam " his late interview had disturbed. A 
 few straggling bits of color in the sloping meadows were 
 the children coming home from school. She hastily tied a 
 girlish sunbonnet under her chin, and slipping out of the 
 back door, swept like a lissom shadow along the line of 
 fence until she seemed to melt into the umbrage of the 
 woods that fringed the distant north boundary. 
 
CHAPTEE IX 
 
 Meanwhile, unaware of her husband's sudden relapse to 
 her old border principles and of the visit that had induced 
 it, Mrs. McKinstry was slowly returning from a lugubri- 
 ous recital of her moods and feelings at the parson's. As 
 she crossed the barren flat and reached the wooded up- 
 land midway between the schoolhouse and the ranch, she 
 saw before her the old familiar figure of Seth Davis loung- 
 ing on the trail. In her habitual loyalty to her husband's 
 feuds she would probably have stalked defiantly past him, 
 notwithstanding her late regrets of the broken engagement, 
 but Seth began to advance awkwardly towards her. In 
 fact, he had noticed the tall, gaunt, plaid-shawled and hol- 
 land-bonneted figure approaching, and had waited for it. 
 
 As he seemed intent upon getting in her way she stopped 
 and raised her right hand warningly before her. In spite 
 of the shawl and the sunbonnet, suffering had implanted 
 a rude Runic dignity to her attitude. " Words that hev to 
 be took back, Seth Davis," she said hastily, " hev passed 
 between you and my man. Out of my way, then, that I 
 may pass, too." 
 
 " Not much betwixt you and me, Aunt Rachel," he said, 
 with slouching deprecation, using the old household title 
 by which he had familiarly known her. " I 've nothin' 
 agin you — and I kin prove it by wot I 'm yer to say. And 
 I ain't trucklin' to yer for myself, for ez far ez me and 
 your'n ez concerned," he continued, with a malevolent 
 glance, " thar ai-n't gold enough in Caleforny to mak the 
 weddin'-ring that could hitch me and Cress together. J 
 
110 CEESSY 
 
 want to tell you that you 're bein' played ; that you 're 
 bein' befooled and bamboozled and honey-fogled. Tliet 
 while you 're groanin' at class-meetin' and Hiram 's quo'lin' 
 with dad, and Joe Masters waitin' round to pick up any 
 bone that 's throwed him, that sneakin,' hypocritical Yankee 
 schoolmaster is draggin' your daughter to h — 11 with him 
 on the sly." 
 
 " Quit that, Seth Davis," said Mrs. McKinstry sternly, 
 " or be man enough to tell it to a man. That 's Hiram's 
 business to know." 
 
 "And what if he knows it well enough and winks at it? 
 What if he 's willin' enough to truckle to it, to curry favor 
 with them sneakin' Yanks ? " said Seth malignantly. 
 
 A spasm of savage conviction seized Mrs. McKinstry. 
 But it was more from her jealous fears of her husband's 
 disloyalty than concern for her daughter's transgression. 
 Nevertheless, she said desperately, " It 's a lie. Where are 
 your proofs ? " 
 
 " Proofs ? " returned Seth. " Who is it sneaks around 
 the schoolhouse to have private talks with the school- 
 master, and edges him on with Cressy afore folks ? Your 
 husband. Who goes sneakin' off every arternoon with that 
 same cantin' hound of a schoolmaster ? Your daughter. 
 Who 's been carryin' on together, and hidin' thick enough 
 to be ridden out on a rail together ? Your daughter and 
 the schoolmaster. Proofs '! — ask anybody. Ask the 
 children. Look yar — you, Johnny — come here." 
 
 He had suddenly directed his voice to a blackberry bush 
 near the trail, from which the curly head of Johnny Filgee 
 had just appeared. That home-returning infant painfullj 
 disengaged himself, his slate, his books, and his small 
 dinner-pail half filled with fruit as immature as himself, 
 and came towards them sideways. 
 
 " Yer 's a dime, Johnny, to git some candy," said Seth, 
 endeavoring to distort his passion-set face into a smile. 
 
CRESsy lU 
 
 Johnny Filgee's small, berry-stained palm promptly closed 
 over the coin. 
 
 " Now, don't lie. Where 's Cressy ? " 
 
 " Kithin' her ho." 
 
 "Good boy. What bo?" 
 
 Johnny hesitated. He had once seen the schoolmaster 
 and Cressy together ; he had heard it whispered by the other 
 children that they loved each other. But looking at Seth 
 and Mrs. McKinstry he felt that something more tremendous 
 than this stupid fact was required of him for grown-up 
 people, and being honest and imaginative, he determined 
 that it should be worth the money. 
 
 " Speak up, Johnny, don't be afeard to tell." 
 
 Johnny was not "afeard" — he was only thinking. He 
 had it ! He remembered that he had just seen his paragon, 
 the brilliant Stacey, coming from the boundary woods. 
 What more poetical and startlingly effective than to connect 
 him with Cressy ? He replied promptly : — 
 
 " Mithter Thtathy. He gived her a watch and ring of 
 truly gold. Goin' to be married at Thacramento." 
 
 " You lyin' limb," said Seth, seizing him roughly. But 
 Mrs. McKinstry interposed. 
 
 " Let that brat go," she said, with gleaming eyes. " I 
 want to talk to you." Seth released Johnny. "It's a 
 trick," he said, " he 's bin put up to it by that Ford." 
 
 But Johnny, after securing a safe vantage behind the 
 blackberry bush, determined to give them another trial — 
 with facts. 
 
 " I know mor'n that," he called out. 
 
 " Git — you measly pup," said Seth savagely. 
 
 " I know Theriff Briggth, he rid over the boundary with 
 a lot o' men and horthes," said Johnny, with that hurried 
 delivery with which he was able to estop interruption. 
 " Theed 'em go by. Maur Harritlion theth his dad 's goin' 
 to chuck out ole McKinthtry. Hooray ! " 
 
112 CRESS Y 
 
 Mrs. McKinstry turned her dark face sharply on Seth. 
 " What 's that he sez ? " 
 
 " ISTothin' but children's gassin'," he answered, meeting 
 her eyes with an evil consciousness half loutish, half defiant, 
 " and ef it war true, it would only sarve Hiram McKinstry 
 right." 
 
 She laid her hand upon his shoulder with swift suspicion. 
 " Out o' my way, Seth Davis," she said suddenly, pushing 
 him aside. " Ef this ez any underhanded work of yours, 
 you '11 pay for it." 
 
 She strode past him in the direction of Johnny, hut at 
 the approach of the tall woman with the angry eyes the 
 boy flew. She hesitated a moment, turned again with a 
 threatening wave of the hand to Seth, and started off rapidly 
 in the direction of the boundary. 
 
 She had not placed so much faith in the boy's story as iii 
 the vague revelation of evil in Davis's manner. If there 
 was any " cussedness " afoot, Seth, convinced of Cressy'a 
 unfaithfulness, and with no further hope of any mediation 
 from the parents, would know it. Unless Hiram had been 
 warned, he was still lulled in his fatuous dream of civiliza- 
 tion. At that time he and his men were in the tules with 
 the stock ; to be satisfied, she herself must go to the boun- 
 dary. 
 
 She reached the ridge of the cottonwoods and sycamores, 
 and a few hundred yards further brought her to the edge of 
 that gentle southern slope which at last sank into the broad 
 meadow of the debatable ground. In spite of Stacey's 
 invidious criticism of its intrinsic value, this theatre of 
 savage dissension, violence, and bloodshed was by some 
 irony of nature a pastoral landscape of singular and peaceful 
 repose. The soft glacis stretching before her was in spring 
 cerulean with lupines, and later starred with mariposas. 
 The meadow was transversely crossed by a curving line of 
 alders that indicated a rare watercourse, of which in the dry 
 
CEESSY 113 
 
 season only a single pool remained to flash back the unvary- 
 ing sky. There had been no attempt at cultivation of this 
 broad expanse ; wild oats, mustard, and rank grasses left it 
 a tossing sea of turbulent and variegated color whose waves 
 rode high enough to engulf horse and rider in their choking 
 depths. Even the traces of human struggle, the uprooted 
 stakes, scattered fence-rails, and empty post-holes were for- 
 ever hidden under these billows of verdure. Midway of the 
 field and near the watercourse arose McKinstry's barn — 
 the solitary human structure, whose rude, misshapen, bulging 
 sides and swallow-haunted eaves bursting with hay from the 
 neighboring pasture seemed, however, only an extravagant 
 growth of the prolific soil. Mrs. McKinstry gazed at it 
 anxiously. There was no sign of life or movement near or 
 around it ; it stood as it had always stood, deserted and 
 solitary. But turning her eyes to the right, beyond the 
 watercourse, she could see a slight regular undulation of 
 the grassy sea and what appeared to be the drifting on its 
 surface of half a dozen slouched hats in the direction of the 
 alders. There was no longer any doubt ; a party from the 
 other side was approaching the border. 
 
 A shout and the quick galloping of hoofs behind her sent 
 a thrill of relief to her heart. She had barely time to draw 
 aside as her husband and his followers swept past her down 
 the slope. But it needed not his furious cry, " The Harri- 
 sons hev sold us out," to tell her that the crisis had come. 
 
 She held her breath as the cavalcade diverged, and in 
 open order furiously approached the watercourse, and she 
 could see a sudden check and hesitation in the movement 
 in the meadow at that unlooked-for onset. Then she 
 thought of the barn. It would be a rallying-point for 
 them if driven back — a tower of defense if besieged. 
 There were arms secreted beneath the hay for such an 
 emergency. She would run there, swing to its open doors, 
 and get ready to barricade them. 
 
114 CRESSY 
 
 She ran crouchingly, seeking the higher grasses and 
 brambles of the ridge to escape observation from the meadow 
 until she could descend upon the barn from the rear. She 
 threw aside her impeding shawl ; her brown holland sun- 
 bonnet, torn off her head and hanging by its strings from 
 her shoulders, let her coarse silver-threaded hair stream like 
 a mane over her back ; her face and hands were bleeding 
 from thorns and whitened by dust. But she struggled on 
 fiercely like some hunted animal until she reached the de- 
 scending trail, when, letting herself go blindly, only with- 
 held by the long grasses she clutched at wildly on either 
 side, she half fell, half stumbled down the slope and emerged 
 beside the barn, breathless and exhausted. 
 
 But what a contrast was there ! For an instant she 
 could scarcely believe that she had left the ridge with her 
 husband's savage outcry in her ears, and in her eyes the 
 swift vision of his furious cavalcade. The boundary 
 meadow was hidden by the soft lines of graceful willows in 
 whose dim recesses the figures of the passionate horsemen 
 seemed to have melted forever. There was nothing now to 
 interrupt the long vista of peaceful beauty that stretched 
 before her through this lonely hollow to the distant sleep- 
 ing hills. The bursting barn in the foreground, heaped 
 with grain that fringed its eaves and bristled from its win- 
 dows and doors until its unlovely bulk was hidden in trail- 
 ing feathery outlines ; the gentle flutter of wings and sooth- 
 ing twitter of swallows and jays around its open rafters, 
 and the drifting shadows of a few circling crows above it ; 
 the drowsy song of bees on the wild mustard that half hid 
 its walls with yellow bloom ; the sound of faintly trickling 
 water in one of those old Indian-haunted springs that had 
 given its name to the locality, — all these for an instant 
 touched the senses of this hard, fierce woman as she had not 
 been touched since she was a girl. For one brief moment 
 the joys of peace and that matured repose that never had 
 
CRESSY 115 
 
 been hers flashed upon her ; hut with it came the savage 
 consciousness that even now it was being wrested away, and 
 the thought fired her blood again. She listened eagerly for 
 a second in the direction of the meadow ; there was no 
 report of firearms — there was yet time to prepare the 
 barn for defense. She ran to the front of the building and 
 seized the latch of the half-closed door. A little feminine 
 cry that was half a laugh came from within, with the rapid 
 rustle of a skirt, and as the door swung open a light figure 
 vanished through the rear window. The slanting sunlight 
 falling in the shadowed interior disclosed only the single 
 erect figure of the schoolmaster — John Ford. 
 
 The first confusion and embarrassment of an interrupted 
 rendezvous that had colored Ford's cheeks gave way to a 
 look of alarm as he caught sight of the bleeding face and 
 disheveled figure of Mrs. McKinstry. She saw it. To 
 her distorted fancy it seemed only a proof of deeper guilt. 
 Without a word she closed the heavy door behind her and 
 swung the huge cross-bar unaided to its place. She then 
 turned and confronted him, wiping the dust from her face 
 and arms with her torn and dangling sunbonnet in a way 
 that recalled her attitude on the first day he had met her. 
 
 " That was Cress with ye ? " she said. 
 
 He hesitated, still gazing at her in wonder. 
 
 "Don't lie." 
 
 He started. " I don't propose to," he retorted indig- 
 nantly. " It was " — 
 
 " I don't ask ye how long this yer 's bin goin' on," she 
 said, pointing to Cressy's sunbonnet, a few books, and a 
 scattered nosegay of wild flowers lying on the hay ; " and 
 I don't want to know. In five minutes either her father 
 will be here, or them hell-hounds of Harrison's who 've 
 sold him out will swarm round this barn to git possesshun. 
 Ef this yer " — she again pointed contemptuously to the 
 objects just indicated — " means that you 've cast your 
 
116 CRESSY 
 
 lot with us and kalkilate to take our bitter with our swei ., 
 ye 'II lift up that stack of hay and bring out a gun to help 
 defend it. Ef you 're meanin' anythin' else, Ford, you '11 
 hide yourself in that hay till Hiram comes and has time 
 enough to attend to ye." 
 
 " And if I choose to do neither ? " he said haughtily. 
 
 She looked at him in unutterable scorn. " There 's the 
 winder — take it while there 's time, afore I bar it. Ef you 
 see Hiram, tell him ye left an old woman behind ye to 
 defend the place whar you uster hide with her darter." 
 
 Before he could reply there was a distant report, followed 
 almost directly by another. With a movement of irritation 
 he walked to the window, turned and looked at her — bolted 
 it, and came back. 
 
 " Where 's that gun ? " he said almost rudely. 
 
 " I reckoned that would fetch ye," she said, dragging 
 away the hay and disclosing a long trough-like box covered 
 with tarpaulin. It proved to contain powder, shot, and 
 two guns. He took one. 
 
 " I suppose I may know what I am fighting for ? " he 
 said dryly. 
 
 " Ye might say ' Cress ' ef they " — indicating the direc- 
 tion of the reports -^ " happen to ask ye," she returned, 
 with equal sobriety. " Jess now ye kin take your stand up 
 thar in the loft and see what 's comin'." 
 
 He did not linger, but climbed to the place assigned 
 him, glad to escape the company of the woman who at that 
 moment he almost hated. In his unreflecting passion for 
 Cressy he had always evaded the thought of this relation- 
 ship or propinquity ; the mother had recalled it to him in a 
 way that imperiled even his passion for the daughter ; his 
 mind was wholly preoccupied with the idiotic, exasperating, 
 and utterly hopeless position that had been forced upon 
 :him. In the bitterness of his spirit his sense of personal 
 danger was so far absorbed that he speculated on the chance 
 
CRESSY 117 
 
 bullet in the melee that might end his folly and relieve him 
 of responsibility. Shut up in a barn with a furious woman, 
 in a lawless defense of questionable rights — with the added 
 consciousness that an equally questionable passion had drawn 
 him into it, and that she knew it — death seemed to offer 
 the only escape from the explanation he coiild never give. 
 If another sting could have been added it was the absurd 
 conviction that Cressy would not appreciate his sacriiice, but 
 was perhaps even at that moment calmly congratulating her- 
 self on the felicitousness of the complication in which she 
 had left him. 
 
 Suddenly he heard a shout and the trampling of horse. 
 The sides of the loft were scantily boarded to allow the 
 extension of the pent-up grain, and between the interstices 
 Ford, without being' himself seen, had an uninterrupted 
 view of the plain between him and the line of willows. As 
 he gazed, five men hvirriedly issued from the extreme left 
 and ran towards the barn. McKinstry and his followers 
 simultaneously broke from the same covert further to the 
 right and galloped forward to intercept them. But although 
 mounted, the greater distance they had to traverse brought 
 them to the rear of the building only as the Harrison party 
 came to a sudden halt before the closed and barricaded 
 doors of the usually defenseless barn. The discomfiture of 
 the latter was greeted by a derisive shout from the Mc- 
 Kinstry party — albeit, equally astonished. But in that 
 brief moment Ford recognized in the leader of the Har- 
 risons the well-known figure of the Sheriff of Tuolumne. 
 It needed only this to cap the climax of the fatality that 
 seemed to pursue him. He was no longer a lawless opposer 
 of equally lawless forces, but he was actually resisting the 
 law itself. He understood the situation now. It was some 
 idiotic blunder of "Uncle Ben's that had precipitated this 
 attack. 
 
 The belligerents had already cocked their weapons, al» 
 
118 CEESSY 
 
 though the barn was still a rampart between the parties. 
 But an adroit flanker of McKinstry's, creeping through the 
 tall mustard, managed to take up an enfilading position as 
 the Harrisons advanced to break in the door. A threat- 
 ening shout from the ambuscaded partisans caused them to 
 hurriedly fall back towards the rear of the barn. There 
 was a pause, and then began the usual Homeric chaff, — 
 with this Western difference that it was cunningly intended 
 to draw the other's fire. 
 
 " Why don't you blaze away at the door, you ^^— 
 ! It won't hurt ye ! " 
 
 " He 's afraid the bolt will shoot back ! " Laughter 
 from the McKinstrys. 
 
 " Come outer the tall grass and show yourself, you black, 
 mud-eating gopher." 
 
 " He can't. He 's dropped his grit and is sarchin' for 
 it." Goading laughter from the Harrisons. 
 
 Each man waited for that single shot which would pre- 
 cipitate the fight. Even in their lawlessness the rude in- 
 stinct of the duello swayed them. The ofiicer of the law 
 recognized the principle as well as its practical advantage 
 in a collision, but he hesitated to sacrifice one of his men 
 in an attack on the barn, which would draw the fire of Mc- 
 Kinstry at that necessarily fatal range. As a brave man 
 he would have taken the risk himself, but as a prudent 
 one, he reflected that his hurriedly collected posse were all 
 partisans, and if he fell the conflict would resolve itself into 
 a purely partisan struggle without a single unprejudiced 
 witness to justify his conduct in the popular eye. The 
 master also knew this ; it had checked his first impulse to 
 come forward as a mediator ; his only reliance now was on 
 Mrs. McKinstry's restraint and the sheriff's forbearance. 
 The next instant both seemed to be imperiled. 
 
 " Well, why don't you wade in ? " sneered Dick Mo- 
 Kinstry ; " who do you reckon 's hidden in the barn ? " 
 
CEESSY 119 
 
 " I '11 tell ye," said a harsh, passionate voice from tha 
 hillside. " It 's Cressy McKinstry and the schoolmaster 
 hidin' in the hay. " 
 
 Both parties turned quickly towards the intruder who 
 had approached them unperceived. But the speech was 
 followed by a more startling revulsion of sentiment as Mrs. 
 McKinstry's voice rang out from the barn, " You lie, Seth 
 Davis ! " 
 
 The brief advantage offered to the sheriff in Davis's ad- 
 vent as a neutral witness was utterly lost by this unlooked- 
 for revelation of Mrs. McKinstry's presence in the barn ! 
 The fates were clearly against him ! A woman in the 
 fight, and an old one at that ! A white woman to be forci- 
 bly ejected ! In the whole unwritten code of Southwest- 
 ern chivalry there was no such precedent. 
 
 " Stand back," he said disgustedly to his followers, 
 " stand back and let the d — d barn slide. But you, Hiram 
 McKinstry, I '11 give you five minutes to shake yourself 
 clear of your wife's petticoats and git ! " His blood was 
 up now — the quicker from his momentary weakness and 
 the trick of which he thought himself a dupe. 
 
 Again the fatal signal seemed imminent, again it was 
 delayed. For Hiram McKinstry, with clanking spurs and 
 rifle in hand, stepped from behind the barn, full in the pre- 
 sence of his antagonists. 
 
 " Ez to my gitten in five minits," he began in his lazi- 
 est, drowsiest manner, " we '11 see when the time 's up. 
 But jest now words hev passed betwixt my wife and Set\i 
 Davis. Afore anythin' else goes on yer, he 's got to take 
 his back. My wife allows he lies ; I allow he lies tooj 
 and I stan' here to say it." 
 
 The right of personal insult to precedence of redress was 
 too old a frontier principle to be gainsaid now. Both par- 
 ties held back and every eye was turned to where Seth 
 Davis had been standing. But he had disappeared. 
 
120 CEESSY 
 
 Where? 
 
 When Mrs. McKinstry hurled her denial from the barn 
 he had taken advantage of the greater surprise to leap to 
 one of the trusses of hay that projected beyond the loft, 
 and secure a footing from which he quickly scrambled 
 through the open scantling to the interior. The master 
 who, startled by his voice, had made his way through the 
 loose grain to the rear, reached it as Scth half crawled, half 
 tumbled through. Their eyes met in a single flash of rage, 
 but before Seth could utter an outcry the master had 
 dropped his gun, seized him around the neck and crammed 
 a thick handful of the soft hay he had hurriedly snatched up 
 into his face and gasping mouth. A furious but silent 
 struggle ensued ; the yielding hay on which they both fell 
 deadened all sound of a scuffle and concealed them from 
 view ; masses of it, already loosened by the intruder's en- 
 trance, and dislodged in their contortions, began to slip 
 through the opening to the ground. The master, still up- 
 permost and holding Seth firmly down, allowed himself to 
 slip with them, shoving his adversary before him; the 
 maddened Missourian detecting his purpose made a des- 
 perate attempt to change his position, and succeeded in 
 raising his knee against the master's chest. Ford, guard- 
 ing against what seemed to be only a wrestler's strategy, 
 contented himself by locking the bent knee firmly in that 
 position, and thus imwittingly gave Seth the looked-for 
 opportunity of drawing the bowie-knife concealed in his 
 boot-leg. He knew his mistake only as Seth freed his arm, 
 and threw it upward for the blow. He heard the steel 
 slither like a scythe through the hay, and unlocking his 
 hold desperately threw himself on the uplifted arm. The 
 movement saved him. For the released body of Seth 
 slipped rapidly through the opening, upheld for a single 
 instant on the verge by the grasp of the master's two hands 
 on the arm that still held the knife, and then dropped 
 
CRESSY 121 
 
 heavily downward. Even then, the hay that had slipped 
 hefore him would have broken his fall, but his head came 
 in violent contact with some farming implements standing 
 against the wall, and without a cry he was stretched sense- 
 less on the ground. The whole occurrence passed so rap- 
 idly and so noiselessly that not only did McKinstry's chal- 
 lenge fall upon his already unconscious ears, but the 
 loosened hay, which in the master's struggles to recover 
 himself still continued to slide gently from the loft, aatu- 
 ally hid him from the eyes of the spectators who sought 
 him a moment afterwards. A mass of hay and wild oats, 
 dislodged apparently by Mrs. McKinstry in securing her 
 defenses, was all that met their eyes ; even the woman 
 herself was unconscious of the deadly struggle that had 
 taken place above her. 
 
 The master staggered to an upright position half choked 
 and half blinded with dust, turgid and bursting with the 
 rush of blood to his head, but clear and collected in mind, 
 and unremorsefully triumphant. Unconscious of the real 
 extent of Seth's catastrophe he groped for and seized his 
 gun, examined the cap, and eagerly waited for a renewed at- 
 tack. " He tried to kill me ; he would have killed me ; 
 if he comes again I must kill him," he kept repeating to 
 himself. It never occurred to him that this was inconsist- 
 ent with his previous thought — indeed with the whole 
 tenor of his belief. Perhaps the most peaceful man who 
 has been once put in peril of life by an adversary, who has 
 recognized death threatening him in the eye of his antagonist, 
 is by some strange paradox not likely to hold his own life, 
 or the life of his adversary as dearly as before. Every- 
 thing was silent now. The suspense irritated him ; he 
 no longer dreaded but even longed for the shot that would 
 precipitate hostilities. What were they doing ? Guided 
 by Seth, were they concerting a fresh attack ? 
 
 Listening more intently he became a\vare of a distant 
 
122 CRESSY 
 
 Bhouting, and even more distinctly of the dull, heavy 
 trampling of hoofs. A sudden angry fear that the McKin- 
 strys had been beaten oflf and were flying — a fear and anger 
 that now for the first time identified him with their cause 
 — came over him, and he scrambled quickly towards the 
 opening below. But the sound was approaching and with 
 it came a voice. 
 
 "Hold on there, sheriff!" 
 
 It was the voice of the agent Stacey. 
 
 There was a pause of reluctant murmuring. But the 
 •warning was enforced by a command from another voice — 
 weak, unheroic, but familiar, " I order this yer to stop — 
 right yer ! " 
 
 A burst of ironical laughter followed. The voice was 
 Uncle Ben's. 
 
 " Stand back ! This is no time for foolin'," said the 
 sheriff roughly. 
 
 " He 's right. Sheriff Briggs," said Stacey's voice hur- 
 riedly ; " you 're acting for Mm, ; he 's the owner of the 
 land." 
 
 " What ? That Ben Dabney ? " 
 
 " Yes ; he 's Daubigny, who bought the title from us." 
 
 There was a momentary hush, and then a hurried mur- 
 mur. 
 
 " Which means, gents," rose Uncle Ben's voice persua- 
 sively, " that this yer young man, though fair-minded and 
 well-intended, hez bin a leetle too chipper and previous 
 in orderin' out the law. This yer ain't no law matter 
 with me, boys. It ain't to be settled by law-papers, noi 
 shot-guns and deringers. It's suthin' to be chawed ov6" 
 sociable-like, between drinks. Ef any harm hez bin done 
 ef anythin' 's happened, I 'm yer to 'demnify the sheriff, ana 
 make it comf'ble all round. Yer know me, boys. I 'm 
 talkin'. It 's me — Dabney, or Daubigny, which ever way 
 you like it." 
 
CRESSY 123 
 
 But in the silence that followed the passions had not 
 yet evidently cooled. It was hroken by the sarcastic drawl 
 of Dick McKinstry, " If them Harrisons don't mind heven 
 had their medders trampled over by a few white men, 
 why " — 
 
 " The sheriff ez 'demnified for that," interrupted Uncle 
 Ben hastily. 
 
 " 'W ef Dick McKinstry don't mind the damage to his 
 pants in crawlin' out o' gun-shot in the tall grass " — 
 retorted Joe Harrison. 
 
 "I'm yer to settle that, boys," said Uncle Ben cheer- 
 fully. 
 
 " But who '11 settle this ? " clamored the voice of the 
 older Harrison from behind the barn where he had stumbled 
 in crossing the fallen hay. " Yer 's Seth Davis lyin' in the 
 hay with the top of his head busted. Who 's to pay for 
 that ? " 
 
 There was a rush to the spot, and a quick cry of reaction. 
 " Whose work is this ? " demanded the sheriff's voice, 
 with official severity. 
 
 The master uttered an instinctive exclamation of defiance, 
 and dropping quickly to the barn floor would the next 
 moment have opened the door and declared himself, but 
 Mrs. McKinstry, after a single glance at his determined 
 face, suddenly threw herself before him with an imperious 
 gesture of silence. Then her voice rang clearly from the 
 barn : — 
 
 " Well, if it 's the hound that tried to force his way '« 
 yer, I reckon ye kin put that down to ME ! " 
 
CHAPTEE X 
 
 It -was known to Indian Spring, the next day, amid great 
 excitement, that a serious fracas had been prevented on the 
 Ill-fated boundary by the dramatic appearance of Uncle Ben 
 Dabney, not only as a peacemaker, but as Mr. Daubigny the 
 bona fide purchaser and owner of the land. It was known 
 and accepted with great hilarity that-" old Ma'am McKin- 
 .itry " had defended the barn alone and unaided, with — as 
 variously stated — a pitchfork, an old stable-broom, and a 
 pail of dirty water, against Harrison, his party, and the 
 entire able posse of the Sheriff of Tuolumne County, with 
 no further damage than a scalp wound which the head of 
 Seth Davis received while falling from the loft of the barn 
 from which he had been dislodged by Mrs. McKinstry and' 
 the broom aforesaid. It was known with unanimous appro- 
 bation that the acquisition of the land-title by a hitherto 
 humble citizen of Indian Spring was a triumph of the 
 settlement over foreign interference. But it was not known 
 that the schoolmaster was a participant in the fight, or even 
 present on the spot. At Mrs. McKinstry's suggestion hs 
 had remained concealed in the loft until after the withdrawal 
 of both parties and the still unconscious Seth. When Ford 
 had remonstrated, with the remark that Seth would be sure 
 to declare the truth when he recovered his senses, Mrs. 
 McKinstry smiled grimly : " I reckon when he comes to 
 know Jwas with ye all the time, he 'd rather hev it allowed 
 that I licked him than yow. I don't say he '11 let it pass 
 ez far ez you 're concerned or won't try to get even with ye, 
 but he won't go round tellin' ichy. However," she added 
 
CEESSY 125 
 
 still -more grimly, "if you think you're ekul to tellin' the 
 hull story — how ye kem to be yer and that Seth wasn't 
 lyin' ai'ter all when he blurted it out afore 'em — why I 
 sha'n't hinder ye." The master said no more. And indeed 
 for a day or two nothing transpired to show that Seth was 
 not equally reticent. 
 
 Nevertheless Mr. Ford was far from being satisfied with 
 the issue of his adventure. His relations with Cressy were 
 known to the mother, and although she had not again alluded 
 to them, she would probably inform her husband. Yet he 
 could not help noticing, with a mingling of unreasoning 
 relief and equally unreasoning distrust, that she exhibited a 
 scornful unconcern in the matter, apart from the singular 
 use to which she had put it. He could hardly count upon 
 McKinstry, with his heavy, blind devotion to Cressy, being 
 as indifferent. On the contrary, he had acquired the 
 impression, without caring to examine it closely, that her 
 father would not be displeased at his marrying Cressy, for 
 it would really amount to that. But here again he was 
 forced to contemplate what he had always avoided, the 
 possible meaning and result of their intimacy. In the reck- 
 less, thoughtless, extravagant — yet thus far innocent — 
 indulgence of their mutual passion, he had never spoken of 
 marriage, nor — and it struck him now with the same 
 incongruous mingling of relief and uneasiness — had she/ 
 Perhaps this might have arisen from some superstitious or 
 sensitive recollection on her part of her previous engagement 
 to Seth, but he remembered now that they had not even 
 exchanged the usual vows of eternal constancy. It may 
 seem strange that, in the half-dozen stolen and rapturous 
 interviews which had taken place between these young 
 lovers, there had been no suggestion of the future, nor any 
 of those glowing projects for a united destiny peculiar to 
 their years and inexperience. They had lived entirely in a 
 blissful present, with no plans beyond their next rendezvous. 
 
126 ORESSY 
 
 In that mysterious and sudden absorption of each other, not 
 only the past, but the future seemed to have been forgotten. 
 
 These thoughts were passing through his mind the next 
 afternoon to the prejudice of that calm and studious repose 
 which the deserted schoolhouse usually superinduced, and 
 ■which had been so fondly noted by McKinstry and UncliS 
 Ben. The latter had not arrived for his usual lesson ; it 
 was possible that undae attention had been attracted to his 
 movements now that his good fortune was known ; and the 
 master was alone save for the occasional swooping incursion 
 of a depredatory jay in search of crumbs from the children's 
 luncheons, who added apparently querulous insult to the 
 larcenous act. He regretted Uncle Ben's absence, as he 
 wanted to know more about his connection with the Harri- 
 son attack and his eventual intentions. Ever since the 
 master emerged from the barn and regained his hotel under 
 cover of the darkness, he had heard only the vaguest ru- 
 mors, and he purposely avoided direct inquiry. 
 
 He had been quite prepared for Cressy's absence from 
 school that morning — indeed in his present vacillaticg 
 mood he had felt that her presence would have been irk- 
 some and embarrassing j but it struck him suddenly and 
 unpleasantly that her easy desertion of him at that critical 
 moment in the barn had not since been followed by the 
 least sign of anxiety to know the result of her mother's in- 
 terference. 'What did she imagine had transpired between 
 Mrs. McKinstry and himself ? Had she confidently expected 
 her mother's prompt acceptance of the situation and a re- 
 coacilation ? Was that the reason why she had treated that 
 interruption as lightly as if she were already his recogni^.ed 
 betrothed ? Had she even calculated upon it ? had she — 
 He stopped, his cheek glowing from irritation under the 
 suspicion, and shame at the disloyalty of entertaining it. 
 
 Opening his desk, he began to arrange his papers 
 mechanically, when he discovered, with a slight feeling of 
 
CEESSY 127 
 
 annoyance, that he had placed Cressy's bouquet — now 
 dried and withered — in the same pigeonhole with the 
 mysterious letters with which he had so often communed in 
 former days. He at once separated them with a half bitter 
 smile, yet after a moment's hesitation, and with his old 
 sense of attempting to revive a forgotten association, he 
 tried to re-peruse them. But they did not even restrain 
 his straying thoughts, nor prevent him from detecting a 
 singular occurrence. The nearly level sun was, after its 
 old fashion, already hanging the shadowed tassels of the 
 pine boughs like a garland on the wall. But the shadow 
 seemed to have suddenly grown larger and more compact, 
 and he turned, with a quick consciousness of some inter- 
 posing figure at the pane. Nothing however was to be 
 seen. Yet so impressed had he been that he walked to the 
 door and stepped from the porch to discover the intruder. 
 The clearing was deserted, there was a slight rustling in 
 the adjacent laurels, but no human being was visible. 
 Nevertheless the old feeling of security and isolation, which 
 had never been quite the same since Mr. McKinstry's con- 
 fession, seemed now to have fled the sylvan schoolhouse 
 altogether, and he somewhat angrily closed his desk, locked 
 it, and determined to go home. 
 
 His way lay through the first belt of pines towards the min- 
 ing-flat, but to-day from some vague impulse he turned and 
 followed the ridge. He had not proceeded far when he 
 perceived Eupert Filgee lounging before him on the trail, 
 and at a little distance further on his brother Johnny. At 
 the sight of these two favorite pupils Mr. Ford's heart smote 
 him with a consciousness that he had of late neglected them, 
 possibly because Eupert's lofty scorn of the " silly " sex 
 was not as amusing to him as formerly, and possibly because 
 Johnny's curiosity had been at times obtrusive. He how- 
 ever quickened his pace and joined Rupert, laying his hand 
 familiarly as of old on his shoulder. To his surprise tb« 
 
128 CEESSY 
 
 boy received his advances with some constraint and av^k- 
 wardness, glancing uneasily in the direction of Johnny. A 
 sudden idea crossed Mr. Ford's mind. 
 
 " Were you looking for me at the schoolroom just 
 now ? " 
 
 "No, sir." 
 
 " You did n't look in at the window to see if I was 
 there ? " continued the master. 
 
 " No, sir." 
 
 The master glanced at Eupert. Truth-telling was a part 
 of Eupert's truculent temper, although, as the boy had often 
 bitterly remarked, it had always " told agin him." 
 
 " All right," said the master, perfect convinced. " It 
 must have been my fancy ; but I thought somebody looked 
 in — or passed by the window." 
 
 But here Johnny, who had overheard the dialogue and 
 approached them, suddenly threw himself upon his brother's 
 unoffending legs and commenced to beat and pull them about 
 with unintelligible protests. Eupert, without looking down, 
 said quietly, " Quit that now — I won't, I tell ye," and 
 went through certain automatic movements of dislodging 
 Johnny as if he were a mere impeding puppy. 
 
 " What 's the matter, Johnny ? " said the master, to 
 whom these gyrations were not unfamiliar. 
 
 Johnny only replied by a new grip of his brother's trou- 
 sers. 
 
 " Well, sir," said Eupert, slightly recovering his dimples 
 and his readiness, " Johnny, yer, wants me to tell ye some- 
 thing. Ef he was n't the most original self-cocking. God- 
 forsaken liar in Injin Spring — ef he didn't lie awake in 
 his crib mornin's to invent lies fer the day, I wouldn't 
 inind tellin' ye, and would hev told you before. However, 
 since you ask, and since you think you saw somebody around 
 the schoolhouse, Johnny yer allows that Seth Davis is 
 spyin' round and followin' ye wherever you go, and he 
 
CRESSY 129 
 
 dragged me down yer to see it. He says he saw him doggin' 
 
 ye." 
 
 " With a knife and pithtolth," added Johnny's bound- 
 less imagination, to the detriment of his limited facts. 
 
 Mr. Ford looked keenly from the one to the other, but 
 rather with a suspicion that they were cognizant of his late 
 fracas than belief in the truth of Johnny's statement. 
 
 " And what do you think of it, Rupert ? " he asked care- 
 lessly. 
 
 " I think, sir," said Eupert, " that allowin' — for onct 
 — that Johnny ain't lying, mebbee it 's Cressy McKinstry 
 that Seth's huntin' round, and knowin' that she's always 
 runnin' after you " — he stopped, and reddening with a 
 newborn sense that his fatal truthfulness had led him into 
 a glaring indelicacy towards the master, hurriedly added, 
 " I mean, sir, that mebbee it 's Uncle Ben he 's jealous of, 
 now that he 's got rich enough for Cressy to hev him, and 
 knowin' he comes to school in the afternoon perhaps " — 
 
 " 'T ain't either ! " broke in Johnny promptly. " Theth 's 
 over ther beyond the thchool, and Crethy 's eatin- ithecream 
 at the bakerth with Uncle Ben." 
 
 " Well, suppose she is, Seth don't know it, silly ! " an- 
 swered Rupert sharply. Then more politely to the master : 
 " That 's it ! Seth has seen Uncle Ben gallivanting with 
 Cressy and thinks he 's bringing her over yer. Don't you 
 see ? " 
 
 The master however did not see but one thing. The 
 girl who had only two days ago carelessly left it to him to 
 explain a compromising situation to her mother — this girl, 
 who had precipitated him into a frontier fight to the peril 
 of his position and her good name, was calmly eating ices 
 with an available suitor without the least concern of the 
 past ! The connection was perhaps illogical, but it was 
 unpleasant. It was the more awkward from the fact that 
 he fancied that not only Rupert's beautiful eyes, but even 
 
130 CKESSY 
 
 the infant Johnny's round ones, were fixed upon him with 
 an embarrassed expression of hesitating and foreboding 
 ■sympathy. 
 
 " I think Johnny believes what he says — don't you, 
 Johnny ? " he smiled, with an assumption of cheerful ease, 
 " but I see no necessity just yet for binding Seth Davis 
 over to keep the peace. Tell me about yourself, Eupe. I 
 hope Uncle Ben does n't think of changing his young tutor 
 with his good fortune ? " 
 
 " No, sir," returned Rupert brightening ; " he promises 
 to take me to Sacramento with him as his private secretary 
 or confidential clerk, you know, ef — ef " — he hesitated 
 again with very un-Eupert-like caution, — " ef things go as 
 he wants 'em." He stopped awkwardly and his brown eyes 
 became clouded. " Like ez not, Mr. Ford, he 's only foolin' 
 me — and — himself." The boy's eyes sought the master's 
 curiously. 
 
 " I don't know about that," returned Mr. Ford uneasily, 
 with a certain recollection of Uncle Ben's triumph over his 
 own incredulity ; " he surely has n't shown himself a fool 
 or a boaster so far. I consider your prospect a very fair one, 
 and I wish you joy of it, my boy." He ran his fingers 
 through Rupert's curls in his old caressing fashion, the 
 more tenderly perhaps that he fancied he still saw symp- 
 toms of stormy and wet weather in the boy's brown eyes. 
 " Kun along home, both of you, and don't worry yourselves 
 about me." 
 
 He turned away, but had scarcely proceeded half a dozen 
 yards before he felt a tug at his coat. Looking down he 
 saw the diminutive Johnny. " They '11 be comin' home thith 
 way," he said, reaching up in a hoarse confidential whisper. 
 
 " Who ? " 
 
 " Crethy and 'im." 
 
 But before the master could make any response to this 
 presumably gratifying information Johnny had rejoined his 
 
CRESSY 131 
 
 brother. The two boys waved their hands towards him 
 with the same diffident and mysterious sympathy that left 
 him hesitating between a smile and a frown. Then he pro- 
 ceeded on his way. Nevertheless, for no other reason than 
 that he felt a sudden distaste to meeting any one, when he 
 reached the point where the trail descended directly to the 
 settlement he turned into a longer and more solitary detour 
 by the woods. 
 
 The sun was already so low that its long rays pierced the 
 forest from beneath, and suffused the dim colonnade of 
 straight pine shafts with a golden haze, while it left the dense 
 intercrossed branches fifty feet above in deeper shadow. 
 Walking in this yellow twilight, with his feet noiselessly 
 treading down the yielding carpet of pine-needles, it seemed 
 to the master that he was passing through the woods in a 
 dream. There was no sound but the dull intermittent 
 double-knock of the woodpecker, or the drowsy croak of 
 some early roosting bird ; all suggestion of the settlement 
 with all traces of human contiguity were left far behind. 
 It was therefore with a strange and nervous sense of being 
 softly hailed by some woodland sprite that he seemed to 
 hear his own name faintly wafted upon the air. He turned 
 quickly ; it was Cressy, panting behind him ! Even then, 
 in her white closely gathered skirts, her bared head and 
 graceful arching neck bent forward, her flying braids freed 
 from the straw hat which she had swung from her arm so 
 as not to impede her flight, there was so much of the fol- 
 lowing Msenad about her that he was for an instant startled. 
 
 He stopped ; she bounded to him, and throwing her arms 
 around his neck with a light laugh, let herself hang for a 
 moment breathless on his breast. Then recovering her 
 speech she said slowly : — 
 
 " I started on an Injin trot after you, just as you turned 
 off the trail, but you 'd got so far ahead while I was shak- 
 ing myself clear of Uncle Ben that I had to jist lope the 
 
132 CKESSY 
 
 whole way through the woods to catch up." She stopped, 
 and looking up into his troubled face caught his cheeks 
 between her hands, and bringing his knit brows down to the 
 level of her humid blue eyes said, " You have n't kissed me 
 yet. What 's the matter ? " 
 
 " Does n't it strike you that I might ask that question, 
 considering that it's three days since I've seen you, and 
 that you left me, in a rather awkward position, to explain 
 matters to your mother ? " he said coldly. He had formu- 
 lated the sentence in his mind some moments before, but 
 now that it was uttered, it appeared singularly weak and 
 impotent. 
 
 " That 's so," she said, with a frank laugh, burying her 
 face in his waistcoat. "You see, dandy boy," — his pet 
 name, — "I reckoned for that reason we 'd better lie low for 
 a day or two. Well," she continued, untying his cravat 
 and retying it again, " how did you crawl out of it ? " 
 
 " Do you mean to say your mother did not tell you ? " 
 he asked indignantly. 
 
 "Why should she?" returned Cressy lazily. "She 
 never talks to me of these things, honey." 
 
 " And you knew nothing about it ? " 
 
 Cressy shook her head, and then winding one of her 
 long braids around the young man's neck, offered the end 
 of it to his mouth, and on his sternly declining it, took it 
 in her own. 
 
 Yet even her ignorance of what had really happened did 
 not account to the master for the indifference of her long 
 silence, and albeit conscious of some inefficiency in his 
 present unheroic attitude, he continued sarcastically, " May 
 I ask what you imagined would happen when you left 
 me?" 
 
 "Well," said Cressy confidently, "I reckoned, chile, 
 you could lie as well as the next man, and that, being 
 gifted, you'd sling maw something new and purty. Why, 
 
OKESSV 133 
 
 / ain't got no fancy, but I fixed up something against paw's 
 questioning me. I made that conceited Masters promise to 
 swear that he was in the barn with me. Then I calculated 
 to tell paw that you came meandering along just before 
 maw popped in, and that I skedaddled to join Masters. Of 
 course," she added quickly, tightening her hold of the 
 master as he made a sudden attempt at withdrawal, " I 
 did n't let on to Masters wJnj I wanted him to promise, or 
 that you were there." 
 
 " Cressy," said Ford, irritated beyond measure, "are you 
 mad, or do you think I am ? " 
 
 The girl's face changed. She cast a half-frightened, 
 half-questioning glance at his eyes, and then around the 
 darkening aisle. " If we 're going to quarrel, Jack," she 
 said hurriedly, "don't let's do it before folks." 
 
 " In the name of Heaven," he said, following her eyes 
 indignantly, " what do you mean ? " 
 
 " I mean," she said, with a slight shiver of resignation 
 and scorn, " if you —oh dear ! if it's all going to be like 
 them, let's keep it to ourselves." 
 
 He gazed at her in hopeless bewilderment. Did she 
 really mean that she was more frightened at the possible 
 revelation of their disagreement than of their intimacy ? 
 
 " Come," she continued tenderly, still glancing, however, 
 uneasily around her, " come ! We '11 be more comfortable 
 in the hollow. It 's only a step." Still holding him by 
 her braid she half led, half dragged him away. To the 
 right was one of those sudden depressions in the ground 
 caused by the subsidence of the earth from hidden springs 
 and the iiprooting of one or two of the larger trees. When 
 she had forced him down this declivity below the level of 
 the needle-strewn forest floor, she seated him upon a mossy 
 root, and shaking out her skirts in a half-childlike, half- 
 coquettish way, comfortably seated herself in his lap, with 
 her arm supplementing the clinging braid around his neck. 
 
134 CRESSY 
 
 "Now hark to me, and don't holler so loud," she said, 
 turning his face to her questioning eyes. "What's gone 
 of you anyway, nigger hoy ? " It should he premised that 
 Cressy's terms of endearment were mainly negro-dialectical, 
 reminiscences of her brief hahyhood, her slave-nurse, and 
 the only playmates she had ever known. 
 
 Still implacable, the master coldly repeated the counts 
 of his indictment against the girl's strange indifference and 
 still stranger entanglements, winding up by setting forth 
 the whole story of his interview with her mother, his forced 
 defense of the barn, Seth's outspoken accusation, and their 
 silent and furious struggle in the loft. But if he had 
 expected that this daughter of a Southwestern fighter would 
 betray any enthusiasm over her lover's participation in one 
 of their characteristic feuds, if he looked for any fond 
 praise for his own prowess, he was bitterly mistaken. She 
 loosened her arm from his neck of her own accord, unwound 
 the braid, and putting her two little hands clasped between 
 her knees, crossed her small feet before her, and, albeit still 
 in his lap, looked the picture of languid dejection. 
 
 " Maw ought to have more sense, and you ought to have 
 lit out of the window after me," she said, with a lazy sigh. 
 "Fightin' ain't in your line — it's too much like them. 
 That Seth 's sure to get even with you." 
 
 •' I can protect myself," he said haughtily. ISTevertheless 
 (;e had a depressing consciousness that his lithe and graceful 
 iiurden was somewhat in the way of any heroic expression. 
 
 '•■ Seth can lick you out of your boots, chile," she said, 
 with naive abstraction. Then, as he struggled to secure an 
 upright position, "Don't git riled, honey. Of course you'd 
 let them kill you before you 'd give in. But that 's their 
 best holt — that 's their trade ! That 's all they can do — 
 don't you see? That's where you're not like them — 
 that 's why you 're not their low-down kind ! That 's why 
 you 're my boy — that 's why I love you ! " 
 
CEESSY 135 
 
 She had thrown her whole weight again upon his shoul- 
 ders until she had forced him back to his seat. Then, with 
 her looked hands again around his neck, she looked intently 
 into his face. The varying color dropped from her cheeks, 
 her eyes seemed to grow larger, the same look of rapt ab- 
 sorption and possession that had so transfigured her young 
 face at the ball was fixed upon it now. Her lips parted 
 slightly, she seemed to murmur rather than speak : — 
 
 " What are these people to us ? What are Seth's jeal- 
 ousies. Uncle Ben's and Masters's foolishness, paw and 
 maw's quarr'ls and tantrums to you and me, dear? What 
 is it what they think, what they reckon, what they plan 
 out, and what they set themselves against — to us ? We 
 love each other, we belong to each other, without their 
 help or their hindrance. From the time we first saw each 
 other it was so, and from that time paw and maw, and 
 Seth and Masters, and even you and me, dear, had nothing 
 else to do. That was love as I know it ; not Seth's sneak- 
 ing rages, and Uncle Ben's sneaking fooleries, and Masters's 
 sneaking conceit, but only love. And knowing that, I let 
 Seth rage, and Uncle Ben dawdle, and Masters trifle — and 
 for what ? To keep them from me and my boy. They were 
 satisfied, and we were happy." 
 
 Vague and unreasoning as he knew her speech to be, the 
 rapt and perfect conviction with which it was uttered stag- 
 gered him. 
 
 " But how is this to end, Cressy ? " he said passionately. 
 
 The abstracted look passed, and the slight color and 
 delicate mobility of her face returned. " To end, dandy 
 boy ?" she repeated lazily. "You didn't think of marry- 
 ing me — did you ? " 
 
 He blushed, stammered, and said " Yes," albeit with all 
 his past vacillation and his present distrust of her trans- 
 parent on his cheek and audible in his voice. 
 
 "No, dear," she said quietly, reaching down, untying 
 
136 CEESSY 
 
 her little shoe and shaking the dust and pine-needles from 
 its recesses, " no ! I don't know enough to be a wife to 
 you, just now, and you know it. And I could n't keep a 
 house fit for you, and you could n't afford to keep me with- 
 out it. And then it would be all known, and it would n't 
 be us two, dear, and our lonely meetings any more. And 
 we could n't be engaged — that would be too much like 
 me and Seth over again. That 's what you mean, dandy 
 boy — for you 're only a dandy boy, you know, and they 
 don't get married to backwood Southern girls who have n't 
 a nigger to bless themselves with since the war ! !N"o," she 
 continued, lifting her proud little head so promptly after 
 Ford had recovered from his surprise as to make the ruse 
 of emptying her shoe perfectly palpable, " no, that 's what 
 we 've both allowed, dear, all along. And now, honey, it 's 
 near time for me to go. Tell me something good — before 
 I go. Tell me that you love me as you used to — tell me 
 how you felt that night at the ball when you first knew we 
 loved each other. But stop — kiss me first — there, once 
 more — for keeps." 
 
CHAPTEE XI 
 
 When Uncle Ben, or "Benjamin Daubigny, Esq.," as 
 he was already known in the columns of the " Star," accom- 
 panied Miss Cressy McKinstry on her way home after the 
 first display of attention and hospitality since his accession 
 to wealth and position, he remained for some moments in a 
 state of bewildered and smiling idiocy. It was true that 
 their meeting was chance and accidental ; it was true that 
 Cressy had accepted his attention with lazy amusement ; it 
 was true that she had suddenly and audaciously left him on 
 the borders of the McKinstry woods in a way that might 
 have seemed rude and abrupt to any escort less invincibly 
 good humored than Uncle Ben, but none of these things 
 marred his fatuous felicity. It is even probable that in his 
 gratuitous belief that his timid attentions had been too 
 marked and impulsive, he attributed Cressy's flight to a 
 maidenly coyness that pleasurably increased his admiration 
 for her and his confidence in himself. In his abstraction 
 of enjoyment and in the gathering darkness he ran against a 
 fir-tree very much as he had done while walking with her, 
 and he confusedly apologized to it as he had to her, and by 
 her own appellation. In this way he eventually overran 
 his trail and found himself unexpectedly and apologetically 
 in the clearing before the schoolhouse. 
 
 " Ef this ain't the singlerest thing, miss," he said, and 
 then stopped suddenly. A faint noise in the schoolhouse 
 like the sound of splintered wood attracted his attention. 
 The master was evidently there. If he was alone he would 
 speak to him. 
 
138 CEESSY 
 
 He went to the window, looked in, and in an instant his 
 amiable abstraction left him. He crept softly to the door, 
 tried it, and then putting his powerful shoulder against the 
 panel, forced the lock from its fastenings. He entered the 
 room as Seth Davis, frightened but furious, lifted himself 
 from before the master's desk which he had just broken 
 open. He had barely time to conceal something in his 
 pocket and close the lid again before Uncle Ben .approached 
 him. 
 
 " What mout ye be doin' here, Seth Davis ? " he asked, 
 with the slow deliberation which in that locality meant 
 mischief. 
 
 " And what mout you be doin' here, Mister Ben Dab- 
 ney ? " said Seth, resuming his effrontery. 
 
 " Well," returned Uncle Ben, planting himself in the 
 aisle before his opponent, " I ain't doin' no sheriff's posse 
 business jest now, but I reckon to keep my hand in far 
 enuff to purtect other folks' property," he added, with a sig- 
 nificant glance at the broken lock of the desk. 
 
 " Ben Dabney," said Seth in snarling expostulation, " I 
 hain't got no quar'l with ye ! " 
 
 " Then hand me over whatever you took just now from 
 teacher's desk and we '11 talk about that afterwards," said 
 Uncle Ben, advancing. 
 
 " I tell ye I hain't got no quar'l with ye. Uncle Ben," 
 continued Seth, retreating with a malignant sneer; "and 
 when you talk of protectin' other folks' property, mebbee 
 ye 'd better protect your own — or what ye 'd like to call 
 so — instead of quar'lin' with the man that 's helpin' ye. 
 I -'ve got yer the proofs that that sneakin' hound of a Yan- 
 kee schoolmaster that Cress McKinstry 's hell bent on, and 
 that the old man and old woman are just chuckin' into her 
 arms, is a lyin', black-hearted, hypocritical seducer " — 
 
 " Stop ! " said Uncle Ben in a voice that made the crazy 
 casement rattle. 
 
CRESSY 138 
 
 He strode towards Seth Davis, no longer with his habit- 
 ual careful, hesitating step, but with a tread that seemed to 
 shake the whole schoolroom. A single dominant clutch of 
 his powerful right hand on the young man's breast forced 
 him backwards into the vacant chair of the master. His 
 usually florid face had grown as gray as the twilight ; his 
 menacing form in a moment filled the little room and dark- 
 3ned the windows. Then in some inexplicable reaction his 
 •figure slightly drooped, he laid one heavy hand tremblingly 
 on the desk, and with the other affected to wipe his mouth 
 after his old embarrassed fashion. 
 
 " What 's that you were sayin' o' Cressy ? " he said 
 huskily. 
 
 " Wot everybody says," said the frightened Seth, gain- 
 ing a cowardly confidence under his adversary's emotion. 
 " Wot every cub that sets yer under his cantin' teachin', 
 and sees 'em together, knows. It 's wot you 'd hev knowed 
 ef he and Eupe Filgee had n't played ye fer a softy all the 
 time. And while you 've bin hangin' round yer fer a 
 flicker of Cressy's gownd as she prances out o' school, he 's 
 bin lyin' low and laffin' at ye, and while he 's turned Rupe 
 over to keep you here, pretendin' to give ye lessons, he 's 
 bin gallivantin' round with her and huggin' and kissin' her 
 in barns and in the brush — and now you want to quar'l 
 with me." 
 
 He stopped, panting for breath, and stared malignantly in 
 the gray face of his hearer. But Uncle Ben only lifted his 
 heavy hand mildly with an awkward gesture of warning, 
 stepped softly in his old cautious hesitating manner to the 
 open door, closed it, and returned gently : — 
 
 " I reckon ye got in through the winder, did n't ye, 
 Seth ? " he said, with a labored affectation of unemotional 
 ease, " a kind o' one leg over, and one, two, and then 
 you 're in, eh ? " 
 
 " Never you mind how I got in, Ben Dabney," returned 
 
140 CRESST 
 
 Seth, his hostility and insolence increasing with his oppo- 
 nent's evident weakness, " ez long ez I got yer and got, hy 
 G — d ! what I kem here fer ! For whiles all this was 
 goin' on, and whiles the old fool man and old fool woman 
 was swallowin' what they did see and blinkin' at what 
 they did n't, and huggin' themselves that they 'd got high- 
 toned kemipany fer their darter, that high-toned kempany 
 was playin' them too, by G — d ! Yes, sir ! that high- 
 toned, cantin' school-teacher was keepin' a married woman 
 in 'Frisco all the while he was here honey-foglin' with 
 Cressy, and I 've got the papers yer to prove it." He 
 tapped his breast pocket with a coarse laugh, and thrust his 
 face forward into the gray shadow of his adversary's. 
 
 " An' you sorter spotted their bein' in this yer desk and 
 bursted it ? " said Uncle Ben, gravely examining ths 
 broken lock in the darkness as if it were the most impor- 
 tant feature of the incident. 
 
 Seth nodded. " You bet your life. I saw him through 
 the winder only this afternoon lookin' over ''em alone, and I 
 reckoned to lay my hands on 'em if I had to bust him or 
 his desk. And I did ! " he added, with a triumphant 
 chuckle. 
 
 " And you did — sure pop ! " said Uncle Ben, with slow 
 deliberate admiration, passing his heavy hand along the 
 splintered lid. " And you reckon, Seth, that this yer 
 showin' of him up will break off enythin' betwixt him and 
 this yer — this yer Miss — Miss McKinstry ? " he contin- 
 ued, with labored formality. 
 
 " I reckon ef the old fool McKinstry don't shoot him in 
 his tracks thar '11 be white men enough in Injin Springs to 
 ride this high-toned, pizenous hypocrite on a rail outer the 
 settlement ! " 
 
 " That 's so ! " said Uncle Ben musingly, after a thought- 
 ful pause, in which he still seemed to be more occupied 
 with the broken desk than his companion's remark. Then 
 
CRESSY 141 
 
 he -went on cautiously, " And ez this thing orter be 
 worked mighty fine, Seth, p'r'aps, on the hull, you'd better 
 let me have them papers." 
 
 " What ! You ? " snarled Seth, drawing back with a 
 glance of angry suspicion ; " not if I know it ! " 
 
 " Seth," said Uncle Ben, resting his elbows on the desk 
 confidentially, and speaking with painful and heavy deliber- 
 ation, " when you first interdoosed this yer subject you 
 elluded to my hevin', so to speak, rights o' preemption 
 and interference with this young lady, and that, in your 
 opinion, I was n't purtectin' them rights. It 'pears to me 
 that, allowin' that to be gospel truth, them ther papers 
 orter be in Tnt/ possession — you hevin' so to speak no 
 rights to purtect, bein' off the board with this yer young 
 lady, and bein' moved gin'rally by free and independent 
 cussedness. And ez I sed afore, this sort o' thing havin' 
 to be worked mighty fine, and them papers manniperlated 
 with judgment, I reckon, Seth, if you don't objeck, I'll 
 hev — hev — to trouble you." 
 
 Seth started to his feet with a rapid glance at the door, 
 but Uncle Ben had risen again with the same alarming ex- 
 pression of completely filling the darkened schoolroom, and 
 of shaking the floor beneath him at the slightest movement. 
 Already he fancied he saw Uncle Ben's powerful arm hover- 
 ing above him ready to descend. It suddenly occurred to 
 him that if he left the execution of his scheme of exposure 
 and vengeance to Uncle Ben, the onus of stealing the let- 
 ters would fall equally upon their possessor. This advan- 
 tage seemed more probable than the danger of Uncle Ben's 
 weakly yielding them up to the master. In the latter case 
 he, Seth, could still circulate the report of having seen the 
 letters which Uncle Ben had himself stolen in a fit of jeal- 
 ousy — a hypothesis the more readily accepted from the 
 latter's familiar knowledge of the schoolhouse and his pre- 
 sumed ambitious jealousy of Cressy in his present attitude 
 
142 CEESSY 
 
 as a man of position. With affected reluctance and hesit* 
 tion he put his hand to his hreast pocket. 
 
 " Of course," he said, " if you 're kalkilatin' to take up 
 the quar'l on your rights, and ez Cressy ain't anythin' more 
 to nie, you orter hev the proofs. Only don't trust them 
 into that hound's hands. Once he gets 'em again he '11 
 secure a warrant agin you for stealin'. That'll he his game. 
 I 'd show 'em to her first — don't ye see ? — and I reckoL 
 ef she 's old Ma'am McKinstry's darter, she '11 make i 
 lively for him." 
 
 He handed the letters to the looming figure hefore him. 
 It seemed to become again a yielding mortal, and said in & 
 hesitating voice, " P'r'aps you 'd hetter make tracks outer 
 this, Seth, and leave me yer to put things to rights and fix 
 up that door and the desk agin to-morrow mornin'. He 'd 
 better not know it to onc't, and so start a row about hein' 
 broken into." 
 
 The proposition seemed to please Seth ; he even extended 
 his hand in the darkness. But he met only an irresponsive 
 void. With a slight shrug of his shoulders and a grunting 
 farewell, he felt his way to the door and disappeared. For 
 a few moments it seemed as if Uncle Ben had also deserted 
 the schoolhouse, so profound and quiet was the hush that 
 fell upon it. But as the eye became accustomed to the 
 shadow a grayish bulk appeared to grow out of it over the 
 master's desk and shaped itself into the broad figure of 
 Uncle Ben. Later, when the moon rose and looked in at 
 the window, it saw him as the master had seen him on the. 
 first day he had .begun his lessons in the schoolhouse, with 
 his face bent forward over the desk and the same look of 
 childlike perplexity and struggle that he had worn at his 
 allotted task. Unheroic, ridiculous, and no doubt blunder- 
 ing and idiotic as then, but still vaguely persistent in his 
 thought, he remained for some moments in this attitude. 
 Then rising and taking advantage of the moonlight that 
 
CEESSY 143 
 
 flooded the desk, he set himself to mend the broken lock 
 with a large mechanical clasp-knife he produced from his 
 pocket, and the aid of his workmanlike thumb and finger. 
 Presently he began to whistle softly, at first a little arti- 
 ficially and with relapses of reflective silence. The lock of 
 the desk restored, he secured into position again tliat part of 
 the door-lock which he had burst off in his entrance. This 
 done, he closed the door gently and once more stepped out 
 into the moonlit clearing. In replacing his knife in his 
 pocket he took out the letters which he had not touched 
 since they were handed to him in the darkness. His first 
 glance at the handwriting caused him to stop. Then stili 
 staring at it, he began to move slowly and automatically 
 backwards to the porch. When he reached it he sat 
 down, unfolded a letter, and without attempting to read it, 
 turned its pages over and over with the unfamiliarity of an 
 illiterate man in search of the signature. This when found 
 apparently plunged him again into motionless abstraction. 
 Only once he changed his position to pull up the legs of his 
 trousers, open his knees, and extend the distance between his 
 feet, and then with the unfolded pages carefully laid in the 
 moonlit space thus opened before him, regarded them with 
 dubious speculation. At the end of ten minutes he rose 
 with a sigh of physical and mental relaxation, refolded the 
 letter, put it in his pocket, and made his way to the town. 
 
 When he reached the hotel he turned into the bar-room, 
 and observing that it happened to be comparatively deserted, 
 asked for a glass of whiskey. In response to the bar-keeper's 
 glance of curiosity — as Uncle Ben seldom drank, and then 
 only as a social function with others — he explained : — 
 
 " I reckon straight whiskey is about ez good ez the next 
 thing for blind chills." 
 
 The bar-keeper here interposed that in his larger medical 
 experience he had found the exhibition of ginger in combi- 
 nation with gin attended with effect, although it was evident 
 
i44 CEESSy 
 
 that in his business capacity he regarded Uncle Ben, as a 
 drinker, with distrust. 
 
 " Ye ain't seen Mr. Ford hanging round yer lately ? " 
 continued Uncle Ben, with laborious ease. 
 
 The bar-keeper, with his eye still scornfully fixed on his 
 customer, but his hands which were engaged in washing his 
 glasses under the counter giving him the air of humorously 
 communicating with a hidden confederate, had not seen the 
 schoolmaster that afternoon. 
 
 Uncle Ben turned away and slowly mounted the staircase 
 to the master's room. After a moment's pause on the land- 
 ing, which must have been painfully obvious to any one 
 who heard his heavy ascent, he gave two timid raps on the 
 door which were equally ridiculous in contrast with his 
 powerful tread. The door was opened promptly by the 
 master. 
 
 " Oh, it 's you, is it ? " he said shortly. " Come in." 
 
 Uncle Ben entered without noticing the somewhat 
 ungracious form of invitation. " It war me," he said, 
 " dropped in, not finding ye downstairs. Let 's have a 
 drink." 
 
 The master gazed at Uncle Ben, who, owing to his ab- 
 straction, had not yet wiped his mouth of the liquor he had 
 imperfectly swallowed, and was in consequence more redo- 
 lent of whiskey than a confirmed toper. lie rang the bell 
 for the desired refreshment with a slightly cynical smile. 
 He was satisfied that his visitor, like many others of humble 
 position, was succumbing to his good fortune. 
 
 " I wanted to see ye, Mr. Ford," he began, taking an 
 unproffered chair and depositing his hat after some hesita- 
 tion outside the door, " in regard to what I onc't told ye 
 about my wife in Mizzouri. P'r'aps you disremember ? " 
 
 " I remember," returned the master resignedly. 
 
 " You know it was that arternoon that fool Stacey sent 
 the sheriif and the Harrisons over to McKinstry's barn." 
 
CEESSY 145 
 
 " Go on ! " petulantly said the master, who had his own 
 Basons for not caring to recall it. 
 
 " It was that arternoon, you know, that you had n't time 
 to hark to me — hevin' to go off on an engagement," con- 
 tinued Uncle Ben, with protracted deliberation, " and " — • 
 
 " Yes, yes, I remember," interrupted the master exasper- 
 atedly, " and really unless you get on faster, I '11 have to 
 leave you again." 
 
 " It was that arternoon," said Uncle Ben, without heeding 
 him, " when I told you I had n't any idea what had become 
 o' my wife ez I left in Mizzouri." 
 
 " Yes," said the master sharply, " and I told you it was 
 your bounden duty to look for her." 
 
 " That 's so," said Uncle Ben, nodding comfortably, 
 " them 's your very words ; on'y a leetle more strong than 
 that, ef I don't disremember. Well, I reckon I 've got an 
 idee ! " The master assumed a sudden expression of inter- 
 est, but Uncle Ben did not vary his monotonous tone. 
 
 " I kern across that idee, so to speak, on the trail. I 
 kem across it in some letters ez was lying wide open in the 
 brush. I picked 'em vip and I 've got 'em here." 
 
 He slowly took the letters from his pocket with one 
 hand, while he dragged the chair on which he was sitting 
 beside the master. But with a quick flush of indignation 
 Mr. Ford rose and extended his hand. 
 
 " These are my letters, Dabney," he said sternly, " stolen 
 from my desk. Who has dared to do this ? " 
 
 But Uncle Ben had, as if accidentally, interposed his 
 elbow between the master and Seth's spoils. 
 
 " Then it 's all right ? " he returned deliberately. " I 
 brought 'em here because I thought they might give an 
 idee where my wife was. For them letters is in her own 
 handwrite. You remember ez I told ez how she was a 
 scollard." 
 
 The master sat back in his chair white and dumb. In* 
 
146 CEESSY 
 
 credible, extraordinary, and utterly unlocked for as was this 
 revelation, he felt instinctively that it was true. 
 
 "I couldn't read it myself — ez you know. I did n't 
 keer to ax any one else to read it for me — you kin reckon 
 why, too. And that 's why I 'm troublin' you to-night, Mr. 
 Ford — ez a friend." 
 
 The master with a desperate eifort recovered his voice. 
 "It is impossible. The lady who wrote those letters does 
 not bear your name. More than that," he added, with 
 hasty irrelevance, " she is so free that she is about to be 
 married, as you might have read. You have made a mis- 
 take ; the handwriting may be like, but it cannot be really 
 your wife's." 
 
 Uncle Ben shook his head slowly. " It 's her'n — 
 there 's no mistake. When a man, Mr. Ford, hez studied 
 that handwrite — havin', so to speak, knowed it on'y from 
 the outside — from seein' it passin' like between friends — 
 that man's chances o' bein' mistook ain't ez great ez the 
 man's who on'y takes in the sense of the words that might 
 b'long to everybody. And her name not bein' the same ez 
 mine, don't foller. Ef she got a divorce she 'd take her 
 old gal's name — the name of her fammerly. And that 
 would seem to allow she did get a divorce. What 
 mowt she hev called herself when she writ this ? " 
 
 The master saw his opportunity and rose to it with a 
 chivalrous indignation, that for the moment imposed even 
 upon himself. " I decline to answer that question," he said 
 angrily. " I refuse to allow the name of any woman who 
 honors me with her confidence to be dragged into the 
 infamous outrage that has been committed upon me and 
 common decency. And I shall hold the thief and scoun- 
 drel — whoever he may be — answerable to myself in the 
 absence of her natural protector." 
 
 Uncle Ben surveyed the hero of these glittering generali- 
 ties with undisguised admiration. He extended his hand 
 to him gravely. 
 
CRESSY 147 
 
 " Shake ! Ef another proof was wantin', Mr. Pord, of 
 that beiu' my wife's letter," he said, " that high-toned style 
 of yours would settle it. For, ef thar was one thing she 
 did like, it was that sort of po'try. And one reason why 
 her and nie did n't get on, and why I skedaddled, was be- 
 cause it was n't in my line. Et 's all in trainin' ! On'y a 
 man ez had the Fourth Reader at his fingers' ends could 
 talk like that. Bein' brought up on Dobell — ez is no- 
 where — it sorter lets me outer you, ez it did outer her. 
 But allowin' it ain't the square thing for you to mention 
 her name, that would n't be nothin' agin my doin' it, and 
 callin' her, well — Lou Price, in a keerless sort o' way, 
 eh?" 
 
 " I decline to answer further," replied the master 
 quickly, although his color liad changed at the name. " I 
 decline to say another word on the matter until this mys- 
 tery is cleared up — until I know who dared to break into 
 my desk and steal my property, and the purpose of this 
 unheard-of outrage. And I demand possession of those let- 
 ters at once." 
 
 Uncle Ben without a word put them in the master's 
 hand, to his slight surprise, and it must be added to his 
 faint discomfiture, nor was it decreased when Uncle Ben 
 added, with grave naivete and a patronizing pressure of 
 his hand on his shoulder, — " In course ez you 're taken' it 
 on to yourself, and ez Lou Price ain't got no further call 
 on me, they orter be yours. Ez to who got 'em outer thf 
 desk, I reckon you ain't got no suspicion of any one spyin' 
 round ye — hev ye ? " 
 
 In an instant the recollection of Seth Davis's face at the 
 window and the corroboration of Rupert's warning flashed 
 across Ford's mind. The hypothesis that Seth had ima- 
 gined that they were Cressy's letters, and had thrown them 
 down without reading them when he had found out his 
 mistake, seemed natural. For if he had read them he 
 
148 CRESSY 
 
 would undoubtedly have kept them to show to Cressy. 
 The complex emotions that had disturbed the master on 
 the discovery of Uncle Ben's relationship to the writer of 
 the letters were resolving themselves into a furious rage at 
 Seth. But before he dared revenge himself he must be 
 first assured that Seth was ignorant of their contents. 
 He turned to Uncle Ben. 
 
 " I have a suspicion, but to make it certain I must ask 
 you for the present to say nothing of this to any one." 
 
 Uncle Ben nodded. " And when you hev found out 
 and you 're settled in your mind that you kin make my 
 mind easy about this yer Lou Price, ez we '11 call her, bein' 
 divorced squarely, and bein', so to speak, in the way o' get- 
 tin' married agin, ye might let me know — ez a friend. I 
 reckon I won't trouble you any more to-night — onless 
 you and me takes another sociable drink together in the 
 bar. No ? Well, then, good-night." He moved slowly 
 towards the door. With his hand on the lock he added, 
 " Ef yer writin' to her agin, you might say ez how you 
 found me lookin' well and comf'able, and hopin' she 's en- 
 jyin' the same blessin'. So long." 
 
 He disappeared, leaving the master in a hopeless collapse 
 of conflicting, and, it is to be feared, not very heroic 
 emotions. The situation, which had begun so dramatically, 
 had become suddenly unromantically ludicrous, without, 
 however, losing any of its embarrassing quality. He was 
 conscious that he occupied the singular position of being 
 more ridiculous than the husband — whose invincible and 
 complacent simplicity stung him like the most exquisite 
 irony. Eor an instant he was almost goaded into the fury 
 of declaring that he had broken off from the writer of the 
 letters forever, but its inconsistency with the chivalrous 
 attitude he had just taken occurred to him in time to pre- 
 vent him from becoming doubly absurd. His rage with 
 Seth Davis seemed to him the only feeling left that was 
 
CRKSSY 149 
 
 genuine and rational, and yet, now that Uncle Ben had gone, 
 even that had a spurious ring. It was necessary for him to 
 lash himself into a fury over the hypothesis that the letters 
 might have been Cressy's, and desecrated by that scoun- 
 drel's touch. Perhaps he had read them and left them 
 to be picked up by others. He looked over them carefully 
 to see if their meaning would, to the ordinary reader, appear 
 obvious and compromising. His eye fell on the first para- 
 graph. 
 
 " I should not be quite fair with you, Jack, if I affected 
 to disbelieve in your faith in your love for me and its 
 endurance, but I should be still more unfair if I did n't tell 
 you what I honestly believe, that at your age you are apt 
 to deceive yourself, and, without knowing it, to deceive 
 otiiers. You confess you have not yet decided upon your 
 career, and you are always looking forward so hopefully, 
 dear Jack, for a change in the future, but you are willing to 
 believe that far more serious things than that will suffer no 
 change in the mean time. If we continued as we were, I, 
 who am older than you and have more experience, might 
 learn the misery of seeing you change towards me as I have 
 changed towards another, and for the same reason. If I 
 were sure I could keep pace with you in your dreams and 
 your ambition, if I were sure that I always knew what 
 they were, we might still be happy — but I am not sure, 
 and I dare not again risk my happiness on an uncertainty. 
 In coming to my present resolution I do not look for happi- 
 ness, but at least I know I shall not suffer disappointment, 
 nor involve others in it. I confess I am growing too old 
 not to feel the value to a woman — a necessity to her in 
 this country — of security in her present and future position. 
 Another can give me that. And although you may call this 
 a selfish view of our relations, I believe that you will soon 
 — if you do not even as you read this now — feel the justice 
 of it, and thank me for taking it." 
 
150 CRESSY 
 
 With a smile of scorn he tore up the letter, in what he 
 fondly believed was the bitterness of an outraged trustful 
 nature, forgetting that for many weeks he had scarcely 
 thought of its writer, and that he himself in his conduct 
 had already anticipated its truths. 
 
CHAPTEE XII 
 
 The master awoke the next morning, albeit after a restless 
 night, with that clarity of conscience and perception which 
 it is to be feared is more often the consequence of youth and 
 a perfect circulation than of any moral conviction or integrity. 
 He argued with himself that as the only party really 
 aggrieved in the incident of the previous night, the right of 
 remedy remained with him solely, and under the benign 
 influence of an early breakfast and the fresh morning air he 
 was inclined to feel less sternly even towards Seth Davis. 
 In any event, he must first carefully weigh the evidence 
 against him, and examine the scene of the outrage closely. 
 For this purpose, he had started for the schoolhouse fully 
 an hour before his usual time. He was even light-hearted 
 enough to recognize the humorous aspect of Uncle Ben's 
 appeal to him, and his own ludicrously paradoxical attitude, 
 and as he at last passed from the dreary flat into the fringe 
 of tipland pines, he was smiling. Well for him, perhaps, 
 that he was no more affected by any premonition of the day 
 before him than the lately awakened birds that lightly cut 
 the still sleeping woods around him in their long flashing 
 sabre-curves of flight. A yellow-throat, destined to become 
 the breakfast of a lazy hawk still swinging above the river, 
 was especially moved to such a causeless and idiotic roulade 
 of mirth that the master listening to the foolish bird was 
 fain to whistle too. He presently stopped, however, with 
 a slight embarrassment. For a few paces before him Cressy 
 had unexpectedly appeared. 
 
 She had evidently been watching for him. But not with 
 
152 CEESSY 
 
 her usual indolent confidence. There was a strained look 
 of the muscles of her mouth, as of some past repression, and 
 a shaded hollow under her temples beneath the blonde rings 
 of her shorter hair. Her habitually slow, steady eye was 
 troubled, and she cast a furtive glance around her before 
 she searched him with her glance. Without knowing why, 
 yet vaguely fearing that he did, he became still more 
 embarrassed, and in the very egotism of awkwardness, stam- 
 mered without a further salutation, '' A disgraceful thing 
 happened last night, and I 'm up early to find the perpetra- 
 tor. My desk was broken into, and " — 
 
 "I know it," she interrupted, with a half-impatient, half- 
 uneasy putting away of the subject with her little hand — . 
 " there — don't go all over it again. Paw and maw have 
 been at me about it all night — ever since those Harrisons, 
 in their anxiousness to make up their quarrel, rushed over 
 with the news. I 'm tired of it ! " 
 
 Eor an instant he was staggered. How much had she 
 learned ? With the same awkward indirectness, he said 
 vaguely, " But it might have been your letters, you know ! " 
 
 " But it was n't," she said simply. " It ought to have 
 been. I wish it had " — She stopped, and again regarded 
 him with a strange expression. " Well," she said slowly, 
 " what are you going to do ? " 
 
 " To find out the scoundrel who has done this," he said 
 firmly, " and punish him as he deserves." 
 
 The almost imperceptible shrug that had raised her 
 shoulders gave way as she regarded him with a look of 
 wearied compassion. 
 
 " No," she said gravely, " you cannot. They 're too 
 many for you. You must go away, at once." 
 
 " Never," he said indignantly. " Even if it were not a 
 cowardice. It would be more — a confession ! " 
 
 " Not more than they already know," she said wearily. 
 " But, I tell you, you must go. I have sneaked out of the 
 
CRESSY 153 
 
 house and run here all the way to warn you. If you — you 
 care for me, Jack — you will go:" 
 
 " I should he a traitor to you if I did," he said quickly. 
 " I shall stay." 
 
 " But if — if — Jack — if " — she drew nearer him with 
 a new-found timidity, and then suddenly placed her two 
 hands upon his shoulders, " If — if — Jack — / were to go 
 with you ? " 
 
 The old rapt, eager look of possession had come back to 
 her face now ; her lips were softly parted. Yet even then 
 ^he seemed to be waiting some reply more potent than that ■ 
 syllabled on the lips of the man before her. 
 
 Howbeit that was the only response. " Darling," he 
 gaid kissing her, " but would n't that justify them " — 
 
 " Stop," she said suddenly. Then putting her hand 
 over his mouth, she continued with the same half-weary ex- 
 pression : " Don't let us go over all that again either. It 
 is so tiresome. Listen, dear. You '11 do one or two little 
 things for me — won't you, dandy boy ? Don't linger long 
 at the schoolhouse after lessons. Go right home ! Don't 
 look after these men to-day — to-morrow, Saturday, is your 
 holiday — you know — and you '11 have more time. Keep 
 to yourself to-day as much as you can, dear, for twelve 
 hours — until — until — you hear from me, you know. It 
 will be all right then," she added, lifting her eyelids with 
 a sudden odd resemblance to her father's look of drowsy 
 pain, which Ford had never noticed before. " Promise me 
 that, dear, won't you ? " 
 
 With a mental reservation he promised hurriedly — pre- 
 occupied in his wonder why she seemed to avoid his expla- 
 nation, in his desire to know what had happened, in the 
 pride that had kept him from asking more or volunteering a 
 defense, and in his still haunting sense of having been 
 wronged. Yet he could not help saying as he caught and 
 held her hand : — 
 
154 CEESSY 
 
 " You have not doubted me, Cressy ? You have not 
 allowed this infamous raki"ng up of things that are past and 
 gone to alter your feelings ? " 
 
 She looked at him abstractedly. " You think it might 
 alter anybody's feelings, then ? " 
 
 " Nobody's who really loved another " — he stammered. 
 
 " Don't let us talk of it any more," she said, suddenly 
 stretching out her arms, lifting them above her head with a 
 ■wearied gesture, and then letting them fall clasped before 
 her in her old habitual fashion. " It makes my head ache ; 
 what with paw and maw and the rest of them — I 'm sick 
 of it all." 
 
 She turned away as Ford drew back coldly and let her 
 hand fall from his arm. She took a few steps forward, 
 stopped, ran back to him again, crushed his face and head 
 in a close embrace, and then seemed to dip like a bird into 
 the tall bracken, and was gone. 
 
 The master stood for some moments chagrined and be- 
 wildered ; it was characteristic of his temperament that he 
 had paid less heed to what she told him than what he 
 imagined had passed between her mother and herself. She 
 was naturally jealous of the letters — he could forgive her 
 for that ; she had doubtless been twitted about them, but 
 he could easily explain them to her parents — as he would 
 have done to her. But he was not such a fool as to elope 
 with her at such a moment, without first clearing his char- 
 acter — and knowing more of hers. And it was equallj 
 characteristic of him that in his sense of injury he con- 
 founded her with the writer of the letters — as sympathiz- 
 ing with his correspondent in her estimate of his character, 
 and was quite carried away with the belief that he was 
 equally wronged by both. 
 
 It was not until he reached the schoolhouse that the evi- 
 dences of last night's outrage for a time distracted his mind 
 from his singular interview. He was struck with the work- 
 
CRESSY 155 
 
 manlike manner in which the locks had been restored, and 
 the care that had evidently been taken to remove the more 
 obvious and brutal traces of burglary. This somewhat 
 staggered his theory that Seth Davis was the perpetrator ; 
 mechanical skill and thoughtfulness were not among the 
 lout's characteristics. But he was still more disconcerted 
 on pushing back his chair to find a small india-rubber to- 
 bacco pouch lying beneath it. The master instantly recog- 
 nized it : he had seen it a hundred times before — it was 
 Uncle Ben's. It was not there when he had closed the 
 room yesterday afternoon. Either Uncle Ben had been 
 there last night or had anticipated him this morning. But 
 in the latter case he would scarcely have overlooked his 
 fallen property — that, in the darkness of the night, might 
 have readily escaped detection. His brow darkened with a 
 sudden conviction that it was Uncle Ben who was the real 
 and only offender, and that his simplicity of the previous 
 night was part of his deception. A sickening sense that he 
 had been again duped — but why or to what purpose he 
 hardly dared to think — overcame him. Who among these 
 strange people could he ever again trust ? After the fash- 
 ion of more elevated individuals, he had accepted the respect 
 and kindness of those he believed his inferiors as a natural 
 tribute to his own superiority ; any change in their feelings 
 must therefore be hypocrisy or disloyalty ; it never occurred 
 to him that he might liave fallen below their standard. 
 
 The arrival of the children and the resumption of his duties 
 for a time diverted him. But although the morning's 
 exercise restored the master's self-confidence, it cannot be 
 said to have improved his judgment. Disdaining to ques- 
 tion Rupert Filgee, as the possible confidant of Uncle Ben, 
 he answered the curious inquiries of the children as to the 
 broken door-lock with the remark that it was a matter that 
 he should have to bring before the Trustees of the Board, 
 and by the time that school was over and the pupils dis- 
 
156. CEESSY 
 
 missed he had quite resolved upon this formal disposition 
 of it. In spite of Cressy's warning — rather hecause of it — 
 in the new attitude he had taken towards her and her 
 friends, he lingered in the schoolhouse until late. He had 
 occupied himself in drawing up a statement of the facts, 
 with an intimation that his continuance in the school would 
 depend upon a rigid investigation of the circumstances, when 
 he was aroused by the clatter of horses' hoofs. The next 
 moment the schoolhouse was surrounded by a dozen men. 
 
 He looked up ; half of them dismounted and entered the 
 room. The other half remained outside darkening the 
 ■windows with their motionless figures. Each man carried 
 a gun before him on the saddle ; each man wore a rude 
 mask of black cloth partly covering his face. 
 
 Although the master was instinctively aware that he was 
 threatened by serious danger, he was far from being im. 
 pressed by the arms and disguise of his mysterious, intruders. 
 On the contrary, the obvious and glaring inconsistency of tliis 
 cheaply theatrical invasion of the peaceful schoolhouse, of 
 this opposition of menacing figures to the scattered childish 
 primers and text-books that still lay on the desks around 
 him, only extracted from him a half-scornful smile as he 
 coolly regarded them. The fearlessness of ignorance is 
 often as unassailable as the most experienced valor, and the 
 awe-inspiring invaders were at first embarrassed and then 
 humanly angry. A lank figure to the right made a forward 
 movement of impotent rage, but was checked by the evident 
 leader of the party. 
 
 " Ef he likes to take it that way, there ain't no Eegula- 
 tors' law agin it, I reckon," he said in a voice which the 
 master instantly recognized as Jim Harrison's, " though ez 
 a gin'ral thing they don't usually find it fun." Then turn- 
 ing to the master he added, " Mister Ford, ef that 's the 
 name you go by everywhere, we 're wantin' a man about 
 your size." 
 
CEESSY 157 
 
 Ford knew that he was in hopeless peril. He knew 
 that he was pliysically defenseless and at the mercy of 
 twelve armed and lawless men. But he retained a pre- 
 ternatural clearness of perception, and audacity born of 
 unqualified scorn for his antagonists, with a feminine sharp- 
 ness of tongue. In a voice which astonished even himself 
 by its contemptuous distinctness, he said, " My name is 
 Ford, but as I only suppose your name is Harrison, perhaps 
 you '11 be fair enough to take that rag from your face and 
 show it to me like a man." 
 
 The man removed the mask from his face with a slight 
 laugh. 
 
 " Thank you," said Ford. " Now, perhaps you will tell 
 me which one of you gentlemen broke into the school- 
 house, forced the lock of my desk, and stole my papers. 
 If he is here I wish to tell him he is not only a thief, but 
 a cur and a coward, for the letters are a woman's — whom 
 he neither knows nor has the right to know." 
 
 If he had hoped to force a personal quarrel and trust his 
 life to the chance of a single antagonist, he was disappointed, 
 for although his unexpected attitude had produced some 
 effect among the group, and even attracted the attention of 
 the men at the windows, Harrison strode deliberately 
 towards him. 
 
 " That kin wait," he said ; " jest now we propose to take 
 you and your letters and drop 'em and you outer this yer 
 township of Injin Springs. You kin take 'em back to the 
 woman or critter you got 'em of. But we kalkilate you 're 
 a little too handy and free in them sorter things to teach 
 school round yer, and we kinder allow we don't keer to hev 
 our gals and boys eddicated up to your high-toned standard. 
 So ef you choose to kem along easy we '11 mak you comf'ble 
 on a boss we 've got waitin' outside, an' escort you across 
 the line. Ef you don't — we '11 take you anyway." 
 
 The master cast a rapid glance around him. In his 
 
158 CRESSY 
 
 quickness of perception he had already noted that the led 
 horse among the cavalcade was fastened by a lariat to one 
 of the riders so that escape by flight was impossible, and 
 that he had not a single weapon to defend himself with or 
 even provoke, in his desperation, the struggle that could 
 forestall ignominy by death. Nothing was left him but 
 his voice, clear and trenchant as he faced them. 
 
 " You are twelve to one," he said calmly, " but if there 
 is a single man among you who dare step forward and 
 accuse me of what you only together dare do, I will tell 
 him he is a liar and a coward, and stand here ready to make 
 it good against him. You come here as judge and jury 
 condemning me without trial, and confronting me with no 
 accusers ; you come here as lawless avengers of your honor, 
 and you dare not give me the privilege of as lawlessly 
 defending my own." 
 
 There was another slight murmur among the men, but the 
 leader moved impatiently forward. "We've had enough o' 
 your preachin' : we want you" he said roughly. " Come." 
 
 " Stop," said a dull voice. 
 
 It came from a mute figure which had remained motion- 
 less among the others. Every eye was turned upon it as it 
 rose and lazily pushed the cloth from its face. 
 
 " Hiram McKinstry ! " said the others in mingled tones 
 of astonishment and suspicion. 
 
 " That 's me ! " said McKinstry, coming forward with 
 heavy deliberation. " I joined this yer delegation at the 
 sross-roads instead o' my brother, who had the call. I 
 reckon et 's all the same — or mebbee better. For I per- 
 pose to take this yer gentleman off your hands." 
 
 He lifted his slumbrous eyes for the first time to the 
 master, and at the same time put himself between him and 
 Harrison. " I perpose," he continued, " to take him at his 
 word ; I perpose ter give him a chance to answer with a 
 guui And ez I reckon, by all accounts, there 's no man yei 
 
CEESSY 159 
 
 ez hez a better right than me, I perpose to be the man to 
 put that question to him in the same way. Et may not suit 
 some gents," he continued slowly, facing an angry exclama- 
 tion from the lank figure behind him, " ez would prefer to 
 hev eleven men to take up their private quo'ls, but even 
 then I reckon that the man who is the most injured hez 
 the right to the first say and that man 's me." 
 
 With a careful deliberation that had a double significance 
 to the malcontents, he handed his own rifle to the master 
 and without looking at him continued : " I reckon, sir, 
 you 've seen that afore, but ef it ain't quite to your hand, 
 any of those gents, I kalkilate, will be high-toned ejiuff to 
 give you the chyce o' theirs. And there 's no need o' 
 traipsin' beyon' the township lines, to fix this yer affair ; 
 I perpose to do it in ten minutes in the brush yonder." 
 
 Whatever might have been the feelings and intentions of 
 the men around him, the precedence of McKinstry's right 
 to the duello was a principle too deeply rooted in their 
 traditions to deny ; if any resistance to it had been con- 
 templated by some of them, the fact that the master was 
 now armed, and that Mr. McKinstry would quickly do 
 battle at his side with a revolver in defense of his rights, 
 checked any expression. They silently drew back as the 
 master and McKinstry slowly passed out of the school- 
 house together, and then followed in their rear. In that 
 interval the master turned to McKinstry and said in a low 
 voice, " I accept your challenge and thank you for it. 
 You have never done me a greater kindness — whatever I 
 have done to you — yet I want you to believe that neither 
 now nor then — I meant you any harm." 
 
 " Ef you mean by that, sir, that ye reckon you won't 
 return my fire, ye 're blind and wrong. For it will do you 
 no good with them," he said, with a significant wave of his 
 crippled hand towards the following crowd, " nor me 
 neither." 
 
160 CEESSY 
 
 Firmly resolved, however, that he would not fire at 
 McKinstry, and clinging hlindly to this which he believed 
 was the last idea of his foolish life, he continued on with- 
 out another word until they reached the open strip of 
 chemisal that flanked the clearing. 
 
 The rude preliminaries were soon settled. The parties 
 armed with rifles were to fire at the word from a distance 
 .of eighty yards, and then approach each other, continuing 
 the fight with revolvers until one or the other fell. The 
 selection of seconds was efi"ected by the elder Harrison act- 
 ing for McKinstry, and after a moment's delay by the vol- 
 unteering of the long, lank figure previously noted to act 
 for the master. Preoccupied by other thoughts, Mr. Ford 
 paid little heed to his self-elected supporter, who to the 
 others seemed to be only taking that method of showing his 
 contempt for McKinstry's recent insult. The master re- 
 ceived the rifle mechanically from his hand and walked to 
 position. He noticed, however, and remembered afterwards 
 that his second was half hidden by the trunk of a large 
 pine to his right that marked the limit of the ground. 
 
 In that supreme moment it must be recorded, albeit 
 against all preconceived theory, that he did not review his 
 past life, was not illuminated by a flash of remorseful or 
 sentimental memory, and did not commend his soul to his 
 Maker, but that he was simply and keenly alive to the very 
 actual present in which he still existed and to his one idea 
 of not firing at his adversary. And if anything could ren- 
 der his conduct more theoretically incorrect it was a certain 
 exalted sense that he was doing quite right and was not 
 only not a bad sort of a fellow, but one whom his survivors 
 might possibly regret ! 
 
 " Are you ready, gentlemen ? One — two — three — 
 fi . . . !" 
 
 The explosions were .singularly simultaneous — so re- 
 markable, in fact, that it seemed to the master that his riflcj 
 
CEESSY 161 
 
 fired in the air, had given a double report. A light wreath 
 of smoke lay between him and his opponent. He was un- 
 hurt — so evidently was his adversary, for the voice rose 
 again. 
 
 " Advance ! . . . Hallo there ! Stop ! " 
 
 He looked up quickly to see McKinstry stagger and then 
 fall heavily to the ground. 
 
 With an exclamation of horror, the first and only terrible 
 emotion he had felt, he ran to the fallen man, as Harrison 
 reached his side at the same moment. 
 
 " For God's sake," he said wildly, throwing himself on 
 his knees beside McKinstry, " what has happened ? For 
 I swear to you, I never aimed at you ! I fired in the air. 
 Speak ! Tell him, you," he turned with a despairing appeal 
 to Harrison, " you must have seen it all — tell him it was 
 not me! " 
 
 A half-wondering, half-incredulous smile passed quickly 
 over Harrison's face. "In course you didn't mean it," he 
 said dryly, " but let that slide. Get up and get away from 
 yer, while you kin," he added impatiently, with a signifi- 
 cant glance at one or two men who lingered after the sud- 
 den and general dispersion of the crowd at McKinstry's 
 fall. " Get — will ye ! " 
 
 " Never ! " said the young man passionately, " until he 
 knows that it was not my hand that fired that sliot." 
 
 McKinstry painfully struggled to his elbow. " It took 
 me yere," he said, with a slow deliberation, as if answering 
 some previous question, and pointing to his hip, " and it 
 kinder let me down when I started forward at the second 
 call." 
 
 " But it was not I who did it, McKinstry, I swear it. 
 Hear me ! For God's sake, say you believe me.'' 
 
 McKinstry turned . his drowsy troubled eyes upon the 
 master as if he were vaguely recalling something. " Stand 
 back thar a minit, will ye," he said to Harrison, with a 
 
162 CEESST 
 
 languid wave of his crippled hand ; " I want ter speak to 
 this yer man." 
 
 Harrison drew back a few paces and the master sought 
 to take the wounded man's hand, but he was stopped by a 
 gesture. " Where hev you put Cressy ? " McKinstry said 
 slowly. 
 
 " I don't understand you," stammered Ford. 
 
 " Where are you hidin' her from me ? " repeated 
 McKinstry, with painful distinctness. " Whar hev you run 
 her to, that you 're reckonin' to jine her arter — arter — 
 this ? " 
 
 " I am not hiding her ! I am not going to her ! I do 
 not know where she is. I have not seen her since we 
 parted early this morning without a word of meeting again," 
 said the master rapidly, yet with a bewildered astonish- 
 ment that was obvious even to the dulled faculties of his 
 hearer. 
 
 " That war true ? " asked McKinstry, laying his hand 
 upon the master's shoulder and bringing his dull eyes to the 
 level of the young man's. 
 
 " It is the whole truth," said Ford fervently, " and true 
 also that I never raised my hand against you." 
 
 McKinstry beckoned to Harrison and the two others who 
 had joined him, and then sank partly back with his hand 
 upon his side, where the slow empurpling of his red shirt 
 showed the slight ooze of a deeply seated wound. 
 
 " You fellers kin take me over to the ranch," he said 
 calmly, " and let him," pointing to Ford, " ride your best 
 hosB fer the doctor. I don't," he continued in grave expla- 
 nation, " gin'rally use a doctor, but this yer is suthin' out- 
 side the old woman's regular gait." He paused, and then 
 drawing the master's head down towards him, he added in 
 his ear, " When I get to hev a look at the size and shape o' 
 this yer ball -that 's in my hip, I '11 — I '11 — I '11 — be — 
 a — little more kam ! " A gleam of dull significance strug- 
 
GRESSY 163 
 
 gled into his eye. The master evidently understood him, 
 for he rose quickly, ran to the horse, mounted him, and 
 dashed ofif for medical assistance, while McKinstry, closing 
 his heavy lids, anticipated this looked-for calm by fainting 
 gently away. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 Of the various sentimental fallacies entertained by adult 
 humanity in regard to childhood, none are more ingeniously 
 inaccurate and gratuitously idiotic than a comfortable belief 
 in its profound ignorance of the events in which it daily 
 moves, and the motives and characters of the people who 
 surround it. Yet even the occasional revelations of an 
 enfant terrible are as nothing compared to the perilous 
 secrets which a discreet infant daily buttons up, or secures 
 with a hook and eye, or even fastens with a safety-pin 
 across its gentle bosom. Society can never cease to be grate- 
 ful for that tact and consideration — qualities more often 
 joined with childish intuition and perception than with 
 matured observation — that they owe to it ; and the most 
 accomplished man or woman of the great world might take 
 a lesson from this little audience who receive from their lips 
 the lie they feel too palpable, with round-eyed complacency, 
 or outwardly accept as moral and genuine the hollow senti- 
 ment they have overheard rehearsed in private for their 
 benefit. 
 
 It was not strange therefore that the little people of the 
 Indian Spring school knew perhaps more of the real rela- 
 tions of Grassy McKinstry to her admirers than the admirers 
 themselves. Not that this knowledge was outspoken — for 
 children rarely gossip in the grown-up sense — or even 
 communicable by words intelligent to the matured intellect. 
 A whisper, a laugh that often seemed vague and unmeaning, 
 conveyed to each other a world of secret significance, and an 
 apparently senseless burst of merriment, in which the whole 
 
CKBSSY 165 
 
 class joined, and that the adult critic set down to " animal 
 spirits," — a quality much more rare with children than 
 generally supposed, — was only a sympathetic expression of 
 some discovery happily ohlivious to older preoccupation. 
 The childish simplicity of Uncle Ben perhaps appealed 
 more strongly to their sympathy, and although, for that 
 very reason, they regarded him with no more respect than 
 they did each other, he was at times carelessly admitted to 
 their confidence. It was especially Rupert Filgee who 
 extended a kind of patronizing protectorate over him — not 
 unmixed with doubts of his sanity, in spite of the promised 
 confidential clerkship he was to receive from his hands. 
 
 On the day of the events chronicled in the preceding 
 chapter, Rupert on returning from school was somewhat 
 surprised to find Uncle Ben perched upon the rail-fence 
 before the humble door of the Filgee mansion and evidently 
 awaiting him. Slowly dismounting as Rupert and Johnny 
 approached, he beamed upon the former for some moments 
 with arch and yet affable mystery. 
 
 " Rupey, old man, I s'pose ye've got yer duds all ready 
 in yer pack, eh ? " 
 
 A flush of pleasure passed ever the boy's handsome face. 
 He cast, however, a hurried look down on the all-pervading 
 Johnny. 
 
 " 'Cause ye see we kalkilate to take the down stage to 
 Sacramento at four o'clock," continued Uncle Ben, enjoying 
 Rupert's half-skeptical surprise. " Ye enter into oifice, so 
 to speak, with me at that hour, when the sellery, seventy- 
 five dollars a month and board, ez private and confidential 
 clerk, begins — eh ? " 
 
 Rupert's dimples deepened in charming, altaost feminine, 
 embarrassment. " But dad " — he stammered. 
 
 " Et 's all right with him. He 's agreeable." 
 
 " But " — 
 
 Uncle Ben followed Rupert's glance at Johnny, who 
 
166 CRESSY 
 
 however appeared to be absorbed in the pattern of Uncle 
 Ben's new trousers. 
 
 " That 's fixed," he said, with a meaning smile. " There 's 
 a sort o' bonus we pays down, you know — for a Chinyman 
 to do the odd jobs." 
 
 " And teacher — Mr. Ford — did ye tell him ? " said 
 Kupert, brightening. 
 
 Uncle Ben coughed slightly. " He 's agreeable, too, I 
 reckon. That is," he wiped his mouth meditatively, " he 
 ez good ez allowed it in gin'ral conversation a week ago, 
 Rupe." 
 
 A swift shadow of suspicion darkened the boy's brown 
 eyes. " Is anybody else goin' with us ? " he said quickly. 
 
 " Not this yer trip," replied Uncle Ben complacently. 
 " Ye see, Rupe," he continued, drawing him aside with an 
 air of comfortable mystery, '' this yer biz'ness b'longs to 
 the private and confidential branch of the office. From 
 informashun we 've received " — 
 
 " We ? " interrupted Rupert. 
 
 " ' We,' that 's the office, you know," continued Uncle 
 Ben, with a heavy assumption of business formality, " wot 
 we 've received per several hands and consignee — we — 
 that 's you and me, Rupe — we goes down to Sacramento to 
 inquire into the standin' of a certing party, as per invoice, 
 and tex see — ter see — ter negotiate you know, ter find 
 out if she 's married or di-vorced," he concluded quickly, 
 as if abandoning for the moment his business manner in 
 consideration of Rupert's inexperience. " We "re to find 
 out her standin', Rupe," he began again, with a more judi- 
 cious blending of ease and technicality, " and her contracts, 
 if any, and where she lives and her way o' life, and exam- 
 ine her books and papers ez to marriages and sich, and arbi- 
 trate with her gin'rally in conversation — you inside the 
 house and me out on the pavement, ready to be called in 
 if an interview with business principals is desired." 
 
CRESSY 16? 
 
 Observing Rupert somewhat perplexed and confused 
 with these technicalities, he tactfully abandoned them for 
 the present, and consulting a pocket-book said, " I 've made 
 a memorandum of some pints that we '11 talk over on the 
 journey," again charged Rupert to be punctually at the 
 stage office with his carpet-bag, and cheerfully departed. 
 
 When he had disappeared Johnny Filgee, without a single 
 word of explanation, fell upon his brother, and at once 
 began a violent attack of kicks and blows upon his legs 
 and other easily accessible parts of his person, accompa- 
 nying his assault with unintelligible gasps and actions, 
 finally culminating in a flood of tears and the casting of 
 himself on his back in the dust with the copper-fastened 
 toes of his small boots turning imaginary wheels in the air. 
 Rupert received these characteristic marks of despairing and 
 outraged affection with great forbearance, only saying, 
 " There, now, Johnny, quit that," and eventually bearing 
 liim still struggling into the house. Here Johnny, declar- 
 iiig that he would kill any " Chinyman " that offered to 
 dress him, and burn down the house after his brother's 
 iuufamous desertion of it, Rupert was constrained to mingle 
 a few nervous, excited tears with his brother's outbreak. 
 Whereat Johnny, admitting the alleviation of an orange, a 
 iour-bladed knife, and the reversionary interest in much of 
 Hupert's personal property, became more subdued. Sitting 
 there with their arms entwined about each other, the sun- 
 light searching the shiftless desolation of their motherless 
 home, the few cheap playthings they had known lying 
 around them, they beguiled themselves with those charming 
 illusions of their future intentions common to their years 
 — -illusions they only half believed themselves and half 
 accepted of each other. Rupert was quite certain that he 
 would return in a few days with a gold watch and a pre- 
 sent for Johnny, and Johnny, with a baleful vision of 
 ndver seeing him again, and a catching breath, magnifi- 
 
168 CEESSY 
 
 cently undertook to bring in the wood and build the fire 
 and wash the dishes " all of himself." And then there 
 were a few childish confidences regarding their absent 
 father — then ingenuously playing poker in the Magnolia 
 Saloon — that might have made that public-spirited, genial 
 companion somewhat uncomfortable, and more tears that 
 were half smiling and some brave silences that were wholly 
 pathetic, and then the hour for Rupert's departure all too 
 suddenly arrived. They separated with ostentatious whoop- 
 ing, and then Johnny, suddenly overcome with the dread- 
 fulness of all earthly things, and the hoUowness of life 
 generally, instantly resolved to run away ! 
 
 To do this he prepared himself with a purposeless 
 hatchet, an inconsistent but long-treasured lump of putty, 
 and all the sugar that was left in the cracked sugar-bowl. 
 Thus accoutred he sallied forth, first to remove all traces of 
 his hated existence that might be left in his desk at school. 
 If the master were there he would say Rupert had sent 
 him ; if he was n't, he would climb in at the window. The 
 sun was already sinking when he reached the clearing and 
 found a cavalcade of armed men around the building. 
 
 Johnny's first conviction was that the master had killed 
 Uncle Ben or Masters, and that the men, taking advantage 
 of the absence of his — Johnny's — big brother, were about 
 to summarily execute him. Observing no struggle from 
 within, his second belief was that the master had been sud- 
 denly elected Governor of California and was about to start 
 with a state escort from the schoolhouse, and that he, 
 Johnny, was in time to see the procession. But when the 
 master appeared with McKinstry, followed by part of the 
 crowd afoot, this quick-witted child of the frontier, from 
 his secure outlook in the " brush," gathered enough from 
 their fragmentary speech to guess the serious purport of 
 their errand, and thrill with anticipation and slightly creepy 
 excitement. 
 
CRESSY 169 
 
 A duel ! A thing liitherto witnessed only by grown-up 
 men, afterwards swaggering with importance and strange 
 technical bloodthirsty words, and now for the first time 
 reserved for a hoy — and that boy him, Johnny ! — to be- 
 hold in all its fearful completeness ! A duel ! of which he, 
 Johnny, meanly abandoned by his brother, was now exalted 
 perhaps to be the only survivor ! He could scarcely credit 
 his senses. It was too much ! 
 
 To creep through the brush while the preliminaries were 
 being settled, reach a certain silver fir on the appointed 
 ground, and, with the aid of his now lucky hatchet, climb 
 unseen to its upper boughs, was an exciting and difficult 
 task, but one eventvtally overcome by his short but ener- 
 getic legs. Here he could not only see all that occurred, but 
 by a fortunate chance the large pine next to him had been 
 selected as the limit of the ground. The sharp eyes of the 
 boy had long since penetrated the disguises of the remain- 
 ing masked men, and when the long, lank figure of the 
 master's self-appointed second took up its position beneath 
 the pines in full view of him, although hidden from the 
 spectators, Johnny instantly recognized it to be none other 
 than Seth Davis. The manifest inconsistency of his ap- 
 pearance as Mr. Ford's second with what Johnny knew of 
 his relations to the master was the one thing that firmly 
 fixed the incident in the boy's memory. 
 
 The men were already in position. Harrison stepped 
 forward to give the word. Johnny's down-hanging legs 
 tingled with cramp and excitement. Why did n't they 
 begin ? What were they waiting for ? What if it were 
 interrupted, or — terrible thought — made up at the last 
 moment ? Would they " holler " out when they were hit, 
 or stagger round convulsively as they did at the " cirkiss " ? 
 Would they all run away afterwards and leave Johnny 
 alone to tell the tale ? And — horrible thought ! — would 
 anybody believe him ? Would Rupert ? Eupert, had ha 
 " on'y knowed this," he would n't have gone away. 
 
170 CKESSY 
 
 « One " — 
 
 "With a child's perfect faith in the invulnerable superi- 
 ority of his friends, he had not even looked at the master, 
 but only at his destined victim. Yet as the -word " two " 
 rang out Johnny's attention vras suddenly attracted to the 
 surprising fact that the master's second, Seth Davis, had 
 also dravi'n a pistol, and from behind his tree was delib- 
 erately and stealthily aiming at McKinstry ! He under- 
 stood it all now — he was a friend of the master's. Bully 
 for Seth ! 
 
 " Three ! " 
 
 Crack ! Z-i-i-p ! Crackle ! "What a funny noise ! And 
 yet he was obliged to throw himself flat upon the bough to 
 keep from falling. It seemed to have snapped beneath 
 him and benumbed his right leg. He did not know that 
 the master's bullet, fired in the air, had ranged along the 
 bough, stripping the bark throughout its length, and glan- 
 cing with half-spent force to inflict a slight flesh-wound on 
 his leg ! 
 
 He was giddy and a little frightened. And he had seen 
 nobody hit, nor nothin'. It was all a humbug ! Seth had 
 disappeared. So had the others. There was a faint sound 
 of voices and a group in the distance — that was all. It 
 was getting dark, too, and his leg was still asleep, but warm 
 and wet. He would get down. This was very difficult, for 
 his leg would not wake up, and but for the occasional sup- 
 port he got by striking his hatchet in the tree he would 
 have fallen in descending. When he reached the ground 
 his leg began to pain, and looking down he saw that his 
 stocking and shoe were soaked with blood. 
 
 His small and dirty handkerchief, a hard wad in his 
 pocket, was insufficient to stanch the flow. With a vague 
 recollection of a certain poultice applied to a boil on his 
 father's neck, he collected a quantity of soft moss and dried 
 yerba buena leaves, and with the aid of his check apron 
 
CEESSY 171 
 
 and of one of his torn suspenders tiglitly wound round the 
 whole mass, achieved a bandage of such elephantine pro- 
 portions that he could scarcely move with it. In fact, like 
 most imaginative children, he became slightly terrified at 
 his own alarming precautions. Nevertheless, although a 
 word or an outcry from him would have at that moment 
 brought the distant group to his assistance, a certain respect 
 to himself and his brother kept him from uttering even a 
 whimper of weakness. 
 
 Yet he found refuge, oddly enough, in a suppressed but 
 bitter denunciation of the other boys of his acquaintance. 
 What was Cal. Harrison doing, while he, Johnny, was alone 
 in the woods, wounded in a grown-up duel ? — for nothing 
 would convince this doughty infant that he had not been 
 an active participant. Where was Jimmy Snyder that he 
 did n't come to his assistance with the other fellers ? Cow- 
 ards all ; they were afraid. Ho, ho ! And he, Johnny, 
 was n't afraid ! ho — he did n't mind it ! Nevertheless he 
 had to repeat the phrase two or three times until, after re- 
 peated struggles to move forward through the brush, he at 
 last sank down exhausted. By this time the distant group 
 had slowly moved away, carrying something between them, 
 and leaving Johnny alone in the fast coming darkness. Yet 
 even this desertion did not affect him as strongly as his im- 
 plicit belief in the cowardly treachery of his old associates. 
 
 It grew darker and darker, until the open theatre of the 
 late conflict appeared inclosed in funereal walls ; a cool 
 searching breath of air, that seemed to have crept through 
 the bracken and undergrowth like a stealthy animal, lifted 
 the curls on his hot forehead. He grasped his hatchet 
 firmly as against possible wild beasts, and as a medicinal 
 and remedial precaution, took another turn with his suspen- 
 der around his bandage. It occurred to him then that he 
 would probably die. They would all feel exceedingly sorry 
 and alarmed, and regret having made hira wash himself on 
 
172 CEESSY 
 
 Saturday night. They would attend his funeral in large 
 numbers in the little graveyard, where a white tombstone 
 inscribed to " John Pilgee, fell in a duel at the age of 
 seven," would be awaiting him. He would forgive his 
 brother, his father, and Mr. Ford. Yet even then he 
 vaguely resented a few leaves and twigs dropped by a wood- 
 pecker in the tree above him, with a shake of his weak fist 
 and an incoherent declaration that they could n't " play no 
 babes in the wood on him." And then having composed 
 himself he onCe more turned on his side to die, as became 
 the scion of a heroic race ! The free woods, touched by an 
 upspringing wind, waved their dark arms above him, and 
 higher yet a few patient stars silently ranged themselves 
 around his pillow. 
 
 But with the rising wind and stars came the swift tram- 
 pling of horses' hoofs and the flashing of lanterns, and Dr. 
 Duchesne and the master swept down into the opening. 
 
 " It was here," said the master quickly, " but they must 
 have taken him on to his own home. Let us follow." 
 
 " Hold on a moment," said the doctor, who had halted 
 before the tree. " What 's all this ? Why, it 's baby Fil- 
 gee — by thunder ! " 
 
 In another moment they had both dismounted and were 
 leaning over the half-conscious child. Johnny turned his 
 feverishly bright eyes from the lantern to the master and 
 back again. 
 
 " What is it, Johnny boy ? " asked the master tenderly. 
 " Were you lost ? " ' 
 
 With a gleam of feverish exaltation, Johnny rose, albeit 
 wanderingly, to the occasion ! 
 
 " Hit ! " he lisped feebly — " hit in a doell ! at the age 
 of theven." 
 
 " What ! " asked the bewildered master. 
 
 But Dr. Duchesne, after a single swift scrutiny of the 
 Iboy's face, had unearthed him from his nest of leaves, laid 
 
CRESSY 173 
 
 him in his lap, and deftly ripped away the preposterous 
 bandage. " Hold the light here. By Jove ! he tells the 
 truth. Who did it, Johnny ? " 
 
 But Johnny was silent. In an interval of feverish con- 
 sciousness and pain, his perception and memory had been 
 quickened ; a suspicion of the real cause of his disaster had 
 dawned upon him — but his childish lips were heroically 
 sealed. The master glanced appealingly at the doctor. 
 
 " Take him before you in the saddle to McKinstry's," 
 said the latter promptly. " I can attend to both." 
 
 The master lifted the boy tenderly in his arms. Johnny, 
 stimulated by the prospect of a free ride, became feebly 
 interested in his fellow sufferer. 
 
 " Did Theth hit him bad ? " he asked. 
 
 " Seth ? " echoed the master wildly. 
 
 " Yeth. I theed him when he took aim." 
 
 The master did not reply, but the next moment Johnny 
 felt himself clasped in his arms in the saddle before him, 
 borne like a whirlwind in the direction of the McKinstry 
 ranch. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 They found the wounded man lying in the front room 
 upon a rudely extemporized couch of bearskins, he having 
 sternly declined the effeminacy of his wife's bedroom. In 
 the possibility of a fatal termination to his wound, and in 
 obedience to a grim frontier tradition, he had also refused to 
 have his boots removed in order that he might "die with 
 them on," as became his ancestral custom. Johnny was 
 therefore speedily made comfortable in the McKinstry bed, 
 while Dr. Duchesne gave his whole attention to his more 
 serious patient. The master glanced hurriedly around for 
 Mrs. McKinstry. She was not only absent from the room, 
 but there seemed to be no suggestion of her presence in the 
 house. To his greater surprise the hurried inquiry that rose 
 to his lips was checked by a significant warning from the 
 attendant. He sat down beside the now sleeping boy, and 
 awaited the doctor's return with his mini wandering be- 
 tween the condition of the little sufferer and the singular 
 revelation that had momentarily escaped his childish lips. 
 If Johnny had actually seen Seth fire at McKinstry, the 
 latter's mysterious wound was accounted for — but not Seth'j 
 motive. The act was so utterly incomprehensible and in- 
 consistent with Seth's avowed hatred of the master that the 
 boy must have been delirious. 
 
 He was roused by the entrance of the surgeon. " It 's 
 not so bad as I thought," he said, with a reassuring nod. 
 " It was a mighty close shave between a shattered bone and 
 a severed artery, but we've got the ball, and he'll pull 
 through in a week. By Jove ! though — the old fire-eater 
 
CRESSY 175 
 
 was more concerned about finding the ball than living or 
 dying! Go in there — he wants to see you. Don't let him 
 talk too much. He 's called in a lot of his friends for some 
 reason or other — and there 's a regular mass-meeting in 
 there. Go in, and get rid of 'em. I'll look after baby 
 Filgee — though the little chap will be all right again after 
 another dressing." 
 
 The master cast a hurried look of relief at the surgeon, 
 and reentered the front room. It was filled with men whom 
 the master instinctively recognized as his former adversaries. 
 But they gave way before him with a certain rude respect 
 and half-abashed sympathy as McKinstry called him to his 
 side. The wounded man grasped his hand. " Lift me up 
 a bit," he whispered. The master assisted hira with diffi- 
 culty to his elbow. 
 
 " Gentlemen ! " said McKinstry, with a characteristic wave 
 of his crippled hand towards the crowd as he laid the other 
 on the master's shoulder. " Ye heerd me talkin' a minit 
 ago ; ye heer me now. This yer young man as we 've slipped 
 up on and meskalkilated has told the truth — every time ! 
 Ye ken tie to hira whenever and wherever ye want to. Ye 
 ain't expected to feel ez I feel, in course, but the man ez 
 goes back on him — quo'ls with me. That's all — and 
 thanks for inquiring friends. Ye '11 git now, boys, and leave 
 him a minit with me." 
 
 The men filed slowly out, a few lingering long enough to 
 shake the master's hand with grave earnestness, or half- 
 smiling, half-abashed embarrassment. The master received 
 the proffered reconciliation of these men, who but a few 
 hours before would have lynched him with equal sincerity, 
 with cold bewilderment. As the door closed on the last of 
 the party he turned to McKinstry. The wounded man had 
 sunk down again, but was regarding with drowsy satisfaction 
 a leaden bullet he was holding between his finger and thumb. 
 
 " This yer shot, Mr. Ford," he said in a slow voice, whose 
 
176 CEESSY 
 
 weakness was only indicated by its extreme deliberation, 
 " never kem from the gun I gave ye — and was never iired 
 by you." He paused, and then added with his old dull 
 abstraction, " It 's a long time since I 've run agin anythin' 
 that makes me feel more — kam." 
 
 In Mr. McKinstry's weak condition the master did not 
 dare to make Johnny's revelation known to him, and con- 
 tented himself by simply pressing his hand, but the next 
 moment the wounded man resumed : — 
 
 " That ball jest iits Seth's navy revolver — and the hound 
 hes made tracks outer the country." 
 
 " But what motive could he have in attacking you at such 
 a time ? " asked the master. 
 
 " He reckoned that either I 'd kill you and so he 'd got 
 shut of us both in that way, without it being noticed ; or if 
 I missed you, the others would hang you — ez they kalki- 
 lated to — for killing me .' The idea kem to him when he 
 overheard you hintin' you would n't return my fire." 
 
 A shuddering conviction that McKinstry had divined 
 the real truth passed over the master. In the impulse of 
 the moment he again would have corroborated it by reveal- 
 ing Johnny's story, but a glance at the growing feverishness 
 of the wounded man checked his utterance. " Don't talk 
 of it now," he said hurriedly. " Enough for me to know 
 that you acquit me. I am here now only to beg you to 
 compose yourself until the doctor comes back — as you 
 seemed to be alone, and Mrs. McKinstry" — he stopped in 
 awkward embarrassment. 
 
 A singular confusion overspread the invalid's face. " She 
 bed stept out afore this happened, owin' to contrairy opin- 
 ions betwixt me and her. Ye mout hev noticed, Mr. Ford, 
 that gin'rally she did n't 'pear to cotton to ye ! Thar ain't 
 a woman a-goin' ez is the ekal of Blair Eawlins' darter in 
 nussin' a man and keeping him in fightin' order, but in 
 matters like things that consarn herself and Cress, I begin 
 
CKESSY 177 
 
 to think, Mr. Ford, that somehow she am't exakly — kam ! 
 Bein' kani yourself, ye '11 put any unpleasantness down to 
 that. Wotever you hear from her, and, for the matter o' 
 that, from her own darter too — for I'm takin' back the 
 foolishness I said to ye over yon about your runnin' off with 
 Cress — you'll remember, Mr. Ford, it warn't from no ill 
 feeling to you, in her or Cress — but ou'y a want of kam ! 
 I mout hev had my idees about Cress, you mout hev had 
 yours, and that fool Dabney mout hev had Ms ; but it 
 warn't the old woman's — nor Cressy's — it warn't Blair 
 Rawlins' darter's idea — nor yet her darter's ! And why ? 
 For want o' kam ! Times I reckon it was left out o' woman's 
 nater. And bein' kam yourself, you understand it, and take 
 it all in." 
 
 The old look of drowsy pain had settled so strongly in 
 his red eyes again that the master was fain to put his hand 
 gently over them, and with a faint smile beg him to com- 
 pose himself to sleep. This he finally did after a whis- 
 pered suggestion that he himself was feeling " more kam." 
 The master sat for some moments with his hand upon the 
 sleeping man's eyes, and a vague and undefinable sense of 
 loneliness seemed to fall upon him from the empty rafters 
 of the silent and deserted house. The rising wind moaned 
 fitfully around its bleak shell with the despairing sound of 
 far and forever receding voices. So strong was the impres- 
 sion that when the doctor and McKinstry's attending 
 brother reentered the room, the master still lingered beside 
 the bed with a dazed sensation of abandonment that the 
 doctor's practical reassuring smile could hardly dispel. 
 
 " He 's doing splendidly now," he said, listening to the 
 sleeper's more regular respiration : " and I 'd advise you 
 to go now, Mr. Ford, before he wakes, lest he might be 
 tempted to excite himself by talking to you again. He 's 
 really quite out of danger now. Good-night ! I '11 drop 
 in on you at the hotel when I return." 
 
178 CEESSY 
 
 The master, albeit still confused and bewildered, felt 
 his way to the door and out into the open night. The 
 wind was still despairingly wrestling with the tree-tops, 
 but the far receding voices seemed to be growing fainter in 
 the distance, until, as he passed on, they too seemed to 
 pass away forever. 
 
 Monday morning had come again, and the master was at 
 his desk in the schoolhouse early, with a still damp and 
 inky copy of the " Star " fresh from the press before him. 
 The free breath of the pines was blowing in the window, 
 and bringing to his ears the distant voices of his slowly 
 gathering flock, as he read as follows : — 
 
 " The perpetrator of the dastardly outrage at the Indian 
 Springs Academy on Thursday last — which, through un- 
 fortunate misrepresentation of the facts, led to a premature 
 calling out of several of our most public-spirited citizens, 
 and culminated in a most regrettable encounter between 
 Mr. McElinstry and the accomplished and estimable prin- 
 cipal of the school — has, we regret to say, escaped condign 
 punishment by leaving the country with his relations. If, 
 as is seriously whispered, he was also guilty of an unpar- 
 alleled offense against a chivalrous code which will exclude 
 him in the future from ever seeking redress at the Court of 
 Honor, our citizens will be only too glad to get rid of the 
 contamination of being obliged to arrest him. Those of 
 our readers who know the high character of the two gentle- 
 men who were thus forced into a hostile meeting, will not 
 be surprised to know that the most ample apologies were 
 tendered on both sides, and that the entente cordials has 
 been thoroughly restored. The bullet — which it is said 
 played a highly important part in the subsequent explanation, 
 proving to have come from a revolver fired by some outsider 
 — has been extracted from Mr. McKinstry's thigh, and he 
 is doing well, with every prospect of a speedy recovery." 
 
CRESSY 179 
 
 Smiling, albeit not uncomplacently, at this valuable con- 
 tribution to hiatory from an unfettered press, his eye felj 
 upon the next paragraph, perhaps not so complacently : — 
 
 " Benjnmiu Daubigny, Esq., who left town for Sacra- 
 mento on important business, not entirely unconnected 
 with his new interests in Indian Springs, will, it is rumored, 
 be shortly joined by his wife, who has been enabled by his 
 recent good fortune to leave her old home in the States, 
 and take her proper proud position at his side. Although 
 personally unknown to Indian Springs, Mrs. Daubigny ia 
 spoken of as a beautiful and singularly accomplished wo- 
 man, and it is to be regretted that her husband's interests 
 will compel them to abandon Indian Springs for Sacramento 
 as a future residence. Mr. Daubigny was accompanied by 
 his private secretary Eupert, the eldest son of H. G. Fil- 
 gee, Esq., who has been a promising graduate of the Indian 
 Springs Academy, and offers a bright example to the youth 
 of this district. We are happy to learn that his younger 
 brother is recovering rapidly from a slight accident received 
 last week through the incautious handling of firearms." 
 
 The master, with his eyes upon the paper, remained so 
 long plunged in a reverie that the schoolroom was quite 
 filled and his little flock was wonderingly regarding him 
 before he recalled himself. He was hurriedly reaching his 
 hand towards the bell when he was attracted by the rising 
 figure of Octavia Dean. 
 
 " Please, sir, you did n't ask if we had any news ! " 
 
 "True — I forgot," said the master, smiling. "Well, 
 have you anything to tell us ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir. Cressy McKinstry has left school." 
 
 " Indeed ! " 
 
 " Yes, sir ; she 's married." 
 
 " Married," repeated the master, with an effort, yet con- 
 scious of the eyes concentrated upon his colorless face. 
 " Married — and to whom ? " 
 
180 CRESSY 
 
 " To Joe Masters, sir, at the Baptist Chapel at Big 
 Bluflf, Sunday, an' Ma'am McKinstry was thar with her." 
 
 There was a momentary and breathless pause. Then the 
 voices of his little pupils — those sage and sweet truants 
 from tradition, those gentle but relentless historians of the 
 future — rose around him in shrill chorus : — 
 
 " Wh^, we knowed it all along, sir J " 
 
A WAED OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 PROLOGUE 
 
 In San Francisco the " rainy season " had been making 
 itself a reality to the wondering Eastern immigrant. There 
 were short days of drifting clouds and flying sunshine, and 
 long succeeding nights of incessant downpour, when the 
 rain rattled on the thin shingles or drummed on the re- 
 sounding zinc of pioneer roofs. The shifting sand-dunes 
 on the outskirts were beaten motionless and sodden by the 
 onslaught of consecutive storms ; the southeast trades 
 brought the saline breath of the outlying Pacific even to 
 the busy haunts of Commercial and Kearney streets ; the 
 low-lying Mission road was a quagmire ; along the City 
 Front, despite of piles and pier and wharf, the Pacific tides 
 still asserted themselves in mud and ooze as far as Sansome 
 Street ; the wooden sidewalks of Clay and Montgomery 
 streets were mere floating bridges or buoyant pontoons 
 superposed on elastic bogs ; Battery Street was the Silurian 
 beach of that early period on which tin cans, packing-boxes, 
 freight, household furniture, and even the runaway crews 
 of deserted ships had been cast away. There were dan- 
 gerous and unknown depths in Montgomery Street and on 
 the Plaza, and the wheels of a passing carriage hopelessly 
 mired had to be lifted by the volunteer hands of a half- 
 dozen high-booted wayfarers, whose wearers were sufficiently 
 content to believe that a woman, a child, or an invalid was 
 behind its closed windows, without troubling themselves or 
 the occupant by looking through the glass. 
 
 It was a carriage that, thus released, eventually drew up 
 
182 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 before the superior public edifice known as the City HalL 
 From it a woman, closely veiled, alighted, and quickly 
 entered the building. A few passers-by turned to look at 
 her, partly from the rarity of the female figure at that 
 period, and partly from the greater rarity of its being well 
 formed and even ladylike. 
 
 As she kept her way along the corridor and ascended an 
 iron staircase, she was passed by others more preoccupied 
 in business at the various public offices. One of these 
 visitors, however, stopped as if struck by some fancied re- 
 aemblance in her appearance, turned, and followed her. 
 But when she halted before a door marked " Mayor's 
 Office," he paused also, and, with a look of half-humorous 
 bewilderment and a slight glance around him as if seeking 
 for some one to whom to impart his arch fancy, he turned 
 away. The woman then entered a large anteroom with a 
 certain quick feminine gesture of relief, and, finding it empty 
 of other callers, summoned the porter, and asked him some 
 question in a voice so suppressed by the official severity of 
 the apartment as to be hardly audible. The attendant re- 
 plied by entering another room marked " Mayor's Secretary," 
 and reappeared with a stripling of seventeen or eighteen, 
 whose singularly bright eyes were all that was youthful in 
 his composed features. After a slight scrutiny of the 
 woman — half boyish, half official — he desired her to be 
 seated, with a certain exaggerated gravity as if he was over- 
 acting a grown-up part, and, taking a card from her, re- 
 entered his office. Here, however, he did not stand on his 
 head or call out a confederate youth from a closet, as the 
 woman might have expected. To the left was a green 
 baize door, outlined with brass-studded rivets like a cheer- 
 ful coffin-lid, and bearing the mortuary inscription, " Pri- 
 vate." This he pushed open, and entered the Mayor's 
 private office. 
 
 The municipal dignitary of San Francisco, although an 
 
A "WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 183 
 
 erect, soldier-like man of strong middle age, was seated 
 with his official chair tilted back against the wall and kept 
 in position by his feet on the rungs of another, which in 
 turn acted as a support for a second man, who was seated 
 a few feet from him in an easy-chair. Both were lazily 
 smoking. 
 
 The Mayor took the card from his secretary, glanced at 
 it, said " Hullo ! " and handed it to his companion, who 
 read aloud " Kate Howard," and gave a prolonged whistle. 
 
 " Where is she ? " asked the Mayor. 
 
 " In the anteroom, sir." 
 
 " Any one else there ? " 
 
 " No, sir." 
 
 " Did you say I was engaged ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir ; but it appears she asked Sam who was with 
 you, and when he told her, she said. All right, she wanted 
 to see Colonel Pendleton too." 
 
 The men glanced interrogatively at each other, but Colo- 
 nel Pendleton, abruptly anticipating the Mayor's functions, 
 said, " Have her in," and settled himself back in his 
 chair. 
 
 A moment later the door opened, and the stranger 
 appeared. As she closed the door behind her she removed 
 her heavy veil, and displayed the face of a very handsome 
 woman of past thirty. It is only necessary to add that it 
 was a face known to the two men, and all San Francisco. 
 
 " Well, Kate," said the Mayor, motioning to a chair, but 
 without rising or changing his attitude. " Here I am, and 
 here is Colonel Pendleton, and these are office hours. 
 What can we do for you ? " 
 
 If he had received her with magisterial formality, or 
 even politely, she would have been embarrassed, in spite of 
 a certain boldness of her dark eyes and an ever present con- 
 sciousness of her power. It is possible that his own ease 
 and that of his companion was part of their instinctive 
 
184 A WAED OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 good nature and perception. She accepted it as such, took 
 the chair familiarly, and seated herself sideways upon it, 
 her right arm half encircling its back and hanging over it ; 
 altogether an easy and not ungraceful pose. 
 
 " Thank you. Jack — I mean, Mr. Mayor — and you, 
 too, Harry. I came on business. I want you two men to 
 act as guardians for my little daughter." 
 
 " Your what ? " asked the two men simultaneously. 
 
 " My daughter," she repeated, with a short laugh, which, 
 however, ended with a note of defiance. " Of course you 
 don't know. Well," she added half aggressively, and yet 
 with the air of hurrying over a compromising and inexpli- 
 cable weakness, " the long and short of it is I 've got a lit- 
 tle girl down at the Convent of Santa Clara, and have had 
 — there ! I've been taking care of her — good care, too, 
 ■boys — for some time. And now I want to put things 
 square for her for the future. See ? I want to make over 
 to her all my property — it's nigh on to seventy-five thou- 
 sand dollars, for Bob Snelling put me up to getting those 
 water lots a year ago — and, you see, I '11 have to have 
 regular guardians, trustees, or whatever you call 'em, to 
 take care of the money for her." 
 
 " Who 's her father ? " asked the Mayor. 
 
 " What 's that to do with it ? " she said impetuously. 
 
 " Everything — because he 's her natural guardian." 
 
 " Suppose he is n't known ? Say dead, for instance." 
 
 " Dead will do," said the Mayor gravely. " Yes, dead 
 will do," repeated Colonel Pendleton. After a pause, in 
 which the two men seemed to have buried this vague rela- 
 tive, the Mayor looked keenly at the woman. 
 
 " Kate, have you and Bob Ridley had a quarrel ? " 
 
 " Bob Ridley knows too much to quarrel with me," she 
 said briefly. 
 
 " Then you are doing this for no motive other than that 
 which you tell me ? " 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 185 
 
 " Certainly. That 's motive enough — ain't it ? " 
 
 "Yes." The Mayor took his feet off his companion's 
 chair and sat upright. Colonel Pendleton did the same, 
 also removing his cigar from his lips. " I suppose you '11 
 think this thing over ? " he added. 
 
 " No — I want it done now — right here — in this 
 office." 
 
 " But you know it will be irrevocable." 
 
 " That 's what I want it — something might happen 
 afterwards." 
 
 " But you are leaving nothing for yourself, and if you 
 are going to devote everything to this daughter and lead a 
 different life, you '11 " — 
 
 " Who said I was ? " 
 
 The two men paused, and looked at her. 
 
 " Look here, boys, you don't understand. From the day 
 that paper is signed, I 've nothing to do with the child. 
 She passes out of my hands into yours, to be schooled, edu- 
 cated, and made a rich girl out of — and never to know 
 who or what or where I am. She does n't know now. I 
 have n't given her and myself away in that style — you 
 bet ! She thinks I 'm only a friend. She has n't seen me 
 more than once or twice, and not to know me again. Why, 
 I was down there the other day, and passed her walking 
 out with the Sisters and the other scholars, and she did n't 
 know me — though one of the Sisters did. But they 're 
 mum — they are, and don't let on. Why, now I think of 
 it, yo^l were down there, Jack, presiding in big style as Mr. 
 Mayor at the exercises. You must have noticed her. Lit- 
 tle thing, about nine — lot of hair, the same color as mine, 
 and brown eyes. WHiite and yellow sash. Had a necklace 
 «n of real pearls I gave her. / bought them,, you under- 
 stand, myself at Tucker's — gave two hundred and fifty 
 dollars for them — and a big bouquet of white rosebuds and 
 lilacs I sent her." 
 
186 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 " I remember her now on the platform," said the Mayoi 
 gravely. " So that is your child ? " 
 
 " You bet — no slouch either. But that 's neither here 
 nor there. What I want now is you and Harry to look 
 after her and her property the same as if I did n't live. 
 More than that, as if I had never lived. I 've come to you 
 two boys, because I reckon you 're square men and won't 
 give me away. But I want to fix it even firmer than that. 
 I want you to take hold of this trust not as Jack Hammers- 
 ley, but as the Mayor of San Francisco ! And. when you 
 make way for a new Mayor, he takes up the trust by virtue 
 of his office, you see, so there 's a trustee all along. I 
 reckon there '11 always be a San Francisco and always a 
 Mayor — at least till the child 's of age ; and it gives her 
 from the start a father, and a pretty big one too. Of course 
 the new man is n't to know the why and wherefore of this. 
 It 's enough for him to take on that duty with his others, 
 without asking questions. And he 's only got to invest 
 that money and pay it out as it's wanted, and consult 
 Harry at times." 
 
 The two men looked at each other with approving intel- 
 ligence. " But have you thought of a successor for me, in 
 case somebody shoots me on sight any time in the next ten 
 years ? " asked Pendleton, with a gravity equal to her 
 own. 
 
 " I reckon, as you 're President of the El Dorado Bank, 
 you 'II make that a part of every president's duty too. 
 You '11 get the directors to agree to it, just as Jack here 
 will get the Common Council to make it the Mayor's busi- 
 ness." 
 
 The two men had risen to their feet, and, after exchang- 
 ing glances, gazed at her silently. Presently the Mayor 
 said : — 
 
 " It can be done, Kate, and we '11 do it for you — eh, 
 Harry ? " 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 187 
 
 " Count me in," said Pendleton, nodding. 
 
 " But you '11 want a third man." 
 
 " What 's that for ? " 
 
 " The casting vote in case of any difficulty." 
 
 The woman's face fell. " I reckoned to keep it a secret 
 with only you two," she said half hitterly. 
 
 " No matter. We '11 find some one to act, or you '11 think 
 of somebody and let us know." 
 
 " But I wanted to finish this thing right here," she said 
 impatiently. She was silent for a moment, with her arched 
 black brows knitted. Then she said abruptly, " Who 's that 
 smart little chap that let me in ? He looks as if he might 
 be trusted." 
 
 " That 's Paul Hathaway, my secretary. He 's sensible, 
 but too young. Stop ! I don't know about that. There 's 
 no legal age necessary, and he 's got an awfully old head on 
 him," said the Mayor thoughtfully. 
 
 "And /say his youth's in his favor," said Colonel Pen- 
 dleton promptly. " He 's been brought up in San Fran- 
 cisco, and he 's got no d — d old-fashioned Eastern notions to 
 get rid of, and will drop into this as a matter of business, 
 without prying about or wondering. I'll serve with 
 him." 
 
 " Call him in ! " said the woman. 
 
 He came. Very luminous of eye, and composed of lip 
 and brow. Yet with the same suggestion of " making 
 believe " very much, as if to offset the possible munching 
 of forbidden cakes and apples in his own room, or the hidden 
 presence of some still in his pocket. 
 
 The Mayor explained the case briefly, but with business- 
 like precision. " Your duty, Mr. Hathaway," he concluded, 
 " at present will be merely nominal and, above all, confi- 
 dential. Colonel Pendleton and myself will set the thing 
 going." As the youth — who had apparently taken in and 
 "illuminated " the whole subject with a single bright-eyed 
 
188 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 glance — bowed and was about to retire, as if to relieve him 
 self of his real feelings behind the door, the woman stopped 
 him with a gesture. 
 
 " Let 's have this thing over now," she said to the 
 Mayor. " You draw up something that we can all sign at 
 once." She fixed her eyes on Paul, partly to satisfy her 
 curiosity and justify her predilection for him, and partly to 
 detect him in any overt act of boyishness. But the youth 
 simply returned her glance with a cheerful, easy prescience, 
 as if her past lay clearly open before him. For some min- 
 utes there was only the rapid scratching of the Mayor's pen 
 over the paper. Suddenly he stopped and looked up. 
 
 " What 's her name ? " 
 
 "She mustn't have mine," said the woman quickly. 
 " That 's a part of my idea. I give that up with the rest. 
 She must take a new name that gives no hint of me. 
 Think of one, can't you, you two men ? Something that 
 would kind of show that she was the daughter of the city, 
 you know." 
 
 " You could n't call her ' Santa Francisca,' eh ? " said 
 Colonel Pendleton doubtingly. 
 
 " Not much," said the woman, with a seriousness that 
 defied any ulterior insinuation. 
 
 " Nor Chrysopolinia ? " said the Mayor musingly. 
 
 " But that 's only a first name. She must have a family 
 name," said the woman impatiently. 
 
 " Can you think of something, Paul ? " said the Mayor, 
 appealing to Hathaway. " You 're a great reader, and later 
 from your classics than I am." The Mayor, albeit practical 
 and Western, liked to be ostentatiously forgetful of his old 
 Alma Mater, Harvard, on occasions. 
 
 " How would Yerba Buena do, sir ? " responded the 
 youth gravely. " It 's the old Spanish title of the first set- 
 tlement here. It comes from the name that Father Juni- 
 pero Serra gave to the pretty little vine that grows wild 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 189 
 
 over the sandhills, and means ' good herb.' He called it 
 ' A balin for the wounded and sore.' " 
 
 " For the wounded and sore ? " repeated the woman 
 slowly. 
 
 " That 's what they say," responded Hathaway. 
 
 " You ain't playing us, eh ? " she said, with a half laugh 
 that, however, scarcely curved the open mouth with which 
 she had been regarding the young secretary. 
 
 " No," said the Mayor hurriedly. " It 's true. I 've 
 often heard it. And a capital name it would be for her too. 
 Yerba the first name. Buena the second. She could be 
 called Miss Buena when she grows up." 
 
 " Yerba Buena it is," she said suddenly. Then, indi- 
 cating the youth with a slight toss of her handsome head, 
 " His head 's level — you can see that." 
 
 There was a silence again, and the scratching of the 
 Mayor's pen continued. Colonel Pendleton buttoned up his 
 coat, pulled his long mustache into shape, slightly arranged 
 his collar, and walked to the window without looking at 
 the woman. Presently the Mayor arose from his seat, and, 
 with a certain formal courtesy that had been wanting in his 
 previous manner, handed her his pen and arranged his 
 chair for her at the desk. She took the pen, and rapidly 
 appended her signature to the paper. The others followed ; 
 and, obedient to a sign from him, the porter was summoned 
 from the outer office to witness the signatures. When this 
 was over, the Mayor turned to his secretary. " That 's all 
 just now, Paul." 
 
 Accepting this implied dismissal with undisturbed grav- 
 ity, the newly made youthful guardian bowed and retired. 
 When the green baize door had closed upon him, the Mayor 
 turned abruptly to the woman with the paper in his hand. 
 
 " Look here, Kate ; there is still time for you to recon- 
 sider your action, and tear up this solitary record of it. If 
 you choose to do so, say so, and I promise you that this 
 
190 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 interview, and all you have told us, shall never pass beyond) 
 these walls. No one will be the wiser for it, and we will 
 give you full credit for having attempted something that 
 was too much for you to perform." 
 
 She had half risen from her chair when he began, but fel) 
 back again in her former position and looked impatiently 
 from him to his companion, who was also regarding her 
 earnestly. 
 
 " What are you talking about ? " she said sharply. 
 
 " You, Kate," said the Mayor. " You have given every- 
 thing you possess to this child. What provision have you 
 made for yourself ? " 
 
 " Do I look played out ? " she said, facing them. 
 
 She certainly did not look like anything but a strong,' 
 handsome, resolute woman ; but the men did not reply. 
 
 " That is not all, Kate," continued the Mayor, folding 
 his arms and looking down upon her. " Have you thought 
 what this means ? It is the complete renunciation not only 
 of any claim, but any interest in your child. That is what 
 you have just signed, and what it will be our duty now to 
 keep you to. From this moment v/e stand between you 
 and her, as we stand between her and the world. Are you 
 ready to see her grow up away from you, losing even the 
 little recollection she has had of your kindness — passing 
 you in the street without knowing you, perhaps even having 
 you pointed out to her as a person she should avoid ? Are 
 you prepared to shut your eyes and ears henceforth to all 
 that you may hear of her new life, when she is happy, 
 rich, respectable, a courted heiress — perhaps the wife of 
 some great man ? Are you ready to accept that she will 
 never know — that no one will ever know — that you had 
 any share in making her so, and that if you should ever 
 breathe it abroad we shall hold it our duty to deny it, and 
 brand the man who takes it up for you as a liar and the 
 slanderer of an honest girl ? " 
 
A WAED OF THE GOLDEN GATE 191 
 
 " That 's what I came here for," she said curtly ; then, 
 regarding them curiousl}', and running her ringed hand up 
 and down the railed back of her chair, she added, with a 
 half laugh, " What are you playin' me for, boys ? " 
 
 " But," said Colonel Pendleton, without heeding her, 
 " are you ready to know that in sickness or affliction you 
 will be powerless to help her ; that a stranger will take 
 your place at her bedside ; that as she has lived without 
 knowing you she will die without that knowledge, or that 
 if through any weakness of yours it came to her then, it 
 would imbitter her last thoughts of earth and, dying, she 
 would curse you ? " 
 
 The smile upon her half-open motlth still fluttered around 
 it, and her curved fingers still ran up and down the rails 
 of the chair-back as if they were the chords of some mute 
 instrument, to which she was trying to give voice. Her 
 rings once or twice grated upon them as if she had at times 
 gripped them closely. But she rose quickly when he 
 paused, said "Yes " sharply, and put the chair back against 
 the wall. 
 
 " Then I will send you copies of this to-morrow, and 
 take an assignment of the property." 
 
 "I've got the check here for it now," she said, drawing 
 it from her pocket and laying it upon the desk. "There, I 
 reckon that 's finished. Good-by ! " 
 
 The Mayor took up his hat. Colonel Pendleton did the 
 same ; both men preceded her to the door, and held it open 
 with grave politeness for her to pass. 
 
 " Where are you boys going ? " she asked, glancing from 
 the one to the other. 
 
 " To see you to your carriage, Mrs. Howard," said the 
 Mayor in a voice that had become somewhat deeper. 
 
 " Through the whole building ? Past all the people in 
 the hall and on the stairs ? Why, I passed Dan Stewart 
 as I came in." 
 
192 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 " If you will allow us ? " he said, turning half appealing 
 to Colonel Pendleton, who, without speaking, made a low 
 bow of assent. 
 
 A slight flush rose to her face — the first and only change 
 in the even healthy color she had shown during the inter- 
 view. 
 
 " I reckon I won't trouble you, boys, if it 's all the same 
 to you," she said, with her half-strident laugh. "You 
 might n't mind being seen — but / would. Good-by." 
 
 She held out a hand to each of the men, who remained 
 for an instant silently holding them. Then she passed out 
 of the door, slipping on her close black veil as she did so 
 with a half-funereal suggestion, and they saw her tall, hand- 
 some figure fade into the shadows of the long corridor. 
 
 " Paul," said the Mayor, reentering the office and turn- 
 ing to his secretary, " do you know who that w^oman is ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " She 's one in a million ! And now forget that you 
 have ever seen her." 
 
CHAPTEE I 
 
 The principal parlor of the New Golden Gate Hotel in 
 San Francisco, fairly reported by the local press as being 
 " truly palatial " in its appointments, and unrivaled in its 
 upholstery, was, nevertheless, on August 5, 1860, of that 
 startling newness that checked any familiarity, and evi- 
 dently had produced some embarrassment on the limbs of 
 four visitors who had just been ushered into its glories. 
 After hesitating before one or two gorgeous fawn-colored 
 brocaded easy-chairs of appalling and spotless virginity, one 
 of them seated himself despairingly on a tete-a-tete sofa in 
 marked and painful isolation, while another sat uncomforta- 
 bly upright on a sofa. The two others remained standing, 
 vaguely gazing at the ceiling, and exchanging ostentatiously 
 admiring but hollow remarks about the furniture in unneces- 
 sary whispors. Yet they were apparently men of a certain 
 habit of importance and small authority, with more or less 
 critical attitude in their speech. 
 
 To them presently entered a young man of about five- 
 and-twenty, with remarkably bright and singularly sympa- 
 thetic eyes. Having swept the group in a smiling glance, 
 he singled out the lonely occupier of the tete-a-tete, and 
 moved pleasantly towards him. The man rose instantly 
 with an eager gratified look. 
 
 " Well, Paul, I did n't allow you 'd remember me. It 's 
 a matter of four years since we met at Marysville. And 
 now you 're bein' a great man you 've " — 
 
 No one could have known from the young man's smiling 
 face that he really had not recognized his visitor at -first, 
 
194 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 and that his greeting was only an exhibition of one of those 
 happy instincts for which he was remarkable. But, follow- 
 ing the clue suggested by his visitor, he was able to say 
 promptly and gayly : — 
 
 " I don't know why I should forget Tony Shear or the 
 Marysville boys," turning with a half-confiding smile to the 
 other visitors, who, after the human fashion, were ' begin- 
 ning to be resentfully impatient of this special attention. 
 
 " Well, no, — for I 've alius said that you took your first 
 start from Marysville. But I 've brought a few friends of 
 our party that I reckoned to introduce to you. Cap'n 
 Stidger, Chairman of our Central Committee, Mr. Henry 
 J. Hoskins, of the firm of Hoskins and Bloomer, and Joe 
 Slate, of the 'Union Press,' one of our most promising 
 journalists. Gentlemen," he continued, suddenly and with- 
 out warning lifting his voice to an oratorical plane in star- 
 tling contrast to his previous unaffected utterance, " I need n't 
 say that this is the Honorable Paul Hathaway, the youngest 
 state senator in the Legislature. You know his record ! " 
 Then, recovering the ordinary accents of humanity he 
 added, " We read of your departure last night from Sacrar 
 mento, and I thought we 'd come early, afore the crowd." 
 
 "Proud to know you, sir," said Captain Stidger, sud- 
 denly lifting the conversation to the platform again. " I 
 have followed your career, sir. I 've read your speech, Mr. 
 Hathaway, and, as I was telling our mutual friend, Mr. 
 Shear, as we came along, I don't know any man that could 
 state the real part}' issues as squarely. Your castigating 
 exposition of so-called Jeffersonian principles, and your re- 
 lentless indictment of the resolutions of '98, were — were" 
 — coughed the captain, dropping into conversation again — 
 " were the biggest thing out. You have only to signify the 
 day, sir, that you will address us, and I can promise you 
 the largest audience in San Francisco. " 
 
 "I'm instructed by the proprietor of the ' Union Press,' " 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 195 
 
 said Mr. Slate, feeling for his notebook and pencil, "to 
 offer you its columns for any explanations you may desire to 
 make in the form of a personal letter or an editorial in 
 reply to the ' Advertiser's ' strictures on your speech, or to 
 take any information you may have for the benefit of our 
 readers and the party." 
 
 " If you are ever down my way, Mr. Hathaway," said 
 Mr. Hoskins, placing a large business card in Hathaway's 
 hand, " and will drop in as a friend, I can show you about 
 the largest business in the way of canned provisions and 
 domestic groceries in the State, and give you a look around 
 Battery Street generally. Or if you '11 name your day, I 've 
 got a pair of 2.36 Blue Grass horses that'll spin you out to 
 the Cliff House to dinner and back. I 've had Governor 
 Fiske, and Senator Doolan, and that big English capitalist 
 who was here last year, and they — well, sir, — they were 
 pleased ! Or if you 'd like to see the town — if this is your 
 first visit — I'm a hand to show you." 
 
 Nothing could exceed Mr. Hathaway's sympathetic accept- 
 ance of their courtesies, nor was there the least affectation 
 in it. Thoroughly enjoying his fellow men, even in their 
 foibles, they found him irresistibly attractive. " I lived 
 here seven years ago," he said, smiling, to the last speaker. 
 
 " When the water came up to Montgomery Street," inter- 
 posed Mr. Shear in a hoarse but admiring aside. 
 
 " When Mr. Hammersley was Mayor," continued Hatha- 
 way. 
 
 " Had an official position — private secretary — afore he 
 was twenty," explained Shear in perfectly audible confi- 
 dence. 
 
 " Since then the city has made great strides, leaping 
 full-grown, sir, in a single night," said Captain Stidger, 
 hastily ascending the rostrum again with a mixed metaphor, 
 to the apparent concern of a party of handsomely dressed 
 young ladies who had recently entered the parlor. " Stretch- 
 
196 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 ing from South Park to Black Point, and running back to 
 the Mission Dolores and the Presidio, we are building up a 
 metropolis, sir, worthy to be placed beside the Golden Gate 
 that opens to the broad Pacific and the shores of far Cathay ! 
 When the Pacific Railroad is built we shall be the natural 
 terminus of the Pathway of Nations ! " 
 
 Mr. Hathaway's face betrayed no consciousness that he 
 had heard something like this eight years before, and that 
 much of it had come true, as he again sympathetically 
 responded. Neither was his attention attracted by a singular 
 similarity which the attitude of the group of ladies on the 
 other side of the parlor bore to that of his own party. They 
 were clustered around one of their own number — a striking- 
 looking girl — who was apparently receiving their mingled 
 flatteries and caresses with a youthful yet critical sympathy, 
 which, singularly enough, was not unlike his own. It was 
 evident also that an odd sort of rivalry seemed to spring up 
 between the two parties, and that, in proportion as Hatha- 
 way's admirers became more marked and ostentatious in their 
 attentions, the supporters of the young girl were equally 
 effusive and enthusiastic in their devotion. As usual in 
 such cases, the real contest was between the partisans them- 
 selves ; each successive demonstration on either side was 
 provocative or retaliatory, and when they were apparently 
 rendering homage to their idols they were really distracted 
 by and listening to each other. At last, Hathaway's party 
 being reinforced by fresh visitors, a tall brunette of the 
 opposition remarked in a professedly confidential but per- 
 fectly audible tone : — 
 
 " Well, my dear, as I don't suppose you want to take 
 part in a political caucus, perhaps we 'd better return to the 
 Ladies' Boudoir, unless there 's a committee sitting there 
 too." 
 
 " I know how valuable your time must be, as you are all 
 business men," said Hathaway, turning to his party, in an 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 197 
 
 equally audible tone ; " but before you go, gentlemen, you 
 must let me offer you a little refreshment in a private room," 
 and he moved naturally towards the door. The rival fair, 
 ■who had already risen at their commander's suggestion, here 
 paused awkvvfardly over an embarrassing victory. Should 
 they go or stay ? The object of their devotion, however, 
 turned curiously towards Hathaway. For an instant their 
 eyes met. The young girl turned carelessly to her compan- 
 ions and said, " No ; stay here — it 's the public parlor ; " 
 and her followers, evidently accustomed to her authority, 
 sat down again. 
 
 " A galaxy of young ladies from the Convent of Santa 
 Clara, Mr. Hathaway," explained Captain Stidger, naively 
 oblivious of any discourtesy on their part, as he followed 
 Hathaway's glance and took his arm as they moved away. 
 " Not the least of our treasures, sir. Most of them daugh- 
 ters of pioneers — and all Californian bred and educated. 
 Connoisseurs have awarded them the palm, and declare that 
 for Grace, Intelligence, and Woman's Highest Charms the 
 East cannot furnish their equal ! " Having delivered this 
 Parthian compliment in an oratorical passage through the 
 doorway, the captain descended, outside, into familiar speech. 
 " But I suppose you will find that out for yourself if you 
 stay here long. San Francisco might furnish a fitting 
 bride to California's youngest senator." 
 
 " I am afraid that my stay here must be brief, and lim- 
 ited to business," said Hathaway, who had merely noticed 
 that the principal girl was handsome and original looking. 
 " In fact, I am here partly to see an old acquaintance — 
 Colonel Pendleton." 
 
 The three men looked at each other curiously. " Oh ! 
 Harry Pendleton," said Mr. Hoskins incredulously. " You 
 don't know him ? " 
 
 " An old pioneer — of course," interposed Shear, ex- 
 planatorily and apologetically. " Why, in Paul's time the 
 colonel was a big man here." 
 
198 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 " I understand the colonel has been unfortunate," said 
 Hathaway gravely ; "but in my time he was President of 
 the El Dorado Bank." 
 
 " And the bank has n't got through its settlement yet," 
 said Hoskins. " I hope you ain't expecting to get any. 
 thing out of it ? " 
 
 " No," said Hathaway, smiling ; " I was a boy at that 
 time, and lived up to my salary. I know nothing of his 
 bank difficulties, but it always struck me that Colonel Pen- 
 dleton was himself an honorable man." 
 
 "It ain't that," said Captain Stidger energetically, 
 " but the trouble with Harry Pendleton is that he has n't 
 grown with the State, and never adjusted himself to it. 
 And he won't. He thinks the Millennium was between 
 the fall of '49 and the spring of '50, and after that every- 
 thing dropped. He belongs to the old days, when a man's 
 simple word was good for any amount if you knew him ; 
 and they say that the old bank had n't a scrap of paper for 
 half that was owing to it. That was all very well, sir, in '49 
 and '50, and — Luck ; but it won't do for '69 and '60, and 
 — Business ! And the old man can't see it." 
 
 " But he is ready to fight for it now, as in the old 
 time," said Mr. Slate, " and that 's another trouble with 
 his chronology. He 's done more to keep up dueling than 
 any other man in the State, and don't know the whole spirit 
 of progress and civilization is against it." 
 
 It was impossible to tell from Paul Hathaway's face 
 whether his sympathy with Colonel Pendleton's foibles or his 
 assent to the criticisms of his visitors was the truer. Both 
 were no doubt equally sincere. But the party was presently 
 engaged in the absorption of refreshment, -which, being of a 
 purely spirituous and exhilarating quality, tended to in- 
 crease their good humor with the host till they parted. 
 Even then a gratuitous advertisement of his virtues and 
 their own intentions in calling upon him was oratorically 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 199 
 
 voiced from available platforms and landings, in the laalls 
 and stairways, until it was pretty well known throughout 
 the Golden Gate Hotel that the Hon. Mr. Paul Hathaway 
 had arrived from Sacramento and had received a " sponta- 
 neous ovation." 
 
 Meantime the object of it had dropped into an easy-chair 
 by the window of his room, and was endeavoring to recall 
 a less profitable memory. The process of human forgetful- 
 ness is not a difficult one between the ages of eighteen and 
 twenty-six, and Paul Hathaway had not only fulfilled the 
 Mayor's request by forgetting the particulars of a certain 
 transfer that he had witnessed in the Mayor's office, but in 
 the year succeeding that request, being about to try his for- 
 tunes in the mountains, he had formally constituted Colo- 
 nel Pendleton to act as his proxy in the administration of 
 Mrs. Howard's singular Trust, in which, however, he had 
 never participated except yearly to sign his name. He was, 
 consequently, somewhat astonished to have received a letter a 
 few days before from Colonel Pendleton, asking him to call 
 and see him regarding it. 
 
 He vaguely remembered that it was eight years ago, and 
 eight years had worked considerable change in the original 
 trustees, greatest of all in his superior olficer, the Mayor, 
 who had died the year following, leaving his trusteeship to 
 his successor in office, whom Paul Hathaway had never 
 seen. The Bank of El Dorado, despite Mrs. Howard's 
 sanguine belief, had long been in bankruptcy, and, although 
 Colonel Pendleton still survived it, it was certain that no 
 other president would succeed to his oifice as trustee, and. 
 that the function would lapse with him. Paul himself, a 
 soldier of fortune, although habitually lucky, had only 
 lately succeeded to a profession — if his political functions 
 could be so described. Even with his luck, energy, and 
 ambition, while everything was possible, nothing was se- 
 cure. It seemed, therefore, as if the soulless official must 
 
200 A WAED OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 eventually assume the duties of the two sympathizing friends 
 who had originated them, and had stood in looo parentis 
 to the constructive orphan. The mother, Mrs. Howard, 
 had disappeared a year after the Trust had heen made — it 
 was charitably presumed in order to prevent any complica- 
 tions that might arise from her presence in the country. 
 With these facts before him, Paul Hathaway was more con- 
 cerned in wondering what Pendleton could want with him 
 than, I fear, any direct sympathy with the situation. On 
 the contrary, it appeared to him more favorable for keeping 
 the secret of Mrs. Howard's relationship, which would now 
 die with Colonel Pendleton and himself ; and there was no 
 danger of any emotional betrayal of it in the cold official 
 administration of a man who had received the Trust 
 through the formal hands of successive predecessors. He 
 had forgotten the time limited for the guardianship, but the 
 girl must soon be of age and off their hands. If there had 
 ever been any romantic or chivalrous impression left upon 
 his memory by the scene in the Mayor's office, I fear he 
 had put it away with various other foolish illusions of his 
 youth, to which he now believed he was superior. 
 
 Nevertheless, he would see the colonel, and at once settle 
 the question. He looked at the address, " St. Charles 
 Hotel." He remembered an old hostelry of that name, 
 near the Plaza. Could it be possible that it had survived 
 the alterations and improvements of the city ? It was an 
 easy walk through remembered streets, yet with changed 
 shops and houses and faces. "When he reached the Plaza, 
 scarce recognizable in its later frontages of brick and stone, 
 he found the old wooden building still intact, with its villa- 
 like galleries and verandas incongruously and ostentatiously 
 overlooked by two new and aspiring erections on either 
 side. For an instant he tried to recall the glamour of old 
 days. He remembered when his boyish eyes regarded it as 
 the crowning work of opulence and distinction ; he remem- 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 201 
 
 bered a ball given there on some public occasion, which was 
 to him the acme of social brilliancy and display. How 
 tawdry and trivial it looked beside those later and more 
 solid structures ! How inconsistent were those long latticed 
 verandas and balconies, pathetic record of that first illusion 
 of the pioneers that their climate was a tropical one ! A 
 restaurant and billiard saloon had aggrandized all of the 
 lower story ; but there was still the fanlight, over which 
 the remembered title of " St. Charles," in gilded letters, 
 was now reinforced by the too demonstrative legend, " Apart- 
 ments and Board, by the Day or Week." Was it possible 
 that this narrow, creaking staircase had once seemed to him. 
 the broad steps of Fame and Fortune ? On the first land- 
 ing, a preoccupied Irish servant-girl, with a mop, directed 
 him to a door at the end of the passage, at which he 
 knocked. The door was opened by a grizzled negro servant, 
 who was still holding a piece of oily chamois leather in his 
 hand ; and the contents of a dueling-case, scattered upon a 
 table in the centre of the room, showed what had been his 
 occupation. Admitting Hathaway with great courtesy, he 
 said : — 
 
 " Marse Harry bin havin' his ole trubble, sah, and bin 
 engaged just dis momen' on his toylet ; ef yo' '11 accommo- 
 date yo'self on the sofa, I inform him yo' is heah." 
 
 As the negro passed into the next room, Paul cast a hasty 
 glance around the apartment. The furniture, originally 
 rich and elegant, was now worn threadbare and lustreless. 
 A bookcase, containing, among other volumes, a few law 
 bonks — there being a vague tradition, as Paul remembered, 
 that Colonel Pendleton had once been connected with the 
 Uw — a few French chairs of tarnished gilt, a rifle in the 
 corner, a presentation sword in a mahogany case, a few clas- 
 sical prints on the walls, and one or two iron deed-boxes 
 rtarked "El Dorado Bank," were the principal objects. A 
 mild flavor of dry decay and methylated spirits pervaded 
 
202 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 the apartment. Yet it was scrupulously clean and well 
 kept, and a few clothes neatly brushed and folded on a 
 chair bore witness to the servant's care. As Paul, however, 
 glanced behind the sofa, he was concerned to see a coat, 
 which had evidently been thrust hurriedly in a corner, with 
 the sleeve lining inside out, and a needle and thread still 
 sticking in the seam. It struck him instantly that this had 
 been the negro's occupation, and that the pistol-cleaning was 
 a polite fiction. 
 
 " Yo' '11 have to skuse Marse Harry seein' yo' in bed, 
 but his laig 's pow'ful bad to-day, and he can't stand," 
 said the servant, reentering the room. " Skuse me, sah," 
 he added in a dignified confidential whisper, half closing 
 the door with his hand, " but if yo' would n't mind 
 avoidin' 'xcitin' or controversical topics in yo' conversation, 
 it would be de better fo' him." 
 
 Paul smilingly assented, and the black retainer, with 
 even more than the usual solemn ceremonious exaggera- 
 tion of his race, ushered him into the bedroom. It was 
 furnished in the same faded glory as the sitting-room, with 
 the exception of a low, iron camp-bedstead, in which the tall, 
 soldierly figure of Colonel Pendleton, clad in threadbare 
 isilk dressing-gown, was stretched. He had changed in 
 eight years : his hair had become gray, and was thinned 
 over the sunken temples, but his iron-gray mustache was 
 still particularly long and well pointed. His face bore 
 uarks of illness and care ; there were deep lines down the 
 angle of the nostril that spoke of alternate savage outbreak 
 and repression, and gave his smile a sardonic rigidity. His 
 dark eyes, that shone with the exaltation of fever, fixed 
 Paul's on entering, and with the tyranny of an invalid 
 never left them. 
 
 " Well, Hathaway ? " 
 
 With the sound of that voice Paul felt the years slip 
 away, and he was again a boy, looking up admiringly to 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 203 
 
 the strong man, who now lay helpless before him. He 
 had entered the room with a faint sense of sympathizing 
 superiority and a consciousness of having had experience in 
 controlling men. But all this fled before Colonel Pendle- 
 ton's authoritative voice ; even its broken tones carried the 
 old dominant spirit of the man, and Paul found himself 
 admiring a quality in his old acquaintance that he missed 
 in his newer friends. 
 
 " I have n't seen you for eight years, Hathaway. 
 Come here and let me look at you." 
 
 Paul approached the bedside with boyish obedience. 
 Pendleton took his hand and gazed at him critically. 
 
 " I should have recognized you, sir, for all your mus- 
 tache and your inches. The last time I saw you was in 
 Jack Hammersley's office. Well, Jack 's dead, and here 
 I am, little better, I reckon. You remember Hammers- 
 ley's house ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Paul, albeit wondering at the question. 
 
 " Something like this, Swiss villa style. I remember 
 when Jack put it up. Well, the last time I was out, I 
 passed there. And what do you think they 've done to it ? " 
 
 Paul could not imagine. 
 
 "Well, sir," said the colonel gravely, "they've changed 
 it into a church missionary shop and young men's Christian 
 reading-room ! But that's ' progress ' and ' improvement' ! " 
 He paused, and, slowly withdrawing his hand from Paul's, 
 added, with grim apology, " You 're young, and belong to 
 the new school, perhaps. Well, sir, I've read your 
 speech ; I don't belong to your party — mine died ten 
 years ago — but I congratulate you. George ! Confound 
 it ! where 's that boy gone ? " 
 
 The negro indicated by this youthful title, although he 
 must have been ten years older than his master, after a 
 hurried shuffling in the sitting-room eventually appeared at 
 llie door. 
 
204 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 " George, champagne and materials for cocktails for the 
 gentleman. The best, you understand. No new-fangled 
 notions from that new barkeeper." 
 
 Paul, who thought he observed a troubled blinking in 
 George's eyelid, and referred it to a fear of possible excite- 
 ment for his patient, here begged his host not to trouble 
 himself — that he seldom took anything in the morning. 
 
 " Possibly not, sir ; possibly not," returned the colonel 
 hastily. " I know the new ideas are prohibitive, and some 
 other blank thing, but you 're safe here from your constit- 
 uents, and by gad, sir, I sha'n't force you to take it ! It 's 
 my custom, Hathaway — an old one — played out, perhaps, 
 like all the others, but a custom nevertheless, and I 'm only 
 surprised that George, who knows it, should have forgotten it." 
 
 " ^ack is, Marse Harry," said George, with feverish 
 apology, " it bin gone 'scaped my mind dis mo'nin' in de 
 prerogation ob business, but I 'm goiu' now, shuah ! " and 
 he disappeared. 
 
 " A good boy, sir, but beginning to be contaminated. 
 Brought him here from Nashville over ten years ago. Eight 
 years ago they proved to him that he was no longer a slave, 
 and made him d — d unhappy until I promised him it should 
 make no difference to him and he could stay. I had to 
 send for his wife and child, — of course, a dead loss of 
 eighteen hundred dollars when they set foot in the State, — 
 but I 'm blanked if he is n't just as miserable with them 
 here, for he has to take two hours in the morning and three 
 in the afternoon every day to be with 'em. I tried to get 
 him to take his family to the mines and make his fortune, 
 like those fellows they call bankers and operators and stock- 
 brokers nowadays ; or to go to Oregon where they '11 make 
 him some kind of a mayor or sheriff — but he won't. He 
 collects my rents on some little property I have left, and 
 pays my bills, sir, and, if this blank civilization would only 
 leave him alone, he 'd be a good enough boy." 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 205 
 
 Paul could n't lielp thinking that the rents George col- 
 lecteil were somewhat inconsistent with those he was evi' 
 dently mending when he arrived, but at that moment the 
 jingle of glasses was heard in the sitting-room, and the old 
 negro reappeared at the door. Drawing himself up with 
 ceremonious courtesy, he addressed Paul. " Wo'd yo' 
 mind, sah, taking a glance at de wine for yo' choice ? " 
 Paul rose, and followed him into the sitting-room, when 
 George carefully closed the door. To his surprise Hatha- 
 way beheld a tray with two glasses of whiskey and bitterSj 
 but no wine. " Skuse me, sah," said the old man, with 
 dignified apology, "but de kernel won't have any but de 
 best champagne for hono'ble gemmen like yo'self, and I 'se 
 despaired to say it can't be got in de house or de suburbs. 
 De best champagne dat we gives visitors is de Widder 
 Glencoe. Wo'd yo' mind, sail, for de sake o' not 'xcitin' 
 de kernel wid triilin' culinary matter, to say dat yo' don' 
 take but de one brand ? " 
 
 " Certainly," said Paul, smiling. " I really don't care for 
 anything so early ; " then, returning to the bedroom, he 
 said carelessly, " You '11 excuse me taking the liberty, colo- 
 nel, of sending away the champagne and contenting myself 
 with whiskey. Even the best brand — the Widow Cliquot " 
 — with a glance at the gratified George — "I find rather 
 trying so early in the morning." 
 
 " As you please, Hathaway," said the colonel, somewhat 
 stiffly. " I dare say there ''s a new fashion in drinks now, 
 and a gentleman's stomach is a thing of the past. Then, I 
 suppose, we can spare the boy, as this is his time for going 
 home. Put that tin box with the Trust papers on the bed, 
 George, and Mr. Hathaway will excuse your waiting." As 
 the old servant made an exaggerated obeisance to each, Paul 
 remarked, as the door closed upon him, " George certainly 
 keeps his style, colonel, in the face of the progress you 
 deplore." 
 
206 A WAED OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 " He was always a ' dandy nigger,' " returned Pendleton, 
 his face slightly relaxing as he glanced after his grizzled 
 henchman, " but his exaggeration of courtesy is a blank 
 sight more natural and manly than the exaggeration of dis- 
 courtesy which your superior civilized ' helps ' think is seli- 
 respect. The excuse of servitude of any kind is its spon- 
 taneity and affection. When you know a man hates you 
 and serves you from interest, you know he 's a cur and 
 you 're a tyrant. It 's your blank progress that 's made 
 menial service degrading by teaching men to avoid it. Why, 
 sir, when I first arrived here. Jack Hammersley and myself 
 took turns as cook to the party. I did n't consider myself 
 any the worse master for it. But enough of this." He 
 paused, and, raising himself on his elbow, gazed for some 
 seconds half cautiously, half doubtfully, upon his compan- 
 ion. "I've got something to tell you, Hathaway," he 
 said slowly. " You 've had an easy time with this Trust: 
 your share of the work has n't worried you, kept you awake 
 nights, or interfered with your career. I understand per- 
 fectly," he continued, in reply to Hathaway's deprecating 
 gesture. " I accepted to act as your proxy, and I have. 
 I 'm not complaining. But it is time that you should know 
 what I 've done, and what you may still have to do. Here 
 is the record. On the day after that interview in the 
 Mayor's office, the El Dorado Bank, of which I was, and 
 still am. President, received seventy-five thousand dollars 
 in trust from Mrs. Howard. Two years afterwards, on that 
 same day, the bank had, by lucky speculations, increased 
 that sum to the credit of the Trust one hundred and fifty 
 thousand dollars, or double the original capital. In the 
 following year the bank suspended payment." 
 
CHAPTEE II 
 
 In an instant the whole situation and his relations to it 
 flashed upon Paul with a terrible, but almost grotesque 
 completeness. Here he was, at the outset of his career, re- 
 sponsible for the wasted fortune of the daughter of a social 
 outcast, and saddled with her support ! He now knew why 
 Colonel Pendleton had wished to see him ; for one shame- 
 ful moment he believed he also knew why he had been con- 
 tent to take his proxy ! The questionable character of the 
 whole transaction, his own carelessness, which sprang from 
 that very confidence and trust that Pendleton had lately 
 extolled — what would, what could not be made of it ! He 
 already heard himself abused by his opponents — perhaps, 
 more terrible still, faintly excused by his friends. All this 
 was visible in his pale face and flashing eyes as he turned 
 them on the helpless invalid. 
 
 Colonel Pendleton received his look with the same criti- 
 cal, half-curious scrutiny that had accompanied his speech. 
 At last his face changed slightly, a faint look of disappoint- 
 ment crossed his eyes, and a sardonic smile deepened the 
 lines of his mouth. 
 
 "There, sir," he said hurriedly, as if dismissing an un- 
 pleasant revelation ; " don't alarm yourself ! Take a drink 
 of that whiskey. You look pale. Well ; turn your eyes 
 on those walls. You don't see any of that money laid 
 out here — do you ? Look at me. I don't look like a 
 man enriched with other people's money — do I ? Well, let 
 that content you. Every dollar of that Trust fund, Hath- 
 away, with all the interests and profits that have accrued to 
 
208 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 it, is safe ! Every cent of it is locked up in government 
 bonds vrith the Rothschilds' agent. There are the receipts, 
 dated a yreek before the bank suspended. But enough of 
 that — that is n't what I asked you to come and see me 
 for." 
 
 The blood had rushed back to Paul's cheeks uncomfort- 
 ably. He saw now, as impulsively as he had previously 
 suspected his co-trustee, that the man had probably ruined 
 himself to save the Trust. He stammered that he had not 
 questioned the management of the fund nor asked to with- 
 draw his proxy. 
 
 " No matter, sir," said the colonel impatiently ; " you 
 had the right, and I suppose," he added, with half-concealed 
 scorn, " it was your duty. But let that pass. The money 
 is safe enough ; but, Mr. Hathaway, — and this is the 
 point I want to discuss with you, — it begins to look as if 
 the secret was safe no longer ! " He had raised himself 
 with some pain and difficulty to draw nearer to Paul, and 
 had again fixed his eyes eagerly upon him. But Paul's re- 
 sponsive glance was so vague that he added quickly, " You 
 understand, sir ; I believe that there are hounds — I say 
 hounds ! — who would be able to blurt out at any mo- 
 ment that that girl at Santa Clara is Kate Howard's daugh- 
 ter." 
 
 At any other moment Paul might have questioned the 
 gravity of any such contingency, but the terrible earnestness 
 of the speaker, his dominant tone, and a certain respect 
 which had lately sprung up in his breast for him, checked 
 him, and he only asked with as much concern as he could 
 master for the moment : — 
 
 " What makes you think so ? " 
 
 " That 's what I want to tell you, Hathaway, and how I, 
 and I alone, am responsible for it. When the bank was in 
 difficulty and I made up my mind to guard the Trust with 
 my own personal and private capital, I knew that there 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 209 
 
 might be some comment on my action. It was a delicate 
 matter to show any preference or exclusion at such a mo- 
 ment, and I took two or three of my brother directors whom 
 I thought I could trust into my confidence. I told them 
 the whole story, and how the Trust was sacred. I made 
 a mistake, sir," continued Pendleton sardonically, " a 
 grave mistake. I did not take into account that even in 
 three years civilization and religion had gained ground here. 
 There was a hound there — a blank Judas in the Trust. 
 Well ; he did n't see it. I think he talked Scripture and 
 morality. He said something about the wages of sin being 
 infamous, and only worthy of confiscation. He talked 
 about the sins of the father being visited upon the children, 
 and justly. I stopped him. Well ! Do you know what 's 
 the matter with my ankle ? Look ! " He stopped, and with 
 some difficulty and invincible gravity, throwing aside his 
 dressing-gown, turned down his stocking, and exposed to 
 Paul's gaze the healed cicatrix of an old bullet-wound. 
 " Troubled me damnably near a year. Where I hit him 
 — has n't troubled him at all since ! 
 
 " I think," continued the colonel, falling back upon the 
 pillow with an air of relief, " that he told others — of his 
 own kidney, sir, — though it was a secret among gentlemen. 
 But they have preferred to be silent now — than afterwards. 
 They know that I 'm ready. But I can't keep this up 
 long ; some time, you know, they 're bound to improve in 
 practice and hit higher up ! As far as I 'm concerned," he 
 added, with a grim glance around the faded walls and 
 threadbare furniture, " it don't mind ; but mine is n't the 
 mouth to be stopped." He paused, and then abruptly, yet 
 with a sudden and pathetic dropping of his dominant note, 
 said : " Hathaway, you 're young, and Hammersley liked 
 you — what 's to be done ? I thought of passing over my 
 tools to you. You can shoot, and I hear you have. But 
 the h — 1 of it is that if you dropped a man or two people 
 
210 A WAKD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 would ask why, and want to know what it was about; 
 while, when I do, nobody here thinks it anything but my 
 way/ I don't mean that it would hurt you with the 
 crowd to wipe out one or two of these hounds during the 
 canvass, but the trouble is that they belong to your party, 
 and," he added grimly, " that would n't help your career." 
 
 '•'But," said Paul, ignoring the sarcasm, "are you not 
 magnifying the effect of a disclosure ? The girl is an heir- 
 ess, excellently brought up. Who will bother about the 
 antecedents of the mother, who has disappeared, whom she 
 never knew, and who is legally dead to her ? " 
 
 " In my day, sir, no one who knew the circumstances," 
 returned the colonel quickly. " But we are living in the 
 blessed era of Christian retribution and civilized propriety, 
 and I believe there are a lot of men and women about who 
 have no other way of showing their own virtue than by 
 showing up another's vice. "We're in a reaction of reform. 
 It 's the old drunkards who are always more clamorous for 
 total abstinence than the moderately temperate. I tell you, 
 Hathaway, there could n't be an unluckier moment for our 
 secret coming out." 
 
 " But she will be of age soon." 
 
 " In two months." 
 
 " And sure to marry." 
 
 " Marry ! " repeated Pendleton, with grim irony. 
 " Would you marry her ? " 
 
 " That 's another question," said the young man promptly, 
 " and one of individual taste ; but it does not affect my 
 general belief that she could easily find a husband as good 
 and better.'' 
 
 " Suppose she found one before the secret is out. Ought 
 he be told ? " 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 "And that would imply telling her? " 
 
 "Yes," said Paul, but not so promptly. 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 211 
 
 " And you consider that fulfilling the promise of the 
 Trust — the pledges exchanged with that woman ? " con- 
 tinued Pendleton, with glittering eyes and a return to his 
 own dominant tone. 
 
 " My dear colonel," said Paul, somewhat less positively, 
 but still smiling, " you have made a romantic, almost im- 
 possible compact with Mrs. Howard that, you yourself are 
 now obliged to admit, circumstances may prevent your car- 
 rying out substantially. You forget, also, that you have 
 just told me that you have already broken your pledge — 
 under circumstances, it is true, that do you honor — and 
 that now your desperate attempts to retrieve it have failed. 
 Now, 1 really see nothing wrong in your telling to a pre- 
 sumptive well-wisher of the girl what you have told to her 
 enemy." 
 
 There was a dead silence. The prostrate man uttered a 
 slight groan, as if in pain, and drew up his leg to change 
 his position. After a pause, he said in a restrained voice, 
 " I differ from you, Mr. Hathaway ; but enough of this for 
 the present. I have something else to say. It will be 
 necessary for one of us to go at once to Santa Clara and see 
 Miss Yerba Buena." 
 
 " Good heavens ! " said Paul quickly. " Do you call 
 her that ? " 
 
 " Certainly, sir. You gave her the name. Have you 
 forgotten ? " 
 
 " I only suggested it," returned Paul hopelessly ; " but 
 no matter — go on." 
 
 " / cannot go there, as you see," continued Pendleton, 
 with a weary gesture towards his crippled ankle ; " and I 
 should particularly like you to see her before we make the 
 joint disposition of her affairs with the Mayor, two months 
 hence. I have some papers you can show her, and I have 
 already written a letter introducing you to the Lady Supe 
 rior at the convent, and to her. You have never seen her ? " 
 
212 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 " No," said Paul. " But of course you have ? " 
 
 " Not for three years." 
 
 Paul's eyes evidently expressed some vironder, for a mo- 
 ment after the colonel added, " I believe, Hathaway, I am 
 looked upon as a queer survival of a rather lav^less and im- 
 proper past. At least, I have thought it better not socially 
 to compromise her by my presence. The Mayor goes there 
 
 — at the examinations and exercises, I believe, sir ; they 
 make a sort of reception for him — with a — a — banquet 
 
 — lemonade and speeches." 
 
 "I had intended to leave for Sacramento to-morrow 
 night," said Paul, glancing curiously at the helpless man; 
 " but I will go there if you wish." 
 
 " Thank you. It will be better." 
 
 There were a few words of further explanation of the 
 papers, and Pendleton placed the packet in his visitor's 
 hands. Paul rose. Somehow, it appeared to him that the 
 room looked more faded and forgotten than when he entered 
 it, and the figure of the man before him more lonely, help- 
 less, and abandoned. With one of his sympathetic impulses 
 he said : — 
 
 " I don't like to leave you here alone. Are you sure you 
 can help yourself without George ? Can I do anything 
 before I go ? " 
 
 " I am quite accustomed to it," said Pendleton quietly. 
 " It happens once or twice a year, and when I go out — 
 well — I miss more than I do here." 
 
 He took Paul's proffered hand mechanically, with a slight 
 return of the critical, doubting look he had cast upon him 
 when he entered. His voice, too, had quite recovered its 
 old dominance, as he said, with half-patronizing convention- 
 ality, " You '11 have to find your way out alone. Let me 
 know how you have sped at Santa Clara, will you ? Good- 
 by." 
 
 The staircase and passage seemed to have grown shabbiei 
 
A "WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 213 
 
 and meaner as Paul, slowly and hesitatingly, descended to 
 the street. At the foot of the stairs he paused irresolutely, 
 and loitered with a vague idea of turning back on some pre- 
 tense, only that he might relieve himself of the sense of 
 desertion. He had already determined upon making that 
 inquiry into the colonel's personal and pecuniary affairs 
 which he had not dared to offer personally, and had a half- 
 formed plan of testing his own power and popularity in a 
 certain line of relief that at once satisfied his sympathies 
 and ambitions. Nevertheless, after reaching the street, he 
 lingered a moment, when an odd idea of temporizing with 
 his inclinations struck him. At the farther end of the 
 hotel — one of the parasites living on its decayed fortunes 
 — was a small barber-shop. By having his hair trimmed 
 and his clothes brushed he could linger a little longer 
 beneath the same roof with the helpless solitary, and per- 
 haps come to some conclusion. He entered the clean but 
 scantily furnished shop, and threw himself into one of the 
 nearest chairs, hardly noting that there were no other cus- 
 tomers, and that a single assistant, stropping a razor behind 
 a glass door, was the only occupant. But there was a famil- 
 iar note of exaggerated politeness about the voice of this 
 man as he opened the door and came towards the back of 
 the chair with the formula : — 
 
 " Mo'nin', sah ! Shall we hab de pleshure of shavin' or 
 hah-cuttin' dis mo'nin' ? " Paul raised his eyes quickly to 
 the mirror before him. It reflected the black face and griz- 
 zled hair of George. 
 
 More relieved at finding the old servant still near his 
 master than caring to comprehend the reason, Hathaway 
 said pleasantly, " Well, George, is this the way you look 
 after your family ? " 
 
 The old man started ; for an instant his full red lips 
 seemed to become dry and ashen, the whites of his eyes 
 were sufi'used and staring, as he met Paul's smiling face in 
 
214 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 the glass. But almost as quickly be recovered himself, and, 
 with a polite but deprecating bow, said, — " For God sake, 
 sah ! I admit de sarkumstances is agin me, but de simple 
 fack is dat I 'm temper'ly occupyin' de place of an ole 
 frien', sah, who is called round de cornah." 
 
 " And I 'm devilish glad of any fact, George, that gives 
 ma a chance of having my hair cut by Colonel Pendleton's 
 right-hand man. So fire away ! " 
 
 The gratified smile which now suddenly overspread the 
 whole of the old man's face, and seemed to quickly stiffen 
 the rugged and wrinkled fingers that had at first trembled 
 in drawing a pair of shears from a ragged pocket, appeared 
 to satisfy Paul's curiosity for the present. But after a few 
 moments' silent snipping, during which he could detect 
 in the mirror some traces of agitation still twitching the 
 negro's face, he said, with an air of conviction : — 
 
 " Look here, George — why don't you regularly use your 
 leisure moments in this trade ? You 'd make your fortune 
 by your taste and skill at it." 
 
 For the next half minute the old man's frame shook with 
 silent childlike laughter behind Paul's chair. " Well, 
 Marse Hathaway, yo' 's an ole frien' o' my massa, and a 
 gemman yo'self, sah, and a senetah, and I do' an mind tellin' 
 yo' — dat 's jess what I bin gone done ! It makes a littk 
 ready money for de ole woman and de chilleren. But dt 
 kernel don' kno'. Ah, sah ! de kernel kill me or hisself if 
 he so much as 'spicioned me. De kernel is high-toned, 
 sah ! — bein' a gemman yo'self, yo' understand. He 
 would n't heah ob his niggah worken' for two massas — for 
 all he 's willen' to lemme go and help myse'f . But, Lord 
 bless yo', sah, dat ain't in de category ! De kernel could n't 
 get along widout me." 
 
 " You collect his rents, don't you ? " said Paul quietly. 
 
 « Yes, sah." 
 
 "Much?" 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 215 
 
 " Well, no, sah ; not so much as fom'ly, sah ! Yo' see, 
 de kernel's prop'ty lies in de ole parts ob de town, where 
 de po' white folks lib, and dey ain't reg'lar. De kernel 
 dat sof in his heart, he dare n' press 'em ; some of 'em is 
 ole fo'ty-niners, like hisself, sah ; and some is Spanish, sah, 
 and dey is sof too, and ain't no more gumption dan chilleren, 
 and tink it 's ole time come agin, and dey 's in de ole places 
 like afo' de Mexican wah ! and dey don' bin payin' noffin'. 
 But we gets along, sah, — we gets along, — not in de prima 
 facie style, sah ! mebbe not in de modden way dut de 
 kernel don't like ; but we keeps ourse'f, sah, and has wine 
 fo' our friends. When yo' come again, sah, yo' '11 find de 
 Widder G-lencoe on de sideboard." 
 
 " Has the colonel many friends here ? " 
 
 " Mos' de ole ones bin don gone, sah, and de kernel don' 
 cotton to de new. He don' mix much in sassiety till de 
 bank settlements bin gone done. Skuse me, sah ! — but 
 you don' happen to know when dat is ? It would be a 
 pow'ful heap off de kernel's mind if it was done. Bein' a 
 high and mighty man in committees up dah in Sacramento, 
 sah, I did n't know but what yo' might know as it might 
 come befo' yo'." 
 
 " I '11 see about it," said Paul, with an odd, abstracted 
 smile. 
 
 " Shampoo dis mornen', sah ? " 
 
 "Nothing more in this line," said Paul, rising from his 
 chair, " but something more, perhaps, in the line of your 
 other duties. You 're a good barber for the public, G-eorge, 
 and I don't take back what I said about your future ; but 
 just now I think the colonel wants all your service. He 's 
 not at all well. Take this," he said, putting a twenty- 
 dollar gold piece in the astonished servant's hand, " and for 
 the next three or four days drop the shop, and under some 
 pretext or another arrange to be with him. That money 
 will cover what you lose here, and as soon as the colonel 's 
 
216 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 all right again you can come back to work. But are you 
 not afraid of being recognized by some one ? " 
 
 "No, sah, dat 's just it. On'y strangers dat don't know 
 no better come yere." 
 
 " But suppose your master should drop in ? It 's quite 
 convenient to his rooms." 
 
 " Marse Harry in a barber-shop ! " said the old man, with 
 a silent laugh. " Skuse me, sah," he added, with an 
 apologetic mixture of respect and dignity, " but fo' twenty 
 years no man hez touched de kernel's chin but myself. 
 When Marse Harry hez to go to a barber-shop, it won't 
 make no matter who 's dar." 
 
 " Let 's hope he will not," said Paul gayly ; then, anxious 
 to evade the gratitude which, since his munificence, he had 
 seen beaming in the old negro's eye and evidently trying to 
 find polysyllabic and elevated expression on his lips, he said 
 hurriedly, " I shall expect to find you with the colonel when 
 I call again in a day or two," and smilingly departed. 
 
 At the end of two hours George's barber-employer returned 
 to relieve his assistant, and, on receiving from him an account 
 and a certain percentage of the afternoon's fees (minus the 
 gift from Paul), was informed by George that he should 
 pretermit his attendance for a few days. " Udder private 
 and personal affairs," explained the old negro, who made 
 no social distinction in his vocabulary, " peroccupyin' dis 
 niggah's time." The head barber, unwilling to lose a really 
 good . assistant, endeavoried to dissuade him by the offer of 
 increased emolument, but George was firm. 
 
 As ho entered the sitting-room the colonel detected his 
 step, and called him in. 
 
 " Another time, George, never allow a guest of mine to 
 send away wine. If he don't care for it, put it on the 
 ■sideboard." 
 
 " Yes, sah ; but as yo' did n't like it yo'self, Marse Harry, 
 and de wine was de most 'xpensive quality ob Glencoe " — 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLT)EN GATE 217 
 
 " D — n the expense ! " He paused, and gazed search 
 iugly at his old retainer. 
 
 " George," he said suddenly, yet in a gentle voice, 
 " don't lie to me, or " — in a still kinder voice — "I '11 
 flog the black skin oif you ! Listen to me. Have you got 
 any money left ? " 
 
 " 'Deed, sah, dere is,'' said the negro earnestly. " I '11 
 jist fetch it wid de accounts." 
 
 " Hold on ! I 've been thinking, lying here, that if the 
 Widow MoUoy can't pay because she sold out, and that to- 
 bacconist is ruined, and we've had to pay the water-tax for 
 old Bill Soames, the rent last week don't amount to much, 
 while there 's the month's bill for the restaurant and that 
 blank druggist's account for lotions and medicines to come 
 out of it. It strikes me we 're pretty near touching bottom. 
 I 've everything I want here, but, by God, sir, if I find 
 you skimping yourself or lying to me or borrowing money " — 
 
 " Yes, Marse Harry, but the Widder Molloy done gone 
 and paid up dis afernoon. I '11 bring de books and money 
 to prove it ; " and he hurriedly reentered the sitting-room. 
 
 Then with trembling hands he emptied his pockets on 
 the table, including Paul's gift and the fees he had just 
 received, and opening a desk-drawer took from it a striped 
 cotton handkerchief, such as negro women wear on their 
 heads, containing a small quantity of silver tied up in a 
 hard knot, and a boy's purse. This he emptied on the table 
 with his own money. 
 
 They were the only rents of Colonel Henry Pendleton ! 
 They were contributed by " George Washington Thomson ; " 
 his wife, otherwise known as " Aunt Dinah," washerwoman ; 
 and " Scipio Thomson," their son, aged fourteen, bootblack. 
 It did not amount to much. But in that happy moisture 
 that dimmed the old man's eyes, God knows it looked large 
 enough. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 Although the rays of an unclouded sun were hot in the 
 Santa Clara roads and byways, and the dry, bleached dust 
 had become an impalpable powder, the perspiring and 
 parched pedestrian who rashly sought relief in the shade of 
 the wayside oak was speedily chilled to the bone by the 
 northwest trade-winds that on those August afternoons 
 swept through the defiles of the Coast Kange, and even 
 penetrated the pastoral valley of San Jose. The anomaly 
 of straw hats and overcoats with the occupants of buggies 
 and station wagons was thus accounted for, and even in the 
 sheltered garden of " El Kosario " two young girls in light 
 summer dresses had thrown wraps over their shoulders as 
 they lounged down a broad rose-alley at right angles with 
 the deep, long veranda of the casa. Yet, in spite of the 
 chill, the old Spanish house and gardens presented a lux- 
 urious, almost tropical, picture from the roadside. Banks, 
 beds, and bowers of roses lent their name and color to the 
 grounds ; treelike clusters of hanging fuchsias, moundlike 
 masses of variegated verbena, and tangled thickets of ceano- 
 tlius and spreading heliotrope were set in boundaries of ven- 
 erable olive, fig, and pear trees. The old house itself, a 
 picturesqiie relief to the glaring newness of the painted 
 villas along the road, had been tastefully modified to suit 
 the needs and habits of a later civilization ; the galleries of 
 the inner courtyard, or patio, had been transferred to the 
 outside walls in the form of deep verandas, while the old 
 adobe walls themselves were hidden beneath flowing Cape 
 jessamine or bestarred passion-vines, and topped by roofs 
 of cylindrical red tiles. 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 219 
 
 " Miss Yerba ! " said a dry, masculine voice from the 
 veranda. 
 
 The taller young girl started, and drew herself suddenly 
 behind a large Castilian rose-tree, dragging her companion 
 with her, and putting her iinger imperatively upon a pretty 
 but somewhat passionate mouth. The other girl checked a 
 laugh, and remained watching her friend's wickedly leveled 
 brows in amused surprise. 
 
 The call was repeated from, the veranda. After a mo- 
 ment's pause there was the sound of retreating footsteps, 
 and all was quiet again. 
 
 "Why, for goodness' sake, didn't you answer, Yerba?" 
 asked the shorter girl. 
 
 " Oh, I hate him ! " responded Yerba. " He only wanted 
 to bore me with his stupid, formal, sham-parental talk. 
 Because he 's my official guardian he thinks it necessary to 
 assume this manner towards me when we meet, and treats 
 me as if I were something between his stepdaughter and 
 an almshouse orphan or a police board. It 's perfectly 
 ridiculous, for it 's only put on while he is in office, and he 
 knows it, and I know it, and I'm tired of making believe. 
 Why, my dear, they change every election ; I 've had seven 
 of them, all more or less of this kind, since I can remem- 
 ber." 
 
 " But I thought there were two others, dear, that were 
 not official," said her companion coaxingly. 
 
 Yerba .sighed. " No ; there was another, who was presi- 
 dent of a bank, but that was also to be official if he died. 
 I used to like him — he seemed to be the only gentleman 
 among them ; but it appears that he is dreadfully improper ; 
 shoots people now and then for nothing at all, and burst up 
 his bank, — and, of course, he 's impossible, and, as there 's 
 no more bank, when he dies there '11 be no more trustee." 
 
 "And there's the third, you know — a stranger, who 
 never appears ? " suggested the younger girl. 
 
220 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 " And who do you suppose he turns out to be ? Do 
 you remember that conceited little wretch — that ' Baby 
 Senator,' I think they called him — who was in the parlor 
 of the Golden Gate the other morning surrounded by his 
 idiotic worshipers and toadies and ballot-box stuffers ? 
 Well, if you please, that 's Mr. Paul Hathaway — the 
 Honorable Paul Hathaway, who washed his hands of me, 
 my dear, at the beginning ! " 
 
 " But really, Yerba, I thought that he looked and 
 acted " — 
 
 " You thought of nothing at all, Milly," returned Yerba, 
 with authority. " I tell you, he 's a mass of conceit. 
 What else can you expect of a Man — toadied and fawned 
 upon to that extent ? It made me sick ! I could have 
 just shaken them ! " 
 
 As if to emphasize her statement, she grasped one of the 
 long willowy branches of the enormous rose-bush where 
 she stood, and shook it lightly. The action detached a few 
 of the maturer blossoms, and sent down a shower of faded 
 pink petals on her dark hair and yellow dress. " I can't 
 bear conceit," she added. 
 
 " Oh, Yerba, just stand as you are ! I do wish the girls 
 could see you. You make the loveliest picture ! " 
 
 She certainly did look very pretty as she stood there — a 
 few leaves lodged in her hair, clinging to her dress, and 
 suggesting by reflection the color that her delicate satin 
 skin would have resented in its own texture. But she 
 turned impatiently away — perhaps not before she had 
 allowed this passing vision to impress the mind of her 
 devoted adherent — and said, " Come along, or that dreadful 
 man will be out on the veranda again." 
 
 " But, if you dislike him so, why did you accept the 
 invitation to meet him here at luncheon ? " said the curious 
 Milly. 
 
 "I didn't accept; the Mother Superior did for me, 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 221 
 
 because he 's the Mayor of San Francisco visiting youi 
 uncle, and she 's always anxious to placate the powers that 
 be. And I thought he might have some information that 1 
 could get out of him. And it was better than being in the 
 convent all day. And I thought I could stand him if you 
 were here." 
 
 Milly gratefully accepted this doubtful proof of affection 
 by squeezing her companion's arm. " And you did n't get 
 any information, dear ? " 
 
 " Of course not ! The idiot knows only the old tra- 
 dition of his office — that I was a mysterious Trust left in 
 Mayor Hammersley's hands. He actually informed me 
 that ' Buena ' meant ' Good ' ; that it was likely the name 
 of the captain of some whaler, that put into San Francisco 
 in the early days, whose child I was, and that, if I choose 
 to call myself ' Miss Good,' he would allow it, and get a 
 bill passed in the Legislature to legalize it. Think of it, my 
 dear ! ' Miss Good,' like one of Mrs. Barbauld's stories, 
 or a moral governess in the 'Primary Reader.' " 
 
 " ' Miss Good,' repeated Milly innocently. " Yes, you 
 might put an e at the end — G-double-o-d-e. There are 
 Goodes in Philadelphia. And then you won't have to 
 sacrifice that sweet pretty * Yerba,' that 's so stylish and 
 musical, for you 'd still be ' Yerba Good.' But," she 
 added, as Yerba made an impatient gesture, " why do you 
 worry yourself about that ? You would n't keep your own 
 name long, whatever it was. An heiress like you, dear, — 
 lovely and accomplished, — would have the best names as 
 well as the best men in America to choose from." 
 
 " Now please don't repeat that idiot's words. That 's 
 what he says ; that 's what they all say ! " returned Yerba 
 pettishly. " One would really think it was necessary for 
 me to get married to become anybody at all, or have any 
 standing whatever. And, whatever you do, don't go talk- 
 ing of me as if I were named after a vegetable. ' Yerba 
 
222 A WAED OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 Buena ' is the name of an island in the bay just off San 
 Francisco. I 'm named after that." 
 
 " But I don't see the difference, dear. The island was 
 named after the vine that grows on it." 
 
 " You don't see the difference ? " said Yerba darkly. 
 " Well, I do. But what are you looking at ? " 
 
 Her companion had caught her arm, and was gating 
 intently at the house. 
 
 " Yerba," she said quickly, " there 's the Mayor and 
 uncle, and a strange gentleman coming down the walk. 
 They 're looking for us. And, as I live, Yerb ! the strangs 
 gentleman is that young senator, Mr. Hathaway ! " 
 
 " Mr. Hathaway ? Nonsense ! " 
 
 " Look for yourself." 
 
 Yerba glanced at the three gentlemen, who, a hundred 
 yards distant, were slowly advancing in the direction of the 
 ceanothus hedge, behind which the girls had instinctively 
 strayed during their conversation. 
 
 " What are you going to do ? " said Milly eagerly. 
 " They 're coming straight this way. Shall we stay hero 
 and let them pass, or make a run for the house ? " 
 
 "Wo," said Yerba, to Milly's great surprise. "That 
 would look as if we cared. Besides, I don't know that 
 Mr. Hathaway has come to see me. We '11 stroll out and 
 meet them accidentally." 
 
 Milly was still more astonished. However, she said, 
 " Wait a moment, dear ! " and, with the instinctive deft- 
 ness of her sex, in three small tugs and a gentle hitch, 
 shook Yerba's gown into perfect folds, passed her fingers 
 across her forehead and over her ears, securing, however, 
 with a hairpin on their passage three of the rose petals 
 where they had fallen. Then, discharging their faces of 
 any previous expression, these two charming hypocrites sal- 
 lied out innocently into the walk. Nothing could be more 
 iiq,tural than their manner : if a criticism might be ventured 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 223 
 
 upon, it was that their elbows were slightly drawn inwards 
 and before them, leaving their hands gracefully advanced in 
 the line of their figures, an attitude accepted throughout 
 the civilized world of deportment as indicating fastidious 
 refinement not unmingled with permissible hauteur. 
 
 The three gentlemen lifted their hats at this ravishing 
 apparition, and halted. The Mayor advanced with great 
 politeness. 
 
 " I feared you did n't hear me call you, Miss Yerba, so 
 we ventured to seek you." As the two girls exchanged 
 almost infantile glances of surprise, he continued : " Mr. 
 Paul Hathaway has done us the honor of seeking you here, 
 as he did not find you at the convent. You may have 
 forgotten that Mr. Hathaway is the third one of your trus- 
 tees." 
 
 "And 30 inefficient and worthless that I fear he doesn't 
 count," said Paul ; "but," raising his eyes to Yerba's, "1 
 fancy that I have already had the pleasure of seeing you, 
 and, I fear, the mortification of having disturbed you and 
 your friends in the parlor of the Golden Gate Hotel yes- 
 terday." 
 
 The two girls looked at each other with the same child- 
 like surprise. Yerba broke the silence by suddenly turning 
 to Milly. "Certainly, you remember how greatly inter- 
 ested we were in the conversation of a party of gentlemen 
 who were there when we came in. I am afraid our foolish 
 prattle must have disturbed you. I know that we were 
 struck with the intelligent and eloquent devotion of your 
 friends." 
 
 " Oh, perfectly," chimed in the loyal but somewhat in- 
 felix Milly ; " and it was so kind and thoughtful of Mr. 
 Hathaway to take them away as he did." 
 
 "I felt the more embarrassed," continued Hathaway, smil- 
 ing, but still critically examining Yerba for an indication 
 of something characteristic beyond this palpable conven 
 
224 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 tiouality, " as I unfortunately must present my credentials 
 from a gentleman as much of a stranger as myself — Colo- 
 nel Pendleton." 
 
 The trade-wind was evidently making itself felt even in 
 this pastoral retreat, for the two gentlemen appeared to 
 shrink slightly within themselves, and a chill seemed to 
 have passed over the group. The Mayor coughed. The 
 avuncular Woods gazed abstractedly at a large cactus. Even 
 Paul, prepared by previous experience, stopped short. 
 
 " Colonel Pendleton ! Oh, do tell me all about him ! " 
 flashed out Yerba suddenly, with clasped hands and eager 
 girlish breath. 
 
 Paul cast a quick grateful glance at the girl. Whether 
 assumed or not, her enthusiastic outburst was effective. 
 The Mayor looked uneasily at Woods, and turned to Paul, 
 
 " Ah, yes ! You and he are original co-trustees. I be- 
 lieve Pendleton is in reduced circumstances. Never quite 
 got over that bank trouble." 
 
 " That is only a question of legislative investigation and 
 relief," said Paul lightly, yet with purposely vague official 
 mystery of manner. Then, turning quickly to Yerba, as 
 if replying to the only real question at issue, he continued 
 pointedly, " I am sorry to say the colonel's health is so poor 
 that it keeps him quite a recluse. I have a letter from 
 him and a message for you." His bright eyes added 
 plainly — " as soon as we can get rid of those people." 
 
 " Then you think that a bill " — began the Mayor 
 eagerly. 
 
 " I think, my dear sir," said Paul plaintively, " that I 
 and my friends have already tried the patience of these two 
 young ladies quite enough yesterday with politics and law- 
 making. I have to catch the six-o'clock train to San 
 Francisco this evening, and have already lost the time I 
 hoped to spend with Miss Yerba by missing her at the con- 
 Vent. Let me stroll on here, if you like, and if I venture 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 225 
 
 to monopolize the attention of this young lady for half an 
 hour, you, my dear Mr. Mayor, who have more frequent 
 access to her, I know, will not begrudge it to me." 
 
 He placed himself beside Yerba and Milly, and began 
 an entertaining, although, I fear, slightly exaggerated, 
 account of his reception by the Lady Superior, and her evi- 
 dent doubts of his identity with the trustee mentioned in 
 Pendleton's letter of introduction. " I confess she fright- 
 ened me," he continued, " when she remarked that, accord.- 
 ing to my statement, I could have been only eighteen yeara 
 old when I became your guardian, and as much in want of 
 one as you were. I think that only her belief that Mr. 
 Woods and the Mayor would detect me as an impostor pro- 
 voked her at last to tell me your whereabouts." 
 
 " But why did they ever make you a trustee, for good- 
 ness' sake ? " said Milly naively. " Was there no one 
 grown up at that time that they could have called upon ? " 
 
 " Those were the early days of California," responded 
 Paul, with great gravity, although he was conscious that 
 Yerba was regarding him narrowly, " and I probably looked 
 older and more intelligent than I really was. For, can- 
 didly," with the consciousness of Yerba's eyes still upon 
 him, " I remember very little about it. I dare say I wa3 
 selected, as you kindly suggest, ' for goodness' sake.' " 
 
 " After all," said the volatile Milly, who seemed in- 
 clined, as chaperon, to direct the conversation, " there was 
 something pretty and romantic about it. You two poor 
 young things taking care of each other, for of course there 
 were no women here in those days." 
 
 " Of course there were women here," interrupted Yerba 
 quickly, with a half-meaning, half-interrogative glance at 
 Paul that made him instinctively uneasy. " You later 
 -•omers " — to Milly — " always seem to think that there 
 was nothing here before you ! " She paused, and then added, 
 with a naive mixture of reproach and coquetry that was as 
 
226 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 charming as it was unexpected, " As to taking care of eacL 
 other, Mr. Hathaway very quickly got rid of me, I believe." 
 
 " But I left you in better hands. Miss Yerba ; and let 
 me thank you now," he added in a lower tone, " for recog- 
 nizing it as you did a moment ago. I 'm glad that you in- 
 stinctively liked Colonel Pendleton. Had you known him 
 better, you would have seen how truthful that instinct was. 
 His chief fault in the eyes of our worthy friends is that he 
 reminds them of a great deal they can't perpetuate and 
 much they would like to forget." He checked himself 
 abruptly. " But here is your letter," he resumed, drawing 
 Colonel Pendleton's missive from his pocket, " perhaps you 
 would like to read it now, in case you have any message 
 to return by me. Miss Woods and I will excuse you." 
 
 They had reached the end of the rose-alley, where a sum- 
 mer-house that was in itself a rose-bower partly disclosed 
 itself. The other gentlemen had lagged behind. " I will 
 amuse Tnyself, and console your other guardian, dear," said 
 the vivacious Milly, with a rapid exchange of glances with 
 Yerba, "until this horrid basiness is over. Besides," she 
 added, with cheerful vagueness, " after so long a separation 
 you must have a great deal to say to each other." 
 
 Paul smiled as she rustled away, and Yerba, entering 
 the summer-house, sat down and opened the letter. The 
 young man remained leaning against the rustic archway, 
 occasionally glancing at her and at the moving figures in 
 the gardens. He was conscious of an odd excitement 
 which he could trace to no particular cause. It was true 
 that he had been annoyed at not finding the young girl at 
 the convent, and at having to justify himself to the Lady 
 Superior for what he conceived to be an act of gratuitous 
 kindness ; nor was he blind to the fact that his persistence 
 in following her was more an act of aggression against the 
 enemies of Pendleton than of concern for Yerba. She was 
 certainly pretty ; he could not remember her mother suffi- 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATfi 227 
 
 ciently to trace any likeness, and he had never admired the 
 mother's pronounced beauty. She had flashed out for an 
 instant into what seemed originality and feeling. But i*, 
 had passed, and she had asked no further questions in 
 regard to the colonel. 
 
 She had hurriedly skimmed through the letter, which 
 seemed to be composed of certain figures and accounts, 
 " I suppose it 's all right," she said ; " at least you can say 
 so if he asks you. It 's only an explanation why he has 
 transferred my money from the bank to the Eothschilds' agent 
 years ago. I don't see why it should interest me now." 
 
 Paul made no doubt that it was the same transfer that 
 had shipwrecked the colonel's fortune and alienated his 
 friends, and could not help 'replying somewhat pointedly, 
 " But I think it should. Miss Yerba. I don't know what 
 the colonel explained to you — doubtless, not the whole 
 truth, for he is not a man to praise himself ; but, the fact 
 is, the bank was in difficulties at the time of that transfer, 
 and, to make it, h^ sacrificed his personal fortune, and, I 
 think, awakened some of that ill feeling you have just 
 noticed." He checked himself too late : he had again lost 
 not only his tact and self-control, but had nearly betrayed 
 himself. He was surprised that the girl's justifiable igno- 
 rance should have irritated him. Yet she had evidently 
 not noticed, or misunderstood it, for she said, with a certain 
 precision that was almost studied : — 
 
 " Yes, I suppose it would have been a terrible thing to 
 him to have been suspected of misappropriating a Trust con- 
 fided to him by parties who had already paid him the high 
 compliment of confiding to his care a secret and a fortune." 
 
 Paul glanced at her quickly with astonishment. Was 
 this ignorance, or suspicion ? Her manner, however, sud- 
 denly changed, with the charming capriciousness of youth 
 and conscious beauty. " He speaks of you in this letter," 
 she said, letting her dark eyes rest on him provokingly. 
 
228 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 " That accounts for your lack of interest then," said 
 Paul gayly, relieved to turn a conversation fraught with so 
 much danger. 
 
 " But he speaks very flatteringly/' she went on. "He 
 seems to be another one of your admirers. I 'm sure, Mr. 
 Hathaway, after that scene in the hotel parlor yesterday, 
 you, at least, cannot complain of having been misrepre- 
 sented before me. To tell you the truth, I think I hated 
 you a little for it." 
 
 " You were quite right," returned Paul. " I must have 
 been insufferable! And I admit that I was slightly 
 piqued against you for the idolatries showered upon you at 
 the same moment by your friends." 
 
 Usually, when two young people have reached the point 
 of confidingly exchanging their first impressions of each 
 other, some progress has been made in first acquaintance. 
 But it did not strike Paul in that way, and Yerba's next 
 remark was discouraging. 
 
 "But I'm rather disappointed, for all that. Colonel 
 Pendleton tells me you know nothing of my family or of 
 the secret." 
 
 Paul was this time quite prepared, and withstood the 
 girl's scrutiny calmly. " Do you think," he asked lightly, 
 " that even he knows ? " 
 
 " Of course he does," she returned quickly. " Do you 
 suppose he would have taken all that trouble you have 
 just talked about if he did n't know it ? And feared the 
 consequences, perhaps ? " she added, with a slight return 
 of her previous expressive manner. 
 
 Again Paul was puzzled and irritated, he knew not why. 
 But he only said pleasantly, " I differ from you there. I 
 am afraid that such a thing as fear never entered into 
 Colonel Pendleton's calculations on any subject. I think 
 he would act the same towards the highest and the lowest, 
 the powerful or the most weak." As she glanced at him 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 229 
 
 quickly and mischievously, he added, " I am quite willing 
 to believe that his knowledge of you made his duty plea- 
 Banter." 
 
 He was again quite sincere, and his slight sympathy had 
 that irresistible quality of tone and look which made him 
 so dangerous. For he was struck with the pretty, soothed 
 self-complacency that had shone in her face since he had 
 spoken of Pendleton's equal disinterestedness. It seemed, 
 too, as if what he had taken for passion or petulance in her 
 manner had been only a resistance to some continual ag- 
 gression of condition. With that remainder held in check, 
 a certain latent nobility was apparent, as of her true self. 
 In this moment of pleased abstraction she had drawn 
 through the lattice-work of one of the windows a spray of 
 roses clinging to the vine, and with her graceful head a lit- 
 tle on one side, was softly caressing her cheek with it. 
 She certainly was very pretty. From the crown of her 
 dark little head to the narrow resetted slippers that had 
 been idly tapping the ground, but now seemed to press it 
 more proudly, with arched insteps and small ankles, she 
 was pleasant to look upon. 
 
 " Bat you surely have something else to think about, 
 Miss Yerba ? " said the young man, with conviction. " In 
 a few months you will be of age, and rid of those dread- 
 fully stupid guardians ; with your " — 
 
 The loosened rose-spray flew irom her hand out of the 
 window as she made a gesture, half real, half assumed, of 
 imploring supplication. " Oh, please, Mr. Hathaway, for 
 Heaven's sake don't you begin too ! You are going to say 
 that, with my wealth, my accomplishments, my beauty, my 
 friends, what more can I want ? What do I care about a 
 secret that can neither add to them nor take them away ? 
 Yes, you were ! It 's the regular thing to say — every- 
 body says it. Why, I should have thought ' the youngest 
 senator ' could afford to have been more original." 
 
230 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 " I plead guilty to all the weaknesses of humanity," said 
 Paul warmly, again beginning to believe that he had been 
 most unjust to her independence. 
 
 " Well, I forgive you, because you have forgotten to 
 say that, if I don't like the name of Yerba Buena, I could 
 so easily change that too." 
 
 " But you do like it," said Paul, touched with this first 
 hearing of her name in her own musical accents, " or would 
 like it if you heard yourself pronounce it." It suddenly 
 recurred to him, with a strange thrill of pleasure, that he 
 himself had given it to her. It was as if he had created 
 some musical instrument to which she had just given voice. 
 In his enthusiasm he had thrown himself on the bench be- 
 side her in an attitude that, I fear, was not as dignified as 
 became his elderly office. 
 
 " But you don't think that is my name," said the girl 
 quickly. 
 
 " I beg your pardon ? " said Paul hesitatingly. 
 
 " You don't think that anybody would have been so ut- 
 terly idiotic as to call me after a ground- vine — a vege- 
 table ? " she continued petulantly. 
 
 « Eh ? " stammered Paul. 
 
 " A name that could be so easily translated," she went 
 on, half scornfully, " and when translated, was no possible 
 title for anybody ? Think of it — Miss Good Herb ! It 
 is too ridiculous for anything." 
 
 Paul was not usually wanting in self-possession in an 
 emergency, or in skill to meet attack. But he was so con- 
 vinced of the truth of the girl's accusation, and now re- 
 called so vividly his own consternation on hearing the 
 result of his youthful and romantic sponsorship for the first 
 time from Pendleton, that he was struck with confusion. 
 
 " But what do you suppose it was intended for ? " he said 
 at last vaguely. " It was certainly ' Yerba Buena ' in the 
 Trust. At least, I suppose so," he corrected himself hurriedly. 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLPEN GATE 231 
 
 " It is only a supposition," she said qnietly, " for you 
 know it cannot be proved. The Trust was never recorded, 
 and the only copy could not be found among Mr. Ham- 
 mersley's papers. It is only part of the name, of which 
 the first is lost." 
 
 " Part of the name ? " repeated Paul uneasily. 
 
 " Part of it. It is a corruption of de la Yerba Buena, — 
 of the Yerba Buena, — and refers to the island of Yerba 
 Buena in the bay, and not to the plant. That island was 
 part of the property of my family — the Arguellos — you 
 will find it so recorded in the Spanish grants. My name 
 is Arguello de la Yerba Buena." 
 
 It is impossible to describe the timid yet triumphant, the 
 half-appealing yet complacent, conviction of the girl's utter- 
 ance. A moment before, Paul would have believed it im- 
 possible for him to have kept his gravity and his respect 
 for his companion under this egregious illusion. But he 
 kept both. For a sudden conviction that she suspected 
 the truth, and had taken this audacious and original plan 
 of crushing it, overpowered all other sense. The Arguel- 
 los, it flashed upon him, were an old Spanish family, 
 former owners of Yerba Buena Island, who had in the last 
 years become extinct. There had been a story that one of 
 them had eloped with an American ship captain's wife at Mon- 
 terey. The legendary history of early Spanish California 
 was filled with more remarkable incidents, corroborated 
 with little difficulty from Spanish authorities, who, it was 
 jlleged, lent themselves readily to any fabrication or for- 
 gery. There was no racial pride : on the contrary, they had 
 shown an eager alacrity to ally themselves with their con- 
 querors. The friends of the Arguellos would be proud 
 to recognize and remember in the American heiress the 
 descendant of their countrymen. All this passed rapidly 
 through his mind after the first moment of surprise ; all 
 this must have been the deliberate reasoning of this girl of 
 
232 A WAKD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 seventeen, whose dark eyes were bent upon him. Whether 
 she was seeking corroboration or complicity he could not tell. 
 
 " Have you found this out yourself ? " he asked, after' a 
 pause. 
 
 " Yes. One of my friends at the convent was Josita 
 Castro ; she knew all the history of the Arguellos. She is 
 perfectly satisfied." 
 
 For an instant Paul wondered if it was a joint conception 
 of the two schoolgirls. But, on reflection, he was persuaded 
 that Yerba would commit herself to no accomplice — of her 
 own sex. She might have dominated the girl, and would 
 make her a firm partisan, while the girl would be convinced 
 of it herself, and believe herself a free agent. He had had 
 such experience with men himself. 
 
 " But why have you not spoken of it before — and to 
 Colonel Pendleton ? " 
 
 " He did not choose to tell me," said Yerba, with feminine 
 dexterity. " I have preferred to keep it myself a secret till 
 I am of age." 
 
 " When Colonel Pendleton and some of the other trustees 
 have no right to say anything," thought Paul quickly. She 
 had evidently trusted him. Yet, fascinated as he had been 
 by her audacity, he did not know whether to be pleased, or 
 the reverse. He would have preferred to be placed on an 
 equal footing with Josita Castro. She anticipated his 
 thoughts by saying, with half-raised eyelids : — 
 
 " What do you think of it ? " 
 
 " It seems to be so natural and obvious an explanation of 
 the mystery that I only wonder it was not thought of before," 
 said Paul, with that perfect sincerity that made his sympathy 
 so effective. 
 
 "You see," — still under her pretty eyelids, and the 
 tender promise of a smile parting her little mouth, — "I'm 
 believing that you tell the truth when you say you don't 
 know anything about it." 
 
A WARD OF THK GOLDEN GATE 233 
 
 It was a desperate moment with Paul, but his sympathetic 
 instincts, and possibly his luck, triumphed. His momentary 
 hesitation easily simulated the caution of a conscientious 
 man ; his knit eyebrows and bright eyes, lowered in an effort 
 of memory, did the rest. " I remember it all so indis- 
 tinctly," he said, with literal truthfulness ; " there was a 
 veiled lady present, tall and dark, to whom Mayor Hammers- 
 ley and the colonel showed a singular, and, it struck me, as 
 an almost superstitious, respect. I remember now, distinctly, 
 I was impressed with the reverential way they both accom- 
 panied her to the door at the end of the interview." He 
 raised his eyes slightly ; the young girl's red lips were 
 parted ; that illumination of the skin, which was her nearest 
 approach to color, had quite transfigured her face. He 
 felt, suddenly, that she believed it, yet he had no sense of 
 remorse. He half believed it himself; at least, he remem- 
 bered the nobility of the mother's self-renunciation and its 
 effect upon the two men. Why should not the daughter 
 preserve this truthful picture of her mother's momentary 
 sxaltation ? Which was the most truthful — that, or the 
 degrading facts ? " You speak of a secret," he added. " I 
 can remember little more than that the Mayor asked me to 
 forget from that moment the whole occurrence. I did not 
 know at the time how completely I should fulfill his request. 
 Vou must remember. Miss Yerba, as your Lady Superior 
 has, that I was absvirdly young at the time. I don't know 
 but that I may have thought, in my youthful inexperience, 
 that this sort of thing was of common occurrence. And 
 then, I had my own future to make — and youth is brutally 
 selfish. I was quite friendless and unknown when I left 
 San Francisco for the mines, at the time you entered the 
 3onvent as Yerba Buena." 
 
 She smiled, and made a slight impulsive gesture, as if 
 she would have drawn nearer to him, but checked herself, 
 still smiling, and without embarrassment. It may have 
 
234 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 been a movement of youthful camaraderie, and that occa- 
 sional maternal rather than sisterly instinct which some- 
 times influences a young girl's masculine friendship, and 
 elevates the favored friend to the plane of the doll she has 
 outgrown. As he turned towards her, however, she rose, 
 shook out her yellow dress, and said with pretty petu- 
 lance : — 
 
 " Then you must go so soon — and this your first and 
 last visit as my guardian ? " 
 
 " No one could regret that more than I," looking at her 
 with undefined meaning. 
 
 " Yes," she said, with a tantalizing coquetry that might 
 have suggested an underlying seriousness. " I think you 
 have lost a good deal. Perhaps, so have I. We might 
 have been good friends in all these years. But that is 
 past." 
 
 " Why ? Surely, I hope, my shortcomings with Miss 
 Yerba Buena will not be remembered by Miss Arguello ? " 
 said Paul earnestly. 
 
 "Ah ! She may be a very different person." 
 
 " I hope not," said the young man warmly. " But how 
 different ? " 
 
 " Well, she may not put herself in the way of receiving 
 such point-blank compliments as that," said the young girl 
 demurely. 
 
 " Not from' her guardian ? " 
 
 " She will have no guardian then." She said this 
 gravely, but almost at the same moment turned and sat 
 down again, throwing her linked hands over her knee, and 
 looked at him mischievously. " You see what you have 
 lost, sir." 
 
 " I see," said Paul, but with all the gravity that she 
 had dropped. 
 
 "No; but you don't see all. I had no brother — no 
 triend. You might have been both. You might have made 
 
A WAED OF THE GOLDEN GATE 235 
 
 me what you liked. You might have educated me far bet- 
 ter than these teachers, or at least given me some pride in 
 my studies. There were so many things I wanted to know 
 that they could n't teach me ; so many times I wanted 
 advice from some one that I could trust. Colonel Pendleton 
 was very good to me when he came ; he always treated me 
 like a princess even when I wore short frocks. It was his 
 manner that first made me think he knew my family ; but 
 I never felt as if I could tell him anything, and I don't 
 think, with all his chivalrous respect, he ever understood 
 me. As to the others — the Mayors — well, you may 
 judge from Mr. Henderson. It is a wonder that I did not 
 run away or do something desperate. Now, are you not a 
 little sorry ? " 
 
 Her voice, which had as many capricious changes as her 
 manner, and had been alternately coquettish, petulant, and 
 serious, had now become playful again. But, like the rest 
 of her sex, she was evidently more alert to her surroundings 
 at such a moment than her companion, for before he could 
 make any reply, she said, without apparently looking, 
 " But there is a deputation coming for you, Mr. Hathar 
 way. You see, the case is hopeless. You never would be 
 able to give to one what is claimed by the many." 
 
 Paul glanced down the rose-alley, and saw that the 
 deputation in question was composed of the Mayor, Mr. 
 Woods, a thin, delicate-looking woman, — evidently Mrs. 
 Woods, — and Milly. The latter managed to reach the 
 summer-house first, with apparently youthful alacrity, but 
 really to exchange, in a single glance, some mysterious fem- 
 inine signal with Yerba. Then she said with breathless 
 infelicity : — 
 
 " Before you two get bored with each other now, I must 
 tell you there 's a chance of your having more time. Aunty 
 has promised to send off a note excusing you to the Rever- 
 end Mother, if she can persuade Mr. Hathaway to atay over 
 
236 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 to-night. But here they are. [To Yerba] Aunty is most 
 anxious, and won't hear of his going." 
 
 Indeed, it seemed as if Mrs. Woods was, after a reiined 
 fashion, most concerned that a distinguished visitor like 
 Mr. Hathaway should have to use her house as a mere ac- 
 cidental meeting-place with his ward, without deigning to 
 accept her hospitality. She was reinforced by Mr. Woods, 
 who enunciated the same idea with more masculine vigoi' ; 
 and by the Mayof, who expressed his conviction that a 
 slight of this kind to Eosario would be felt in the Santa 
 Clara valley. " After dinner, my dear Hathaway," con- 
 cluded Mr. Woods, " a few of our neighbors may drop in, 
 who would be glad to shake you by the hand- — no formal 
 meeting, my boy - — but, hang it ! they expect it." 
 
 Paul looked around for Yerba. There was really no rea- 
 son why he shouldn't accept, although an hour ago the 
 idea had nevei; entered his mind. Yet, if he did, he would 
 like the girl to know that it was ion 7ier sake. Unfortu- 
 nately, far from exhibiting any concern in the matter, she 
 seemed to be preoccupied with Milly, and only the charm- 
 ing back of her head was visible behind Mrs. Woods. He 
 accepted, however, with a hesitation that took some of the 
 graciousness from his yielding, and a sense that he was giv- 
 ing a strange importance to a trivial circumstance. 
 
 The necessity of- attaching himself to his hostess, and 
 making a more extended tour of the grounds, for a while 
 diverted him from an uneasy oo}isideratioh of his past inter- 
 view. Mrs. Woods had known Yeirba through the school 
 friendship of Milly, and, as far as the religious rules of the 
 convent would allow, had always been delighted to show 
 her any hospitality. She was a beautiful girl - — did ilot 
 Mr. Hathaway think so ? — and a girl of great character. 
 It was a pity, of course, that she had never known a mother's 
 care, and that the present routine of a boarding-school had 
 usurped the tender influences of home. She believed, too, 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 237 
 
 thai the singular rotation of guardianship had left the girl 
 practically without a counseling friend to rely upon, except, 
 perhaps, Colonel Pendleton ; and while she, Mrs. Woods, 
 did not for a moment doubt that the colonel might be a 
 good friend and a pleasant companion of inen, really he, 
 Mr. Hathaway, must admit that, with his reputation and 
 habits, he wus hardly a fit associate for a young lady. In- 
 deed, Mr. Woods would have never allowed Milly to invite 
 Yerba here if Colonel Pendleton was to have been her 
 escort. Of course, the poor girl could not choose her own 
 guardian, but Mr. Woods said he had a right to choose who 
 should be his niece's company. Perhaps Mr. Woods was 
 prejudiced, — most men were, — yet surely Mr. Hathaway, 
 although a loyal friend of Colonel Pendleton's, must admit 
 that when it was an open scandal that the colonel had 
 fought a duel about a notoriously common woman, and even 
 blasphemously defended her before a party of gentlemen, 
 it was high time, as Mr. Woods said, that he should be re- 
 manded to their company exclusively. No ; Mrs. Woods 
 could not admit that this was owing to the injustice of her 
 own sex ! Men are really the ones who make the fuss over 
 those things, just as they, as Mr. Hatha v/ay well knew, 
 made the laws ! No ; it was a great pity, as she and her 
 husband had just agreed, that Mr. Hathaway, of all the 
 guardians, could not have been always the help and coun- 
 selor — in fact, the elder brother — of poor Yerba ! Paul 
 was conscious that he winced slightly, consistently and con- 
 scientiously, at the recollection of certain passages of his 
 youth ; inconsistently and meanly at this suggestion of a 
 joint relationship with Yerba's mother. 
 
 " I think, too," continued Mrs. W^oods, " she has worried 
 foolishly about this ridiculous mystery of her parentage ^ — ■ 
 as if it could make' the' slightest difference to a girl with a 
 (quarter of a million, or as if that did n't show quite con- 
 Elusively that she was somebody ! " 
 
238 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 " Certainly," said Paul quickly, with a relief that ht 
 nevertheless felt was ridiculous. 
 
 " And, of course, I dare say it will all come out when 
 she is of age. I suppose you know if any of the family are 
 still living ? " 
 
 " I really do not." 
 
 " I beg your pardon," said Mrs. Woods, with a smile. 
 " I forgot it 's a profound secret until then. But here we 
 are at the house ; I see the girls have walked over to our 
 neighbors'. Perhaps you would like to have a few moments 
 to yourself before you dress for dinner, and your portman- 
 teau, which has been sent for, comes from your hotel. You 
 must be tired of seeing so many people." 
 
 Paul was glad to accept any excuse for being alone, and, 
 thanking his hostess, followed a servant to his room — a 
 low-ceilinged but luxuriously furnished apartment on the 
 first floor. Here he threw himself on a cushioned lounge 
 that filled the angle of the deep embrasure — the thickness 
 of the old adobe walls — that formed a part of the wooden- 
 latticed window. A Cape jessamine climbing beside it filled 
 the room with its subtle, intoxicating perfume. It was so 
 strong, and he felt himself so irresistibly overpowered and 
 impelled towards a merely idle reverie, that, in order to 
 think more clearly and shut out some strange and unreason- 
 ing enthrall ment of his senses, he rose and sharply closed 
 the window. Then he sat down and reflected. 
 
 What was he doing here ? and what was the meaning of 
 all this ? He had come simply to fulfill a duty to his past, 
 and please a helpless and misunderstood old acquaintance. 
 He had performed that duty. But he had incidentally 
 learned a certain fact that might be important to this friend, 
 and clearly his duty was simply to go back and report it- 
 He would gain nothing more in the way of corroboration o^ 
 it by staying now, if further corroboration were required 
 Colonel Pendleton had already been uselessly and absurdly 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 239 
 
 perplexed about the possible discovery of the girl's parent- 
 age, and its effect upon her fortunes and herself. She had 
 just settled that of her own accord, and, without committing 
 herself or others, had suggested a really sensible plan by 
 ■which all trouble would be avoided in future. That v « 
 the common-sense way of looking at it. He would lay tie 
 plan before the colonel, have him judge of its expediency 
 and its ethics — and even the question whether she already 
 knew the real truth, or was self-deceived. That done, he 
 would return to his own affairs in Sacramento. There was 
 nothing difficult in this, or that need worry him, only he 
 could have done it just as well an hour ago. 
 
 He opened the window again. The scent of the jessa- 
 mine came in as before, but mingled with the cooler breath 
 of the roses. There was nothing intoxicating or unreal in 
 it now ; rather it seemed a gentle aromatic stimulant — of 
 thought. Long shadows of unseen poplars beyond barred 
 the garden lanes and alleys with bands of black and yellow. 
 A slanting pencil of sunshine through the trees was for a 
 moment focused on a bed of waxen callas before a hedge of 
 ceanothus, and struck into dazzling relief the cold white 
 chalices of the flowers and the vivid shining green of their 
 background. Presently it slid beyond to a tiny fountain, 
 before invisible, and wrought a blinding miracle out of its 
 flashing and leaping spray. Yet even as he gazed, the foun- 
 tain seemed to vanish slowly, the sunbeam slipped on, and 
 beyond it moved the shimmer of white and yellow dresses. 
 It was Yerba and Milly returning to the house. Well, he 
 would not interrupt his reflections by idly watching them ; 
 he would, probably, see a great deal of Yerba that evening, 
 and by that time he would have come to some conclusion in 
 regard to her. 
 
 But he had not taken into consideration her voice, which, 
 always musical in its Southern intonation and quite audible 
 in the quiet garden, struck him now as being full of joyous 
 
240 A WAED OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 sweetness. Well, she was certainly very happy '■ — or very 
 thoughtless. She was actually romping with Milly, and was 
 now evidently being chased down the rose-alley by that 
 volatile young woman. Then these swift Camillas appar- 
 ently neared the house, there was the rapid rustle of skirts, 
 the skurrying of little feet on the veranda, a stumble, a 
 mouselike shriek from Milly, and her voice, exhausted, 
 dying, happy, broken with half-hushed laughter, rose to him 
 on the breath of the jessamine and rose. 
 
 Surely she was a child, and, if a child, how he had mis- 
 judged her ! What if all that he had believed was mature 
 deliberation was only the innocent imaginings of a romantic 
 girl, all that he had taken seriously only a schoolgirl's foolish 
 dream ! Instead of combating it, instead of reasoning with 
 her, instead of trying to interest her in other things, he had 
 even helped on her illusions. He had treated her as if the 
 taint of her mother's worldliness and knowledge of evil was 
 in her pure young flesh. He had recognized her as the 
 daughter of an adventuress, and not as his ward, appealing 
 to his chivalry through her very ignorance — it might be her 
 very childish vanity. He had brought to a question of 
 tender and pathetic interest only his selfish opinion of the 
 vcorld and the weaknesses of mankind. The blood came to 
 his cheeks, — with all his experienced self-control, he had 
 not lost the youthful trick of blushing, — and he turned 
 away from the window as if it had breathed a reproach. 
 
 But ought he have even contented himself with destroying 
 her illusions — ought he not have gone farther and told 
 her the whole truth ? Ought he not first have won her 
 confidence — he remembered bitterly, now, how she had 
 intimated that she had no one to confide in — and, after 
 revealing her mother's history, have still pledged himself to 
 keep the secret from all others, and assisted her in her plan ? 
 Tt would not have altered the state of affairs, except so far 
 as she was concerned ; they could have combined together ; 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 241 
 
 his ready wit would have helped him ; and his sympathy 
 would have sustained her ; but — 
 
 How and in what way could he have told her ? Leaving 
 out the delicate and difficult periphrase by which her mother's 
 shame would have to be explained to an innocent schoolgirl 
 — what right could lie have assumed to tell it ? As the 
 guardian who had never counseled or protected her ? As 
 an acquaintance of hardly an hour ago ? Who would have 
 such a right ? A lover — on whose lips it would only seem 
 a tacit appeal to her gratitude or her fears, and whom no 
 sensitive girl could accept thereafter ? Ko. A husband ? 
 Yes ! He remembered, with a sudden start, what Pendleton 
 had said to him. Good Heavens ! Had Pendleton that 
 idea in his mind ? And yet — it seemed the only solution. 
 
 A knock at his door was followed by the appearance of 
 Mr. Woods. Mr. Hathaway's portmanteau had come, and 
 Mrs. Woods had sent a message, saying that in view of the 
 limited time that Mr. Hathaway would have with his ward, 
 Mrs. Woods would forego her right to keep him at her side 
 at dinner, and yield her place to Yerba. Paul thanked him 
 with a grave inward smile. What if he made his dramatic 
 disclosure to her confidentially over the soup and fish ? 
 Yet, in his constantly recurring conviction of the girl's 
 independence, he made no doubt she would have met his 
 brutality with unflinching pride and self-possession. He 
 began to dress slowly, at times almost forgetting himself in 
 a new kind of pleasant apathy, which he attributed to the 
 odor of the flowers, and the softer hush of twilight that had 
 come on with the dying away of the trade-winds, and the 
 restful spice of the bay-trees near his window. He presently 
 found himself not so much thinking of Yerba as of seeing 
 her. A picture of her in the summer-house caressing her 
 cheek with the roses seemed to stand but from the shadows 
 of the blank wall opposite him. When he passed into the 
 dressing-room beyond, it was not his own face he saw in the 
 
242 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 glass, but heis. It was with a start, as if he had heard her 
 voice, that he found upon his dressing-table a small vase 
 containing a flower for his coat, with the penciled words on 
 a card in a schoolgirl's hand, " From Yerba, with thanks 
 for staying." It must have been placed there by a servant 
 while he was musing at the window. 
 
 Half a dozen people were already in the drawing-room 
 when Paul descended. It appeared that Mr. Woods had 
 invited certain of his neighbors — among them a Judge 
 Baker and his wife, and Don Ceesar Briones, of the adja- 
 cent Rancho of Los Pajaros, and his sister, the Dona Anna. 
 Milly and Yerba had not yet appeared. Don Caesar, a 
 young man of a toreador build, roundly bland in face and 
 murky in eye, seemed to notice their absence, and kept his 
 glances towards the door, while Paul engaged in conversation 
 with Dofia Anna — if that word could convey an impression 
 of a conventionality which that good-humored young lady 
 converted into an animated flirtation at the second sentence 
 with a single glance and two shakes of her fan. And then 
 Milly fluttered in — a vision of schoolgirl freshness and 
 white tulle, and a moment later — with a pause of expec- 
 tation — a tall, graceful figure, that at first Paul scarcely 
 recognized. 
 
 It is a popular conceit of our sex that we are superior to 
 any effect of feminine adornment, and that a pretty girl is 
 equally pretty in the simplest frock. Yet there was not a 
 man in the room who did not believe that Yerba in hei 
 present attire was not only far prettier than before, but that 
 she indicated a new and more delicate form of beauty. It 
 was not the mere revelation of contour and color of an 
 ordinary decollete dress, it was a perfect presentment of 
 pure symmetry and carriage. In this black grenadine dress, 
 tiiranied with jet, not only was the delicate satin sheen of 
 her skin made clearer by contrast, but she looked every 
 inch her full height, with an ideal exaltation of breeding 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 243 
 
 and culture. She wore no jewelry except a small necklace 
 of pearls — so small it might have been a child's — that 
 fitted her slender throat so tightly that it could scarcely be 
 told from the flesh that it clasped. Paul did not know 
 that it was the gift of the mother to the child that she had 
 forsworn only a few weeks before she parted from her for- 
 ever ; but he had a vague feeling that, in that sable dress 
 that seemed like mourning, she walked at the funeral of 
 her mother's past. A few white flowers in her corsage, the 
 companions of the solitary one in his buttonhole, were the 
 only relief. 
 
 Their eyes met for a single moment, the look of admira- 
 tion in Paul's being answered 'by the naive consciousness in 
 Yerba's of a woman looking her best ; but the next mo- 
 ment she appeared preoccupied with the others, and the 
 eager advances of Don Caesar. 
 
 " Your brother seems to admire Miss Yerba," said Paul, 
 
 " Ah, ye — es," returned Dona Anna. "And you ? " 
 
 "Oh!" said Paul gayly, "/.'' Z" am her guardian — 
 with me it is simple egotism, you know." 
 
 " Ah ! " returned the arch DoBia Anna, " you are then 
 already so certain of her ? Good ! I shall warn him." 
 
 A precaution that did seem necessary ; as later, when 
 Paul, at a signal from his hostess, offered his arm to Yerba, 
 the young Spaniard regarded him with a look of startled 
 curiosity. 
 
 "I thank you for selecting me to wear your colors," said 
 Paul, with a glance at the flowers in her corsage, as they 
 sat at table, " and I think I deserve them, since, but for 
 you, I should have been on my way to San Francisco at 
 this moment. Shall I have an opportunity of talking to 
 you a few minutes later in the evening ? " he added in a 
 lower tone. 
 
 " Why not now ? " returned Yerba mischievously. " We 
 are set here expressly for that purpose." 
 
244 A WAED OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 " Surely not to talk of our own business — I should say-j 
 of our familij affairs," said Paul, looking at her witli equal 
 playfulness ; " though I believe your friend Don Csesar, 
 opposite, would be more pleased if he were sure that was all 
 we did." 
 
 " And you think his sister would share in that pleasure ? " 
 retorted Yerba. " I warn you, Mr. Hathaway, that you 
 have been quite justifying the Reverend Mother's doubts 
 about your venerable pretensions. Everybody is staring 
 at you now." 
 
 Paul looked up mechanically. It was true. Whether 
 from some occult sympathy, from a human tendency to ad- 
 mire obvious fitness and symmetry, or the innocent love 
 with which the world regards innocent lovers, they were all 
 observing Yerba and himself with undisguised attention. 
 A good talker, he quickly led the conversation to other 
 topics. It was then that he discovered that Yerba was 
 not only accomplished, but that this convent-bred girl had 
 acquired a singular breadth of knowledge apart from the 
 ordinary routine of the school curriculum. She spoke and 
 thought with independent perceptions and clearness, yet 
 without the tactlessness and masculine abruptness that is 
 apt to detract from feminine originality of reflection. By 
 some tacit understanding that had the charm of mutual con- 
 fidence, they both exerted themselves to please the company 
 rather than each other, and Paul, in the interchange of 
 sallies with Dona Anna, had a certain pleasure in heariiig 
 Yerba converse in Spanish with Don Csesar. But in a few 
 moments he observed, with some uneasiness, that they were 
 talking of the old Spanish occupation, and presently of the 
 old Spanish families. Would she prematurely expose an 
 ignorance that might be hereafter remembered against her. 
 or invite some dreadful genealogical reminiscence that would 
 destroy her hopes and raze her Spanish castles ? Or was 
 she simply collecting information ? He admired the dex- 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 245 
 
 terity with which, without committing herself, she made 
 Don Caesar openly and even confidentially communicative. 
 And yet he was on thorns ; at times it seemed as if he him- 
 self were playing a part in this imposture of Yerba's. He 
 was aware that his wandering attention was noticed by the 
 quick-witted Dona Anna, when he regained his self-posses- 
 sion by what appeared to be a happy diversion. It was the 
 voice of Mrs. Judge Baker calling across the table to Yerba. 
 By one of the peculiar accidents of general conversation, it 
 was the one apparently trivial remark that in a pause 
 challenged the ears of all. 
 
 " We were admiring your necklace, Miss Yerba." 
 
 Every eye was turned upon the slender throat of the 
 handsome girl. The excuse was so natural. 
 
 Yerba put her hand to her neck with a smile. " You 
 are joking, Mrs. Baker. I know it is ridiculously small, 
 but it is a child's necklace, and I wear it because it was a 
 gift from my mother." 
 
 Paul's heart sank again with consternation. It was the 
 first time he had heard the girl distinctly connect herself 
 with her actual mother, and for an instant he felt as 
 startled as if the forgotten Outcast herself had returned and 
 taken a seat at the board. 
 
 " I told you it could n't be so ! " remarked Mrs. Baker 
 to her husband. 
 
 Everybody naturally looked inquiringly upon the couple, 
 and Mrs. Baker explained w'ith a smile, "Bob thinks he's 
 seen it before ; men are so obstinate." 
 
 " Pardon me. Miss Yerba," said the Judge blandly, 
 " would you mind showing it to me, if it is not too much 
 trouble ? " 
 
 " Not at all," said Yerba, smiling, and detaching the cir- 
 clet from her neck. " I 'm afraid you '11 find it rather old- 
 fashioned." 
 
 " That 's just what I hops to find it," said Judge 
 
246 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 Baker, with a triumphant glance at his wife. "It was 
 eight years ago when I saw it in Tucker's jewelry shop. I 
 wanted to buy it for my little Minnie, but as the price was 
 steep I hesitated, and when I did make up my mind he had 
 disposed of it to another customer. Yes," he added, ex- 
 amining the necklace which Yerba had handed to him, " I 
 am certain it is the same : it was unique, like this. Odd, 
 is n't it ? " 
 
 Everybody said it was odd, and looked upon the occur- 
 rence- with that unreasoning satisfaction with which aver- 
 age humanity receives the most trivial and unmeaning co- 
 incidences. It was loft to Don Csesar to give it a gallant 
 application. 
 
 " I have not-a the pleasure of knowing-a the Miss Minnie, 
 but the jewelry, when she arrives, to the throat-a of Miss 
 Yerba, she has not lost the value — the beauty — the 
 charm." 
 
 " No," said Woods cheerily. " The fact is. Baker, you 
 were too slow. Miss Yerba's folks gobbled up the neck- 
 lace while you were thinking. You were a newcomer. 
 Old 'forty-niners' did not hesitate over a thing they 
 wanted." 
 
 " You never knew who was your successful rival, eh ? " 
 said Doiia Anna, turning to Judge Baker, with a curious 
 glance at Paul's pale face in passing. 
 
 "No," said Baker, " but " — he stopped with a hesitating 
 laugh and some little confusion. " No, I 've mixed it up 
 with something else. It 's so long ago. I never knew, or 
 if I did I 've forgotten. But the necklace I remember." 
 He handed it back to Yerba with a bow, and the incident 
 ended. 
 
 Paul had not looked at Yerba during this conversation, 
 an unreasoning instinct that he might confuse her, an 
 equally unreasoning dread that he might see her confused 
 by others, possessing him. And when he did glance at her 
 
A WAKD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 247 
 
 calm, untroubled face, that seemed only a little surprised 
 at his own singular coldness, he was by no means relieved. 
 He was only convinced of one thing. In the last five 
 minutes he had settled upon the irrevocable determination 
 that his present relations with the girl could exist no longer. 
 He must either tell her everything, or see her no more. 
 There was no middle course. She was on the brink of an 
 exposure at any moment, either through her ignorance or 
 her unhappy pretension. In his intolerable position, he 
 was equally unable to contemplate her peril, accept her 
 defense, or himself defend her. 
 
 As if, with some feminine instinct, she had attributed 
 his silence to some jealousy of Don Caesar's attentions, she 
 more than once turned from the Spaniard to Paul with an 
 assuring smile. In his anxiety, he half accepted the rather 
 humiliating suggestion, and managed to say to her in a 
 lower tone : — 
 
 " On this last visit of your American guardian, one 
 would tnink, you need not already anticipate your Spanish 
 relations." 
 
 He was thrilled with the mischievous yet faintly tender 
 pleasure that sparkled in her eyes as she said : — 
 
 " You forget it is my American guardian's first visit, as 
 well as his last." 
 
 "And as your guardian," he went on, with half-veiled 
 seriousness, " I protest against your allowing your trea- 
 sures, the property of the Trust," he gazed directly into her 
 beautiful eyes, " being handled and commented upon by 
 everybody." 
 
 When the ladies had left the table, he was, for a mo- 
 ment, relieved. But only for a moment. Judge Baker 
 drew his chair beside Paul's, and, taking his cigar from 
 his lips, said, with a perfunctory laugh : — 
 
 " I say, Hathaway, I pulled up just in time to save my- 
 self from making an awful speech, just now, to your ward." 
 
248 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 Paul looked at him with cold curiosity. 
 
 " Yes. Gad ! Do you know who was my rival in that 
 necklace transaction ? " 
 
 " No," said Paul, with frigid carelessness. 
 
 " Why, Kate Howard ! Fact, sir. She bought it right 
 under my nose — and overbid me, too." 
 
 Paul did not lose his self-possession. Thanks to the 
 fact that Yerba was not present, and that Don Caesar, who 
 had overheard the speech, moved forward with a suggestive 
 and unpleasant smile, his agitation congealed into a coldly 
 placid fury. 
 
 " And I suppose," he replied, with perfect calmness, 
 " that after the usual habit of this class of women, the neck- 
 lace very soon found its way back, through the pawnbroker, 
 to the jeweler again. It 's a common fate." 
 
 " Yes, of course," returned Judge Baker cheerfully. 
 " You 're quite right. That 's undoubtedly the solution of 
 it. But," with a laugh, " I had a narrow escape from say- 
 ing something — eh ? " 
 
 " A very narrow escape from an apparently gratuitous 
 insult," said Paul gravely, but fixing his eyes, now more 
 luminous than ever with anger, not on the speaker, but on 
 the face of Don Csesar, who was standing at his side. " You 
 were about to say " — 
 
 " Eh — oh — ah ! this Kate Howard ? So ! I have 
 heard of her — yees ! And Miss Yerba — ah — she is of 
 my country — I think. Yes — we shall claim her — of 
 a truth — yes." 
 
 " Your countrymen, I believe, are in the habit of mak- 
 ing claims that are more often founded on profit than ver- 
 ity," said Paul, with smileless and insulting deliberation. 
 He knew perfectly what he was saying, and the result he 
 expected. Only twenty-four hours before he had smiled 
 at Pendleton's idea of averting scandal and discovery by 
 fighting, yet he was endeavoring to pick a quarrel with a 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 249 
 
 man, merely on suspicion, for the same purpose, and he 
 saw nothing strange in it. A vague idea, too, that this 
 would irrevocahly confirm him in opposition to Yerba's 
 illusions probably determined him. 
 
 But Don Caesar, albeit smiling lividly, did not seem 
 inclined to pick up the gauntlet, and Woods interfered 
 hastily. "Don Csesar means that your ward has some 
 idea herself that she is of Spanish origin — at least, Milly 
 says so. But of course, as one of the oldest trustees, you 
 know the facts." 
 
 In another moment Paul would have committed himself. 
 " I think we '11 leave Miss Yerba out of the question," he 
 said coldlj'. " My remark was a general one, although, 
 of course, I am responsible for any personal application 
 of it." 
 
 " Spoken like a politician, Hathaway," said Judge Baker, 
 with an effusive enthusiasm, which he hoped would atone 
 for the alarming results of his infelicitous speech. " That 's 
 right, gentlemen 1 You can't get the facts from him 
 before he is ready to give them. Keep your secret, Mr. 
 Hathaway, the court is with you." 
 
 Nevertheless, as they passed out of the room to join the 
 ladies, the Mayor lingered a little behind with Woods. 
 " It 's easy to see the influence of that Pendleton on our 
 young friend," he said significantly. " Somebody ought to 
 tell him that it 's played out down here — as Pendleton is. 
 It 's quite enough to ruin his career." 
 
 Paul was too observant not to notice this, but it brought 
 him no sense of remorse ; and his youthful belief in him- 
 self and his power kept him from concern. He felt as if 
 he had done something, if only to show Don Csesar that the 
 girl's weakness or ignorance could not be traded upon with 
 impunity. But he was still undecided as to the course he 
 should pursue. But he should determine that to-night. At 
 present there seemed no chance of talking to her alone — 
 
250 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 she was unconcernedly conversing with Milly and Mrs. 
 Woods, and ah-eady the visitors who had been invited to 
 this hurried levee in his honor were arriving. In view of 
 his late indiscretion, he nervously exerted his fullest powers, 
 and in a very few minutes was surrounded by a breathless 
 and admiring group of worshipers. A ludicrous resem- 
 blance to the scene in the Golden Gate Hotel passed through 
 his mind ; he involuntarily turned his eyes to seek Yerba in 
 the half-fear, half-expectation of meeting her mischievous 
 smile. Their glances met ; to his surprise hers was smile- 
 less, and instantly withdrawn, but not until he had been 
 thrilled by an unconscious prepossession in its luminous 
 depths that he scarcely dared to dwell upon. What mat^ 
 tered now this passage with Don Caesar or the plaudits of 
 his friends ? She was proud of him ! 
 
 Yet, after that glance, she was shy, preoccupying herself 
 with Milly, or even listening sweetly to Judge Baker's 
 somewhat practical and unromantic reminiscences of the 
 deprivations and the hardships of California early days, as 
 if to condone his past infelicity. She was pleasantly unaf- 
 fected with Don Ceesar, although she managed to draw Dona 
 Anna into the conversation ; she was unconventional, Paul 
 fancied, to all but himself. Once or twice, when he had 
 artfully drawn her towards the open French window that 
 led to the moonlit garden and shadowed veranda, she had 
 managed to link Milly's arm in her own, and he was confi- 
 dent that a suggestion to stroll with him in the open air 
 would be followed by her invitation to Milly to accompany 
 them. Disappointed and mortified as he was, he found some 
 solace in her manner, which he still believed suggested the 
 hope that she might be made accessible to his persuasions. 
 Persuasions to what ? He did not know. 
 
 The last guest had departed ; he lingered on the veranda 
 with a cigar, begging his host and hostess not to trouble 
 themselves to keep him company. Milly and Yerba had 
 
A -WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 25] 
 
 retired to the former's boudoir, but, as they had not yet 
 formally bade him good-night, there was a chance of their 
 returning. He still stayed on in this hope for half an hour, 
 and then, accepting Yerba's continued absence as a tacit 
 refusal of his request, he turned abruptly away. But as he 
 glanced around the garden before reentering the house, he 
 was struck by a singular circumstance — a white patch, like 
 a forgotten shawl, which he had observed on the distant 
 ceanothus hedge, and which had at first thrilled him with 
 expectation, had certainly changed its position. Before, it 
 seemed to be near the summer-house ; now it was, undoubt- 
 edly, farther away. Could they, or she alone, have slipped 
 from the house and be awaiting him there ? With a mut- 
 tered exclamation at his stupidity he stepped hastily from 
 the veranda and walked towards it. But he had scarcely 
 proceeded a dozen yards before it disappeared. He reached 
 the summer-house — it was empty ; he followed the line 
 of hedge — no one was there. It could not have been she, 
 or she would have waited, unless he were the victim of a 
 practical joke. He turned impatiently back to the house, 
 reentered the drawing-room by the French window, and was 
 crossing the half-lit apartment, when he heard a slight rustle 
 in the shadow of the window. He looked around quickly, 
 and saw that it was Yerba, in a white, loose gown, for which 
 she had already exchanged her black evening dress, leaning 
 back composedly on the sofa, her hands clasped behind her 
 shapely head. 
 
 " I am waiting for Milly," she said, with a faint smile 
 on her lips. He fancied, in the moonlight that streamed 
 upon her, that her beautiful face was pale. " She has gone 
 to the other wing to see one of the servants who is ill. We 
 thought you were on the veranda smoking and I should 
 have company, until I saw you start off, and rush up and 
 down the hedge like mad." 
 
 Paul felt that he was losing his self-possession, and be 
 
252 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 coming nervous in her presence. " I thought it was yoM," 
 he stammered. 
 
 " Me ! Out in the garden at this hour, alone, and in the 
 broad moonlight ? What are you thinking of, Mr. Hatha- 
 way ? Do you know anything of convent rules, or is that 
 your idea of your ward's education ? " 
 
 He fancied that, though she smiled faintly, her voice was 
 as tremulous as his own. 
 
 " I want to speak with you," he said, with awkward 
 directness. " I even thought of asking you to stroll with 
 me in the garden." 
 
 " Why not talk here ? " she returned, changing her posi- 
 tion, pointing to the other end of the sofa, and drawing the 
 whole overflow of her skirt to one side. "It is not so very 
 late, and Milly will return in a few moments." 
 
 Her face was in shadow now, but there was a glow-worm 
 light in her beautiful eyes that seemed faintly to illuminate 
 her whole face. He sank down on the sofa at her side, no 
 longer the brilliant and ambitious politician, but, it seemed 
 to him, as hopelessly a dreaming, inexperienced boy as when 
 he had given her the name that now was all he could think 
 of, and the only word that rose to his feverish lips. 
 
 " Yerba ! " 
 
 " I like to hear you say it," she said quickly, as if to 
 gloss over his first omission of her formal prefix, and lean- 
 ing a little forward, with her eyes on his. " One would 
 think you had created it. You almost make me regret to 
 lose it." 
 
 He stopped. He felt that the last sentence had saved 
 him. " It is of that I want to speak," he broke out sud- 
 denly and almost rudely. " Are you satisfied that it means 
 nothing, and can mean nothing, to you ? Does it awaken 
 no memory in your mind — recall nothing you care to 
 know ? Think ! I beg you, I implore you to be frank 
 with me ! " 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 253 
 
 She looked at him with surprise. 
 
 " I have told you already that my present name must be 
 some absurd blunder, or some intentional concealment. But 
 why do you want to know now ? " she continued, adding 
 her faint smile to the emphasis. 
 
 " To help you ! " he said eagerly. " Eor that alone ! 
 To do all I can to assist you, if you really believe, and 
 want to believe, that you have another. To ask you to 
 confide in me ; to tell me all you have been told, all that 
 you know, think you know, or want to know about your 
 relationship to the Arguellos — or to — any one. And 
 then to devote myself entirely to proving what you shall 
 say is your desire. You see, I am frank with you, Yerba. 
 I only ask you to be as frank with me ; to let me know 
 your doubts, that I may counsel you ; your fears, that I 
 may give you courage." 
 
 " Is that all you came here to tell me ? " she asked 
 quietly. 
 
 " No, Yerba," he said eagerly, taking her unresisting 
 but indifferent hand, " not all ; but all that I must say, all 
 that I have the right to say, all that you, Yerba, would per- 
 mit me to tell you now. But let me hope that the day is 
 not far distant when I can tell you all, when you will un- 
 derstand that this silence has been the hardest sacrifice of 
 the man who now speaks to you." 
 
 "And yet not unworthy of a rising politician," she added, 
 quickly withdrawing her hand. " I agree," she went on, 
 looking towards the door, yet without appearing to avoid 
 his eager eyes, " and when I have settled upon ' a local 
 habitation and a name ' we shall renew this interesting con- 
 versation. Until then, as my fourth official guardian used 
 to say — he was a lawyer, Mr. Hathaway, like yourself — ■ 
 when he was winding up his conjectures on the subject — ■ 
 all that has passed is to be considered ' without prejudice.'" " 
 
 " But Yerba " — began Paul bitterly. 
 
254 A WAKD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 She slightly raised her hand as if to check him with a 
 warning gesture. " Yes, dear," she said suddenly, lifting 
 her musical voice, with a mischievous side-glance at Paul, 
 as if to indicate her conception of the irony of a possihle 
 application, " this way. Here we are waiting for you." 
 Her listening ear had detected Milly's step in the passage, 
 and in another moment that cheerful young woman dis- 
 creetly stopped on the threshold of the room, with every 
 expression of apologetic indiscretion in her face. 
 
 " We have finished our talk, and Mr. Hathaway has heen 
 so concerned about my having no real name that he has 
 been promising me everything, but his own, for a suitable 
 one. Have n't you, Mr. Hathaway ? " She rose slowly 
 and, going over to Milly, put her arm around her waist and 
 stood for one instant gazing at him between the curtains of 
 the doorway. " Good-night. My very proper chaperon is 
 dreadfully shocked at this midnight interview, and is tak- 
 ing me away. Only think of it, Milly ; he actually pro- > 
 posed to me to walk in the garden with him ! Good-night, 
 or, as my ancestors — don't forget, my ancestors — used to 
 say, ' Buend noche — hasta mdnana ! ' " She lingered 
 over the Spanish syllables with an imitation of Dona Anna's 
 lisp, and with another smile, but more faint and more ghost- 
 like than before, vanished with her companion. 
 
 At eight o'clock the next morning Paul was standing 
 beside his portmanteau on the veranda. 
 
 " But this is a sudden resolution of yours, Hathaway," 
 said Mr. Woods. " Can you not possibly wait for the next 
 train ? The girls will be down then, and you can break- 
 fast comfortably." 
 
 " I have much to do — more than I imagined — in San 
 Francisco before I return," said Paul quickly. "You 
 must make my excuses to them and to your wife." 
 
 " I hope," said Woods, with an uneasy laugh, " you have 
 had no more words with Don Csesar, or he with you ? " 
 
A WAKD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 255 
 
 " No," said Paul, with a reassuring smile, " nothing 
 more, I assure you." 
 
 " For you know you 're a devilish quick fellow, Hath- 
 away," continued Woods, " quite as quick as your friend 
 Pendleton. And, by the way, Baker is awfully cut up 
 about that absurd speech of his, you know. Came to me 
 last night and wondered if anybody could think it was in- 
 tentional. I told him it was d — d stupid, that was all. I 
 guess his wife had been at him. Ha ! ha ! You see, he 
 remembers the old times, when everybody talked of these 
 things, and that woman Howard was quite a character. 
 I 'm told she went off to the States years ago." 
 
 " Possibly," said Paul carelessly. After a pause, as the 
 carriage drove up to the door, he turned to his host. " By 
 the way. Woods, have you a ghost here ? " 
 
 " The house is old enough for one. But no. Why ? " 
 
 " I '11 swear I saw a figure moving yonder, in the shruTx 
 bery, late last evening ; and when I came up to it, it most 
 unaccountably disappeared." 
 
 " One of Don Caesar's servants, I dare say. There is 
 one of them, an Indian, prowling about here, I 've been 
 told, at all hours. I '11 put a stop to it. Well, you must 
 go then? Dreadfully sorry you couldn't stop longer! 
 Good-by!" 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 It was two months later that Mr. Tony Shear, of Marys- 
 ville, but lately confidential clerk to the Honorable Paul 
 Hathaway, entered his employer's chambers in Sacramento, 
 and handed the latter a letter. 
 
 " I only got back from San Francisco this morning ; but 
 Mr. Slate said I was to give you that, and if it satisfied 
 you, and was what you wanted, you would send it back to 
 him." 
 
 Paul took the envelope and opened it. It contained a 
 printer's proof-slip, which he hurriedly glanced over. It 
 read as follows : — 
 
 " Those of our readers who are familiar with the early 
 history of San Francisco will be interested to know that an 
 eccentric and irregular trusteeship, vested for the last eight 
 years in the Mayor of San Francisco and two of our oldest 
 citizens, was terminated yesterday by the majority of a 
 beautiful and accomplished young lady, a pupil of the Con- 
 vent of Santa Clara. Very few, except the original trus- 
 tees, were cognizant of the fact that the administration of 
 the trustees has been a recognized function of the succes- 
 sive Mayors of San Francisco during this period ; and the 
 mystery surrounding it has been only lately divulged. It 
 ofi'ers a touching and romantic instance of a survival of the 
 oM patriarchal duties of the former Alcaldes and the simpli- 
 city of pioneer days. It seems that, in the unsettled con- 
 ditions of the Mexican land-titles that followed the Ameri- 
 can oociipation, the consumptive widow of a scion of one of 
 the oldest Californian families intrusted her property and 
 
A WAED OF THE GOLDEN GATE 257 
 
 the custody of her infant daughter virtually to the city of 
 San Francisco, as represented by the trustees specified, 
 until the girl should become of age. Within a year, the 
 invalid mother died. With what loyalty, sagacity, and 
 prudence these gentlemen fulfilled their trust may be gath- 
 ered from the fact that the property left in their charge has 
 not only been secured and protected, but increased a hun- 
 dredfold in value ; and that the young lady, who yesterday 
 attained her majority, is not only one of the richest landed 
 heiresses on the Pacific Slope, but one of the most accom- 
 plished and thoroughly educated of her sex. It is now no 
 secret that this favored child of Chrysopolis is the Dona 
 Maria Concepcion de Arguello de la Yerba Buena, so called 
 from her ancestral property on the island, now owned by 
 the Federal government. But it is an affecting and poetio 
 tribute to the parent of her adoption that she has preferred 
 to pass under the old, quaintly typical name of the city, 
 and has been known to her friends simply as ' Miss Yerba 
 Buena.' It is a no less pleasant and suggestive circum- 
 stance that our ' youngest senator,' the Honorable Paul 
 Hathaway, formerly private secretary to Mayor Hammers- 
 ley, is one of the original unofficial trustees ; while the 
 chivalry of the older days is perpetuated in the person of 
 Colonel Harry Pendleton, the remaining trustee." 
 
 As soon as he had finished, Paul took a pencil and 
 crossed out the last sentence ; but instead of laying the 
 proof aside, or returning it to the waiting secretary, he re- 
 mained with it in his hand, his silent, set face turned 
 towards the window. Whether the merely human secre- 
 tary was tired of waiting, or the devoted partisan saw some- 
 thing on his yoTing chief's face that disturbed him, he 
 turned to Paul with that exaggerated respect which his 
 functions as secretary had grafted upon his affection for his 
 old associate, and said : — 
 
 " I hope nothing 's wrong, sir. Not another of those 
 
258 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 scurrilous attacks on you for putting that bill through to 
 relieve Colonel Pendleton ? Yet it was a risky thing for 
 you, sir." 
 
 Paul started, recovered himself as if from some remote 
 abstraction, and, with a smile, said : " No, — nothing. 
 Quite the reverse. Write to Mr. Slate, thank him, and 
 say that it will do very well — with the exception of the 
 lines I have marked out. Then bring me the letter, and I 
 will add this inclosure. Did you call on Colonel Pendle- 
 ton ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir. He was at Santa Clara, and had not yet 
 returned, — at least, that 's what that dandy nigger of his 
 told me. The airs and graces that that creature puts on 
 since the colonel's affairs have been straightened out are a 
 little too much for a white man to stand. Why, sir ! d — d 
 if he did n't want to patronize you, and allowed to me that 
 ' de kernel ' had a ' fah ideah ' of you, ' and thought you 
 a promisin' young man.' The fact is, sir, the party is mak- 
 ing a big mistake trying to give votes to that kind of cat- 
 tle — it would only be giving two votes to the other side, 
 for, slave or free, they 're the chattels of their old masters. 
 And as to the masters' gratitude for what you 've done 
 affecting a single vote of their party — you 're mistaken." 
 
 " Colonel Pendleton belongs to no party," said Paul 
 curtly ; " but if his old constituents ever try to get into 
 power again, they 've lost their only independent martyr." 
 
 He presently became abstracted again, and Shear pro- 
 duced from his overcoat pocket a series of official-looking 
 documents. 
 
 " I 've brought the reports, sir." 
 
 " Eh ? " said Paul absently. 
 
 The secretary stared. " The reports of the San Francisco 
 Chief of Police that you asked me to get." His employer 
 was certainly very forgetful to-day. 
 
 " Oh yes ; thank you. You can lay them on my desk. 
 
A WARD 0¥ THE GOLDEN GATE 259 
 
 I '11 look them over in Committee. You can go now, and 
 if any one calls to see me say I 'm busy." 
 
 The secretary disappeared in the adjoining room, and 
 Paul leaned back in his chair, thinking. He had, at last, 
 eifected the work he had resolved upon when he left Eosa- 
 rio two months ago ; the article he had just read, and whicli 
 would appear as an editorial in the San Francisco paper the 
 day after to-morrow, was the culmination of quietly persist- 
 ent labor, inquiry, and deduction, and would be accepted, 
 hereafter, as authentic history, which, if not thoroughly 
 established, at least could not be gainsaid. Immediately 
 on arriving at San Francisco, he had hastened to Pendle- 
 ton's bedside, and laid the facts and his plan before him. 
 To his mingled astonishment and chagrin, the colonel had 
 objected vehemently to this " saddling of anybody's off- 
 spring on a gentleman who couldn't defend himself," and 
 even Paul's explanation that the putative father was a myth 
 scarcely appeased him. But Paul's timely demonstration, 
 by relating the scene he had witnessed of Judge Baker's 
 infelicitous memory, that the secret was likely to be re- 
 vealed at any moment, and that if the girl continued to 
 cling to her theory, as he feared she would, even to the 
 parting with her fortune, they would be forced to accept it, 
 or be placed in the hideous position of publishing her dis- 
 grace, at last convinced him. On the other hand, there 
 was less danger of her positive imposition being discovered 
 than of the vague and impositive truth. The real danger 
 lay in the present uncertainty and mystery, which courted 
 surmise and invited discovery. Paul, himself, was willing 
 to take all the responsibility, and at last extracted from the 
 colonel a promise of passive assent. The only revelation 
 he feared was from the interference of the mother, but Pen- 
 dleton was strong in the belief that she had not only ut- 
 terly abandoned the girl to the care of her guardians, but 
 'liat she would never rescind her resolution to disclaim her 
 
260 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 relationship ; that she had gone into self-exile for that pur- 
 pose ; and that if she had changed her mind, he would he 
 the first to know of it. On this day they had parted. 
 Meantime, Paul had not forgotten another resolution he 
 had formed on his first visit to the colonel, and had actually 
 succeeded in getting legislative relief for the Golden Gate 
 Bank, and restoring to the colonel some of his private pro- 
 perty that had heen in the hands of a receiver. 
 
 This had been the background of Paul's meditation, 
 which only threw into stronger relief , the face and figure 
 that moved before him as persistently as it had ,once before 
 in the twilight of his room at Kosario. There were times 
 when her moonlit face, with its faint, strange smile, stood 
 out before him as it had stood out of the shadows of the 
 half-darkened drawing-room that night ; as he had seen it 
 — he believed for the last time — framed for an instant in 
 the parted curtains of the doorway, when she bade him 
 " good-night." For he had never visited her since, and, 
 on the attainment of her majority, had delegated his pass- 
 ing functions to Pendleton, whom he had induced to 
 accompany the Mayor to Santa Clara for the final and for- 
 mal ceremony. For the present she need not know how 
 much she had been indebted to him for the accomplishment 
 of her wishes. 
 
 With a sigh he at last recalled himself to his duty, and, 
 drawing the pile of reports which Shear had handed him, 
 he began to examine them. These, again, bore reference 
 to his silent, unobtrusive inquiries. In his function as 
 Chairman of Committee he had taken advantage of a kind 
 of advanced moral legislation then in vogue, and particu- 
 larly in reference to a certain social reform, to examine 
 statistics, authorities, and witnesses, and in this indirect but 
 exhaustive manner had satisfied himself that the woman 
 "Kate Howard," alias "Beverly," alias "Durfree," had 
 long passed beyond the ken of local police supervision, and 
 
A WAKD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 261 
 
 that in the record tbeie was no trace or indication of her 
 child. He was going over those infelix records of early 
 transgressions with the eye of trained experience, making 
 notes from time to time for his official use, and yet always 
 watchful of his secret quest, when suddenly he stopped 
 with a quickened pulse. In the record of an affray at a 
 gambling-house, one of the parties had sought refuge in the 
 rooms of " Kate Howard," who was represented before the 
 magistrate by her protector, Juan de Arrjuello. The date 
 given was contemporary with the beginning of the Trust, 
 but that proved nothing. But the name — had it any 
 significance, or was it a grim coincidence, that spoke even 
 more terribly and hopelessly of the woman's promiscuous 
 frailty ? He again attacked the entire report, but there 
 was no other record of her name. Even that would have 
 passed any eye less eager and watchful than his own. 
 
 He laid the reports aside, and took up the proof-slip 
 again. Was there any man living but himself and Pen- 
 dleton who would connect these two statements ? That 
 her relations with this Arguello were brief and not gen- 
 erally known was evident from Pendleton's ignorance of 
 the fact. But he must see him again, and at once. Per- 
 haps he might have acquired some information from Yerba ; 
 the young girl might have given to his age that confidence 
 she had withheld from the younger man ; indeed, he re- 
 membered with a flush it was partly in that hope he had 
 induced the colonel to go to Santa Clara. He put the proof- 
 slip in his pocket and stepped to the door of the next room. 
 
 " You need not write that letter to Slate, Tony. I will 
 see him myself. I am going to San Francisco to-night." 
 
 "And do you want anything copied from the reports, 
 sir ? " 
 
 Paul quickly swept them from the table into his drawer, 
 and locked it. "Not now, thank you. I'll finish my 
 notes later." 
 
262 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 The next morning Paul was in San Francisco, and had 
 again crossed the portals of the Golden Gate Hotel. Hi 
 had been already told that the doom of that palatial edifice 
 was sealed by the laying of the corner-stone of a new erec- 
 tion in the next square that should utterly eclipse it ; he 
 even fancied that it had already lost its freshness, and its 
 meretricious glitter had been tarnished. But when he had 
 ordered his breakfast he made his way to the public parlor, 
 happily deserted at that early hour. It was here that he 
 had first seen her. She was standing there, by that mir- 
 ror, when their eyes first met in a sudden instinctive sym- 
 pathy. She herself had remembered and confessed it. He 
 recalled the pleased yet conscious, girlish superiority witli 
 which she had received the adulation of her friends ; his 
 memory of her was broad enough now even to identify 
 Milly, as it re-peopled the vacant and silent room. 
 
 An hour later he was making his way to Colonel Pen- 
 dleton's lodgings, and half expecting to find the St. Charles 
 Hotel itself transformed by the eager spirit of improvement. 
 But it was still there in all its barbaric and provincial in- 
 congruity. Public opinion had evidently recognized that 
 nothing save the absolute razing of its warped and flimsy 
 walls could effect a change, and waited for it to collapse 
 suddenly like the house of cards it resembled. Paul won- 
 dered for a moment if it were not ominous of its lodgers' 
 helpless inability to accept changed conditions, and it was 
 with a feeling of doubt that he even now ascended the 
 creaking staircase. But it was instantly dissipated on the 
 threshold of the colonel's sitting-room by the appearance of 
 George and his reception of his master's guest. 
 
 The grizzled negro was arrayed in a surprisingly new suit 
 of blue cloth with a portentous white waistcoat and an 
 enormous crumpled white cravat, that gave him the ap- 
 pearance of suffering from a glandular swelling. His man- 
 ner had, it seemed to Paul, advanced in exaggeration with 
 
A WAKD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 263 
 
 his clothes. Dusting a chair and offering it to the visitor, 
 he. remained gracefully posed with his hand on the back of 
 another. 
 
 " Yo' finds us heah yet, Marse Hathaway," he began, ele- 
 gantly toying with an enormous silver watch-chain, " fo' de 
 kernel he don' bin find contagious apartments dat at all 
 approximate, and he don' build, for his mind 's not dat set- 
 tled that he ain't goin' to trabbel. De place is low down, 
 sah, and de fo'ks is low down, and dah 's a heap o' white 
 trash dat has congested under de roof ob de hotel since we 
 came. But we uses it temper'ly, sah, fo' de present, and in 
 a dissolutory fashion." 
 
 It struck Paul that the contiguity of a certain barber's 
 shop and its dangerous reminiscences had something to do 
 with George's lofty depreciation of his surroundings, and 
 he could not help saying : — 
 
 " Then you don't find it necessary to have it convenient 
 to the barber's shop any more ? I am glad of that, 
 George." 
 
 The shot told. The unfortunate George, after an endea- 
 vor to collect himself by altering his pose two or three 
 times in rapid succession, finally collapsed, and, with an air 
 of mingled pain and dignity, but without losing his ceremo- 
 nious politeness or unique vocabulary, said : — 
 
 " Yo' got me dah, sah ! Yo' got me dah ! De infirmities 
 o' human natcheh, sah, is the common p'operty ob man, 
 and a gemplum like yo'self, sah, a legislate' and a pow'ful 
 speakah, is de lass one to hoi' it agin de individal pusson. 
 I confess, sah, de circumstances was propiskuous, de fees 
 fahly good, and de risks inferior. De gemplum who kept 
 de shop was an artess hisself, and had been niggah to Ker- 
 nel Henderson, of Tennessee, and de gemplum I relieved 
 was a Mr. Johnson. But de kernel, he would n't see it in 
 dat light, sah, and if yo' don' mind, sah " — 
 
 " I have n't the slightest idea of telling the colonel ot 
 
2G4 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 anybody, George," said Paul, smiling ; " and I am glad tc 
 find on your own account that you are able to put aside any 
 work beyond your duty here." 
 
 " Thank yo', sah. If yo' '11 let me introduce yo' to de 
 refreshment, yo' '11 find it all right now. De Glencoe is 
 dah. De kernel will be here soon, but he would be pow'- 
 ful mo'tified, sah, if yo' did n't hab something afo' he come." 
 He opened a well-filled sideboard as he spoke. It was the 
 first evidence Paul had seen of the colonel's restored for- 
 tunes. He would willingly have contented himself with 
 this mere outward manifestation, but in his desire to soothe 
 the ruiHed dignity of the old man he consented to partake 
 of a small glass of spirits. George at once became radiant 
 and communicative. " De kernel bin gone to Santa Clara 
 to see de young lady dat 's finished her edercntion dah — 
 de kernel's only ward, sah. She 's one p' dose million- 
 heiresses and highly connected, sah, wid de old Mexican 
 gobbermen, I understand. And I reckon dey 's bin big 
 goin's on doun dar, fob de Mayer kem hisself fo' de kernel. 
 Looks like des might bin a proceshon, sah. Yo' don' know 
 of a young lady bin hab a title, sah ? I won't be shuah, 
 his Honah de Mayer or de kernel did n't say someting 
 about a ' Donna.' " 
 
 " Very likely," said Paul, turning away with a faint 
 pmile. So it was already in the air ! Setting aside the old 
 negro's characteristic exaggeration, there had already been 
 some conversation between the colonel and the Mayor, which 
 George had vaguely overheard. He might be too late, the 
 alternative might be no longer in his hands. But his dis- 
 composure was heightened a moment later by the actual 
 apparition of the returning Pendleton. 
 
 He was dressed in a tightly buttoned blue frock coat, 
 which fairly accented his tall, thin military figure, although 
 the top lapel was thrown far enough back to show a fine 
 ruffled cambric shirt and checked gingham necktie, and was 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 265 
 
 itself aJorned with a white rosebud in the buttonhole. 
 Fawn -colored trousers strapped over narrow patent-leather 
 boots, and a tall white hat, whose broad mourning-band was 
 a perpetual memory of his mother, who had died in his boy- 
 hood, completed his festal transformation. Yet his erect 
 carriage, high aquiline nose, and long gray drooping mus- 
 tache lent a distinguishing grace to this survival of a bygone 
 fashion, and over-rode any irreverent comment. Even his 
 slight limp seemed to give a peculiar character to his mas- 
 sive gold-headed stick, and made it a part of his formal 
 elegance. 
 
 Handing George his stick and a military cape he carried ' 
 easily over his left arm, he greeted Paul warmly, yet with 
 a return of his old dominant manner. 
 
 " Glad to see you, Hathaway, and glad to see the boy 
 has served you better than the last time. If I had known 
 you were coming, I would have tried to get back in time to 
 have breakfast with you. But your friends at Kosario — ■ 
 I think they call it ; in my time it was owned by Colonel 
 Briones, and he called it ' The Devil's Little Canon ' — 
 detained me with some d — d civilities. Let 's see — his 
 name is Woods, is n't it ? Used to sell rum to runaway 
 sailors on Long Wharf, and take stores in exchange ? Or 
 was it Baker ? — Judge Baker ? I forget which. Well, 
 sir, they wished to be remembered." 
 
 It struck Paul, perhaps unreasonably, that the colonel's 
 indifference and digression were both a little assumed, and he 
 asked abruptly : — 
 
 " And you fulfilled your mission ? " 
 
 "I made the formal transfer, with the Mayor, of the 
 property to Miss Arguello." 
 
 "To Miss Arguello?" 
 
 " To the Dofia Maria Concepcion de Arguello de la Yerba 
 Buena — to speak precisely," said the colonel slowly. 
 "George, you can take that hat to that blank hatter — 
 
266 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 what 's his hlanked name ? I read it only yesterday in a 
 list of the prominent citizens here — and tell him, with my 
 compliments, that I want a gentleman's mourning-band 
 around my hat, and not a child's shoelace. It may be his 
 idea of the value of his own parents, — if he ever had any, 
 — but I don't care for him to appraise mine. Go ! " 
 
 As the door closed upon George, Paul turned to the colo- 
 nel — 
 
 " Then am I to understand that you have agreed to her 
 story ? " 
 
 The colonel rose, picked up the decanter, poured out a 
 glass of whiskey, and holding it in his hand, said : — 
 
 " My dear Hathaway, let us understand each other. As 
 a gentleman, I have made a point through life never tc 
 question the age, name, or family of any lady of my 
 acquaintance. Miss Yerba Buena came of age yesterday, 
 and, as she is no longer my ward, she is certainly entitled 
 to the consideration I have just mentioned. If she, there- 
 fore, chooses to tack to her name the whole Spanish direc- 
 tory, I don't see why I should n't accept it.'' 
 
 Characteristic as this speech appeared to be of the colo- 
 nel's ordinary manner, it struck Paul as being only an 
 imitation of his usual frank independence, and made him 
 uneasily conscious of some vague desertion on Pendleton's 
 part. He fixed his bright eyes on his host, who was osten- 
 tatiously sipping his liquor, and said : — 
 
 " Am I to understand that you have heard nothing more 
 from Miss Yerba, either for or against her story ? That 
 you still do not know whether she has deceived herself, 
 has been deceived by others, or is deceiving us ? " 
 
 " After what I have just told you, Mr. Hathaway," said 
 the colonel, with an increased exaggeration of manner 
 which Paul thought must be apparent even to himself, "I 
 should have but one way of dealing with questions of that 
 kind from anybody but yourself." 
 
A WAED OF THE GOLDEN GATE 267 
 
 This culminating extravagance — taken in connection 
 with Pendleton's passing doubts — actually forced a laugh 
 from Paul in spite of his bitterness. 
 
 Colonel Pendleton's face flushed quickly. Like most 
 positive one-idea'd men, he was restricted from any possible 
 humorous combination, and only felt a mysterious sense of 
 being detected in some weakness. He put down his glass. 
 
 " Mr. Hathaway," he began, with a slight vibration in 
 his usual dominant accents, " you have lately put me under 
 a sense of personal obligation for a favor which I felt I 
 could accept without derogation from a younger man, be- 
 cause it seemed to be one not only of youthful generosity 
 but of justice, and was not unworthy the exalted ambition 
 of a young man like yourself or the simple deserts of an 
 old man such as I am. I accepted it, sir, the more readily, 
 because it was entirely unsolicited by me, and seemed to be 
 the spontaneous offering of your own heart. If I have pre- 
 sumed upon it to express m3'self freely on other matters in 
 a way that only excites your ridicule, I can but offer you 
 an apology, sir. If I have accepted a favor I can neither 
 renounce nor return, I must take the consequences to my- 
 self, and even beg you, sir, to put up with them." 
 
 Remorseful as Paul felt, there was a singulai resem- 
 blance between the previous reproachful pose of George 
 and this present attitude of his master, as if the mere pro- 
 pinquity of personal sacrifice had made them alike, that 
 struck him with a mingled pathos and ludicrousness. But 
 he said warmly, " It is I who must apologize, my dear colo- 
 nel. I am not laughing at your conclusions, but at thh 
 singular coincidence with a discovery I have made." 
 
 "As how, sir ?" 
 
 " I find in the report of the Chief of Police for the year 
 1850 that Kate Howard was under the protection of a man 
 named Arguello." 
 
 The colonel's exaggeration instantly left him. He 
 
268 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 stared blankly at Paul. " And you call this a laughing 
 matter, sir ? " he said sternly, but in his more natural 
 manner. 
 
 " Perhaps not, but I don't think, if you will allow me 
 to say so, my dear colonel, that you have been treating the 
 whole affair very seriously. I left you two months ago 
 utterly opposed to views which you are now treating as of 
 no importance. And yet you wish me to believe that 
 nothing has happened, and that you have no further infor- 
 mation than you had then. That this is so, and that you 
 are really no nearer the facts, I am willing to believe from 
 your ignorance of what I have just told you, and your con- 
 cern at it. But that you have not been influenced in your 
 judgment of what you do know, I cannot believe." He 
 drew nearer Pendleton, and laid his hand upon his arm. 
 "I beg you to be frank with me, for the sake of the per- 
 son whose interests I see you have at heart. In what way 
 wiU the discovery I have just made affect them ? You 
 are not so far prejudiced as to be blind to the fact that it 
 may be dangerous because it seems corroborative." 
 
 Pendleton coughed, rose, took his stick, and limped up 
 and down the room, finally dropping into an armchair by 
 the window, with his cane between his knees, and the 
 drooping gray silken threads of his long mustache curled 
 nervously between his fingers. 
 
 " Mr. Hathaway, I will be frank with you. I know 
 nothing of this blank affair, — blank it all ! — but what 
 I've told you. Your discovery may be a concidence, no- 
 thing more. But I have been influenced, sir, — influenced 
 by one of the most perfect goddess-like — yes, sir ; one of 
 the most simple girlish creatures that God ever sent upon 
 earth. A woman that I should be proud to claim as my 
 daughter, a woman that would always be the superior of 
 any man who dare aspire to De her husband ! A young 
 lady as peerless in her beauty as she is in her accomplish- 
 
A WAED OF THE GOLDEN GATE 269 
 
 ments, and whose equal don't walk this planet ! I know, 
 sir, you don't follow me ; I know, Mr. Hathaway, your 
 Puritan prejudices ; your Church proclivities ; your worldly 
 sense of propriety ; and, above all, sir, the blanked hypo- 
 critical Pharisaic doctrines of your party — I mean no 
 offense to you, sir, personally — blind you to that girl's 
 perfections. She, poor child, herself has seen it and felt 
 it ; but never, in her blameless innocence and purity, sus- 
 pecting the cause. ' There is,' she said to me last night, 
 confidentially, ' something strangely antagonistic and repel- 
 lent in our natures, some undefined and nameless barrier 
 between our ever understanding each other.' You compre- 
 hend, Mr. Hathaway, she does full justice to your inten- 
 tions and your unquestioned abilities. ' I am not blind,' 
 she said, ' to Mr. Hathaway's gifts, and it is very possible 
 the fault lies with me.' Her very words, sir." 
 
 " Then you believe she is perfectly ignorant of her real 
 mother ? " asked Paul, with a steady voice, but a whiten- 
 ing face. 
 
 " As an unborn child," said the colonel emphatically. 
 " The snow on the Sierras is not more spotlessly pure of 
 any trace or contamination of the mining ditches than she 
 of her mother and her past. The knowledge of it, the 
 mere breath of suspicion of it, in her presence would be a 
 profanation, sir ! Look at her eye — open as the sky and 
 ns clear ; look at her face and figure — as clean, sir, as a 
 Blue Grass thoroughbred ! Look at the way she carries 
 herself, whether in those white frillings of her simple 
 school-gown, or that black evening dress that makes her 
 look like a princess ! And, blank me, if she is n't one ! 
 There 's no poor stock there — no white trash — no mixed 
 blood, sir. Blank it all, sir, if it comes to that — the Ar- 
 guellos — if there 's a hound of them living — might go 
 down on their knees to have their name borne by such 
 a creature ! By the Eternal, sir, if one of them dared to 
 
270 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 cross her path with a word that wasn't abject — yes, sir, 
 abject, I 'd wipe his dust off the earth and send it back to 
 his ancestors before he knew where he was, or my name 
 is n't Harry Pendleton ! " 
 
 Hopeless and inconsistent as all this was, it was a won- 
 derful sight to see the colonel, his dark stern face illumi- 
 nated with a zealot's enthusiasm, his eyes on fire, the ends 
 of his gray mustache curling around his set jaw, his head 
 thrown back, his legs astride, and his gold-headed stick 
 held in the hollow of his elbow, like a lance at rest ! 
 Paul saw it, and knew that this Quixotic transformation 
 was part of her triumph, and yet had a miserable conscious- 
 ness that the charms of this Dulcinea del Toboso had 
 scarcely been exaggerated. He turned his eyes away, and 
 said quietly : — 
 
 " Then you don't think this coincidence will evei 
 awaken any suspicion in regard to her real mother ? " 
 
 " Not in the least, sir — not in the least," said the colo- 
 nel, yet, perhaps, with more doggedness than conviction of 
 accent. " Nobody but yourself would ever notice that 
 police report, and the connection of that woman's name 
 with his was not notorious, or I should have known it." 
 
 " And you believe," continued Paul hopelessly, " that 
 Miss Yerba's selection of the name was purely acciden- 
 tal ? " 
 
 " Purely — a schoolgirl's fancy. Fancy, did I say ? 
 No, sir ; by Jove, an inspiration ! " 
 
 " And," continued Paul, almost mechanically, " j^ou do 
 not think it may be some insidious suggestion of an enemy 
 who knew of this transient relation that no one sus- 
 pected ? " 
 
 To his final amazement Pendleton's brow cleared ! " An 
 enemy ? Gad ! you may be right. I '11 look into it ; and, 
 if that is the case, which I scarcely dare hope for, Mr. 
 Hathaway, you can safely leave him to me." 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 2V1 
 
 He looked so supremely confident in his fatuous heroism 
 that Paul could say no more. He rose and, with a faint 
 smile upon his pale face, held out his hand. " I think 
 that is all I have to say. When you see Miss Yerha again, 
 — as you will, no douht, — you may tell her that I am 
 conscious of no misunderstanding on my part, except, per- 
 haps, as to the best way I could serve her, and that, but for 
 what she has told you, I should certainly have carried 
 away no remembrance of any misunderstanding of hers." 
 
 " Certainly," said the colonel, with cheerful philosophy, 
 " I will carry your message with pleasure. You understand 
 how it is, Mr. Hathaway. There is no accounting for these 
 instincts — we can only accept them as they are. But I 
 believe that your intentions, sir, were strictly according to 
 what you conceived to he your duty. You won't take 
 something before you go ? Well, then — good-by." 
 
 Two weeks later Paul found among his morning letters 
 an envelope addressed in Colonel Pendleton's boyish scrawl- 
 ing hand. He opened it with an eagerness that no studied 
 self-control nor rigid preoccupation of his duties had ye,t 
 been able to subdue, and glanced hurriedly at its con- 
 tents : — 
 
 Deab Sik, — As I am on the point of sailing to Europ>> 
 to-morrow to escort Miss Arguello and Miss Woods on aP 
 extended visit to England and the Continent, I am desirou? 
 of informing you that I have thus far been unable to find 
 any foundation for the suggestions thrown out by you in 
 our last interview. Miss Arguello's Spanish acquaintances 
 have been very select, and limited to a few school friends 
 and Don Csesar and Dona Anna Briones, tried friends, who 
 are also fellow passengers with us to Europe. Miss Ar- 
 guello suggests that some political difi'erence between you 
 and Don Caisar, which occurred during your visit to B,osario 
 three months ago, may have, perhaps, given rise to your 
 
272 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 supposition. She joins me in best wishes for your public 
 career, which even in the distraction of foreign travel and 
 the obligations of her position she will follow from time to 
 time with the greatest interest. 
 
 Very respectfully yours, 
 
 Haert Pendleton, 
 
•JHAPTEE V 
 
 It was on the 3d of August, 1863, that Paul Hathaway 
 resigned himself and his luggage to the care of the gold- 
 laced, ostensible porter of the Strudle Bad Hof, not without 
 some uncertainty, in a land of uniforms, whether he would 
 be eventually conducted to the barracks, the police office, or 
 the Conservatoire. He was relieved when the omnibus 
 drove into the courtyard of the Bad Hof, and the gold- 
 chained chamberlain, flanked by two green tubs of oleanders, 
 received him with a gravity calculated to check any precon- 
 ceived idea he might have that traveling was a trifling aifair, 
 or that an arrival at the Bad Hof was not of serious mo- 
 ment. His letters had not yet arrived, for he had, in a fit of 
 restlessness, shortened his route, and he strolled listlessly 
 into the reading-room. Two or three English guests were 
 evidently occupied in eminently respectable reading and 
 writing ; two were sitting by the window engaged in sub- 
 dued but profitable conversation ; and two Americans from 
 Boston were contentedly imitating them on the other side 
 of the room. A decent restraint, as of people who were 
 not for a moment to be led into any foreign idea of social 
 gayety at a watering-place, was visible everywhere. A 
 spectacled Prussian officer in full uniform passed along the 
 hall, halted for a moment at the doorway as if contemplat- 
 ing an armed invasion, thought better of it, and took his 
 uniform away into the sunlight of the open square, where 
 it was joined by other uniforms, and became by contrast a 
 miracle of unbraced levity. Paul stood the Polar silence 
 for a few moments, until one of the readers arose and, tak- 
 
274 A "WAKD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 ing his book — a Murray — iu his hand, walked slowly 
 across the room to a companion, mutely pointed to a passage 
 in the book, remained silent until the other had dumbly 
 perused it, and then walked back again to his seat, having 
 achieved the incident without a word. At which Paul, 
 convinced of his own incongruity, softly withdrew with his 
 hat in his hand, and his eyes fixed devotionally upon it. 
 
 It was good after that to get into the slanting sunlight 
 and checkered linden shadows of the AlUe ; to see even a 
 tightly jacketed cavalryman naturally walking with Clarchen 
 and her two round-faced and drab-haired young charges ; to 
 watch the retijrning invalid procession, very real and very 
 human, each individual intensely involved in the atmos- 
 phere of his own symptoms ; and very good after that to 
 turn into the Thiergarten, where the animals were, how- 
 ever, chiefly of his own species, and shamelessly and openly 
 amusing themselves. It was pleasant to contrast it with 
 his first visit to the place three months before, and correct 
 his crude impressions. And it was still more pleasant 
 suddenly to recognize, under the round flat cap of a gen- 
 eral officer, a former traveler who was fond of talking 
 with him about America with an intelligence and under- 
 standing of it that Paul had often missed among his own 
 traveled countrymen. It was pleasant to hear his unaf- 
 fected and simple greeting, to renew their old acquaintance, 
 and to saunter back to the hotel together through the long 
 twilight. 
 
 They were only a few squares from the hotel, when 
 Paul's attention was attracted by the curiosity and delight 
 of two or three children before him, who appeared to be 
 following a quaint-looking figure that was evidently not 
 unfamiliar to them. It appeared to be a servant in a strik- 
 ing livery of green with yellow facings and crested silver 
 buttons, but still more remarkable for the indescribable 
 mingling of jaunty ease and conscious dignity with which 
 
A WAED OF THE GOLDEN GATE 27a 
 
 he carried off liis finery. There was something so singular 
 and yet so vaguely reminiscent in his peculiar Avalk and tlie 
 exaggerated swing of his light bamboo cane that Paul could 
 not only understand the childish wonder of the passers-by, 
 who turned to look after him, but was stirred with a deeper 
 curiosity. He quickened his pace, but was unable to dis- 
 tinguish anything of the face or features of the stranger^ 
 except that his hair under his cocked hat appeared to 
 be tightly curled and powdered. Paul's companion, whc 
 was amused at what seemed to be the American's national 
 curiosity, had seen the figure before. " A servant in the 
 suite of some Eastern Altesse visiting the baths. You will 
 see stranger things, my friend, in the Strudle Bad. Par 
 example, your own countrymen, too ; the one who has 
 enriched himself by that pork of Chicago, or that soap, or 
 this candle, in a carriage with the crest of the title he has 
 bought in Italy with his dollars, and his beautiful daugh- 
 ters, who are seeking more titles with possible matrimonial 
 contingencies." 
 
 After an early dinner, Paul found his way to the little 
 theatre. He had already been struck by a highly colored 
 poster near the Bahnhof, purporting that a distinguished 
 German company would give a representation of " Uncle 
 Tom's Cabin," and certain peculiarities in the pictorial 
 advertisement of the tableaux gave promise of some enter- 
 tainment. He found the theatre fairly full ; there was the 
 usual contingent of abonnirte officers, a fair sprinkling of 
 English and German travelers, but apparently none of his 
 own countrymen. He had no time to examine the house 
 more closely, for the play, commencing with simple punctu- 
 ality, not only far exceeded the promise of the posters, but 
 of any previous performance of the play he had witnessed. 
 Transported at once to a gorgeous tropical region — the 
 slave States of America — resplendent with the fruits and 
 palms of Mauritius, and peopled exclusively with Paul and 
 
276 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 Virginia's companions in striped cotton, Hathaway managed 
 to keep a composed face, until the arrival of the good 
 Southern planter St. Clare as one of the earlier portraits of 
 Goethe, in top boots, light kerseymere breeches, redingote 
 and loose Byron collar, compelled him to shrink into the 
 upper corner of the box with his handkerchief to his face. 
 Luckily, the action passed as the natural effect upon a 
 highly sympathetic nature of religious interviews between 
 a round-faced flaxen-haired " Kleine Eva " and " Onkecl 
 Tome," occasionally assisted by a Dissenting clergyman in 
 Geneva bands ; of excessive brutality with a cattle whip by 
 a Zaniiel-like Legree ; of the sufferings of a runaway negro 
 ZimTnermadchen with a child three shades lighter than 
 herself ; and of a painted canvas " man-hunt," where ap- 
 parently four well-known German composers on horseback, 
 with flowing hair, top boots, and a cor de chasse, weie pur- 
 suing, with the aid of a pack of foxhounds, " the much too 
 deeply abused and yet spiritually elevated Onkeel Tome." 
 Paul did not wait for the final apotheosis of " der Kleine 
 Eva," but, in the silence of a hushed audience, made his 
 way into the corridor and down the staircase. He was 
 passing an open door marked " Direction," when his atten- 
 tion was sharply attracted by a small gathering around it 
 and the sounds of indignant declamation. It was the voice 
 of a countryman — more than that, it was a familiar voice, 
 that he had not heard for three years — the voice of Colo- 
 nel Harry Pendleton ! 
 
 " Tell him," said Pendleton, in scathing tones, to some 
 invisible interpreter, — " tell him, sir, that a more infa- 
 mous caricature of the blankest caricature that ever maligned 
 a free people, sir, I never before had the honor of witness- 
 ing. Tell him that I, sir — I, Harry Pendleton, of Ken- 
 tucky, a Southerner, sir — an old slaveholder, sir, declare 
 it to be a tissue of falsehoods unworthy the credence of a 
 Christian civilization like this — unworthy the attention of 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDE>r GATE 277 
 
 the distinguished ladies and gentlemen that are gathered 
 here to-night. Tell him, sir, he has heen imposed upon. 
 Tell him I am responsible — give him my card and address 
 — personally responsible for what I say. If he wants 
 proofs — blank it all ! — tell him you yourself have been a 
 slave — my slave, sir ! Take off your hat, sir ! Ask him 
 to look at you — ask him if he thinks you ever looked or 
 could look like that lop-eared, psalm-singing, white-headed 
 hypocrite on the stage ! Ask him, sir, if he thinks that 
 blank ringmaster they call St. Clare looks like Me ! " 
 
 At this astounding exordium Paul eagerly pressed forward 
 and entered the bureau. There certainly was Colonel Pen- 
 dleton, in spotless evening dress ; erect, flashing, and indig- 
 nant ; his aquiline nose lifted like a hawk's beak over his 
 quarry, his iron-gray mustache, now white and waxed, 
 parted like a swallow's tail over his handsome mouth, and 
 between him and the astounded " Direction " stood the ap- 
 parition of the AUee — George ! There was no mistaking 
 him now. What Paul had thought was a curled wig or 
 ■powder was the old negro's own white knotted wool, and 
 the astoiuiding livery he wore was carried off as no one but 
 George could carry it. 
 
 But he was still more amazed when the old servant, in a 
 German as exaggerated, as incoherent, but still' as fluent 
 and persuasive as his own native speech, began an extrava- 
 gant but perfectly dignified and diplomatic translation of 
 his master's protest. Where and when, by what instinct, 
 he had assimilated and made his own the grotesque inver- 
 sions and ponderous sentimentalities of Teutonic phrasing, 
 Paul could not guess ; but it was with breathless wonder 
 that he presently became aware that, so perfect and convin- 
 cing was the old man's style and deportment, not only the 
 simple officials but even the bystanders were profoundly 
 impressed by this farrago of absurdity. A happy word 
 here and there, the full title and rank given, even with a 
 
278 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 slight exaggeration, to each individual, brought a deep and 
 guttural " So ! " from lips that would have found it difficult 
 to repeat a line of his ceremonious idiocy. 
 
 In their preoccupation neither the colonel nor George had 
 perceived Paul's entrance, but, as the old servant turned 
 with magnificent courtesy towards the bystanders, his eyes 
 fell upon Paul. A flash of surprise, triumph, and satisfac- 
 tion lit up his rolling eyes. Paul instantly knew that he 
 not only recognized him, but that he had already heard 
 of and thoroughly appreciated a certain distinguished posi- 
 tion that Paul had lately held, and was quick to apply it. 
 Intensifying for a moment the grandiloquence of his man- 
 ner, he called upon his master's most distinguished and 
 happily arrived old friend, the Lord Lieutenant-Governor 
 of the Golden Californias, to corroborate his statement. 
 Colonel Pendleton started, and grasped Paul's hand warmly. 
 Paul turned to the already half-mollified Director with the 
 diplomatic suggestion that the vivid and realistic acting of 
 the admirable company which he himself had witnessed had 
 perhaps unduly excited his old friend, even as it had un- 
 doubtedly thrown into greater relief the usual exaggerations 
 of dramatic representation, and the incident terminated with 
 a profusion of apologies, and the most cordial expressions of 
 international good feeling on both sides. 
 
 Yet, as they turned away from the theatre together, Paul 
 could not help noticing that, although the colonel's first 
 greeting had been spontaneous and unaffected, it was suc- 
 ceeded by an uneasy reserve. Paul made no attempt to 
 break it, and confined himself to a few general inquiries, 
 ending by inviting the colonel to sup with him at the hotel. 
 Pendleton hesitated. " At any other time, Mr. Hathaway, 
 I should have insisted upon you, as the stranger, supping 
 with me ; but since the absence of — of — the rest of my 
 party — I have given up my suite of rooms at the Bad Hof, 
 and have taken smaller lodgings for myself and the boy at 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 279 
 
 the Schwartze Adler. Miss Woods and Miss Arguello have 
 accepted an invitation to spend a few days at the villa of 
 the Baron and Baroness von Schilpreoht — an hour or two 
 from here." He lingered over the title with an odd min- 
 gling of impressiveness and inquiry, and glanced at Paul. 
 But Hathaway exhibiting neither emotion nor surprise at 
 the mention of Yerba's name or the title of her host, he con- 
 tinued, " Miss Arguello, I suppose you know, is immensely 
 admired : she has been, sir, the acknowledged belle of 
 Strudle Bad." 
 
 " I can readily believe it," said Paul simply. 
 
 "And has taken the position — the position, sir, to which 
 she is entitled." 
 
 Without appearing to notice the slight challenge in Pen- 
 dleton's tone, Paul returned, " I am glad to hear it. The 
 more particularly as, I believe, the Germans are great stick- 
 lers for position and pedigree." 
 
 " You are right, sir — quite right : they are," said the 
 colonel proudly — " although " — with a certain premedi- 
 tated deliberation — "I have been credibly informed that 
 the King can, in certain cases, if he chooses, supply — yes, 
 sir — supply a favored person with ancestors — yes, sir, 
 with ancestors ! " 
 
 Paul cast a quick glance at his companion. 
 
 "Yes, sir — that is, we will say, in the case of a lady of 
 inferior rank — or even birth, the King of these parts can, 
 on her marriage with a nobleman — blank it all ! — ennoble 
 her father and mother, and their fathers and mothers, though 
 they 've been dead, or as good as dead, for years." 
 
 " I am afraid that 's a slight exaggeration of the rare cus- 
 tom of granting ' noble lands,' or estates that carry hered- 
 itary titles with them," said Paul more emphatically, per- 
 haps, than the occasion demanded. 
 
 " Fact, sir — George there knows it all," said Pendleton. 
 " He gets it from the other servants. I don't speak the Ian- 
 guage, sir, but he does. Picked it up in a year." 
 
280 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 " I must compliment him on his fluency, certainly," said 
 Paul, looking at George. 
 
 The old servant smiled, and not without a certain conde- 
 scension. " Yes, sah ; I don' say to a scholar like yo'- 
 self, sah, dat I 'se got de grandmatical presichion ; hut as 
 fah, sah — as fah as de idiotisms ob de language goes. Sah 
 — it 's gen'Uy allowed I 'm dar ! As to what Marse Harry 
 says ob de ignobling ob predecessors, I 've had it, sah, from 
 de best autority, sah — de f urst, I may say, sah — de real 
 prima facie men — de gemplum ob his Serene Highness, in 
 de korse eb ordinary conversashun, sah." 
 
 " That '11 do, George," said Pendleton, with paternal 
 brusqueness. " Kun on ahead and tell that blank chamber- 
 lain that Mr. Hathaway is one of my friends — and have 
 supper accordingly." As the negro hastened away he 
 turned to Paul : " What he says is true : he 's the most 
 popular man or hoy in all Strudle Bad — a devilish sight 
 more than his master — and goes anywhere where 1 can't 
 go. Princes and princesses stop and talk to him in the 
 street ; the Grand Duke asked permission to have him up 
 in his carriage at the races the other day ; and, by the Eter- 
 nal, sir, he gives the style to all the flunkies in town ! " 
 
 " And I see, he dresses the character," observed Paul. 
 
 "His own idea — entirely. And, by Jove 1 he proves 
 to he right. You can't do anything here without a uniform. 
 And they tell me he 's got everything correct, down to the 
 crest on the buttons." 
 
 They walked on in silence for a few moments, Pendle- 
 ton retaining a certain rigidity of step and bearing which 
 Paul had come to recognize as indicating some uneasiness 
 or mental disturbance on his part. Hathaway had no in- 
 tention of precipitating the confidence of his companion. 
 Perhaps experience had told him it would come soon 
 enough. So he spoke carelessly of himself. How the 
 need of a year's relaxation and change had brought him 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 28J 
 
 alDroad, his journeyings, and, finally, how he had been ad- 
 vised by his German physician to spend a few weeks at 
 Strudle Bad preparatory to the voyage home. Yet he was 
 perfectly aware that the colonel from time to time cast a 
 furtive glance at his face. " And you" he said in conclu- 
 sion — " when do you intend to return to California ? " 
 
 The colonel hesitated slightly. "I shall remain in 
 Europe until Miss Arguello is — settled — I mean," he 
 added hurriedly, " until she has — ahem ! — completed her 
 education in foreign ways and customs. You see, Hatha- 
 way, I have constituted myself, after a certain fashion, I 
 may say — still, her guardian. I am an old man, with 
 neither kith nor kin myself, sir — I'm a little too old-fash- 
 ioned for the boys over there" — with a vague gesture 
 towards the west, which, however, told Paul how near it 
 still was to him. " But then, among the old fogies here — 
 blank it all ! — it is n't noticed. So I look after her, you 
 see, or rather make myself responsible for her generally — 
 although, of course, she has other friends and associates, 
 you understand, more of her own age and tastes." 
 
 "And I've no doubt she's perfectly satisfied," said 
 Paul in a tone of conviction. 
 
 " Well, yes, sir, I presume so," said the colonel slowly ; 
 " but I 've sometimes thought, Mr. Hathaway, that it would 
 have been better if she 'd have had a woman's care — the 
 protection, you understand, of an elderly woman of society. 
 That seems to be the style here, you know — a chaperon, 
 they call it. Now, Milly Woods, you see, is about the 
 same age, and the Dona Anna, of course, is older, but — 
 blank it ! — she 's as big a flirt as the rest — I mean," he 
 added, correcting himself sharply, " she lacks balance, sir, 
 and — what shall I call it ? — self-abnegation." 
 
 " Then Dona Anna is still of your party ? " asked Paul. 
 
 " She is, sir, and her brother, Don Caesar. I have 
 thought it advisable, on Yerba's account, to keep up as 
 
282 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 much as possible the suggestion of her Spanish relationship 
 — although by reason of their absurd ignorance of geogra- 
 phy and political divisions out here, there is a prevailing 
 impression that she is a South American. A falct, sir. I 
 have myself been mistaken for the Dictator of one of these 
 infernal Eepublics, and I have been pointed out as ruling 
 over a million or two of niggers like George ! " 
 
 There was no trace of any conception of humor in the 
 colonel's face, although he uttered a short laugh, as if in 
 polite acceptance of the possibility that Paul might have 
 one. Far from that, his companion, looking at the strik- 
 ing profile and erect figure at his side, — at the long white 
 mustache which drooped from his dark cheeks, and remem- 
 bering his own sensations at first seeing George, — thought 
 the popular belief not so wonderful. He was even forced 
 to admit that the perfect unconsciousness on the part of 
 master and man of any- incongruity or peculiarity in them- 
 selves assisted the public misconception. And it was, I 
 fear, with a feeling of wicked delight that, on entering the 
 hotel, he hailed the evident consternation of those correct 
 fellow countrymen from whom he had lately fled, at what 
 they apparently regarded as a national scandal. He over- 
 heard their hurried assurance to their English friends that 
 his companions were not from Boston, and enjoyed tieir 
 mortification that this explanation did not seem to detract 
 from the interest and relief with which the Briton? sur- 
 veyed them, or the open admiration of the Germans. 
 
 Although Pendleton somewhat unbent during supper, 
 he did not allude to the secret of Yerba's parentage, nor of 
 any tardy confidence of hers. To all appearance the situa- 
 tion remained as it was three years ago. He spoke of her 
 great popularity as an heiress and a beautiful woman, and 
 the marked attentions she received. He doubted not thai 
 she had rejected very distinguished offers, but she kepi \hat 
 to herself. She was perfectly competent to do so. Sir was 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 28A 
 
 no giddy girl, to be flattered or deceived ; on the contrary, 
 he had never known a cooler or more sensible woman. 
 She knew her own worth. When she met the man who 
 satisfied her ambition and understanding, she would marry, 
 and not before. He did not know what that ambition was ; 
 it was something exalted, of course. He could only say, 
 of his own knowledge, that last year, when they were on 
 the Italian lakes, there was a certain prince — Mr. Hath- 
 away would understand why he did not mention names — 
 who was not only attentive to her, but attentive to him, 
 sir, by Jove ! and most significant in his inquiries. It was 
 the only occasion when he, the colonel, had ever spoken to 
 her on such subjects ; and, knowing that she was not indif- 
 ferent to the fellow, who was not bad of his kind, he had 
 asked her why she had not encouraged his suit. She had 
 said, with a laugh, that he could n't marry her unless he 
 gave up his claim of succession to a certain reigning house ; 
 and she would n't accept him without it. Those were her 
 words, sir, and he could only say that the prince left a few 
 days afterwards, and they had never seen him since. As to 
 the princelings and counts and barons, she knew to a day 
 the date of their patents of nobility, and what privileges 
 they were entitled to ; she could tell to a dot the value of 
 their estates, the amount of their debts, and, by Jove ! sir, 
 the amount of mortgages she was expected to pay off before 
 she married them. She knew the amount of income she 
 had to bring to the Prussian Army, from the general to the 
 lieutenant. She understood her own value and her rights. 
 There was a young English lordling she met on the Rhine, 
 whose boyish ways and simplicity seemed to please her. 
 They were great friends ; but he wanted him — the colonel 
 — to induce her to accept an invitation for both to visit his 
 mother's home in England, that his people might see her. 
 But she declined, sir ! She declined to pass in review be- 
 fore his mother. She said it was for him to pass in review 
 before her motlier. 
 
284 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 " Did she say that ? " interrupted Paul, fixing his hright 
 eyes upon the colonel. 
 
 " If she had one, if she had one," corrected the colonel 
 hastily. " Of course it was only an illustration. That she 
 is an orphan is generally known, sir." 
 
 There was a dead silence for a few moments. The colo- 
 nel leaned back in his chair and pulled his mustache. Paul 
 turned away his eyes, and seemed absorbed in reflection. 
 After a moment the colonel coughed, pushed aside his glass, 
 and, leaning across the table, said, " I have a favor to ask 
 of you, Mr. Hathaway." 
 
 There was such a singular change in the tone of his voice, 
 an unexpected relaxation of some artificial tension, — a re- 
 laxation which struck Paul so pathetically as being as much 
 physical as mental, as if he had suddenly been overtaken 
 in some exertion by the weakness of age, — that he looked 
 lip quickly. Certainly, although still erect and lightly 
 grasping his mustache, the colonel looked older. 
 
 " By all means, my dear colonel," said Paul warmly. 
 
 " During the time you remain here you can hardly help 
 meeting Miss Arguello, perhaps frequently. It would he 
 strange if you did not ; it would appear to everybody still 
 stranger. Give me your word as a gentleman that you will 
 not make the least allusion to her of the past — nor reopen 
 the subject." 
 
 Paul looked fixedly at the colonel. " I certainly had no 
 intention of doing so," he said, after a pause, "for I thought 
 it was already settled by you beyond disturbance or discus- 
 sion. But do I understand you, that she has shown any 
 iineasiness regarding it ? From what you have just told 
 me of her plans and ambition, I can scarcely imagine that 
 she has any suspicion of the real facts." 
 
 " Certainly not," said the colonel hurriedly. " But I 
 have your promise ? " 
 
 " I promise you." said Paul, after a pause, " that I shall 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 285 
 
 neither introduce nor refer to the subject myself, and that 
 if she should question me again regarding it, -vvhicli is hardly- 
 possible, I will reveal nothing without your consent." 
 
 " Thank you," said Pendleton, without, howeverj exhibit- 
 ing much relief in his face. " She will return here to- 
 morrow." 
 
 " I thought you said she was absent for some days," said 
 Paul. 
 
 " Yes ; but she is coming back to say good-by to Dona 
 Anna, who arrives here with her brother the same day, on 
 their way to Paris." 
 
 It flashed through Paul's mind that the last time he had 
 seen her was in the company of the Briones. It was not a 
 pleasant coincidence. Yet he was not aware that it had 
 affected him, until he saw the colonel watching him. 
 
 " I believe you don't fancy the brother," said Pendle- 
 ton. 
 
 For an instant Paul was strongly tempted to avow his 
 old vague suspicions of Don Csesar, but the utter hopeless- 
 ness of reopening the whole subject again, and his recollec- 
 tion of the passage in Pendleton's letter that purported to be 
 Yerba's own theory of his dislike, checked him in time. 
 He only said, " I don't remember whether I had any cause 
 for disliking Don Cffisar ; I can tell better when I see him 
 again," and changed the subject. A few moments later the 
 colonel summoned George from some lower region of the 
 hotel, and rose to take his leave. " Miss Arguello, with her 
 maid and courier, will occupy her old suite of rooms here," 
 he remarked, with a return of his old imperiousness. 
 " George has given the orders for her. I shall not change 
 my present lodgings, but of course will call every day. 
 Good-night ! " 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 The next morning Paul could not help noticing an in- 
 creased and even exaggerated respect paid him by the hotel 
 attendants. He was asked if his Excellency would be 
 served with breakfast in a private room, and his condescen- 
 sion in selecting the public coifee-room struck the obsequious 
 chamberlain, but did not prevent him from preceding Paul 
 backwards to the table, and summoning a waiter to attend 
 specially upon " milor." Surmising that George and the 
 colonel might be in some way connected with this extrava- 
 gance, he postponed an investigation till he should have 
 seen them again. And, although he hardly dared to con- 
 fess it to himself, the unexpected prospect of meeting Yerba 
 again fully preoccupied his thoughts. He had believed that 
 he would eventually see her in Europe, in some vague and 
 indefinite way and hour : it had been in his mind when he 
 started from California. That it would be so soon, and in 
 such a simple and natural manner, he had never conceived. 
 
 He had returned from his morning walk to the Brun- 
 nen, and was sitting idly in his room, when there was a 
 knock at the door. It opened to a servant bearing a sal- 
 ver with a card. Paul lifted it with a slight tremor, not at 
 the engraved name of " Maria Concepcion de Arguello de 
 la Yerba Buena," but at the remembered schoolgirl hand 
 that had penciled underneath the words, " wishes the favor 
 of an audience with his Excellency the Lord Lieutenant- 
 Governor of the Californias." 
 
 Paul' looked inquiringly at the servant. "The gnddir/e 
 Fraulein was in her own salon. Would Excellency walk 
 
A WAED OF THE GOLDEN GATE 287 
 
 that way ? It was but a step ; in effect, the next apart- 
 ment." 
 
 Paul followed him into the hall with wondering steps. 
 The door of the next room was open, and disclosed a hand- 
 somely furnished salon. A tall graceful figure rose quickly 
 from behind a writing-table, and advanced with outstretched 
 hands and a frank yet mischievous smile. It was Yerba. 
 
 Standing there in a grayish hat, mantle, and traveling 
 dress, all of one subdued yet alluring tone, she looked as 
 beautiful as when he had last seen her — and yet — unlike. 
 For a brief bitter moment his instincts revolted at this famil- 
 iar yielding up in his fair countrywomen of all that was 
 distinctively original in them to alien tastes and habits, and 
 he resented the plastic yet characterless mobility which made 
 Yerba's Parisian dress and European manner fit her so 
 charmingly and yet express so little. For a brief critical 
 moment he remembered the placid, unchanging simplicity 
 of German, and the inflexible and ingrained reserve of Eng- 
 lish, girlhood, in opposition to this indistinctive cosmopoli- 
 tan grace. But only for a moment. As soon as she spoke, 
 a certain flavor of individuality seemed to return to her 
 speech. 
 
 " Confess," she said, " it was a courageous thing for me 
 to do. You might have been somebody else — a real Excel- 
 lency — or Heaven knows what ! Or, what is worse in 
 your new magnificence, you might have forgotten one of 
 your oldest, most humble, but faithful subjects." She 
 drew back and made him a mock ceremonious curtsy, that 
 even in its charming exaggeration suggested to Paul, how-, 
 ever, that she had already made it somewhere seriously. 
 
 " But what does it all mean ? " he asked, smiling, feel- 
 ing not only his doubts and uneasiness vanish, but even the 
 years of separation melt away in her presence. " I know I 
 went to bed last night a very humble individual, and yet 
 I seem to awaken this morning a very exalted personage. 
 
288 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 Am I really Commander of the Faithful, or am I dream- 
 ing ? Might I trouhle you, as my predecessor Abou Hassan 
 did Sweetlips, to bite my little finger ? " 
 
 "Do you mean to say you have not seen the 'Anzei- 
 ger ' ? " she returned, taking a small German printed sheet 
 from the table and pointing to a paragraph. Paul took the 
 paper. Certainly there was the plain announcement among 
 the arrivals of " His Excellency Paul Hathaway, Lord 
 Lieutenant-Governor of the Californias." A light flashed 
 upon him. 
 
 "This is George's work. He and Colonel Pendleton 
 were here with me last night." 
 
 " Then you have seen the colonel already ? " she said, 
 with a scarcely perceptible alteration of expression, which, 
 however, struck Paul. 
 
 " Yes. I met him at the theatre last evening." He was 
 about to plunge into an animated description of the colo- 
 nel's indignation, but checked himself, he knew not why. 
 But he was thankful the next moment that he had. 
 
 " That accounts for everything," she said, lifting her 
 pretty shoulders with a slight shrug of weariness. " I had 
 to put a stop to George's talking about me three months 
 ago, — his extravagance is something too awful. And the 
 colonel, who is completely in his hands, — trusting him for 
 everything, even the language, — doesn't see it." 
 
 " But he is extravagant in the praise of his friends only, 
 and you certainly justify all he can say." 
 
 She was taking off her hat, and stopped for a moment to 
 look at him thoughtfully, with the soft tendrils of her hair 
 clinging to her forehead. " Did the colonel talk much about 
 me?" 
 
 " A great deal. In fact, I think we talked of nothing else. 
 He has told me of your triumphs and your victims ; of your 
 various campaigns and your conquests. And yet 1 dare say 
 he has not told me all — and I am dying to hear more." 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 289 
 
 She had laid down her hat and unloosed a large bow of 
 her mantle, but stopped suddenly in the midst of it and sat 
 down again. 
 
 " I wish you 'd do something for me." 
 
 " You have only to name it." 
 
 " Well, drop all this kind of talk ! Try to think of me 
 as if I had just come from California — or, better, as if you 
 had never known anything of me at all — and we met for 
 the first time. You could, I dare say, make yourself very 
 agreeable to such a young lady who was willing to be pleased 
 — why not to me ? I venture to say you have not ever 
 troubled yourself about me since we last met. No — heai 
 me through — vvhy, then, should you wish to talk over 
 what did n't concern you at the time ? Promise me you 
 will stop this reminiscent gossip, and I promise you I will 
 not only -not bore you with it, but take care that it is not 
 intruded upon you by others. Make yourself pleasant to 
 me by talking about yourself and your prospects, — any- 
 thing but me, — and I will throw over those princes and 
 barons that the colonel has raved about, and devote myself 
 to you while you are here. Does that suit your Excel- 
 lency ? " She had crossed her knees, and, with her hands 
 clasped over them, and the toe of her small boot advanced 
 beyond her skirt, leaned forward in the attitude he re- 
 membered to have seen her take in the summer-house at 
 Eosario. 
 
 " Perfectly,", he said. 
 
 " How long will you be here ? " 
 
 " About three weeks : that, I believe, is the time allotted 
 for my cure." 
 
 " Are you really ill," she said quietly, " or imagine your- 
 self so ? " 
 
 " It amounts to about the same thing. But my cure 
 may not take so long," he added, fixing his bright eyes 
 upon her. 
 
290^ A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 She returned his gaze thoughtfully, and they remained 
 looking at each other silently. 
 
 " Then you are stronger than you give yourself credit for. 
 That is very often the case," she said quietly. " There," 
 she added in another tone, " it is settled. You will come 
 and go as you like, using this salon as your own. Stay, we 
 can do something to-day. What do you say to a ride in 
 the forest this afternoon ? Milly is n't here yet, but it will 
 be quite proper for you to accompany me on horseback, 
 though, of course, we could n't walk a hundred yards down 
 the Allee together unless we were verloht." 
 
 " But," said Paul, " you are expecting company this 
 afternoon. Don Csesar — I mean Miss Briones and her 
 brother are coming here to say good-by." 
 
 She regarded him curiously, but without emotion, 
 
 " Colonel Pendleton should have added that they were 
 to remain here over night as my guests," she said com- 
 posedly. " And of course we shall be back in time for 
 dinner. But that is nothing to you. You have only to he 
 ready at three o'clock. I will see that the horses are 
 ordered. I often ride here, and the people know my tastes, 
 and habits. We will have a pleasant ride and a good long 
 talk together, and I '11 show you a ruin and a distant view 
 of the villa where I have been staying." She held out her 
 hand with a frank girlish smile, and even a girlish anticipa- 
 tion of pleasure in her brown eyes. He bent over her slim 
 fingers for a moment, and withdrew. 
 
 When he was in his own room again, he was conscious 
 only of a strong desire to avoid the colonel until after his 
 ride with 'Yerba. He would keep his word so far as to ab- 
 stain from allusion to her family or her past : indeed, he 
 had his own opinion of its futility. But it would be strange 
 if, with his past experience, he could not find some other 
 way to determine her convictions or win her confidence dur- 
 ing those two hours of companionship. He would accept 
 
A WAED OF THE GOLDEN GATE 291 
 
 her terms fairly ; if she had any ulterior design in her ad- 
 vances, he would detect it ; if she had the least concern for 
 him, she could not continue long an artificial friendship. 
 But he must not think of that ! 
 
 By absenting himself from the hotel he managed to keep 
 clear of Pendleton until the hour arrived. He was grati- 
 fied to find Yerba in the simplest and most sensible of 
 habits, as if she had already divined his tastes and had 
 wished to avoid attracting undue attention. Nevertheless, 
 it very prettily accented her tall graceful figure, and Paul, 
 albeit, like most artistic admirers of the sex, not recognizing 
 a woman on a horse as a particularly harmonious spectacle, 
 was forced to admire her. Both rode well, and naturally 
 — having been brought up in the same Western school — 
 the horses recognized it, and instinctively obeyed them, and 
 their conversation had the easy deliberation and inflection 
 of a tete-a-tete. Paul, in view of her previous hint, talked 
 to her of himself and his fortunes, of which she appeared, 
 however, to have some knowledge. His health had obliged 
 him lately to abandon politics and office ; he had been suc- 
 cessful in some ventures, and had become a junior partner 
 in a bank with foreign correspondence. She listened to 
 him for some time with interest and attention, but at last 
 her face became abstracted and thoughtful. " I wish I were 
 a man ! " she said suddenly. 
 
 Paul looked at her quickly. For the first time he de- 
 tected in the ring of her voice something of the passionate 
 quality he fancied he had always seen in her face. 
 
 " Except that it might give you better control of your 
 horse, I don't see why," said Paul. "And I don't en- 
 tirely believe you." 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " Because no woman really wishes to be a man unless 
 she is conscious of her failure as a woman." 
 
 " And how do you know I 'm not ? " she said, checking 
 
292 A WAED OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 her horse and looking in his face. A quick conviction that 
 she was on the point of some confession sprang into his 
 mind, but unfortunately showed in his face. She beat 
 back his eager look with a short laugh. " There, don't 
 speak, and don't look like that. That remark was worthy 
 the usual artless maiden's invitation to a compliment, was n't 
 it ? Let us keep to the subject of yourself. Why, with 
 your political influence, don't you get yourself appointed 
 to some diplomatic position over here ? " 
 
 " There are none in our service. You would n't want 
 me to sink myself in some absurd social functions, which 
 are called by that name, merely to become the envy and 
 hatred of a few rich republicans, like your friends who 
 haunt foreign courts ? " 
 
 " That 's not a pretty speech — but I suppose I invited 
 that too. Don't apologize. I 'd rather see you flare out 
 like that than pay compliments. Yet I fancy you 're a 
 diplomatist, for all that." 
 
 " You did me the honor to believe I was one once; when 
 I was simply the most palpable ass and bungler living," 
 said Paul bitterly. 
 
 She was still sweetly silent, apparently preoccupied in 
 smoothing out the mane of her walking horse. " Did I ? " 
 she said softly. He drew close beside her. 
 
 "How different the vegetation is here from what it is 
 with us ! " she said, with nervous quickness, directing his 
 attention to the grass road beneath them, without lifting 
 her eyes. " I don't mean what is cultivated, — for I sup- 
 pose it takes centuries to make the lawns they have in Eng- 
 land, — but even here the blades of grass seem to press 
 closer together, as if they were crowded or over-populated, 
 like the country ; and this forest, which has been always 
 wild and was a hunting park, has a blase look, as if it was 
 already tired of the unchanging traditions and monotony 
 around it. I think over there Nature aff'ects and influences 
 us : here, I fancy, it is itself affected by the people." 
 
A WAED OF THE GOLDEN GATE 293 
 
 " I think a good deal of Nature comes over from Amer- 
 ica for that purpose," he said dryly. 
 
 " And I think you are breaking your promise — besides 
 being a goose ! " she retorted smartly. Nevertheless, for 
 some occult reason they both seemed relieved by this ex- 
 quisite witticism, and trotted on amicably together. When 
 Paul lifted his eyes to hers he could see that they were suf- 
 fused with a tender mischief, as of a reproving yet secretly 
 admiring sister, and her strangely delicate complexion had 
 taken on itself that faint Alpine glow that was more of an 
 illumination than a color. " There," she said gayly, pointing 
 with her whip as the wood opened upon a glade through 
 which the parted trees showed a long blue curvature of 
 distant hills, " you see that white thing lying like a snow- 
 drift on the hills ? " 
 
 " Or the family washing on a hedge." 
 
 " As you please. Well, that is the villa." 
 
 " And you were very happy there ? " said Paul, watching 
 her girlishly animated face. 
 
 " Yes ; and as you don't ask questions, I '11 tell you 
 why. There is one of the sweetest old ladies there that I 
 ever met — the perfection of old-time courtliness with all 
 the motherishness of a German woman. She was very kind 
 to me, and, as she had no daughter of her own, I think she 
 treated me as if I was one. At least, I can imagine how 
 one would feel to her, and what a woman like that could 
 make of any girl. You laugh, Mr. Hathaway, you don't 
 understand — but you don't know what an advantage it 
 would be to a girl to have a mother like that, and know 
 that she could fall back on her and hold her own against 
 anybody. She 's equipped from the start, instead of being 
 handicapped. It 's all very well to talk about the value 
 of money. It can give you everything but one thing — the 
 power to do without it." 
 
 " I think its purchasing value would include even the 
 
294 A WAKD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 gnddige Frau," said Paul, who had laughed only to hida 
 the uneasiness that Yerba's approach to the tabooed subject 
 had revived in him. She shook her head ; then, recovering 
 her tone of gentle banter, said, "There — I've made a 
 confession. If the colonel talks to you again about my 
 conquests, you will know that at present my affections are 
 centred on the baron's mother. I admit it 's a strong point 
 in his — in anybody's — favor, who can show an unblem- 
 ished maternal pedigree. What a pity it is you are an 
 orphan, like myself, Mr. Hathaway ! For I fancy your mo- 
 ther must have been a very perfect woman. A great deal 
 of her tact and propriety has descended to you. Only it 
 would have been nicer if she had given it to you like pocket 
 money, as occasion required — which you might have shared 
 with me — than leaving it to you in one thumping legacy." 
 
 It was impossible to tell how far the playfulness of her 
 brown eyes suggested any ulterior meaning, for as Paul 
 again eagerly drew towards her, she sent her horse into a 
 rapid canter before him. When he was at her side again, 
 she said, "There is still the ruin to see on our way home. 
 It is just off here to the right. But if you wish to go over 
 it we will have to dismount at the foot of the slope and walk 
 up. It has n't any story or legend that I know of ; I looked 
 over the guide-book to cram for it before you came, but 
 there was nothing. So you can invent what you like." 
 
 They dismounted at the beginning of a gentle acclivity, 
 where an ancient wagon-road, now grass-grown, rose smooth 
 as a glacis. Tying their horses to two moplike bushes, they 
 climbed the slope hand in hand like children. There were 
 a few winding broken steps, part of a fallen archway, a few 
 feet of vaulted corridor, a sudden breach — the sky beyond 
 — and that was all ! Not all ; for before them, overlooked 
 at first, lay a chasm covering half an acre, in which the 
 whole of the original edifice — tower, turrets, walls, and 
 battlements — had been apparently cast, inextricably mixed 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 295 
 
 and mingled at different depths and angles, -with here and 
 there, like mushrooms from a dust-heap, a score of trees 
 upspringing. 
 
 " This is not Time — but gunpowder," said Paul, leaning 
 over a parapet of the wall and gazing at the abyss, with a 
 slight grimace. 
 
 "It don't look very romantic, certainly," said Yerba. 
 " I only saw it from the road before. I 'm dreadfully 
 sorry," she added, with mock penitence. "I suppose, how- 
 ever, something must have happened here." 
 
 " There may have been nobody ir the house at the time," 
 said Paul gravely. " The family may have been at the 
 baths." 
 
 They stood close together, their eibows resting upon the 
 broken wall, and almost touching. Beyond the abyss and 
 darker forest they could see the more vivid green and regu- 
 lar lines of the plane-trees of Strudle Bad, the glitter of a 
 spire, or the flash of a dome. Prom the abyss itself arose 
 a cool odor of moist green leaves, the scent of some unseen 
 blossoms, and around the baking vines on the hot wall the 
 hum of apparently taskless and disappointed bees. There 
 was nobody in sight in the forest road, no one working in 
 the bordering fields, and no suggestion of the present. 
 There might hava been three or four centuries between them 
 and Strudle Bad. 
 
 "The legend of this place," said Paul, glancing at, the 
 long brown lashes and oval outline of the cheek so near his 
 own, " is simple, yet affecting. A cruel, remorseless, but 
 fascinating Hexie was once loved by a simple shepherd. 
 He had never dared to syllable his hopeless affection, or 
 claim from her a syllabled — perhaps I should say a one- 
 syllabled — reply. He had followed her from remote lands, 
 dumbly worshiping her, building in his foolish brain an air- 
 castle of happiness, which by reason of her magic power 
 she could always see plainly in his eyes. And one day. 
 
296 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 beguiling him in the depths of the forest, she led him to a 
 faii'-seeming castle, and, bidding him enter its portals, offered 
 to show him a realization of his dream. But, lo ! even as 
 he entered the stately corridor it seemed to crumble away 
 before him, and disclosed a hideous abyss beyond, in which 
 the whole of that goodly palace lay in heaped and tangled 
 ruins — the fitting symbol of his wrecked and shattered 
 hopes." 
 
 She drew back a little way from him, but still holding 
 on to the top of the broken wall with one slim gauntleted 
 hand, and swung herself to one side, while she surveyed 
 him with smiling, parted lips and conscious eyelids. He 
 promptly covered her hand with his own, but she did not 
 seem to notice it. 
 
 " That is not the story," she said in a faint voice that 
 even her struggling sauciness could not make steadier. 
 " The true story is called ' The Legend of the Goose-Girl 
 of Strudle Bad, and the enterprising Gosling.' There was 
 once a goose-girl of the plain who tried honestly to drive 
 her geese to market, but one eccentric and willful gosling — 
 Mr. Hathaway ! Stop — please — I beg you let me go ! " 
 
 He had caught her in his arms — the one encircling her 
 waist, the other hand still grasping hers. She struggled, 
 half laughing ; yielded for a breathless moment as his lips 
 brushed her cheek, and — threw him off. " There ! " she 
 said, " that will do : the story was not illustrated." 
 
 " But Yerba," he said, with passionate eagerness, " hear 
 me — it is all God's truth. — I love you ! " 
 
 She drew back farther, shaking the dust of the wall from 
 the folds of her habit. Then, with a lower voice and a 
 paler cheek, as if his lips had sent her blood and utterance 
 back to her heart, she said, " Come, let us go." 
 
 " But not until you 've heard me, Yerba." 
 
 " Well, then — I believe you — there ! " she said, look- 
 ing at him. 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 297 
 
 " You believe me ? " he repeated eagerly, attempting to 
 take her hand again. 
 
 She drew back still further. " Yes," she said, " or I 
 should n't be here now. There ! that must suffice you. 
 And if you wish me still to believe you, you will not speak 
 of this again while we are out together. Come, let us go 
 back to the horses." 
 
 He looked at her with all his soul. She was pale, but 
 composed, and — he could see — determined. He followed 
 her without a word. She accepted his hand to support her 
 again down the slope without embarrassment or reminiscent 
 emotion. The whole scene through which she had just 
 passed might have been buried in the abyss and ruins be- 
 hind her. As she placed her foot in his hand to remount, 
 and for a moment rested her weight on his shoulder, her 
 brown eyes met his frankly and without a tremor. 
 
 'Not was she content with this. As Paul at first rode on 
 silently, his heart filled with unsatisfied yearning, she ral- 
 lied him mischievously. Was it kind in him on this, their 
 first day together, to sulk in this fashion ? Was it a pro- 
 mise for their future excursions ? Did he intend to carry this 
 lugubrious visage through the AUeeand up to the courtyard 
 of the hotel to proclaim his sentimental condition to the 
 world ? At least, she trusted he would not show it to 
 Milly, who might remember that this was only the second 
 time they had met each other. There was something so 
 sweetly reasonable in this, and withal not without a certain 
 hopefulness for the future, to say nothing of the half-mis- 
 chievous, half-reproachful smile that accompanied it, that 
 Paul exerted himself, and eventually recovered his lost 
 gayety. When they at last drew up in the courtyard, with 
 the flush of youth and exercise in their faces, Paul felt he 
 vras the object of envy to the loungers, and of fresh gossip 
 to Strudle Bad. It struck him less pleasantly that two 
 dark faces, which had been previously regarding him in tne 
 
298 A WAED OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 gloom of the corridor and vanished as he approached, reaj, 
 peared some moments later in Yerba's salon as Don CcRsat 
 and Dona Anna, with a benignly different expression. Doiia 
 Anna especially greeted him with so much of the osten- 
 tatious archness of a confident and forgiving woman to a 
 momentarily recreant lover, that he felt absurdly embar- 
 rassed in Yerba's presence. He was thinking how he could 
 excuse himself, when he noticed a beautiful basket of flow- 
 ers on the table and a tiny note bearing a baron's crest. 
 Yerba had put it aside with — as it seemed to him at the 
 moment — an almost too pronounced indifference — and an 
 indifference that was strongly contrasted to Doiia Anna's 
 eagerly expressed enthusiasm over the offering, and her ulti- 
 mate supplications to Paul and her brother to admire its 
 beauties and the wonderful taste of the donor. 
 
 All this seemed so incongruous with Paul's feelings, and 
 above all with the recollection of his scene with Yerba, that 
 he excused himself from dining with the party, alleging an 
 engagement with his old fellow traveler, the German officer, 
 whose acquaintance he had renewed. Yerba did not press 
 him ; he even fancied she looked relieved. Colonel Pen- 
 dleton was coming ; Paul was not loath, in his present 
 frame of mind, to dispense with his company. A convic- 
 tion that the colonel's counsel was not the best guide for 
 Yerba, and that in some vague way their interests were 
 antagonistic, had begun to force itself upon him. He had 
 no intention of being disloyal to her old guardian, but he 
 felt that Pendleton had not been frank with him since his 
 return from Rosario. Had he ever been so with her ? He 
 sometimes doubted his disclaimer. 
 
 He was lucky in finding the general disengaged, and to- 
 gether they dined at a restaurant and spent the evening at 
 the Kursaal. Later, at the Eesidenz Club, the general 
 leaned over his beer-glass and smilingly addressed his com- 
 panion. 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 299 
 
 " So I hear you, too, are a conquest of the beautiful 
 South American." 
 
 For an instant Paul, recognizing only Doiia Anna undei 
 that epithet, looked puzzled. 
 
 " Come, my friend," said the general, regarding him 
 with some amusement, " I am an older man than you, yet 
 I hardly think I could have ridden out with such a god- 
 dess without becoming her slave." 
 
 Paul felt his face flush in spite of himself. " Ah ! you 
 mean Miss Arguello," he said hurriedly, his color increas- 
 ing at his own mention of that name as if he were imposing 
 it upon his honest companion. " She is an old acquaint- 
 ance of mine — from my own State — California." 
 
 " Ah, so," said the general, lifting his eyebrows in pro- 
 found apology. " A thousand pardons." 
 
 " Surely," said Paul, with a desperate attempt to recovex 
 his equanimity, " you ought to know our geography better.'" 
 
 " So, I am wrong. But still the name — Arguello — 
 surely that is not American ? Still, they say she has no 
 accent, and does not look like a Mexican." 
 
 For an instant Paul was superstitiously struck with the 
 fatal infelicity of Yerba's selection of a foreign name, that 
 now seemed only to invite that comment and criticism 
 which she should have avoided. Nor could he explain it 
 at length to the general without assisting and accenting the 
 deception, which he was always hoping in some vague way 
 to bring to an end. He was sorry he had corrected the 
 general ; he was furious that he had allowed himself to be 
 confused. 
 
 Happily his companion had misinterpreted his annoy- 
 ance, and with impulsive German friendship threw himself 
 into what he believed to be Paul's feelings. " Donnerwet- 
 ter ! Your beautiful countrywoman is made the subject of 
 curiosity just because that stupid baron is persistent in his 
 serious attentions. That is quite enough, my good friend, 
 
800 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 to make Klatsclien here among those animals who do not 
 understand the freedom of an American girl, or that an 
 heiress may have something else to do with her money than 
 to expend it on the baron's mortgages. But " — he stopped, 
 and his simple, honest face assumed an air of profound and 
 sagacious cunning — "I am glad to talk about it with you, 
 who of course are perfectly familiar with the affair. I shall 
 now be able to know what to say. My word, my friend, 
 has some weight here, and I shall use it. And now you 
 shall tell me who is our lovely friend, and who were her 
 parents and her kindred in her own home. Her associates 
 here, you possibly know, are an impossible colonel and his 
 never-before-approached valet, with some South American 
 Indian planters, and, I believe, a pork-butcher's daughter. 
 But of them — it makes nothing. Tell me of her people." 
 
 With his kindly serious face within a few inches of 
 Paul's, and sympathizing curiosity beaming from his pince- 
 nez, he obliged the wretched and conscience-stricken Hatha- 
 way to respond with a detailed account of Yerba's parentage 
 as projected by herself and indorsed by Colonel Pendleton. 
 He dwelt somewhat particularly on the romantic character 
 of the Trust, hoping to draw the general's attention away 
 from the question of relationship, but he was chagrined to 
 find that the honest warrior evidently confounded the Trust 
 ■vith some eleemosynary institution and sympathetically 
 glossed it over. " Of course," he said, " the Mexican Min- 
 ister at Berlin would know all about the Arguello family : 
 so there would be no question there." 
 
 Paul was not sorry when the time came to take leave of 
 his friend ; but once again in the clear moonlight and fresh, 
 balmy air of the Allee, he forgot the unpleasantness of the 
 interview. He found himself thinking only of his ride 
 with Yerba. Well ! he had told her that he loved her. 
 She knew it now, and although she had forbidden him to 
 Bueak further, she had not wholly rejected it. It must be hei 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 301 
 
 morbid consciousness of the mystery of her birth that with- 
 held a return of her affections, — some half-knowledge, per- 
 haps, that she would not divulge, yet that kept her unduly 
 sensitive of accepting his love. He was satisfied there was 
 no entanglement ; her heart was virgin. He even dared to 
 hope that she had always cared for him. It was for him 
 to remove all obstacles — to prevail upon her to leave this 
 place and return to America with him as her husband, the 
 guardian of her good name, and the custodian of her secret. 
 At times the strains of a dreamy German waltz, played in 
 the distance, brought back to him the brief moment that 
 his arm had encircled her waist by the crumbling wall, and 
 his pulses grew languid, only to leap firmer the next mo- 
 ment with more desperate resolve. He would win her, come 
 what may ! He could never have been in earnest before : 
 he loathed and hated himself for his previous passive 
 acquiescence to her fate. He had been a weak tool of the 
 colonel's from the first : he was even now handicapped by 
 fl preposterous promise he had given him ! Yes, she was 
 right to hesitate — to question his ability to make her 
 happy ! He had found her here, surrounded by stupidity 
 and cupidity — to give it no other name — so patent ' that 
 she was the common gossip, and had offered nothing but a 
 boyish declaration ! As he strode into the hotel that night 
 it was well that he did not meet the unfortunate colonel on 
 the staircase ! 
 
 It was very late, although there was still visible a light 
 in Yerba's salon, shining on her balcony, which extended 
 before and included his own window. From time to time 
 he could hear the murmur of voices. It was too late to 
 avail himself of the invitation to join them, even if his 
 frame of mind had permitted it. He was too nervous and 
 excited to go to bed, and, without lighting his candle, he 
 opened the Erench window that gave upon the balcony, 
 drew a chair in the recess behind the curtain, and gazed 
 
802 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 upon the night. It was very quiet ; the moon was high, 
 tlie square was sleeping in a trance of checkered shadows, 
 lilce a gigantic chessboard, with black foreshortened trees 
 for pawns. The click of a cavalry sabre, the sound of a 
 footfall on the pavement of the distant Kbnigsstrasse, were 
 distinctly audible; a far-off railway whistle was startling in 
 its abruptness. In the midst of this calm the opening of 
 the door of the salon, with the sudden uplifting of voices 
 in the hall, told Paul that Yerba's guests were leaving. He 
 heard Doiia Anna's arch accents — arch even to Colonel 
 Pendleton's monotonous baritone ! — Milly's high, rapid 
 utterances, the suave falsetto of Don Csesar, and her voice, 
 he thought a trifle wearied, — the sound of retiring footsteps, 
 and all was still again. 
 
 So still that the rhythmic beat of the distant waltz 
 returned to him, with a distinctiveness that he could idly fol- 
 low. He thought of Rosario and the rose-breath of the 
 open windows with a strange longing, and remembered the 
 half-stifled sweetness of her happy voice rising with it from 
 the veranda. Why had he ever let it pass from him then 
 and waft its fragrance elsewhere ? "Why — What was 
 that? 
 
 The slight turning of a latch ! The creaking of the 
 French window of the salon, and somebody had slipped 
 softly half out on the balcony. His heart stopped beating. 
 Prom his position in the recess of his own window, with 
 his back to the partition of the salon, he could see nothing. 
 Yet he did not dare to move. For with the quickened 
 senses of a lover he felt the diffused and perfumed aura of 
 her presence, of her garments, of her flesh, flow in upon 
 him through the open window, and possess his whole 
 breathless being ! It was she ! Like him, perhaps, long- 
 ing to enjoy the perfect night — like him, perhaps, think- 
 ing of — 
 
 " So you ar-range to get rid of me — ha ! lik thees ? To 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 303 
 
 tur-rn me off from your heels like a dog who have follow 
 you — but without a word — without a — a — thanks — 
 without a 'ope ! Ah ! — we have ser-rved you — me and 
 my sister ; we are the or-range dry — now we can go ! 
 Like the old shoe, we are to be flung away ! Good ! But 
 I am here again — you see. I shall speak, and you shall 
 hear-r." 
 
 Don Caesar's voice — alone with her ! Paul gripped his 
 chair and sat upright. 
 
 " Stop ! Stay where you are ! How dared you return 
 here ? " It was Yerba's voice, on the balcony, low and 
 distinct. 
 
 " Shut the window ! I shall speak with you what you 
 will not the world to hear." 
 
 " I prefer to keep where I am, since you have crept into 
 this room like a thief ! " 
 
 " A thief ! Good ! " He broke out in Spanish, and, 
 i,i, if no longer fearful of being overheard, had evidently 
 diL-awn nearer to the window. " A thief. Ha ! wMy 
 bueno — but it is not I, you understand — I, Caesar Bri- 
 ones, who am the thief ! No ! It is that swaggering espa- 
 dachin — that fanfarron of a Colonel Pendleton — that 
 pi.ttern of an official, Mr. Hathaway — that most beautiful 
 heiress of the Californias, Miss Arguello — that are thieves ! 
 Yes — of a name — Miss Arguello — of a name ! The 
 name of Arguello ! " 
 
 Paul rose to his feet. 
 
 " Ah, so ! You start — you turn pale — you flash your 
 ejes, senora, but you think you have deceived me all these 
 years. You think I did not see your game at Eosario — 
 yes, even when that foolish Castro muchacha first put that 
 idea in your head. Who furnished you the facts you 
 wanted ? I — Mother of God ! such facts ! — I, who 
 knew the Arguello pedigree — I, who know it was as 
 impossible for you to be a daughter of them as — what V 
 
304 A WARD OF THE GOLDEK GATE 
 
 let me think — as — as it is impossible for you to be the 
 wife of that baron whom you would deceive with the rest ! 
 Ah, yes ; it was a high flight for you, Mees — Mees — 
 Dofia Fulana — a noble game for you to bring down ! " 
 
 Why did she not speak? What was she doing? If 
 she had but uttered a single word of protest, of angry dis- 
 missal, Paul would have flown to her side. It could not 
 be the paralysis of persona.1 fear : the balcony was wide ; 
 she could easily pass to the end ; she could even see his 
 open window. 
 
 "Why did I do this ? Because I loved you, senora — 
 and you knew it ! Ah ! you can turn your face away 
 now ; you can pretend to misunderstand me, as you did a 
 moment ago ; you can part from me now like a mere 
 acquaintance — but it was not always so ! No, it was you 
 who brought me here ; your eyes that smiled into mine — ■ 
 and drove home the colonel's request that I and my sister 
 should accompany you. God ! I was weak then ! You 
 smile, sefiora ; you think you have succeeded — you and 
 your pompous colonel and your clever governor ! You 
 think you have compromised me, and perjured vie, because 
 of this. You are wrong ! You think I dare not speak to 
 this puppet of a baron, and that I have no proofs. You 
 are wrong ! " 
 
 " And even if you can produce them, what care I ? " 
 said Yerba unexpectedly, yet in a voice so free from excite- 
 ment and passion that the weariness which Paul had at first 
 noticed seemed to be the only dominant tone. " Suppose 
 you prove that I am not an Arguello. Good ! you have 
 yet to show that a connection with any of your race would 
 be anything but a disgrace." 
 
 " Ah ! you defy me, little one ! Caramha ! Listen, 
 then ! You do not know all ! When you thought I was 
 only helping you to fabricate your claim to the Arguellos' 
 name, I was finding out \vho you really were 1 Ah ! It 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 305 
 
 was not so difficult as you fondly hope, seiiora. We were 
 not all brutes and fools in the early days, though we stood 
 aside to let your people run their vulgar course. It was 
 your hired bully — your respected guardian — this dog of 
 an espadaehin, who let out a hint of the secret — with a 
 prick of his blade — and a scandal. One of my peon 
 women was a servant at the convent when you were a 
 child, and recognized the woman who put you there and 
 came to see you as a friend. She overheard the Mother 
 Superior say it was your mother, and saw a necklace that 
 was left for you to wear. Ah ! you begin to believe ! 
 When I had put this and that together I found that Pepita 
 could not identify you with the child that she had seen. 
 But you, senora, you yourself supplied the missing proof ! 
 Yes ! you supplied it with the necklace that you wore that 
 evening at Rosario, when you wished to do honor to this 
 young Hathaway — the guardian who had always thrown 
 you off ! Ah ! — you now suspect why, perhaps ! It was 
 your mother's necklace that you wore, and you said so ! 
 That night I sent the good Pepita to identify it; to watch 
 through the window from the garden when you were wear- 
 ing it ; to make it sure as the Creed. I sent her to your 
 room late that night when you had changed your dress, 
 that she might examine it among your jewels. And she 
 did and will swear — look you ! — swear that it is the one 
 given you as a child by the woman at the convent, who 
 was your mother ! And who was that woman — eh ? 
 Who was the mother of the Arguello de la Yerba Buena ? 
 — who this noble ancestress ? " 
 
 " Excuse me — but perhaps you are not aware that you 
 are raising your voice in a lady's drawing-room, and that 
 although you are speaking a language no one here under- 
 stands, you are distiirbing the hotel." 
 
 It was Paul, quiet, pale in the moonlight, erect on the 
 balcony before the window. As Yerba, with a start, 
 
306 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 retreated quickly into the room, Don Cassar stepped fo^ 
 ward angrily and suspiciously towards the window. He 
 had his hand reached forward towards the handle as if to 
 close the swinging sash against the intruder, when in an 
 instant he was seized hy Paul, tightly locked in a desperate 
 grip, and whirled out on the balcony. Before he could 
 gain breath to utter a cry, Hathaway had passed his right 
 arm around the Mexican's throat, effectively stopping his 
 utterance, and, with a supreme effort of strength, dragged 
 him along the wall, falling with him into the open window 
 of his own room. As he did so, to his inexpressible relief he 
 heard the sash closed and the bolt drawn of the salon win- 
 dow, and regained his feet, collected, quiet, and trium- 
 phant. 
 
 " I am sorry," he said, coolly dusting his clothes, " to 
 have been obliged to change the scene of this discussion so 
 roughly, but you will observe that you can speak more 
 freely here, and that any altercation we may have in this 
 room will be less likely to attract comment." 
 
 " Assassin ! " said Don Caesar chokingly, as he strug- 
 gled to his feet. 
 
 " Thank you. Relieve your feelings as much as you 
 like here ; in fact, if you would speak a little louder you 
 would oblige me. The guests are beginning to be awake," 
 continued Paul, with a wicked smile, indicating the noise 
 of an opening door and footsteps in the passage, " and are 
 now able to locate without difficulty the scene of the dis- 
 turbance." 
 
 Briones apparently understood his meaning and the suc- 
 cess of his stratagem. " You think you have saved her from 
 disgrace," he said, with a livid smile, in a lower tone and 
 a desperate attempt to imitate Paul's coolness. " Por the 
 present — ah — yees ! perhaps in this hotel and this even- 
 ing. But you have not stop my mouth for — a — to 
 morrow — and the whole world, Mr. Hathaway." 
 
A WAKD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 307 
 
 " Well," said Paul, looking at him critically, " I don't 
 know about that. Of course, there 's the equal chance that 
 you may kill me — but that 's a question for to-morrow, too." 
 
 The Mexican cast a quick glance at the door and window. 
 Paul, as if carelessly, changed the key of the former from 
 one pocket to the other, and stepped before the window. 
 
 " So this is a plot to murder me ! Have a care ! You 
 . are not in your own brigand California ! " 
 
 " If you think so, alarm the house. They will find us 
 quarreling, and you will only precipitate matters by receiv- 
 ing the insult that will make you fight — before them." 
 
 " I am r-ready, sir, when and where you will," said 
 Briones, with a swaggering air but a shifting, furtive eye. 
 " Open — a — the door." 
 
 " Pardon me. We will leave this room together in an 
 hour for the station. We will board the night express that 
 will take us in three hours beyond the frontier, where we 
 can each find a friend." 
 
 " But my affairs here — my sister — I must see her." 
 
 " You shall write a note to her at that table, saying that 
 important business — a dispatch — has called you away, 
 and we will leave it with the porter to be delivered in the 
 morning. Or — I do not restrict you — you can say what 
 you like, provided she don't get it until we have left." 
 
 " And you make of me a prisoner, sir ? " 
 
 " No ; a visitor, Don Caesar — a visitor whose conversa- 
 tion is so interesting that I am forced to detain him to hear 
 more. You can pass the time pleasantly by finishing the 
 story I was obliged to interrupt a moment ago. Do you 
 know this mother of Miss Yerba, of whom you spoke ? " 
 
 " That 's m — my aifair." 
 
 " That means you don't know her. If you did, you 'd 
 have had her within call. And, as she is the only person 
 who is able to say that Miss Yerba is not an Arguello, you 
 have been very remiss." 
 
308 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 " Ah, bah ! I am not one of your — a — lawyers." 
 
 " No ; or you would know that, with no better evidence 
 than you have, you might be sued for slander." 
 
 " Ah ! Why does not Miss Yerba sue, then ? " 
 
 " Because she probably expects that somebody will shoot 
 you." 
 
 " As you for instance ? " 
 
 "Perhaps." 
 
 " And if you do not — eh ? — you have not stop my 
 mouth, but your own. And if you dv, you help her to 
 marry the baron, your rival. You are not wise, friend 
 Hathaway." 
 
 " May I remind you that you have not yet written to 
 your sister, and you may prefer to do it carefully and de- 
 liberately ? " 
 
 Don Caesar arose with a vindictive glance at Paul, and 
 pulled a chair before the table, as the latter placed pen, 
 ink, and paper before him. " Take your time," he added, 
 folding his arms and walking towards the window. " Saj 
 what you like, and don't let my presence restrain you." 
 
 The Mexican began to write furiously, then spasmodi- 
 cally, then slowly and reluctantly. "I war-r-n you, I 
 shall expose all," he said suddenly. 
 
 " As you please." 
 
 " And shall say that if I disappear, you are my mur- 
 derer — you understand — my murderer ! " 
 
 " Don't consult me on a question of epithets, but go 
 on." 
 
 Don Caesar recommenced his writing with a malign smile. 
 There was a sudden sharp rap at the door. 
 
 Don Caesar leaped to his feet, grasped his papers, and 
 rushed to the door ; but Paul was before him. " Who is 
 there ? " he demanded. 
 
 "Pendleton." 
 
 At the sound of the colonel's voice Don Caesar fell back 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 30i? 
 
 Paul opened the door, admitted the tall figure of the 
 colonel, and was about to turn the key again. But Pen- 
 dleton lifted his hand in grim deprecation. 
 
 "That will do, Mr. Hathaway. I know all. But I 
 wish to speak with Briones elsewhere, alone." 
 
 " Excuse me, Colonel Pendleton," said Paul firmly, 
 " but I have the prior claim. Words have passed between 
 this gentleman and myself which we are now on our way 
 to the station and the frontier to settle. If you are willing 
 to accompany us, I shall give you every opportunity to 
 converse with him alone, and arrange whatever business 
 you may have with him, provided it does not interfere with 
 mine." 
 
 " My business," said Pendleton, " is of a personal 
 nature, that will not interfere with any claim of yours that 
 Mr. Briones may choose to admit, but is of a private quality 
 that must be transacted between us now." His face was 
 pale, and his voice, although steady and self-controlled, had 
 that same strange suggestion of sudden age in it which Paul 
 had before noticed. Whether Don Csesar detected it, or 
 whether he had some other instinctive appreciation of 
 greater security, Paul could not tell. He seemed to recover 
 his swagger again, as he said : — 
 
 " I shall hear what Colonel Pendleton has to say first. 
 But I shall hold myself in readiness to meet you after- 
 wards — you shall not fear, sir ! " 
 
 Paul remained looking from the one to the other without 
 speaking. It was Don Caesar who returned his glance 
 boldly and defiantly, Colonel Pendleton who, with thin 
 white fingers pulling his mustache, evaded it. Then Paul 
 unlocked the door, and said slowly, " In five minutes I 
 leave this house for the station. I shall wait there until 
 the train arrives. If this gentleman does not join me, I 
 shall be better able to understand all this and take measures 
 accordingly." 
 
310 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 " And I tell to you, Meester Hathaway, sir," said Don 
 Caesar, striking an attitude in the doorway, " you shall do 
 as I please — Caramba ! — and shall beg " — 
 
 " Hold your tongue, sir, — ^or, by the Eternal ! " — burst 
 out Pendleton suddenly, bringing down his thin hand on 
 the Mexican's shoulder. He stopped as suddenly. " Gen- 
 tlemen, this is childish. Go, sir ! " to Don Caesar, pointing 
 with a gaunt white finger into the darkened hall. "I will 
 follow you. Mr. Hathaway, as an older man, and one who 
 has seen a good deal of foolish altercation, I regret, sir, 
 deeply regret, to be a witness to this belligerent quality in a 
 law-maker and a public man ; and I must deprecate, sir, — 
 deprecate, your demand on that gentleman for what, in the 
 folly of youth, you are pleased to call personal satisfac- 
 tion." 
 
 As he moved with dignity out of the room, Paul remained 
 blankly staring after him. Was it all a dream ? — or was 
 this Colonel Pendleton the duelist ? Had the old man 
 gone crazy, or was he merely acting to veil some wild pur- 
 pose ? His sudden arrival showed that Yerba must have 
 sent for him and told him of Don Caesar's threats ; would 
 he be wild enough to attempt to strangle the man in some 
 remote room or in the darkness of the passage? He stepped 
 softly into the hall : he could still hear the double tread of 
 the two men : they had reached the staircase — they were 
 descending ! He heard the drowsy accents of the night 
 porter and the swinging of the door — they were in the 
 street ! 
 
 Wherever they were going, or for what purpose, he must 
 be at the station, as he had warned them he would be. He 
 hastily threw a few things into his valise, and prepared to 
 follow them. When he went downstairs he informed the 
 porter that owing to an urgent call of business he should 
 try to catch the through express at three o'clock, but they 
 must reta,in his room and luggage until they heard from 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 311 
 
 him. He remembered Don CsBsar's letter. Had either of 
 the gentlemen, his friends who had just gone out, left a 
 letter or message ? No, Excellency ; the gentlemen were 
 talking earnestly — he believed, in the South American lan- 
 guage — and had not spoken to him. 
 
 Perhaps it was this that reminded Paul, as he crossed the 
 square again, that he had made no preparation for any pos- 
 sible fatal issue to himself in this adventure. She would 
 know it, however, and why he had undertaken it. He tried 
 to think that perhaps some interest in himself had prompted 
 her to send the colonel to him. Yet, mingled with this 
 was an odd sense of a certain ridiculousness in his position : 
 there was the absurdity of his prospective antagonist being 
 even now in confidential consultation with his own friend 
 and ally, whose functions he had usurped, and in whose in- 
 terests he was about to risk his life. And as he walked 
 away through the silent streets, the conviction more than 
 once was forced upon him that he was going to an appoint- 
 ment that would not be kept. 
 
 He reached the station some ten minutes before the train 
 was due. Two or three half-drowsy, wrapped-up passengers 
 were already on the platform ; but neither Don Csesar nor 
 Colonel Pendleton was among them. He explored the wait- 
 ing-rooms and even the half-lit buffet, but with no better 
 success. Telling the Bahnhof Inspector that his passage 
 was only contingent upon the arrival of one or two com- 
 panions, and describing them minutely to prevent mistakes, 
 he began gloomily to pace before the ticket-office. Five 
 minutes passed — the number of passengers did not in- 
 crease ; ten minutes ; a distant shriek — the hoarse inquiry 
 of the inspector — had the Herr's companions yet gekommt? 
 the sudden glare of a Cyclopean eye in the darkness, the 
 on-gliding of the long-jointed and gleaming spotted serpent, 
 the train — a hurried glance around the platform, one or 
 two guttural orders, the slamming of doors, the remounting 
 
312 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 of black uniformed figures like caryatides along the marches 
 ^ieds, a puff of vapor, and the train had come and gone 
 without them. 
 
 Yet he would give his adversary fifteen minutes more to 
 allow for accident or delay, or the possible arrival of the 
 colonel with an explanation, and recommenced his gloomy 
 pacing, as the Bahnhof sank back into half-lit repose. At 
 the end of five minutes there was another shriek. Paul 
 turned quickly to the inspector. Ah, then, there was an- 
 other train ? No ; it was only the up exjiress for Basle, 
 going the other way and stopping at the Nord Station, half 
 a mile away. It would not stop here, but the Herr would 
 see it pass in a few moments at full speed. 
 
 It came presently, with a prolonged despairing shriek, out 
 of the darkness ; a flash, a rush and roar at his side, a plunge 
 into the darkness again with the same despairing cry ; a 
 flutter of something white from one of the windows, like a 
 loosened curtain, that at last seemed to detach itself, and, 
 after a wild attempt to follow, suddenly soared aloft, whirled 
 over and over, dropped, and drifted slowly, slantwise, to 
 the ground. 
 
 The inspector had seen it, ran down the line, and picked 
 it up. Then he returned with it to Paul with a look of 
 sympathizing concern. It was a lady's handkerchief, evi- 
 dently some signal waved to the well-born Herr, who was 
 the only passenger on the platfrom. So, possibly, it might 
 be from his friends, who by some stupid mischance had gone 
 to the wrong station, and — Gott im Himmel I — it was 
 hideously stupid, yet possible, got on the wrong train ! 
 
 The Herr, a little pale, but composed, thought it was 
 possible. No ; he would not telegraph to the next station 
 — not yet — he would inquire. 
 
 He walked quickly away, reaching the hotel breathlessly, 
 yet in a space that seemed all too brief for his disconnected 
 thought. There were signs of animation in the hall, and an 
 
A WAKD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 313 
 
 empty carriage was just reentering the courtyard. Tlie hall 
 porter met him with demonstrative concern and apology. 
 Ah ! if he had only understood his Excellency better, he 
 could have saved him all this trouble. Evidently his 
 Excellency was going with the Arguello party, who had 
 ordered a carriage, doubtless, for the same important jour- 
 iiey, an hour before, yet had left only a few moments after 
 his Excellency, and his Excellency, it would appear, had 
 gone to the wrong station. 
 
 Paul pushed hurriedly past the man and ascended to his 
 room. Both windows were open, and in the faint moonlight 
 he could see that something white was pinned to his pillow. 
 With nervous fingers he relit his candles, and found it was a 
 note in Yerba's handwriting. As he opened it, a tiny spray 
 of the vine that had grown on the crumbling wall fell at his 
 feet. He picked it up, pressed it to his lips, and read, with 
 dim eyes, as follows : — 
 
 You know now why I spoke to you as I did to-day, and 
 why the other half of this precious spray is the only mem- 
 ory I care to carry with me out of this crumbling ruin of 
 all my hopes. You were right, Paul : my taking you there 
 was an omen — not to you, who can never be anything but 
 proud, beloved, and true — but to me of all the shame and 
 misery. Thank you for all you have done — for all you 
 would do, my friend, and don't think me ungrateful, only 
 because I am unworthy of it. Try to forgive me, but don't 
 forget me, even if you must hate me. Perhaps, if you knew 
 all — you might still love a little the poor girl to whom you 
 have already given the only name she can ever take from 
 you — Yekba Buena ! 
 
CHAPTEE VII 
 
 It was already autumn, and in the city of New York an 
 early Sunday morning breeze was sweeping up the leave? 
 that had fallen from the regularly planted ailantus-trees be- 
 fore the brown-stone frontage of a row of monotonously 
 alike five-storied houses on one of the principal avenues. 
 The Pastor of the Third Presbyterian Church, that uplifted 
 its double towers on the corner, stopped before one of these 
 dwellings, ran up the dozen broad steps, and rang the bell. 
 He was presently admitted to the sombre richness of a hall 
 and drawing-room with high-backed furniture of dark carved 
 woods, like cathedral stalls, and, hat in hand, somewhat 
 impatiently awaited the arrival of his hostess and parish- 
 ioner. The door opened to a tall, white-haired woman in 
 lustreless black silk. She was regular and resolute in fea- 
 tures, of fine but unbending presence, and, though somewhat 
 past middle age, showed no signs of either the weakness or 
 mellowness of years. 
 
 " I am sorry to disturb your Sabbath morning medita- 
 tions. Sister Argalls, nor would I if it were not in the line 
 of Christian duty ; but Sister Eobbins is unable to-day to 
 make her usual Sabbath hospital visit, and I thought if you 
 were excused from the Foreign Missionary class and Bible 
 instruction at three you might undertake her functions. 
 I know, my dear old friend," he continued, with bland 
 doprecation of her hard-set eyes, "how distasteful this 
 promiscuous mingling with the rough and ungodly has 
 always been to you, and how reluctant you are to be placed 
 in the position of being liable to hear coarse, vulgar, or 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 315 
 
 irreverent speech. I think, too, in our long and pleasant 
 pastoral relations, you have always found me mindful of it. 
 I admit I have sometimes regretted that your late husband 
 had not more generally familiarized you with the ways of 
 the world. But so it is — we all have our weaknesses. If 
 not one thing, another. And as Envy and Uncharitable- 
 ness sometimes find their way in even Christian hearts, I 
 should like you to undertake this office for the sake of ex- 
 ample. There are some, dear Sister Argalls, who think 
 that the rich widow who is most liberal in the endowment 
 of the goods that Providence has intrusted to her hands 
 claims therefore to be exempt from labor in the Christian 
 vineyard. Let us teach them how unjust they are." 
 
 " I am willing," said the lady, with a dry, determined 
 air, " I suppose these patients are not professedly bad 
 characters ? " 
 
 " By no means. A few, perhaps ; but the majority are 
 unfortunates — dependent either upon public charity or 
 some small provision made by their friends." 
 
 « Very well." 
 
 " And you understand that though they have the privi- 
 lege of rejecting your Christian ministrations, dear Sister 
 Argalls, you are free to judge when you may be patient or 
 importunate with them ? " 
 
 " I understand." 
 
 The Pastor was not an unkindly man, and, as he glanced 
 at the uncompromising look in Mrs. Argalls's eyes, felt for 
 a moment some inconsistency between his humane instincts 
 and his Christian duty. " Some of them may require, and 
 be benefited by, a stern monitress, and Sister Bobbins, I 
 fear, was weak," he said consolingly to himself, as he de- 
 scended the steps again. 
 
 At three o'clock Mrs. Argalls, with a reticule and a few 
 tracts, was at the door of St. John's Hospital. As she dis- 
 played her testimonials and announced that she had taken 
 
316 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 Mrs. Eobbins's place, the officials received her respectfully, 
 und gave some instructions to the attendants, which, how- 
 ever, did not stop some individual comments. 
 
 " I say, Jim, it does n't seem the square thing to let that 
 grim old girl loose among them poor convalescents." 
 
 " Well, I don't know : they say she 's rich and gives a 
 lot o' money away, but if she tackles that swearing old 
 Kentuckian in No. 3, she '11 have her hands full." 
 
 However, the criticism was scarcely fair, for Mrs. Argalls, 
 although moving rigidly along from bed to bed of the ward, 
 equipped with a certain formula of phrases, nevertheless 
 dropped from time to time some practical common-sense 
 questions that showed an almost masculine intuition of the 
 patients' needs and requirements. Nor did she betray any 
 of that over-sensitive shrinking from coarseness which the 
 good Pastor had feared, albeit she was quick to correct its 
 exhibition. The languid men listened to her with half- 
 aggressive, half-amused interest, and some of the satisfaction 
 of taking a bitter but wholesome tonic. It was not until 
 she reached the bed at the farther end of the ward that she 
 seemed to meet with any check. 
 
 It was occupied by a haggard man, with a long white 
 mustache and features that seemed wasted by inward 
 struggle and fever. At the first sound of her voice he 
 turned quickly towards her, lifted himself on his elbow, 
 and gazed fixedly in her face. 
 
 " Kate Howard — by the Eternal ! " he said in a low 
 voice. 
 
 Despite her rigid self-possession the woman started, 
 glanced hurriedly around, and drew nearer to him. 
 
 " Pendleton ! " she said in an equally suppressed voice. 
 " What, in God's name, are you doing here ? " 
 
 "Dying, I reckon — sooner or later," he said grimly, 
 '"'yiat's what they do here." 
 
 ' But — what," she went on hurriedly, still glancing over 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 317 
 
 her shoulder as if she suspected some trick — " what has 
 brought you to this ? " 
 
 " You ! " said the colonel, dropping back exhaustedly on 
 his pillow. " You and your daughter." 
 
 " I don't understand you," she said quickly, yet regard- 
 ing him with stern rigidity. " You know perfectly well I 
 have no daughter. You know perfectly well that I 've 
 kept the word I gave you ten years ago, and that I have 
 been dead to her as she has been to me." 
 
 " I know,'' said the colonel, " that within the last three 
 months I have paid away my last cent to keep the mouth 
 of an infernal scoundrel shut who knows that you are her 
 mother, and threatens to expose her to her friends. I know 
 that I 'm dying here of an old wound that I got when I 
 shut the mouth of another hound who was ready to bark 
 at her two years after you disappeared. I know that be- 
 tween you and her I've let my old nigger die of a broken 
 heart, because I could n't keep him to suffer with me, and 
 I know tliat I 'm here a pauper on the State. I know 
 that, Kate, and when I say it I don't regret it. I 've kept 
 my word to you, and, by the Eternal ! your daughter 's 
 worth it. For if there ever was a fair and peerless crea- 
 ture — it 's your child ! " 
 
 " And she — a rich woman — unless she squandered the 
 fortune I gave her — lets you lie here ! " said the woman 
 grimly. 
 
 " She don't know it." 
 
 " She should know it ! Have you quarreled ? " She 
 was looking at him keenly. 
 
 " She distrusts me, because she half suspects the secret, 
 and I had n't the heart to tell her all." 
 
 " All ? What does she know ? What does this man 
 know ? What has been told her ? " she said rapidly. 
 
 "She only knows that the name she has taken she has 
 no right to." 
 
318 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 " Right to ? Why, it was written on the Trust — 
 Yerba Buena." 
 
 "No, not that. She thought it was a mistake. She 
 took the name of Arguello." 
 
 " What ? " said Mrs. Argalls, suddenly grasping the 
 invalid's wrist with both hands. " What name ? " Her 
 eyes were startled from their rigid coldness, her lips were 
 colorless. 
 
 " Arguello ! It was some foolish schoolgirl fancy which 
 that hound helped to foster in her. Why — what 's the 
 matter, Kate ? " 
 
 The woman dropped the helpless man's wrist, then, with 
 an effort, recovered herself sufficiently to rise, and, with an 
 air of increased decorum, as if the spiritual character of 
 their interview excluded worldly intrusion, adjusted the 
 screen around his bed, so as partly to hide her own face 
 and Pendleton's. Then, dropping into the chair beside 
 him, she said, in her old voice, from which the burden of 
 ten long years seemed to have been lifted : — 
 
 " Harry, what 's that you 're playing on me ? " 
 
 " I don't understand you," said Pendleton amazedly. 
 
 " Do you mean to say you don't know it, and did n't tell 
 her yourself ? " she said curtly. 
 
 " What ? Tell her what ? " he repeated impatiently. 
 
 " That Arguello was her father ! " 
 
 " Her father ? " He tried to struggle to his elbow 
 again, but she laid her hand masterfully upon his shoul- 
 der and forced him back. " Her father ! " he repeated 
 hurriedly. " Juan de Arguello ! Great God ! — are you 
 sure ? " 
 
 Quietly and yet mechanically gathering the scattered 
 tracts from the coverlet, and putting them back, one by one 
 in her reticule, she closed it and her lips with a snap as she 
 uttered — "Yes." 
 
 Pendleton remained staring at her silently. " Yes," he 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 319 
 
 muttered, " it may have been some instinct of the child's, 
 or some diabolical fancy of Briones'. But," he said bit- 
 terly, "true or not, she has no right to his name." 
 
 "And I say she has." 
 
 She had risen to her feet, with her arms folded across 
 her breast, in an attitude of such Puritan composure that 
 the distant spectators might have thought she was deliver- 
 ing an exordium to the prostrate man. 
 
 " I met Juan de Arguello, for the second time, in New 
 Orleans," she said slowly, " eight years ago. He was still 
 rich, but ruined in health by dissipation. I was tired of 
 my way of life. He proposed that I should marry him to 
 take care of him and legitimatize our child. I was forced 
 to tell him what I had done with her, and that the Trust 
 could not be disturbed until she was of age and her own 
 mistress. He assented. We married, but he died within 
 a year. He died, leaving with me his acknowledgment 
 of her as his child, and the right to claim her if I chose." 
 
 " And ? " — interrupted the colonel with sparkling 
 eyes. 
 
 "' I don't choose." 
 
 " Hear me ! " she continued firmly. " With his name 
 and my own mistress, and the girl, as I believed, properly 
 provided for and ignorant of my existence, I saw no neces- 
 sity for reopening the past. I resolved to lead a new life 
 as his widow. I came North. In the little New England 
 town where I first stopped, the country people contracted 
 my name to Mrs. Argalls. I let it stand so. I came to 
 New York and entered the service of the Lord and the 
 bonds of the Church, Henry Pendleton, as Mrs. Argalls, 
 and have remained so ever since." 
 
 " But you would not object to Yerba knowing that you. 
 lived, and rightly bore her father's name ? " said Pendlb- 
 ton eagerly. 
 
 The woman looked at him with compressed lips. " I 
 
820 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 should. I have buried all my past, and all its conse- 
 quences. Let me not seek to reopen it or recall them." 
 
 " But if you knew that she was as proud as yourself, 
 and that this very uncertainty as to her name and parent- 
 age, although she has never known the whole truth, kept 
 her from taking the name and becoming the wife of a man 
 whom she loves ? " 
 
 " Whom she loves ! " 
 
 " Yes ; one of her guardians — Hathaway — to whom 
 you intrusted her when she was a child." 
 
 " Paul Hathaway — but he knew it." 
 
 " Yes. But she does not know he does. He has kept 
 the secret faithfully, even when she refused him." 
 
 She was silent for a moment, and then said : — 
 
 " So be it. I consent." 
 
 " And you '11 write to her ? " said the colonel eagerly. 
 
 " No. But you may, and if you want them I will fur- 
 nish you with such proofs as you may require." 
 
 " Thank you." He held out his hand with such a 
 happy yet childish gratitude upon his worn face that her 
 own trembled slightly as she took it. " Good-by ! " 
 
 " I shall see you soon," she said. 
 
 " I shall be here," he said grimly. 
 
 " I think not," she returned, with the first relaxation of 
 her smileless face, and moved away. 
 
 As she passed out she asked to see the house surgeon. 
 How soon did he think the patient she had been convers- 
 ing with could be removed from the hospital with safety ? 
 Did Mrs. Argalls mean " far " ? Mrs. Argalls meant as 
 far as that — tendering her card and eminently respectable 
 address. Ah ! — perhaps in a week. Not before ? Per- 
 haps before, unless complications ensued ; the patient had 
 been much run down physically, though, as Mrs. Argalls 
 had probably noticed, he was singularly strong in nervous 
 will force. Mrs. Argalls had noticed it, and considered it 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 321 
 
 an extraordinary case of conviction — worthy of the closest 
 watching and care. When he was able to be moved she 
 would send her own carriage and her own physician to su- 
 perintend his transfer. In the mean time he was to want 
 for nothing. Certainly, he had given very little trouble, 
 and, in fact, wanted very little. Just now he had only 
 asked for paper, pens, and ink. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 As Mrs. Aigalls's carriage rolled into Eifth Avenue, it 
 for a moment narrowly grazed another carriage, loaded with 
 luggage, driving up to a hotel. The abstracted traveler 
 within it was Paul Hathaway, who had returned from 
 Europe that morning. 
 
 Paul entered the hotel, and going to the register me- 
 chanically, turned its leaves for the previous arrivals, with 
 the same hopeless patience that had for the last six weeks 
 accompanied this habitual preliminary performance on his 
 arrival at the principal European hotels. For he had lost 
 all trace of Yerba, Pendleton, Milly, and the Briones from 
 the day of their departure. The entire party seemed to 
 have separated at Basle, and, in that eight-hours' start 
 they had of him, to have disappeared to the four cardinal 
 points. He had lingered a few days in London to transact 
 some business ; he would linger a few days longer in New 
 York before returning to San Francisco. 
 
 The daily papers already contained his name in the list 
 of the steamer passengers who arrived that morning. It 
 might meet her eye, although he had been haunted during 
 the voyage by a terrible fancy that she was still in Europe, 
 and had either hidden herself in some obscure provincial 
 town with the half-crazy Pendleton, or had entered a con- 
 vent, or even, in reckless despair, had accepted the name 
 and title of some penniless nobleman. It was this miserable 
 doubt that had made his homeward journey at times seem 
 like a cruel desertion of her, while at other moments the 
 conviction that Milly's Californian relatives might give him 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 323 
 
 some clue to her whereabouts made him feverishly fearful 
 of delaying an hour on his way to San Francisco. He did 
 not believe that she had tolerated the company of Briones 
 a single moment after the scene at the Bad Hof, and yet he 
 had no confidence in the colonel's attitude towards the 
 Mexican. Hopeless of the future as her letter seemed, still 
 its naive and tacit confession of her feelings at the moment 
 ■was all that sustained him. 
 
 Two days passed, and he still lingered aimlessly in New 
 York. In two days more the Panama steamer would sail 
 — yet in his hesitation he had put off securing his passage. 
 He visited the oiiices of the different European steamer lines, 
 and examined the recent passenger lists, but there was no 
 record of any of the party. What made his quest seem the 
 more hopeless was his belief that, after Briones' revelation, 
 she had cast off the name of Arguello and taken some other. 
 She might even be in New York under that new name now. 
 
 On the morning of the third day, among his letters was 
 one that bore the postmark of a noted suburban settlement 
 of wealthy villa-owners on the Hudson River. It was from 
 Milly Woods, stating that her father had read of his arrival 
 in the papers, and begged he would dine and stay the next 
 night with them at Under Cliff, if he " still had any 
 interest in the fortunes of old friends. Of course," added 
 the perennially incoherent Milly, "if it bores you we 
 sha'n't expect you." The quick color came to Paul's care- 
 worn cheek. He telegraphed assent, and at sunset that 
 afternoon stepped off the train at a little private woodland 
 station — so abnormally rustic and picturesque in its brown- 
 bark walls covered with scarlet Virginia creepers that it 
 looked like a theatrical erection. 
 
 Mr. Woods's station wagon was in waiting, but Paul, 
 handing the driver his valise, and ascertaining the general 
 direction of the house, and that it was not far distant, told 
 him to go on and he would follow afoot. The trem'jr of 
 
324 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 vague anticipation had already come upon him ; something 
 that he knew not whether he feared or longed for, only that 
 it was inevitable, had begun to possess him. He would 
 soon recover himself in the flaring glory of this woodland, 
 and the invigoration of this hale October air. 
 
 It was a beautiful and brilliant sunset, yet not so beauti- 
 ful and brilliant but that the whole opulent forest around 
 him seemed to challenge and repeat its richest as well as its 
 most delicate dyes. The reddening west, seen through an 
 opening of scarlet maples, was no longer red ; the golden 
 glory of the sun, sinking over a promontory of gleaming 
 yellow sumach that jutted out into the noble river, was 
 shorn of its intense radiance ; at times in the thickest woods 
 he seemed surrounded by a yellow nimbus ; at times so 
 luminous was the glow of these translucent leaves that the 
 position of the sun itself seemed changed, or the shadows 
 cast in defiance of its glory. As he walked on, long reaches 
 of the lordly placid stream at his side were visible, as far as 
 the terraces of the opposite shore, lifted on basaltic columns, 
 themselves streaked and veined with gold and fire. Paul 
 had seen nothing like this since his boyhood ; for an instant 
 the great heroics of the Sierran landscape were forgotten in 
 this magnificent harlequinade. 
 
 A dim footpath crossed the road in the direction of the 
 house, which for the last few moments had been slowly 
 etching itself as a soft vignette in a tinted aureole of walnut 
 and maple upon the steel blue of the river. He was hesi- 
 tating whether to take this short cut or continue on by the 
 road, when he heard the rustling of quick footsteps among 
 the fallen leaves of the variegated thicket through which it 
 stole. He stopped short, the leafy screen shivered and 
 parted, and a tall graceful figure, like a draped and hidden 
 Columbine, burst through its painted foliage. It was 
 Yerba ! 
 
 She ran quickly towards him, with parted lips, shining 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 325 
 
 eyes, and a few scarlet leaves clinging to the stuff of her 
 worsted dress in a way that recalled the pink petals of 
 Eosario. 
 
 " When I saw you were not in the wagon and knew you 
 were walking I slipped out to intercept you, as I had some- 
 thing to tell you before you saw the others. I thought 
 you would n't mind." She stopped and suddenly hesi- 
 tated. 
 
 What was this new strange shyness that seemed to droop 
 her eyelids, her proud head, and even the slim hand that 
 had been so impulsively and frankly outstretched towards 
 him ? And he — Paul — what was he doing ? Where 
 was this passionate outburst that had filled his heart for 
 nights and days ? Where this eager tumultuous question- 
 ing that his feverish lips had rehearsed hour by hour ? 
 Where this desperate courage that would sweep the whole 
 world away if it stood between them ? Where, indeed ? 
 He was standing only a few feet from her — cold, silent, 
 and tremulous! 
 
 She drew back a step, lifted her head with a quick toss 
 that seemed to condense the moisture in her shining eyes, 
 and sent what might have been a glittering dew-drop flying 
 into the loosed tendrils of her hair. Calm and erect again, 
 she put her little hand to her jacket pocket. 
 
 " I only wanted you to read a letter I got yesterday," 
 she said, taking out an envelope. 
 
 The spell was broken. Paul caught eagerly at the hand 
 that held the letter, and would have drawn her to him ; but 
 she put him aside gravely but sweetly. 
 
 " Read that letter ! " 
 
 " Tell me of yourself first ! " he broke out passionately. 
 " Why you fled from me, and why I now find you here, by 
 the merest chance, without a word of summons from your- 
 self, Yerba ? Tell me who is with you ? Are you free 
 and your own mistress — free to act for yourself and me ? 
 
326 A WAED OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 Speak, darling — don't be cruel ! Since that night I have 
 longed for you, sought for you, and suffered for you every 
 day and hour. Tell me if I find you the same Yerba who 
 wrote " — 
 
 " Bead that letter ! " 
 
 " I care for none but the one you left me. I have read 
 and re-read it, Yerba — carried it always with me. See ! 
 I have it here ! " He was in the act of withdrawing it 
 from his breast-pocket, when she put up her hand piteously. 
 
 " Please, Paul, please — read this letter first ! " 
 
 There was something in her new supplicating grace, still 
 retaining the faintest suggestion of her old girlish archness, 
 that struck him. He took the letter and opened it. It was 
 from Colonel Pendleton. 
 
 Plainly, concisely, and formally, without giving the 
 name of his authority or suggesting his interview with Mrs. 
 Argalls, he had informed Yerba that he had documentary 
 testimony that she was the daughter of the late Juan de 
 Arguello, and legally entitled to bear his name. A copy 
 of the instructions given to his wife, recognizing Yerba 
 Buena, the ward of the San Francisco Trust, as his child 
 and hers, and leaving to the mother the choice of making 
 it known to her and others, was inclosed. 
 
 Paul turned an unchanged face tipon Yerba, who was 
 watching him eagerly, uneasily, almost breathlessly. 
 
 " And you think this concerns met" he said bitterly. 
 " You think only of this, when I speak of the precious 
 letter that bade me hope, and brought me to you ? " 
 
 " Paul," said the girl, with wondering eyes and hesitat- 
 ing lips, " do you mean to . say that — that — this is — 
 nothing to you ? " 
 
 " Yes — but forgive me, darling ! " he broke out again, 
 with a sudden vague remorsef ulness, as he once more sought 
 her elusive hand. " I am a brute — an egotist ! I forgot 
 that it might be something to you." 
 
A "WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 327 
 
 " Paul," continued the girl, her voice quivering with a 
 strange joy, "do you say that you — you yourself, care 
 nothing for this ? " 
 
 " Nothing," he answered, gazing at her transfigured face 
 with admiring wonder. 
 
 " And " — more timidly, as a faint aurora kindled in her 
 cheeks — " that you don't care — that — that — I am com= 
 ing to you with a name, to give you in — exchange ? " 
 
 He started. 
 
 " Yerba, you are not mocking me ? You will be my 
 wife ? " 
 
 She smiled, yet moving softly backwards with the grave 
 stateliness of a vanishing yet beckoning goddess, until she 
 reached the sumach bush from which she had emerged. He 
 followed. Another backward step, and it yielded to let 
 her through ; but even as it did so she caught him in her 
 arms, and for a single moment it closed upon them both, 
 and hid them in its glory. A still lingering song-bird, pos- 
 sibly convinced that he had mistaken the season, and that 
 spring had really come, flew out with a little cry to carry 
 the message south ; but even then Paul and Yerba emerged 
 with such innocent, childlike gravity, and, side by side, 
 walked so composedly towards the house that he thought 
 better of it. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 It was only the third time they had ever met — did 
 Paul consider that when he thought her cold ? Did he 
 know now why she had not understood him at Eosario ? 
 Did he understand now how calculating and selfish he had 
 seemed to her that night ? Could he look her in the face 
 now — no, he must be quiet — they were so near the house, 
 and everybody could see them ! — and say that he had ever 
 believed her capable of making iip that story of the Ar- 
 guellos ? Coiild he not have guessed that she had some 
 memory of that name in her childish recollections, how or 
 where she knew not ? Was it strange that a daughter 
 should have an instinct of her father ? Was it kind to 
 her to know all this himself and yet reveal nothing ? Be- 
 cause her mother and father had quarreled, and her mother 
 had run away with somebody and left her a ward to stran- 
 gers — was that to be concealed from her, and she left with- 
 out a name ? This, and much more, tenderly reproachful, 
 bewildering and sweetly illogical, yet inexpressibly dear to 
 Paul, as they walked on in the gloaming. 
 
 More to the purpose, however, the fact that Briones, as 
 far as she knew, did not know her mother, and never before 
 the night at Strudle Bad had ever spoken of her. Still 
 more to the purpose, that he had disappeared after an inter- 
 view with the colonel that night, and that she believed 
 always that the colonel had bought him off. It was not 
 with her money. She had sometimes thought that the 
 colonel and he were in confidence, and that was why she 
 had lately distrusted Pendleton. But she had refused to 
 
A WAED OF THE GOLDEN GATE ^"29 
 
 take the name of Arguello again after that scene, and iiad 
 called herself only by the name he had given hei' — 
 would he forgive her for ever speaking of it as she had ? 
 — Yerba Buena. But on shipboard, at Milly's suggestion, 
 and to keep away from Briones, her name had appei»red on 
 the passenger list as Miss Good, and they had come, not to 
 New York, but to Boston. 
 
 It was possible that the colonel had extracted the infor- 
 mation he sent her from Briones. They had parted from 
 Pendleton in London, as he was grumpy and queer, and, as 
 Milly thought, becoming very miserly and avaricious as he 
 grew older, for he was always quarreling over the hotel 
 bills. But he had Mrs. Woods's New York address at 
 Under Cliff, and, of course, guessed where she was. There 
 was no address on his letter : he had said he would write 
 again. 
 
 Thus much until they reached the steps of the veranda, 
 and Milly, flying down, was ostentatiously overwhelmed 
 with the unexpected appearance of Mr. Paul Hathaway and 
 Yerba, whom she had been watching from the window for 
 the last ten minutes. Then the appearance of Mr. Woods, 
 Californian and reminiscent, and Mrs. Woods, metropolitan, 
 languid and forgetful, and the sudden and formal retire- 
 ment of the girls. An arch and indefinable mystery in the 
 air whenever Paul and Yerba appeared together — of which 
 even the servants were discreetly conscious. 
 
 At dinner Mr. Woods again became retrospective and 
 Californian, and dwelt upon the changes he had noticed. 
 It appeared the old pioneers had in few cases attained a 
 comfortable fortune for their old age. " I know," he added, 
 " that your friend Colonel Pendleton has dropped a good 
 deal of money over in Europe. Somebody told me that he 
 actually was reduced to take a steerage passage home. It 
 looks as if he might gamble — it 's an old Californian com- 
 plaint." As Paul, who had become suddenly grave again, 
 
330 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 did not speak, Mrs. Woods reminded them that she had 
 always doubted the colonel's moral principles. Old as he 
 was, he had never got over that freedom of life and social 
 opinion which he had imbibed in early days. For her part, 
 she was very glad he had not returned from Europe with 
 the girls, though, of course, the presence of Don Csesar and 
 his sister during their European sojourn was a corrective. 
 As Paul's face grew darker during this languid criticism, 
 Yerba, who had been watching it with a new and absorbing 
 sympathy, seized the first mompnt when they left the table 
 to interrogate him with heartbreaking eyes. 
 
 " You don't think, Paul, that the colonel is really 
 poor ? " 
 
 " God only knows," said Paul. " I tremble to think 
 how that scoundrel may have bled him." 
 
 " And all for me ! Paul, dear, you know you were say- 
 ing in the woods that you would never, never touch my 
 money. What " — exultingly — " if we gave it to him ? " 
 
 What answer Paul made did not transpire, for it seemed 
 to have been indicated by an interval of profound silence. 
 
 But the next morning, as he and Mr. Woods were closeted 
 in the library, Yerba broke in upon them with a pathetic 
 face and a telegram in her hand. " Oh, Paul — Mr. Hath- 
 away — it 's true ! " 
 
 Paul seized the telegram quickly : it had no signature, 
 only the line : " Colonel Pendleton is dangerously ill at St, 
 John's Hospital." 
 
 " I must go at once," said Paul, rising. 
 
 " Oh, Paul " — imploringly — " let me go with you ! I 
 should never forgive myself if — and it 's addressed to me, 
 and what would he thiiik if I did n't come ? " 
 
 Paul hesitated. " Mrs. Woods will let Milly go with us 
 — and she can stay at the hotel. Say yes," she continued, 
 seeking his eyes eagerly. 
 
 He consented, and in half an hour they were in the train 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 331 
 
 for New York. Leaving Milly at the hotel, ostensibly in 
 deference to the Woods's prejudices, but really to save the 
 presence of a third party at this meeting, Paul drove with 
 Yerba rapidly to the hospital. They were admitted to an 
 anteroom. The house surgeon received them respectfully, 
 but doubtingly. The patient was a little better this morn- 
 ing, but very weak. There was a lady now with him — a 
 member of a religious and charitable guild, who had taken 
 the greatest interest in him — indeed, she had wished to 
 take him to her own home — but he had declined at first, 
 and now he was too weak to be removed. 
 
 " But I received this telegram : it must have been sent 
 at his request," protested Yerba. 
 
 The house surgeon looked at the beautiful face. He 
 was mortal. He would see if the patient was able to stand 
 another interview ; possibly the regular visitor might with- 
 draw. 
 
 When he had gone, an attendant volunteered the infor- 
 mation that the old gentleman was perhaps a little excited 
 at times. He was a wonderful man ; he had seen a great 
 deal ; he talked much of California and the early days ; he 
 was very interesting. Ah, it would be all right now if the 
 doctor found him well enough, for the lady was already go- 
 ing — that was she, coming through the hall. 
 
 She came slowly towards them — erect, gray, grim — a 
 still handsome apparition. Paul started. To his horror, 
 Yerba ran impulsively forward, and said eagerly, " Is he 
 better ? Can he see us now ? " 
 
 The woman halted an instant, seemed to gather the 
 prayer-book and reticule she was carrying closer to her 
 breast, but was otherwise unchanged. Replying to Paul 
 rather than to the young girl, she said rigidly, " The patient 
 is able to see Mr. Hathaway and Miss Yerba Buena," 
 and passed slowly on. But as she reached the door she 
 unloosed her black mourning veil from her bonnet, and 
 
332 A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 seemed to drop it across her face with the gesture that 
 Paul remembered she had used twelve years ago. 
 
 " She frightens me ! " said Yerba, turning a suddenly 
 startled face on Paul. " Oh, Paul, I hope it is n't an 
 omen, but she looked like some one from the grave ! " 
 
 " Hush ! " said Paul, turning away a face that was 
 whiter than her own. " They are coming now." 
 
 The house surgeon had returned a trifle graver. They 
 might see him now, but they must be warned that he 
 wandered at times a little ; and, if he might suggest, if it 
 was anything of family importance, they had better make 
 the most of their time and his lacid intervals. Perhaps if 
 they were old friends — very old friends — he would re- 
 cognize them. He was wandering much in the past — ■ 
 always in the past. 
 
 They found him in the end of the ward, but so care- 
 fully protected and partitioned off by screens that the space 
 around his cot had all the privacy and security of an apart- 
 ment. He was very much changed ; they would scarcely 
 have known him, but for the delicately curved aquiline pro- 
 file and the long white mustache — now so faint and ethe- 
 realized as to seem a mere spirit wing that rested on his 
 pillow. To their surprise he opened his eyes with a smile 
 of perfect recognition, and, with thin fingers beyond the 
 aoverlid, beckoned to them to approach. Yet there was 
 still a shadow of his old reserve in his reception of Paul, 
 and, although one hand interlocked the fingers of Yerba — 
 who had at first rushed impulsively forward and fallen 
 on her knees beside the bed — and the other softly placed 
 itself upon her head, his eyes were fixed upon the young 
 man's with the ceremoniousness due to a stranger. 
 
 " I am glad to see, sir," he began in a slow, broken, but 
 perfectly audible voice, " that now you are — satisfied with 
 the right — of this young lady — to bear the name of — Ar- 
 guello — and her relationship — sir — to one of the oldest " — 
 
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE 333 
 
 "But, my dear old friend," broke out Paul earnestly, 
 ''I never cared for that — I beg you to believe" — 
 
 " He never — never — cared for it — dear, dear colonel," 
 sobbed Yerba passionately: "it was all my fault — he 
 thought only of me — you wrong him ! " 
 
 " / think otherwise," said the colonel, with grim and 
 relentless deliberation. "I have a vivid — impression — 
 sir — of an — interview I had with you — at the St. 
 Charles — where you said " — He was silent for a mo- 
 ment, and then in a quite different voice called faintly, 
 " George ! " 
 
 Paul and Yerba glanced quickly at each other. 
 
 " George, set out some refreshment for the Honorable 
 Paul Hathaway. The best, sir — you understand. ... A 
 good nigger, sir — a good boy ; and he never leaves me, sir. 
 Only, by gad ! sir, he will starve himself and his family to 
 be with me. I brought him with me to California away 
 back in the fall of '49. Those were the early days, sir — 
 the early days." 
 
 His head had fallen back quite easily on the pillow now; 
 but a slight film seemed to be closing over his dark eyes, 
 like the inner lid of an eagle when it gazes upon the sun. 
 
 " They were the old days, sir — the days of Men — when 
 a man's word was enough for anything, and his trigger- 
 finger settled any doubt. When the Trust that he took 
 from Man, Woman, or Child was never broken. When 
 the tide, sir, that swept through the Golden Gate came up 
 <*3 far as Montgomery Street." 
 
 He did not speak again. But they who stood beside 
 him knew that the tide had once more come up to Mont- 
 gomery Street, and was carrying Harry Pendleton away 
 with it. 
 
THE CHATELAINE OF BUENT EIDGE 
 CHAPTER 1 
 
 It had grown dark on Burnt Eidge. Seen from below, 
 the whole serrated crest, that had glittered in the sunset as 
 if its interstices were eaten by consuming fires, now closed 
 up its ranks of blackened shafts and became again harsh 
 and sombre chevaux de frise against the sky. A faint 
 glow still lingered over the red valley road, as if it were 
 its own reflection, rather than any light from beyond the 
 darkened ridge. Night was already creeping up out of re- 
 mote cc jions and along the furrowed flanks of the mountain, 
 or settling on the nearer woods with the sound of home- 
 coming and innumerable wings. At a point where the road 
 began to encroach upon the mountain side in its slow wind- 
 ing ascent the darkness had become so real that a young girl 
 cantering along the rising terrace found difficulty in guiding 
 her horse, with eyes still dazzled by the sunset fires. 
 
 In spite of her precautions, the animal suddenly shied at 
 some object in the obscured roadway, and nearly unseated 
 her. The accident disclosed not only the fact that she was 
 riding in a man's saddle, but also a foot and ankle that her 
 ordinary walking-dress was too short to hide. It was evi- 
 dent that her equestrian exercise was extempore, and that 
 at that hour and on that road she had not expected to meet 
 company. But she was apparently a good horsewoman, foi 
 the mischance which might have thrown a less practical 
 or more timid rider seemed of little moment to her. With 
 a strong hand and determined gesture she wheeled her 
 frightened horse back into the track, and rode him directly 
 
THE CHATELAINE OF BURNT RIDGE 335 
 
 at the object. But here she herself slightly recoiled, fot 
 it was the body of a man lying in the road. 
 
 As she leaned forward over her horse's shoulder, she 
 could see by the dim light that he was a miner, and that, 
 though motionless, he was breathing stertorously. Drunk, 
 no doubt ! — an accident of the locality alarming only to 
 her horse. But although she cantered impatiently for- 
 ward, she had not proceeded a hundred yards before she 
 Stopped reflectively, and trotted back again. He had not 
 moved. She could now see that his head and shoulders 
 were covered with broken clods of earth and gravel, and 
 smaller fragments lay at his side. A dozen feet above him 
 on the hillside there was a foot trail which ran parallel 
 with the bridle-road, and occasionally overhung it. It 
 seemed possible that he might have fallen from the trail 
 and been stunned. 
 
 Dismounting, she succeeded in dragging him to a safer 
 position by the bank. The act discovered his face, which 
 was young, and unknown to her. Wiping it with the silk 
 handkerchief which was loosely slung around his neck after 
 the fashion of his class, she gave a quick feminine glance 
 around her and then approached her own and rather hand- 
 some face near his lips. There was no odor of alcohol in 
 the thick and heavy respiration. Mounting again, she rode 
 forward at an accelerated pace, and in twenty minutes had 
 reached a higher tableland of the mountain, a cleared open- 
 ing in the forest that showed signs of carefal cultivation, 
 and a large, rambling, yet picturesque-looking dwelling, 
 whose unpainted redwood walls were hidden in roses and 
 creepers. Pushing open a swinging gate, she entered the 
 inclosure as a brown-faced man, dressed as a vaquero, came 
 towards her as if to assist her to alight. But she had 
 already leaped to the ground and thrown him the reins. 
 
 " Miguel," she said, with a mistress's quiet authority in 
 her boyish contralto voice, "put Glory in the covered 
 
336 THE CHATELAINE OF BURNT EIDGE 
 
 wagon, and drive down the road as far as the valley turn- 
 ing. Tliere 's a man lying near the right bank, drunk, or 
 sick, maybe, or perhaps crippled by a fall. Bring him up 
 here, unless somebody has found him already, or you hap- 
 pen to know who he is and where to take him." 
 
 The vaquero raised his shoulders, half in disappointed 
 expectation of some other command. " And your brother, 
 seiiora, he has not himself arrived." 
 
 A light shadow of impatience crossed her face. " No," 
 she said bluntly. " Come, be quick." 
 
 She turned towards the house as the man moved away. 
 Already a gaunt-looking old man had appeared in the porch, 
 and was awaiting her with his hand shadowing his angry, 
 suspicious eyes, and his lips moving querulously. 
 
 " Of course, you 've got to stand out there and give 
 orders and 'tend to your own business afore you think o' 
 speaking to your own flesh and blood," he said aggrievedly. 
 " That 's all you care ! " 
 
 " There was a sick man lying in the road, and I 've sent 
 Miguel to look after him," returned the girl, with a certain 
 contemptuous resignation. 
 
 " Oh yes ! " struck in another voice, which seemed to 
 belong to the female of the first speaker's species, and to be 
 its equal in age and temper, " and I reckon you saw a jay- 
 bird on a tree, or a squirrel on the fence, and either of 'em 
 was more important to you than your own brother." 
 
 " Steve did n't come by the stage, and did n't send any 
 message," continued the young girl, with the same coldly 
 resigned manner. " No one had any news of him, and, as 
 I told you before, I did n't expect any." 
 
 " Why don't you say right out you did n't want any ? " 
 said the old man sneeringly. " Much you inquired ! No ; 
 I orter hev gone myself, and I would if I was master here, 
 instead of me and your mother bein' the dust of the yearth 
 bciwjath your feet." 
 
THE CHATELAINE OF BURNT EIDGE 3S7 
 
 The young girl entered the house, followed by the old 
 man, passing an old woman seated by the window, who 
 seemed to be nursing her resentment and a large Bible 
 which she held clasped against her shawled bosom at the 
 same moment. Going to the wall, she hung up her large 
 hat and slightly shook the red dust from her skirts as she 
 continued her explanation, in the same deep voice, with a 
 certain monotony of logic and possibly of purpose and prac- 
 tice also. 
 
 " You and mother know as well as I do, father, that 
 Stephen is no more to be depended upon than the wind 
 that blows. It 's three years since he has been promising 
 to come, and even getting money to come, and yet he has 
 never showed his face, though he has been a dozen times 
 within five miles of this house. He does n't come because 
 he does n't want to come. As to your going over to the 
 stage-office, I went there myself at the last moment to save 
 you the mortification of asking questions of strangers that 
 they know have been a dozen times answered already." 
 
 There was such a ring of absolute truthfulness, albeit 
 worn by repetition, in the young girl's deep honest voice 
 that for one instant her two more emotional relatives quailed 
 before it; but only for a moment. 
 
 " That 's right ! " shrilled the old woman. " Go on and 
 abuse your own brother. It 's only the fear you have that 
 he '11 make his fortune yet and shame you before the father 
 and mother you despise." 
 
 The young girl remained standing by the window, motion- 
 less and apparently passive, as if receiving an accepted and 
 usual punishment. But here the elder woman gave way to 
 sobs and some incoherent snuiHing, at which the younger 
 went away. Whether she recognized in her mother's tears 
 the ordinary deliquescence of emotion, or whether, as a wo- 
 man herself, she knew that this mere feminine convention- 
 ality could not possibly be directed at her, and that the 
 
338 THE CHATELAINE OF BURNT EIDGE 
 
 actual conflict between them had ceased, she passed slowly 
 on to an inner hall, leaving the male victim, her unfor- 
 tunate father, to succumb, as he always did sooner or later, 
 to their influence. Crossing the hall, which -was decorated 
 with a few elk horns, Indian trophies, and mountain pelts, 
 she entered another room, and closed the door behind her 
 with a gesture of relief. 
 
 The room, which looked upon a porch, presented a singu- 
 lar combination of masculine business occupations and femi: 
 nine taste and adornment. A desk covered with papers, a 
 shelf displaying a ledger and account-books, another containing 
 works of reference, a table with a vase of flowers and a lady's 
 riding-whip upon it, a map of California flanked on either 
 side by an embroidered silken workbag and an oval mirror 
 decked with grasses, a calendar and interest-table hanging 
 below two schoolgirl crayons of classic heads with the legend, 
 " Josephine Forsyth fecit," — were part of its incongruous 
 accessories. The young girl went to her desk, but presently 
 moved and turned towards the window thoughtfully. The 
 last gleam had died from the steel-blue sky ; a few lights 
 like star points began to prick out the lower valley. The 
 expression of monotonous restraint and endurance had not 
 yet faded from her face. 
 
 Yet she had been accustomed to scenes like the one she had 
 just passed through since her girlhood. Five years ago, 
 Alexander Forsyth, her uncle, had brought her to this spot 
 — then a mere log cabin on the hillside — as a refuge from 
 the impoverished and shiftless home of his elder brother 
 Thomas and his ill-tempered wife. Here Alexander For- 
 syth, by reason of his more dominant character and business 
 capacity, had prospered until he became a rich and influen- 
 tial ranch owner. Notwithstanding her father's jealousy of 
 Alexander's fortune, and the open rupture that followed 
 between the brothers, Josephine retained her position in the 
 heart and home of her uncle without espousing the cause of 
 
THE CHATELAINE OF BURNT KIDGE 339 
 
 either ; and her father was too prudent not to recognize the 
 near and prospective advantages of such a mediator. Ac- 
 customed to her parents' extravagant denunciations, and her 
 uncle's more repressed but practical contempt of them, the 
 unfortunate girl early developed a cynical disbelief in the 
 virtues of kinship in the abstract, and a philosophical re- 
 signation to its effects upon her personally. Believing that 
 her father and uncle fairly represented the fraternal principle, 
 she was quite prepared for the early defection and distrust 
 of her vagabond and dissipated brother Stephen, and ac- 
 cepted it calmly. True to an odd standard of justice, which 
 she had erected from the crumbling ruins of her own domes- 
 tic life, she was tolerant of everything but human perfection. 
 This quality, however fatal to her higher growth, had given 
 her a peculiar capacity for business which endeared her to her 
 uncle. Familiar with the strong passions and prejudices of 
 men, she had none of those feminine meannesses, a wholesome 
 distrust of which had kept her uncle a bachelor. It was not 
 strange, therefore, that when he died two years ago it was 
 found that he had left her his entire property, real and 
 personal, limited only by a single condition. She was to 
 undertake the vocation of a "sole trader," and carry on the 
 business under the name of " J. Torsyth." If she married, 
 the estate and property were to be held distinct from her 
 husband's, inalienable under the "Married Woman's Pro- 
 perty Act," and subject during her life only to her own 
 control and personal responsibilities as a trader. 
 
 The intense disgust and discomfiture of her parents, who 
 had expected to more actively participate in their brother's 
 fortune, may be imagined. But it was not equal to their 
 fury when Josephine, instead of providing for them a sepa- 
 rate maintenance out of her abundance, simply offered to 
 transfer them and her brother to her own house on a domes- 
 tic but not a business equality. There being no alternative 
 but their former precarious shiftless life in their " played- 
 
340 THE CHATELAINE OF BURNT EIDGE 
 
 out " claim in the valley, they wisely consented, reserving 
 the sacred right of daily protest and objurgation. In the 
 economy of Burnt Eidge Ranch they alone took it upon 
 themselves to represent the shattered domestic altar and 
 its outraged Lares and Penates. And so conscientiously did 
 they perform their task as even occasionally to impede the 
 business visitor to the ranch, and to cause some of the 
 more practical neighbors seriously to doubt the young girl's 
 commercial wisdom. But she was firm. Whether she 
 thought her parents a necessity of respectable domesticity, 
 or whether she regarded their presence in the light of a 
 penitential atonement for some previous disregard of them, 
 no one knew. Public opinion inclined to the latter. 
 
 The black line of ridge faded out with her abstraction, and 
 she turned from the window and lit the lamp on her desk. 
 The yellow light illuminated her face and figure. In their 
 womanly graces there was no trace of what some people be- 
 lieved to be a masculine character, except a singularly frank 
 look of critical inquiry and patient attention in her dark eyes. 
 Her long brown hair was somewhat rigidly twisted into a 
 knot on the top of her head, as if more for security than 
 ornament. Brown was also the prevailing tint of her eye- 
 brows, thickly set eyelashes, and eyes, and was even sug- 
 gested in the slight sallowness of her complexion. But her 
 lips were well cut and fresh colored and her hands and feet 
 small and finely formed. She would have passed for a pretty 
 girl, had she not suggested something more. 
 
 She sat down, and began to examine a pile of papers be- 
 fore her with that concentration and attention to detail which 
 was characteristic of her eyes, pausing at times with prettily 
 knit brows, and her penholder between her lips, in the sem- 
 blance of a pout that was pleasant enough to see. Suddenly 
 the rattle of hoofs and wheels struck her with the sense of 
 something forgotten, and she put down her work quickly and 
 Btood up listening. The sound of rough voices and he» 
 
THE CHATELAINE OF BURNT EIDGE 341 
 
 father's querulous accents was broken upon by a cultivated 
 and more familiar utterance, " All right ; I '11 speak to her 
 at once. Wait there," and the door opened to the well- 
 known physician of Burnt Eidge, Dr. Duchesne. 
 
 " Look here," he said, with an abruptness that was only 
 saved from being brusque by a softer intonation and a reassur- 
 ing smile, " I met Miguel helping an accident into your 
 buggy. Your orders, eh ? " 
 
 " Oh yes," said Josephine quietly. " A man I saw on 
 the road." 
 
 " Well, it 's a bad case, and wants prompt attention. And 
 as your house is the nearest I came with him here." 
 
 " Certainly," she said gravely. " Take him to the second 
 room beyond — Steve's room — it's ready," she explained 
 to two dusky shadows in the hall behind the doctor. 
 
 " And look here," said the doctor, partly closing the 
 door behind him and regarding her with critical eyes, " you 
 always said you 'd like to see some of my queer cases. Well, 
 this is one — a serious one, too ; in fact, it 's just touch and 
 go with him. There 's a piece of the bone pressing on the 
 brain no bigger than that, but as much as if all Burnt Eidge 
 was atop of him ! I 'm going to lift it. I want somebody 
 here to stand by, some one who can lend a hand with a sponge, 
 eh ? — some one who is n't going to faint or scream, or even 
 shake a hair's-breadth, eh ? " 
 
 The color rose quickly to the girl's cheek, and her eyes 
 kindled. " I '11 come," she said thoughtfully. " Who is 
 he?" 
 
 The doctor stared slightly at the unessential query. 
 " Don't know, — one of the river miners, I reckon. It 's an 
 urgent case. I'll go and get everything ready. You'd 
 better," he added, with an ominous glance at her gray frock, 
 " put something over your dress." The suggestion made 
 her grave, but did not alter her color. 
 
 A moment later she entered the room. It was the one 
 
342 THE CHATELAINE OF BURNT RIDGE- 
 
 that had always been set apart for her brother : the very bed 
 on which the unconscious man lay had been arranged that 
 morning with her own hands. Something of this passed 
 through her mind as she saw that the docter had wheeled it 
 beneath the strong light in the centre of the room, stripped 
 its outer coverings with professional thoughtfulness, and re- 
 arranged the mattresses. But it did not seem like the same 
 room. There was a pungent odor in the air from some 
 freshly opened vial ; an almost feminine neatness and lux- 
 ury in an open morocco case like a jewel box on the table, 
 shining with spotless steel. At the head of the bed one of 
 her own servants, the powerful mill foreman, was assisting 
 with the mingled curiosity and blase experience of one ac- 
 customed to smashed . and lacerated digits. At first she did 
 not look at the central unconscious figure on the bed, whose 
 sufferings seemed to her to have been vicariously transferred 
 to the concerned, eager, and drawn faces that looked down 
 upon its immunity. Then she femininely recoiled before the 
 bared white neck and shoulders displayed above the quilt, 
 until, forcing herself to look upon the face half-concealed by 
 bandages and the head from which the dark tangles of hair 
 had been ruthlessly sheared, she began to share the doctor's 
 unconcern in his personality. What mattered who or what 
 he was ? It was — a case ! 
 
 The operation began. With the same earnest intelli- 
 gence that she had previously shown, she quickly and noise- 
 lessly obeyed the doctor's whispered orders, and even half 
 anticipated them. She was conscious of a singular curi- 
 osity that, far from being mean or ignoble, seemed to lift 
 her not only above the ordinary weaknesses of her own 
 sex, but made her superior to the men around her. Al- 
 niost before she knew it, the operation was over, and she 
 regarded with equal curiosity the ostentatious solicitude 
 with which the doctor seemed to be v^iping his fateful in- 
 strument that bore an odd resemblance to a silver-handled 
 
THE CHATELAINE OF BUKNT KIDGE 343 
 
 centre-bit. The stertorous breathing below the bandages 
 had given way to a fainter but more natural respiration. 
 There was a moment of suspense. The doctor's hand left the 
 pulse and lifted the closed eyelid of the sufferer. A slight 
 movement passed over the figure. The sluggish face had 
 cleared ; life seemed to struggle back into it before even 
 the dull eyes participated in the glow. Dr. Duchesne 
 with a sudden gesture waved aside his companions, but not 
 before Josephine had bent her head eagerly forward. 
 
 " He is coming to," she said. 
 
 At the sound of that deep clear voice — the first to break 
 the hush of the room — the dull eyes leaped up, and the 
 head turned in its direction. The lips moved and uttered 
 a single rapid sentence. The girl recoiled. 
 
 " You 're all right now," said the doctor cheerfully, in- 
 tent only upon the form before him. 
 
 The lips moved again, but this time feebly and vacantly ; 
 the eyes were staring vaguely around. 
 
 "What 's matter ? What 's all about ? " said the man 
 thickly. 
 
 " You 've had a fall. Think a moment. Where do 
 you live ? " 
 
 Again the lips moved, but this time only to emit a con- 
 fused, incoherent murmur. Dr. Duchesne looked grave, 
 but recovered himself quickly. 
 
 "That will do. Leave him alone now," he said 
 brusquely to the others. 
 
 But Josephine lingered. 
 
 " He spoke well enough just now," she said eagerly. 
 " Did you hear what he said ? " 
 
 " Not exactly," said the doctor abstractedly, gazing at 
 the man. 
 
 "He said, 'You'll have to kill me first,' " said Jose- 
 phine slowly. 
 
 " Humph," said the doctor, passing his hand backwards 
 
344 THE CHATELAINE OF BURNT KIDGE 
 
 and forwards before the man's eyes to note any change in 
 the staring pupils. 
 
 "Yes," continued Josephine gravely. "I suppose," 
 she added cautiously, "he was thinking of the operation 
 — of what you had just done to him ? " 
 
 « What I had dona to him ? Oh yes I " 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 Before noon the next day it was known throughout 
 Burnt Eidge Valley that Dr. Duchesne had performed a 
 difficult operation upon an unknown man, who had been 
 picked up unconscious from a fall, and carried to Burnt 
 Eidge Eanch. But although the unfortunate man's life 
 was saved by the operation, he had only momentarily 
 recovered consciousness — relapsing into a semi-idiotic state, 
 which effectively stopped the discovery of any clue to his 
 friends or his identity. As it was evidently an accident, 
 which, in that rude community — and even in some more 
 civilized ones — conveyed a vague impression of some con- 
 tributary incapacity on the part of the victim, or some pro- 
 vidential interference of a retributive character, Burnt 
 Eidge gave itself little trouble about it. It is unnecessary 
 to say that Mr. and Mrs. Forsyth gave themselves and 
 Josephine much more. They had a theory and a griev- 
 ance. Satisfied from the first that the alleged victim was a 
 drunken tramp, who had submitted to have a hole bored in 
 his head in order to foist himself upon the ranch, they were 
 loud in their protests, even hinting at a conspiracy between 
 Josephine and the stranger to supplant her brother in the 
 property, as he had already in the spare bedroom. " Did n't 
 all that yer happen the very night she pretended to go 
 for Stephen — eh ? " said Mrs. Forsyth. " Tell me that ! 
 LnA did n't she have it all arranged with the buggy to 
 bring him here, as that sneaking doctor let out — eh ? 
 Looks mighty curious, don't it ? " she muttered darkly to 
 the old man. But although that gentleman, even from 
 
346 THE CHATELAINE OF BURNT EIDGE 
 
 his own selfish view, would scarcely have suhmitted to a 
 surgical operation and later idiocy as the price of insuring 
 comfortable dependency, he had no doubt others were base 
 enough to do it, and lent a willing ear to his wife's sus- 
 picions. 
 
 Josephine's personal knowledge of the stranger went 
 little further. Dr. Duchesne had confessed to her his pro- 
 fessional disappointment at the incomplete results of the 
 operation. He had saved the man's life, but as yet not his 
 reason. There was still hope, however, for the diagnosis 
 revealed nothing that might prejudice a favorable progress. 
 It was a most interesting case. He would watch it care- 
 fully, and as soon as the patient could be removed would 
 take him to the county hospital, where, under his own 
 eyes, the poor fellow would have the benefit of the latest 
 science and the highest specialists. Physically, he was do- 
 ing remarkably well ; indeed, he must have been a fine 
 young chap, free from blood taint or vicious complication, 
 whose flesh had healed like an infant's. It should be re- 
 corded that it was at this juncture that Mrs. Forsyth first 
 learnt that a silver plate let into the artful stranger's skull 
 was an adjunct of the healing process ! Convinced that 
 this infamous extravagance was part and parcel of the con- 
 spiracy, and was onlj' the beginning of other assimilations 
 of the Forsyths' metallic substance ; that the plate was 
 probably polished and burnished with a fulsome inscription 
 to the doctor's skill, and would pass into the possession 
 and adornment of a perfect stranger, her rage knew no 
 bounds. He or his friends ought to be made to pay for it 
 or work it out ! In vain it was declared that a few dollars 
 were all that was found in the man's pocket, and that no 
 memoranda gave any indication of his name, friends, or 
 history beyond the suggestion that he came from a distance. 
 This was clearly a part of the conspiracy ! Even Jose- 
 phine's practical good sense was obliged to take note of this 
 
THE CHATELAINE OF BUKNT EIDGB 347 
 
 singular absence of all record regarding him, and the appar- 
 ent obliteration of everything that might be responsible for 
 his ultimate fate. 
 
 Homeless, friendless, helpless, and even nameless, the 
 unfortunate man of twenty-five was thus left to the tender 
 mercies of the mistress of Burnt Eidge Ranch, as if he had 
 been a new-born foundling laid at her door. But this mere 
 claim of weakness was not all ; it was supplemented by a 
 singular personal appeal to Josephine's nature. From the 
 time that he turned his head towards her voice on that 
 fateful night, his eyes had always followed her around the 
 room with a wondering, yearning, canine half-intelligence. 
 Without being able to convince herself that he understood 
 her better than his regular attendant furnished by the doc- 
 tor, she could not fail to see that he obeyed her implicitly, 
 and that whenever any difficulty arose between him and his 
 nurse she was always appealed to. Her pride in this proof 
 of her practical sovereignty was flattered ; and when Dr. 
 Duchesne finally admitted that although the patient was 
 now physically able to be removed to the hospital, yet he 
 would lose in the change that very strong factor which 
 Josephine had become in his mental recovery, the young 
 girl as frankly suggested that he should stay as long as 
 there was any hope of restoring his reason. Dr. Duchesne 
 was delighted. With all his enthusiasm for science, he 
 had a professional distrust of some of its disciples, and 
 perhaps was not sorry to keep this most interesting case in 
 his own hands. To him her suggestion was only a wo- 
 manly kindness, tempered with womanly curiosity. But 
 the astonishment and stupefaction of her parents at this 
 evident corroboration of suspicions they had as yet only 
 half believed was tinged with superstitious dread. Had 
 she fallen in love with this helpless stranger ? or, more 
 awful to contemplate, was he really no stranger, but a 
 surreptitious lover thus strategically brought under her 
 
348 THE CHATELAINE OF BURNT KIDGE 
 
 roof ? 'For once they refrained from open criticism. The 
 very magnitude of their suspicions left them dumb. 
 
 It was thus that the virgin Chatelaine of Burnt Eidge 
 Eanch was left to gaze untrammeled upon her pale and 
 handsome guest, whose silken, bearded lips and sad, child- 
 like eyes might have suggested a more Exalted Sufferer in 
 their absence of any suggestion of a grosser material man- 
 hood. But even this imaginative appeal did not enter into 
 her feelings. She felt for her good-looking, helpless patient 
 a profound and honest pity. I do not know whether she 
 had ever heard that " pity was akin to love." She would 
 probably have resented that utterly untenable and atrocious 
 commonplace. There was no suggestion, real or illusive, 
 of any previous masterful quality in the man which might 
 have made his present dependent condition picturesque by 
 contrast. He had come to her handicapped by an unro- 
 mantic accident and a practical want of energy and intellect. 
 He would have to touch her interest anew if, indeed, he 
 would ever succeed in dispelling the old impression. His 
 beauty, in a community of picturesquely handsome men, 
 had little weight with her, except to accent the contrast 
 with their fuller manhood. 
 
 Her life had given her no illusions in regard to the other 
 sex. She had found them, however, more congenial and 
 safer companions than women, and more accessible to her 
 own sense of justice and honor. In return, they had re- 
 spected and admired rather than loved her, in spite of her 
 womanly graces. If she had at times contemplated event- 
 ual marriage, it was only as a possible practical partnership 
 in her business ; but as she lived in a country where men 
 thought it dishonorable and a proof of incompetency to rise 
 by their wives' superior fortune, she had been free from 
 that kind of mercenary persecution, even from men who 
 might have worshiped her in hopeless and silent honor. 
 For this reason, there was nothing in the situation that 
 
THE CHATELAINE OF BURNT RIDGE 349 
 
 suggested a single compromising speculation in the minda 
 of the neighbors, or disturbed her own tranquillity. There 
 seemed to be nothing in the future except a possible relief 
 to her curiosity. Some day the unfortunate man's reason 
 •would be restored, and he would tell his simple history. 
 Perhaps he might explain what was in his mind when he 
 turned to her the first evening with that singular sentence 
 which had often recurred strangely to her, she knew not 
 why. It did not strike her until later that it was because 
 it had been the solitary indication of an energy and capacity 
 that seemed unlike him. Nevertheless, after that explana- 
 tion, she would have been quite willing to have shaken 
 hands with him and parted. 
 
 And yet — for there was an unexpressed remainder in 
 her thought — she was never entirely free or uninfluenced 
 in his presence. The flickering vacancy of his sad eyes 
 sometimes became fixed with a resolute immobility under 
 the gentle questioning with which she had sought to draw 
 out his faculties, that both piqued and exasperated her. He 
 could say " Yes " and " No," as she thought, intelligently, 
 but he could not utter a coherent sentence nor write a word, 
 except like a child in imitation of his copy. She taught 
 him to repeat after her the names of the inanimate objects 
 in the room, then the names of the doctor, his attendant, 
 the servant, and, finally, her own under her Christian pre- 
 nomen, with frontier familiarity ; but when she pointed to 
 himself he waited for her to name him ! In vain she tried 
 him with all the masculine names she knew ; his was not 
 one of them, or he would not or could not speak it. For 
 at times she rejected the professional dictum of the doctor 
 that the faculty of memory was wholly paralyzed or held in 
 abeyance, even to the half-automatic recollection of his let- 
 ters, yet she inconsistently began to teach him the alphabet 
 with the same method, and — in her sublime unconscious- 
 ness of his manhood — with the same discipline as if he 
 
350 THE CHATELAINE OF BURNT EIDGE 
 
 were a very child. When he had recovered sufficiently to 
 leave his room, she would lead him to the porch before her 
 window, and make him contented and happy by allowing 
 him to watch her at work at her desk, occasionally answer- 
 ing his wondering eyes with a word, or stirring his faculties 
 with a question. I grieve to say that her parents had 
 taken advantage of this publicity and his supposed helpless 
 condition to show their disgust of his assumption, to the 
 extreme of making faces at him — an act which he resented 
 with such a furious glare that they retreated hurriedly to 
 their own veranda. A fresh though somewhat inconsistent 
 grievance was added to their previous indictment of him : 
 " If we ain't found dead in our bed with our throats cut by 
 that woman's crazy husband " (they had settled by this time 
 that there had been a clandestine marriage), "we'll be 
 lucky," groaned Mrs. Forsyth. 
 
 Meantime, the mountain summer waxed to its fullness 
 of fire and fruition. There were daj's when the crowded 
 forest seemed choked and impeded with its own foliage, and 
 pungent and stifling with its own rank maturity ; when the 
 long hillside ranks of wild oats, thick-set and impassable, 
 filled the air with the heated dust of germination. In this 
 quickening irritation of life it would be strange if the un- 
 fortunate man's torpid intellect was not helped in its awak- 
 ening, and he was allowed to ramble at will over the ranch ; 
 but with the instinct of a domestic animal he always re- 
 tiirned to the house, and sat in the porch, where Josephine 
 usually found him awaiting her when she herself returned 
 from a visit to the mill. Coming thence one day she espied 
 him on the mountain side leaning against a projecting ledge 
 in an attitude so rapt and immovable that she felt compelled 
 to approach him. He appeared to be dumbly absorbed in 
 the prospect, which might have intoxicated a saner mind. 
 
 Half veiled by the heat that rose quiveringly from the 
 fiery canon below, the domain of Burnt Ridge stretched 
 
THE CHATELAINE OF BURNT EIDGE 351 
 
 away before him, until, lifted in successive terraces hearsed 
 and plumed with pines, it was at last lost in the ghostly 
 snow-peaks. But the practical Josephine seized the oppor- 
 tunity to try once more to awaken the slumbering memory of 
 her pupil. Following his gaze with signs and questions, she 
 sought to draw from him some indication of familiar recol- 
 lection of certain points of the map thus unrolled behind 
 him. But in vain. She even pointed out the fateful 
 shadow of the overhanging ledge on the road where she had 
 picked him up — there was no response in his abstracted 
 eyes. She bit her lips ; she was becoming irritated again. 
 Then it occurred to her that, instead of appealing to his 
 hopeless memory, she had better trust to some unreflective 
 automatic instinct independent of it, and she put the ques- 
 tion a little forward : " When you leave us, where will you 
 go from here ? " He stirred slightly, and turned towards 
 her. She repeated her query slowly and patiently, with 
 signs and gestures recognized between them. A faint glow 
 of intelligence struggled into his eyes ; he lifted his arm 
 slowly, and pointed. 
 
 " Ah ! those white peaks — the Sierras ? " she asked 
 eagerly. No reply. " Beyond them ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " The States ? " No reply. " Further still ? " 
 
 He remained so patiently quiet and still pointing that 
 she leaned forward, and following with her eyes the direc- 
 tion of his hand, saw that he was pointing to the sky ! 
 
 Then a great quiet fell upon them. The whole mountain 
 side seemed to her to be hushed, as if to allow her to grasp 
 and realize for the first time the pathos of the ruined life at 
 her side, which it had known so long, but which she had 
 never felt till now. The tears came to her eyes ; in her 
 swift revulsion of feeling she caught the thin uplifted hand 
 between her ovi^n. It seemed to her that he was about to 
 raise them to his lips, but she withdrew them hastily, and 
 
352 THE CHATELAINE OF BURNT EIDGE 
 
 moved away. She had a strange fear that if he had kissed 
 them, it might seem as if some dumb animal had touched 
 them — or — it 'might not. The next day she felt a con- 
 sciousness of this in his presence, and a wish that he was well 
 cured and away. She determined to consult Dr. Duchesne 
 on the subject when he next called. 
 
 But the doctor, secure in the welfare of his patient, had 
 not visited him lately, and she found herself presently ab- 
 sorbed in the business of the ranch, which at this season was 
 particularly trying. There had also been a quarrel between 
 Dick Shipley, her mill foreman, and. Miguel, her ablest and 
 most trusted vaquero, and in her strict sense of impartial 
 justice she was obliged to side on the merits of the case 
 vith Shipley against her oldest retainer. This troubled her, 
 fis she knew that with the Mexican nature, fidelity and 
 ioyalty were not unmixed with quick and unreasoning jeal- 
 ousy. For this reason she was somewhat watchful of the 
 two men when work was over, and there was a chance of 
 their being thrown together. Once or twice she had re- 
 mained up late to meet Miguel returning from the posada at 
 San Ramon, filled with aguardiente and a recollection of 
 his wrongs, and to see him safely bestowed before she her- 
 self retired. It was on one of those occasions, however, 
 that she learned that Dick Shipley, hearing that Miguel had 
 disparaged him freely at the posada, had broken the disci- 
 pline of the ranch, and absented himself the same night that 
 Miguel " had leave," with a view of facing his antagonist 
 on his own ground. To prevent this, the fearless girl aj 
 once secretly set out alone to overtake and bring back the 
 delinquent. 
 
 For two or three hours the house was thus left to the 
 sole occupancy of Mr. and Mrs. Forsyth and the invalid — 
 a fact only dimly suspected by the latter, who had become 
 vaguely conscious of Josephine's anxiety, and had noticed 
 the absence of light and movement in her room. For this 
 
THE CHATELAINE OF BURNT RIDGE 353 
 
 reason, therefore, having risen again and mechanically taken 
 his seat in the porch to await her return, he was startled 
 by hearing her voice in the shadow of the lower porch, ac- 
 companied by a hurried tapping against the door of the old 
 couple. The half-reasoning man arose, and would have 
 moved towards it, but suddenly he stopped rigidly, with 
 white and parted lips and vacantly distended eyeballs. 
 
 Meantime the voice and muffled tapping had brought the 
 tremulous fingers of old Forsyth to the door-latch. He 
 opened the door partly ; a slight figure that had been lurk- 
 ing in the shadow of the porch pushed rapidly through the 
 opening. There was a faint outcry quickly hushed, and 
 the door closed again. The rays of a single candle showed 
 the two old people hysterically clasping in their arms the 
 figure that had entered— a slight but vicious-looking young 
 fellow of five-and-twenty. 
 
 " There, d — n it ! " he said impatiently in a voice whose 
 rich depth was like Josephine's, but whose querulous action 
 was that of the two old people before him, " let me go, and 
 quit that. I did n't come here to be strangled ! I want 
 some money, — money, you hear! Devilish quick, too, for 
 I've got to be off again before daylight. So look sharp, 
 will you ? " 
 
 " But, Stevy dear, when you did n't come that time three 
 months ago, but wrote from Los Angeles, you said you'd 
 made a strike at last, and " — 
 
 " What are you talking about ? " he interrupted vio- 
 lently. "That was just my lyin' to keep you from wor- 
 ryin' me. Three months ago — three months ago ! Why, 
 you must have been crazy to have swallowed it ; I had n't 
 a cent." 
 
 " Nor have we," said the old woman shrilly. " That 
 hellish sister of yours still keeps us like beggars. Our only 
 hope was you, our own boy. And now you only come to 
 — to go again." 
 
354 THE CHATELAINE OF BURNT EIDGE 
 
 "But she has money; she^s doing well, and she shall 
 give it to me," he went on angrily. " She can't bully me 
 with her business airs and morality. Who else has got a 
 right to share, if it is not her own brother ? " 
 
 Alas for the fatuousness of human malevolence ! Had 
 the unhappy couple related only the simple facts they knew 
 about the new guest of Burnt Eidge Eanch, and the man- 
 ner of his introduction, they might have spared what fol- 
 lowed. 
 
 But the old woman broke into a vindictive cry : " Who 
 else, Steve — who else ? Why, the slut has brought a 
 man here — a sneaking, deceitful, underhanded, crazy 
 lover ! " 
 
 "Oh, has she ? " said the young man fiercely, yet 
 secretly pleased at this promising evidence of his sister's 
 human weakness. " Where is she ? I '11 go to her. She 's 
 in her room, I suppose," and before they could restrain him, 
 he had thrown off their impending embraces and darted 
 across the hall. 
 
 The two old people stared doubtfully at each other. For 
 even this powerful ally, whose strength, however, they 
 were by no means sure of, might succumb before the de- 
 termined Josephine ! Prudence demanded a middle course. 
 "Ain't they brother and sister?" said the old man, with 
 an air of virtuous toleration. "Let 'em fight it out." 
 
 The young man impatiently entered the room he remem- 
 bered to have been his sister's. By the light of the moon 
 that streamed upon the window he could see she was not 
 there. He passed hurriedly to the door of her bedroom ; 
 it was open ; the room was empty, the bed unturned. She 
 was not in the house — she had gone to the mill. Ah ! 
 What was that they had said ? An infamous thought 
 passed through the scoundrel's mind. Then, in what he 
 half believed was an access of virtuous fury, he began by 
 the dim light to rummage in the drawers of the desk for 
 
THE CHATELAINE OF BURNT EIDGE 355 
 
 such loose coin or valuables as, in the perfect security of 
 the ranch, were often left unguarded. Suddenly he heard a 
 heavy footstep on the threshold, and turned. 
 
 An awful vision — a recollection, so unexpected, so ghost- 
 like in that weird light that he thought he was losing his 
 senses — stood before him. It moved forwards with staring 
 eyeballs and white and open lips from which a horrible inar- 
 ticulate sound issued that was the speech of no living man ! 
 With a single desperate, almost superhuman effort, Stephen 
 Forsyth bo\mded aside, leaped from the window, and ran 
 like a madman from the house. Then the apparition trem- 
 bled, collapsed, and sank in an undistinguishable heap to the 
 ground. 
 
 When Josephine Forsyth returned an hour later with her 
 mill foreman, she was startled to find her helpless patient in 
 a fit on the floor of her room. With the assistance of her 
 now converted and penitent employee, she had the unfor- 
 tunate man conveyed to his room — but not until she had 
 thoughtfully rearranged the disorder of her desk and closed 
 the open drawers without attracting Dick Shipley's atten- 
 tion. In the morning, hearing that the patient was still in 
 the semi-conscious exhaustion of his late attack, but with- 
 out seeing him, she sent for Dr. Duchesne. The doctor 
 arrived while she was absent at the mill, where, after a 
 careful examination of his patient, he sought her with some 
 little excitement. 
 
 " Well ? '"' she said, with eager gravitj'. 
 
 " Well, it looks as if your wish would be gratified. Your 
 friend has had an epileptic fit, but the physical shock has 
 started his mental machinery again. He has recovered his 
 faculties ; his memory is returning ; he thinks and speaks 
 coherently ; he is as sane as you and I." 
 
 " And " — said Josephine, questioning the doctor's knitted 
 eyebrows. 
 
 " I am not yet sure whether it was the result of some 
 
356 THE CHATELAINE OF BURNT EIDGE 
 
 shock he does n't remember ; or an irritation of the brain, 
 ■which would indicate that the operation had not been suc- 
 cessful, and that there was still some physical pressure or 
 obstruction there — in which case he would be subject to 
 these attacks all his life." 
 
 " Do you think his reason came before the fit or after ? " 
 asked the girl anxiously. 
 
 " I could n't say. Had anything happened ? " 
 
 " I was away, and found him on the floor on my return," 
 she answered, half uneasily. After a pause, she said, " Then 
 he has told you his name and all about himself ? " 
 
 " Yes, it 's nothing at all ! He was a stranger just ar- 
 rived from the States, going to the mines — the old story ; 
 had no near relations, of course; wasn't missed or asked 
 after ; remembers walking along the ridge and falling over ; 
 name, John Baxter, of Maine." He paused, and relaxing 
 into a slight smile, added, " I have n't spoiled your romance, 
 have I?" 
 
 " No," she said, with an answering smile. Then as the 
 doctor walked briskly away she slightly knitted her pretty 
 brows, hung her head, patted the ground with her little 
 foot beyond the hem of her gown, and said to herself, 
 "' The man was lying to him," 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 On her return to the house, Josephine apparently con- 
 tented herself with receiving the bulletin of the stranger's 
 condition from the servant, for she did not enter his room. 
 She had obtained no theory of last night's incident from 
 her parents, who, beyond a querulous agitation that was 
 quickened by the news of his return to reason, refrained 
 from even that insidious comment which she half feared 
 would follow. When another day passed without seeing 
 him, she nevertheless was conscious of a little embar- 
 rassmeift when his attendant brought her the request that 
 she would give him a moment's speech in the porch, 
 whither he had been removed. 
 
 She found him physically weaker ; indeed, so much so 
 that she was fain, even in her embarrassment, to assist him 
 back to the bench from which he had ceremoniously risen. 
 But she was so struck with the change in his face and 
 manner, a change so virile and masterful, in spite of its 
 gentle sadness of manner, that she recoiled with a slight 
 timidity as if he had been a stranger, although she was also 
 conscious that he seemed to be more at his ease than she 
 was. He began in a low exhausted voice, but before he 
 had finished his first sentence, she felt herself in the pre- 
 sence of a superior. 
 
 " My thanks come very late, Miss Forsyth," he said, 
 with a faint smile, " but no one knows better than your- 
 self the reason why, or can better understand that they 
 mean that the burden you have so generously taken on 
 yourself ia^ about to be lifted. I know all. Miss Forsyth. 
 
358 THE CHATELAINE OF BURNT RIDGE 
 
 Since yesterday I have learned how much I owe you, even 
 my life I believe, though I am afraid I must tell you in the 
 same breath that that is of little worth to any one. You 
 have kindly helped and interested yourself in a poor stran- 
 ger who turns out a nobody, without friends, without ro- 
 mance, and without even mystery. You found me lying in 
 the road down yonder, after a stupid accident that might have 
 happened to any other careless tramp, and which scarcely 
 gave me a claim to a bed in the county hospital, much less 
 under this kindly roof. It was not my fault, as you know, 
 that all this did not come out sooner ; but while it does n't 
 lessen your generosity, it doesn't lessen my debt, and 
 although I cannot hope to ever repay you, I can at least 
 keep the score from running on. Pardon my speaking so 
 bluntly, but my excuse for speaking at all was to say 
 ' Good-by ' and ' God bless you.' Dr. Duchesne has pro- 
 mised to give me a lift on my way in his buggy when he 
 goes." 
 
 There was a slight touch of consciousness in his voice in 
 spite of its sadness, which struck the young girl as a weak 
 and even ungentlemanly note in his otherwise self-abnegat- 
 ing and undemonstrative attitude. If he was a common 
 tramp, he would n't talk in that way, and if he was n't, 
 why did he lie ? Her practical good sense here asserted 
 itself. 
 
 " But you are far from strong yet ; in fact, the doctor 
 says you might have a relapse at any moment, and you 
 have — that is, you seem to have no money," she said 
 gravely. 
 
 " That 's true," he said quickly. " I remember I was 
 quite played out when I entered the settlement, and I think 
 I had parted from even some little trifles I carried with me. 
 I am afraid I was a poor find to those who picked me up, 
 and you ought to have taken warning. But the doctor has 
 offered to lend me enough to take me to San Trancisco, if 
 
THE CHATELAINE OK BURNT RIDGE 359 
 
 only to give a fair trial to the machine he has set once more 
 a-going." 
 
 " Then you have friends in San Francisco ? " said the 
 young girl quickly. " Those who know you ? Why not 
 write to them first, and tell them you are here ? " 
 
 " I don't think your postmaster here would be preoccu- 
 pied with letters for John Baxter, if I did," he said 
 quietly. " But here is the doctor waiting. Good-by." 
 
 He stood looking at her' in a peculiar, yet half-resigned 
 way, and held out his hand. For a moment she hesitated. 
 Had he been less independent and strong, she would have 
 refused to let him go — have offered him some slight em- 
 ployment at the ranch ; for oddly enough, in spite of the 
 suspicion that he was concealing something, she felt that 
 she would have trusted him, and he would have been a help 
 to her. But he was not only determined, but she was all 
 the time conscious that he was a totally different man from 
 the one she had taken care of, and merely ordinary pru- 
 dence demanded that she should know something more of 
 him first. She gave him her hand constrainedly ; he 
 pressed it warmly. 
 
 Dr. Duchesne drove up, helped him into the buggy, 
 smiled a good-natured but half-perfunctory assurance that 
 he would look after " her patient," and drove away. 
 
 .The whole thing was over, but so unexpectedly, so sud- 
 denly, so unromantically, so unsatisfactorily, that, although 
 her common sense told her that it was perfectly natural, 
 proper, businesslike, and reasonable, and, above all, final 
 and complete, she did not know whether to laugh or be 
 angry. Yet this was her parting from the man who had 
 but a few days ago moved her to tears with a single hope- 
 less gesture. Well, this would teach her what to expect. 
 Well, what had she expected ? Nothing ! 
 
 Yet for the rest of the day she was unreasonably irritable, 
 and, if the conjointure be not paradoxical, severely practical, 
 
360 THE CHATELAINE OF BUKNT EIDGB 
 
 and inhumanly just. Falling foul of some presumption <A 
 Miguel's, based upon his prescriptive rights through long 
 service on the estate, with the recollection of her severity 
 towards his antagonist in her mind, she rated that trusted 
 retainer with such pitiless equity and unfeminine logic that 
 his hot Latin blood chilled in his veins, and he stood livid 
 on the road. Then, informing Dick Shipley with equally 
 relentless calm that she might feel it necessary to change 
 all her foremen unless they could agree in harmony, she 
 sought the dignified seclusion of her castle. But her re. 
 spected parents, whose triumphant relief at the stranger's 
 departure had emboldened them to await her return in 
 their porch with bended bows of invective and lifted javelins 
 of aggression, recoiled before the resistless helm of this cold- 
 browed Minerva, who galloped contemptuously past them. 
 
 Nevertheless, she sat late that night at her desk. The 
 cold moon looked down upon her window, and lit up the 
 empty porch where her silent guest had mutely watched 
 her. For a moment she regretted that he had recovered 
 his reason, excusing herself on the practical ground that he 
 would never have known his dependence, and he would 
 have been better cared for by her. She felt restless and 
 uneasy. This slight divergence from the practical groove 
 in which her life had been set had disturbed her in many 
 other things, and given her the first views of the narrow- 
 ness of it. 
 
 Suddenly she heard a step in the porch. The lateness 
 of the hour, perhaps some other reason, seemed to startle 
 her, and she half rose. The next moment the figure of 
 Miguel appeared at the doorway, and vtfith a quick, hurried 
 look around him, and at the open window, he approached 
 her. He was evidently under great excitement, his hollow 
 shaven cheek looked like a waxen effigy in the Mission 
 church ; his yellow, tobacco-stained eye glittered like phos- 
 phorescent amber, his lank gray hair was damp and perspir* 
 
THE CHATELAINE OF BURNT KIDGE 361 
 
 ing ; but more striking than this was the evident restraint 
 he had put upon himself, pressing his broad-brimmed sombrerC" 
 with both of his trembling yellow hands against his breast. 
 The young girl cast a hurried glance at the open window 
 and at the gun which stood in the corner, and then con- 
 fronted him with clear and steady eyes, but a paler cheek. 
 
 Ah, he began in Spanish, which he himself had taught 
 her as a child, it was a strange thing, his coming there to- 
 night ; but, then, mother of God ! it was a strange, a ter- 
 rible thing that she had done to him — old Miguel, her 
 uncle's servant : he that had known her as a muchacha ; 
 he that had lived all his life at the ranch — ay, and whose 
 fathers before him had lived there all their lives and driven 
 the cattle over the very spot where she now stood, before 
 the thieving Americans came here ! But he would be calm ; 
 yes, the seHora should find him calm, even as she was when 
 she told him to go. He would not speak. No, he — 
 Miguel — would contain himself ; yes, he had mastered 
 himself, but could he restrain others ? Ah, yes, others — 
 that was it. Could he keep Manuel and Pepe and Do- 
 minguez from talking to the milkman — that leaking sieve, 
 that gabbling brute of a Shipley, for whose sake she had 
 cast off her old servant that very day ? 
 
 She looked at him with cold astonishment, but without 
 fear. Was he drunk with aguardiente, or had his jealousy 
 turned his brain ? He continued gasping, but still pressing 
 his hat against his breast. 
 
 Ah, he saw it all ! Yes, it was to-day, the day he left. 
 Yes, she had thought it safe to cast Miguel oif now — now 
 til at he was gone ! 
 
 Without in the least understanding him, the color had 
 leaped to her cheek, and the consciousness of it made her 
 furious. 
 
 " How dare you ? " she said passionately. " What has 
 that stranger to do with my affairs or your insolence ? " 
 
362 THE CHATELAINE OF BUENT RIDGE 
 
 He stopped and gazed at her with a certain admiring 
 loyalty. " Ah ! so," he said, with a deep hreath, " the 
 senora is the niece of her uncle. She does well not to fear 
 him — a, dog,". — with a slight shrug, — "who is more 
 than repaid by the senora's condescension. Me dare not 
 speak ! " 
 
 " Who dare not speak ? Are you mad ? " She stopped 
 with a sudden terrible instinct of apprehension. " Miguel," 
 she said in her deepest voice, " answer me, I command you I 
 Do you know anything of this man ? " 
 
 It was Miguel's turn to recoil from his mistress. " Ah, 
 my God ! is it possible the senora has not suspect ? " 
 
 " Suspect ! " said Josephine haughtily, albeit her proud 
 heart was beating quickly. " I suspect nothing. I com- 
 mand you to tell me what you know." 
 
 Miguel turned with a rapid gesture and closed the door. 
 Then, drawing her away from the window, he said in a 
 hurried whisper : — 
 
 " I know that that man has not the name of Baxter ! 
 I know that he has the name of Randolph, a young gam- 
 bler, who have won a large sum at Sacramento, and, fearing 
 to be robbed by those he won of, have walk to himself 
 through the road in disguise of a miner. I know that your 
 brother Esteban have decoyed him here, and have fallen on 
 him." 
 
 " Stop ! " said the young girl, her eyes, which had been 
 fixed with the agony of conviction, suddenly flashing with 
 the energy of despair. " And you call. yourself the servant 
 of my uncle, and dare say this of his nephew ? " 
 
 " Yes, senora," broke out the old man passionately. 
 " It is because I am the servant of your uncle that I, and 
 I alone, dare say it to you ! It is because I perjured my 
 soul, and have perjured my soul to deny it elsewhere, that 
 I now dare to say it ! It is because I, your servant, knew 
 it from one of my countrymen, who was of the gang, — 
 
THE CHATELAINE OF BURNT RIDGE 363 
 
 because I, Miguel, knew that your brother was not far away 
 that night, and because I, whom you would dismiss, have 
 picked up this pocket-book of Randolph's and your brother's 
 ring which he have dropped, and I have found beneath the 
 body of the man you sent me to fetch." He drew a packet 
 from his bosom, and tossed it on the desk before her. 
 
 " And why have you not told me this before ? " said 
 Josephine passionately. 
 
 Miguel shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " What good ? Possibly this dog Eandolph would die. 
 Possibly he would live — as a lunatic. Possibly would 
 happen what has happened ! The senora is beautiful. The 
 American has eyes. If the Dona Josephine's beauty shall 
 finish what the silly Don Esteban's arm have begun — what 
 matter ? " 
 
 " Stop ! " cried Josephine, pressing her hands across her 
 ihuddering eyes. Then, uncovering her white and set face, 
 s.he said rapidly, " Saddle my horse and your own at once. 
 Then take your choice ! Come with me and repeat all that 
 you have said in the presence of that man, or leave this 
 ranch forever. For if I live I shall go to him to-night, and 
 tell the whole story." 
 
 The old man cast a single glance at his mistress, shrugged 
 ihis shoulders, and, without a word, left the room. But in 
 ten minutes they were on their way to the- county town. 
 
 Day was breaking over the distant Burnt Ridge — a faint, 
 ghostly level, like a funeral pall, in the dim horizon — as 
 they drew up before the gaunt, white-painted pile of the 
 hospital building. Josephine uttered a cry. Dr. Duchesne's 
 buggy was before the door. On its very threshold they met 
 the doctor, dark and irritated. " Then you heard the news ? " 
 he said quickly. 
 
 Josephine turned her white face to the doctor's. " What 
 news ? " she asked in a voice that seemed strangely deep 
 and resonant. 
 
364 THE CHATELAINE OF BURNT KIDGE 
 
 " The poor fellow had another attack last night, and died 
 of exhaustion about an hour ago. I was too late to save 
 him." 
 
 " Did he say anything ? Was he conscious ? " asked 
 the girl hoarsely. 
 
 " No ; incoherent ! Now I think of it, he harped on the 
 same string as he did the night of the operation. What was 
 it he said ? you remember." 
 
 " ' You '11 have to kill me first,' " repeated Josephine in 
 a choking voice. 
 
 " Yes ; something about his dying before he 'd tell. 
 Well, he came back to it before he went off — they often 
 do. You seem a little hoarse with your morning ride. 
 You should take care of that voice of yours. By the way, 
 ii 's a good deal like your brother's." 
 
 The Chatelaine of Burnt Eidge never married. 
 
A M^CENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 As Mr. Eobert Rushbrook, known to an imaginative press 
 n'j the " Msecenas of the Pacific Slope," drove up to. his 
 country seat, equally referred to as a " palatial villa," he 
 cast a quick but practical look at the pillared pretensions of 
 that enormous shell of wood and paint and plaster. The 
 statement, also a reportorial one, that its site, the CaHon of 
 Los Osos, " some three years ago was disturbed only by the 
 passing tread of bear and wildcat," had lost some of its fresh- 
 ness as a picturesque apology, and already successive im- 
 provements on the original building seemingly cast the 
 older part of the structure back to a hoary antiquity. To 
 many it stood as a symbol of everything Robert Rushbrook 
 did or had done — an improvement of all previous periorm- 
 ances ; it was like his own life — an exciting though irri- 
 tating state of transition to something better. Yet the 
 visible architectural result, as here shown, was scarcely har- 
 monious ; indeed, some of his friends -*— and Maecenas had 
 many — professed to classify the various improvements by 
 the successive fortunate ventures in their owner's financial 
 career, which had led to new additions, under the names of 
 " The Comstook Lode Period," " The Union Pacific Renais- 
 sance," "The Great Wheat Corner," and "Water Front 
 Gable Style," a humorous trifling that did not, however, 
 prevent a few who were artists from accepting Maecenas's 
 liberal compensation for their services in giving shape to 
 those ideas. 
 
366 A MAECENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 
 
 Relinquishing to a groom his fast-trotting team, the second 
 relay in his two hours' drive from San Erancisco, he leaped 
 to the ground to meet the architect, already awaiting his 
 orders in the courtyard. With his eyes still fixed upon the 
 irregular building before him, he mingled his greeting and 
 his directions. 
 
 " Look here. Barker, we '11 have a wing thrown out here, 
 and a hundred-foot ballroom. Something to hold a crowd ; 
 something that can be used for music — sabe ? — a concert, 
 or a show." 
 
 " Have you thought of any style, Mr. Rushbrook ? " 
 suggested the architect. 
 
 " No," said Eushbrook ; " I 've been thinking of the 
 time — thirty days, and everything to be in. You '11 stop 
 to dinner. I '11 have you sit near Jack Somers. You can 
 talk style to him. Say I told you." 
 
 " You wish it completed in thirty days ? " repeated the 
 architect dubiously. 
 
 " Well, I should n't mind if it were less. You can begin 
 at once. There 's a telegraph in the house. Patrick will 
 take any message, and you can send up to San Francisco 
 and fix things before dinner." 
 
 Before the man could reply, Ruslibrook was already giv- 
 ing a hurried interview to the gardener and others on his 
 way to the front porch. In another moment he had entered 
 his own hall, — a wonderful temple of white and silver 
 plaster, formal, yet friable like the sugared erection of a 
 wedding-cake, — where his major-domo awaited him. 
 
 " Well, who 's here ? " asked Eushbrook, still advancing 
 towards his apartments. 
 
 " Dinner is set for thirty, sir," said the functionary, keep- 
 ing step demurely with his master, " but Mr. Appleby takes 
 ten over to San Mateo, and some may sleep there. The 
 char-a-hanc is still out and five saddle-horses, to a picnic in 
 Green Canon, and I can't positively say, but I should think 
 
A M^CENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 367 
 
 you might count on seeing about forty-five guests before you 
 go to town to-morrow. The opera troupe seem to have not 
 exactly understood the invitation, sir." 
 
 " How ? I gave it myself." 
 
 "The chorus and supernumeraries thought themselves 
 invited too, sir, and have come, I believe, sir. At least 
 Signora Pegrelli and Madame Denise said so, and that they 
 ■would speak to you about it, but that meantime I could 
 put them up anywhere." 
 
 " And you made no distinction, of course ? " 
 
 " No, sir, I put them in the corresponding rooms oppo- 
 site, sir. I don't think the prima donnas like it." 
 
 " Ah ! " 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 Whatever was in their minds, the two men never 
 changed their steady, practical gravity of manner. The 
 major-domo's appeared to be a subdued imitation of his mas- 
 ter's, worn, as he might have worn his master's clothes, 
 had he accepted, or Mr. Eushbrook permitted, such a degra- 
 dation. By this time they had reached the door of Mr. 
 Eush brook's room, and the man paused. " I did n't include 
 some guests of Mr. Leyton's, sir, that he brought over here 
 to show around the place, but he told me to tell you he 
 would take them away again, or leave them, as you liked. 
 They 're some Eastern strangers stopping with him." 
 
 " All right," said Rushbrook quietly, as he entered his 
 own apartment. It was decorated as garishly as the hall, 
 as staring and vivid in color, but wholesomely new and 
 clean for all its paint, veneering, and plaster. It was 
 filled with heterogeneous splendor — all new and well kept, 
 yet with so much of the attitude of the show-room still 
 lingering about it that one almost expected to see the vari- 
 ous articles of furniture ticketed with their prices. A lux- 
 urious bed, with satin hangings and Indian carved posts, 
 standing ostentatiously in a corner, kept up this reseai- 
 
368 A MAECENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 
 
 blance, for in a curtained, recess stood a worn camp bedstead, 
 Eushbrook's real couch, Spartan in its simplicity. 
 
 Mr. Eushbrook drew his watch from his pocket, and de- 
 liberately divested himself of his boots, coat, waistcoat, and 
 cravat. Then rolling himself in a fleecy, blanket-like rug 
 with something of the habitual dexterity of a frontiersman, 
 he threw himself on his couch, closed his eyes, and went 
 instantly to sleep. Lying there, he appeared to be a man 
 comfortably middle-aged, with thick iron-gray hair that 
 might have curled had he encouraged such inclination ; a 
 skin roughened and darkened by external hardships and 
 exposure, but free from taint of inner vice or excess, and 
 indistinctive features redeemed by a singularly handsome 
 mouth. As the lower part of the face was partly hidden 
 by a dense but closely cropped beard, it is probable that the 
 delicate outlines of his lips had gained something from 
 their framing. 
 
 He slept, through what seemed to be the unnatural still- 
 ness of the large house,' — a quiet that might have come 
 from the lingering influence of the still virgin solitude 
 around it, as if Nature had forgotten the intrusion, or were 
 stealthily retaking her own ; and later, through the rattle of 
 returning wheels or the sound of voices, which were, how- 
 ever, promptly absorbed in that deep and masterful silence 
 which was the unabdicating genius of the cafion. For it 
 was remarkable that even the various artists, musicians, ora- 
 tors, and poets whom Maecenas had gathered in his cool 
 business fashion under that roof, all seemed to become, by 
 contrast with surrounding Nature, as new and artificial as 
 the house, and as powerless to assert themselves against its 
 influence. 
 
 He was sleeping when James reentered tlie room, but 
 awoke promptly at the sound of his voice. In a few mo- 
 ments he had rearranged his scarcely disordered toilet, and 
 
A M^CENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 369 
 
 stepped out refreshed and observant into the hall. The 
 guests were still absent from that part of the building, and 
 he walked leisurely past the carelessly opened doors of the 
 rooms they had left. Everywhere he met the same glaring 
 ornamentation and color, the same garishness of treatment, 
 the same inharmonious extravagance of furniture, and every- 
 where the same troubled acceptance of it by the inmates, or 
 the same sense of temporary and restricted tenancy. Dresses 
 were hung over cheval-glasses ; clothes piled up on chairs 
 to avoid the use of doubtful and over ornamented ward- 
 robes, and in some cases more practical guests had appar- 
 ently encamped in a corner of their apartment. A gentle- 
 man from Siskyou — sole proprietor of a mill patent now 
 being considered by Maecenas — had confined himself to a 
 rocking-chair and clothes-horse as being trustworthy and 
 familiar ; a bolder spirit from Yreka — in treaty for capi- 
 tal to start an independent journal devoted to Maecenas's 
 interests — had got a good deal out of, indeed all he had 
 into, a Louis XVI. armoire ; while a young painter from 
 Sacramento had simply retired into his adjoining bathroom, 
 leaving the glories of his bedroom untarnished. Suddenly 
 he paused. 
 
 He had turned into a smaller passage in order to make a 
 shorter cut through one of the deserted suites of apartments 
 that should bring him to that part of the building where 
 he designed to make his projected improvement, when his 
 feet were arrested on the threshold of a sitting-room. Al- 
 though it contained the same decoration and furniture as 
 the other rooms, it looked totally different ! It was taste- 
 ful, luxurious, comfortable, and habitable. The furniture 
 seemed to have fallen into harmonious position ; even the 
 staring decorations of the walls and ceiling were toned down 
 by sprays of laurel and red-stained manzanita boughs with 
 their berries, apparently fresh plucked from the new canon. 
 
370 A MjEoenas of the pacific slope 
 
 But he was more unexpectedly impressed to see that the 
 room was at that moment occupied by a tall, handsome girl, 
 who had paused to take breath, with her hand still on the 
 heavy centre-table she was moving. Standing there, grace- 
 ful, glowing, and animated, she looked the living genius of 
 the recreated apartment. 
 
CHAPTER n 
 
 Mr. Eushbhook glanced rapidly at his unknown guest. 
 *' Excuse me," he said, with respectful business brevity, 
 '' but I thought every one was out," and he stepped back« 
 ward quickly. 
 
 " I 've only just come," she said without embarrassment, 
 " and would you mind, as you are here, giving me a lift 
 with this table ? " 
 
 " Certainly," replied Eushbrook, and under the young 
 girl's direction the millionaire moved the table to one side. 
 
 During the operation he was trying to determine which 
 of his unrecognized guests the fair occupant was. Possibly 
 one of the Leyton party, that James had spoken of as 
 impending. 
 
 " Then you have changed all the furniture, and put up 
 these things ? " he asked, pointing to the laurel. 
 
 " Yes, the room was really something too awful. It 
 looks better now, don't you think ? " 
 
 "A hundred per cent.," said Eushbrook promptly. 
 " Look here, I '11 tell you what you 'ye done. You 've set 
 the furniture to ivorlc ! It was simply lying still — with no 
 return to anybody on the investment." 
 
 The young girl opened her gray eyes at this, and then 
 smiled. The intruder seemed to be characteristic of Cali- 
 fornia. As for Eushbrook, he regretted that he did not 
 know her better ; he would at once have asked her to re- 
 arrange all the rooms, and have managed in some way 
 liberally to reward her for it. A girl like that had no 
 Uonsense about her. 
 
372 A MAECENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 
 
 " Yes," she said, " I wonder Mr. Eushbrook don't look 
 at it in that way. It is a shame that all these pretty 
 things — and you know they are really good and valuable 
 — should n't show what they are. But I suppose every- 
 body here accepts the fact that this man simply buys them 
 because they are valuable, and nobody interferes, and is con- 
 tent to humor him, laugh at him, and feel superior. It 
 don't strike me as quite fair, does it you ? " 
 
 Eushbrook was pleased. Without the vanity that would 
 be either annoyed at this revelation of his reputation or 
 gratified at her defense of it, he was simply glad to discover 
 that she had not recognized him as her host, and could con- 
 tinue the conversation unreservedly. "Have you seen thp 
 ladies' boudoir ? " he asked. " You know, the room iitted 
 with knickknacks and pretty things — some of 'em bought 
 from old collections in Europe, by fellows who knew what 
 they were ; but perhaps," he added, looking into her eyes 
 for the first time, " didn't know exactly what ladies cared 
 for." 
 
 "I merely glanced in there when I first came, for there 
 was such a queer lot of women — I'm told he isn't very 
 particular in that way — that I did n't stay." 
 
 " And you did n't think they might be just as valuable 
 and good as some of the furniture, if they could have been 
 pulled around and put into shape,, or set in a corner, eh ? " 
 
 The young girl smiled ; she thought her fellow guest 
 rather amusing, none the less so, perhaps, for catching up 
 her own ideas, but nevertheless she slightly shrugged her 
 shoulders with that hopeless skepticism which women 
 reserve for their own sex. " Some of them looked as if 
 they had been pulled around, as you say, and had n't been 
 improved by it." 
 
 "There's no one there now," said Eushbrook, with 
 practical directness ; " come and take a look at it." She 
 complied without hesitation, walking by his side, tall, easy, 
 
A MAECENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 373 
 
 and self-possessed, apparently accepting without self-con- 
 sciousness his half-paternal, half-comr^e-like informality. 
 The boudoir was a large room, repeating on a bigger scale 
 the incongruousness and ill-fitting splendor of the others. 
 When she had of her own accord recognized and pointed 
 out the more admirable articles, he said, gravely looking at 
 his watch, " We 've just about seven minutes yet ; if you 'd 
 like to pull and haul these things around, I '11 help you." 
 
 The young girl smiled. " I 'm quite content with what 
 I 've done in my own room, where I have no one's taste to 
 consult but my own. I hardly know how Mr. Eushbrook, 
 or his lady friends, might like my operating here." Then 
 recognizing with feminine tact the snub that might seem 
 implied in her refusal, she said quickly, " Tell me some- 
 thing about our host — but first look ! is n't that pretty ? " 
 
 She had stopped before the window that looked upon the 
 dim blue abyss of the canon, and was leaning out to gaze 
 upon it. Eushbrook joined her. 
 
 " There is n't much to be changed down there, is there ? " 
 he said, half interrogatively. 
 
 " No, not unless Mr. Eushbrook took it into his head to 
 roof it in, and somebody was ready with a contract to do it. 
 But what do you know of him ? Eemember, I 'm quite a 
 stranger here." 
 
 " You came with Charley Leyton ? " 
 
 " With Mrs. Leyton's party," said the young girl, with 
 a half-smiling emphasis. " But it seems that we don't 
 know whether Mr. Eushbrook wants us here or not, till he 
 comes. And the drollest thing about it is that they 're all 
 so perfectly frank in saying so." 
 
 " Charley and he are old friends, and you '11 do well to 
 trust to their judgment." 
 
 This was hardly the kind of response that the handsome 
 and clever society girl before him had been in the habit of 
 receiving, but it amused her. Her fellow guest was decide 
 
374 A M^CENAS OF THE PACIPIC SLOPE 
 
 edly original. But he had n't told her about Kushbrook, 
 and it struck her that his opinion would be independent, at 
 least. She reminded him of it. 
 
 " Look here," said Rushbrook, " you '11 meet a man here 
 to-night — or he '11 be sure to meet you — who '11 tell you 
 all about Eushbrook. He 's a smart chap, knows everybody 
 and talks well. His name is Jack Somers ; he is a great 
 ladies' man. He can talk to you about these sort of things, 
 too," — indicating the furniture with a half-tolerant, half- 
 contemptuous gesture, that struck her as inconsistent with 
 what seemed to be his previous interest, — " just as well as 
 he can talk of people. Been in Europe, too." 
 
 The young girl's eye brightened with a quick vivacity at 
 the name, but a moment after became reflective and slightly 
 embarrassed. " I know him — I met him at Mr. Leyton's. 
 He has already talked of Mr. Rushbrook, but," she added, 
 avoiding any conclusion, with a pretty pout, " I 'd like to 
 have the opinion of others. Yours, now, I fancy would be 
 quite independent." 
 
 " You stick to what Jack Somers has said, good or bad, 
 and you won't be far wrong," he said assuringly. He 
 stopped ; his quick ear had heard approaching voices ; he 
 returned to her and held out his hand. As it seemed to 
 her that in California everybody shook hands with every- 
 body else on the slightest occasions, sometimes to save fur- 
 ther conversation, she gave him her own. He shook it, less 
 forcibly than she had feared, and abruptly left her. For a 
 moment she was piqued at this superior and brusque way 
 of ignoring her request, but reflecting that it might be the 
 awkwardness of an untrained man, she dismissed it from 
 her mind. The voices of her friends in the already resound- 
 ing passages also recalled her to the fact that she had been 
 wandering about the house with a stranger, and she rejoined 
 (hem a little self-consciously. 
 
 "Well, my dear," said Mrs. Leyton gayly, "it seems 
 
A MiECENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 375 
 
 we are to stay. Leyton says Eushbrook won't hear of our 
 going." 
 
 " Does that mean that your husband takes the whole 
 opera troupe over to your house in exchange ? " 
 
 " Don't be satirical, but congratulate yourself on your 
 opportunity of seeing an awfully funny gathering. I 
 would n't have you miss it for the world. It 's the most 
 characteristic thing out." 
 
 " Characteristic of what ? " 
 
 " Of Eushbrook, of course. Nobody else would conceive 
 of getting together such a lot of queer people." 
 
 " But don't it strike you that we 're a part of the lot ? " 
 
 " Perhaps," returned the lively Mrs. Leyton. " No 
 doubt that 's the reason why Jack Somers is coming over, 
 and is so anxious that you should stay. I can't imagine 
 why else he should rave about Miss Grace Nevil as he does. 
 Come, Grace, no New York or Philadelphia airs, here ! 
 Consider your uncle's interests with this capitalist, to say 
 nothing of ours. Because you 're a millionaire and have 
 been accustomed to riches from your birth, don't turn up 
 your nose at our unpampered appetites. Besides, Jack 
 Somers is Eushbrook's particular friend, and he may think 
 your criticisms unkind." 
 
 " But is Mr. Somers such a great friend of Mr. Eush- 
 brook's ? " asked Grace Nevil. 
 
 " Why, of course. Eushbrook consults him about all 
 these things ; gives him carte blanche to invite whom he 
 likes and order what he likes, and trusts his taste and judg- 
 ment implicitly." 
 
 " Then this gathering is Mr. Somers's selection ? " 
 
 " How preposterous you are, Grace. Of course not. Only 
 Somers's idea of what is pleasing to Eushbrook, gotten up 
 with a taste and discretion all his own. You know Somers 
 is a gentleman, educated at West Point — traveled all over 
 Europe — you might have met him there ; and Eushbrook 
 
876 A M^CENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 
 
 — well, you have only to see him to know what he is. 
 Don't you understand ? " 
 
 A slight seriousness ; the same shadow that once before 
 darkened the girl's charming face gave way to a mischievous 
 knitting of her brows as she said naively, " No." 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 Geace Nevil had quite recovered her equanimity when 
 the indispensable Mr. Somers, handsome, well-bred, and self- 
 restrained, approached her later in the crowded drawing-room. 
 Blended with his subdued personal admiration was a certain 
 ostentation of respect — as of a tribute to a distinguished 
 guest — that struck her. " I am to have the pleasure of 
 taking you in, Miss Nevil," he said. " It 's my one com- 
 pensation for the dreadful responsibility just thrust upon 
 me. Our host has been suddenly called away, and I am 
 left to take his place." 
 
 Miss Nevil was slightly startled. Nevertheless, she smiled 
 graciously. " From what I hear this is no new function of 
 yours ; that is, if there really is a Mr. Rnshbrook. I am 
 inclined to think him a myth." 
 
 "You make me wish he were," retorted Somers gal- 
 lantly ; " but as I could n't reign at all except in his 
 stead, I shall look to you to lend your rightful grace to my 
 borrowed dignity." 
 
 The more general announcement to the company was 
 received with a few perfidious regrets from the more polite, 
 but with only amused surprise by the majority. Indeed, 
 many considered it " characteristic " — "so like Bob Eush- 
 brook " — and a few enthusiastic friends looked upon it as 
 a crowning and intentional stroke of humor. It remained, 
 however, for the gentleman from Siskyou to give the inci 
 dent a subtlety that struck Miss Nevil's fancy. " It reminds 
 me," he said in her hearing, " of ole Kernel Frisbee, of 
 Robertson County, one of the purlitest men I ever struck. 
 
378 A MAECENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 
 
 When he knew a feller was very dry, he 'd jest set the 
 decanter afore him, and managed to be called outer the room 
 on bus'ness. Now, Bob Eushbrook 's about as white a man 
 as that. He 's jest the feller, who, knowing you and me 
 might feel kinder restrained about indulging our appetites 
 afore him, kinder drops out easy, and leaves us alone." And 
 she was impressed by an instinct that the speaker really felt 
 the delicacy he spoke of, and that it left no sense of inferior- 
 ity behind. 
 
 The dinner, served in a large, brilliantly lit saloon, that 
 in floral decoration and gilded columns suggested an ingenious 
 blending of a steamboat table d'hote and " harvest home," 
 was perfect in its cuisine, even if somewhat extravagant in 
 its proportions. 
 
 " I should be glad to receive the salary that Eushbrook 
 pays his chef, and still happier to know how to earn it as 
 fairly," said Somers to his fair companion. 
 
 " But is his skill entirely appreciated here ? " she asked. 
 
 " Perfectly," responded Somers. " Our friend from Sis- 
 kyou over there appreciates that pate which he cannot name 
 as well as I do. Eushbrook himself is the only exception, 
 yet I fancy that even his simplicity and regularity in feeding 
 is as much a matter of business with him as any defect in 
 his earlier education. In his eyes, his chefs greatest quali- 
 fication is his promptness and fertility. Have you noticed 
 that ornament before you ? " pointing to an elaborate con- 
 fection. " It bears your initials, you see. It was conceived 
 and executed since you arrived — rather, I should say, since 
 it was known that you would honor us with your company. 
 The greatest difficulty encountered was to find out what 
 your initials were." 
 
 " And I suppose," mischievously added the young girl to 
 her acknowledgments, " that the same fertile mind which 
 conceived the design eventually provided the initials ? " 
 
 "That is our secret," responded Somers, with afl'ected 
 gravity. 
 
A ILECENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 379 
 
 The wines were of characteristic expensiveiiess, and pro- 
 voked the same general comment. Rushbrook seldom 
 drank wine ; Somers had selected it. But the barbaric 
 opulence of the entertainment culminated in the Californian 
 fruits, piled in pyramids on silver dishes, gorgeous and un- 
 real in their size and painted beauty, and the two Divas 
 smiled over a basket of grapes and peaches as outrageous iu 
 dimensions and glaring color as any pasteboard banquet at 
 which they had professionally assisted. As the courses 
 succeeded each other, under the exaltation of wine, conver- 
 sation became more general as regarded participation, but 
 more local and private as regarded the subject, until Miss 
 Nevil could no longer follow it. The interests of that one, 
 the hopes of another, the claims of a third, in affairs that 
 were otherwise uninteresting, were all discussed with singu- 
 lar youthfulness of trust that to her alone seemed remark- 
 able. Not that she lacked entertainment from the conver- 
 sation of her clever companion, whose confidences and 
 criticisms were very pleasant to her ; but she had a gentle- 
 woman's instinct that he talked to her too much, and more 
 than was consistent with his duties as the general host. 
 She looked around the table for her singular acquaintance 
 of an hour before, but she had not seen him since. She 
 would have spoken about him to Somers, but she had an 
 instinctive idea that the latter would be antipathetic, in 
 spite of the stranger's flattering commendation. So she 
 found herself again following Somers's cynical but good- 
 humored description of the various guests, and, I fear, see- 
 ing with his eyes, listening with his ears, and occasionally 
 participating in his superior attitude. The " fearful joy " 
 she had found in the novelty of the situation and the 
 originality of the actors seemed now quite right from this 
 critical point of view. So she learned how the guest with 
 the long hair was an unknown painter, to whom Rush' 
 brook had given a commission for three hundred yards of 
 
380 A M^CENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 
 
 painted canvas, to be cut up and framed as occasion and 
 space required, in Rushbrook's new hotel in San Francisco ; 
 how the gray-bearded foreigner near him was an accom- 
 plished bibliophile who was furnishing Mr. Eushbrook's 
 library from spoils of foreign collections, and had suffered 
 unheard-of agonies from the millionaire's insisting upon a 
 handsome uniform binding that should deprive certain 
 precious but musty tomes of their crumbling, worm-eaten 
 coverings ; how the very gentle, clerical-looking stranger, 
 mildest of a noisy, disputing crowd at the other table, was 
 a notorious duelist and dead shot ; how the only gentleman 
 at the table who retained a flannel shirt and high boots was 
 not a late-coming mountaineer, but a well-known English 
 baronet on his travels ;■ how the man who told a somewhat 
 florid and emphatic anecdote was a popular Eastern clergy- 
 man ; how the one queiulous, discontented face in a laughing 
 group was the famous humorist who had just convulsed it ; 
 and how a pale, handsome young fellow, who ate and drank 
 sparingly and disregarded the coquettish advances of the 
 prettiest Diva with the cold abstraction of a student, was a 
 notorious roue and gambler. But there was a sudden and 
 unlooked-for change of criticism and critic. 
 
 The festivity had reached that stage when the guests were 
 more or less accessible to emotion, and more or less touched 
 by the astounding fact that every one was enjoying himself. 
 This phenomenon, which is apt to burst into song or dance 
 among other races, is constrained to voice itself in an Anglo- 
 Saxon gathering by some explanation, apology, or moral — 
 known as an after-dinner speech. Thus it was that the 
 gentleman from Siskyou, who had been from time to time 
 casting glances at Somers and his fair companion at the 
 head of the table, now rose to his feet, albeit unsteadily, 
 pushed back his chair, and began ; — 
 
 " 'Pears to me, ladies and gentlemen, and feller pardners, 
 that on an occasion like this, suthin' oughter be said of the 
 
A MAECENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 381 
 
 man who got it up — whose money paid for it, and who 
 ain't here to speak for himself, except by deputy. Yet 
 you all know that 's Bob Eushbrook's style — he ain't here, 
 because he 's full of some other plan or improvements — and 
 it 's like him to start suthin' of this kind, give it its aim and 
 purpose, and then stand aside to let somebody else run it 
 for him. There ain't no man livin' ez hez, so to speak, more 
 fast horses ready saddled for riding, and more fast men ready 
 spurred to ride 'em, — whether to win his races or run his 
 errands. There ain't no man livin' ez knows better how to 
 make other men's games his, or his game seem to be other 
 men's. And from Jack Somers smilin' over there, ez 
 knows where to get the best wine that Bob pays for, and 
 knows how to run this yer show for Bob, at Bob's expense 
 — we 're all contented. Ladies and gentlemen, we 're all 
 contented. We stand, so to speak, on the cards he 's dealt 
 us. What may be his little game, it ain't for us to say ; 
 but whatever it is, we 're in it. Gentlemen and ladies, 
 we '11 drink Bob's health ! " 
 
 There was a somewhat sensational pause, followed by 
 good-natured laughter and applause, in which Somers 
 joined ; yet not without a certain constraint that did not 
 escape the quick sympathy of the shocked and unsmiling 
 Miss Nevil. It was with a feeling of relief that she caught 
 the chaperoning eye of Mrs. Leyton, who was entreating her 
 in the usual mysterious signal to the other ladies to rise and 
 follow her. When she reached the drawing-room, a little 
 behind the others, she was somewhat surprised to observe 
 that the stranger whom she had missed during the evening 
 was approaching her with Mrs. Leyton. 
 
 " Mr. Eushbrook returned sooner than he expected, but 
 unfortunately, as he always retires early, he has only time 
 to say ' good-night ' to you before he goes." 
 
 For an instant Grace Nevil was more angry than discon- 
 certed. Then came the conviction that she was stupid not 
 
382 A MAECENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 
 
 to have suspected the truth before. Who else would that 
 brusque stranger develop into but this rude host? She 
 bowed formally. 
 
 Mr. Eushbrook looked at her with the faintest smile on 
 his handsome mouth. 
 
 " Well, Miss Nevil, I hope Jack Somers satisfied your 
 curiosity ? " 
 
 With a sudden recollection of the Siskyou gentleman's 
 speech, and a swift suspicion that in some way she had been 
 made use of with the others by this forceful-looking man 
 before her, she answered pertly : — 
 
 " Yes ; but there was a speech by a gentleman from Sis- 
 kyou that struck me as being nearer to the purpose." 
 
 " That 's so — I heard it as I came in," said Mr. Eush- 
 brook calmly. " I don't know but you 're right." 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 Six months had passed. The Villa of Maecenas was closed 
 at Los Osos Canon, and the southwest trade-wmds were 
 slanting the rains of the wet season against its shut windows 
 and harred doors. Within that hollow, deserted shell, its 
 aspect — save for a single exception — was unchanged ; the 
 furniture and decorations preserved their eternal youth un- 
 dimmed by time ; the rigidly arranged rooms, now closed to 
 life and light, developed more than ever their resemblance 
 to a furniture warehouse. The single exception was the 
 room which Grace Nevil had rearranged for herself ; and 
 that, oddly enough, was stripped and bare — even to its 
 paper and mouldings. 
 
 In other respects, the sealed treasures of Eushbrook's 
 villa, far from provoking any sentimentality, seemed only 
 to give truth to the current rumor that it was merely waiting 
 to be transformed into a gorgeous watering-place hotel under 
 Eushbrook's direction ; that, with its new ballroom changed 
 into an elaborate dining-hall, it would undergo still further 
 improvement, the inevitable end and object of all Eushbrook's 
 enterprise ; and that its former proprietor had already begun 
 another villa whose magnificence should eclipse the last. 
 There certainly appeared to be no limit to the millionaire's 
 success in all that he personally undertook, or in his fortunate 
 complicity with the enterprise and invention of others. 
 His name was associated with the oldest and safest schemes, 
 as well as the newest and boldest — with an equal guarantee 
 of security. A few, it was true, looked doubtingly upon 
 this "one man power," but could not refute the fact that 
 
384 A M^CENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 
 
 others had largely benefited by association with him, and that 
 he shared his profits with a royal hand. Some objected on 
 higher grounds to his brutalizing the influence of wealth by 
 his material and extravagantly practical processes, instead of 
 the gentler suggestions of education and personal example, 
 and were impelled to point out the fact that he and his 
 patronage were vulgar. It was felt, however, by those who 
 received his benefits, that a proper sense of this inferiority 
 was all that ethics demanded of them. One could still ac- 
 cept Eushbrook's barbaric gifts by humorously recognizing 
 the fact that he didn't know any better, and that it pleased 
 him, as long as they resented any higher pretensions. 
 
 The rain-beaten windows of Kushbrook's town house, 
 however, were cheerfully lit that December evening. Mr. 
 Eushbrook seldom dined alone ; in fact, it was popularly 
 alleged that very often the unfinished business of the day 
 was concluded over his bountiful and perfect board. He 
 was dressing as James entered the room. 
 
 " Mr. Ley ton is in your study, sir ; he will stay to din- 
 ner." 
 
 " All right." 
 
 " I think, sir," added James, with respectful suggestive- 
 ness, " he wants to talk. At least, sir, he asked me if you 
 would likely come downstairs before your company ar- 
 rived." 
 
 '■'Ah! Well, tell the others I'm dining on business, 
 and set dinner for two in the blue room." 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 Meanwhile, Mr. Leyton — a man of Kushbrook's age, 
 but not so fresh and vigorous-looking — had thrown himself 
 in a chair beside the study fire, after a glance around the 
 handsome and familiar room. For the house had belonged 
 to a brother millionaire ; it had changed hands with cer- 
 tain shares of " Water Front," • — as some of Eushbrook's 
 dealings had the true barbaric absence of money detail, — 
 
A MAECENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 385 
 
 and was elegantly and tastefully furnished. The cuckoo 
 had, however, already laid a few characteristic eggs in thiis 
 adopted nest, and a white marble statue of a nude and ill- 
 fed Virtue, sent over by Rushbrook's Paris agent, and un- 
 packed that morning, stood in one corner, and materially 
 brought down the temperature. A Japanese praying-throne 
 of pure ivory, and, above it, a few yards of improper, 
 colored exposure by an old master, equalized each other. 
 
 " And what is all this affair about the dinner ? " sud- 
 denly asked a tartly pitched female voice with a foreign 
 accent. 
 
 Mr. Leyton turned quickly, and was just conscious of a 
 faint shriek, the rustle of a skirt, and the swift vanishing of 
 a woman's figure from the doorway. Mr. Leyton turned 
 red. Eushbrook lived en gargon, with feminine possibili- 
 ties ; Leyton was a married man and a deacon. The inci- 
 dent which, to a man of the world, would have brought 
 only a smile, fired the inexperienced Leyton with those 
 exaggerated ideas and intense credulity regarding vice com- 
 mon to some very good men. He walked on tiptoe to the 
 door, and peered into the passage. At that moment Rush- 
 brook entered from the opposite door of the room. 
 
 " Well," said Eushbrook, with his usual practical direct- 
 ness, " what do you think of her ? " 
 
 Leyton, still flushed, and with eyebrows slightly knit, 
 said, awkwardly, that he had scarcely seen her. 
 
 " She cost me already ten thousand dollars, and I sup- 
 pose I'll have to eventually fix up a separate room for her 
 somewhere," continued Eushbrook. 
 
 " I should certainly advise it," said Leyton quickly, 
 " for really, Eushbrook, you know that something is due 
 to the respectable people who come here, and any of them 
 are likely to see " — 
 
 " Ah ! " interrupted Eushbrook seriously, " you think 
 she hasn't got on clothes enough. Why, look here, old 
 
386 A M^CENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 
 
 man — she 's one of the Virtues, and that 's the rig in 
 which they always travel. She 's a ' Temperance ' or a 
 * Charity ' or a ' Eesignation,' or something of that kind. 
 You '11 find her name there in French somewhere at the 
 foot of the marble." 
 
 Leyton saw his mistake, but felt — as others sometimes 
 felt — a doubt whether this smileless man was not inwardly 
 laughing at him. He replied, with a keen, rapid glance at 
 his host : — 
 
 " I was referring to some woman who stood in that door- 
 way just now, and addressed me rather familiarly, thinking 
 it was you." 
 
 " Oh, the Signora," said Rushbrook, with undisturbed 
 directness ; " well, you saw her at Los Osos last summer. 
 Likely she did think you were me." 
 
 Thfe cool ignoring of any ulterior thought in Leyton's 
 objection forced the guest to be equally practical in his 
 reply. 
 
 " Yes, but the fact is Miss !N'evil had talked of coming 
 here with me this evening to see you on her own affairs, 
 and it would n't have been exactly the thing for her to 
 meet that woman." 
 
 " She would n't," said Eushbrook promptly ; " nor 
 would you, if you had gone into the parlor as Miss Nevil 
 would have done. But look here ! If that 's the reason 
 why you did n't bring her, send for her at once ; my coach- 
 man can take a card from you ; the brougham 's all ready 
 to fetch her, and there you are. She '11 see only you and 
 me." He was already moving towards the bell, when 
 Leyton stopped him. 
 
 ■ " No matter now. I can tell you her business, I fancy ; 
 and, in fact, I came here to speak of it, quite independently 
 of her." 
 
 " That won't do, Leyton," interrupted Rushbrook, with 
 Brtsp decision. " One or the other interview is unnecessary ; 
 
A MiECENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 387 
 
 it wastes time, and is n't business. 'Better have her present, 
 even if she don't say a word." 
 
 " Yes, but not in this matter," responded Leyton ; " it 's 
 about Somers. You know he 's been very attentive to her 
 ever since her uncle left her here to recruit her health, and 
 I think she fancies him. Well, although she 's independ- 
 ent and her own mistress, as you know, Mrs. Leyton and I 
 are somewhat responsible for her acquaintance with Somers, 
 — and for that matter so are you ; and as my wife thinks 
 it means a marriage, we ought to know something more 
 positive about Somers's prospects. Now, all we really know 
 is that he 's a great friend of yours ; that you trust a good 
 deal to him ; that he manages your social affairs ; that you 
 treat him as a son or nephew, and it 's generally believed 
 that he 's as good as provided for by you — eh ? Did you 
 speak ? " 
 
 " No," said Eushbrook, quietly regarding the statue as 
 if taking its measurement for a suitable apartment for it. 
 " Go on." 
 
 " Well," said Leyton, a little impatiently, " that 's the 
 belief everybody has, and you 've not contradicted it. And 
 on that we 've taken the responsibility of not interfering 
 with Somers's attentions." 
 
 " Well ? " said Eushbrook interrogatively. 
 
 " Well," replied Leyton emphatically, " you see I must 
 ask you po.sitively if you have done anything, or are you 
 going to do anything for him ? " 
 
 " Well," replied Eushbrook, with exasperating coolness, 
 " what do you call this marriage ? " 
 
 " I don't understand you," said Leyton. 
 
 " Look here, Leyton," said Eushbrook, suddenly and 
 abruptly facing him ; " Jack Somers has brains, knowledge 
 of society, tact, accomplishments, and good looks : that 's 
 liis capital as much as mine is money. I employ him: 
 that's his advertisement, recommendation, and credit 
 
388 A MAECENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 
 
 Now, on the strength of this, as you say, Miss Nevil is will* 
 ing to invest in faim ; I don't see what more can be done." 
 
 " But if her uncle don't think it enough ? " 
 
 " She 's independent, and has money for both." 
 
 " But if she thinks she 's been deceived, and changes her 
 mind ? " 
 
 " Leyton, you don't know Miss Nevil. Whatever that 
 girl undertakes she 's weighed fully, and goes through with. 
 If she 's trusted him enough to marry him, money won't 
 stop her ; if she thinks she 's been deceived, you 'II never 
 know it." 
 
 The enthusiasm and conviction were so unlike Eush- 
 hrook's usual cynical toleration of the sex that Leyton 
 stared at hitn. 
 
 " That 's odd," he returned. " That 's what she says of 
 you." 
 
 " Of me ; you mean Somers ? " 
 
 " No, of you. Come, Eushbrook, don't pretend you 
 don't know that Miss Nevil is a great partisan of yours, 
 swears by you, says you 're misunderstood by people, and, 
 what 's infernally odd in a woman who don't belong to the 
 class you fancy, don't talk of your habits. That 's why she 
 wants to consult you about Somers, I suppose, and that 's 
 why, knowing you might influence her, I came here first to 
 warn you." 
 
 " And I 've told you that whatever I might say or do 
 would n't influence her. So we '11 drop the subject." 
 
 " Not yet ; for you 're bound to see Miss Nevil sooner 
 or later. Now, if she knows that you 've done nothing for 
 this man, your friend and her lover, won't she be justified 
 in thinking that you would have a reason for it ? " 
 
 " Yes. I should give it." 
 
 " What reason ? " 
 
 "That I knew she'd be more contented to have him 
 speculate with her money than mine." 
 
A M^CENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 389 
 
 "Then you think that he is n't a husiness man ? " 
 " I think that she thinks so, or she would n't marry 
 him ; it 's part of the attraction. But come, James has 
 been for five minutes discreetly waiting outside the door to 
 tell us dinner is ready, and the coast clear of all other com- 
 pany. But look here," he said, suddenly stopping, with 
 his arm in Leyton's, " you 're through your talk, I suppose ; 
 perhaps you 'd rather we 'd dine with the Signora and the 
 others than alone ? " 
 
 For an instant Leyton thrilled with the fascination of 
 what he firmly believed was a guilty temptation. Eush- 
 brook, perceiving his hesitation, added : — 
 
 " By the way, Somers is of the party, and one or two 
 others you know." 
 
 Mr. Leyton opened his eyes widely at this ; either the 
 temptation had passed, or the idea of being seen in doubt- 
 ful company by a younger man was distasteful, for he hur- 
 riedly disclaimed any preference. " But," he added with 
 half-significant politeness, " perhaps I 'm keeping you from 
 them ? " 
 
 " It makes not the slightest difference to me," calmly 
 returned Rushbrook, with such evident truthfulness that 
 Leyton was both convinced and chagrined. 
 
 Preceded by the grave and ubiquitous James, they 
 crossed the large hall, and entered through a smaller pas- 
 sage a charming apartment hung with blue damask, which 
 might have been a boudoir, study, or small reception-room, 
 yet had the air of never having been anything continuously. 
 It would seem that Rushbrook's habit of " camping out " 
 in different parts of his mansion obtained here as at Los 
 Osos, and with the exception of a small closet which con- 
 tained his Spartan bed, the rooms were used separately or 
 in suites, as occasion or his friends required. It is recorded 
 that an Eastern guest, newly arrived with letters to Rush- 
 brook, after a tedious journey, expressed himself pleased 
 
390 A MAECENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 
 
 with this same blue, room, in which he had sumptuously 
 dined with his host, and subsequently fell asleep in his 
 chair. Without disturbing his guest, Rushbrook had the 
 table removed, a bed, washstand, and bureau brought in, 
 the sleeping man delicately laid upon the bed, and left t« 
 awaken to an Arabian Night's realization of his wish. 
 
CHAPTEE Y 
 
 James had barely disposed of his master and Mr. Leyton, 
 and left them to the ministrations of two of his underlings, 
 before he was confronted with one of those difficult problems 
 that it was part of his functions to solve. The porter in- 
 formed him that a young lady had just driven up in a car- 
 riage ostensibly to see Mr. Eushbrook, and James, descend- 
 ing to the outer vestibule, found himself face to face with 
 Miss Grace Nevil. Happily, that young lady, with her 
 usual tact, spared him some embarrassment. 
 
 " Oh ! James," she said sweetly, " do you think that I 
 could see Mr. Eushbrook for a few moments if I waited 
 for the opportunity ? You understand, I don't wish tp 
 disturb him or his company by being regularly announced." 
 
 The young girl's practical intelligence appeared to in- 
 crease the usual respect which James had always shown her. 
 " I understand, miss." He thought for a moment, and 
 said : " Would you mind, then, following me where you 
 could wait quietly and alone ? " As she quickly assented, 
 he preceded her up the staircase, past the study and drawing- 
 room, which he did not enter, and stopped before a small 
 door at the end of the passage. Then, handing her a key 
 which he took from his pocket, he said : " This is the only 
 room in the house that is strictly reserved for Mr. Eush- 
 \)rook, and even he rarely uses it. You can wait here 
 without anybody knowing it until I can communicate with 
 him and bring yoa to his study unobserved. And," he 
 hesitated, " if you would n't mind locking the door when 
 you are in, miss, you would be more secure, and I will 
 knock when I come for you." 
 
392 A M^CENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 
 
 Grace Nevil smiled at the man's prudence, and entered 
 the room. But to her great surprise, she had scarcely shut 
 the door when she was instantly struck with a singular 
 memory which the apartment recalled. It was exactly like 
 the room she had altered in Eushbrook's villa at Los Osos ! 
 More than that, on close examination it proved to be the 
 very same furniture, arranged as she remembered to have 
 arranged it, even to the flowers and grasses, now, alas ! 
 faded and withered on the walls. There could be no mis- 
 take. There was the open ebony escritoire with the satin 
 blotter open, and its leaves still bearing the marks of her 
 own handwriting. So complete to her mind was the idea 
 of her own tenancy in this bachelor's mansion, that she 
 looked around with a half-indignant alarm for the photo- 
 graph or portrait of herself that might further indicate it. 
 But there was no other exposition. The only thing that 
 had been added was a gilt legend on the satin case of the 
 blotter, — " Los Osos, August 20, 186-," the day she had 
 occupied the room. 
 
 She was pleased, astonished, but more than all, disturbed. 
 The only man who might claim a right to this figurative 
 possession of her tastes and habits was the one whom she 
 had quietly, reflectively, and understandingly half accepted 
 as her lover, and on whose account she had come to consult 
 Eushbrook. But Somers was not a sentimentalist ; in fact, 
 as a young girl, forced by her independent position to some- 
 what critically scrutinize masculine weaknesses, this had 
 always been a point in his favor ; yet even if he had joined 
 with his friend Eushbrook to perpetuate the memory of 
 their first acquaintanceship, his taste merely would not have 
 selected a chamhre de gargon in Mr. Eushbrook's home for 
 its exhibition. Her conception of the opposite characters 
 of the two men was singularly distinct and real, and this 
 momentary confusion of them was disagreeable to her wo- 
 man's sense. But at this moment James came to release 
 
A M^CENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 893 
 
 her and conduct her to Eushbrook's study, where he would 
 join her at once. Everything had been arranged as she had 
 wished. 
 
 Even a more practical man than Eushbrook might have 
 lingered over the picture of the tall, graceful figure of Miss 
 Nevil, quietly enthroned in a large armchair by the fire, her 
 scarlet, satin-lined cloak thrown over its back, and her chin 
 resting on her hand. But the millionaire walked directly 
 towards her with his usual frankness of conscious but re- 
 straining power, and she felt, as she always did, perfectly 
 at her ease in his presence. Even as she took his out- 
 stretched hand, its straightforward grasp seemed to endow 
 her with its own confidence. 
 
 " You'll excuse my coming here so abruptly," she smiled, 
 " but I wanted to get before Mr. Leyton, who, I believe, 
 wishes to see you on the same business as myself." 
 
 " He is here already, and dining with me," said Eush- 
 brook. 
 
 " Ah ! does he know I am here ? " asked the girl 
 quietly. 
 
 " ^o ; as he said you had thought of coming with him 
 and did n't, I presumed you did n't care to have him know 
 you had come alone." 
 
 " Not exactly that, Mr. Eushbrook," she said, fixing her 
 beautiful eyes on him in bright and trustful confidence, 
 " but I happen to have a fuller knowledge of this business 
 than he has, and yet as it is not altogether my o\yn secret, I 
 was not permitted to divulge it to him. Nor would I tell it 
 to you, only I cannot bear that you should think that I had 
 anything to do with this wretched inquisition into Mr. 
 Somers's prospects. Knowing as well as you do how per- 
 fectly independent I am, you would think it strange, 
 would n't you ? But you would think it still more sur- 
 prising when you found out that I and my uncle already 
 know how liberally and generously you had provided foi 
 Mr. Somers in the future." 
 
394 A MAECENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 
 
 "How I had provided for Mr. Somers in the future ?" 
 repeated Mr. Eushbrook, looking at the fire, " eh ? " 
 
 " Yes," said the young girl indifferently, " how you 
 were to put him in to succeed you in the Water Front 
 Trust, and all that. He told it to me and ray uncle at the 
 outset of our acquaintance, confidentially, of course, and I 
 dare say with an honorable delicacy that was like him, but 
 — I suppose now you will think me foolish — all the while 
 I 'd rather he had not." 
 
 " You 'd rather he had not," repeated Mr. Rushbrook 
 slowly. 
 
 " Yes," continued Grace, leaning forward with her rounded 
 elbows on her knees, and her slim, arched feet on the fen- 
 der. " Now you are going to laugh at me, Mr. Rushbrook, 
 but all this seemed to me to spoil any spontaneous feeling I 
 might have towards him, and limit my independence in a 
 thing that should be a matter of free will alone. It seemed 
 too much like a business proposition ! There, my kind 
 friend ! " she added, looking up and trying to read his face 
 with a half-girlish pout, followed, however, by a maturer 
 sigh, " I 'm bothering you with a woman's foolishness in- 
 stead of talking business. And " — another sigh — "I 
 suppose it is business ; for my uncle, who has, it seems, 
 bought into this Trust on these possible contingencies, has, 
 perhaps, been asking questions of Mr. Leyton. But I don't 
 want you to think that I approve of them, or advise your 
 answering them. But you are not listening." 
 
 " I had forgotten something," said Eushbrook, with an 
 odd preoccupation. " Excuse me a motoent — I will return 
 at once." 
 
 He left the room quite as abstractedly, and when he 
 reached the passage, he apparently could not remember what 
 he had forgotten, as he walked deliberately to the end win- 
 dow, where, with his arms folded behind his back, he re- 
 mained looking out into the street. A passer-by, glancing up, 
 
A MAECENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 395 
 
 might have said he had seen the pale, stern ghost of Mr. 
 Eushbrook, framed like a stony portrait in the window. 
 But he presently turned away, and reehtered the room, going 
 up to Grace, who was still sitting by the fire, in his usual 
 strong and direct fashion. 
 
 " Well ! Now let me see what you want. I think this 
 would do." 
 
 He took a seat at the open desk, and rapidly wrote a few 
 lines. " There," he continued, " when you write to your 
 uncle, inclose that." 
 
 Grace took it, and read : — 
 
 Dear Miss Nevil, — Pray assure your uncle from me 
 that I am quite ready to guarantee, in any form that he 
 may require, the undertaking represented to him by Mr. 
 John Somers. Yours very truly, 
 
 EoBEKT Eushbrook. 
 
 A quick flush mounted to the young girl's cheeks. " But 
 this is a security, Mr. Eushbrook," she said proudly, hand- 
 ing him back the paper, " and my uncle does not require 
 that. Nor shall I insult him or you by sending it." 
 
 " It is biLsiness, Miss Nevil," said Eushbrook gravely. 
 He stopped, and fixed his eyes upon her animated face and 
 sparkling eyes. " You can send it to him or not, as you 
 like. But " — a rare smile came to his handsome mouth 
 — '■' as this is a letter to you, you must not insult me by 
 not accepting it." 
 
 Eeplying to his smile rather, than the words that accom- 
 panied it, Miss Ntjvil smiled, too. Nevertheless, she was 
 uneasy and disturbed. The interview, whatever she might 
 have vaguely expected from it, had resolved itself simply 
 into a business indorsement of her lover, which she had not 
 so\ight, and which gave her no satisfaction. Yet there was 
 the same potent and indefinably protecting presence before 
 
396 A M^CENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 
 
 her which she had sought, but whose omniscience and whose 
 help she seemed to have lost the spell and courage to put to 
 the test. He relieved her in his abrupt but not unkindly 
 fashion. " Well, when is it to be ? " 
 
 " It ? " 
 
 " Your marriage." 
 
 " Oh, not for some time. There 's no hurry." 
 
 It might have struck the practical Mr. Eushbrook that, 
 even considered as a desirable business affair, the prospective 
 completion of this contract provoked neither frank satisfac- 
 tion nor conventional dissimulation on the part of the young 
 lady, for he regarded her calm but slightly wearied expres- 
 sion fixedly. But he only said, " Then I shall say nothing 
 of this interview to Mr. Leyton ? " 
 
 " As you please. It really matters little. Indeed, I 
 suppose I was rather foolish in coming at all and wasting 
 your valuable time for nothing." 
 
 She had risen, as if taking his last question in the signi- 
 ficance of a parting suggestion, and was straightening her 
 tall figure, preparatory to putting on her cloak. As she 
 reached it, he stepped forward, and lifted it from the chair 
 to assist her. The act was so unprecedented, as Mr. Hush- 
 brook never indulged in those minor masculine courtesies, 
 that she was momentarily as confused as a younger girl at 
 the gallantry of a younger man. In their previous friend- 
 ship he had seldom drawn near her except to shake her hand 
 — a circumstance that had always recurred to her when his 
 free and familiar life had been the subject of gossip. But 
 she now had a more frightened consciousness that her nerves 
 were strangely responding to his powerful propinquity, and 
 she involuntarily contracted her pretty shoulders as he gen- 
 tly laid the cloak upon them. Yet even when the act was 
 completed, she had a superstitious instinct that the signifi- 
 cance of this rare courtesy was that it was final, and that he 
 had helped her to interpose something that shut him out 
 from her forever. 
 
A M^CENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 397 
 
 She was turning away with a heightened color, when the 
 sound of light, hurried footsteps and the rustle of a wo- 
 man's dress were heard in the hall. A swift recollection of 
 her companion's infelicitous reputation now returned to her, 
 and Grace N"evil, with a sliglit stiffening of her whole frame, 
 became coldly herself again. Mr. Eushbrook betrayed nei- 
 ther surprise nor agitation. Begging her to wait a moment 
 until he could arrange for her to pass to her carriage unno- 
 ticed, he left the room. 
 
 Yet it seemed that the cause of the disturbance was un- 
 suspected by Mr. Eushbrook. Mr. Leyton, although left 
 to the consolation of cigars and liquors in the blue room, 
 had become slightly weary of his companion's prolonged 
 absence. Satisfied in his mind that Eushbrook had joined 
 the gayer party, and that he was even now paying gallant 
 court to the Signora, he became again curious and uneasy. 
 At last the unmistakable sound of whispering voices in the 
 passage got the better of his sense of courtesy as a guest, 
 and he rose from his seat, and slightly opened the door. 
 As he did so the figures of a man and woman, conversing 
 in earnest whispers, passed the opening. The man's arm 
 was round the woman's waist ; the woman's was — as he 
 had suspected — the one who had stood in the doorway, 
 the Signora — but — the man was not Eushbrook. Mr. 
 Leyton drew back this time m unaffected horror. It was 
 none other than Jack Somers ! 
 
 Some warning instinct must at that moment have struck 
 the woman, for with a stifled cry she disengaged herself 
 from Somers's arm, and dashed rapidly down the hall. 
 Somers, evidently "unaware of the cause, stood irresolute for 
 a moment, and then more silently but swiftly disappeared 
 into a side corridor as if to intercept her. It was the rapid 
 passage of the Signora that had attracted the attention of 
 Grace and Eushbrook in the study, and it was the moment 
 after it that Mr. Eushbrook left. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 Vaguely uneasy, and still perplexed with her previous 
 agitation, as Mr. Rushbrook closed the door behind him, 
 Grace, following some feminine instinct rather than any 
 definite reason, walked to the door and placed her hand 
 upon the lock to prevent any intrusion until he returned. 
 Her caution seemed to be justified a moment later, for a 
 heavier but stealthier footstep halted outside. The handle 
 of the door was turned, but she resisted it with the fullest 
 strength of her small hand until a voice, which startled 
 her, called in a hurried whisper : — 
 
 " Open quick, 't is I." 
 
 She stepped back quickly, flung the door open, and be- 
 held Somers on the threshold ! 
 
 The astonishment, agitation, and, above all, the awkward 
 confusion of this usually self-possessed and ready man were 
 so unlike him, and withal so painful, that Grace hurried to 
 put an end to it, and for an instant forgot her own surprise 
 at seeing him. She smiled assuringly, and extended her 
 hand. 
 
 " Grace — Miss Nevil — I beg your pardon — I did n't 
 imagine " — he began, with a forced laugh. " I mean, of 
 course — I cannot — but " — He stopped, and then as- 
 suming a peculiar expression, said : " But what are you 
 doing here ? " 
 
 At any other moment the girl would have resented the 
 tone, which was as new to her as his previous agitation, 
 but in her present self-consciousness her situation seemed to 
 require some explanation. " I came here," she said, " to 
 
A M^CENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 399 
 
 see Mr. Rushbrook on business. Your business — our busi- 
 ness," she added, with a charming smile, using for the first 
 time the pronoun that seemed to indicate their unity and 
 interest, and yet fully aware of a vague insincerity in doing 
 so. 
 
 " Our business ? " he repeated, ignoring her gentler 
 meaning with a changed emphasis and a look of suspicion. 
 
 " Yes," said Grace, a little impatiently. " Mr. Leyton 
 thought he ought to write to my uncle something positive 
 as to your prospects with Mr. Rushbrook, and " — 
 
 " You came here to inquire ? " said the young man 
 sharply. 
 
 " I came here to stop any inquiry," said Grace indig- 
 nantly. " I came here to say / was satisfied with what 
 you had confided to me of Mr. Rushbrook's generosity, and 
 that was enough ! " 
 
 " With what / had confided to you ? You dared say 
 that ? " 
 
 Grace stopped, and instantly faced hipi. But any indig- 
 nation she might have felt at his speech and manner was 
 swallowed up in the revulsion and horror that overtook her 
 with the sudden revelation she saw in his white and fright- 
 ened face. Leyton's strange inquiry, Rushbrook's cold 
 composure and scornful ?,cceptance of her own credulous- 
 ness, came to her in a flash of shameful intelligence. Som- 
 ers had lied ! The insufferable meanness of it ! A lie, 
 whose very uselessness and ignobility had defeated its pur- 
 pose — a lie that implied the basest suspicion of her own 
 independence and truthfulness — such a lie now stood out 
 as plainly before her as his guilty face. 
 
 " Forgive my speaking so rudely," he said, with a forced 
 smile and attempt to recover his self-control, " but you 
 have ruined me unless you deny that I told you anything. 
 It was a joke — an extravagance that I had forgotten ; j,t 
 least, it was a confidence between you and me that you 
 
400 A MAECENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 
 
 have foolishly violated. Say that you misunderstood me 
 — that it was a fancy of your own. Say anything — he 
 trusts you — he '11 believe anything you say." 
 
 " He has believed me," said Grace, almost fiercely, turn- 
 ing upon him with the paper that Eushbrook had given 
 her in her outstretched hand. " Read that ! " 
 
 He read it. Had he blushed, had he stammered, had he 
 even kept up his former frantic and pitiable attitude, she 
 might at that supreme moment have forgiven him. But to 
 her astonishment his face changed, his handsome brow 
 cleared, his careless, happy smile returned, his graceful con- 
 fidence came back — he stood before her the elegant, 
 courtly, and accomplished gentleman she had known. He 
 returned her the paper, and advancing with extended hand, 
 said triumphantly : — 
 
 " Superb ! Splendid ! No one but a woman could think 
 of that ! And only one woman achieve it. You have 
 tricked the great Kushbrook. You are indeed worthy of 
 being a financier's wife ! " 
 
 " No," she said passionately, tearing up the paper and 
 throwing it at his feet ; " not as you understand it and 
 never yours ! You have debased and polluted everything 
 connected with it, as you would have debased and polluted 
 me. Out of my presence that you are insulting — out of 
 the room of the man whose magnanimity you cannot under- 
 stand ! " 
 
 The destruction of the guarantee apparently stung him 
 more than the words that accompanied it. He did not re- 
 lapse again into his former shamefaced terror, but as a 
 malignant glitter came into his eyes, he regained his cool- 
 ness. 
 
 " It may not be so difficult for others to understand. 
 Miss Nevil," he said, with polished insolence, " and as 
 Bob Eushbrook's generosity to pretty women is already a 
 matter of suspicion, perhaps you are wise to destroy that 
 record of it." 
 
A M^CENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 401 
 
 " Coward ! " said Grace, " stand aside and let me pass ! " 
 She swept by him to the door. But it opened upon Eush- 
 brook's reentrance. He stood for an instant glancing at 
 the pair, and then on the fragments of the paper that 
 strewed the floor. Then, still holding the door in his hand, 
 he said quietly: — 
 
 " One moment before you go, Miss Nevil. If this is the 
 result of any misunderstanding as to the presence of another 
 woman here, in company with Mr. Somers, it is only fair to 
 him to say that that woman is here as a friend of mine, not 
 of his, and I alone am responsible." 
 
 Grace halted, and turned the cold steel of her proud eyes 
 on the two men. As they rested on Eushbrook they quiv- 
 ered slightly. " I can already bear witness," she said 
 coldly, " to the generosity of Mr. Eushbrook in a matter 
 which then touched me. But there certainly is no neces- 
 sity for him to show it now in a matter in which I have 
 not the slightest concern." 
 
 As she swept out of the room and was received in the 
 respectable shadow of the waiting James, Eushbrook turned 
 to Somers. 
 
 " And / 'm afraid it won't do — for Leyton saw you," 
 he said curtly. " Now, then, shut that door, for you and I, 
 Jack Somers, have a word to say to each other." 
 
 What that word was, and how it was said and received, 
 is not a part of this record. But it is told that it was the 
 beginning of that mighty Iliad, still remembered of men, 
 which shook the financial camps of San Francisco, and 
 divided them into bitter contending parties. For when it 
 became known the next day that Somers had suddenly 
 abandoned Eushbrook, and carried over to a powerful for- 
 eign capitalist the secret methods, and even, it was believed, 
 the luck of his late employer, it was certain that there 
 would be war to the knife, and that it was no longer a 
 struggle of rival enterprise, but of vindictive men. 
 
CHAPTEE VII 
 
 Fob a year the battle between the Somers faction and 
 the giant but solitary Rushbrook raged fiercely, with vary- 
 ing success. I grieve to say that the prot^g^s and parasites 
 of Maecenas deserted him in a body ; nay, they openly 
 alleged that it was the true artistic nature and refinement 
 of Somers that had always attracted them, and that a man 
 like Eushbrook, who bought pictures by the yard, — equally 
 of the unknown struggling artist and the famous masters, 
 — was no true patron of Art. Eushbrook made no attempt 
 to recover his lost prestige, and once, when squeezed into a 
 tight " corner," and forced to realize on his treasures, he 
 put them up at auction and the people called them " daubs ; " 
 their rage knew no bounds. It was then that an unfettered 
 press discovered that Eushbrook never was a Mascenas at 
 all, grimly deprecated his assumption of that title, and 
 even doubted if he were truly a millionaire. It was at this 
 time that a few stood by him — notably, the mill inventor 
 from Siskyou, grown plethoric with success, but eventually 
 ground between the upper and nether millstone of the 
 Somers and Eushbrook party. Miss Kevil had returned to 
 the Atlantic States with Mrs. Leyton. While rumors had 
 played freely with the relations of Somers and the Signora 
 as the possible cause of the rupture between him and Eush- 
 brook, no mention had ever been made of the name of Miss 
 Nevil. 
 
 It was raining heavily one afternoon, when Mr. Eush- 
 brook drove from his office to his San Francisco house. 
 The fierce struggle in which he was engaged left him little 
 
A MAECENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 40!» 
 
 time for hospitality, and for the last two weeks his house 
 had been comparatively deserted. He passed through the 
 empty rooms, changed in little except the absence of some 
 valuable monstrosities which had gone to replenish his 
 capital. When he reached his bedroom, he paused a mo- 
 ment at the open door. 
 
 " James ! " 
 
 " Yes, sir," said James, appearing out of the shadow. 
 
 " What are you waiting for ? " 
 
 " I thought you might he wanting something, sir." 
 
 " You were waiting there this morning ; you were in the 
 ante-room of my study while I was writing. You were out- 
 side the blue room while I sat at breakfast. You were at 
 my elbow in the drawing-room late last night. Now, 
 James," continued Mr. Eushbrook, with his usual grave 
 directness, " I don't intend to commit suicide ; I can't 
 afford it, so keep your time and your rest for yourself — 
 you want it — that's a good fellow." 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " James ! " 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 Rushbrook extended his hand. There was that faint, 
 rare smile on his handsome mouth, for which James would 
 at any time have laid down his life. But he only silently 
 grasped his master's hand, and the two men remained look- 
 ing into each other's eyes without a word. Then Mr. 
 Rushbrook entered his room, lay down, and went to sleep, 
 and James vanished in the shadow. 
 
 At the end of an hour Mr. Eushbrook awoke refreshed, 
 and even James, who came to call him, appeared to have 
 brightened in the interval. " I have ordered a fire, sir, in 
 the reserved room, the one fitted up from Los Osos, as 
 your study has had no chance of being cleaned these two 
 weeks. It will be a change for you, sir. I hope you 'II 
 excuse my not waking you to consult you about it." 
 
404 A MAECENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 
 
 Rnshbrook remained so silent that James, fancying he 
 had not heard him, was about to repeat himself when his 
 master said quickly, " Very well, come for me there when 
 dinner is ready," and entered the passage leading to the 
 room. James did not follow him, and when Mr. Eush- 
 brook, opening the door, started back with an exclamation, 
 no one but the inmate heard the word that rose to his 
 lips. 
 
 For there, seated before the glow of the blazing fire, was 
 Miss Grace Nevil. She had evidently just arrived, for her 
 mantle was barely loosened around her neck, and upon the 
 fringe of brown hair between her bonnet and her broad, 
 low forehead, a few drops of rain still sparkled. As she 
 lifted her long lashes quickly towards the door, it seemed 
 as if they, too, had caught a little of that moisture. Rush- 
 brook moved impatiently forward, and then stopped. Grace 
 rose unhesitatingly to her feet, and met him halfway with 
 frankly outstretched hands. " First of all," she said, with 
 a half-nervous laugh, " don't scold James ; it 's all my 
 fault ; I forbade him to announce me, lest you should drive 
 me away, for I heard that during this excitement you came 
 here for rest, and saw no One. Even the intrusion into this 
 room is all my own. I confess now that I saw it the last 
 night I was here ; I was anxious to know if it was un- 
 changed, and made James bring me here. I did not under- 
 stand it then. I do now — and — thank you." 
 
 Her face must have shown that she was conscious that 
 he was still holding her hand, for he suddenly released it. 
 With a heightened color and a half-girlish naivete, that 
 was the more charming for its contrast with her tall figure 
 and air of thoroughbred repose, she turned back to her 
 chair, and lightly motioned him to take the one before her. 
 " I am here on business ; otherwise I should not have dared 
 to look in upon you at all." 
 
 She stopped, drew off her gloves with a provoking delib- 
 
A M^CENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 405 
 
 eration, which was none the less fascinating that it implied 
 a demure consciousness of inducing some impatience in the 
 breast of her companion, stretched them out carefully by 
 the fingers, laid them down neatly on the table, placed 
 her elbows on her knees, slightly clasped her hands together, 
 and bending forward, lifted her honest, handsome eyes to 
 the man before her. 
 
 " Mr. Rushbrook, I have got between four and five hun- 
 dred thousand dollars that I have no use for ; I can con- 
 trol securities which can be converted, if necessary, into a 
 hundred thousand more in ten days. I am free and my 
 own mistress. It is generally considered that I know what 
 I am about ; you admitted as much when I was your pupil. 
 I have come here to place this sum in your hands, at your 
 free disposal. You know why and for what purpose." 
 
 " But what do you know of my affairs ? " asked Eush- 
 brook quickly. 
 
 " Everything ; and I know you, which is better. Call it 
 an investment, if you like — for I know you will succeed 
 
 — and let me share your profits. Call it — if you please 
 
 — restitution, for I am the miserable cause of your rupture 
 with that man. Or call it revenge if you like," she said 
 with a faint smile, " and let me fight at your side against 
 our common enemy ! Please, Mr. Eushbrook, don't deny 
 me this. I have come three thousand miles for it ; I could 
 have sent it to you — or written — but I feared you would 
 not understand it. You are smiling — you will take it ? " 
 
 " I cannot," said Eushbrook gravely. 
 
 " Then you force me to go into the Stock Market my- 
 self, and fight for you, and, unaided by your genius, per- 
 haps lose it without benefiting you." 
 
 Eushbrook did not reply. 
 
 " At least, then, tell me why you ' cannot.' " 
 
 Eushbrook rose, and looking into her face, said quietly, 
 with his old directness : — 
 
406. A M^CENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 
 
 " Because I love j'ou, Miss Nevil." 
 
 A sudden instinct to rise and move away, a greater one 
 to remain and hear him speak again, and a still greater one 
 to keep back the blood that she felt was returning all too 
 quickly to her cheek after the first shock, kept her silent. 
 But she dropped her eyes. 
 
 " I loved you ever since I first saw you at Los Osos," 
 he went on quickly ; " I said to myself even then, that if 
 there was a woman that would fill my life, and make me 
 what she wished me to be, it was you, I even fancied that 
 day that you understood me better than any woman, or even 
 any man, that I had ever met before. I loved you through 
 all that miserable business with that man, even when my fail- 
 ure to make you happy, with another brought me no nearer 
 to you. I have loved you always. I shall love you 
 always, I love you more for this foolish kindness that 
 brings you beneath my roof once more, and gives me a 
 chance to speak my heart to you, if only once and for the 
 last time, than all the fortune that you could put at my 
 disposal. But I could not accept what you would offer me 
 from any woman who was not my wife — and I could not 
 marry any woman that did not love me. I am perhaps 
 past the age when I could inspire a young girl's affection ; 
 but I have not reached the age when I would accept any- 
 thing less." He stopped abruptly, Grace did not look up. 
 There was a tear glistening upon her long eyelashes, albeit 
 a faint smile played upon her lips, 
 
 " Do you call this business, Mr, Eushbrook ? " she said 
 softly, 
 
 " Business ? " 
 
 " To assume a proposal declined before it has been 
 offered." 
 
 " Grace — my darling — tell me — is it possible ? " 
 
 It was too late for her to rise now, as his hands held 
 both hers, and his handsome mouth was smiling level with 
 
A M^CENAS OF THE PACIFIC SLOPE 407 
 
 her own. So it really seemed to a dispassionate spectator 
 that it was possible, and before she had left the room, it 
 even appeared to be the most probable thing in the world. 
 
 The union of Grace Nevil and Robert Kushbrook was 
 recorded by local history as the crown to his victory over 
 the King. But only he and his wife knew that it was the 
 cause. 
 
COLONEL STAEBOTTLE'S CLIENT 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 It may be remembered that it was the habit of that gal- 
 lant " war-horse " of the Calaveras democracy, Colonel 
 Starbottle, at the close of a political campaign, to return to 
 his original profession of the Law. Perhaps it could not 
 be called a peaceful retirement. The same fiery-tongued 
 eloquence and full-breasted chivalry which had in tarns 
 thrilled and overawed freemen at the polls were no less 
 fervid and embattled before a jury. Yet the Colonel was 
 counsel for two or three pastoral Ditch companies and cer- 
 tain bucolic corporations, and although he managed to im- 
 port into the simplest question of contract more or less 
 abuse of opposing counsel, and occasionally mingled prece- 
 dents of law with antecedents of his adversary, his legal 
 victories were seldom complicated by bloodshed. He was 
 only once shot at by a free-handed judge, and twice as- 
 saulted by an over-sensitive litigant. Nevertheless, it was 
 thought merely prudent, while preparing the papers in the 
 well known case of " The Arcadian Shepherds' Association 
 of Tuolumne versus the Kedron Vine and Pig-Tree Grow- 
 ers of Calaveras," that the Colonel should seek with a shot- 
 gun the seclusion of his partner's law office in the sylvan 
 outskirts of Rough and Keady for that complete rest and 
 serious preoccupation which Marysville could not affi)rd. 
 
 It was an exceptionally hot day. The painted shingles 
 of the plain wooden one-storied building in which the Colo- 
 nel sat were warped and blistering in the direct rays of the 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT 409 
 
 fierce, untempered sun. The tin sign bearing the dazzling 
 legend, " Starbottle and Bungstarter, Attorneys and Coun- 
 selors," glowed with an insufferable light ; the two pine- 
 trees still left in the clearing around the house, ineifective 
 as shade, seemed only to have absorbed the day-long heat 
 through every scorched and crisp twig and fibre, to radiate 
 it again with the pungent smell of a slowly smouldering 
 iire ; the air was motionless yet vibrating in the sunlight ; 
 on distant shallows the half-dried river was flashing and 
 intolerable. 
 
 Seated in a wooden armchair before a table covered with 
 books and papers, yet with that apparently haughty attitude 
 towards it affected by gentlemen of abdominal fullness. Colo- 
 nel Starbottle supported himself with one hand grasping 
 the arm of his chair and the other vigorously plying a huge 
 palm-leaf fan. He was perspiring freely. He had taken 
 off his characteristic blue frock-coat, waistcoat, cravat, and 
 collar, and, stripped only to his ruffled shirt and white drill 
 trousers, presented the appearance from the opposite side of 
 the table of having hastily risen to work in his nightgown. 
 A glass with a thin sediment of sugar and lemon-peel 
 remaining in it stood near his elbow. Suddenly a black 
 shadow fell on the staring, uncarpeted hall. It was that of 
 a stranger who had just entered from the noiseless dust of 
 the deserted road. The Colonel cast a rapid glance at his 
 sword-cane, which lay on the table. 
 
 But the stranger, although sallow and morose-looking, 
 was evidently of pacific intent. He paused on the thresh- 
 old in a kind of surly embarrassment. 
 
 " I reckon this is Colonel Starbottle," he said at last, 
 glancing gloomily round hira, as if the interview was not 
 entirely of his own seeking. " Well, I 've seen you often 
 enough, though you don't know me. My name 's Jo Cor- 
 bin. I guess," he added, still discontentedly, " I have to 
 consult you about something." 
 
410 COLONEL STAEBOTTLE'S CLIENT 
 
 " Corbin ? " repeated the Colonel in his jauntiest man- 
 ner. " Ah ! Any relation to old Maje Corbin of Nash- 
 ville, sir ? " 
 
 " No," said the stranger briefly. " I 'm from Shelby- 
 ville." 
 
 " The Major," continued the Colonel, half closing his 
 eyes as if to follow the Major into the dreamy past, " the 
 old Major, sir, a matter of five or six years ago, was one of 
 my most intimate political friends, — in fact, sir, my most 
 intimate friend. Take a chyar ! " 
 
 But the stranger had already taken one, and during the 
 Colonel's reminiscence had leaned forward, with his eyes on 
 the ground, discontentedly swinging his soft hat between 
 his legs. " Did you know Tom Frisbee, of Yolo ? " he 
 asked abruptly. 
 
 "Er — no." 
 
 " Nor even heard anything about Frisbee, nor what hap- 
 pened to him ? " continued the man, with aggrieved melan- 
 choly. 
 
 In point of fact, the Colonel did not think that he had. 
 
 " Nor anything about his being killed over at Fresno ? " 
 said the stranger, with a desponding implication that the in- 
 terview after all was a failure. 
 
 " If — er — if you could — er — give me a hint or two," 
 suggested the Colonel blandly. 
 
 "There wasn't much," said the stranger, "if you don't 
 remember." He paused, then rising, he gloomily dragged 
 his chair slowly beside the table, and taking up a paper- 
 weight examined it with heavy dissatisfaction. " You see," 
 he went on slowly, " I killed him — it was a quo'll. He 
 was my pardner, but I reckon he must have drove me 
 hard. Yes, sir," he added with aggrieved reflection, " I 
 reckon he drove me hard." 
 
 The Colonel smiled courteously, slightly expanding his 
 chest under the homicidal relation, as if, having taken it in 
 
COLONEL STAEBOTTLB'S CLIENT 411 
 
 and made it a part of himself, he was ready, if necessary, 
 to become personally responsible for it. Then lifting his 
 empty glass to the light, he looked at it with half closed 
 eyes, in polite imitation of his companion's examination of 
 the paper-weight, and set it down again. A casual specta- 
 tor from the window might have imagined that the two 
 were engaged in an amicable inventory of the furniture. 
 
 " And the — er — actual circumstances ? " asked the 
 Colonel. 
 
 " Oh, it was fair enough fight. They 'II tell you that. 
 And so would he, I reckon — if he could. He was ugly 
 and bedev'lin', but I did n't care to quo'll, and give him 
 the go-by all the time. He kept on, followed me out of 
 the shanty, drew, and fired twice. I " — he stopped and 
 regarded his hat a moment as if it was a corroborating 
 witness — "I — I closed with him — I had to — it was 
 my only chance, and that ended it — and with his own 
 revolver. I never drew mine." 
 
 " I see," said the Colonel, nodding, " clearly justifiable 
 and honorable as regards the code. And you wish me to 
 defend you ? " 
 
 The stranger's gloomy expression of astonishment now 
 turned to blank hopelessness. 
 
 " I knew you did n't understand," he said despairingly. 
 " Why, all that was two years ago. It 's all settled and 
 done and gone. The jury found for me at the inquest. It 
 ain't that I want to see you about. It 's something aris- 
 ing out of it." 
 
 " Ah," said the Colonel, affably, " a vendetta, perhaps. 
 Some friend or relation of his taken up the quarrel ? " 
 
 The stranger looked abstractedly at Starbottle. " You 
 think a relation might ; or would feel in that sort of 
 way ? " 
 
 " Why, blank it all, sir," said the Colonel, " nothing is 
 more common. Why, in '52 one of my oldest friends. 
 
412 COLONEL STAEBOTTLE'S CLIENT 
 
 Doctor Byrne, of St. Jo, the seventh in a line from old 
 General Byrne, of St. Louis, was killed, sir, by Pinkey 
 Eiggs, seventh in a line from Senator Eiggs, of Kentucky. 
 Original cause, sir, something about a d — d roasting ear, or 
 a blank persimmon in 1832 ; forty-seven men wiped out in 
 twenty years. Fact, sir." 
 
 "It ain't that," said the stranger, moving hesitatingly 
 in his chair. " If it was anything of that sort I would n't 
 mind, — it might bring matters to a wind-up, and I should 
 n't have to come here and have this cursed talk with you." 
 
 It was so evident that this frank and unaffected expres- 
 sion of some obscure disgust with his own present position 
 had no other implication, that the Colonel did not except 
 to it. Yet the man did not go on. He stopped and 
 seemed lost in sombre contemplation of his hat. 
 
 The Colonel leaned back in his chair, fanned himself 
 elegantly, wiped his forehead with a large pongee hand- 
 kerchief, and looking at his companion, whose shadowed 
 abstraction seemed to render him impervious to the heat, 
 said : — 
 
 " My dear Mr. Corbin, I perfectly understand you. 
 Blank it all, sir, the temperature in this infernal hole is 
 quite enough to render any confidential conversation be- 
 tween gentlemen upon delicate matters utterly impossible. 
 It 's almost as near Hades, sir, as they make it, — as I trust 
 you and I, Mr. Corbin, will ever experience. I propose," 
 continued the Colonel, with airy genialty, " some light 
 change and refreshment. The bar-keeper of the Magnolia is 
 — er — I may say, sir, facile princeps in the concoction of 
 mint juleps, and there is a back room where I have occasion- 
 ally conferred with political leaders at election time. It is 
 but a step, sir — in fact, on Main Street — round the cor- 
 ner." 
 
 The stranger looked up and then rose mechanically as 
 the Colonel resumed his coat and waistcoat, but not his 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT 413 
 
 collar and cravat, which lay limp and dejected among his 
 papers. Then, sheltering himself heneath a large-brimmed 
 Panama hat, and hooking his cane on his arm, he led the 
 way, fan in hand, into the road, tiptoeing in his tight, pol- 
 ished boots through the red, impalpable dust with his usual 
 jaunty manner, yet not without a profane suggestion of 
 burning ploughshares. The stranger strode in silence by 
 his side in the burning sun, impenetrable in his own morose 
 shadow. 
 
 But the Magnolia was fragrant, like its namesake, with 
 mint and herbal odors, cool with sprinkled floors, and 
 sparkling with broken ice, on its counters, like dewdrops 
 on white, unfolded petals — and slightly soporific with the 
 subdued murmur of droning loungers, who were heavy with 
 its sweets. The gallant Colonel nodded with confidential 
 affability to the spotless-shirted bar-keeper, and then taking 
 Corbin by the arm fraternally conducted him into a small 
 apartment in the rear of the bar-room. It was evidently 
 ■used as the office of the proprietor, and contained a plain 
 desk, table, and chairs. At the rear window, Nature, not 
 entirely evicted, looked in with a few straggling buckeyes 
 and a dusty myrtle, over the body of a lately felled pine- 
 tree, that flaunted from an upflung branch a still green 
 spray as if it were a drooping banner lifted by a dead but 
 rigid arm. From the adjoining room the faint, monotonous 
 click of billiard balls, languidly played, came at intervals 
 like the dry notes of cicale in the bushes. 
 
 The bar-keeper brought two glasses crowned with mint 
 and diademed with broken ice. The Colonel took a long 
 pull at his portion, and leaned back in his chair with a 
 bland gulp of satisfaction and dreamily patient eyes. The 
 stranger mechanically sipped the contents of his glass, and 
 then, without having altered his reluctant expression, drew 
 from his breast-pocket a number of old letters. Holding 
 thsm displayed in his fingers like a difficult hand of cards. 
 
414 COLONEL STARBOTTLB'S CLIENT 
 
 and with something of the air of a dispirited player, he 
 began : — 
 
 " You see, about six months after this yer trouble I got 
 this letter." He picked out a well-worn, badly written 
 missive, and put it into Colonel Starbottlc's hands, rising at 
 the same time and leaning over him as he read. " You 
 see, she that writ it says as how she had n't heard from her 
 son for a long time, but owing to his having spoken once 
 about me, she was emboldened to write and ask me if I 
 knew what had gone of him." He was pointing his finger 
 at each line of the letter as he read it, or rather seemed to 
 translate it from memory with a sad familiarity. " Now," 
 he continued m parenthesis, " you see this kind o' got me. 
 I knew he had got relatives in Kentucky. I knew that all 
 this trouble had been put in the paper with his name and 
 mine, but this here name of Martha Jeffcourt at the bottom 
 did n't seem to jibe with it. Then I remembered that he 
 had left a lot of letters in his trunk in the shanty, and I 
 looked 'em over. And I found that his name was Tom 
 Jeffcourt, and that he 'd been passin' under the name of 
 Frisbee all this time." 
 
 " Perfectly natural and a frequent occurrence," inter- 
 posed the Colonel cheerfully. " Only last year I met an 
 old friend whom we '11 call Stidger, of New Orleans, at the 
 Union Club, 'Frisco. ' How are you, Stidger ? ' I said ; 
 ' I have n't seen you since we used to meet — driving over 
 the Shell Eoad in '53.' ' Excuse me, sir,' said he, ' my 
 name is not Stidger, it 's Brown.' I looked him in the 
 eye, sir, and saw him quiver. ' Then I must apologize to 
 Stidger,' I said, 'for supposing him capable of changing 
 his name.' He came to me an hour after, all in a tremble. 
 ' For God's sake, Star,' he said, — always called me Star, 
 — ' don't go back on me, but you know family affairs — 
 another woman, beautiful creature,' etc., etc., — yes, sir, 
 perfectly common, but a blank mistake. When a man once 
 
COLONEL STAEBOTTLE'S CLIENT 415 
 
 funks his own name he '11 turn tail on anything. Sorry for 
 this man, Friezecoat, or Turncoat, or whatever 's his d — d 
 name ; , but it 's so." 
 
 The suggestion did not, however, seem to raise the 
 stranger's spirits or alter his manner. " His name was 
 Jeffcourt, and this here was his mother," he went on drear- 
 ily ; " and you see here she says " — pointing to the letter 
 again — " she 's been expecting money from him and it 
 don't come, and she 's mighty hard up. And that gave me 
 an idea. I don't know," he went on, regarding the Colonel 
 with gloomy doubt, " as you '11 think it was much ; I don't 
 know as you would n't call it a d — d fool idea, but I got it 
 all the same." He stopped, hesitated, and went on. " You 
 see this man, Frisbee or Jeffcourt, was my pardner. We 
 were good friends up to the killing, and then he drove me 
 hard. I think I told you he drove me hard, — did n't I ? 
 Well, he did. But the idea I got was this. Considerin' I 
 killed him after all, and so to speak disappointed them, I 
 reckoned I 'd take upon myself the care of that family and 
 send 'era money every month." 
 
 The Colonel slightly straitened his clean-shaven mouth. 
 " A kind of expiation or aipercement by fine, known to the 
 Mosaic, Eoman, and old English law. Gad, sir, the Jews 
 might have made you inarry his widow or sister. An old 
 custom, and I think superseded — sir, properly superseded 
 — by the alternative of ordeal by battle in the mediaeval 
 times. I don't myself fancy these pecuniary fashions of 
 settling wrongs, — but go on." 
 
 " I wrote her," continued Corbin, " that her son was 
 dead, but that he and me had some interests together in a 
 claim, and that I was very glad to know where to send her 
 what would be his share every month. I thought it no use 
 to tell her I killed him, — maybe she might refuse to take 
 it. I sent her a hundred dollars every month since. Some- 
 times it 's been pretty hard sleddin' to do it, for I ain't 
 
416 COLONEL STAEBOTTLE'S CLIENT 
 
 rich ; sometimes I 've had to borrow the money, but I reck- 
 oned that I was only paying for my share in this here busi- 
 ness of his bein' dead, and I did it." 
 
 " And I understand you that this Jeifcourt really had no 
 interest in your claim ? " 
 
 Corbin looked at him in dull astonishment. " Not a cent, 
 of course ; I thought I told you that. But that were n't 
 his fault, for he never had anything, and owed me money. 
 In fact," he added gloomily, " it was because I had n't any 
 more to give him — havin' sold my watch for grub — that 
 he quo'lled with me that day, and up and called me a * sneak- 
 in' Yankee hound.' I told you he drove me hard." 
 
 The Colonel coughed slightly and resumed his jaunty 
 manner. " And the — er — mother was, of course, grateful 
 and satisfied ? " 
 
 "Well, no, — not exactly." He stopped again and took 
 up his letters once more, sorted and arranged them as if to 
 play out his unfinished but hopeless hand, and drawing out 
 another, laid it before the Colonel. " You see, this Mrs. 
 Jeffcourt, after a time, reckoned she ought to have more 
 money than I sent her, and wrote saying that she had always 
 understood from her son (he that never wrote but once a 
 year, remember) that this claim of ours (that she never knew 
 of, you know) was paying much more than I sent her — and 
 she wanted a return of accounts and papers, or she 'd write 
 to some lawyer, mighty quick. Well, I reckoned that all 
 this" was naturally in the line of my trouble, and I did 
 manage to scrape together fifty dollars more for two months 
 and sent it. But that didn't seem to satisfy her — as 
 you see." He dealt Colonel Starbottle another letter from 
 his baleful hand with an unchanged face. " When I got that, 
 ■ — well, I just up and told her the whole thing. I sent her 
 the account of the fight from the newspapers, and told her 
 as how her son was the Frisbee that was my pardner, and 
 Vw he never had a cent in the world — but how I '4 got 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT 417 
 
 that idea to help her, and was willing to carry it out as long 
 as I could." 
 
 " Did you keep a copy of that letter ? " asked the Colo- 
 nel, straitening his masklike mouth. 
 
 " No," said Corbin moodily. " What was the good ? I 
 knowed she'd got the letter, — and she did, — for that is 
 what she wrote back." He laid another letter before the 
 Colonel, who hastily read a few lines and then brought his 
 fat white hand violently on the desk. 
 
 " Why, d — n it all, sir, this is blabkmail ! As infamous 
 a case of threatening and chantage as I ever heard of." 
 
 " Well," said Corbin dejectedly, " I don't know. You 
 see, she allows that I murdered Frisbee to get hold of his 
 claim, and that I 'm trying to buy her off, and that if I 
 don't come down with twenty thousand dollars on the nail, 
 and notes for the rest, she '11 prosecute me. Well, mebbe 
 the thing looks to her like that — mebbe you know I 've 
 got to shoulder that too. Perhaps it 's all in the same 
 line." 
 
 Colonel Starbottle for a moment regarded Corbin criti- 
 cally. In spite of his chivalrous attitude towards the 
 homicidal faculty, the Colonel was not optimistic in regarcS 
 to the baser pecuniary interests of his fellow man. It waf 
 quite on the cards that his companion might have murdered! 
 his partner to get possession of the claim. It was true that 
 Corbin had voluntarily assumed an unrecorded and hitherto 
 unknown responsibility that had never been even suspected, 
 and was virtually self-imposed. But that might have been 
 the usual one unerring blunder of criminal sagacity and fore- 
 thought. It was equally true that he did not look or act 
 'ike a mean murderer ; but that was nothing. However, 
 ihere was no evidence of these reflections in the Colonel's 
 face. Rather he suddenly beamed with an excess of polite- 
 ness. " Would you — er — mind, Mr. Corbin, whilst I am 
 going over those letters again, to — er — step across to mj 
 
418 COLONEL STAEBOTTLE'S CLIENT 
 
 office — and — er — bring me the copy of ' Wood's Digest ' 
 that lies on my table ? It will save some time." 
 
 The stranger rose, as if the service was part of his self- 
 imposed trouble, and as equally hopeless with the rest, and 
 taking his hat departed to execute the commission. As 
 soon as he had left the building Colonel Starbottle opened 
 the door and mysteriously beckoned' the bar-keeper within. 
 
 " Do you remember anything of the killing of a man 
 named Frisbee over in Fresno three years ago ? " 
 
 The bar-keeper whistled meditatively. " Three years 
 ago — Frisbee ? — Fresno ? — no ? Yes — but that was 
 only one of his names. He was Jack Walker over here. Yes 
 — and by Jove ! that fellow that was here with you killed 
 him. Darn my skin, but I thought I recognized him." 
 
 " Yes, yes, I know all that," said the Colonel impatiently. 
 " But did Frisbee have any property ? Did he have any 
 means of his own ? " 
 
 " Property ? " echoed the bar-keeper with scornful in- 
 credulity. " Property ? Means ? The only property and 
 means he ever had was the free lunches or drinks he took in 
 at somebody else's expense. Why, the only chance he ever 
 had of earning a square meal was when that fellow that was 
 with you just now took him up and made him his partner. 
 And the only way he could get rid of him was to kill him ! 
 And I did n't think he had it in him. Rather a queer kind 
 o' chap, — good deal of hayseed about him. Showed up at 
 the inquest so glum and orkerd that if the boys had n't 
 made up their minds this yer Frisbee orter been killed — 
 it might have gone hard with him." 
 
 " Mr. Corbin," said Colonel Starbottle, with a pained but 
 unmistakable hauteur and a singular elevation of his shirt 
 frill, as if it had become of its own accord erectile, — " Mr. 
 Corbin — er — er — is the distant relative of old Major Cor- 
 bin, of Nashville — er — one of my oldest political friends. 
 When Mr. Corbin — er — returns, you can conduct him to 
 me. And, if you please, replenish the glasses." 
 
COX.ONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT 419 
 
 "When the bar-keeper respectfully showed Mr. Corbin and 
 " Wood's Digest " into the room again, the Colonel was 
 still beaming and apologetic. 
 
 " A thousand thanks, sir, but except to sliow you the law 
 if you require it — hardly necessary. Ihave — er — glanced 
 over the woman's letters again ; it would be better, perhaps, 
 if you had kept copies of your own — but still these tell 
 the whole story and your own. The claim is preposterous ! 
 You have simply to drop the whole thing. Stop your re- 
 mittances, stop your correspondence, — pay no heed to any 
 further letters and wait results. You need fear nothing 
 further, sir ; I stake my professional reputation on it." 
 
 The gloom of the stranger seemed only to increase as the 
 Colonel reached his triumphant conclusion. 
 
 " I reckoned you 'd say that," he said slowly, " but it 
 won't do. I shall go on paying as far as I can. It 's my 
 trouble and I '11 see it through." 
 
 " But, my dear sir, consider," gasped the Colonel. " You 
 are in the hands of an infamous harpy, who is using her 
 son's blood to extract money from you. You have already 
 paid a dozen times more than the life of that d — d sneak 
 was worth ; and more than that — the longer you keep on 
 paying you are helping to give color to their claim and 
 estopping your own defense. And Gad, sir, you 're making 
 a precedent for this sort of thing ! you are offering a pre- 
 mium to widows and orphans. A gentleman won't be able 
 to exchange shots with another without making himself 
 liable for damages!. I am willing to admit that your feel- 
 ings — though, in my opinion — er — exaggerated — do you 
 credit ; but I am satisfied that they are utterly misunder- 
 stood — sir." 
 
 " Not by all of them," said Corbin darkly. 
 
 " Eh ? " returned the Colonel quickly. 
 
 " There was another letter here which I did n't particu- 
 larly point out to you," said Corbin, taking up the letters 
 
420 COLONEL STAEBOTTLE'S CLIENT 
 
 again, " for I reckoned it was n't evidence, so to speak, 
 being from his cousin, — a girl, — and calculated you 'd 
 read it when I was out." 
 
 The Colonel coughed hastily. " I was in fact — - er — > 
 just about to glance over it when you came in." 
 
 " It was written," continued Corbin, selecting a letter 
 more bethumbed than the others, " after the old woman 
 had threatened me. This here young woman allows that 
 she is sorry that her aunt has to take money of me on ac- 
 count of her cousin being killed, and she is still sorrier that 
 she is so bitter against me. She says she had n't seen her 
 cousin since he was a boy, and used to play with her, and 
 that she finds it hard to believe that he should ever grow 
 up to change his name and act so as to provoke anybody 
 to lift a hand against him. She says she supposed it must 
 be something in that dreadful California that alters people 
 and makes everybody so reckless. I reckon her head 's 
 level there, ain't it ? " 
 
 There was such a sudden and unexpected lightening of 
 the man's face as he said it, such a momentary relief to his 
 persistent gloom, that the Colonel, albeit inwardly dis- 
 senting from both letter and comment, smiled condescend- 
 ingly. 
 
 " She ^s no slouch of a scribe neither," continued Corbin 
 animatedly. "Eead that." 
 
 He handed his companion the letter, pointing to a pas- 
 sage with his finger. The Colonel took it with, I fear, a 
 somewhat lowered opinion of his client, and a new theory of 
 the case. It was evident that this weak submission to the 
 aunt's conspiracy was only the result of a greater weakness 
 for the niece. Colonel Starbottle had a wholesome distrust 
 of the sex as a business or political factor. He began to 
 look over the letter, but was evidently slurring it with su- 
 perficial politeness, when Corbin said : — 
 
 " Eead it out loud." 
 
COLONEL STAEBOTTLE's CLIENT 421 
 
 The Colonel slightly lifted his shoulders, fortified him- 
 self with another sip of the julep, and, leaning back, 
 oratorically began to read, — the stranger leaning over him 
 and following line by line with shining eyes. 
 
 " ' When I say I am sorry for you, it is because I think 
 it must be dreadful for you to be going round with the 
 blood of a fellow creature on your hands. It must be awful 
 for you in the stillness of the night season to hear the voice 
 of the Lord saying, " Cain, where is thy brother ? " and 
 you saying, " Lord, I have slayed him dead." It must be 
 awful for you when the pride of your wrath was surfitted, 
 and his dum senseless corps was before you, not to know 
 that it is written, " Vengeance is mine, I will repay," saith 
 the Lord. ... It was no use for you to say, " I never 
 heard that before," remembering your teacher and parents. 
 Yet verily I say unto you, " Though your sins be as scarlet, 
 they shall be washed whiter than snow," saith the Lord — 
 Isaiah i. 18 ; and " Heart hath no sorrow that Heaven can- 
 not heal." — My hymn-book, 1st Presbyterian Church, page 
 79. Mr. Corbin, I pity your feelins at the grave of my 
 pore dear cousin, knowing he is before his Maker, and you 
 can't bring him back.' Umph ! — er — er — very good — 
 very good indeed," said the Colonel, hastily refolding the 
 letter. "Very well meaning and — er" — 
 
 "Go on," said Corbin over his shoulder, "you haven't 
 read all." 
 
 " Ah, true. I perceive I overlooked something. Um — 
 um. ' May God forgive you, Mr. Corbin, as I do, and 
 make aunty think better of you, for it was good what you 
 tried to do for her and the fammely, and I 've always said 
 it when she was raging round and wanting money of you. 
 I don't believe you meant to do it anyway, owin' to youi 
 kindness of heart to the ophanless and the widow since you 
 did it. Anser this letter, and don't mind what aunty says. 
 So no more at present from — Yours very respectfully, 
 
 Sally Dows. 
 
422 COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT 
 
 " 'P. S. — There 's been some troubel in our township, 
 and some fitin'. May the Lord change ther hearts and 
 make them as a little child, for if you are still young you 
 may grow up different. I have writ a short prayer for 
 you to say every night. You can coppy it out and put it at 
 the head of your bed. It is this : Lord make me sorry 
 for having killed Sarah Dows' cousin. Give me, Lord, 
 that peace that the world cannot give, and which fadeth not 
 away ; for my yoke is heavy, and my burden is harder than 
 I can bear.' " 
 
 The Colonel's deliberate voice stopped. There was a 
 silence in the room, and the air seemed stifling. The click 
 of the billiard balls came distinctly through the partition 
 from the other room. Then there was another click, a 
 stamp on the floor, and a voice crying coarsely : " Curse it 
 all — missed again ! " 
 
 To the stranger's astonishment, the Colonel was on his 
 feet in an instant, gasping w^ith inarticulate rage. Flinging 
 the door open, he confronted the startled bar-keeper em- 
 purpled and stertorous. 
 
 " Blank it all, sir, do you call this a saloon for gentle- 
 men, or a corral for swearing cattle ? Or do you mean to 
 say that the conversation of two gentlemen upon delicate 
 professional — and — er — domestic affairs — is to be 
 broken upon by the blank profanity of low-bred hounds 
 over their picayune gambling ! Take them my kyard, sir," 
 choked the Colonel, who was always Southern and dialectic 
 in his excited as in his softest moments, " and tell them 
 that Colonel Starbottle will nevah dyarken these doahs 
 again." 
 
 Before the astonished bar-keeper could reply, the Colonel 
 nad dashed back into the room, clapped his hat on his head, 
 and seized his book, letters, and cane. " Mr. Corbin," he 
 said, with gasping dignity, " I will take these papahs, and 
 consult them again in my own office — where, if you will 
 
COLONEL STAEBOTTLE'S CLIENT 423 
 
 do me the honor, sir, to call at ten o'clock to-morrow, I 
 will give you my opinion." He strode out of the saloon 
 beside the half awe-stricken, half-amused, yet all discreetly 
 silent loungers, followed by his wondering but gloomy client. 
 At the door they parted, — the Colonel tiptoeing towards 
 his office as if dancing with rage, the stranger darkly plod- 
 ding through the stifling dust in the opposite direction, with 
 what might have been a faint suggestion to his counselor, 
 that the paths of the homicide did not lie beside the still 
 oool waters. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 The house of Captain Masterton Dews, at Pineville, 
 Kentucky, was a fine specimen of Southern classical archi- 
 tecture, being an exact copy of Major Fauquier's house in 
 Virginia, which was in turn only a slight variation from a 
 well-known statesman's historical villa in Alabama, that 
 everybody knew was designed from a famous Greek temple 
 on the Pirseus. Not but that it shared this resemblance 
 with the County Court House and the Odd Fellows' Hall, 
 but the addition of training jessamine and Cherokee rose to 
 the columns of the portico, and over the colonnade leading 
 to its offices, showed a certain domestic distinction. And 
 the sky line of its incongruously high roof was pleasantly 
 broken against adjacent green pines, butternut, and darker 
 cypress. 
 
 A nearer approach showed the stuccoed gateposts — whose 
 red brick core was revealed through the dropping plaster — 
 opening in a wall of half-rough stone, half-wooden palisade, 
 equally covered with shining moss and parasitical vines, 
 which hid a tangled garden left to its own unkempt luxuri- 
 ance. Yet there was reminiscence of past formality and 
 even pretentiousness in a wide box-bordered terrace and one 
 or two stuccoed vases prematurely worn and time-stained ; 
 while several rare exotics had, however, thriven so unwisely 
 and well in that stimulating soil as to lose their exclusive 
 refinement and acquire a certain temporary vulgarity. A 
 few, with the not uncommon enthusiasm of aliens, had 
 adopted certain native peculiarities with a zeal that far 
 exceeded any indigenous performance. But dominant 
 
COLONEL STAEBOTTLE'S CLIENT 425 
 
 through all was the continual suggestion of precocious frui- 
 tion and premature decay that lingered like a sad perfume 
 in the garden, but made itself persistent if less poetical in 
 the house. 
 
 Here the fluted wooden columns of the portico and colon- 
 nade seemed to have taken upon themselves a sodden and 
 unwliolesome age unknown to stone and mortar. Moss and 
 creeper clung to paint that time had neither dried nor mel- 
 lowed, but left still glairy in its white consistency. There 
 were rusty red blotches around inflamed nail-holes in the 
 swollen wood, as of punctures in living flesh ; along the 
 entablature and cornices and in the dank gutters decay had 
 taken the form of a mild deliquescence ; and the pillars 
 were spotted as if Nature had dropped over the too early 
 ruin a few unclean tears. The house itself was lifted upon 
 a broad wooden foundation painted to imitate marble with 
 such hopeless mendacity that the architect at the last mo- 
 ment had added a green border, and the owner permitted a 
 fallen board to remain oflf so as to allow a few privileged 
 fowls to openly explore the interior. When Miss Sally 
 Dows played the piano in the drawing-room she was at times 
 accompanied by the uplifted voice of the sympathetic hounds 
 who sought its quiet retreat in ill health or low spirits, and 
 from whom she was separated only by an imperfectly car- 
 peted floor of yawning seams. The infant progeny of 
 " Mammy Judy," an old nurse, made this a hiding-place 
 from domestic justice, where they were eventually betrayed 
 by subterranean giggling that had once or twice brought 
 bashful confusion to the hearts of Miss Sally's admirers, and 
 mischievous security to that finished coquette herself. 
 
 It was a pleasant September afternoon, on possibly one 
 of these occasions, that Miss Sally, sitting before the piano, 
 alternately striking a few notes with three pink fingers and 
 glancing at her reflection in the polished rosewood surface 
 ■)f the lifted keyboard case, was heard to utter this languid 
 jjrotest : — 
 
426 COLONEL STAEBOTTLE'S CLIENT 
 
 " Quit that kind of talk, Chet, unless you just admire to 
 have every word of it repeated all over the county. Those 
 little niggers of Mammy Judy's are lying round somewhere 
 and are mighty 'cute, and sassy, I tell you. It 's nothin' 
 to me, sure, but Miss Hilda might n't like to hear of it. 
 So soon after your particular attention to her at last night's 
 pawty too." 
 
 Here a fresh-looking young fellow of six-and-twenty, 
 leaning uneasily over the piano from the opposite side, was 
 heard to murmur that he did n't care what Miss Hilda heard, 
 nor the whole world, for the matter of that. " But," he 
 added, with a faint smile, " folks allow that you know how 
 to play up sometimes, and put on the loud pedal, when 
 you don't want Mammy's niggers to hear." 
 
 " Indeed," said the young lady demurely. " Like 
 this ? " 
 
 She put out a distracting little foot, clothed in the white 
 stocking and cool black prunella slipper then . de ric/ueur 
 in the State, and, pressing it on the pedal, began to drum 
 vigorously on the keys. In vain the amorous Chet protes- 
 ted in a voice which the instrument drowned. Perceiving 
 which the artful young lady opened her blue eyes mildly 
 and said : — 
 
 " I reckon it ts so ; it does kind of prevent you hearing 
 what you don't want to hear." 
 
 " You know well enough what I mean," said the youth 
 gloomily. " And that ain't all that folks say. They 
 allow that you 're doin' a heap too much correspondence 
 with that Californian rough that killed Tom Jeilcourt over 
 there." 
 
 " Do they ? " said the young lady, with a slight curl 
 of her pretty lip. " Then perhaps they allow that if it 
 was n't for me he would n't be sending a hundred dollars a 
 month to Aunt Martha ? " 
 
 " Yes," said the fatuous youth ; " but they allow he 
 
COLONEL STAEBOTTLE'S CLIENT 427 
 
 killed Tom for his money. And they do say it 's mighty 
 queer doin's in yo' writin' religious letters to him, and Tom 
 your own cousin." 
 
 " Oh, they tell those lies here, do they ? But do they 
 say anything about how, when the same lies were told over 
 in California, the lawyer they 've got over there, called 
 Colonel Starbottle, — a Southern man, too, — got up and 
 just wrote to Aunt Martha that she'd better quit that afore 
 she got prosecuted ? They did n't tell you that, did they. 
 Mister Chester Brooks ? " 
 
 But here the unfortunate Brooks, after the fashion of all 
 jealous lovers, deserted his allies for his fair enemy. " I 
 don't cotton to what they say, Sally, but you do write to 
 him, and I don't see what you 've got to write about — you 
 and him. Jule JefFcourt says that when you got religion 
 at Louisville during the revival, you felt you had a call to 
 write and save sinners, and you did that as your trial and 
 probation, but that since you backslided and are worldly 
 again, and go to parties, you just keep it up for foolin' and 
 flirtin' ! She ain't goin' to weaken on the man that shot 
 her brother, just because he's got a gold mine and — a 
 mustache ! " 
 
 " She takes his money all the same," said Miss Sally. 
 
 " She don't — her mother does. She says if she was a 
 man she 'd have blood for blood ! " 
 
 " My ! " said Miss Sally in affected consternation. " It 's 
 a wonder she don't apply to you to act for her." 
 
 " If it was my brother he killed, I 'd challenge him 
 quick enough," said Chet, flushing through his thin pink 
 skin and light hair. 
 
 " Marry her, then, and that '11 make you one of the 
 family. I reckon Miss Hilda can bear it," rejoined the 
 young lady pertly. 
 
 " Look here, Miss Sally," said the young fellow, with a 
 boyish despair that was not without a certain pathos in its 
 
428 COLONEL STAEBOTTLE'S CLIENT 
 
 implied inferiority, " I ain't gifted like you — I ain't on 
 yo' level nohow ; P" can't pass yo' on the road, and so I 
 reckon I must take yo' dust as yo' make it. But there is 
 one thing. Miss Sally, I want to tell you. You know 
 what 's going on in this country, — you 've heard your 
 father say what the opinion of the best men is, and 
 what 's likejy to happen if the Yanks force that nigger 
 worshiper, Lincoln, on the South. You know that we 're 
 drawing the line closer every day, and spottin' the men 
 that ain't sound. Take care, Miss Sally, you ain't sellin' 
 us cheap to some Northern Abolitionist who 'd like to set 
 Marm Judy's little niggers to something worse than eaves- 
 dropping down there, and mebbe teach 'em to kindle a fire 
 underneath yo' own flo'." 
 
 He had become quite dialectic in his appeal, as if youth- 
 fully reverting to some accent of the nursery, or as if he 
 were exhorting her in some recognized shibboleth of a sec- 
 tion. Miss Sally rose and shut down the piano. Then 
 leaning over it on her elbows, her rounded little chin 
 slightly elevated with languid impertinence, and one saucy 
 foot kicked backwards beyond the hem of her white cotton 
 frock, she said : " And let me tell you. Mister Chester 
 Brooks, that it 's just such God-forsaken, infant phenome- 
 nons as you who want to run the whole country that make 
 all this fuss, when you ain't no more fit to be trusted with 
 matches than Judy's children. What do you know of Mr. 
 Jo Corbin, when you don't even, know that he 's from 
 Shelbyville, and as good a Siith'ner as you, and if he has n't 
 got niggers it 's because they don't use them in his parts ? 
 Yo'r for all the world like one o' Mrs. Johnson's fancy 
 bantams that ain't quit of the shell afore they square off at 
 their own mother. My goodness ! Sho ! Sho-o-o ! " 
 And suiting the action to the word the young lady, still 
 indolently, even in her simulation, swirled around, caught 
 her skirts at the side with each hand, and lazily shaking 
 
COLONEL STAHBOTTLE'S CLIEXT 429 
 
 them before her in the accepted feminine method of fright- 
 ening chickens as she retreated backwards, dropped them sud- 
 denly in a profound curtsy, and swept out of the parlor. 
 
 Nevertheless, as she entered the sitting-room she paused 
 to listen, then, going to the window, peeped through the 
 slits of the Venetian blind and saw her youthful admirer, 
 more dejected in the consciousness of his wasted eiforts and 
 useless attire, mount his showy young horse, as aimlessly 
 spirited as himself, and ride away. Miss Sally did not re- 
 gret this ; neither had she been entirely sincere in her 
 defense of her mysterious correspondent. But, like many 
 of her sex, she was trying to keep up by the active stimu- 
 lus of opposition an interest that she had begun to think ■ 
 if left to itself might wane. She was conscious that her 
 cousin Julia, although impertinent and illogical, was right 
 in considering her first epistolary advances to Corbin as a 
 youthful convert's religious zeal. But now that her girlish 
 enthusiasm was spent, and the revival itself had proved as 
 fleeting an excitement as the old "Tournament of Love' 
 and Beauty," which it had supplanted, she preferred to 
 believe that she enjoyed the fascinating impropriety because 
 it was the actual result of her religious freedom. Perhaps 
 she had a vague idea that Corbin's conversion would expi- 
 ate her present preference for dress and dancing. She had' 
 certainly never flirted with him ; they had never exchanged 
 photographs ; there was not a passage in his letters that 
 might not havb been perused by her parents, — which, I 
 fear, was probably one reason why she had never shown her 
 correspondence ; and beyond the fact that this letter-writing 
 gave her a certain importance in her own eyes and those of 
 her companions, it might really be stopped. She even 
 thought of writing at once to him that her parents objected 
 to its further continuance, bvit remembering that his usual 
 monthly letter was now nearly due, she concluded to wait 
 until it came. 
 
430 COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT 
 
 It is to be feared that Miss Sally had little help in the 
 way of family advice, and that the moral administration of 
 the Dows household was as prematurely developed and as 
 precociously exhausted as the estate and mansion themselves. 
 Captain Dows' marriage with Josephine Jeffcourt, the 
 daughter of a " poor white," had heen considered a mesalli- 
 ance by his family, and his own sister, Miranda Dows, had 
 abandoned her brother's roof and refused to associate with 
 the Jeffcourts, only returning to the house and an armed 
 neutrality at the death of Mrs. Dows a few years later 
 She had taken charge of Miss Sally, sending her to school 
 at Nashville until she was recalled by her father two years 
 ago. It may be imagined that Miss Sally's correspondence 
 with Jeffcourt's murderer had afforded her a mixed satisfac- 
 tion ; it was at first asserted that Miss Sally's forgiveness 
 was really prompted by " Miss Mirandy," as a subtle sar- 
 casm upon the family. When, however, that forgiveness 
 seemed to become a source of revenue to the impoverished 
 Jeffcourts, her Christian interference had declined. 
 
 For this reason, possibly, the young girl did not seek her 
 aunt in the bedroom, the dining-room, or the business-room, 
 where Miss Miranda frequently assisted Captain Dows in 
 the fatuous and prejudiced mismanagement of the houso 
 and property, nor in any of the vacant guest-rooms, whichj 
 in their early wreck of latter-day mahogany and rosewood, 
 seemed to have been unoccupied for ages, but went directly 
 to her own room. This was in the "L," a lately added 
 wing that had escaped the gloomy architectural tyranny ol 
 the main building, and gave Miss Sally light, ventilation, 
 the freshness and spice of new pine boards and clean paper, 
 and a separate entrance and windows on a cool veranda all 
 to herself. Intended as a concession to the young lady's 
 traveled taste, it was really a reversion to the finer simpli- 
 city of the pioneer. 
 
 New as the apartment appeared to be, it was old enough 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT 431 
 
 to contain the brief little records of her maidenhood : the 
 childish samplers and pictures ; the sporting epoch with its 
 fox-heads, opossum and wildcat skins, riding-whip, and the 
 goshawk in a cage, which Miss Sally believed could be 
 trained as a falcon ; the religious interval of illustrated 
 texts, " Eock of Ages," cardboard crosses, and the certificate 
 of her membership with " The Daughters of Sion " at the 
 head of her little bed, down to the last decadence of frivol- 
 ity shown in the be-ribboned guitar in the corner, and the 
 dance cards, favors, and rosettes, military buttons, dried 
 bouquets, and other love gages on the mantelpiece. 
 
 The young girl opened a drawer of her table and took 
 out a small packet of letters tied up with a green ribbon. 
 As she did so she heard the sound of hoofs in the rear 
 courtyard. This was presently followed by a step on the 
 veranda, and she opened the door to her father with the 
 letters still in her hand. There was neither the least em- 
 barrassment nor self-consciousness in her manner. 
 
 Captain Dows, superficially remarkable only for a certain 
 odd combination of high military stock and turned-over plan- 
 ter's collar, was slightly exalted by a sympathetic mingling 
 of politics and mint julep at Pineville Court House. "I 
 was passing by the post-office at the Cross Roads last. week, 
 dear," he began cheerfully, "and I thought of you, and 
 reckoned it was about time that my Pussy got one of her 
 letters from her rich Californian friend — and sure enough 
 there was one. I clean forgot to give it to you then, and 
 only remembered it passing there to-day. ■ I did n't get to 
 see if there was any gold-dust in it," he continued, with 
 great archness, and a fatherly pinch of her cheek ; " though 
 I suspect that is n't the kind of currency he sends to you.'' 
 
 " It is from Mr. Corbin," said Miss Sally, taking it with 
 a languid kind of doubt ; " and only now, paw, I was just 
 thinking that I 'd sort of drop writing any more ; it makes 
 a good deal of buzzing amongst the neighbors, and I don't 
 see much honey nor comb in it." 
 
432 COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT 
 
 "Eh," said the Captain, apparently more astonished 
 than delighted at his daughter's prudence. " Well, child, 
 suit yourself ! It 's mighty mean, though, for I was just 
 tliiuking of telling you that Judge Head is an old friend of 
 this Colonel Starbottle, who is your friend's friend and law- 
 yer, and he says that Colonel Starbottle is with us, and 
 working for the cause out there, and has got a list of all the 
 So'thern men in California that are sound and solid for the 
 South. Read says he should n't wonder if he 'd make 
 California wheel into line too." 
 
 " I don't see what that 's got to do with Mr. Corbin," 
 said the young girl impatiently, flicking the still unopened 
 letter against the packet in her hand. 
 
 " Well," said ti^e Captain, with cheerful vagueness, " I 
 thought it might interest you, — that 's all," and lounged 
 judicially away. 
 
 "Paw thinks," said Miss Sally, still standing in the door- 
 way, ostentatiously addressing her pet goshawk, but with 
 one eye following her retreating parent, — " paw thinks that 
 everybody is as keen bent on politics as he is. There 's 
 where paw slips up, Jim." 
 
 Eeijntering the room, scratching her little nose thought- 
 fully with the edge of Mr. Corbin's letter, she went to the 
 mantelpiece and picked up a small ivory-handled dagger, 
 the gift of Joyce Masterton, aged eighteen, presented with 
 certain verses addressed to a " Daughter of the South," and 
 cut open the envelope. The first glance was at her own 
 hame, and then at the signature. There was na change in 
 the formality; it was "Dear Miss Sarah," and "Yours re- 
 spectfully, Jo Corbin," as usual. She was still secure. 
 But her pretty brows contracted slightly as she read as 
 follows : — 
 
 I 've always allowed I should feel easier in my mind if 
 I could ever get to see Mrs. Jetfcourt, and that maybe she 
 
COLONEL STAEBOITLE'S CLIENT 433 
 
 might feel easier in hers if I stood before her, face to face. 
 Even if slie did n't forgive me at once, it might do her good 
 to get off what she had on her mind against me. But as 
 there was n't any chance of her coming to me, and it was 
 out of the question my coming to her and still keeping up 
 enough work in the mines to send her the regular money, it 
 could n't be done. But at last I 've got a partner to run 
 the machine when I 'm away. I shall be at Shelbyville by 
 the time this reaches you, where I shall stay a day or two 
 to give you time to break the news to Mrs. Jeffcourt, 
 and then come on. You will do this for me in your Chris- 
 tian kindness. Miss Dows — won't you ? and if you could 
 soften her mind so as to make it less hard for me I shall be 
 grateful. 
 
 P. S. — I forgot to say I have had him exhumed — 
 you know who I mean — and am bringing him with me in 
 a patent metallic burial casket, — the best that could be got 
 in 'Frisco, and will see that he is properly buried in your 
 own graveyard. It seemed to me that it would be the best 
 thing I could do, and might work upon her feelings — as it 
 has on mine. Don't you ? 
 
 J. C. 
 
 Miss Sally felt the tendrils of her fair hair stir with con- 
 sternation. The letter had arrived a week ago ; perhaps he 
 was in Pineville at that very moment ! She must go at once 
 to the Jeifcourts, — it was only a mile distant. Perhaps 
 she might be still in time ; but even then it was a terribly 
 short notice for such a meeting. Yet she stopped to select 
 her newest hat from the closet, and to tie it with the largest 
 of bows under her pretty chin ; and then skipped from tht 
 veranda into a green lane that ran beside the garden boun 
 dary. There, hidden by a hedge, she dropped into a long, 
 swinging trot, that even in her haste still kept the languid 
 deliberation characteristic of her people, until she had reached 
 
434 COLONEL STAEBOTTLE'S CLIENT 
 
 the road. Two or three hounds in the garden started joy, 
 ously to follow her, but she drove them back with a porten- 
 tous frown, and an ill-aimed stone, and a suppressed voice. 
 Yet in that backward glance she could see that her little 
 Eumenides — Mammy Judy's children — were peering at 
 her from below the wooden floor of the portico, which they 
 were grasping with outstretched arms and bowed shoulders, 
 as if they were black caryatides supporting — as indeed 
 their race had done for many a year — the pre-doomed and 
 decaying mansion of their master. 
 
CHAPTEE in 
 
 Happily Miss Sally thought more of her present mission 
 than of the past errors of her people. The faster she 
 walked the more vividly she pictured the possible complica- 
 tions of this meeting. She knew the dull, mean nature of 
 her aunt, and the utter hopelessness of all appeal to anything 
 but her selfish cupidity, and saw in this fatuous essay of 
 Corbin only an aggravation of her worst instincts. Even 
 the dead body of her son would not only whet her appetite 
 for pecuniary vengeance, but give it plausibility in the eyes 
 of their emotional but ignorant neighbors. She had still 
 less to hope from Julia Jeffcourt's more honest and human 
 indignation but equally bigoted and prejudiced intelligence. 
 It is true they were only women, and she ought to have no 
 fear of that physical revenge which Julia had spoken of, 
 but she reflected that Miss Jeffcourt's unmistakable beauty, 
 and what was believed to be a " truly Southern spirit," had 
 gained her many admirers who might easily take her wrongs 
 upon their shoulders. If her father had only given her 
 that letter before, she might have stopped Corbin's coming 
 at all ; she might even have met him in time to hurry him 
 and her cousin's provocative remains out of the country. In 
 the midst of these reflections she had to pass the little hill- 
 side cemetery. It was a spot of great natural beauty, cy- 
 press-shadowed and luxuriant. It was justly celebrated in 
 Pineville, and, but for its pretentious tombstones, might 
 have been peaceful and suggestive. Here she recognized a 
 figure just turning from its gate. It was Julia Jeffcourt. 
 
 Her first instinct — that she was too late and that her 
 
436 COLONEL STARBOTTLES CLIENT 
 
 cousin had come to the cemetery to make some arrangements 
 for the impending burial — was, however, quickly dissipated 
 by the young girl's manner. 
 
 " Well, Sally Dows, you here ! who 'd have thought of 
 seeing you to-day ? Why, Chet Brooks allowed that you 
 danced every set last night and did n't get home till day- 
 light. And you — you that are going to show up at an- 
 other party to-night, too ! Well, I reckon I have n't got 
 that much ambition these times. And out with your new 
 bonnet, too." 
 
 There was a slight curl of her handsome lip as she looked 
 at her cousin. She was certainly a more beautiful girl 
 than Miss Sally ; very tall, dark and luminous of eye, with 
 a brunette pallor of complexion, suggesting, it was said, 
 that remote mixture of blood which was one of the uri- 
 proven counts of Miss Miranda's indictment against her 
 family. Miss Sally smiled sweetly behind her big how. 
 " If you reckon to tie to everything that Chet Brooks says, 
 you '11 want lots of string, and you won't be safe then. 
 You ought to have heard him run on about this one, and 
 that one, and that other one, not an hour ago in our parlor. 
 I had to pack him off, saying he was even making Judy's 
 niggers tired." She stopped and added with polite languor, 
 " I suppose there 's no news up at yo' house either ? 
 ■ Everything 's going on as usual — and — you get yo' Cali- 
 fornia draft regularly ? " 
 
 A good deal of the white of Julia's beautiful eyes showed 
 as she turned indignantly on the speaker. " I wish, cousin 
 Sally, you 'd just let up talking to me about that money. 
 You know as well as I do that I allowed to maw I would n't 
 take a cent of it from the first ! I might have had all the 
 gowns and bonnets " — with a look at Miss Sally's bows — 
 " I wanted from her ; she even offered to take me to St. 
 Louis for a rig-out — if I 'd been willing to take blood- 
 money. But I 'd rather stick to this old sleazy mou'nin' 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT 437 
 
 for Tom " — she gave a dramatic pluck at her faded hlack 
 skirt — " than flaunt around in white muslins and China 
 silks at ten dollars a yard, paid for by his murderer." 
 
 " You know black 's yo' color always, — taking in your 
 height and complexion, Jule," said Miss Sally demurely, 
 yet not without a feminine consciousness that it really did 
 set off her cousin's graceful figure to perfection. " But you 
 can't keep up this gait always. You know some day you 
 might come upon this Mr. Corbin." 
 
 " He 'd better not cross my path," she said passionately. 
 
 " I 've heard girls talk like that about a man and then 
 get just green and yellow after him," said Miss Sally criti- 
 cally. " But goodness me ! speaking of meeting people 
 reminds me I clean forgot to stop at the stage office and 
 see about bringing over the new overseer. Lucky I met 
 you, Jule ! Good-by, dear. Come in to-night, and we '11 
 all go to the party together." And with a little nod she 
 ran off before her indignant cousin could frame a suitably: 
 crushing reply to her Parthian insinuation. 
 
 But at the stage office Miss Sally only wrote a few lines 
 on a card, put it in an envelope, which she addressed to 
 Mr. Joseph Corbin, and then seating herself with easy care- 
 lessness on a long packing-box, languidly summoned the 
 proprietor. 
 
 " You 're always on hand yourself at Kirby station when 
 the kyars come in to bring passengers to Pineville, Mr. 
 Sledge ? " 
 
 " Yes, miss." 
 
 " Yo' have n't brought any strangers over lately ? " 
 
 " Well, last week Squire Farnham of Green Eidge — if 
 he kin be called a stranger — as used to live in the very 
 house yo' father " — 
 
 " Yes, I know," said Miss Sally impatiently, " but if an 
 entire stranger comes to take a seat for Pineville, you ask 
 him if that 's his name," handing the letter, " and give i* 
 
438 COLONEL STAEBOTTLE'S CLIENT 
 
 to him if it is. And — Mr. Sledge — it 's nobody's busi- 
 ness but — yours and mine." 
 
 " I understand, Miss Sally," with a slow, paternal, tol- 
 erating wink. " He '11 get it, and nobody else, sure." 
 
 " Thank you ; I hope Mrs. Sledge is getting round 
 again." 
 
 " Pow'fully, Miss Sally." 
 
 Having thus, as she hoped, stopped the arrival of the 
 •unhappy Corbin, Miss Sally returned home to consider the 
 best means of finally disposing of him. She had insisted 
 upon his stopping at Kirby and holding no communication 
 with the Jeffcourts until he heard from her, and had 
 strongly pointed out the hopeless infelicity of his plan. 
 She dare not tell her Aunt Miranda, knowing that she 
 would be too happy to precipitate an interview that would 
 terminate disastrously to both the Jeffcourts and Corbin. 
 She might have to take her father into her confidence, — a 
 dreadful contingency. 
 
 She was dressed for the evening party, which was pro- 
 vincially early ; indeed, it was scarcely past nine o'clock 
 when she had finished her toilet, when there came a rap at 
 her door. It was one of Mammy Judy's children. 
 
 " Dey is a gemplum. Miss Sally." 
 
 " Yes, yes," said Miss Sally impatiently, thinking only 
 of her escort. " I '11 be there in a minute. Kun away. 
 He can wait." 
 
 " And he said I was to guv yo' dis yer," continued the 
 little negro with portentous gravity, presenting a card. 
 
 Miss Sally took it with a smile. It was a plain card on 
 which was written with a pencil in a hand she hurriedly 
 recognized, "Joseph Corbin." 
 
 Miss Sally's smile became hysterically rigid, and pushing 
 the boy aside with a little cry, she darted along the veranda 
 and entered the parlor from a side door and vestibule. To 
 her momentary relief she saw that her friends had not 
 
COLONEL STAEBOTTLE'S CLIENT 439 
 
 yet arrived : a single figure — a stranger's — rose as she 
 entered. 
 
 Even in her consternation she had time to feel the added 
 shock of disappointment. She had always present in her 
 mind an ideal picture of this man whom she had never 
 seen or even heard described. Joseph Corbin had been 
 tall, dark, with flowing hair and long mustache. He had 
 flashing fiery eyes which were capable of being subdued by 
 a single glance of gentleness — her own. He was tempes- 
 tuous, quick, and passionate, but in quarrel would be led 
 by a smile. He was a combination of an Italian brigand 
 and a poker player whom she had once met on a Mississippi 
 steamboat. He would wear a broad-brimmed soft hat, a red 
 shirt, showing his massive throat and neck — and high 
 hoots ! Alas ! the man before her was of medium height, 
 with light close-cut hair, hollow cheeks that seemed to have 
 been lately scraped with a razor, and light gray troubled 
 eyes. A suit of cheap black, ill fitting, hastily acquired, 
 and provincial even for Pineville, painfully set oif these 
 imperfections, to which a white cravat in a hopelessly tied 
 bow was superadded. A terrible idea that this combination 
 of a country undertaker and an ill-paid circuit preacher on 
 probation was his best holiday tribute to her, and not a 
 funeral offering to Mr. Jefifcourt, took possession of her. 
 And when, with feminine quickness, she saw his eyes wan- 
 der over her own fine clothes and festal figure, and sink 
 again upon the floor in a kind of hopeless disappointment 
 equal to her own, she felt ready to cry. But the more ter- 
 rible sound of laughter approaching the house from the 
 garden recalled her. Her friends were coining. 
 
 " For Heaven's sake," she broke out desperately, "didn't 
 you get my note at the station telling you not to come ? " 
 
 His face grew darker, and then took up its look of hope- 
 less resignation, as if this last misfortune was only an 
 accepted part of his greater trouble, as he sat down again, 
 
«40 COLONEL STAKBOTTLE'S CLIENT 
 
 and, to Miss Sally's horror, listlessly swung his hat to and 
 fro under his chair. 
 
 " No," he said gloomily, " I did n't go to no station. I 
 walked here all the way from Shelbyville. I thought it 
 might seem more like the square thing to her for me to do. 
 I sent liim by express ahead in the box. It 's been at the 
 stage office all day." 
 
 With a sickening conviction that she had been sitting on 
 her cousin's body while she wrote that ill-fated card, the 
 young girl managed to gasp out impatiently : " But you 
 must go — yes — go now, at once ! Don't talk now, but 
 go." 
 
 " I did n't come here," he said, rising with a kind of 
 slow dignity, " to interfere with things I did n't kalkilate 
 to see," glancing again at her dress, as the voices came 
 nearer, " and that I ain't in touch with, — but to know if 
 you think I 'd better bring him — or " — 
 
 He did not finish the sentence, for the door had opened 
 suddenly, and a half-dozen laughing girls and their escorts 
 burst into the room. But among them, a little haughty and 
 still irritated from her last interview, was her cousin Julia 
 Jeffcourt, erect and beautiful in a sombre silk. 
 
 " Go," repeated Miss Sally in an agonized whisper. 
 " You must not be known here." 
 
 But the attention of Julia had been arrested by het 
 cousin's agitation, and her eye fell on Corbin, where it was 
 fixed with some fatal fascination that seemed in turn to 
 enthrall and possess him also. To Miss Sally's infinite 
 dismay the others fell back and allowed these two black 
 figures to stand out, then to move towards each other with 
 t'.ie same terrible magnetism. They were so near she could 
 not repeat her warning to him without the others hearing 
 it. And all hope died when Corbin, turning deliberately 
 towards her with a grave gesture in the direction of Julia, 
 said quietly : — 
 
COLONEL STAKBOTTLE'S CLIENT 441 
 
 " Interduce me." 
 
 Miss Sally hesitated, and then gasped hastily, " Miss 
 Jeffcourt." 
 
 " Yer don't say my name. Tell her I 'm Joseph Corbin 
 of 'Frisco, California, who killed her brother." He stopped 
 and turned towards her. " I came here to try and fix things 
 again — and I 've brought him." 
 
 In the wondering silence that ensued the others smiled 
 vacantly, breathlessly, and expectantly, until Corbin ad- 
 vanced and held out his hand, when Julia Jeffcourt, draw- 
 ing hers back to her bosom with the palms outward, uttered 
 an inarticulate cry and — and spat in his face ! 
 
 With that act she found tongue — reviling him, the house 
 that harbored him, the insolence that presented him, the 
 insult that had been put upon her ! " Are you men ! " 
 she added passionately, " who stand here with the man be- 
 fore you that killed my brother, and see him offer me his 
 filthy villainous hand — and dare not strike him down ! " 
 
 And they dared not. Violently, blindly, stupidly moved 
 through all their instincts, though they gathered hysteri- 
 cally around him, there was something in his dull self-con- 
 tainment that was unassailable and awful. For he wiped 
 his face and breast with his handkerchief without a tremor, 
 and turned to them with even a suggestion of relief. 
 
 " She 's right, gentlemen," he said gravely. " She 's 
 right. It might have been otherwise. I might have al- 
 lowed that it might be otherwise, — but she 's right. I'm 
 a Soth'n man myself, gentlemen, and I reckon to under- 
 stand what she has done. I killed the only man that had 
 a right to stand up for her, and she has now to stand up 
 for herself. But if she wants — and you see she allows 
 she wants — to pass that on to some of you, or all of you, 
 I 'm willing. As many as you like, and in what way you 
 like — I waive any chyce of weapon — I'm ready, gentle' 
 men. I came here — with him, — for that purpose." 
 
442 COLONEL STAEBOTTLE'S CLIENT 
 
 Perhaps it may have been his fateful resignation ; per- 
 haps it may have been his exceeding readiness, — but there 
 was no response. He sat down again, and again swung his 
 hat slowly and gloomily to and fro under his chair. 
 
 " I 've got him in a box at the stage office," he went on, 
 apparently to the carpet. " I had him dug up that I might 
 bring him here, and mebbe bury some of the trouble and 
 difference along with his friends. It might be," he added, 
 with a slightly glowering upward glance, as to an overruling, 
 but occasionally misdirecting Providence, — " it might be 
 from the way things are piling up on me that some one 
 might have rung in another corpse instead o' him, but so 
 far as I can judge, alio win' for the space of time and nat'ral 
 wear and tear — it 's him I " 
 
 He rose slowly and moved towards the door in a silence 
 that was as much the result of some conviction that any 
 violent demonstration against him would be as grotesque 
 and monstrous as the situation, as of anything he had said. 
 Even the ilashing indignation of Julia Jeffcourt seemed to 
 become suddenly as unnatural and incongruous as her bro- 
 ther's chief mourner himself, and although she shrank from 
 his passing figure she uttered no word. Chester Brooks's 
 youthful emotions, following the expression of Miss Sally's 
 face, lost themselves in a vague hysteric smile, and the 
 other gentlemen looked sheepish. Joseph Corbin halted at 
 the door. 
 
 " Whatever," he said, turning to the company, " ye 
 make up your mind to do about me, I reckon ye 'd better 
 do it after the funeral. I 'm always ready. But he, what 
 with being in a box and changing climate, had better go 
 first." He paused, and with a suggestion of delicacy in 
 the momentary dropping of his eyelids, added, — " for 
 reasons." 
 
 He passed out through the door, on to the portico and 
 thence into the garden. It was noticed at the time that 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT 443 
 
 the half-dozen hounds lingering there rushed after him with 
 their usual noisy demonstrations, hut that they as suddenly 
 stopped, retreated violently to the security of the basement, 
 and there gave relief to their feelings in a succession of 
 prolonged howls. 
 
CHAPTEK IV 
 
 It must not be supposed that Miss Sally did not feel 
 some contrition over the ineffective part she had played in 
 this last episode. But Joseph Corhin had committed the 
 unpardonable sin to a woman of destroying her own illogi- 
 cal ideas of him, which was worse than if he had affronted 
 the preconceived ideas of others, in which case she might 
 5till defend him. Then, too, she was no longer religious, 
 and had no " call " to act as peacemaker. Nevertheless she 
 resented Julia Jeffcourt's insinuations bitterly, and the 
 cousins quarreled — not the first time in their intercourse 
 — and it was reserved for the latter to break the news of 
 Corbin's arrival with the body to Mrs. Jeffcourt. 
 
 How this was done and what occurred at that interview 
 has not been recorded. But it was known the next day 
 that, while Mrs. Jeffcourt accepted the body at Corbin's 
 hands, — and it is presumed the funeral expenses also, — 
 le was positively forbidden to appear either at the services 
 at the house or at the church. There had been some wild 
 talk among the younger and many of the lower members 
 of the community, notably the " poor " non-slave-holding 
 whites, of tarring and feathering Joseph Corbin, and riding 
 him on a rail out of the town on the day of the funeral, as 
 a propitiatory sacrifice to the manes of Thomas Jeffcourt ; 
 but it being pointed out by the undertaker that it might 
 involve some uncertainty in the settlement of his bill, to- 
 gether with some reasonable doubt of the thorough resigna- 
 tion of Corbin, whose previous momentary aberration in 
 that respect they were celebrating, the project was post- 
 
COLONEL STAEBOTTLE'S CLIENT 445 
 
 poned until after the funeral. And here an unlooked-for 
 incident occurred. 
 
 There was to be a political meeting at Kirby on that 
 day, when certain distinguished Southern leaders had gath- 
 ered from the remoter Southern States. At the instigation 
 of Captain Dows it was adjourned at the hour of the fu- 
 neral to enable members to attend, and it was even rumored, 
 to the great delight of Pineville, that a distinguished speaker 
 or two might come over to " improve the occasion " with 
 some slight allusion to the engrossing topic of " Southern 
 Eights." This combined appeal to the domestic and polit- 
 ical emotions of Pineville was irresistible. The Second 
 Baptist Church was crowded. After the religious service 
 there was a pause, and Judge Eead, stepping forward amid 
 a breathless silence, said that they were peculiarly honored 
 by the unexpected presence in their midst " of that famous 
 son of the South, Colonel Starbottle," who had lately re- 
 turned to his native soil from his adopted home in Califor- 
 nia. Every eye was fixed on the distinguished stranger as 
 he rose. 
 
 Jaunty and gallant as ever, femininely smooth-faced, yet 
 polished and high colored as a youthful mask ; pectorally 
 expansive, and unfolding the white petals of his waistcoat 
 through the swollen lapels of his coat, like a bursting mag- 
 nolia bud. Colonel Starbottle began. The present associa- 
 tions were, he might say, singularly hallowed to him ; not 
 Qnly was Pineville — a Southern centre — the recognized 
 nursery of Southern chivalry, Southern beauty (a stately 
 inclination to the pew in which Miss Sally and Julia Jeff- 
 court sat). Southern intelligence, and Southern independ- 
 ence, but it was the home of the lamented dead who had 
 been, like himself and another he should refer to later, an 
 adopted citizen of the Golden State, a seeker of the Golden 
 Fleece, a companion of Jason. It was the home, fellow 
 citizens and friends, ol the sorrowing sister of the deceased) 
 
446 COLONEL staebottle's client 
 
 a young lady whom he, the speaker, had as yet known 
 only through the chivalrous blazon of her virtues and 
 graces by her attendant knights (a courteous wave towards 
 the gallery where Joyce Masterton, Chester Brooks, Cal- 
 houn Bungstarter, and the embattled youth generally of 
 Pineville became empurpled and idiotic) ; it was the home 
 of the afflicted widowed mother, also personally unknown 
 to him, but with whom he might say he had had — er 
 — er — professional correspondence. But it was not this 
 alone that hallowed the occasion, it was a sentiment that 
 should speak in trumpet-like tones throughout the South 
 iii this uprising of an united section. It was the forget- 
 fulness of petty strife, of family feud, of personal wrongs 
 in the claims of party ! It might not be known that he, 
 the speaker, was professionally cognizant of one of these 
 regrettable — should he ^ay accidents ? — arising from the 
 chivalrous challenge and equally chivalrous response of two 
 fiery Southern spirits, to which they primarily owe their 
 coming here that day. And he should take it as his duty, 
 his solemn duty, in that sacred edifice to proclaim to the 
 world that in his knowledge as a professional man — as a 
 man of honor, as a Southerner, as a gentleman, that the — 
 er — circumstances which three years ago led to the early 
 demise of our lamented friend and brother, reflected only 
 the highest credit equally on both of the parties. He said 
 this on his own responsibility — in or out of this sacred 
 edifice — and in or out of that sacred edifice he was per- 
 sonally responsible, and prepared to give the fullest satis- 
 faction for it. He was also aware that it might not be 
 known — or understood — that since that boyish episode 
 the survivor had taken the place of the departed in the be- 
 reaved family and ministered to their needs with counsel 
 and — er — er — pecuniary aid, and had followed the body 
 afoot across the continent that it might rest with its kin- 
 dred dust. He was aware that an unchristian — he woiild 
 
GOLONEL STAEBOTTLE'S CLIENT 447 
 
 Bay but for that sacred edifice — a dastardly attempt had 
 been made to impugn the survivor's motives — to suggest 
 an unseemly discord between him and the family, but he, 
 the speaker, would never forget the letter breathing with 
 Christian forgiveness and replete with angelic simplicity 
 sent by a member of that family to his client, which came 
 under his professional eye (here the professional eye for a 
 moment lingered on the hysteric face of Miss Sally) ; he 
 did not envy the head or heart of a man who could peruse 
 these lines — of which the mere recollection — er — er — 
 choked the utterance of even a professional man like — er 
 ■ — himself — without emotion. " And what, my friends 
 and fellow citizens," suddenly continued the Colonel, re- 
 placing his white handkerchief in his coat-tail, " was the 
 reason why my client, Mr. Joseph Corbin — whose delicacy 
 keeps him from appearing among these mourners — comes 
 here to bury all differences, all animosities, all petty pas- 
 sions ? Because he is a son of the South ; because as a son 
 of the South, as the representative, and a distant connection, 
 I believe, of my old political friend. Major Corbin, of Nash- 
 ville, he wishes here and everywhere, at this momentous 
 crisis, to sink everything in the one all-pervading, all-ab- 
 sorbing, one and indivisible unity of the South in its resist- 
 ance to the Northern Usurper ! That, my friends, is the 
 great, the solemn, the Christian lesson of this most remark- 
 able occasion in my professional, political, and social expe- 
 rience." 
 
 Whatever might have been the c'almer opinion, there 
 Was no doubt that the gallant Colonel had changed the 
 prevailing illogical emotion of Pineville by the substitution 
 «f another equally illogical, and Miss Sally was not surprised 
 when her father, touched by the Colonel's allusion to bis 
 daughter's epistolary powers, insisted upon bringing Joseph 
 Corbin home with him, and offering him the hospitality of 
 the Dews mansion. Although the stranger seemed to yield 
 
448 COLONEL STAEBOTTLE'S CLIENT 
 
 rather from the fact that the Dows were relations of the 
 Jeffcourts than from any personal preference, when he was 
 fairly installed in one of the appropriately gloomy guest 
 chambers, Miss Sally set about the delayed work of recon- 
 ciliation — theoretically accepted by her father, and cyni- 
 cally tolerated by her Aunt Miranda. But here a difficulty 
 arose which she had not foreseen. Although Corbin had 
 evidently forgiven her defection on that memorable evening, 
 he had not apparently got over the revelation of her giddy 
 worldliness, and was resignedly apathetic and distrustful of 
 her endeavors. She was at first amused, and then angry. 
 And her patience was exhausted when she discovered that 
 he actually seemed more anxious to conciliate Julia Jeffcourt 
 than her mother. 
 
 " But she spat in your face," she said indignantly. 
 
 " That 's so," he replied gloomily ; " but I reckoned you 
 said something in one of your letters about turning the other 
 cheek when you were smitten. Of course, as you don't 
 believe it now," he added, with his upward glance, "I 
 suppose that 's been played on me, too." 
 
 But here Miss Sally's spirit lazily rebelled. 
 
 " Look here, Mr. Joseph Jeremiah Corbin," she returned, 
 with languid impertinence, " if instead of cavortin' round 
 on yo' knees trying to conciliate an old woman who never 
 had a stroke of luck till you killed her son, and a young 
 girl who won't be above letting on afore you think it that 
 your conciliatin' her means sparkin' her ; if instead of that 
 foolishness you 'd turn your hand to trying to conciliate the 
 folks here and keep 'em from going into that fool's act of 
 breaking up these United States ; if instead of digging up 
 second-hand corpses that's already been put out of sight 
 once you 'd set to work to try and prevent the folks about 
 here from digging up their old cranks and their old whims, 
 and their old women fancies, you 'd be doing something like 
 a Christian and a man ! What 's yo' blood-guiltiness — I 'd 
 
COLONEL STAKBOTTLE'S CLIENT 449 
 
 like to know — alongside of the blood-guiltiness of those 
 fools who are just wild to rush into it, led by such turkey- 
 cocks as yo' friend Colonel Starbottle ? And you 've been 
 five years in California — a free State — and that's all yo' 've 
 toted out of it — a dead body ! There now, don't sit there 
 and swing yo' hat under that chyar, but rouse out and come 
 along with me to the pawty if you can shake a foot, and 
 show Miss Pinkney and the gyrls yo' fit for something mo' 
 than to skirmish round as a black japanned spittoon for 
 Julia Jeffcourt ! " It is not recorded that Corbin accepted 
 this cheerful invitation, but for a few days afterwards he 
 was more darkly observant of, and respectful to, Miss Sally. 
 Strange indeed if he had not noticed — although always in 
 his resigned fashion — the dull green stagnation of the life 
 around him, or when not accepting it as part of his trouble 
 he had not chafed at the arrested youth and senile childish- 
 ness of the people. Stranger still if he had not at times 
 been startled to hear the outgrown superstitions and follies 
 of his youth voiced again by grown-up men, and perhaps 
 strangest of all if he had not vaguely accepted it all as the 
 hereditary curse of that barbarism under which he himself 
 had survived and suffered. 
 
 The reconciliation between himself and Mrs. Jeffcourt 
 was superficially effected, so far as a daily visit by him to 
 the house indicated it to the community, but it was also 
 known that Julia was invariably absent on these occasions. 
 What happened at those interviews did not transpire, but 
 it may be surmised that Mrs. Jeffcourt, perhaps recognizing 
 the fact that Corbin was really giving her all that he had to 
 give, or possibly having some lurking fear of Colonel Star- 
 bottle, was so far placated as to exhibit only the average 
 ingratitude of her species towards a regular benefactor. She 
 consented to the erection of a small obelisk over her son's 
 grave, and permitted Corbin to plant a few flowering shrubs, 
 which he daily visited and took care of. It is said that on 
 
450 COLONEL STAEBOTTLE'S CLIENT 
 
 one of these pilgrimages he encountered Miss Julia, appar- 
 ently on the same errand, who haughtily retired. It was 
 further alleged, on the authority of one of Mammy Judy's 
 little niggers, that those two black mourning figures had 
 been seen at nightfall sitting opposite to each other at the 
 head and foot of the grave, and " glowerin' " at one another 
 " like two ha:its." But when it was asserted on the same 
 authority that their voices had been later overheard uplifted 
 in some vehement discussion over the grave of the impassive 
 dead, great curiosity was aroused. Being pressed by the 
 eager Miss Sally to repeat some words or any words he had 
 'heard them say, the little witness glibly replied, "Marse 
 Linkum" (Lincoln), and "The Souf," and so, for the time, 
 shipwrecked his testimony. But it was recalled six months 
 afterwards. It was then that a pleasant spring day brought 
 madness and enthusiasm to a majority of Pineville, and 
 bated breath and awe to a few, and it was known with the 
 tidings that the South had appealed to arms, that among 
 those who had first responded to the call was Joseph Corbin, 
 an alleged " Union man," who had, however, volunteered 
 to take that place in her ranks which might have been filled 
 by the man he had killed. And then people forgot all 
 about him. 
 
 . • . . . ^ 
 
 A year passed. It was the same place ; the old familiax I 
 outlines of home and garden and landscape. But seen now, 
 in the choking breathlessness of haste, in the fitful chang- 
 ing flashes of life and motion around it, in intervals of 
 sharp suspense or dazed bewilderment, it seemed to be 
 recognized no longer. Men who had known it all their 
 lives hurrying to the front in compact masses, scurrying to 
 the rear in straggling line, or opening their ranks to let 
 artillery gallop by, stared at it vaguely, and clattered or 
 scrambled on again. The smoke of a masked battery ia 
 *Qie woods struggled and writhed to free itself from the 
 
COLONEL STAEBOTTLE'S CLIENT 451 
 
 slinging tree -tops behind it, and sank back into a gray 
 encompassing cloud. The dust thrown up- by a column of 
 passing horse poured over the wall in one long wave, and 
 whitened the garden with its ashes. Throughout the dim 
 empty house one no longer heard the sound of cannon, only 
 a dull intermittent concussion was felt, silently bringing 
 flakes of plaster from the walls, or sliding fragments of 
 glass from the shattered windows. A shell, lifted from the 
 ominous distance, hung uncertain in the air and then de- 
 scended swiftly through the roof ; the whole house dilated 
 with flame for an instant, smoke rolled slowly from the 
 windows, and even the desolate chimneys started into a 
 hideous mockery of life, and then all was still again. At 
 such awful intervals the sun shone out brightly, touched 
 the green of the still sleeping woods and the red and white 
 of a flower in the garden, and something in a gray uniform 
 writhed out of the dust of the road, staggered to the wall, 
 and died. 
 
 A mile down this road, growing more and more obscure 
 with those rising and falling apparitions or the shapeless 
 and rugged heaps terrible in their helpless inertia by hedge 
 and fence, arose the cemetery hill. Taken and retaken 
 thrice that afternoon, the dead above it far outnumbered 
 the dead below ; and when at last the tide of battle swept 
 around its base into the dull, reverberating woods, and it 
 emerged from the smoke, silenced and abandoned, only a 
 few stragglers remained. One of them, leaning on his 
 musket, was still gloomilj' facing the woods. 
 
 '• Joseph Corbin," said a low, hurried voice. 
 
 He started and glanced quickly at the tombs around him. 
 Perhaps it was because he had been thinking of the dead, 
 — but the voice sounded like his. Yet it was only the 
 sister, who had glided, pale and haggard, from the thicket. 
 
 " They are coming through the woods," she said quickly. 
 " Eun, or you 'II be taken. Why ^ you linger ? " 
 
452 COLONEL STAEBOTTLE'S CLIENT 
 
 " You know why," he said gloomily. 
 
 " Yes, but you have done yo' duty. You have done his 
 work. The task is finished now, and yo' free." 
 
 He did not reply, but remained gazing at the woods. 
 
 " Joseph," she said more gently, laying her trembling 
 hand on his arm, " Joseph, fly — and — take me with you. 
 For I was wrong, and I want you to forgive me. I knew 
 your heart was not in this, and I ought not to have asked 
 you. Joseph — listen ! I never wanted to avenge myself 
 nor him when I spat on your face. I wanted to avenge 
 myself on her. I hated her, because I thought she wanted 
 to work upon you and use you for herself." 
 
 " Your mother," he said, looking at her. 
 
 " No," she said, with widely opened eyes ; " you know 
 who I mean — Miss Sally." 
 
 He looked at her wonderingly for a moment, but quickly 
 bent his head again in the direction of the road. " They 
 are coming," he said, starting. "You must go. This is 
 no place for you. Stop ! it's too late ; you cannot go now 
 until they have passed. Come here — crouch down here 
 — over this grave — so." 
 
 He almost forced her — kneeling down — upon the 
 mound below the level of the shrubs, and then ran quickly 
 himself a few paces lower down the hill to a more exposed 
 position. She understood it. He wished to attract atten- 
 tion to himself. He was successful — a few hurried shots 
 followed from the road, but struck above him. 
 
 He clambered back quickly to where she was still crouch- 
 ing. 
 
 " They were the vedettes," he said, " but they have 
 fallen back on the main skirmish line and will be here in 
 force in a moment. Go — while you can." She had not 
 moved. He tried to raise her — her hat fell off — he saw 
 blood oozing from where the vedette's bullet that had 
 missed him had pierced her brain. 
 
COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT 453 
 
 And yet he saw in that pale dead face only the other 
 face which he remembered now had been turned like this 
 towards his own. It was very strange. And this was the 
 end, and this was his expiation ! He raised his own face 
 humbly, blindly, despairingly to the inscrutable sky ; it 
 looked back upon him from above as coldly as the dead face 
 had from below. 
 
 Yet out of this he struck a faint idea that he voiced aloud 
 in nearly the same words which he had used to Colonel 
 Starbottle only three years ago. " It was with his own 
 pistol too," he said, and took up his musket. 
 
 He walked deliberately down the hill, occasionally trying 
 the stock of his musket in the loose earth, and at last sud- 
 denly remained motionless, in the attitude of leaning over it. 
 At the same moment there was a distant shout ; two thin 
 parallel streams of blue and steel came issuing through the 
 woods like a river, appeared to join tumultuously in the open 
 before the hill, and out of the tumult a mounted officer called 
 upon him to surrender. 
 
 He did not reply. 
 
 " Come down from there, Johnny Eeb, I want to speak 
 to you," called a young corporal. 
 
 He did not move. 
 
 " It 's time to go home, Johnny." 
 
 No response. 
 
 The officer, who had been holding down his men with an 
 unsworded but masterful hand, raised it suddenly. A dozeu 
 shots followed. The men leaped forward, and dashing 
 Corbin contemptuously aside streamed up the hill past 
 him. 
 
 But he had neither heard nor cared. For they found he 
 had already deliberately transiixed himself through the heart 
 on his own bayonet. 
 
IN A PIONEER EESTAURANT 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Theke was probably no earthly reason why the "PocoMds 
 6 Menos " Club of San Francisco should have ever existed, 
 or why its five harmless, indistinctive members should not 
 have met and dined together as ordinary individuals. Still 
 less was there any justification for the gratuitous opinion 
 which obtained, that it was bold, bad, and brilliant. Look, 
 ing back upon it over a quarter of a century and half a globe, 
 I confess I cannot recall a single witticism, audacity, or hu- 
 morous characteristic that belonged to it. Yet there was 
 no doubt that we were thought to be extremely critical and 
 satirical, and I am inclined to think we honestly believed 
 it. To take our seats on Wednesdays and Saturdays at a 
 specially reserved table at the restaurant we patronized, to 
 be conscious of being observed by the other guests, and of 
 our waiter confidentially imparting our fame to strangers 
 behind the shaken-out folds of a napkin, and of knowing 
 that the faintest indication of merriment from our table 
 thrilled the other guests with anticipatory smiles, was, I am 
 firmly convinced, all that we ever did to justify our reputa- 
 tions. Nor, strictly speaking, were we remarkable as in- 
 dividuals : an assistant editor, a lawyer, a young army 
 quartermaster, a bank clerk, and a mining secretary — we 
 could not separately challenge any special social or literary 
 distinction. Yet I am satisfied that the very name of our 
 Club — a common Spanish colloquialism, literally meaning 
 " a little more or less," and adopted in Californian slang to 
 
IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT 455 
 
 express an unknown quantity — was supposed to be replete 
 with deep and convulsing humor. 
 
 My impression is that our extravagant reputation, and, 
 indeed, our continued existence as a Club, was due solely to 
 the proprietor of the restaurant and two of his waiters, and 
 that we were actually " run " by them. When the sug- 
 gestion of our meeting regularly there was first broached to 
 the proprietor — a German of slow but deep emotions — 
 he received it with a •' So " of such impressive satisfaction 
 that it might have been the beginning of our vainglory. 
 From that moment he became at once our patron and cur 
 devoted slave. To linger near our table once or twice dur- 
 ing dinner with an air of respectful vacuity, — as of one 
 who knew himself too well to be guilty of the presumption 
 of attempting to understand our brilliancy, — to wear a cer- 
 tain parental pride and unconsciousness in our fame, and 
 yet to never go further in seeming to comprehend it than to 
 obligingly translate the name of the Club as " a leedle more 
 and nod quide so much," — was to him sufficient happiness. 
 That he ever experienced any business profit from the custom 
 of the Club, or its advertisement, may be greatly doubted ; 
 on the contrary, that a few plain customers, nettled at our 
 self-satisfaction, might have resented his favoritism seemed 
 more probable. Equally vague, disinterested, and loyal was 
 the attachment of the two waiters, — one an Italian, faintly 
 reminiscent of better days and possibly superior extraction ; 
 the other a rough but kindly Western man, who might have 
 taken this menial position from temporary stress of circum- 
 stances, yet who continued in it from sheer dominance of 
 habit and some feebleness of will. They both vied with 
 each other to please us. It may have been they considered 
 their attendance upon a reputed intellectual company less 
 degrading than ministering to the purely animal and silent 
 wants of the average customers. It may have been that 
 they were attracted by our general youthfulness. Indeed, 
 
456 IN A PIONEEE EESTAUEANT 
 
 I am inclined to think that they themselves were much mora 
 distinctive and interesting than any members of the Club, 
 and it is to introduce theyn that I venture to recall so much 
 of its history. 
 
 A few months after our advent at the restaurant, one 
 evening, Joe Tallant, the mining secretary, one of our live- 
 liest members, was observed to be awkward and distrait 
 during dinner, forgetting even to offer the usual gratuity to 
 the Italian waiter who handed him his hat, although he 
 stared at him with an imbecile smile. As we chanced to 
 leave the restaurant together, I was rallying him upon his 
 abstraction, when to my surprise he said gravely : " Look 
 here, one of two things has got to happen : either we must 
 change our restaurant or I 'm going to resign." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Well, to make matters clear, I 'm obliged to tell you 
 something that in our business we usually keep a secret. 
 About three weeks ago I had a notice to transfer twenty 
 feet of Gold Hill to a fellow named ' Tournelli.' Well, 
 Tournelli happened to call for it himself, and who the devil 
 do you suppose Tournelli was ? Why, our Italian waiter. 
 I was regularly startled, and so was he. But business is 
 business ; so I passed him over the stock and said nothing 
 — nor did he — neither there nor here. Day before yes- 
 terday he had thirty feet more transferred to him, and sold 
 out." 
 
 "Well ? " I said impatiently. 
 
 "Well," repeated Tallant indignantly, "Gold Hill's 
 worth six hundred dollars a foot. That's eighteen thou- 
 sand dollars cash. And a man who 's good enough for that 
 much money is too good to wait upon me. Fancy a man 
 who could pay my whole year's salary with five feet of stock 
 slinging hash to me. Fancy you tipping him with a 
 quarter ! " 
 
 " But if he don't mind it — and prefers to continue a 
 
IN A PIONEEE IvESTAUEANT 457 
 
 waiter — why should you care ? And we 're not supposed 
 to know." 
 
 " That 's just it," groaned Tallant. " That's just where 
 the sell conies in. Think how he must chuckle over us ! 
 No, sir ! There 's nothing aristocratic about me ; but, by 
 thunder, if I can't eat my dinner, and feel I am as good as 
 the man who waits on me, I'll resign from the Club." 
 
 After endeavoring to point out to him the folly of such a 
 proceeding, I finally suggested that we should take the other 
 members of our Club into our confidence, and abide by their 
 decision ; to which he agreed. But, to his chagrin, the 
 others, far from participating in his delicacy, seemed to 
 enjoy Tournelli's unexpected wealth with a vicarious satis- 
 faction and increase of dignity as if we were personally 
 responsible for it. Although it had been unanimously 
 agreed that we should make no allusions, jocose or serious, 
 to him, nor betray any knowledge of it before him, I am 
 afraid our attitude at the next dinner was singularly artificial. 
 A nervous expectancy when he approached us, and a certain 
 restraint during his presence, a disposition to check any dis- 
 cussion of shares or " strikes " in mining lest he should 
 think it personal, an . avoidance of unnecessary or trifling 
 " orders," and a singular patience in awaiting their execu- 
 tion when given ; a vague hovering between sympathetic 
 respect and the other extreme of indifferent bluntness in 
 our requests, tended, I think, to make that meal far from 
 exhilarating. Indeed, the unusual depression affected the 
 unfortunate cause of it, who added to our confusion by 
 increased solicitude of service and — as if fearful of some 
 fault, or having incurred our disfavor — by a deprecatory 
 and exaggerated humility that in our sensitive state seemed 
 like the keenest irony. At last, evidently interpreting 
 our constraint before him into a desire to be alone, he retired 
 to the door of a distant pantry, whence he surveyed us with 
 dark and sorrowful Southern eyes. Tallant, who in this 
 
458- IN A PIONEER EESTAUKANT 
 
 general embarrassment had been imperfectly served, and 
 had eaten nothing, here felt his grievance reach its climax, 
 and in a sudden outbreak of recklessness he roared, out, 
 " Hi waiter — you, Tourne.lli. He may," he added, turn- 
 ing darkly to us, " buy up enough stock to control the 
 board and dismiss me ; but, by thunder, if it costs me my 
 place, I 'm going to have some more chicken ! " 
 
 It vpas probably this sensitiveness that kept us from 
 questioning him, even indirectly, and perhaps led us into 
 the wildest surmises. He was acting secretly for a brother- 
 hood or society of waiters ; he was a silent partner of his 
 German employer ; he was a disguised Italian stockbroker,, 
 gaining " points " from the unguarded conversation of 
 " operating " customers ; he was a political refugee with 
 capital ; he was a fugitive Sicilian bandit, investing his ill- 
 gotten gains in California ; he was a dissipated young noble- 
 man, following some amorous intrigue across the ocean, and 
 acting as his own Figaro or Leporello. I think a majority 
 of us favored the latter hypothesis, possibly because we 
 were young, and his appearance gave it color. His thin 
 black mustaches and dark eyes, we felt, were Tuscan and 
 aristocratic ; at least, they were like the baritone who 
 played those parts, and he ought to know. Yet nothing 
 could be more exemplary and fastidious than his conduct 
 towards the few lady frequenters of the "Poodle Dog" 
 restaurant, who, I regret to say, were not puritanically re- 
 served or conventual in manner. 
 
 But an unexpected circumstance presently changed and 
 divided our interest. It was alleged by Clay, the assistant 
 editor, that entering the restaurant one evening he saw the 
 back and tails of a coat that seemed familiar to him half 
 filling a doorway leading to the restaurant kitchen. It was 
 unmistakably the figure of one of our Club members, — the 
 young lawyer, — Jack Manners. But what was he doing 
 there ? While the Editor was still gazing after him, he 
 
IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT 459 
 
 suddenly disappeared, as if some one had warned him that 
 he was observed. As he did not reappear, when Toiirnelli 
 entered from the kitchen a few moments later, the Editor 
 called him and asked for his fellow member. To his sur- 
 prise the Italian answered, with every appearance of truth- 
 fulness, that he had not seen Mr. Manners at all ! The 
 Editor was staggered ; but as he chanced, some hours later, 
 to meet Manners, he playfully rallied him on his mysterious 
 conference with the Italian. Manners replied briefly that 
 he had had no interview whatever with Tournelli, and 
 changed the subject quickly. The mystery — as we per- 
 sisted in believing it — was heightened when another mem- 
 ber deposed that he had seen " Tom," the Western waiter, 
 coming from Manners's office. As Manners had volunteered 
 no information of this, we felt that we could not without 
 indelicacy ask him if Tom was a client, or a messenger 
 from Tournelli. The only result was that our Club dinner 
 was even more constrained than before. Not only was 
 " Tom " now invested with a dark importance, but it was 
 evident that the harmony of the Club was destroyed by 
 these singular secret relations of two of its members with 
 their employees. 
 
 It chanced that one morning, arriving from a delayed 
 journey, I dropped into the restaurant. It was that slack 
 hour between the lingering breakfast and coming luncheon 
 when the tables are partly stripped and unknown doors, 
 opened for ventilation, reveal the distant kitchen, and a 
 mingled flavor of cold coffee-grounds and lukewarm soups 
 hangs heavy on the air. To this cheerlessness was added 
 a gusty rain without, that filmed the panes of the windows 
 and doors, and veiled from the passer-by the usual tempting 
 display of snowy cloths and china. 
 
 As I seemed to be the only customer at that hour, I 
 selected a table by the window for distraction. Tom had 
 taken my order ; the other waiters, including Tournelli, 
 
460 IN A PIONEER EESTAUEANT 
 
 were absent, with the exception of a solitary German, ■who, 
 in the interlude of perfunctory trifling with the casters, 
 gazed at me with that abstracted irresponsibility which one 
 waiter assumes towards another's customer. Even the pro- 
 prietor had deserted his desk at the counter. It seemed to 
 be a favorable opportunity to get some information from 
 Tom. 
 
 But he anticipated me. When he had dealt a certain 
 number of dishes around me, as if they were cards and he 
 was telling my fortune, he leaned over the table and said, 
 with interrogating confidence : — 
 
 " I reckon you call that Mr. Manners of yours a good 
 lawyer ? " 
 
 We were very loyal to each other in the Club, and I re- 
 plied with youthful enthusiasm that he was considered one 
 of the most promising at the bar. And, remembering Tour- 
 nelli, I added confidently that whoever engaged him to look 
 after their property interests had secured a treasure. 
 
 " But is he good in criminal cases — before a police court, 
 for instance ? " continued Tom. 
 
 I believed — I don't know on what grounds — that Man- 
 ners was good in insurance and admiralty law, and that he 
 looked upon criminal practice as low ; but I answered 
 briskly — though a trifle startled — that as a criminal law- 
 yer he was perfect. 
 
 " He could advise a man, who had a row hanging on, 
 how to steer clear of being up for murder — eh ? " 
 
 I trusted, with a desperate attempt at jocosity, that 
 neither he nor Tournelli had been doing anything to require 
 Manners's services in that way. 
 
 " It would be too late, then," said Tom coolly, " and 
 anybody could tell a man what he ought to have done, or 
 how to make the best of what he had done ; but the smart 
 thing in a lawyer would be to give a chap points beforehand, 
 and sorter tell him how far he could go, and yet keep inside 
 
IN A PIONEER EESTATJEA.NT 461 
 
 the law. How he might goad a fellow to draw on him, and 
 then plug him — eh ? " 
 
 I looked up quickly. There was nothing in his ordinary, 
 good-humored, but not very strong face to suggest that he 
 himself was the subject of this hypothetical case. If he 
 were speaking for Tournelli, the Italian certainly was not 
 to be congratulated on his ambassador's prudence ; and, 
 above all. Manners was to be warned of the interpretation 
 which might be put upon his counsels, and disseminated 
 thus publicly. As I was thinking what to say, he moved 
 away, but suddenly returned again. 
 
 " What made you think Tournelli had been up to any- 
 thing ? " he asked sharply. 
 
 " Nothing," I answered ; " I only thought you and he, 
 being friends " — 
 
 " You mean we 're both waiters in the same restaurant. 
 Well, I don't know him any better than I know that chap 
 over there," pointing to the other waiter. " He 's a 
 Greaser or an Italian, and, I reckon, goes with his kind." 
 
 Why had we not thought of this before ? Nothing 
 would be more natural than that the rich and imperious 
 Tournelli should be exclusive, and have no confidences with 
 his enforced associates. And it was evident that Tom had 
 noticed it and was jealous. 
 
 " I suppose he 's rather a swell, is n't he ? " I suggested 
 tentatively. 
 
 A faint smile passed over Tom's face. It was partly 
 cynical and partly suggestive of that amused toleration of 
 our youthful credulity which seemed to be a part of that 
 discomposing patronage that everybody extended to the 
 Club. As he said nothing, I continued encouragingly : — 
 
 " Because a man 's a waiter, it does n't follow that he 's 
 always been one, or always will be." 
 
 " No," said Tom abstractedly ; " but it 's about as good 
 »a anything else to lie low and wait on." But here two 
 
462 IN A PIONEER EESTAURANT 
 
 customers entered, and he turned to them, leaving me in 
 doubt whether to accept this as a verbal pleasantry or an 
 admission. Only one thing seemed plain : I had certainly 
 gained no information, and only added a darker mystery to 
 his conference with Manners, which I determined I should 
 ask Manners to explain. 
 
 I finished my meal in solitude. The rain was still 
 beating drearily against the windows with an occasional 
 accession of impulse that seemed like human impatience. 
 Vague figures under dripping umbrellas, that hid their 
 faces as if in premeditated disguise, hurried from the main 
 thoroughfare. A woman in a hooded waterproof like a 
 domino, a Mexican in a black serape, might have been 
 stage conspirators hastening to a rendezvous. The cavern- 
 ous chill and odor which I had before noted as cotiiing 
 from some sarcophagus of larder or oven, where " funeral 
 baked meats" might have been kept in stock, began to 
 oppress me. The hollow and fictitious domesticity of this 
 common board had never before seemed so hopelessly dis- 
 played. And Tom, the waiter, his napkin twisted in his 
 hand and his face turned with a sudden dark abstraction 
 towards the window, appeared to be really ''lying low," 
 and waiting for something outside his avocation. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 The fact that Tom did not happen to be on duty at the 
 next Club dinner gave me an opportunity to repeat his 
 mysterious remark to Manners, and to jokingly warn that 
 rising young lawyer against the indiscretion of vague counsel. 
 Manners, however, only shrugged his shoulders. " I don't 
 know what he meant," he said carelessly ; " but since he 
 chooses to talk of his own aifairs publicly, I don't min(i 
 saying that they are neither very weighty nor very danger: 
 ous. It 's only the old story : the usual matrimonial infi- 
 delities that are mixed up with the Californian emigration. 
 He leaves the regular wife behind, — fairly or unfairly, I 
 can't say. She gets tired waiting, after the usual style, and 
 elopes with somebody else. The Western Penelope is n't 
 built for waiting. But she seems to have converted some 
 of his property into cash when she skipped from St. Louis, 
 and that 's where his chief concern comes in. That 's what 
 he wanted to see me for ; that 's why he inveigled me into 
 that infernal pantry of his one day to show me a plan of 
 his property, as if that was aay good." 
 
 He paused disgustedly. We all felt, I think, that Tom 
 was some kind of an impostor, claiming the sympathies of 
 the Club on false pretenses. Nevertheless, the Quarter- 
 master said, " Then you did n't do anything for him — give 
 him any advice, eh ? " 
 
 " Ko ; for the property 's as much hers as his, and he 
 has n't got a divorce ; and, as it 's doubtful whether he 
 did n't desert her first, he can't get one. He was surprised," 
 he added, with a grim smile, " when I told him that he was 
 
464 IN- A PIONEER RESTAURANT 
 
 obliged to support her, and was even liable for her debts. 
 But people who are always talking of invoking the law 
 know nothing about it." We were surprised too, although 
 Manners was always convincing us, in some cheerful but 
 discomposing way, that we were all daily and hourly, in our 
 simplest acts, making ourselves responsible for all sorts of 
 liabilities and actions, and even generally preparing ourselves 
 for arrest and imprisonment. The Quartermaster continued 
 lazily : — 
 
 " Then you did n't give him any points about shooting ? " 
 
 " No ; he does n't even know the man she went off with. 
 It was eighteen months ago, and I don't believe he 'd even 
 know her again if he met her. But, if he is n't much of a 
 client, we shall miss him to-night as a waiter, for the place 
 is getting full, and there are not enough to serve." 
 
 The restaurant was, indeed, unusually crowded that even- 
 ihg ; the more so that, the private rooms above being early 
 occupied, some dinner-parties and exclusive couples had 
 been obliged to content themselves with the public dining 
 saloon. A small table nearest us, usually left vacant to 
 insure a certain seclusion to the Club, was arranged, with a 
 deprecatory apology from the proprietor, for one of those 
 couples, a man and woman. The man was a well-known 
 speculator, — cool, yet reckless and pleasure-loving ; the 
 woman, good-looking, picturesquely attractive, self-conscious, 
 and self-possessed. Our propinquity was evidently neither 
 novel nor discomposing. As she settled her skirts in her 
 place, her bright, dark eyes swept our table with a frank, 
 almost childish, familiarity. The younger members of the 
 Club quite unconsciously pulled up their collars and settled 
 their neckties ; the elders as unconsciously raised their voices 
 slightly, and somewhat arranged their sentences. Alas ! the 
 simplicity and unaffectedness of the Club were again invaded. 
 
 Suddenly there was a crash, the breaking of glass, and 
 an exclamation. Tournelli, no doubt disorganized by the 
 
IN A PIONEER KESTAUKANT 465 
 
 unusual hurry, on his way to our table had dropped his tray, 
 impartially distributed a plate of asparagus over an adjoining 
 table, and, flushed and nervous, yet with an affectation of 
 studied calmness, was pouring the sauce into the young 
 Quartermaster's plate, in spite of his languid protests. At 
 any other time we would have laughed, but there was some- 
 thing in the exaggerated agitation of the Italian that checked 
 our mirth. Why should he be so upset by a trifling acci- 
 dent ? He could afi'ord to pay for the breakage ; he would 
 laugh at dismissal. Was .it the sensitiveness of a refined 
 nature, or — he was young and good-looking — was he dis- 
 concerted by the fact that our handsome neighbor had wit- 
 nessed his awkwardness ? But she was not laughing, and, 
 as far as I could see, was intently regarding the bill of fare. 
 
 " Waiter ! " called her companion, hailing Tournelli. 
 " Here ! " The Italian, with a face now distinctly white, 
 leaned over the table, adjusting the glasses, but did not 
 reply. 
 
 " Waiter ! " repeated the stranger sharply. Tournelli's 
 face twitched, then became set as a mask ; but he did not 
 move. The stranger leaned forward and pulled his apron 
 from behind. Tournelli started with flashing eyes, and 
 turned swiftly round. But the Quartermaster's hand had 
 closed on his wrist. 
 
 « That 's my knife, Tournelli." 
 
 The knife dropped from the Italian's fingers. 
 
 " Better see what he wants. It may not be that" said 
 the young officer, coolly but kindly. 
 
 Tournelli turned impatiently towards the stranger. We 
 alone had witnessed this incident, and were watching him 
 breathlessly. Yet what bade fair a moment ago to be a 
 tragedy, seemed now to halt grotesquely. For Tournelli, 
 throwing open his linen jacket with a melodramatic gesture, 
 tapped his breast, and with flashing eyes and suppressed ac- 
 cents said, " Sare ; you wantah me ? Look — I am herre ! " 
 
466 IN A PIONEER EESTAUEANT 
 
 The speculator leaned back in his chair in good-humorecf 
 astonishment. The lady's black eyes, ■without looking at 
 Tournelli, glanced backward round the room, and slipped 
 along our table with half-defiant unconcern ; and then she 
 uttered a short hysterical laugh. 
 
 " Ah ! ze lady — madame — ze signora — eh — she 
 wantah me ? " continued Tournelli, leaning on the table 
 with compressed fingers, and glaring at her. " Perhaps she 
 wantah Tournelli — eh ? " 
 
 " Well, you might bring some with the soup," blandly 
 replied her escort, who seemed to enjoy the Italian's excite- 
 ment as a national eccentricity ; " but hurry up and set the 
 table, will you ? " 
 
 Then followed, on the authority of the Editor, who un- 
 derstood Italian, a singular scene. Secure, apparently, in 
 his belief that his language was generally uncoraprehended, 
 Tournelli brought a decanter, and, setting it on the table, 
 said, " Traitress ! " in an intense whisper. This was fol- 
 lowed by the cruets, which he put down with the excla- 
 mation, " Perjured fiend ! " Two glasses, placed on either 
 side of her, carried the word " Apostate ! " to her ear; and 
 three knives and forks, rattling more than was necessary, 
 and laid crosswise before her plate, were accompanied with 
 " Tremble, wanton ! " Then, as he pulled the tablecloth 
 straight, and ostentatiously concealed a wine-stain with a 
 clean napkin, scarcely whiter than his lips, he articulated 
 under his breath:." Let him beware ! he goes not hence 
 alive ! I will slice his craven heart — thus — and thou 
 shalt see it." He turned quickly to a side table and 
 brought back a spoon. " And this is why I have not 
 found you ; " another spoon, " For this you have disap- 
 peared ; " a purely perfunctory polishing of her fork, " For 
 him, bah ! " an equally unnecessary wiping of her glass, 
 " Blood of God ! " — more wiping — " It will end ! Yes " 
 — general wiping and a final flourish over the whole table 
 
IN A PIONEER EESTAITKANT 467 
 
 with a napkin — "I go, but at the door I shall await you 
 both." 
 
 She had not spoken yet, nor even lifted her eyes. 
 When she did so, however, she raised them level with his, 
 showed all her white teeth — they were small and cruel- 
 looking — and said smilingly in his own dialect : — 
 
 " Thief ! " 
 
 Tournelli halted, rigid. 
 
 "You're talking his lingo, eh?" said her escort good 
 humoredly. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Well — tell him to bustle around and be a little live- 
 lier with the dinner, won't you ? This is only skirmish- 
 ing." 
 
 " You hear," she continued to Tournelli in a perfectly 
 even voice ; " or shall it be a policeman, and a charge of 
 stealing ? " 
 
 " Stealing ! " gasped Tournelli. " You say stealing ! " 
 
 " Yes — ten thousand dollars. You are well disguised 
 here, my little fellow ; it is a good business — yours. 
 Keep it while you can." 
 
 I think he would have sprung upon her there and then, 
 but that the Quartermaster, who was nearest him, and had 
 been intently watching his face, made a scarcely percepti- 
 ble movement as if ready to anticipate him. He caught 
 the officer's eye ; caught, I think, in ours the revelation 
 that he had been understood, drew back with a sidelong, 
 sinuous movement, and disappeared in the passage to the 
 kitchen. 
 
 I believe we all breathed more freely, although the situ- 
 ation was still full enough of impending possibilities to 
 prevent i)eaceful enjoyment of our dinner. As the Editor 
 finished his hurried translation, it was suggested that we 
 ought to warn the unsuspecting escort of Tournelli's 
 threats. But it was pointed out that this would be betray' 
 
468 IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT 
 
 ing the woman, and that Jo Hays (her companion) was 
 fully able to take care of himself. " Besides," said the 
 Editor aggrievedly, " you fellows only think of yourselves, 
 and you don't understand the first principles of journalism. 
 Do you suppose I 'm going to do anything to spoil a half 
 column of leaded brevier copy — from an eye-witness, too ? 
 No ; it 's a square enough fight as it stands. We must 
 look out for the woman, and not let Tournelli get an 
 unfair drop on Hays. That is, if the whole thing is n't 
 a bluff." 
 
 But the Italian did not return. Whether he had incon- 
 tinently fled, or was nursing his wrath in the kitchen, or 
 already fulfilling his threat of waiting on the pavement 
 outside the restaurant, we could not guess. Another waiter 
 appeared with the dinners they had ordered. A momentary 
 thrill of excitement passed over us at the possibility that 
 Tournelli had poisoned their soup ; but it presently lapsed, 
 as we saw the couple partaking of it comfortably, and chat- 
 ting wit) I apparent unconcern. Was the scene we had just 
 witnessed only a piece of Southern exaggeration ? Was 
 the woman a creature devoid of nerves or feeling of any 
 kind ; or was she simply a consummate actress ? Yet she 
 was clearly not acting, for in the intervals of conversation, 
 and even while talking, her dark eyes wandered carelessly 
 around the room, with the easy self-confidence of a pretty 
 woman. We were beginning to talk of something else, 
 when the Editor said suddenly, in a suppressed voice : — 
 
 " Hullo ! What 's the matter now ? " 
 
 The woman had risen, and was hurriedly throwing her 
 cloak over her shoulders. But it was her face that was 
 now ashen and agitated, and we could see that her hands 
 were trembling. Her escort was assisting her, but was evi- 
 dently as astonished as ourselves. " Perhaps," he suggested 
 hopefully, " if you wait a minute it will pass off." 
 
 " No, no," she gasped, still hurriedly wrestling with hei 
 
IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT 469 
 
 cloak. " Don't you see I 'm suffocating here — I want air. 
 You can follow ! " She began to move off, her face turned 
 fixedly in the direction of the door. We instinctively 
 looked there — perhaps for Tournelli. There was no one. 
 Nevertheless, the Editor and Quartermaster had half risen 
 from their seats. 
 
 " Helloo ! " said Manners suddenly. " There 's Tom just 
 come in. Call him ! " 
 
 Tom, evidently recalled from his brief furlough by the 
 proprietor on account of the press of custom, had just made 
 his appearance from the kitchen. 
 
 " Tom, where 's Tournelli ? " asked the Lawyer hur- 
 riedly, but following the retreating woman with his eyes. 
 
 " Skipped, they say. Somebody insulted him," said 
 Tom curtly. 
 
 " You did n't see him hanging round outside, eh ? Swear- 
 ing vengeance ? " asked the Editor. 
 
 " No," said Tom scornfully. 
 
 The woman had reached the door, and darted out of it 
 as her escort paused a moment at the counter to throw down 
 a coin. Yet in that moment she had hurried before him 
 through the passage into the street. I turned breathlessly 
 to the window. For an instant her face, white as a phan- 
 tom's, appeared pressed rigidly against the heavy plate-glass, 
 her eyes staring with a horrible fascination back into the 
 room — I even imagined at us. Perhaps, as it was evident 
 that Tournelli was not with her, she fancied he was still 
 here ; perhaps she had mistaken Tom for him ! However, 
 her escort quickly rejoined her ; their shadows passed the 
 windoty together — they were gone. 
 
 Then a pistol-shot broke the quiet of the street. 
 
 The Editor and Quartermaster rose and ran to the door. 
 Manners rose also, but lingered long enough to whisper to 
 nie, "Don't lose sight of Tom," and followed them. But 
 to my momentary surprise no one else moved. I had for* 
 
470 IN A PIONEER EESTAUKANT 
 
 gotten, in the previous excitement, that in those days a 
 pistol-shot was not unusual enough to attract attention. A 
 few raised their heads at the sound of running feet on the 
 pavement, and the flitting of hlack shadows past the win- 
 dows. Tom had not stirred, but, napkin in hand, and eyes 
 fixed on vacancy, was standing, as I had seen him once be- 
 fore, in an attitude of listless expectation. 
 
 In a few minutes Manners returned. I thought he 
 glanced oddly at Tom, who was still lingering in attend- 
 ance, and' I even fancied he talked to us ostentatiously for 
 his benefit. Yes, it was a row of Tournelli's. He was 
 waiting at the corner ; had rushed at Hays with a knife, 
 but had been met with a derringer-shot through his hat. 
 The lady, who, it seems, was only a chance steamer ac- 
 quaintance of Hays's, thought the attack must have been 
 meant for her, as she had recognized in the Italian a man 
 who had stolen from her divorced husband in the States, 
 two years ago, and was a fugitive from justice. At least 
 that was the explanation given by Hays, for the woman had 
 fainted and been driven off to her hotel by the Quarter- 
 master, and Tournelli had escaped. But the Editor was on 
 his track. " You did n't notice that lady, Tom, did you ? " 
 
 Tom came out of an abstracted study, and said, " No, 
 ehe had her back to me all the time." 
 
 Manners regarded him steadily for a moment without 
 speaking, but in a way that I could not help thinking was 
 much more embarrassing to the bystanders than to him. 
 When we rose to leave, as he placed his usual gratuity into 
 Tom's hand, he said carelessly, " You might drop into my 
 office to-morrow if you have anything to tell me." 
 
 " I have n't," said Tom quietly. 
 
 " Then I may have something to tell you." 
 
 Tom nodded, and turned away to his duties. 
 
 The Mining Secretary and myself could scarcely wait to 
 reach the street before we turned eagerly on Manners. 
 
IN A PIONEER EESTAUKANT 471 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " Well ; the woman you saw was Tom's runaway wife, 
 and Tournelli the man she ran away with." 
 
 " And Tom knew it ? " 
 
 " Can't say." 
 
 " And you mean to say that all this while Tom never 
 suspected him, and even did not recognize her just now ? " 
 
 Manners lifted his hat and passed his fingers through 
 his hair meditatively. " Ask me something easier, gentle- 
 
JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN" 
 
 It was growing dark, and the Sonora trail was becoming 
 more indistinct before me at every step. The diificulty had 
 increased over the grassy slope, where the overflow from 
 some smaller watercourse above had worn a number of 
 diverging gullies so like the trail as to be undistinguishable 
 from it. Unable to determine which was the right one, I 
 threw the reins over the mule's neck and resolved to trust 
 to that superior animal's sagacity, of which I had heard sc 
 much. But I had not taken into account the equally well- 
 known weaknesses of sex and species, and Chu Chu had 
 already shown uncontrollable signs of wanting her own 
 way. Without a moment's hesitation, feeling the relaxed 
 bridle, she lay down and rolled over. 
 
 In this perplexity the sound of horse's hoofs ringing out 
 of the rocky canon beyond was a relief, even if momentarily 
 embarrassing. An instant afterwards a horse and rider 
 appeared cantering round the hill on what was evidently 
 the lost trail, and pulled up as I succeeded in forcing Chu 
 Chu to her legs again. 
 
 " Is that the trail from Sonora ? " I asked. 
 
 " Yes ; " but with a critical glance at the mule, " I 
 reckon you ain't going thar to-night." 
 
 " Why not ? " 
 
 " It 's a matter of eighteen miles, and most of it a blind 
 trail through the woods after you take the valley." 
 
 " Is it worse than this ? " 
 
 " What 's the matter with this trail ? Ye ain't expecting 
 a, racecourse or a shell road over the foothills — are ye ? " 
 
JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN" 473 
 
 " Ko. Is there any hotel where I can stop ? " 
 
 " Nary." 
 
 " Nor any house ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Thank you. Good-night." 
 
 He had already passed on, when he halted again and 
 turned in his saddle. " Look yer. Just a spell over yon 
 canon ye '11 find a patch o' buckeyes ; turn to the right and 
 ye 'II see a trail. That '11 take ye to a shanty. You ask 
 if it 's Johnson's." 
 
 " Who 's Johnson ? " 
 
 " I am. You ain't lookin' for Vanderbilt or God Al- 
 mighty up here, are you ? Well, then, you hark to me, will 
 you ? You say to my old woman to give you supper and a 
 shakedown somewhar to-night. Say / sent you. So long." 
 
 He was gone before I could accept or decline. An 
 extraordinary noise proceeded from Chu Chu, not unlike a 
 suppressed chuckle. I looked sharply at her ; she coughed 
 affectedly, and, with her head and neck stretched to their 
 greatest length, appeared to contemplate her neat little off 
 fore shoe with admiring abstraction. But as soon as I had 
 mounted she set off abruptly, crossed the rocky canon, 
 apparently sighted the patch of buckeyes of her own voli- 
 tion, and without the slightest hesitation found the trail to 
 the right, and in half an hour stood before the shanty. 
 
 It was a log cabin with an additional " lean-to" of the 
 same material, roofed with bark, and on the other side a 
 larger and more ambitious "extension" built of rough, 
 unplaned, and unpainted redwood boards, lightly shingled. 
 The " lean-to " was evidently used as a kitchen, and the 
 central cabin as a living-room. The barking of a dog as I 
 approached called four children of different sizes to the open 
 door, where already an enterprising baby was feebly essay- 
 ing to crawl over a bar of wood laid across the threshold 
 to restrain it. 
 
474 JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN 
 
 " Is this Johnson's house ? " 
 
 My remark was really addressed to the eldest, a boy of 
 apparently nine or ten, but I felt that my attention was 
 unduly fascinated by the baby, who at that moment had 
 toppled over the bar, and was calmly eying me upside 
 down, while silently and heroically suffocating in its pet- 
 ticoats. The boy disappeared without replying, but pre- 
 sently returned with a taller girl of fourteen or fifteen. I 
 was struck with the way that, as she reached the door, 
 she passed her hands rapidly over the heads of the others 
 as if counting them, picked up the liaby, reversed it, shook 
 out its clothes, and returned it to the inside, without 
 even looking at it. The act was evidently automatic and 
 habitual. 
 
 I repeated my question timidly. 
 
 Yes, it was Johnson's, but he had just gone to King's 
 Mills. I replied, hurriedly, that I knew it, — that I had 
 met him beyond the canon. As I had lost my way and 
 could n't get to Sonora to-night, he had been good enough 
 to say that I might stay there until morning. My voice 
 was slightly raised for the benefit of Mr. Johnson's " old 
 woman," who, I had no doubt, was inspecting me furtively 
 from some corner. 
 
 The girl drew the children away, except the boy. To 
 him she said simply, " Show the stranger whar to stake out 
 his mule, 'Dolphus," and disappeared in the " extension " 
 without another word. I followed my little guide, who was 
 perhaps more actively curious, but equally unresponsive. 
 To my various questions he simply returned a smile of ex- 
 asperating vacuity. But he never took his eager eyes from 
 me, and I was satisfied that not a detail of my appearance 
 escaped him. Leading the way behind the house to a little 
 wood, whose only " clearing " had been effected by decay 
 or storm, he stood silently apart while T picketed Chu Chu. 
 neither offering to assist me, nor opposing any interruption 
 
JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN" 475 
 
 to my survey of the locality. There was no trace of human 
 cultivation in the surroundings of the cahin ; the wilderness 
 still trod sharply on the heels of the pioneer's fresh foot- 
 prints, and even seemed to obliterate them. Eor a few 
 yards around the actual dwelling there was an unsavory 
 fringe of civilization in the shape of cast-off clothes, empty 
 bottles, and tin cans, and the adjacent thorn and elder 
 bushes blossomed unwholesomely with bits of torn white 
 paper and bleaching dish-cloths. This hideous circle nevei 
 widened ; Nature always appeared to roll back the intruding 
 debris ; no bird nor beast carried it away ; no animal ever 
 forced the uncleanly barrier ; civilization remained grimly 
 trenched in its own exuvia. The old terrifying girdle of 
 fire around the hunter's camp was not more deterring to 
 curious night prowlers than this coarse and accidental out- 
 work. 
 
 When I regained the cabin I found it empty, the doors 
 of the lean-to and extension closed, but there was a stool 
 set before a rude table, upon which smoked a tin cup of 
 coflfee, a tin dish of hot saleratus biscuit, and a plate of fried 
 beef. There was something odd and depressing in this silent 
 exclusion of my presence. Had Johnson's " old woman " 
 from some dark post of observation taken a dislike to my 
 appearance, or was this churlish withdrawal a peculiarity of 
 Sierran hospitality ? Or was Mrs. Johnson young and pretty, 
 and hidden under the restricting ban of Johnson's jealousy, 
 or was she a deformed cripple, or even a bedridden crone ? 
 From the extension at times came a murmur of voices, but 
 never the accents of adult womanhood. The gathering dark- 
 ness, relieved only by a dull glow from the smouldering 
 logs in the adobe chimney, added to my loneliness. In the 
 circumstances I knew I ought to have put aside the repast 
 and given myself up to gloomy and pessimistic reflection ; 
 but Nature is often inconsistent, and in that keen mountain 
 air, I grieve to say, my physical and moral condition was 
 
476 JOHNSON'S " OLD WOMAN " 
 
 not in that perfect accord always indicated by romancers. I 
 had an appetite and I gratified it ; dyspepsia and ethical 
 reflections might come later. I ate the saleratus biscuit 
 cheerfully, and was meditatively finishing my oofiee when a 
 gurgling sound from the rafters above attracted my atten- 
 tion. I looked up ; under the overhang of the bark roof 
 three pairs of round eyes were fixed upon me. They be- 
 longed to the children I had previously seen, who, in the 
 attitude of Eaphael's cherabs, had evidently been deeply 
 interested spectators of my repast. As our eyes met an 
 inarticulate giggle escaped the lips of the youngest. 
 
 I never could understand why the shy amusement of 
 children over their elders is not accepted as philosophically 
 by its object as when it proceeds from an equal. We fondly 
 believe that when Jones or Brown laughs at us it is from, 
 malice, ignorance, or a desire to show his superiority, but 
 there is always a haunting suspicion in our minds that these 
 little critics really see something in us to laugh at. I, how- 
 ever, smiled affably in return, ignoring any possible gro- 
 tesqueness in my manner of eating in private. 
 
 " Come here, Johnny," I said blandly. 
 
 The two elder ones, a girl and a boy, disappeared in- 
 stantly, as if the crowning joke of this remark was too much 
 for them. From a scraping and kicking against the log 
 wall I judged that they had quickly dropped to the ground 
 outside. The younger one, the giggler, remained fascinated, 
 but ready to fly at a moment's warning. 
 
 " Come here, Johnny, boy," I repeated gently. " I want 
 you to go to your mother, please, and tell her " — 
 
 But here the child, who had been working its face con- 
 vulsively, suddenly uttered a lugubrious howl and disap- 
 peared also. I ran to the front door and looked out in time 
 to see the tallest girl, who had received me, walking away 
 with the child under her arm, pushing the boy ahead of her, 
 and looking back over her shoulder, not unlike a youthful 
 
JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN" 477 
 
 she-bear conducting her cubs from danger. She disappeared 
 at the end of the extension, where there was evidently 
 another door. 
 
 It was very extraordinary. It was not strange that I 
 turned back to the cabin with a chagrin and mortification 
 which for a moment made me entertain the wild idea of 
 saddling Chu Chu, and shaking the dust of that taciturn 
 house from my feet. But the ridiculousness of such an act, 
 to say nothing of its ingratitude, as quickly presented it- 
 self to me. Johnson had offered me only food and shelter ; 
 I could have claimed no more from the inn I had asked him 
 to direct me to. I did not reenter the house, but, lighting 
 my last cigar, began to walk gloomily up and down the trail. 
 With the outcoming of the stars it had grown lighter ; 
 through a wind opening in the trees I could see the heavy 
 bulk of the opposite mountain, and beyond it a superior 
 crest defined by a red line of forest fire, which, however, 
 cast no reflection on the surrounding earth or sky. Faint 
 woodland currents of air, still warm from the afternoon sun, 
 stirred the leaves around me with long-drawn aromatic 
 breaths. But these in time gave way to the steady Sierran 
 night wind sweeping down from the higher summits, and 
 rocking the tops of the tallest pines, yet leaving the tran- 
 quillity of the dark lower aisles unshaken. It was very 
 quiet ; there was no cry nor call of beast or bird in the 
 darkness; the long rustle of the tree-tops sounded as faint 
 as the far-off wash of distant seas. Nor did the resemblance 
 cease there ; the close-set files of the pines and cedars, 
 stretching in illimitable ranks to the horizon, were 'filled 
 with the immeasurable loneliness of an ocean shore. In 
 this vast silence I began to think I understood the taciturnity 
 of the dwellers in the solitary cabin. 
 
 When I returned, however, I was surprised to find the 
 tallest girl standing by the door. As I approached she 
 letreated before me, and pointing to the corner where a com- 
 
478 JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN" 
 
 mon cot bed had been evidently just put up, said, " Ye can 
 turn in thar, only ye '11 have to rouse out early when 'Dol- 
 phus does the chores," and was turning towards the exten- 
 sion again, when I stopped her almost appealingly. 
 
 " One moment, please. Can I see your mother ? " 
 
 She stopped and looked at me with a singular expression. 
 Then she said sharply : — 
 
 " You know, fust rate, she 's dead." 
 
 She was turning away again, but I think she must have 
 seen my concern in my face, for she hesitated. " But," I 
 said quickly, " I certainly understood your father, that is, 
 Mr. Johnson," I added interrogatively, " to say that I was 
 to speak to " — I did n't like to repeat the exact phrase — 
 " his wife." 
 
 " I don't know what he was playin' ye for," she said 
 shortly. " Mar has been dead mor'n a year." 
 
 " But," I persisted, " is there no grown-up woman 
 here ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Then who takes care of you and the children ? " 
 
 "I do." 
 
 " Yourself and your father — eh ? " 
 
 " Dad ain't here two days running, and then on'y to 
 sleep." 
 
 " And you take the entire charge of the house ? " 
 
 " Yes, and the log tallies." 
 
 "The log tallies?" 
 
 " Yes ; keep count and measure the logs that go by th*- 
 slide." 
 
 It flashed upon me that I had passed the slide or de- 
 clivity on the hillside, where logs were slipped down into 
 the valley, and I inferred that Johnson's business was cut- 
 ting timber for the mill. 
 
 " But you 're rather young for all this work," I sug' 
 gested. 
 
JOHNSON'S " OLD WOMAN " 479 
 
 "I 'm goin' on sixteen," she said gravely. 
 
 Indeed, for the matter of that, she might have been any 
 age. Her face, on which sunburn took the place of com- 
 plexion, was already hard and set. But on a nearer view 
 I was struck with the fact that her eyes, which were not 
 large, were almost indistinguishable from the presence of 
 the most singular eyelashes I had ever seen. Intensely 
 black, intensely thick, and even tangled in their profusion, 
 they bristled rather than fringed her eyelids, obliterating 
 everything but the shining black pupils beneath, which 
 were like certain lustrous hairy mountain berries. It was 
 this woodland suggestion that seemed to uncannily connect 
 her with the locality. I went on playfully : — 
 
 " That 's not very old — but tell me — does your father, 
 or did your father, ever speak of you as his ' old woman ' ? " 
 
 She nodded. "Then you thought I was mar?" she 
 said, smiling. 
 
 It was such a relief to see her worn face relax its expres- 
 sion of pathetic gravity — although this operation quite 
 buried her eyes in their black thickset hedge again — that 
 I continued cheerfully, " It was n't m\ich of a mistake, 
 considering all you do for the house and family." 
 
 " Then you did n't tell Billy ' to go and be dead in the 
 ground with mar,' as he 'lows you did ? " she said half 
 suspiciously, yet trembling on the edge of a smile. 
 
 No, I had not, but I admitted that my asking him to go 
 to his mother might have been open to this dismal construc- 
 tion by a sensitive infant mind. She seemed mollified, 
 and again turned to go. 
 
 " Good-night, Miss — you know your father did n't tell 
 me your real name," I said. 
 
 " Karline ! " 
 
 " Good-night, Miss Karline." 
 
 I held out my hand. 
 
 She looked at it and then at me through her intricate ey( 
 
480 JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN" 
 
 laslies. Then she struck it aside briskly, but not unkindly^ 
 jaid " Quit foolin', now," as she might have said to one of 
 the children, and disappeared through the inner door. Not 
 knowing whether to be amused or indignant, I I'emained 
 silent a moment. Then I took a turn outside in the in- 
 creasing darkness, listened to the now hurrying wind over 
 the tree-tops, reentered the cabin, closed the door, and went 
 to bed. 
 
 But not to sleep. Perhaps the responsibility towards 
 these solitary children, which Johnson had so lightly 
 shaken off, devolved upon me as I lay there, for I found 
 myself imagining a dozen emergencies of their unprotected 
 state, with which the elder girl could scarcely grapple. 
 There was little to fear from depredatory man or beast, — 
 desperadoes of the mountain trail never stooped to ignoble 
 burglary, bear or panther seldom approached a cabin, — hut 
 there was the chance of sudden illness, fire, the accidente 
 that beset childhood, to say nothing of the narrowing moral 
 and mental effect of their isolation at that tender age. It 
 was scandalous in Johnson to leave them alone. 
 
 In the silence I found I could hear quite distinctly the 
 sound of their voices in the extension, and it was evident 
 that Caroline was putting them to bed. Suddenly a voice 
 was uplifted — her own ! She began to sing and the others 
 to join her. It was the repetition of a single verse of a 
 well-known lugubrious negro melody. " All the world am 
 sad and dreary," wailed Caroline, in a high head-note, 
 " everywhere I roam." " Oh, darkieth," lisped the younger 
 girl in response, " how my heart growth weary, far from the 
 old folkth at h-o-o-me." This was repeated two or three 
 times before the others seemed to get the full swing of it, 
 and then the lines rose and fell sadly and monotonously in 
 ■She darkness. I don't know why, but I at once got the 
 impression that those motherless little creatures were under 
 i vague belief that their performance was devotional, and 
 
JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN" 481 
 
 was really filling the place of an evening hymn. A brief 
 and indistinct kind of recitation, followed by a dead silence, 
 broken only by the slow creaking of new timber, as if the 
 house were stretching itself to sleep too, confirmed my 
 impression. Then all became quiet again. 
 
 But I was more wide awake than before. Finally I rose, 
 dressed myself, and dragging my stool to the fire, took a 
 book from my knapsack, and by the light of a guttering 
 candle, which I discovered in a bottle in the corner of the 
 hearth, began to read. Presently I fell into a doze. How 
 long I slept I could not tell, for it seemed to me that a 
 dreamy consciousness of a dog barking at last forced itself 
 upon me so strongly that I awoke. The barking appeared 
 to come from behind the cabin in the direction of the clear- 
 ing where I had tethered Chu Chu. I opened the door 
 hurriedly, ran round the cabin towards the hollow, and was 
 almost at once met by the bulk of the frightened Chu Chu, 
 plunging out of the darkness towards me, kept only in 
 check by her riata in the hand of a blanketed shape slowly 
 advancing with a gun over its shoulder out of the hollow. 
 Before I had time to recover from my astonishment I was 
 thrown into greater confusion by recognizing the shape as 
 none other than Caroline ! 
 
 Without the least embarrassment or even self-conscious- 
 ness of her appearance, she tossed the end of the riata to 
 me with the curtest explanation as she passed by. Some 
 prowling bear or catamount had frightened the mule. I 
 had better tether it before the cabin away from the wind. 
 
 "But I thought wild beasts never came so near," I said 
 quickly. 
 
 " Mule meat 's mighty temptin'," said the girl senten- 
 tiously and passed on. I wanted to thank her ; I wanted 
 to say how sorry I was that she had been disturbed ; I 
 wanted to compliment her on her quiet midnight courage, 
 and yet warn her against recklessness ; I wanted to know 
 
482 JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN" 
 
 whether she had been accustomed to such alarms ; and if 
 the gun she carried was really a necessity. But I could 
 only respect her reticence, and I was turning away when I 
 was struck by a more inexplicable spectacle. As she neared 
 the end of the extension I distinctly saw the tall figure of 
 a man, moving with a certain diffidence and hesitation that 
 did not, however, suggest any intention of concealment, 
 among the trees ; the girl apparently saw him at the 
 same moment and slightly slackened her pace. Not more 
 than a dozen feet separated them. He said something that 
 was inaudible to my ears, — but whether from his hesita- 
 tion or the distance I could not determine. There was no 
 such uncertainty in her reply, however, which was given in 
 her usual curt fashion : " All right. You can traipse along 
 home now and turn in." 
 
 She turned the corner of the extension and disappeared. 
 The tall figure of the man wavered hesitatingly for a mO' 
 ment, and tlien vanished also. But I was too much excited 
 by curiosity to accept this unsatisfactory conclusion, and, 
 hastily picketing Chu Chu a few rods from the front door, 
 I ran after him, with an instinctive feeling that he had not 
 gone far. I was right. A few paces distant he had halted 
 in the same dubious, lingering way. " Hallo ! " I said. 
 
 He turned towards me in the like awkward fashion, but 
 with neither astonishment nor concern. 
 
 " Come up and take a drink with me before you go," I 
 said, " if you 're not in a hurry. I 'm alone here, and 
 since I have turned out I don't see why we might n't have 
 a smoke and a talk together." 
 
 " I durs n't." 
 
 I looked up at the six feet of strength before me and 
 repeated wonderingly, " Dare not ? " 
 
 " She would n't like it." He made a movement with 
 his right shoulder towards the extension. 
 
 " Who ? " 
 
JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN" 483 
 
 " Miss Karline." 
 
 " Nonsense ! " I said. " She is n't in the cabin, — you 
 won't see her. Come along." He hesitated, although 
 from what I could discern of his bearded face it was weakly 
 smiling. 
 
 " Come." 
 
 He obeyed, following me not unlike Chu Chu, I fancied, 
 with the same sense of superior size and strength and a 
 slight whitening of the eye, as if ready to shy at any mo- 
 ment. At the door he " backed." Then he entered side- 
 ways. I noticed that he cleared the doorway at the top and 
 the sides only by a hair's breadth. 
 
 By the light of the fire I could see that, in spite of his 
 full first growth of beard, he was young, — even younger 
 than myself, — and that he was by no means bad looking. 
 As he still showed signs of retreating at any moment, I 
 took my flask and tobacco from my saddle-bags, handed 
 them to him, pointed to the stool, and sat down myself 
 upon the bed. 
 
 " You live near here ? " 
 
 " Yes," he said a little abstractedly, as if listening for 
 some interruption, " at Ten Mile Crossing." 
 
 " Why, that 's two miles away." 
 
 "I reckon." 
 
 " Then you don't live here — on the clearing ? " 
 
 " No. I b'long to the mill at ' Ten Mile.' " 
 
 " You were on your way home ? " 
 
 " No," he hesitated, looking at his pipe ; " I kinder 
 meander round here at this time, when Johnson 's away, to 
 see if everything 's goin' straight." 
 
 " I see — you 're a friend of the family." 
 
 " 'Deed no ! " He stopped, laughed, looked confused, 
 and added, apparently to his pipe, " That is, a sorter friend. 
 Not much. She " — he lowered his voice as if that poten- 
 tial personality filled the whole cabin — " would n't like it." 
 
484 JOHNSON'S " OLD WOMAN " 
 
 " Then at night, when Johnson 's away, you do sentry 
 duty round the house ? " 
 
 " Yes, ' sentry dooty,' that 's it," — he seemed impressed 
 with the suggestion, — "that 's it ! Sentry dooty. You 've 
 struck it, pardner." 
 
 " And how often is Johnson away ? " 
 
 '"Bout two or three times a week on an average." 
 
 " But Miss Caroline appears to he ahle to take care of 
 herself. She has no fear." 
 
 " Fear ! Eear was n't hangin' round when she was 
 horn ! " He paused. " No, sir. Did ye ever look into 
 them eyes ? " 
 
 I had n't, on account of the lashes. But I did n't care 
 to say this, and only nodded. 
 
 " There ain't the created thing livin' or dead, that she 
 can't stand straight up to and look at." 
 
 I wondered if he had fancied she experienced any diffi- 
 culty in standing up before that innocently good-humored 
 face, but I could not resist saying : — 
 
 " Then I don't see the use of your walking four miles to 
 look after her." 
 
 I was sorry for it the next minute, for he seemed to have 
 awkwardly broken his pipe, and had to bend down for a 
 long time afterwards to laboriously pick up the smallest 
 fragments of it. At last he said cautiously : — 
 
 " Ye noticed them bits o' flannin' round the chillern's 
 throats ? " 
 
 I remembered that I had, but was uncertain whether it 
 was intended as a preventive of cold or a child's idea of 
 decoration. ' I nodded. 
 
 " That 's their trouble. One night, when old Johnson 
 had been off for three days to Coulterville, I was prowling 
 round here and I did n't git to see no one, though there was 
 a light burnin' in the shanty all night. The next night I 
 was here again, — the same light twinklin', but no one 
 
JOHNSON'S " OLD WOMAN " 485 
 
 about. I reckoned that was mighty queer, and I jess crep' 
 up to the house an' listened. I heard suthin' like a little 
 cough oncet in a while, and at times suthin' like a little 
 moan. I did n't durst to sing out for I knew she would n't 
 like it, but whistled keerless like, to let the chillern know 
 I was there. But it did n't seem to take. I was jess 
 goin' off, when — darn my skin ! — if I did n't come across 
 the bucket of water I 'd fetched up from the spring that 
 mornhi', standin' there full, and never taken in / 'When 
 I saw that I reckoned I 'd jess wade in, anyhow, and I 
 knocked. Pooty soon the door was half opened, and I saw 
 her eyes blazin' at me like them coals. Then she 'lowed 
 I 'd better ' git up and git,' and shet the door to ! Then 
 I 'lowed she might tell me what was up — through the 
 door. Then she said through the door, as how the chillern 
 lay all sick with that hoss-distemper, diphthery. Then she 
 'lowed she 'd use a doctor ef I 'd fetch him. Then she 
 'lowed again I 'd better take the baby that had n't ketohed 
 it yet along with me, and leave it where it was safe. Then 
 she passed out the baby through the door all wrapped up in 
 a blankit like a papoose, and you bet I made tracks with 
 it. I knowed thar was n't no good going to the mill, so 
 I let out for White's, four miles beyond, whar there was 
 White's old mother. I told her how things were pointin', 
 and she lent me a hoss, and I jess rounded on Dr. Green 
 at Mountain Jim's, and had him back here afore sun-up ! 
 And then I heard she wilted, — regularly played out, you 
 see, — for she had it all along wuss than the lot, and never 
 let on or whimpered ! " 
 
 " It was well you persisted in seeing her that night," 1 
 said, watching the rapt expression of his face. He looked 
 up quickly, became conscious of my scrutiny, and dropped 
 his eyes again, smiled feebly, and drawing a circle in the 
 ashes with the broken pipe-stem, said : — 
 
 " But she did n't like it, though." 
 
486 JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN" 
 
 I suggested, a little -warmly, that if she allowed her fa- 
 ther to leave her alone at night with delicate children, she 
 had no right to choose who should assist her in an emer- 
 gency. It struck me afterwards that this was not very 
 complimentary to him, and I added hastily that I wondered. 
 if she expected some young lady to be passing along the 
 trail at midnight! But this reminded me of Johnson's 
 style of argument, and I stopped. 
 
 "Yes," he said meekly, "and ef she didn't keer enough 
 for herself and her brothers and sisters, she orter remember 
 them Beazeley chillern." 
 
 " Beazeley children ? " I repeated wonderingly. 
 
 " Yes ; them two little ones, the size of Mirandy ; they 're 
 Beazeley's." 
 
 "Who is Beazeley, and what are his children doing 
 here ? " 
 
 " Beazeley up and died at the mill, and she bedeviled 
 her father to let her take his two young uns here." 
 
 " You don't mean to say that with her other work she 's 
 taking care of other people's children too ? " 
 
 " Yes, and eddicatin' them." 
 
 " Educating them ? " 
 
 " Yes ; teachin' them to read and write and do sums. 
 One of our loggers ketched her at it when she was keepin' 
 tally." 
 
 We were both silent for some moments. 
 
 " I suppose you know Johnson ? " 1 said finally. 
 
 " Not much." 
 
 " But you call here at other times than when you 're 
 helping her ? " 
 
 " Never been in the house before." 
 
 He looked slowly around him as he spoke, raising his 
 eyes to the bare rafters above, and drawing a few long 
 breaths, as if he were inhaling the aura of some unseen pre- 
 sence. He appeared so perfectly gratified and contented, and 
 
JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN" 487 
 
 I was so impressed with this humble and sileni absorption 
 of the sacred interior, that I felt vaguely conscious that any 
 interruption of it was a profanation, and I sat still, gazing 
 at the dying fire. Presently he arose, stretched out his 
 hand, shook mine warmly, said, " I reckon I '11 meander 
 along," took another long breath, this time secretly, as if 
 conscious of my eyes, and then slouched sideways out of the 
 house into the darkness again, where he seemed suddenly 
 to attain his full height, and so looming, disappeared. I 
 shut the door, went to bed, and slept soundly. 
 
 So soundly that when I awoke the sun was streaming on 
 my bed from the open door. On the table before me my 
 breakfast was already laid. When I had dressed and eaten 
 it, struck by the silence, I went to the door and looked out. 
 'Dolph"us was holding Chu Chu by the riata a lew paces 
 from the cabin. 
 
 " Where 's Caroline ? " I asked. 
 
 He pointed to the woods and said, " Over yon : keeping 
 tally." 
 
 " Did she leave any message ? " 
 
 " Said I was to git your mule for you." 
 
 " Anything else ? " 
 
 " Yes ; said you was to go." 
 
 I went, but not until I had scrawled a few words of 
 thanks on a leaf of my note-book, which I wrapped about 
 my last Spanish dollar, addressed it to " Miss Johnson," 
 and laid it upon the table. 
 
 It was more than a year later that in the bar-room of the 
 Mariposa Hotel a hand was laid upon my sleeve. I looked 
 up. It was Johnson. 
 
 He drew from his pocket a Spanish dollar. " I reck- 
 oned," he said cheerfully, "I'd run agin ye somewhar 
 some time. My old woman told me to give ye that when 
 I did, and say that she ' did n't keep no hotel.' But she 
 
488 JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN" 
 
 allowed she 'd keep the letter, and has spelled it out to the 
 chillern." 
 
 Here was the opportunity I had longed for to touch John- 
 son's pride and affection in the brave but unprotected girl. 
 " I want to talk to you about Miss Johnson," I said 
 eagerly. 
 
 " I reckon so," he said, ■with an exasperating smile. 
 " Most fellers do. But she ain't Miss Johnson no more. 
 She 's married." 
 
 " Not to that big chap over from Ten Mile Mills ? " I 
 said breathlessly. 
 
 " What 's the matter with him" said Johnson. " Ye 
 did n't expect her to marry a nobleman, did ye ? " 
 
 I said I did n't see why she should n't — and believed 
 '^hat she had. 
 
A TREASURE OF THE REDWOODS 
 
 AND OTHER TALES 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 A Tkeasuke of the Bedwoods i . 1 
 
 A Belle of CaSada City ........ 24 
 
 A Jack and Jill of the Sierras 66 
 
 Under the Eaves 91 
 
 How Keuben Allen "Saw Life" in San Francisco . . 114 
 
 Bohemian Days in San Francisco 134 
 
 A Vision of the Fountain 166 
 
 A Romance of the Line 168 
 
 A Buckeye Hollow Inheritance 193 
 
 Miss Peggy's Prot^g^s 219 
 
 The Goddess of Excelsior 232 
 
 How I WENT TO THE MiNES 261 
 
 Condensed Novels, Second Series 
 
 Rupert the Eesembler. By A-th-y B-pe . . . 263 
 
 The Stolen Cigar Case, By A. Co-n D-le . . . 279 
 Golly and the Christian, or the Minx and the 
 
 Manxman. By H-ll C-ne 290 
 
 The Adventures of John Longbowe, Yeoman . . 307 
 
 Dan'l Borem. By E. N-s W-t-t 316 
 
 Stories Three. By S-dy-d K-pl-g 
 
 For Simla Reasons 333 
 
 A Private's Honor 338 
 
 Jungle Folk 341 
 
 "Zut-Ski." By M^-e C-^i 347 
 
A TREASURE OF THE REDWOODS, AND 
 OTHER TALES 
 
 A TEEASUEE OF THE EEDWOODS 
 
 PAET I 
 
 Mk. Jack Fleming stopped suddenly before a lifeless 
 and decaying redwood-tree with an expression of disgust 
 and impatience. It was the very tree he had passed only 
 an hour before, and he now knew he had been describing 
 that mysterious and hopeless circle familiar enough to those 
 lost in the woods. 
 
 There was no mistaking the tree, with its one broken 
 branch which depended at an angle like the arm of a sema- 
 phore ; nor did it relieve his mind to reflect that his mishap 
 was partly due to his own foolish abstraction. He was re- 
 turning to camp from a neighboring mining town, and while 
 indulging in the usual day-dreams of a youthful prospector, 
 had deviated from his path in attempting to make a short 
 cut through the forest. He had lost the sun, his only guide, 
 in the thickly interlaced boughs above him, which suffused 
 through the long columnar vault only a vague, melancholy 
 twilight. He had evidently penetrated some unknown se- 
 clusion, absolutely primeval and untrodden. The thick layers 
 of decaying bark and the desiccated dust of ages dead- 
 ened his footfall and invested the gloom with a profound 
 silence. 
 
 As he stood for a moment or two, irresolute, his ear, by 
 
2 A TREASURE OF THE REDWOODS 
 
 this time attuned to the stillness, caught the faint but dis- 
 tinct lap and trickle of water. He was hot and thirsty, and 
 turned instinctively in that direction. A very few paces 
 brought him to a fallen tree; at the foot of its upturned 
 roots gurgled the spring whose upwelling stream had slowly 
 but persistently loosened their hold on the soil, and worked 
 their ruin. A pool of cool and clear water, formed by the 
 disruption of the soil, overflowed, and after a few yards 
 sank again in the sodden floor. 
 
 As he drank and bathed his head and hands in this sylvan 
 basin, he noticed the white glitter of a quartz ledge in its 
 depths, and was considerably surprised and relieved to find, 
 hard by, an actual outcrop of that rock through the thick 
 carpet of bark and dust. This betokened that he was near 
 the edge of the forest or some rocky opening. He fancied 
 that the light grew clearer beyond, and the presence of a 
 few fronds of ferns confirmed him in the belief that he was 
 approaching a different belt of vegetation. Presently he 
 saw the vertical beams of the sun again piercing the opening 
 in the distance. With this prospect of speedy deliverance 
 from the forest at last secure, he did not hurry forward, but 
 on the contrary coolly retraced his footsteps to the spring 
 again. The fact was that the instincts and hopes of the 
 prospector were strongly dominant in him, and having no- 
 ticed the quartz ledge and the contiguous outcrop, he deter- 
 mined to examine them more closely. He had still time to 
 find his way home, and it might not be so easy to penetrate 
 the wilderness again. Unfortunately, he had neither pick, 
 pan, nor shovel with him, but a very cursory displacement 
 of the soil around the spring and at the outcrop with his 
 hands showed him the usual red soil and decomposed quartz 
 which constituted an "indication." Yet none knew better 
 than himself how disappointing and illusive its results often 
 were, and he regretted that he had not a pan to enable him 
 to test the soil by washing it at the spring. If there were 
 
A TREASUKE OF THE REDWOODS 3 
 
 only a miner's cabin handy, he could easily borrow what 
 he wanted. It was just the usual luck, — " the things a 
 man sees when he hasn't his gun with him! " 
 
 He turned impatiently away again in the direction of the 
 opening. "When he reached it, he found himself on a rocky 
 hillside sloping toward a small green valley. A light smoke 
 curled above a clump of willows ; it was from the chimney 
 of a low dwelling, but a second glance told him that it was 
 no miner's cabin. There was a larger clearing around the 
 house, and some rude attempt at cultivation in a roughly 
 fenced area. Nevertheless, he determined to try his luck 
 in borrowing a pick and pan there; at the worst he could 
 inquire his way to the main road again. 
 
 A hurried scramble down the hill brought him to the 
 dwelling, — a rambling addition of sheds to the usual log 
 cabin. But he was surprised to find that its exterior, and 
 indeed the palings of the fence around it, were covered with 
 the stretched and drying skins of animals. The pelts of 
 bear, panther, wolf, and fox were intermingled with squir- 
 rel and wildcat skins, and the displayed wings of eagle, 
 hawk, and kingfisher. There was no trail leading to or 
 from the cabin ; it seemed to have been lost in this opening 
 of the encompassing woods and .left alone and solitary. 
 
 The barking of a couple of tethered hounds at last 
 brought a figure to the door of the nearest lean-to shed. 
 It seemed to be that of a young girl, but it was clad in 
 garments so ridiculously large and disproportionate that it 
 was difficult to tell her precise age. A calico dress was 
 pinned up at the skirt, and tightly girt at the waist by an 
 apron — so long that one corner had to be tucked in at the 
 apron string diagonally, to keep the wearer from treading 
 on it. An enormous sunbonnet of yellow nankeen com- 
 pletely concealed her head and face, but allowed two knot- 
 ted and twisted brown tails of hair to escape under its frilled 
 cape behind. She was evidently engaged in some culinary 
 
4 A TREASURE OF THE REDWOODS 
 
 ■work, and still held a large tin basin or pan she had beea 
 cleaning clasped to her breast. 
 
 Fleming's eye glanced at it covetously, ignoring the fig- 
 ure behind it. But he was diplomatic. 
 
 "I have lost my way in the woods. Can you tell me in 
 what direction the main road lies 1 " 
 
 She pointed a small red hand apparently in the direction 
 he had come. "Straight over thar — across the hill." 
 
 Fleming sighed. He had been making a circuit of the 
 forest instead of going through it — and this open space 
 containing the cabin was on a remote outskirt ! 
 
 " How far is it to the road ? " he asked. 
 
 "Jest a spell arter ye rise the hill, ef ye keep 'longside 
 the woods. But it 's a right smart chance beyond, ef ye 
 go through it." 
 
 This was quite plain to him. In the local dialect a 
 " spell " was under a mile ; " a right smart chance " might 
 be three or four miles farther. Luckily the spring and 
 outcrop were near the outskirts; he would pass near them 
 again on his way. He looked longingly at the pan which 
 she still held in her hands. "Would you mind lending me 
 that pan for a little while ? " he said half laughingly. 
 
 " Wot for 1 " demanded the girl quickly. Yet her tone 
 was one of childish curiosity rather than suspicion. Flem- 
 ing would have liked to avoid the question and the conse- 
 quent exposure of his discovery which a direct answer im- 
 plied. But he saw it was too late now. 
 
 "I want to wash a little dirt," he said bluntly. 
 
 The girl turned her deep sunbonnet toward him. Some- 
 where in its depths he saw the flash of white teeth. "Go 
 along with ye — ye 're funnin' ! " she said. 
 
 " I want to wash out some dirt in that pan — I'm pro- 
 specting for gold," he said; "don't you understand? " 
 
 " Are ye a miner 1 " 
 
 " Well, yes — a sort of one, " he returned, with a laugh. 
 
A TEEA.SURE OF THE REDWOODS 5 
 
 " Then ye 'd better be soootin' out o' this mighty quick 
 afore dad comes. He don't cotton to miners, and won't 
 have 'em around. That 's why he lives out here." 
 
 "Well, I don't live out here," responded the young man 
 lightly. "I shouldn't be here if I hadn't lost my way, 
 and in half an hour I '11 be oil again. So I 'm not likely 
 to bother him. But," he added, as the girl still hesi' 
 tated, "I '11 leave a deposit for the pan, if you like." 
 
 " Leave a which 1 " 
 
 "The money that the pan 's worth," said Fleming impa' 
 tiently. 
 
 The huge sunbonnet stiffly swung around like the wind- 
 sail of a ship and stared at the horizon. "I don't want no 
 money. Ye kin git," said the voice in its depths. 
 
 "Look here," he said desperately, "I only wanted to 
 prove to you that I '11 bring your pan back safe. Now 
 look! If you don't like to take money, I '11 leave this ring 
 with you until I come back. There ! " He slipped a small 
 specimen ring, made out of his first gold findings, from his 
 little finger. 
 
 The sunbonnet slowly swung around again and stared at 
 the ring. Then the little red right hand reached forward, 
 took the ring, placed it on the forefinger of the left hand, 
 with all the other fingers widely extended for the sunbon- 
 net to view, and all the while the pan was still held against 
 her side by the other hand. Fleming noticed that the 
 bands, though tawny and not over clean, were almost child- 
 like in size, and that the forefinger was much too small for 
 the ring. He tried to fathom the depths of the sunbonnet, 
 but it was dented on one side, and he could discern only a 
 single pale blue eye and a thin black arch of eyebrow. 
 
 "Well," said Fleming, "is it a go? " 
 
 "Of course ye '11 be comin' back for it again," said the 
 girl slowly. 
 
 There was so much of hopeless disappointment at that 
 
6 A TEEASUEE OF THE EEDWOODS 
 
 prospect in her voice that Fleming laughed outright. " I 'm 
 afraid I shall, for I value the ring very much," he said. 
 
 The girl handed him the pan. "It 's our bread pan," 
 she said. 
 
 It might have been anything, for it was by no means 
 new ; indeed, it was battered on one sidq and the bottom 
 seemed to have been broken ; but it would serve, and Flem- 
 ing was anxious to be off. "Thank you," he said briefly, 
 and turned away. One of the hounds barked again as he 
 passed; he heard the girl say, "Shut your head, Tige!" 
 and saw her turn back into the kitchen, still holding the 
 ring before the sunbonnet. 
 
 When he reached the woods, he attacked the outcrop he 
 had noticed, and detached with his hands and the aid of a 
 sharp rock enough of the loose soil to fill the pan. This 
 he took to the spring, and, lowering the pan in the pool, 
 began to wash out its contents with the centrifugal move- 
 ment of the experienced prospector. The saturated red 
 soil overflowed the brim with that liquid ooze known as 
 " slumguUion, " and turned the crystal pool to the color of 
 blood until the soil was washed away. Then the smaller 
 stones were carefully removed and examined, and then an- 
 other washing of the now nearly empty pan showed the 
 fine black sand covering the bottom. This was in turn as 
 gently washed away. 
 
 Alas ! the clean pan showed only one or two minute glis- 
 tening yellow scales, like pinheads, adhering from their 
 specific gravity to the bottom; gold, indeed, but merely 
 enough to indicate "the color," and common to ordinary 
 prospecting in his own locality. 
 
 He tried another panful with the same result. He be- 
 came aware that the pan was leaky, and that infinite care 
 alone prevented the bottom from falling out during the 
 washing. Still it was an experiment, and the result a 
 failure. 
 
A THEASURE OF THE EEDWOODS 7 
 
 Fleming was too old a prospector to take his disappoint- 
 ment seriously. Indeed, it was characteristic of that per- 
 formance and that period that failure left neither hopeless- 
 ness nor loss of faith behind it; the prospector had simply 
 miscalculated the exact locality, and was equally as ready to 
 try his luck again. But Fleming thought it high time to 
 return to his own mining work in camp, and at once set off 
 to return the pan to its girlish owner and recover his ring. 
 
 As he approached the cabin again, he heard the sound of 
 singing. It was evidently the girl's voice, uplifted in what 
 seemed to he a fragment of some negro camp-meeting 
 hymn : — 
 
 Dar was a poor man and his name it was Lazaium, 
 Lord bress de Lamb — glory hallelugemm ! 
 Lord bress de Lamb I " 
 
 The first two lines had a brisk movement, accented ap- 
 parently by the clapping of bands or the beating of a tin 
 pan, but the refrain, "Lord bress de Lamb," was drawn 
 out in a lugubrious chant of infinite tenuity. 
 
 " The rich man died and he went straight to hellemm, 
 Lord bress de Lamb — glory hallelugerum ! 
 Lord bress de Lamb t " 
 
 Fleming paused at the cabin door. Before he could rap 
 the voice rose again : — 
 
 " When ye see a poo' man be sure to give him crumbsorum. 
 Lord bress de Lamb — glory hallelugerum ! 
 Lord bress de Lamb ! " 
 
 At the end of this interminable refrain, drawn out in a 
 youthful nasal contralto, Fleming knocked. The girl in- 
 stantly appeared, holding the ring in her fingers. " I reck- 
 oned it was you," she said, with an afi'ected briskness, ta 
 conceal her evident dislike at parting with the trinket. 
 "There it is!" 
 
 But Fleming was too astounded to speak. With the 
 
8 A TREASURE OF THE REDWOODS 
 
 opening of the door the sunbonnet had fallen back like a 
 buggy top, disclosing for the first time the head and shoul- 
 ders of the wearer. She was not a child, but a smart young 
 woman of seventeen or eighteen, and much of his embar- 
 rassment arose from the consciousness that he had no reason 
 whatever for having believed her otherwise. 
 
 "I hope I didn't interrupt your singing," he said awk- 
 wardly. 
 
 "It was only one o' mammy's camp-meetin' songs," said 
 the girl. 
 
 " Your mother ? Is she in 1 " he asked, glancing past 
 the girl into the kitchen. 
 
 "'T ain't mother — she's dead. Mammy's our old 
 nurse. She 's gone to Jimtown, and taken my duds to get 
 some new ones fitted to me. These are some o' mother's." 
 
 This accounted for her strange appearance; but Fleming 
 noticed that the girl's manner had not the slightest con- 
 sciousness of their unbecomingness, nor of the charms of 
 face and figure they had marred. 
 
 She looked at him curiously. "Hev you got religion?" 
 
 "Well, no ! " said Fleming, laughing; "I 'm afraid not." 
 
 "Dad hez — he 's got it pow'ful." 
 
 "Is that the reason he don't like miners? " asked Flem- 
 'ing. 
 
 " ' Take not to yourself the mammon of unrighteous- 
 ness, ' " said the girl, with the confident air of repeating a 
 lesson. "That 's what the Book says." 
 
 "But I read the Bible, too," replied the young man. 
 
 "Dad says, ' The letter killeth ' ! " said the girl senten- 
 tiously. 
 
 Fleming looked at the trophies nailed on the walls with 
 a vague wonder if this peculiar Scriptural destructiveness 
 had anything to do with his skill as a marksman. The 
 girl followed his eye. 
 
 " Dad 's a mighty hunter afore the Lord. " 
 
A TKEASUEE OF THE REDWOODS 9 
 
 " What does he do with these skins ? " 
 
 "Trades 'em off for grub and fixin's. But he don't 
 believe in trottin' round in the mud for gold." 
 
 "Don't you suppose these animals would have preferred 
 it if he had ? Gold hunting takes nothing from anybody. " 
 
 The girl stared at him, and then, to his great surprise, 
 laughed instead of being angry. It was a very fascinating 
 laugh in her imperfectly nourished pale face, and her little 
 teeth revealed the bluish milky whiteness of pips of young 
 Indian corn. 
 
 " Wot yet lookin' at ? " she asked frankly. 
 
 "You," he replied, with equal frankness. 
 
 "It's them duds," she said, looking down at her dress; 
 "I reckon I ain't got the hang o' 'em." 
 
 Yet there was not the slightest tone of embarrassment or 
 3ven coquetry in her manner, as with both hands she tried 
 to gather in the loose folds around her waist. 
 
 "Let me help you," he said gravely. 
 
 She lifted up her arms with childlike simplicity and 
 backed toward him as he stepped behind her, drew in the 
 folds, and pinned them around what proved a very small 
 waist indeed. Then he untied the apron, took it off, folded 
 it in half, and retied its curtailed proportions around the 
 waist. " It does feel a heap easier, " she said, with a little 
 shiver of satisfaction, as she lifted her round cheek, aad 
 the tail of her blue eyes with their brown lashes, over her 
 shoulder. It was a tempting moment — but Jack felt that 
 the whole race of gold hunters was on trial just then, and 
 was adamant! Perhaps he was a gentle fellow at heart, 
 too. 
 
 "I could loop up that dress also, if I had more pins," 
 he remarked tentatively. Jack had sisters of his own. 
 
 The pins were forthcoming. In this operation — a kind 
 of festooning — the girl's petticoat, a piece of common 
 washed-out blue flannel, as pale as her eyes, but of the com- 
 
10 A TREASURE OF THE REDWOODS 
 
 monest material, became visible, but without fear or re. 
 preach to either. 
 
 "There, that looks more tidy," said Jack, critically sur- 
 veying his work and a little of the small ankles revealed. 
 The girl also examined it carefully by its reflection on the 
 surface of the saucepan. ''Looks a little like a chiny girl, 
 don't it?" 
 
 Jack ■would have resented this, thinking she meant a 
 Chinese, until he saw her pointing to a cheap crockery or- 
 nament, representing a Dutch shepherdess, on the shelf. 
 There was some resemblance. 
 
 " You beat mammy out o' sight ! " she exclaimed glee- 
 fully. "It will jest set her clear crazy when she sees me." 
 
 "Then you had better say you did it yourself," said 
 Fleming. 
 
 " Why 1 " asked the girl, suddenly opening her eyes on 
 him with relentless frankness. 
 
 " You said your father did n't like miners, and he might n't 
 like your lending your pan to me." 
 
 "I 'm more afraid o' lyin' than o' dad," she said, with 
 an elevation of moral sentiment that was, however, slightly 
 weakened by the addition, " Mammy '11 say anything I '11 
 tell her to say." 
 
 " Well, good- by, " said Fleming, extending his hand. 
 
 "Ye didn't tell me what luck ye had with the pan," 
 she said, delaying taking his hand. 
 
 Fleming shrugged his shoulders. " Oh, my usual luck, 
 — nothing, " he returned, with a smile. 
 
 " Ye seem to keer more for gettin' yer old ring back than 
 for any luck," she continued. "I reckon you ain't much 
 o' a miner." 
 
 "I'm afraid not." 
 
 "Ye didn't say wot yer name was, in case dad wants to 
 know." 
 
 "I don't think he will want toj but it 'a John Fleming.'' 
 
A TREASURE OF THE REDWOODS 11 
 
 She took his hand. "You didn't tell me yours," he 
 said, holding the little red fingers, " in case I wanted to 
 know. " 
 
 It pleased her to consider the rejoinder intensely witty. 
 She showed all her little teeth, threw away his hand, and 
 said : — 
 
 " G' long with ye,- Mr. Fleming. It 's Tinka " — 
 
 "Tinker?" 
 
 "Yes; short for Katinka, — Katinka Jallinger." 
 
 " Good-by, Miss Jallinger. " 
 
 "Good-by. Dad's name is Henry Boone Jallinger, of 
 Kentucky, ef ye was ever askin'." 
 
 "Thank you." 
 
 He turned away as she swiftly reentered the house. As 
 he walked away, he half expected to hear her voice uplifted 
 again in the camp-meeting chant, but he was disappointed. 
 When he reached the top of the hill he turned and looked 
 back at the cabin. 
 
 She was apparently waiting for this, and waved him an 
 adieu with the humble pan he had borrowed. It flashed a 
 moment dazzlingly as it caught the declining sun, and then 
 went out, even obliterating the little figure behind it. 
 
 PAET II 
 
 Mr. Jack Fleming was indeed "not much of a miner." 
 He and his partners — both as young, hopeful, and ineffi- 
 cient as himself — had for three months worked a claim in 
 a mountain mining settlement which yielded them a certain 
 amount of healthy exercise, good-humored grumbling, and 
 exalted independence. To dig for three or four hours in 
 the morning, smoke their pipes under a redwood tree for 
 an hour at noon, take up their labors again until sunset, 
 when they " washed up " and gathered sufficient gold to 
 
12 A TREASURE OF THE REDWOODS 
 
 pay for their daily wants, was, without their seeking it, oi 
 even knowing it, the realization of a charming socialistic 
 ideal which hetter men than themselves had only dreamed 
 of. Fleming fell back into this refined barbarism, giving 
 little thought to his woodland experience, and no revelation 
 of it to his partners. He had transacted their business at 
 the mining town. His deviations en route were nothing 
 to them, and small account to himself. 
 
 The thircj day after his return he was lying under a red- 
 wood when his partner approached him. 
 
 "You aren't uneasy in your mind about any unpaid bill 
 — say a wash bill — that you 're owing 1 " 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "There 's a big nigger woman in camp looking' for you; 
 she 's got a folded account paper in her hand. It looks 
 deucedly like a bill." 
 
 "There must be some mistake," suggested Fleming, sit- 
 ting up. 
 
 "She says not, and she's got your name pat enough! 
 Faulkner " (his other partner) " headed her straight up the 
 gulch, away from camp, while I came down to warn you. 
 So if you choose to skedaddle into the brush out there and 
 lie low until we get her away, we '11 fix it ! " 
 
 "Nonsense! I '11 see her." 
 
 His partner looked aghast at this temerity, but Fleming, 
 jumping to his feet, at once set out to meet his mysterious 
 visitor. This was no easy matter, as the ingenious Faulk- 
 ner was laboriously leading his charge up the steep gulch 
 road, with great politeness, but many audible misgivings as 
 to whether this was not "Jack Fleming's day for going to 
 Jamestown. " 
 
 He was further lightening the journey by cheering ac- 
 counts of the recent depredations of bears and panthers in 
 that immediate locality. When overtaken by Fleming he 
 affected a start of joyful surprise, to conceal the look of 
 
A TREASURE OF THE REDWOODS 13 
 
 ■warning which Fleming did not heed, — having no eyes 
 but for Faulkner's companion. She was a very fat negro 
 woman, panting with exertion and suppressed impatience, 
 Fleming's heart was filled with compunction. 
 
 " Is you Marse Fleming 1 " she gasped. 
 
 " Yes, " said Fleming gently. " What can I do for y ou ? " 
 
 "Well! Ye kin pick dis yar insek, dis caterpillier, " she 
 said, pointing to Faulkner, "off my paf. Ye kin tell dis 
 yar chipmunk dat when he comes to showin' me mule 
 tracks for b'ar tracks, he 's barkin' up de wrong tree ! Dat 
 when he tells me dat he sees panfers a-promenadin' round 
 in de short grass or hidin' behime rocks in de open, he 
 hain't talkin' to no nigger chile, but a growed woman! 
 Ye kin tell him dat Mammy Curtis lived in de woods afo' 
 he was born, and hez seen more b'ars and mountain lyuns 
 dan he hez hairs in his mustarches." 
 
 The word " Mammy " brought a flash of recollection to 
 Fleming. 
 
 "I am very sorry," he began; hut to his surprise the 
 negro woman burst into a good-tempered laugh. "All 
 right, honey ! S' long 's you is Marse Fleming and de man 
 dat took dat 'ar pan offer Tinka de odder day, I ain't 
 mindin' yo' frens' bedevilments. I 've got somefin fo' you, 
 yar, and a little box," and she handed him a folded paper. 
 
 Fleming felt himself reddening, he knew not why, at 
 which Faulkner discreetly but ostentatiously withdrew, 
 conveying to his other partner painful conviction that Flem- 
 ing had borrowed a pan from a traveling tinker, whose 
 negro wife was even now presenting a bill for the same, 
 and demanding a settlement. Relieved by his departure, 
 Fleming hurriedly tore open the folded paper. It was a 
 letter written upon a leaf torn out of an old account book, 
 whose ruled lines had undoubtedly given his partners the 
 idea that it was a bill. Fleming hurriedly read the follow- 
 ing, traced with a pencil in a schoolgirl's hand: — 
 
14 A TREASURE OF THE REDWOODS 
 
 Me. J, "Fleming: 
 
 Dear Sir, — After you went away that day I took that 
 pan you brought back to mix a batch of bread and biscuits. 
 The next morning at breakfast dad says: " What 's gone o' 
 them thar biscuits — my teeth is just broke with them — 
 they 're so gritty — they 're abominable ! What 's this ? " 
 says he, and with that he chucks over to me two or three 
 flakes of gold that was in them. You see what had hap- 
 pened, Mr. Fleming, was this ! You had better luck than 
 you was knowing of! It was this way! Some of the gold 
 you washed had got slipped into the sides of the pan where 
 it was broke, and the sticky dough must have brought u 
 out, and I kneaded them up unbeknowing. Of course I 
 had to tell a wicked lie, but "Be ye all things to all men," 
 says the Book, and I thought you ought to know your good 
 luck, and I send mammy with this and the gold in a little 
 box. Of course, if dad was a hunter of Mammon and not 
 of God's own beasts, he would have been mighty keen 
 about finding where it came from, but he allows it was in 
 the water in our near spring. So good-by. Do you care 
 for your ring now as much as you did ? 
 
 Yours very respectfully, 
 
 Katinka Jallingee. 
 
 As Mr. Heming glanced up from the paper, mammy put 
 B small cardboard box in his hand. For an instant he hesi- 
 tated to open it, not knowing how far mammy was intrusted 
 with the secret. To his great relief she said briskly: 
 "Well, dar! now dat job's done gone and offen my ban's, 
 I allow to quit and jest get off dis yer camp afo' ye kin 
 shake a stick. So don't tell me nuffin I ain't gotter tell 
 when I goes back." 
 
 Fleming understood. "You can tell her I thank 
 her — and — I'll attend to it," he said vaguely; "that 
 is — I" — 
 
A TREASURE OF THE REDWOODS 15 
 
 "Hold dar! that's just enuff, honey — no mo'! So 
 long to ye and youse folks." 
 
 He watched her striding away toward the main road, and 
 then opened the box. 
 
 It contained three flakes of placer or surface gold, weigh- 
 ing in all about a quarter of an ounce. They could easily 
 have slipped into the interstices of the broken pan and not 
 have been observed by him. If this was the result of the 
 washing of a single pan — and he could now easily imagine 
 that other flakes might have escaped — what — But he 
 stopped, dazed and bewildered at the bare suggestion. He 
 gazed upon the vanishing figure of "mammy." Could she 
 — could Katinka — have the least suspicion of the possibil- 
 ities of this discovery ? Or had Providence put the keeping 
 of this secret into the hands of those who least understood 
 its importance 1 For an instant he thought of running after 
 her with a word of caution ; but on reflection he saw that 
 this might awaken her suspicion and precipitate a discovery 
 by another. 
 
 His only safety for the present was silence, until he could 
 lepeat his experiment. And that must be done quickly. 
 
 How should he get away without his partners' knowledge 
 of his purpose ? He was too loyal to them to wish to keep 
 this good fortune to himself, but he was not yet sure of his 
 good fortune. It might be only a little " pocket " which 
 he had just emptied ; it might be a larger one which an- 
 other trial would exhaust. 
 
 He had put up no "notice; " he might find it already in 
 possession of Katinka' s father, or any chance prospector 
 like himself. In either case he would be covered with ridi- 
 cule by his partners and the camp, or more seriously re- 
 buked for his carelessness and stupidity. No! he could 
 not tell them the truth ; nor could he lie. He would say 
 he was called away for a day on private business. 
 
 Luckily for him, the active imagination of his partners 
 
16 A TREASUKE OF THE REDWOODS 
 
 ■was even now helping him. The theory of the " tinker " 
 and the "pan" was indignantly rejected hy his other part- 
 ner. His hlushes and embarrassment were suddenly re- 
 membered by Eaulkner, and by the time he reached his 
 cabin, they had settled that the negro woman had brought 
 him a love letter! He was young and good looking; what 
 was more natural than that he should have some distant 
 love affair? 
 
 His embarrassed statement that he must leave early the 
 next morning on business that he could not at present dis- 
 close was considered amply confirmatory, and received with 
 maliciously significant acquiescence. "Only," said Faulk- 
 ner, "at your age, sonny," — he was nine months older 
 than Fleming, — "I should have gone to-night. " Surely 
 Providence was favoring him ! 
 
 He was off early the next morning. He was sorely 
 tempted to go first to the cabin, but every moment was 
 precious until he had tested the proof of his good for- 
 tune. 
 
 It was high noon before he reached the fringe of forest. 
 A few paces farther and he found the spring and outcrop. 
 To avert his partners' suspicions he had not brought his 
 own implements, but had borrowed a pan, spade, and pick 
 from a neighbor's claim before setting out. The spot was 
 apparently in the same condition as when he left it, and 
 with a beating heart he at once set to work, an easy task 
 with his new implements. He nervously watched the 
 water overflow the pan of dirt at its edges until, emptied of 
 earth and gravel, the black sand alone covered the bottom. 
 A slight premonition of disappointment followed; a rich 
 indication would have shown itself before this! A few 
 more workings, and the pan was quite empty except for a 
 few pin-points of "color," almost exactly the quantity he 
 had found before. He washed another pan with the same 
 result. Another taken from a different level of the outcrop 
 
A TREASURE OF THE REDWOODS 17 
 
 yielded neither more nor less ! There was no mistake : it 
 was a failure! His discovery had been only a little 
 " pocket, " and the few flakes she had sent him were the first 
 and last of that discovery. 
 
 He sat down with a sense of relief; he could face his 
 partners again without disloyalty; he could see that pretty 
 little figure once more without the compunction of having 
 incurred her father's prejudices by locating a permanent 
 claim so near his cabin. In fact, he could carry out his 
 partners' fancy to the letter! 
 
 He quickly heaped his implements together and turned 
 to leave the wood; but he was confronted by a figure that 
 at first he scarcely recognized. Yet — it was Katinka ! the 
 young girl of the cabin, who had sent him the gold. She 
 was dressed differently — perhaps in her ordinary every-day 
 garments — a bright sprigged muslin, a chip hat with blue 
 ribbons set upon a coil of luxurious brown hair. But what 
 struck him most was that the girlish and diminutive char- 
 acter of the figure had vanished with her ill-fitting clothes ; 
 the girl that stood before him was of ordinary height, and 
 of a prettiness and grace of figure that he felt would have 
 attracted anywhere. Fleming felt himself suddenly embar- 
 rassed, — a feeling that was not lessened when he noticed 
 that her pretty lip was compressed and her eyebrows a little 
 straightened as she gazed at him. 
 
 " Ye made a bee line for the woods, I see," she said coldly. 
 " I allowed ye might have been droppin' in to our house 
 first." 
 
 "So I should," said Fleming quickly, "but I thought I 
 ought to first make sure of the information you took the 
 trouble to send me." He hesitated to speak of the ill luck 
 he had just experienced; he could laugh at it himself — ■ 
 but would she ? 
 
 "And ye got a new pan? " she said half poutingly. 
 i Here seemed his opportunity. "Yes, but I 'm afraid it 
 
18 A TREAStTKE OF THK REDWOODS 
 
 hasn't the magic of yours. I haven't even got the color. 
 I believe you bewitched your old pan." 
 
 Her face flushed a little and brightened, and her lip re- 
 laxed with a smile. "Go 'long with yer! Ye don't mean 
 to say ye had no luck to-day ? " 
 
 "None — but in seeing you." 
 
 Her eyes sparkled. " Ye see, I said all 'long ye were n't 
 much o' a miner. Ye ain't got no faith. Ef ye had as 
 much as a grain o' mustard seed, ye 'd remove mountains; 
 it 'sin the Book." 
 
 "Yes, and this mountain is on the bed-rock, and my 
 faith is not strong enough," he said laughingly. "And 
 then, that wo^ild be having faith in Mammon, and you 
 don't want me to have that." 
 
 She looked at him curiously. " I jest reckon ye don't 
 care a picayune whether ye strike anything or not," she 
 said half admiringly. 
 
 "To please you I '11 try again, if you '11 look on. Per- 
 haps you '11 bring me hick as you did before. You shall 
 take the pan. I will fill it and you shall wash it out. 
 You '11 be my mascot." 
 
 She stiffened a little at this, and then said pertly, 
 "Wot 's that?" 
 
 "My good fairy." 
 
 She smiled again, this time with a new color in her pale 
 face. "Maybe I am," she said, with sudden gravity. 
 
 He quickly filled the pan again with soil, brought it to 
 the spring, and first washed out the greater bulk of loose 
 soiL "Now come here and kneel down beside me," he 
 said, "and take the pan and do as I show you." 
 
 She knelt down obediently. Suddenly she lifted her 
 little hand with a gesture of warning. " Wait a minit — 
 jest a minit — till the water runs clear again. " 
 
 The pool had become slightly discolored from the first 
 washing. 
 
A TREASURE OF THE REDWOODS 19 
 
 -That makes no difference," he said quickly. 
 
 "Ah ! but wait, please ! " She laid her brown hand upon 
 his arm; a pleasant warmth seemed to follow her touch. 
 Then she said joyously, "Look down there." 
 
 " Where "i " he asked. 
 
 "There — don't ye see it!" 
 
 "See what?" 
 
 " You and me ! " 
 
 He looked where she pointed. The pool had settled, 
 resumed its mirror-like calm, and reflected distinctly, not 
 only their two bending faces, but their two figures kneeling 
 side by side. Two tall redwoods rose on either side of 
 them, like the columns before an altar. 
 
 There was a moment of silence. The drone of a bumble 
 bee near by seemed to make the silence swim drowsily in 
 their ears; far off they. heard the faint beat of a woodpecker. 
 The suggestion of their kneeling figures in this magic mir- 
 ror was vague, imreasoning, yet for the moment none the 
 less irresistible. His arm instinctively crept around her lit- 
 tle waist as he whispered, — he scarce knew what he said, 
 — " Perhaps here is the treasure I am seeking. " 
 
 The girl laughed, released herself, and sprang up; the 
 pan sank ingloriously to the bottom of the pool, where 
 Fleming had to grope for it; assisted by Tinka, who rolled 
 up her sleeve to her elbow. For a minute or two they 
 washed gravely, but with no better success than had at- 
 tended his own individual efforts. The result in the bot- 
 tom of the pan was the same. Fleming laughed. 
 
 "You see," he said gayly, "the Mammon of unrighteous- 
 ness is not for me — at least, so near your father's taber- 
 nacle. " 
 
 " That makes no difference now, " said the girl quickly, 
 "for dad is goin' to move, anyway, farther up the moun- 
 tains. He says it's gettin' too crowded for him here — 
 when the last settler took up a section three miles off. " 
 
20 A TEEASUEE OF THE EEDWOODS 
 
 " And are you going too 1 " asked the young man ear- 
 neBtly. 
 
 Tinka nodded her hrown head. Fleming heaved a gen- 
 uine sigh. " Well, I '11 try my hand here a little longer. 
 I '11 put up a notice of claim; I don't suppose your father 
 would object. You know he couldn't legally." 
 
 " I reckon ye might do it ef ye wanted — ef ye was that 
 keen on gettin' gold ! " said Tinka, looking away. There 
 was something in the girl's tone which this budding lover 
 resented. He had become sensitive. 
 
 "Oh, well," he said, " I see that it might make unplea- 
 santness with your father. I only thought," he went on, 
 with tenderer tentativeness, " that it would be pleasant to 
 work here near you." 
 
 "Ye 'd be only wastin' yer time," she said darkly. 
 
 Fleming rose gravely. " Perhaps you 're right, " he an- 
 swered sadly and a little bitterly, "and I '11 go at once." 
 
 He walked to the spring, and gathered up his tools. 
 "Thank you again for your kindness, and good-by." 
 
 He held out his hand, which she took passively, and he 
 moved away. 
 
 But he had not gone far before she called him. He 
 turned ';o find her still standing where he had left her, her 
 little h£ nds clinched at her side', and her widely opened eyes 
 staring at him. Suddenly she ran at him, and, catching 
 the lapi Is of his coat in both hands, held him rigidly fast. 
 
 "No! no! ye shan't go — ye mustn't go!" she said, 
 with hj sterical intensity. " I want to tell ye something ! 
 Listen! — you — you — Mr. Fleming ! I 've been a wicked, 
 wicked girl ! I 've told lies to dad — to mammy — to you ! 
 I've borne false witness — I'm worse than Sapphira — 
 I 've acted a big lie. Oh, Mr. Fleming, I 've made you 
 come back here for nothing! Ye didn't find no gold the 
 other day. There wasn't any. It was all me! I — I—' 
 salted that pan ! " 
 
A TREASURE OF THE REDWOODS 21 
 
 " Salted it ! " echoed Fleming, in amazement. 
 
 "Yes, ' salted it,' " she faltered; "that 's what dad says 
 they call it — what those wicked sons of Mammon do to 
 their claims to sell them. I — put gold in the pan myself; 
 it wasn't there before." 
 
 " But why t " gasped Fleming. 
 
 She stopped. Then suddenly the fountains in the deep 
 of her blue eyes were broken up ; she burst into a sob, and 
 buried her head in her hands, and her hands on his shoul- 
 der. " Because — because " — she sobbed against him — 
 "I wanted you to come back ! " 
 
 He folded her in his arms. He kissed her lovingly, for- 
 givingly, gratefully, tearfully, smilingly — and paused ; then 
 he kissed her sympathetically, understandingly, apologeti- 
 cally, explanatorily, in lieu of other conversation. Then, 
 becoming coherent, he asked, — 
 
 " But where did you get the gold ? " 
 
 "Oh," she said between fitful and despairing sobs, 
 " somewhere ! — I don't know — out of the old Eun — long 
 ago — when I was little ! I did n't never dare say anything 
 to dad — he 'd have been crazy mad at his own daughter 
 diggin' — and I never cared nor thought a single bit about 
 it until I saw you." 
 
 " And you have never been there since 1 " 
 
 "Never." 
 
 " Nor anybody else ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 Suddenly she threw back her head; her chip hat fell 
 back from her face, rosy with a dawning inspiration! 
 "Oh, say. Jack! — you don't think that — after all this 
 time — there might " — She did not finish the sentence, 
 but, grasping his hand, cried, " Come ! " 
 
 She caught up the pan, he seized the shovel and pick, 
 and they raced like boy and girl down the hill. When 
 within a few hundred feet of the house she turned at right 
 
22 A TREASURE OF THE REDWOODS 
 
 angles into the clearing, and saying, "Don't be skeered; 
 dad's away," ran boldly on, still holding his hand, along 
 the little valley. At its farther extremity they came to the 
 "Eun," a half-dried watercourse whose rocky sides were 
 marked by the erosion of winter torrents. It was appar- 
 ently as wild and secluded as the forest spring. "Nobody 
 ever came here," said the girl hurriedly, "after dad sunk 
 the well at the house." 
 
 One or two pools still remained in the Eun from the last 
 season's flow, water enough to wash out several pans of dirt. 
 
 Selecting a spot where the white quartz was visible, Flem- 
 ing attacked the bank with the pick. After one or two 
 blows it began to yield and crumble away at his feet. He 
 washed out a panful perfunctorily, more intent on the girl 
 than bis work ; she, eager, alert, and breathless, had changed 
 places with him, and become the anxious prospector ! But 
 the result was the same. He threw away the pan with a 
 laugh, to take her little hand! But she whispered, "Try 
 again. " 
 
 He attacked the bank once more with such energy that 
 a great part of it caved and fell, filling the pan and even 
 burying the shovel in the d<5bris. He unearthed the latter 
 while Tinka was struggling to get out the pan. 
 
 "The mean thing is stuck and won't move," she said 
 pettishly. "I think it 's broken now, too, just like ours." 
 
 Fleming came laughingly forward, and, putting one arm 
 around the girl's waist, attempted to assist her with the 
 other. The pan was immovable, and, indeed, seemed to be 
 broken and bent. Suddenly he uttered an exclamation and 
 began hurriedly to brush away the dirt and throw the soil 
 out of the pan. 
 
 In another moment he had revealed a fragment of decom- 
 posed quartz, like discolored honeycombed cheese, half fill- 
 ing the pan. But on its side, where the pick had struck it 
 glancingly, there was a yellow streak like a ray of sunshine I 
 
A TEEASURE OF THE KED WOODS 23 
 
 And as he strove to lift it he felt in that unmistakable om- 
 nipotency of weight that it was seamed and celled with 
 gold. 
 
 The news of Mr. Fleming's engagement, two weeks 
 later, to the daughter of the recluse religious hunter who 
 had made a big strike at Lone Run, excited some skeptical 
 discussion, even among the honest congratulations of his 
 partners. 
 
 "That's a mighty queer story how Jack got that girl 
 sweet on him just by borrowin' a prospectin' pan of her," 
 said Faulkner, between the whiifs of his pipe under the 
 trees. "You and me might have borrowed a hundred pro- 
 spectin' pans and never got even a drink thrown in. Then 
 to think of that old preachin' coon-hunter hevin' to give iti 
 and pass his strike over to his daughter's feller, jest because 
 he had scruples about gold diggin' himself. He 'd hev 
 booted you and me outer his ranch first." 
 
 "Lord, ye ain't takin' no stock in that hogwash," re- 
 sponded the other. "Why, everybody knows old man 
 Jallinger pretended to be sick o' miners and minin' camps, 
 and couldn't bear to hev 'em near him, only jest because 
 he himself was all the while secretly prospectin' the whole 
 lode and did n't want no interlopers. It was only when 
 Fleming nippled in by gettin' hold o' the girl that Jallinger 
 knew the secret was out, and that 's the way he bought him 
 off. "Why, Jack was n't no miner — never was — ye could 
 see that. He never struck anything. The only treasure 
 he found in the woods was Tinka Jallinger ! " 
 
A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 
 
 Cissy was tying her hat under her round chin before 
 a small glass at her window. The window gave upon a 
 background of serrated mountain and olive-shadowed canon, 
 with a faint additional outline of a higher snow level — the 
 only dreamy suggestion of the whole landscape. The fore- 
 ground was a glaringly fresh and unpicturesque mining 
 town, whose irregular attempts at regularity were set forth 
 with all. the cruel, uncompromising clearness of the Califor- 
 nian atmosphere. There was the straight Main Street with 
 its new brick block of "stores," ending abruptly against a 
 tangled bluff; there was the ruthless clearing in the sedate 
 pines where the hideous spire of the new church imitated 
 the soaring of the solemn shafts it had displaced with al- 
 most irreligious mockery. Yet this foreground was Cissy's 
 world — her life, her sole girlish experience. She did not, 
 however, bother her pretty head with the view just then, 
 but moved her cheek up and down before the glass, the 
 better to examine by the merciless glare of the sunlight a 
 few freckles that starred the hollows of her temples. Like 
 others of her sex, she was a poor critic of what was her real 
 beauty, and quarreled with that peculiar texture of her 
 healthy skin which made her face as eloquent in her sun- 
 kissed cheek as in her bright eyes and expression. Never- 
 theless, she was somewhat consoled by the ravishing effect 
 of the bowknot she had just tied, and turned away not 
 wholly dissatisfied. Indeed, as the acknowledged belle of 
 Canada City and the daughter of its principal banker, small 
 wonder that a certain frank vanity and childlike imperious- 
 ness were among her faults — and her attractions. 
 
A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 25 
 
 She bounded down the stairs and into the front parlor, 
 for their house possessed the unheard-of luxury of a double 
 drawing-room, albeit the second apartment contained a desk, 
 and was occasionally used by Cissy's father in private busi- 
 ness interviews with anxious seekers of "advances" who 
 shunned the publicity of the bank. Here she instantly flew 
 into the arms of her bosom friend, Miss Piney Tibbs, a girl 
 only a shade or two less pretty than herself, who, always 
 more or less ill at ease in these splendors, was awaiting her 
 impatiently. For Miss Tibbs was merely the daughter of 
 the hotel-keeper ; and although Tibbs was a Southerner, and 
 had owned " his own niggers " in the States, she was of 
 inferior position and a protegee of Cissy's. 
 
 "Thank goodness you 've come," exclaimed Miss Tibbs, 
 "for I've been sittin' here till I nigh took root. What 
 kep' ye?" 
 
 " How does it look ! " responded Cissy, as & relevant 
 reply. 
 
 The "it" referred to Cissy's new hat, and to the young 
 girl the coherence was perfectly plain. Miss Tibbs looked 
 at " it " severely. It would not do for a protdg^e to be too 
 complaisant. 
 
 "Hem! Must have cost a heap o' money." 
 
 "It did! Came from the best milliner in San Fran- 
 cisco. " 
 
 "Of course," said Piney, with half-assumed envy. 
 "When your popper runs the bank and just wallows in 
 gold ! " 
 
 "Never mind, dear," replied Cissy cheerfully. "So'U 
 your popper some day. I 'm goin' to get mine to let your 
 popper into something — Ditch stocks and such. Yes! 
 True, King! Popper '11 do anything for me," she added 
 a little loftily. 
 
 Loyal as Piney was to her friend, she was by no means 
 convinced of this. She knew the difference between the 
 
26 A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 
 
 two men, and had a vivid recollection of hearing her own 
 fathei express his opinion of Cissy's respected parent as a 
 "Gold Shark" and "Quartz Miner Crusher." It did not, 
 however, affect her friendship for Cissy. She only said, 
 "Let's come!" caught Cissy around the waist, pranced 
 with her out into the veranda, and gasped, out of hreath, 
 " Where are we goin' first ? " 
 
 "Down Main Street," said Cissy promptly. 
 
 " And let 's stop at Markham's store. They 've got some 
 new things in from Sacramento," added Piney. 
 
 "Country styles," returned Cissy, with a supercilious 
 air. "No! Besides, Markham's head clerk is gettin' too 
 presumptuous. Just guess! He asked me, while I was 
 buy in' something, if I enjoyed the dance last Monday! " 
 
 "But you danced with him," said the simple Piney, in 
 astonishment. 
 
 "But not in his store among his customers," said Cissy 
 sapiently. "No! we're going down Main Street past Se- 
 camps'. Those Secamp girls are sure to be at their win- 
 dows, looking out. This hat will just turn 'em green — 
 greener than ever." 
 
 " Tou 're just horrid, Ciss ! " said Piney, with admira- 
 tion. 
 
 "And then," continued Cissy, "we'll just sail down 
 past the new block to the parson's and make a call." 
 
 "Oh, I see," said Piney archly. "It '11 be just about 
 the time when the new engineer of the mUl works has a 
 clean shirt on, and is smoking his cigyar before the office." 
 
 Cissy tossed her hat disdainfully. "Much anybody cares 
 whether he 's there or not! I haven't forgotten how he 
 showed us over the mill the other day in a pair of overalls, 
 just like a workman." 
 
 "But they say he 's awfully smart and well educated, and 
 need n't work, and I 'm sure it 's very nice of him to dress 
 just like the other men when he 's with 'em;" urged Piney, 
 
A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 27 
 
 "Bah! That was just to show that he did n't care what 
 we thought of him, he's that conceited ! And it wasn't 
 respectful, considering one of the directors was there, all 
 dressed up. Don't tell me! You can see it in his eye, 
 looking you over without blinking and then turning away 
 as if he 'd got enough of you. He makes me tired." 
 
 Piney did not reply. The engineer had seemed to her 
 to be a singularly attractive young man, yet she was equally 
 impressed with Cissy's superior condition, which could find 
 flaws in such perfection. Following her friend down the 
 steps of the veranda, they passed into the staring graveled 
 walk of the new garden, only recently recovered from the 
 wild wood, its accurate diamond and heart shaped beds of 
 vivid green set in white quartz borders giving it the appear- 
 ance of elaborately iced confectionery. A few steps further 
 brought them to the road and the wooden " sidewalk " to 
 Main Street, which carried civic improvements to the hill- 
 side, and Mr. Trixit's very door. Turning down this thor- 
 oughfare, they stopped laughing, and otherwise assumed 
 a conscious, half-artificial air; for it was the hour when 
 Canada City lounged listlessly before its shops, its saloons, 
 its offices and mills, or even held lazy meetings in the dust 
 of the roadway, and the passage down the principal street 
 of its two prettiest girls was an event to be viewed as if it 
 were a civic procession. Hats flew off as they passed; 
 place was freely given; impeding barrels and sacks were 
 removed from the wooden pavement, and preoccupied in- 
 dwellers hastily summoned to the front door to do homage 
 to Cissy Trixit and Piney as they went by. Not but that 
 Canada City, in the fierce and unregenerate days of its 
 youth, had seen fairer and higher colored faces, more gayly 
 bedizened, on its thoroughfares, but never anything so fresh 
 and innocent. Men stood there all unconsciously, rever- 
 encing their absent mothers, sisters, and daughters, in their 
 spontaneous homage to the pair, and seemed to feel the 
 
28 A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 
 
 ■wholesome breath of their Eastern homes wafted from the 
 freshly ironed skirts of these foolish virgins as they rustled 
 by. I am afraid that neither Cissy nor Piney appreciated 
 this feeling; few women did at that time; indeed, these 
 young ladies assumed a slight air of hauteur. 
 
 " Eeally, they do stare so, " said Cissy, with eyes dilating 
 with pleasurable emotion; "we'll have to take the back 
 street next time ! " 
 
 Piney, proud in the glory reflected from Cissy, and in 
 her own, answered, " We will — sure ! " 
 
 There was only one interruption to this triumphal pro- 
 gress, and that was so slight as to be noticed by only one of 
 the two girls. As they passed the new works at the mill, the 
 new engineer, as Piney had foreseen, was leaning against 
 the doorpost, smoking a pipe. He took his hat from his 
 head and his pipe from his mouth as they approached, and 
 greeted them with an easy " Good-afternoon, " yet with a 
 glance that was quietly observant and tolerantly critical. 
 
 "There!" said Cissy, when they had passed, "didn't I 
 tell you? Did you ever see such conceit in your born 
 days? I hope you did not look at him." 
 
 Piney, conscious of having done so, and of having 
 blushed under his scrutiny, nevertheless stoutly asserted 
 that she had merely looked at him "to see who it was." 
 But Cissy was placated by passing the Secamps' cottage, 
 from whose windows the three strapping daughters of John 
 Secamp, lately an emigrant from Missouri, were, as Cissy 
 had surmised, lightening the household duties by gazing at 
 the — to them — unwonted wonders of the street. Whether 
 their complexions, still bearing traces of the alkali dust and 
 inefficient nourishment of the plains, took a more yellow 
 tone from the spectacle of Cissy's hat, I cannot say. Cissy 
 thought they did ; perhaps Piney was nearer the truth when 
 she suggested that they were only "looking" to enable 
 them to make a home-made copy of the hat next week. 
 
A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 29 
 
 Their progress forward and through the outskirts of the 
 town was of the same triumphal character. Teamsters with- 
 held their oaths and their uplifted whips as the two girls 
 passed by ; weary miners, toiling in ditches, looked up with 
 a pleasure that was half reminiscent of their past; younger 
 skylarkers stopped in their horse-play with half-smiling, 
 half-apologetic faces ; more ambitious riders on the highway 
 urged their horses to greater speed under the girls' inspir- 
 ing eyes, and "Vaquero Billy," charging them, full tilt, 
 brought up his mustang on its haunches and rigid forelegs, 
 with a sweeping bow of his sombrero, within a foot of their 
 artfully simulated terror. In this way they at last reached 
 the clearing in the forest, the church with its ostentatious 
 spire, and the Eeverend Mr. Windibrook's dwelling, other- 
 wise humorously known as "The Pastorage," where Cissy 
 intended to call. 
 
 The Reverend Mr. Windibrook had been selected by his 
 ecclesiastical superiors to minister to the spiritual wants of 
 Canada City as being what was called a " hearty " man. 
 Certainly, if considerable lung capacity, absence of reserve, 
 and power of hand-shaking and back-slapping were neces- 
 sary to the redemption of Canada City, Mr. Windibrook's 
 ministration would have been successful. But, singularly 
 enough, the rude miner was apt to resent this familiarity, 
 and it is recorded that Isaac Wood, otherwise known as 
 " Grizzly Woods, " once responded to a cheerful back-slap 
 from the reverend gentleman by an ostentatiously friendly 
 hug which nearly dislocated the parson's ribs. Perhaps 
 Mr. Windibrook was more popular on account of his admir- 
 ing enthusiasm of the prosperous money-getting members of 
 his flock and a singular sympathy with their methods, and 
 Mr. Trixit's daring speculations were an especially delight- 
 ful theme to him. 
 
 "Ah, Miss Trixit," he said, as Cissy entered the little 
 parlor, "and how is your dear father? Still startling the 
 
30 A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 
 
 money market with his fearless speculations! This, bro- 
 ther Jones, " turning to a visitor, " is the daughter of our 
 Napoleon of finance, Montagp Trixit. Only last week, in 
 that deal in ' the Comstock, ' he cleared fifty thousand dol- 
 lars! Yes, sir," repeating it with unction, "fifty — thou- 
 sand — dollars ! — in about two hours, and with a single 
 stroke of the pen! I believe I am not overstating, Miss 
 Trixit 1 " he added, appealing to Cissy with a portentous 
 politeness that was as badly fitting as his previous "hearti- 
 ness. " 
 
 Cissy colored slightly. "I don't know," she said sim- 
 ply. She was perfectly truthful. She knew nothing of 
 her father's business, except the vague reputation of his 
 success. 
 
 Her modesty, however, produced a singular hilarity in 
 Mr. Windibrook, and a playful push. " You don't know? 
 Ha, but / do. Yes, sir," — to the visitor, — "I have 
 reason to remember it. I called upon him the next day. 
 I used, sir, the freedom of an old friend. ' Trixit, ' I said, 
 clapping my hand on his shoulder, ' the Lord has been 
 good to you. I congratulate you. ' 
 
 " ' H'm ! ' he said, without looking up. ' What do you 
 reckon those congratulations are worth t ' 
 
 "Many a man, sir, who didn't know his style, would 
 have been staggered. But I knew my man. I looked him 
 straight in the eye. ' A new organ, ' I said, ' and as good 
 a one as Sacramento can turn out.' 
 
 "He took up a piece of paper, scrawled a few lines on it 
 to his cashier, and said, ' Will that do ? ' " Mr. Windi- 
 brook's voice sank to a thrilling whisper. "It was an order 
 for one thousand dollars! Fact, sir. That is the father 
 of this young lady. " 
 
 " Ye had better luck than Bishop Briggs had with old 
 Johnson, the Excelsior Bank president," said the visitor, 
 encouraged by Windibrook's " heartiness " into a humorous 
 
A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 31 
 
 retrospect. " Briggs goes to him for a subscription for a new 
 fence round the buryin'-ground — the old one bavin' rotted 
 away. ' Ye don't want no fence,' sez Johnson, short like. 
 'No fence round a buryin'-ground 1 ' sez Briggs, starin'. 
 'No! Them as is in the buryin'-ground can't get out, 
 and them as is n't don't want to get in, nohow! So you 
 kin just travel — I ain't givin' money away on useless- 
 nesses ! ' Ha ! ha ! " 
 
 A chill silence followed, which checked even Piney's 
 giggle. Mr. Windibrook evidently had no "heartiness" 
 for non-subscribing humor. "There are those who can jest 
 with sacred subjects," he said ponderously, "but I have 
 always found Mr. Trixit, though blunt, eminently practical. 
 Your father is still away," he added, shifting the conversa- 
 tion to Cissy, " hovering wherever he can extract the honey 
 to store up for the provision of age. An industrious 
 worker. " 
 
 "He's still away," said Cissy, feeling herself on safe 
 ground, though she was not aware of her father's entomo- 
 logical habits. "In San Francisco, I think." 
 
 Sfie was glad to get away from Mr. Windibrook's " hearti- 
 ness " and console herself with Mrs. Windibrook's consti- 
 tutional depression, Which was partly the result of nervous 
 dyspepsia and her husband's boisterous cordiality. "I sup- 
 pose, dear, you are dreadfully anxious about your father 
 when he is away from home 1 " she said to Cissy, with a 
 sympathetic sigh. 
 
 Cissy, conscious of never having felt a moment's anxiety, 
 and accustomed to his absences, replied naively, " Why 1 " 
 
 "Oh," responded Mrs. Windibrook, "on account of his 
 great business responsibilities, you know ; so much depends 
 upon him." 
 
 Again Cissy did not comprehend; she could not under- 
 stand why this masterful man, her father, who was equal 
 to her own and, it seemed, everybody's needs, had any 
 
32 A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 
 
 responsibility, or was not as infallible and constant as the 
 sunshine or the air she breathed. Without being his con- 
 fidante, or even his associate, she had since her mother's 
 death no other experience ; youthfully alive to the impor- 
 tance of their wealth, it seemed to her, however, only a 
 natural result of being his daughter. She smiled vaguely 
 and a little impatiently. They might have talked to her 
 about herself; it was a little tiresome to always have to 
 answer questions about her "popper." Nevertheless, she 
 availed herself of Mrs. Windibrook's invitation to go into 
 the garden and see the new summer-house that had been 
 put up among the pines, and gradually diverted her hostess's 
 conversation into gossip of the town. If it was somewhat 
 'ugubrious and hesitating, it was, however, a relief to Cissy, 
 and bearing chiefly upon the vicissitudes of others, gave her 
 the comforting glow of comparison. 
 
 Touching the complexion of the Secamp girls, Mrs. 
 Windibrook attributed it to their great privations in the 
 alkali desert. "One day," continued Mrs. Windibrook, 
 " when their father was ill with fever and ague, they drove 
 the cattle twenty miles to water through that dreadful poi- 
 sonous dust, and when they got there their lips were cracked 
 and bleeding and their eyelids like burning knives, and 
 Mamie Secamp's hair, which used to be a beautiful brown 
 like your own, my dear, was bleached into a rusty yellow." 
 
 "And they will wear colors that don't suit them," said 
 Cissy impatiently. 
 
 "Never mind, dear," said Mrs. Windibrook ambiguously ; 
 " I suppose they will have their reward. " 
 
 Nor was the young engineer discussed in a lighter vein. 
 "It pains me dreadfully to see that young man working 
 with the common laborers and giving himself no rest, just 
 because he says he wants to know exactly ' how the thing 
 is done' and why the old works failed," she remarked 
 sadly. "When Mr. Windibrook knew he was the son of 
 
A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 33 
 
 Judge Masterton and had rich relations, he wished, of 
 course, to be civil, but somehow young Masterton and he 
 didn't 'hit off.' Indeed, Mr. Windibrook was told that 
 he had declared that the prosperity of Canada City was only 
 a mushroom growth, and it seems too shocking to repeat, 
 dear, but they say he said that the new church — om 
 church — was simply using the Almighty as a big bluff to 
 the other towns. Of course, Mr. Windibrook couldn't see 
 him after that. Why, he even said your father ought to 
 send you to school somewhere, and not let you grow up in 
 this half-civilized place." 
 
 Strangely enough, Cissy did not hail this corroboration 
 of her dislike to young Masterton with the liveliness one 
 might have expected. Perhaps it was because Piney Tibbs 
 was no longer present, having left Cissy at the parsonage and 
 returned home. Still she enjoyed her visit after a fashion, 
 romped with the younger Windibrooks and climbed a tree 
 in the security of her sylvan seclusion and the promptings 
 of her still healthy, girlish blood, and only came back to 
 cake and tea and her new hat, which she had prudently 
 hung up in the summer-house, as the afternoon was waning. 
 When they returned to the house, they found th^t Mr. 
 Windibrook had gone out with his visitor, and Cissy was 
 spared the advertisement of a boisterous escort home, which 
 he generally insisted upon. She gayly took leave of the 
 infant Windibrook and his mother, sallied out into the 
 empty road, and once more became conscious of her new 
 hat. 
 
 The shadows were already lengthening, and a cool breeze 
 stirred the deep aisles of the pines on either side of the 
 highway. One or two people passed her hurriedly, talking 
 and gesticulating, evidently so preoccupied that they did 
 not notice her. Again, a rapid horseman rode by without 
 glancing round, overtook the pedestrians, exchanged a few 
 hurried words with them, and then spurred swiftly away as 
 
34 A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 
 
 one of them shouted after him, "There 's another dispatch 
 confirming it." A group of men talking by the roadside 
 failed to look up as she passed. Cissy pouted slightly at 
 this want of tasttf, which made some late election news or 
 the report of a horse race more enthralling than her new 
 hat and its owner. Even the toilers in the ditches had left 
 their work, and were congregated around a man who was 
 reading aloud from a widely margined " extra " of the 
 "Canada City Press." It seemed provoking, as she knew 
 her cheeks were glowing from her romp, and was conscious 
 that she was looking her best. However, the Secamps' 
 cottage was just before her, and the girls were sure to be 
 on the lookout! She shook out her skirts and straightened 
 her pretty little figure as she approached the house. But 
 to her surprise, her coming had evidently been anticipated 
 by them, and they were actually — and unexpectedly — 
 awaiting her behind the low whitewashed garden palings! 
 As she neared them they burst into tf. shrill, discordant 
 laugh, so full of irony, gratified malice, and mean exalta- 
 tion that Cissy was for a moment startled. But only for 
 a moment; she had her father's reckless audacity, and bore 
 them down with a display of such pink cheeks and flashing 
 eyes that their laughter was checked, and they remained 
 open-mouthed as she swept by them. 
 
 Perhaps this incident prevented her from noticing an- 
 other but more passive one. A group of men standing 
 before the new mill — the same men who had so solicitously 
 challenged her attention with their bows a couple of hours 
 ago — turned as she approached and suddenly dispersed. 
 It was not until this was repeated by another group that 
 its oddity forced itself upon her still angry consciousness. 
 Then the street seemed to be full of those excited preoccu- 
 pied groups who melted away as she advanced. Only one 
 man met her curious eyes, — the engineer, — yet she missed 
 the usual critical smile with which he was wont to greet 
 
A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 35 
 
 her, and he gave her a bow of such profound respect and 
 gravity that for the first time she felt really uneasy. Was 
 there something wrong with her hat 1 That dreadful, fate- 
 ful hat ! Was it too conspicuous 1 Did he think it was 
 vulgar 1 She was eager to cross the street on the next block 
 where there were large plate-glass windows which she and 
 Piney — if Piney were only with her now! — had often 
 used as mirrors. 
 
 But there was a great crowd on the next block, congre- 
 gated around the bank, — her father's bank ! A vague ter- 
 ror, she knew not what, now began to creep over her. She 
 would have turned into a side street, but mingled with her 
 fear was a resolution not to show it, — not to even think of 
 it, — to combat it as she had combated the horrid laugh of 
 the Secamp girls, and she kept on her way with a beating 
 heart but erect head, without looking across the street. 
 
 There was another crowd before the newspaper office — 
 also on the other side — and a bulletin board, but she would 
 not try to read it. Only one idea was in her mind, — to 
 reach home before any one should speak to her ; for the last 
 intelligible sound that had reached her was the laugh of the 
 Secamp girls, and this was still ringing in her ears, seeming 
 to voice the hidden strangeness of all she saw, and stirring 
 her, as that had, with childish indignation. She kept on 
 with unmoved face, however, and at last turned into the 
 planked side-terrace, — a part of her father's munificence, 
 — and reached the symmetrical garden-beds and graveled 
 ■walk. She ran up the steps of the veranda and entered the 
 drawing-room through the open French window. Glancing 
 around the familiar room, at her father's closed desk, at the 
 open piano with the piece of music she had been practicing 
 that morning, the whole walk seemed only a foolish dream 
 that had frightened her. She was Cissy Trixit, the daugh- 
 ter of the richest man in the town ! This was her father's 
 house, the wonder of Canada City ! 
 
36 A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 
 
 A ring at the front doorbell startled her ; without wait- 
 ing for the servant to answer it, she stepped out on the ve- 
 randa, and saw a boy whom she recognized as a waiter at 
 the hotel kept by Piney's father. He was holding a note 
 in his hand, and staring intently at the house and garden. 
 Seeing Cissy, ho transferred his stare to her. Snatching 
 the note from him, she tore it open, and read in Piney's 
 well-known scrawl, "Dad won't let me come to you now, 
 dear, but I '11 try to slip out late to-night." Why should 
 she want to come 1 She had said nothing about coming 
 now — and why should her father prevent her ? Cissy 
 crushed the note between her fingers, and faced the boy. 
 
 " What are you staring at — idiot ! " 
 
 The boy grinned hysterically, a little frightened at Cis- 
 sy's straightened brows and snapping eyes. 
 
 "Get away! there 's no answer." 
 
 The boy ran off, and Cissy returned to the drawing- 
 room. Then it occurred to her that the servant had not 
 answered the bell. She rang again furiously. There was 
 no response. She called down the basement staircase, and 
 heard only the echo of her voice in the depths. How still 
 the house was ! Were they all out, — Susan, Norah, the 
 cook, the Chinaman, and the gardener? She ran down 
 into the kitchen; the back door was open, the fires were 
 burning, dishes were upon the table, but the kitchen was 
 empty. Upon the floor lay a damp copy of the "extra." 
 She picked it up quickly. Several black headlines stared 
 her in the face. " Enormous Defalcation ! " " Montagu 
 Trixit Absconded ! " " 50, 000 Dollars Missing ! " " Eun 
 on the Bank!" 
 
 She threw the paper through the open door as she would 
 have hurled back the accusation from living lips. Then, 
 in a revulsion of feeling lest any one should find her there, 
 she ran upstairs and locked herself in her own room. 
 
 So that was what it all meant ! All ! — from the laugh 
 
A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 37 
 
 of the Secamp girls to the turning away of the townspeople 
 as she went by. Her father was a thief who had stolen 
 money from the bank and run away leaving her alone to 
 bear it! No! It was all a lie — a wicked, jealous lie! 
 A foolish lie, for how could he steal money from his own 
 bank ? Cissy knew very little of her father — perhaps that 
 was why she believed in him; she knew still less of busi- 
 ness, but she knew that he did. She had often heard them 
 say it — perhaps the very ones who now called him names. 
 He! who had made Canada City what it was! He, who, 
 Windibrook said, only to-day, had, like Moses, touched the 
 rocks of the Canada with his magic wand of Finance, and 
 streams of public credit and prosperity had gushed from it ! 
 She would never speak to them again! She would shut 
 herself tip here, dismiss all the servants but the Chinaman, 
 and wait until her father returned. 
 
 There was a knock, and the entreating voice of Norah, 
 the cook, outside the door. Cissy unlocked it and flung it 
 open indignantly. 
 
 "Ah! It 's yourself, miss — and I never knew ye kem 
 back till I met that gossoon of a hotel waiter in the street, " 
 said the panting servant. " Sure it was only an hour ago 
 while I was at me woorrck in the kitchen, and Jim rushes 
 in and sez : ' For the love of God, if iver ye want to see a 
 blessed cint of the money ye put in the masther's bank, off 
 wid ye now and draw it out — for there's a run on the 
 bank!'" 
 
 "It was an infamous lie," said Cissy fiercely. 
 
 " Sure, miss, how was oi to know ? And if the masther 
 has gone away, it 's ownly takin' me money from the other 
 divils down there that 's drawin' it out and dividin' it 
 betwixt and between them." 
 
 Cissy had a very vague idea of what a " run on the bank " 
 meant, but Norah's logic seemed to satisfy her feminine 
 reason. She softened a little. 
 
38 A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 
 
 "Mr. Windibrook is in the parlor, miss, and a jintleman 
 on ttie veranda," continued Nora:h, encouraged. 
 
 Cissy started. "I '11 come down," she said briefly. 
 
 Mr. Windibrook was waiting beside the piano, with his 
 soft hat in one heind and a large white handkerchief in the 
 other. He had confidently expected to find Cissy in tears, 
 and was ready with boisterous condolement, but was a lit- 
 tle taken aback as the young girl entered with a pale face, 
 straightened brows, and eyes that shone with -audacious re- 
 bellion. However, it was too late to change his attitude. 
 " Ah, my young friend, " he said a little awkwardly, " we 
 must not give way to our emotions, but try to recognize in 
 our trials the benefits of a great lesson. But," he added 
 hurriedly, seeing her stand still silent but erect before him, 
 " I see that you do ! " He paused, coughed slightly, cast 
 a glance at the veranda, — where Cissy now for the first 
 time observed a man standing in an obviously assumed at- 
 titude of negligent abstraction, — moved towards the back 
 room, and in a lower voice said, "A word with you in 
 private." 
 
 Without replying. Cissy followed him. 
 
 "If," said Mr. Windibrook, with a sickly smile, "you 
 are questioned regarding your father's affairs, you may re- 
 member his peculiar and utterly unsolicited gift of a certain 
 sum towards a new organ, to which I alluded to-day. You 
 can say that he always expressed great liberality towards 
 the church, and it was no surprise to you." 
 
 Cissy only stared at him with dangerous eyes. 
 
 " Mrs. Windibrook," continued the reverend gentleman in 
 his highest, heartiest voice, albeit a little hurried, "wished 
 me to say to you that until you heard from — your friends 
 — she wanted you to come and stay with her. Do come ! 
 Bo ! " 
 
 Cissy, with her bright eyes fixed upon her visitor, said, 
 "I shall stay here." 
 
A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 39 
 
 "But," said Mr. Windibrook impatiently, "you cannot. 
 That man you see on the veranda is the sheriff's officer. 
 The house and all that it contains are in the hands of the 
 law." 
 
 Cissy's face whitened in proportion as her eyes grew 
 darker, but she said stoutly, "I shall stay here till my 
 popper tells me to go." 
 
 "Till your popper tells you to go! " repeated Mr. Win- 
 dibrook harshly, dropping his heartiness and his handker- 
 chief in a burst of unguarded temper. "Your papa is a 
 thief escaping from justice, you foolish girl; a disgraced 
 felon, who dare not show his face again in Canada City; 
 and you are lucky, yes ! lucky, miss, if you do not share 
 his disgrace ! " 
 
 "And you 're a wicked, wicked liar! " said Cissy, clinch- 
 ing her little fists at her side and edging towards him with 
 a sidelong bantam-like movement as she advanced her 
 freckled cheek close to his with an effrontery so like her 
 absconding father that he recoiled before it. " And a mean, 
 double-faced hypocrite, too! Didn't you always praise 
 him? Didn't you call him a Napoleon, and a — Moses? 
 Did n't you say he was the making of Canada City ? Did n't 
 you get him to raise your salary, and start a subscription 
 for your new house ? Oh, you — you — stinking beast ! " 
 
 Here the stranger on the veranda, still gazing abstractedly 
 at the landscape, gave a low and apparently unconscious 
 murmur, as if enraptured with the view. Mr. Windibrook, 
 recalled to an attempt at dignity, took up his hat and hand- 
 kerchief. " When you have remembered yourself and your 
 position, Miss Trixit," he said loftily, "the offer I have 
 n^ade you " — 
 
 "I despise it! I 'd sooner stay in the woods with the 
 grizzlies and rattlesnakes ! " said Cissy pantingly. " Go and 
 leave me alone ! Do you hear ? " She stamped her little 
 foot. " Are you listening ? Go ! " 
 
40 A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 
 
 Mr. Windibrook promptly retreated through the door 
 and down the steps into the garden, at which the stranger 
 on the veranda reluctantly tore himself away from the land- 
 scape and slowly entered the parlor through the open Erench 
 window. Here, however, he became equally absorbed and 
 abstracted in the condition of his beard, carefully stroking 
 his shaven cheek and lips and pulling his goatee. 
 
 After a pause he turned to the angry Cissy, standing by 
 the piano, radiant with glowing cheeks and flashing eyes, 
 and said slowly, "I reckon you gave the parson as good as 
 he sent. It kinder settles a man to hear the frozen truth 
 about himself sometimes, and you 've helped old Shadbelly 
 considerably on the way towards salvation. But he was 
 right about one thing, Miss Trixit. The house is in the 
 hands of the law. I 'm representing it as deputy sheriff 
 Mebbe you might remember me — Jake Poole — when your 
 father was addressing the last Citizens' meeting, sittin' 
 next to him on the platform — /'m in possession. It is n't 
 a job I 'm hankerin' much arter; I 'd a lief rather hunt 
 hoss thieves or track down road agents than this kind o' 
 fancy, underhand work. So you '11 excuse me, miss, if I 
 ain't got the style." He paused, rubbed his chin thought- 
 fully, and then said slowly and with great deliberation : 
 "Ef there 's any little thing here, miss, — any keepsakes or 
 such trifles ez you keer for in partickler, things you would n't 
 like strangers to have, — you just make a little pile of 'em 
 and drop 'em down somewhere outside the back door. 
 There ain't no inventory taken nor sealin' up of anythin' 
 done just yet, though I have to see there ain't anythin' 
 disturbed. But I kalkUate to walk out on that veranda 
 for a spell and look at the landscape." He paused again, 
 and said, with a sigh of satisfaction, "It 's a mighty pooty 
 view out thar; it just takes me every time." 
 
 As he turned and walked out through the French win- 
 dow, Cissy did not for a moment comprehend him; then, 
 
A BELLE OF CANADA jCITY 41 
 
 strangely enough, his act of rude courtesy for the first time 
 awakened her to the full sense of the situation. This 
 house, her father's house, was no longer hers! If her 
 father should never return, she wanted nothing from it, 
 nothing ! She gripped her beating heart with the little 
 hand she had clinched so valiantly a moment ago. Sud- 
 denly her hand dropped. Some one had glided noiselessly 
 into the hack room ; a figure in a blue blouse ; a Chinaman, 
 their house servant. Ah Fe. He cast a furtive glance at 
 the stranger on the veranda, and then beckoned to her 
 stealthily. She came towards him wonderingly, when he 
 suddenly whipped a note from his sleeve, and with a dex- 
 terous movement slipped it into her fingers. She tore it 
 open. A single glance showed her a small key inclosed in 
 a line of her father's handwriting. Drawing quickly back 
 into the corner, she read as follows: "If this reaches you 
 in time, take from the second drawer of my desk an envel- 
 ope marked ' Private Contracts ' and give it to the bearer." 
 There was neither signature nor address. 
 
 Putting her finger to her lips, she cast a quick glance at 
 the absorbed figure on the veranda and stepped before the 
 desk. She fitted the key to the drawer and opened it rap- 
 idly but noiselessly. There lay the envelope, and among 
 other ticketed papers a small roll of greenbacks — such as 
 her father often kept there. It was his money ; she did 
 not scruple to take it with the envelope. Handing the lat- 
 ter to the Chinaman, who made it instantly disappear up 
 his sleeve like a conjurer's act, she signed him to follow 
 her into the hall. 
 
 " Who gave you that note, Ah Fe ? " she whispered 
 breathlessly. 
 
 "Chinaman." 
 
 "Who gave it to him?" 
 
 "Chinaman." 
 
 " And to him ? " 
 
42 A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 
 
 "Nollee Chinaman." 
 
 " Another Chinaman ? " 
 
 " Yes — heap Chinaman — allee same as gang. " 
 
 "You mean it passed from one Chinaman's hand to an- 
 other?" 
 
 "Allee same." 
 
 "Why didn't the first Chinaman who got it bring it 
 here 1 " 
 
 " S'pose Mellikan man want to catchee lettel. He spotty- 
 Chinaman. He follee Chinaman. Chinaman passee lettel 
 nex' Chinaman. He no get. Mellikan man no habe got. 
 Sabe ? " 
 
 " Then this package will go back the same way 1 " 
 
 "Allee same." 
 
 " And who will you give it to now ? " 
 
 "Allee same man blingee me lettel. Hop Li — who 
 makee washee. " 
 
 An idea here struck Cissy which made her heart jump 
 and her cheeks flame. Ah Pe gazed at her with an in- 
 fantile smile of admiration. 
 
 " How far did that letter come ? " she asked, with eager 
 questioning eyes. 
 
 "Lettee me see him," said Ah Fe. 
 
 Cissy handed him the missive ; he examined closely some 
 half a dozen Chinese characters that were scrawled along 
 the length of the outer fold, and which she had innocently 
 supposed were a part of the markings of the rice paper on 
 which the note was written. 
 
 "Heap Chinaman velly much walkee — longee way! 
 S'pose you look." He pointed through the open front 
 door to the prospect beyond. It was a familiar one to 
 Cissy, — the long Canada, the crest on crest of serried 
 pines, and beyond the dim snow-line. Ah Fa's brown 
 finger seemed to linger there. 
 
 " In the snow, " she whispered, her cheek whitening like 
 
A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 43 
 
 mat dim lino, but her eyes sparkling like the sunshine 
 over it. 
 
 "Allee same, John," said Ah Fe plaintively. 
 
 "Ah Fe," whispered Cissy, "take me with you to Hop 
 Li." 
 
 "No good," said Ah Fe stolidly. "Hop Li, he givee 
 this " — he indicated the envelope in his sleeve — " to next 
 Chinaman. He no go. S'pose you go with me, Hop Li 
 — you no makee nothing — allee same, makee f oolee ! " 
 
 " I know ; but you just take me there. Do ! " 
 
 The young girl was irresistible. Ah Fe's face relaxed. 
 
 " Allee litee ! " he said, with a resigned smile. 
 
 " You wait here a moment," said Cissy, brightening. She 
 flew up the staircase. In a few minutes she was back 
 again. She had exchanged her smart rose-sprigged chintz 
 for a pathetic little blue-checked frock of her school-days; 
 the fateful hat had given way to a brown straw " flat, " bent 
 like a frame around her charming face. All the girlishness, 
 and indeed a certain honest boyishness of her nature, seemed 
 to have come out in her glowing, freckled cheek, brilliant, 
 audacious eyes, and the quick stride which brought her to 
 Ah Fe's side. 
 
 "Now let 's go," she said, "out the back way and down 
 the side streets." She paused, cast a glance through the 
 drawing-room at the contemplative figure of the sheriff's 
 deputy on the veranda, and then passed out of the house 
 forever. 
 
 The excitement over the failure of Montagu Trixit's 
 bank did not burn itself out until midnight. By that time, 
 however, it was pretty well known that the amount of the 
 defalcations had been exaggerated; that it had been pre- 
 ceded by the suspension of the " Excelsior Bank " of San 
 Francisco, of which Trixit was . also a managing director, 
 occasioned by the discovery of the withdrawal of securities 
 
44 A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 
 
 for use in the branch bank at Canada City; that he had 
 fled the State eastward across the Sierras; yet that, owing 
 to the vigilance of the police on the frontier, he had failed 
 to escape and was in hiding. But there were adverse re- 
 ports of a more sinister nature. It was said that others 
 were implicated; that they dared not bring him to justice; 
 it was pointed out that there was more concern among 
 many who were not openly connected with the bank than 
 among its unfortunate depositors. Besides the inevitable 
 downfall of those who had invested their fortunes in it, 
 there was distrust or suspicion everywhere. Even Trixit's 
 enemies were forced to admit the saying that " Canada City 
 was the bank, and the bank was Trixit." 
 
 Perhaps this had something to do with an excited meet- 
 ing of the directors of the New Mill, to whose discussions 
 Dick Masterton, the engineer, had been hurriedly sum- 
 moned. When the president told him that he had been 
 selected to undertake the difficult and delicate mission of 
 discovering the whereabouts of Montagu Trixit, and, if pos- 
 sible, procuring an interview with him, he was amazed. 
 What had the New Mill, which had always kept itself 
 aloof from the bank and its methods, to do with the dis- 
 graced manager 1 He was still more astonished when the 
 president added bluntly : — 
 
 "Trixit holds securities of ours for money advanced to 
 the mill by himself privately. They do not appear on the 
 books, but if he chooses to declare them as assets of the 
 bank, it 's a bad thing for us. If he is bold enough to 
 keep them, he may be willing to make some arrangement 
 with us to carry them on. If he has got away or commit- 
 ted suicide, as some say, it 's for you to find the where- 
 abouts of the securities and get them. He is said to have 
 been last seen near the Summit. You understand our 
 position 1 " 
 
 Masterton did, with suppressed disgust. But he was 
 
A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 45 
 
 young, and there was the thrill of adventure in this. "I 
 will go," he said quietly. 
 
 " We thought you would. You must take the up stage 
 to-night. Come again and get your final instructions. By 
 tlie way, you might get some information at Trixit's house. 
 You — er — er — are acquainted with his daughter, I 
 think?" 
 
 "Which makes it quite impossible for me to seek her 
 for such a purpose," said Masterton coldly. 
 
 A few hours later he was on the coach. As they cleared 
 the outskirts of the town, they passed two Chinamen plod- 
 ding sturdily along in the dust of the highway. 
 
 Mr. Masterton started from a slight doze in the heavy, 
 lumbering " mountain wagon " which had taken the place 
 of the smart Concord coach that he had left at the last sta- 
 tion. The scenery, too, had changed; the four horses 
 threaded their way through rocky defiles of stunted larches 
 and hardy " brush, " with here and there open patches of 
 shrunken snow. Yet at the edge of declivities he could 
 still see through the rolled-up leather curtains the valley be- 
 low bathed in autumn, the glistening rivers half spent with 
 the long summer drought, and the green slopes rolling up- 
 ward into crest after crest of ascending pines. At times a 
 drifting haze, always imperceptible from below, veiled the 
 view ; a chill wind blew through the vehicle, and made the 
 steel sledge-runners that hung beneath the wagon, ready to 
 be shipped under the useless wheels, an ominous provision. 
 A few rude "stations," half blacksmith shops, half grocery, 
 marked the deserted but well-worn road; a long, narrow 
 "packer's" wagon, or a tortuous file of Chinamen carrying 
 mysterious bundles depending from bamboo poles, was their 
 rare and only company. The rough sheepskin jackets 
 which these men wore over their characteristic blue blouses 
 and their heavy leggings were a new revelation to Master- 
 
46 A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 
 
 ton, accustomed to the thinly clad coolie of the mines. 
 They seemed a distinct race. 
 
 "I never knew those chaps get so high up, hut they 
 seem to understand the cold," he remarked. 
 
 The driver looked up, and ejaculated his disgust and his 
 tobacco juice at the same moment. 
 
 " I reckon they 're every whar in Californy whar you 
 •want 'em and whar you don't; you take my word for it, 
 afore long Californy will hev to reckon that she ginerally 
 dorCt want 'em, ef a white man has to live here. With 
 a race tied up together in a language ye can't understand, 
 ways that no feller knows, — from their prayin' to devils, 
 swappin' their wives, and havin' their bones sent back to 
 Chiny, — wot are ye goin' to do, and where are ye? Wot 
 are ye goin' to make outer men that look so much alike ye 
 can't tell 'em apart; that think alike and act alike, and 
 never in ways that ye kin catch on to ! Fellers knotted 
 together in some underhand secret way o' communicatin' 
 with each other, so that ef ye kick a Chinaman up here on 
 the Summit, another Chinaman will squeal in the valley ! 
 And the way they do it just gets me ! Look yer ! I '11 tell 
 ye somethin' that happened, that's gospel truth! Some 
 of the boys that reckoned to hev some fun with the Chinee 
 gang over at Cedar Camp started out one afternoon to raid 
 'em. They groped along through the woods whar nobody 
 could see 'em, kalkilatin' to come down with a rush on the 
 camp, over two miles away. And nobody did see 'em, 
 only one Chinaman wot they met a mile from the camp, 
 burnin' punk to his joss or devil, and he scooted away just 
 in the contrary direction. Well, sir, when they waltzed 
 into that camp, darn my skin! ef there was a Chinaman 
 there, or as much as a grain of rice to grab ! Somebody 
 had warned 'em ! Well ! this sort o' got the boys, and 
 they set about discoverin' how it was done. One of 'em 
 noticed that there was some of them bits of tissue paper 
 
A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 47 
 
 slips that they toss around at funerals lyin' along the road 
 near the camp, and another remembered that the Chinaman 
 they met on the hill tossed a lot of that paper in the air 
 afore he scooted. Well, sir, the wind carried just enough 
 of that paper straight down the hill into that camp ten 
 minutes afore they could get there, to give them Chinamen 
 warnin' — whatever it was ! Fact! Why, I've seen 'em 
 stringin' along the road just like them fellers we passed 
 just now, and then stop all of a suddeht like hounds off the 
 scent, jabber among themselves, and start off in a different 
 direction " — 
 
 "Just what they're doing now! By thunder !" inter- 
 rupted another passenger, who was looking through the 
 roUed-up curtain at his side. 
 
 All the passengers turned by one accord and looked out. 
 The file of Chinamen under observation had indeed turned, 
 and was even then moving rapidly away at j-ight angles 
 from the road. 
 
 "Got some signal, you bet!" said the driver; "some 
 yeller paper or piece o' joss stick in the road. What ? " 
 
 The remark was addressed to the passenger who had just 
 placed his finger on his lip, and indicated a stolid-looking 
 Chinaman, overlooked before, who was sitting in the back 
 or " steerage " seat. 
 
 " Oh, he be darned ! " said the driver impatiently. " He 
 is no account; he's only the laundryman from Eocky 
 Canon. I 'm talkin' of the coolie gang." 
 
 But here the conversation flagged, and the air growing 
 keener, the flaps of the leather side curtains were battened 
 down. Masterton gave himself up to conflicting reflections 
 The information that he had gathered was meagre and un- 
 satisfactory, and he could only trust to luck and circum- 
 stance to fulfill his mission. The first glow of adventure 
 having passed, he was uneasily conscious that the mission 
 was not to his taste. The pretty, flushed but defiant face 
 
48 A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 
 
 of Cissy that afternoon haunted him; he had not known 
 the immediate cause of it, hut made no doubt that she had 
 already heard the news of her father's disgrace when he 
 met her. He regretted now that he had n't spoken to her, 
 if only a few formal words of sympathy. He had always 
 been half tenderly amused at her frank conceit and her 
 "airs," — the innocent, undisguised pride of the country 
 belle, so different from the hard aplomb of the city girl! 
 And now the foolish little moth, dancing in the sunshine 
 of prosperity, had felt the chill of winter in its pretty 
 wings. The contempt he had for the father had hitherto 
 shown itself in tolerant pity for the daughter, so proud of 
 her father's position and what it brought her. In the reve- 
 lation that his own directors had availed themselves of that 
 father's methods, and the ignoble character of his present 
 mission, he felt a stirring of self-reproach. What would 
 become of her t Of course, frivolous as she was, she would 
 not feel the keenness of this misfortune like another, nor 
 yet rise superior to it. She would succumb for the present, 
 to revive another season in a dimmer glory elsewhere. His 
 critical, cynical observation of her had determined that any 
 filial affection she might have would be merged and lost in 
 the greater deprivation of her position. 
 
 A sudden darkening of the landscape below, and a sin- 
 gular opaque whitening of the air around them, aroused him 
 from his thoughts. The driver drew up the collar of his 
 overcoat and laid his whip smartly over the backs of his 
 cattle. The air grew gradually darker, until suddenly it 
 seemed to disintegrate into invisible gritty particles that 
 swept through the wagon. Presently these particles he- 
 same heavier, more perceptible, and polished like small 
 shot, and a keen wind drove them stingingly into the faces 
 of the passengers, or insidiously into their pockets, collars, 
 or the folds of their clothes. The snow forced itself 
 through the smallest crevice. 
 
A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 49 
 
 "We '11 get over this when once we 've passed the bend; 
 the road seems to dip beyond, " said Masterton cheerfully 
 from his seat beside the driver. 
 
 The driver gave him a single scornful look, and turned 
 to the passenger who occupied the seat on the other side of 
 him. "I don't like the look o' things down there, but ef 
 we are stuck, we '11 have to strike out for the next station." 
 
 "But," said Masterton, as the wind volleyed the sharp 
 snow pellets in their faces and the leaders were scarcely 
 distinguishable through the smoke-like discharges, "it can't 
 be worse than here." 
 
 The driver did not speak, but the other passenger craned 
 over his back, and said explanatorily : — 
 
 "I reckon ye don't know these storms; this kind o' dry 
 snow don't stick and don't clog. Look! " 
 
 Indeed, between the volleys, Masterton could see that 
 the road was perfectly bare and wind-swept, and except 
 slight drifts and banks beside outlying bushes and shrubs, 
 -^ which even then were again blown away before his eyes, 
 — the level landscape was unclothed and unchanged. 
 "Where these mysterious snow pellets went to puzzled and 
 confused him; they seemed to vanish, as they had ap- 
 peared, into the air about them. 
 
 "I 'd make a straight rush for the next station," said the 
 other passenger confidently to the driver. " If we 're stuck, 
 we 're that much on the way; if we turn back now, we '11 
 have to take the grade anyway when the storm's over, and 
 neither you nor I know when that '11 be. It may be only 
 a squall just now, but it 's gettin' rather late in the season. 
 Just pitch in and drive all ye know. " 
 
 The driver laid his lash on the horses, and for a few mo- 
 ments the heavy vehicle dashed forward in violent conflict 
 with the storm. At times the elastic hickory framew.ork 
 of its domed leather roof swayed and bent like the ribs of 
 an umbrella i at times it seemed as if it would be lifted 
 
50 A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 
 
 bodily off; at times the whole interior of the vehicle was 
 filled with a thin smoke by drifts through every cranny. 
 But presently, to Masterton's great relief, the interminable 
 level seemed to end, and between the whitened blasts he 
 could see that the road was descending. Again the horses 
 were urged forward, and at last he could feel that the vehi- 
 cle began to add the momentum of its descent to its conflici) 
 with the storm. The blasts grew less violent, or became 
 only the natural resistance of the air to their dominant rush. 
 With the cessation of the snow volleys and the clearing of 
 the atmosphere, the road became more strongly defined as 
 it plunged downward to a terrace on the mountain flank, 
 several hundred feet below. Presently they came again 
 upon a thicker growth of bushes, and here and there a soli- 
 tary fir. The wind died away; the cold seemed to be less 
 bitter. Masterton, in his relief, glanced smilingly at his 
 companions on the box, but the driver's mouth was com- 
 pressed as he urged his team forward, and the other passen- 
 ger looked hardly less anxious. They were now upon the 
 level terrace, and the storm apparently spending its fury 
 high up and behind them. But in spite of the clearing of 
 the air, he could not but notice that it was singularly dark. 
 What was more singular, the darkness seemed to have risen 
 from below, and to flow in upon them as they descended. 
 A curtain of profound obscurity, darker even than the 
 mountain wall at their side, shut out the horizon and the 
 valley below. But for the temperature, Masterton would 
 have thought a thunderstorm was closing, in upon them. 
 An odd feeling of uneasiness crept over him. 
 
 A few fitful gusts now came from the obscurity; one of 
 them was accompanied by what seemed a flight of small 
 startled birds crossing the road ahead of them. A second 
 larger and more sustained flight showed his astonished eyes 
 that they were white, and each bird an enormous flake of 
 snow 1 For an instant the air was filled with these disks. 
 
A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 51 
 
 shreds, patches, — two or three clinging together, — like 
 ■ the downfall shaken from a tree, striking the leather roof 
 and sides with a dull thud, spattering the road into which 
 they descended with large rosettes that melted away only 
 to be followed by hundreds more that stuck and stayed. 
 In five minutes the ground was white with it, the long road 
 gleaming out ahead in the darkness ; the roof and sides of 
 the wagon were overlaid with it as with a coating of plaster 
 of Paris; the harness of the horses, and even the reins, 
 stood out over their steaming backs like white trappings. 
 In five minutes more the steaming backs themselves were 
 blanketed with it; the arms and legs of the outside passen- 
 gers pinioned to the seats with it, and the arms of the 
 driver kept free only by incessant motion. It was nc 
 longer snowing; it was "snowballing; " it was an avalanche 
 out of the slopes of the sky. The exhausted horses floun- 
 dered in it; the clogging wheels dragged in it; the vehicle 
 at last plunged into a billow of it — and stopped. 
 
 The bewildered and half-blinded passengers hurried out 
 into the road to assist the driver to unship the wheels and 
 fit the steel runners in their axles. But it was too late ! 
 By the time the heavy wagon was converted into a sledge, 
 it was deeply imbedded in wet and clinging snow. The 
 narrow, long-handled shovels borrowed from the prospec- 
 tors' kits were powerless before this heavy, half-liquid im- 
 pediment. At last the driver, with an oath, relinquished 
 the attempt, and, unhitching his horses, collected the pas- 
 sengers and led them forward by a narrower and more shel- 
 tered trail toward the next station, now scarce a mile away. 
 The led horses broke a path before them, the snow fell less 
 heavily, but it was nearly an hour before the straggling 
 procession reached the house, and the snow-coated and ex- 
 hausted passengers huddled and steamed round the red-hot 
 stove in the bar-room. The driver had vanished with his 
 team into the shed; Masterton's fellow passenger on the 
 
52 A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 
 
 box-seat, after a few whispered words to the landlord, also 
 disappeared. 
 
 "I see you've got Jake Poole with you," said one of 
 the bar-room loungers to Mastertoji, indicating the passen- 
 ger who had just left. "I reckon he 's here on the same 
 fool business." 
 
 Masterton looked his surprise and mystiiication. 
 
 "Jake Poole, the deputy sheriff," repeated the other. 
 "I reckon he 's here pretendin' to hunt for Montagu Trixit 
 like the San FraneisGO detectives that kem up yesterday." 
 
 Masterton with difficulty repressed a start. He had 
 heard of Poole, but did not know him by sight. "I don't 
 think I understand," he said coolly. 
 
 "I reckon you 're a stranger in these parts," returned the 
 lounger, looking at Masterton curiously. "Ef you war n't, 
 ye 'd know that about the last man San Francisco or Canada 
 City wanted to ketch is Monty Trixit! He knows too 
 much and thei/ know it. But they 've got to keep up a 
 show chase — a kind o' cirkis-ridin' — up hereto satisfy 
 the stockholders. You bet that Jake Poole hez got his or- 
 ders^ they might kill him to shut his mouth, ef they got 
 an excuse — and he made a fight — but he ain't no such 
 fool. No, sir! Why, the sickest man you ever saw was 
 that director that kem up here with a detective when he 
 found that Monty hadn't left the State." 
 
 " Then he is hiding about here ? " said Masterton, with 
 assumed calmness. 
 
 The man paused, lowered his voice, and said : " I would 
 n't swear he wasn't a mile from whar we 're talkin' now. 
 Why, they do allow that he 's taken a drink at this very 
 bar since the news came ! — and that thar 's a boss kept 
 handy in the stable already saddled just to tempt him ef he 
 was inclined to scoot." 
 
 "That 's only a bluff to start him goin' so that they kin 
 shoot him in his tracks," said a bystander. 
 
A BELLfc Ot CANADA CITY 53 
 
 "That Sin't no good ef he has, as they ^ay he hag, 
 papers stowed away with a friend that would frighten some 
 inighty partickler men out o' their boots," returned the 
 first Speaker. "But he 's got his spies too, and thar ain't 
 a man that crosses the Divide as ain't spotted hy them. 
 The officers brag about bavin' put a cordoii aftfund the dis- 
 trict, and yet they 've just found out that he managed to 
 send a telegraphic dispatch from Black Rock station right 
 under their noses. Why, only an hour or so after the de- 
 tectives and the news arrived hete, thar kem along one o' 
 them emigrant teams from Pike, aiid the driver said that 
 a smart-lookin' chap in store-clothes had come out of an did 
 prospector's cabin up thar on the rise about a iiiile away and 
 asked for a newspaper. And the description the teamster 
 gave just fitted Trixit to a T. Well, the information was 
 give so public like that the detectives had to make a rush 
 over thar, and b' gosh! although thar wasn't a soul passed 
 them but a file of Chinese coolies, when they got thar they 
 iowndnothin', — nothin' but them Chinamen cookin' their 
 rice by the roadside." 
 
 Masterton smiled carelessly, and walked to the window, 
 as if intent upon the still falling snow. But he had at once 
 grasped the situation that seemed now almost providential 
 for his inexperiende and his mission. The mail he was seek- 
 ing was within his possible reach, if the story he had heard 
 was true. The detectives would not be likely to interfere 
 with his plans, for he Was the only man who really wished 
 to meet the fugitive. The preseiice of Poole rdade him 
 uneasy, though he had never met the man before. Was it 
 barely possible that he was on the same mission on behalf 
 of others ? If what he heard was true, there might be oth- 
 ers equally involved with the absconding manager. But 
 then the spies — how could the deputy sheriff elude them, 
 and how could he ? 
 
 He was turning impatiently away from the window when 
 
54 A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 
 
 his eye caught sight of a straggling file of Chinamen breast- 
 ing the storm on their way up the hill. A sudden idea 
 seized him. Perhaps they were the spies in question. He 
 remembered the driver's story. A sudden flash of intui- 
 tion made him now understand the singular way the file of 
 coolies which they met had diverted their course after pass- 
 ing the wagon. They had recognized the deputy on the 
 box. Stay ! — there was another Chinaman in the coach ; 
 he might have given them the signal. He glanced hur- 
 riedly around the room for him; he was gone. Perhaps 
 he had already joined the file he had just seen. His only 
 hope was to follow them — but how? and how to do it 
 quietly? The afternoon was waning; it would be three or 
 four hours before the down coach would arrive, from which 
 the driver expected assistance. Now, if ever, was his 
 opportunity. 
 
 He made his way through the back door, and found him- 
 self among the straw and chips of the stable-yard and wood- 
 shed. Still uncertain what to do, he mechanically passed 
 before the long shed which served as temporary stalls for 
 the steaming wagon horses. At the further end, to his sur- 
 prise, was a tethered mustang ready saddled and bridled — ■ 
 the opportune horse left for the fugitive, according to the 
 lounger's story. Masterton cast a quick glance around the 
 stable; it was deserted by all save the feeding animals. 
 
 He was new to adventures of this kind, or he would 
 probably have weighed the possibilities and consequences. 
 He was ordinarily a thoughtful, reflective man, but like 
 most men of intellect, he was also imaginative and supersti- 
 tious, and this crowning accident of the providential situa- 
 tion in which he found himself was superior to his logic. 
 There would also be a grim irony in his taking this horse 
 for such a purpose. He again looked and listened. There 
 was no one within sight or hearing. He untied the rope 
 from the bit-ring, leaped into the saddle, and emerged cau- 
 
A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 55 
 
 tiously from the shed. The wet snow muffled the sound of 
 the horse's hoofs. Moving round to the rear of the stable so 
 as to bring it between himself and the station, he clapped his 
 heels into the mustang's flanks and dashed into the open. 
 
 At first he was confused and bewildered by the half-hid- 
 den boulders and snow-shrouded bushes that beset the 
 broken ground, and dazzled by the still driving storm. 
 But he knew that they would also divert attention from his 
 flight, and beyond he could now see a white slope slowly 
 rising before him, near whose crest a few dark spots were 
 crawling in file, like Alpine climbers. They were the 
 Chinamen he was seeking. He had reasoned that when they 
 discovered they were followed they would, in the absence 
 of any chance of signaling through the storm, detach one 
 of their number to give the alarm. Him he would follow. 
 He felt his revolver safe on his hip; he would use it only 
 if necessary to intimidate the spies. 
 
 For some moments his ascent through the wet snow was 
 slow and difficult, but as he advanced he felt a change of 
 temperature corresponding to that he had experienced that 
 afternoon on the wagon coming down. ' The air grew keener, 
 the snow drier and finer. He kept a sharp lookout for the 
 moving figures, and scanned the horizon for some indication 
 of the prospector's deserted hut. Suddenly the line of fig- 
 ures he was watching seemed to be broken, and then gath- 
 ered together as a group. Had they detected him ? Evi- 
 dently they had, for, as he had expected, one of them had 
 been detached, and was now moving at right angles from 
 the party towards the right. With a thrill of excitement 
 he urged his horse forward; the group was far to the left, 
 and he was nearing the solitary figure. But to his astonish- 
 ment, as he approached the top of the slope he now observed 
 another figure, as far to the left of the group as he was to 
 the right, and that figure he could see, even at that dis- 
 tance, was not a Chinaman. He halted for a better obser- 
 
56 A BELLE 07 CANADA ClTf 
 
 vation ; for an instant he thought it might be the fugitive 
 himself, but as quickly he recognized it was another man 
 — the deputy. It was Ke whom the Chinaman had discov- 
 ered; it was he who had caused the diversion and the dis- 
 patch of the vedette to warn the fugitive. His own figure 
 had evidently riot yet been detected. His heart beat high 
 with hope; he again dashed forward after the flying meis- 
 senger, who was undoubtedly seeking the prospector's 
 ruined hut and — Trixit. 
 
 But it was no easy matter. At this elevation the snow 
 had formed a crust, over which the single Chinaman — a 
 lithe young figure -^skimmed like a skater, while Master- 
 ton's horse crashed through it into unexpected depths. 
 Again, the runner could deviate by a shorter cut, while the 
 horseman was condemned to the one-half obliterated trail. 
 The only thing in Masterton's favor, ho'vVever, was that he 
 was steadily increasing his distance from the group arid the 
 deputy sheriff, and so cutting off their connection with the 
 messenger. But the trail grew more and more indistinct 
 as it neared the summit, until at last it utterly vanished. 
 Still he kept up his speed to*ard the active little figure — ■ 
 which now seemed to be that of a mere bojr^ — skimming 
 over the frozen snow. Twice a stumble arid flounder of 
 the mustang through the broken crust o(ught to have warned 
 him of his recklessness, but now a distinct glimpse of a low, 
 blackened shanty, the prospector's ruined hut, toward which 
 the messenger was making, made him forget all else. The 
 distahce was lessening between them ; he could see the long 
 pigtail of the fugitive standing out from his bent head-, 
 when suddenly his horse plunged forward and downward. 
 In an awful instant of suspense and twilight, such as he 
 niight have seen in a dream, he felt himself pitched head- 
 long into suffocating depths, followed by a shock, the 
 crushing weight and steaming flank of his horse across his 
 shoulder, utter darkness, and — merciful unconsciousness. 
 
A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 57 
 
 How long he lay there thus he never knew. With liis 
 returning consciousness came this strange twilight again, — 
 the twilight of a dream. He was sitting in the new church 
 at Canada City, as he had sat the first Sunday of his arrival 
 there, gazing at the pretty face of Cissy Trixit in the pew 
 opposite him, and wondering who she was. Again he saw 
 the startled, awakened light that came into her adorable 
 eyes, the faint blush that suffused her cheek as she met his 
 inquiring gaze, and the conscious, half-conceited, half-girl- 
 ish toss of her little head as she turned her eyes away, and 
 then a file of brovyn Chinamen, muttering some harsh, uij- 
 couth gibberish, interposed between them. This was fol- 
 lowed by what seemed to be the crashing in of the church 
 roof, a stifling heat succeeded by a long, deadly chill. But 
 he knew that this last was all a dream, and he tried to 
 struggle to his feet to see Cissy's face again, — a reality 
 that he felt would take him out of this horrible trance, — 
 and he called to her across the pew and heard her sweet 
 voice again in answer, and then a wave of unconsciousness 
 once more submerged him. 
 
 He came back to life with a sharp tingling of his whole 
 frame as if pierced with a thousand needles. He knew ho 
 was being rubbed, and in his attempts to throw his torturers 
 aside, he saw faintly by the light of a flickering fire that 
 they were Chinamen, and he was lying on the floor of a 
 rude hut. With his first movements they ceased, and, 
 wrapping him like a mummy in warm blankets, dragged 
 him out of the heap of loose snow with which they had 
 been rubbing him, toward the fire that glowed upon the 
 .^flige adobe hearth. The stinging pain was succeeded by 
 a warm glow ; a pleasant languor, which made even thought 
 a burden, came over him, and yet his perceptions were 
 keenly alive to his surroundings. He heard the Chinamen 
 mutter something and then depart, leaving him alone. Biit 
 piesently he was aware of another figure that had entered, 
 
58 A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 
 
 and was now sitting with its back to him at a rude table, 
 roughly extemporized from a packing-box, apparently en- 
 gaged in writing. It was a small Chinaman, evidently the 
 one he had chased ! The events of the past few hours — 
 his mission, his intentions, and every incident of the pur- 
 suit — flashed back upon him. Where was he ? What 
 was he doing here? Had Trixit escaped him? 
 
 In his exhausted state he was unable to formulate a ques- 
 tion which even then he doubted if the Chinaman could 
 understand. So he simply watched him lazily, and with 
 a certain kind of fascination, until he should finish his 
 writing and turn round. His long pigtail, which seemed 
 ridiculously disproportionate to his size, — the pigtail which 
 he remembered had streamed into the air in his flight, — 
 had partly escaped from the dish-covered hat under which 
 it had been coiled. But what was singular, it was not 
 the wiry black pigtail of his Mongolian fellows, but soft 
 and silky, and as the firelight played upon it, it seemed 
 of a shining chestnut brown ! It was like — like — he 
 stopped — was he dreaming again t A long sigh escaped 
 him. 
 
 The figure instantly turned. He started. It was Cissy 
 Trixit! There was no mistaking that charming, sensitive 
 face, glowing with health and excitement, albeit showing 
 here and there the mark of the pigment with which it 
 had been stained, now hurriedly washed o£F. A little of it 
 had run into the corners of her eyelids, and enhanced the 
 brilliancy of her eyes. 
 
 He found his tongue with an effort. "What are you 
 doing here ? " he asked with a faint voice, and a fainter 
 attempt to smile. 
 
 "That's what I might ask about you," she said pertly, 
 but with a slight touch of scorn ; " but I guess I know as 
 well as I do about the others. I came here to see my 
 father," she added defiantly. 
 
A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 59 
 
 " And you are the — the — one — I chased 1 " 
 
 "Yes; and I 'd have outrun you easily, even with your 
 horse to help you, " she said proudly, " only I turned back 
 when you went down into that prospector's hole with your 
 ■horse and his broken neck atop of you." 
 
 He groaned slightly, but more from shame than pain. 
 The young girl took up a glass of whiskey ready on the 
 table and brought it to him. "Take that; it will fetch 
 you all right in a moment. Popper says no bones are 
 broken. " 
 
 Masterton waived the proffered glass. "Your father — ■ 
 is he here 1 " he asked hurriedly, recalling his mission. 
 
 " Not now ; he's gone to the station — to — fetch — my 
 clothes," she said, with a little laugh. 
 
 "To the station?" repeated Masterton, bewildered. 
 
 "Yes," she replied, "to the station. Of course you 
 don't know the news," she added, with an air of girlish 
 importance. "They've stopped all proceedings against 
 him, and he 's as free as you are." 
 
 Masterton tried to rise, but another groan escaped him. 
 He was really in pain. Cissy's bright eyes softened. She 
 knelt beside him, her soft breath fanning his hair, and 
 lifted him gently to a sitting position. 
 
 "Oh, I've done it before," she laughed, as she read his 
 wonder, with his gratitude, in his eyes. "The horse was 
 already stiff, and you were nearly so, by the time I came 
 up to you and got " — she laughed again — " the other 
 Chinaman to help me pull you out of that hole." 
 
 "I know I owe you my life," he said, his face flushing. 
 
 "It was lucky I was there," she returned naively; 
 "perhaps lucky you were chasing me." 
 
 "I 'm afraid that of the many who would run after you 
 I should be the least lucky, " he said, with an attempt to 
 laugh that did not, however, conceal his mortification; 
 " but I assure you that I only wished to have an interview 
 
60 A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 
 
 with your father, — a business interview, perhaps as much 
 in his interest as my own." 
 
 The old look of audacity came hack to her face. "I 
 guess that 's what they all came here for, except one, hut 
 it did n't keep them from believing and saying he was a 
 thief behind his back. Yet they all wanted his — confi- 
 dence," she added bitterly. 
 
 Mastertgn felt that his burning cheeks were confessing 
 the truth of this. " You excepted one," he said hesitatingly. 
 
 "Yes — the deputy sheriff. He came to help ■me." 
 
 "You!" 
 
 " Yes, me ! " A coquettish little toss of her head added 
 to his confusion. "He threw up his job just to follow 
 me, without my knowing it, to see that I didn't come to 
 any harm. He saw me only once, too, at the house when 
 he came to take possession. He said he thought I was 
 ■ clear grit ' to risk everything to find father, and he said 
 he saw it in me when he was there; that 's how he guessed 
 where I was gone when I ran away, and followed me." 
 
 "He was as right as he was lucky," said Masterton 
 gravely. " But how did you get here ? " 
 
 She slipped down on the floor besidp him with an uncon- 
 scious movement that her masculine garments only made 
 the more quaintly girlish, and, clasping her knee with both 
 hands, looked at the fire as she rocked herself slightly back- 
 ward and forward as she spoke. 
 
 "It will shock a proper man like you, I know," she be- 
 gan demurely, " but I came alone, with only a Chinaman 
 to guide me. I got these clothes from our laundry man, so 
 that I should n't attract attention. I would have got a 
 Chinese lady's dress, but I couldn't walk in their shoes," 
 — she looked down at her little feet encased in wooden 
 sandals, — " and I had a long way to walk. But even jf 
 I didn't look quite right to Chinamen, no white man was 
 able to detect the difference. You passe4 !pe twiqe in the 
 
A BRLLE of CANADA CITY 61 
 
 stage, and you did n't know me. I traveled night and day, 
 most of the time walking, and being passed along from one 
 Chinaman to another, or, when we were alone, being slung 
 on a pole between two coolies like a bale of goods. I ate 
 what they could give me, for I dared not go into a shop or 
 a restaurant; I couldn't shut my eyes in their dens, so I 
 stayed awake all night. Yet I got ahead of you and the 
 sheriff, ^ — though I didn't know at the time what you were 
 after," she added presently. 
 
 He was overcome with wondering admiration of her cour- 
 age, and of self-reproach at his own short-sightedness. 
 This was the girl he had looked upon as a spoiled village 
 beauty, satisfied with her small triumphs and provincial 
 elevation, and void of all other purpose. Here she was 
 — the all-unconscious heroine ■^- and he her critic helpless 
 at her feet! It was not a cheerful reflection, and yet he 
 took a certain delight in his expiation. Perhaps he had 
 half believed in her without knowing it. What could he 
 do or say 1 I regret to say he dodged the question meanly. 
 
 " And you think your disguise escaped detection ? " he 
 said, looking markedly at her escaped braid of hair. 
 
 She followed his eyes rather than his words, half pet- 
 tishly caught up the loosened braid, swiftly coiled it around 
 the top of her head, and, clapping the weather-beaten and 
 battered conical hat back again upon it, defiantly said: 
 "Yes! Everybody isn't as critical as you are, and even 
 you would n't be — of a Chinaman ! " 
 
 He had never seen her except when she was arrayed with 
 the full intention to affect the beholders and perfectly con- 
 scious of her attractions ; he was utterly unprepared for this 
 complete ignoring of adornment now, albeit he was for the 
 first time aware how her real prettiness made it unnecessary. 
 She looked fully as charming in this grotesque head-cover- 
 ing as she had in that paragon of fashion, the new hat, 
 which had excited his tolerant amusement; 
 
62 A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 
 
 "I'm afraid I 'm a very poor critic," he said bluntly. 
 "I never conceived that this sort of thing was at all to 
 your taste." 
 
 "I came to see my father because I wanted to," she 
 said, with equal bluntness. 
 
 "And I came to see him though I didn't want to," he 
 said, with a cynical laugh. 
 
 She turned, and fixed her brown eyes inquiringly upon 
 him. 
 
 " Why did you come, then 1 " 
 
 " I was ordered by my directors. " 
 
 " Then you did not believe he was a thief 1 " she asked, 
 her eyes softening. 
 
 " It would ill become me to accuse your father — or my 
 directors," he answered diplomatically. 
 
 She was quick enough to detect the suggestion of moral 
 superiority in his tone, but woman enough to forgive it. 
 "You're no friend of Windibrook," she said, "I know." 
 
 "I am not," he replied frankly. 
 
 "If you would like to see my popper, I can manage it," 
 she said hesitatingly. "He'll do anything for me," she 
 added, with a touch of her old pride. 
 
 "Who could blame him?" returned Masterton gravely. 
 "But if he is a free man now, and able to go where he 
 likes, and to see whom he likes, he may not care to give an 
 audience to a mere messenger." 
 
 "You wait and let me see him first," said the girl 
 quickly.- Then, as the sound of sleigh-bells came from 
 the road outside, she added, " Here he is. I '11 get your 
 clothes; they are out here drying by the fire in the shed." 
 She disappeared through a back door, and returned pre- 
 sently bearing his dried garments. "Dress yourself while 
 I take popper into the shed, " she said quickly, and ran out 
 into the road. 
 
 Masterton dressed himself with difficulty. Although 
 
A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 63 
 
 circulation was now restored, and he felt a glow through 
 his warmed clothes, he had been sorely bruised and shaken 
 by his fall. He had scarcely finished dressing when Mon- 
 tagu Trixit entered from the shed. Masterton looked at 
 him with a new interest and a respect he had never felt be- 
 fore. There certainly was little of the daughter in this 
 keen-faced, resolute-lipped man, though his brown eyes, 
 like hers, had the same frank, steadfast audacity. With 
 a business brevity that was hurried but not unkindly, he 
 hoped Masterton had fully recovered. 
 
 "Thanks to your daughter, I'm all right now," said 
 Masterton. "I need not tell you that I believe I owe my 
 life to her energy and courage, for I think you have 
 experienced what she can do in that way. But you have 
 had the advantage of those who have only enjoyed her so- 
 cial acquaintance in knowing all the time what she was 
 capable of," he added significantly. 
 
 "She is a good girl," said Trixit briefly, yet with a 
 slight rise in color on his dark, sallow cheek, and a sudden 
 wavering of his steadfast eyes. " She tells me you have a 
 message from your directors. I think I know what it is, 
 but we won't discuss it now. As I am going directly to 
 Sacramento, I shall not see them, but I will give you an 
 answer to take to them when we reach the station. I am 
 going to give you a lift there when my daughter is ready. 
 And here she is." 
 
 It was the old Cissy that stepped into the room, dressed 
 as she was when she left her father's house two days be- 
 fore. Oddly enough, he fancied that something of her old 
 conscious manner had returned with her clothes, and as he 
 stepped with her into the back seat of the covered sleigh 
 in waiting, he could not help saying, "I really think I 
 understand you better in your other clothes." 
 
 A slight blush mounted to Cissy's cheek, but her eyes 
 were still audacious. "All the same, I don't think you 'd 
 
64 A BELLE OF CANADA CITY 
 
 like to walk down Main Street with me iri that rig, al- 
 though you once thought nothing of taking me over your 
 old mill in youi blue blouse and overalls." And having 
 apparently greatly relieved her proud little heart by this 
 enigmatic statement, she grew so chatty and confidential 
 that the young man was satisfied that he had been in love 
 with her from the first. 
 
 When they reached the station, Trixit drew him aside. 
 Taking an envelope marked " Private Contracts " from his 
 pocket, he opened it and displayed some papers. " These 
 are the securities. Tell your directors that you have seen 
 them safe in my hands, and that no one else has seen them. 
 Tell them that if they will send me their renewed notes, 
 dated from to-day, to Sacramento within the next three 
 days, I will return the securities. That is my message." 
 
 The young man bowed. But before the coach stairted 
 he managed to draw near to Cissy. "You are not return- 
 ing to Canada City," he said. 
 
 The young girl made a gesture of indignation. "No! 
 I am never going there again. I go with my popper to 
 Sacramento. " 
 
 " Then I suppose I must say ' good-by. ' " 
 
 The girl looked at him in surprise. "Popper sa^s you 
 are coming to Sacramento in three days ! " 
 
 "Ami?" 
 
 He looked at her fixedly. She returned his glance 
 audaciously, steadfastly. 
 
 "You are," she said, in her low but distinct voice, 
 
 "I will." 
 
 And he did. 
 
A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIEERAS 
 
 It was four o'clock in the afternoon, and the hottest 
 hour of the day on that Sierran foothill. The western sun, 
 streaming down the mile-long slope of close-set pine crestSj 
 had been caught on an outlying ledge of glaring white 
 quartz, covered with mining tools ahd debris, and seemed 
 to have been thrown into an incandescent rage. The air 
 above it shimmered and became visible. A white canvas 
 tent on it was an object not to be borne; the steel-tipped 
 picks and shovels, intolerable to touch and eyesight, and 
 a tilted tin prospecting pan, falling over, flashed out as an- 
 other sun of insufferable effulgence. At such moments the 
 five members of the "Eureka Mining Company " prudently 
 withdrew to the nearest pine tree, which cast a shadow so 
 sharply defined on the glistening sand that the impingement 
 of a hand or finger beyond that line cut like a knife. The 
 men lay, or squatted, in this shadow, feverishly puffing 
 their pipes and waiting for the sun to slip beyond the burn- 
 ing ledge. Yet so irritating was the dry air, fragrant with 
 the aroma of the heated pines, that occasionally one would 
 start up and walk about until he had brought on that pro- 
 fuse perspiration which gave a momentary relief, and, as 
 he believed, saved him from sunstroke. Suddenly a voice 
 exclaimed querulously : — 
 
 "Derned if the blasted bucket ain't empty ag'in! Not 
 a drop left, by Jimminy ! " 
 
 A stare of helpless disgust was exchanged by the mo- 
 mentarily uplifted heads; then every man lay down again, 
 as if trying to erase himself. 
 
66 A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIERKAS 
 
 " Who brought the last 1 " demanded the foreman. 
 
 " / did, " said a reflective voice coming from a partner 
 lying comfortably on his back, "and if anybody reckons 
 I 'm going to face Tophet ag'in down that slope, he 's 
 mistaken ! " The speaker was thirsty — but he had prin- 
 ciples. 
 
 "We must throw round for it," said the foreman, taking 
 the dice from his pocket. 
 
 He cast; the lowest number fell to Parkhurst, a florid, 
 full-blooded Texan. "All right, gentlemen," he said, wip- 
 ing his forehead, and lifting the tin pail with a resigned 
 air, " only ef anything comes to me on that bare stretch o' 
 stage road, — and I 'm kinder seein' things spotty and black 
 now, — remember you ain't anywhar nearer the water than 
 you were! I ain't sayin' it for myself — but it mout be 
 rough on you — and " — 
 
 "Give me the pail," interrupted a tall young fellow, 
 rising. "I '11 risk it." 
 
 Cries of "Good old Ned," and "Hunky boy!" greeted 
 him as he took the pail from the perspiring Parkhurst, who 
 at once lay down again. "You mayn't be a professin' 
 Christian, in good standin', Ned Bray," continued Park- 
 hurst from the ground, "but you 're about as white as they 
 make 'em, and you're goin' to do a Heavenly Act! I 
 repeat it, gents — a Heavenly Act 1 " 
 
 Without a reply Bray walked off with the pail, stopping 
 only in the underbrush to pluck a few soft fronds of fern, 
 part of which he put within the crown of his hat, and stuck 
 the rest in its band around the outer brim, making a para- 
 sol-like shade above his shoulders. Thus equipped he 
 passed through the outer fringe of pines to a rocky trail 
 which began to descend towards the stage road. Here he 
 was in the full glare of the sun and its reflection from the 
 heated rocks, which scorched his feet and pricked his bent 
 face into a rash. The descent was steep and necessarily 
 
A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIERRAS 6? 
 
 slow from the slipperiness of the desiccated pine needles 
 that had fallen from above. Nor were his troubles over 
 when, a few rods further, he came upon the stage read, 
 which here swept in a sharp curve round the flank of the 
 mountain. Its red dust, ground by heavy wagons and 
 pack-trains into a fine powder, was nevertheless so heavy 
 with some metallic substance that it scarcely lifted with the 
 foot, and he was obliged to literally wade through it. Yet 
 there were two hundred yards of this road to be passed be- 
 fore he could reach that point of its bank where a narrow 
 and precipitous trail dropped diagonally from it, to creep 
 along the mountain side to the spring he was seeking. 
 
 When he reached the trail, he paused to take breath and 
 wipe the blinding beads of sweat from his eyes before he 
 cautiously swung himself over the bank into it. A single 
 misstep here would have sent him headlong to the tops of 
 pine trees a thousand feet below. Holding his pail in one 
 hand, with the other he steadied himself by clutching the 
 ferns and brambles at his side, and at last reached the 
 spring — a niche in the mountain side with a ledge scarcely 
 four feet wide. He had merely accomplished the ordinary 
 gymnastic feat performed by the members of the Eureka 
 Company four or five times a day ! But the day was ex- 
 ceptionally hot. He held his wrists to cool their throbbing 
 pulses in the clear, cold stream that gurgled into its rocky 
 basin ; he threw the water over his head and shoulders ; he 
 swung his legs over the ledge and let the overflow fall on 
 his dusty shoes and ankles. Gentle and delicious rigors 
 came over him. He sat with half-closed eyes looking across 
 the dark olive depths of the caiion between him and the 
 opposite mountain. A hawk was swinging lazily above it, 
 apparently within a stone's throw of him; he knew it was 
 at least a mile away. Thirty feet above him ran the stage 
 road ; he could hear quite distinctly the slow thud of hoofs, 
 the dull jar of harness, and the labored creaking of the 
 
68 A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIERRAS 
 
 Pioneer Coach as it crawled up the long ascent, part of 
 which he had just passed. He thought of it, — a slow 
 drifting cloud of dust and heat, as he had often seen it, 
 abandoned by even its passengers, who sought shelter in 
 the wayside pines as they toiled behind it to the summitj 
 ^^and hugged himself in the grateful shadows of the 
 spring. It had passed out of hearing and thought, he had 
 turned to fill his pail, when he was startled by a shower of 
 dust and gravel from the road above, and the next moment 
 he was thrown violently down, blinded and pinned against 
 the ledge by the fall of some heavy body on his back and 
 shoulders. His last flash of consciousness Was that he had 
 been struck by a sack of flour slipped from the pack of some 
 passing mule. 
 
 How long he remained unconscious he never knew. It 
 was probably not long, for his chilled hands and arms, 
 thrust by the blow on his shoulders into the pool of water, 
 assisted in restoring him. He came to with a sense of suf- 
 focating pressure on his back, but his head and shoulders 
 were swathed in utter darkness by the folds of some soft 
 fabrics and draperies, which, to his connecting conscious- 
 ness, seemed as if the contents of a broken bale or trunk 
 had also fallen from the pack. With a tremendous efi'ort 
 he succeeded in getting his arm out of the pool, and at- 
 tempted to free his head from its blinding enwrappings. 
 In doing so his hand suddenly touched human flesh — a 
 soft, bared arm ! With the same astounding discovery 
 came one mote terrible ; that arm belonged to the weight 
 that was pressing him down; and now, assisted by his 
 struggles, it was slowly slipping toward the brink of the 
 ledge and the abyss below! With a desperate effort he 
 turned on his side, caught the body, — as such it was, -^ 
 dragged it back on the ledge, at the same moment that, 
 freeing his head from its covering, — a feminine skirt, — he 
 discovered it was a woman 1 
 
A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIERRAS 69 
 
 She had been also unconscious, although the touch of his 
 cold, wet hand on her skin had probably given her a shock 
 that was now showing itself in a convulsive shudder of her 
 shoulders and half opening of her eyes. Suddenly she be- 
 gan to stare it him, to draw in her knees and feet toward 
 her, sideways, with a feminine movement, as she smoothed 
 out her skirt, and kept it down with a hand on which -she 
 leaned. She was a tall, handsome girl, from what he could 
 judge of her half -sitting figure in her torn silk dust-cloak, 
 which, although its cape and one sleeve were split into 
 ribbons, had still protected her delicate, well-fitting gown 
 beneath. She was evidently a lady. 
 
 " What — is it ? — what has happened ? " she said faintly, 
 yet with a slight touch of formality in her manner. 
 
 "You must have fallen — from the road above," said 
 Bray, hesitatingly. 
 
 " From the road above ? " she repeated, with a slight 
 frown, as if to concentrate her thought. She glanced up- 
 ward, then at the ledge before her, and then, for the first 
 time, at the darkening abyss below. The color, which had 
 begun to return, suddenly left her face here, and she drew 
 instinctively back against the mountain side. "Yes," she 
 half murmured to herself, rather than to him, "it must be 
 so. I was walking too near the bank — and — I fell!" 
 Then turning to him, she said, " And you found me lying 
 here when you came." 
 
 "I think," stammered Bray, "that I was here when you 
 fell, and I — I broke the fall." He was sorry for it a 
 moment afterward. 
 
 She lifted her handsome gray eyes to him, saw the dust, 
 dirt, and leaves on his back and shoulders, the collar of his 
 shirt torn open, and a few spots of blood from a bruise on 
 his forehead. Her black eyebrows straightened again as 
 she said coldly, "Dear me! I am very sorry; I couldn't 
 help it, you know. I hope you are not otherwise hurt.'' 
 
70 A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIERKAS 
 
 "No," he replied quickly. "But you, are you sure you 
 are not injured? It must have been a terrible shock." 
 
 "I 'm not hurt," she said, helping herself to her feet by 
 the aid of the mountain-side bushes, and ignoring his prof- 
 fered hand. " But, " she added quickly and impressively, 
 glancing upward toward the stage road overhead, "why 
 don't they come? They must have missed me! I must 
 have been here a long time ; it 's too bad ! " 
 
 " They missed you ? " he repeated diffidently. 
 
 "Yes," she said impatiently, "of course! I wasn't 
 alone. Don't you understand? I got out of the coach to 
 walk uphill on the bank under the trees. It was so hot 
 and stuffy. My foot must have slipped up there — and — 
 I — slid — down. Have you heard any one calling me ? 
 Have you called out yourself ? " 
 
 Mr. Bray did not like to say he had only just recovered 
 consciousness. He smiled vaguely and foolishly. But on 
 turning around in her impatience, she caught sight of the 
 chasm again, and lapsed quite white against the mountain 
 side. 
 
 "Let me give you some water from the spring," he said 
 eagerly, as she sank again to a sitting posture; "it will 
 refresh you." 
 
 He looked hesitatingly around him ; he had neither cup 
 nor flask, but he filled the pail and held it with great dex- 
 terity to her lips. She drank a little, extracted a lace 
 handkerchief from some hidden pocket, dipped its point in 
 the water, and wiped her face delicately, after a certain fe- 
 line fashion. Then, catching sight of some small object in 
 the fork of a bush above her, she quickly pounced upon it, 
 and with a swift sweep of her hand under her skirt, put on 
 Tier fallen slipper, and stood on her feet again. 
 
 "How does one get out of such a place ? " she asked fret- 
 fully; and then, glancing at him half indignantly, "why 
 don't you shout? " 
 
A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIEREAS 71 
 
 "I was going to tell you," he said gently, "that when 
 you are a little stronger, we can get out by the way I came 
 in, — along the trail. " 
 
 He pointed to the narrow pathway along the perilous in- 
 cline. Somehow, with this tall, beautiful creature beside 
 him, it looked more perilous than before. She may have 
 thought so too, for she drew in her breath sharply and sank 
 down again. 
 
 "Is there no other way? " 
 
 "None!" 
 
 " How did you happen to be here ? " she asked suddenly, 
 opening her gray eyes upon him. " What did you come 
 here for ? " she went on, almost impertinently. 
 
 "To fetch a pail of water." He stopped, and then it 
 suddenly occurred to him that after all there was no rea- 
 son for his being bullied by this tall, good-looking girl, 
 even if he had saved her. He gave a little laugh, and 
 added mischievously, "Just like Jack and Jill, you 
 know. " 
 
 " What ? " she said sharply, bending her black brows at 
 him. 
 
 "Jack and Jill," he returned carelessly; "I broke my 
 crown, you know, and you," — he did not finish. 
 
 She stared at him, trying to keep her face and her com- 
 posure; but a smile, that on her imperious lips he thought 
 perfectly adorable, here lifted the corners of her mouth, 
 and she turned her face aside. But the smile, and the line 
 of dazzling little teeth it revealed, were unfortunately on 
 the side toward him. Emboldened by this, he went on, 
 "I couldn't think what had happened. At first I had a 
 sort of idea that part of a mule's pack had fallen on top oi. 
 me, — blankets, flour, and all that sort of thing, you know, 
 until " — 
 
 Her smile had vanished. "Well," she said impatiently, 
 "until?" 
 
72 A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIEERAS 
 
 " Until I touched you. I 'm afraid I gave you a shock; 
 my hand was dripping from the spring." 
 
 She colored so quickly that he knew she must have been 
 conscious at the time, and he noticed now that the sleeve of 
 her cloak, which had been half torn oflf her bare arm, was 
 pinned together over it. When and how had she managed 
 to do it without his detecting the act? 
 
 "At all events," she said coldly, "I 'm glad you haye not 
 received greater injury from — yeur mule pack." 
 
 "I think we 've both been very lucky," he said simply. 
 
 She did not reply, but remained looking furtively at the 
 narrow trail. Then she listened. " I thought I heard 
 voices," she said, half rising. 
 
 "Shall I shout?" he asked. 
 
 "No! You say there 's no use — there 's only this way 
 out of it ! " 
 
 " I might go up first, and perhaps get assistance -r- a rope 
 or chair," he suggested. 
 
 "And leave me here alone? " she cried, with a horrified 
 glance at the fibyss. " No, thank you ! I should be over 
 that ledge before you came back ! There 's a dreadful ffis- 
 cination in it even now. No ! I think I 'd rather go — 
 at once ! I never shall be stronger as long as I stay near 
 it; I may be weaker." 
 
 She gave a petulant little shiver, and then, though paler 
 and evidently agitated, composed her tattered and dusty 
 outer garments in a deft, ladylike way, and leaned back 
 against the mountain side. He saw her also glance at his 
 loosened shirt front and hanging neckerchief, and with a 
 heightened color he quickly re-knotted it around his throat. 
 They moved from the ledge toward the trail. Suddenly 
 she started back. 
 
 "But it's only wide enough for one, and I never — 
 never — could even stamd on it ^ minutg alone!" she 
 exclaimed. 
 
A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIEEEAS 73 
 
 He looked at her critically. " We will go together, side 
 by side," he said quietly, "but you will have to take the 
 outside. " 
 
 "Outside!" she repeated, recoiling. "Impossible! I 
 shall fall." 
 
 "I shall keep hold of you," he explained; "you need 
 not fear that. Stop! I '11 make it safer." He untied the 
 large bandanna silk handkerchief which he wore around his 
 shoulders, knotted one end of it firmly to hia belt, and 
 handed her the other. 
 
 " Do you think you can hold on to that ? " 
 
 "T — don't know" — she hesitated. "If I should 
 fall ? " 
 
 " Stay a moment ! Is your belt strong 1 " He pointed 
 to a girdle of yellow leather which caught her tunic aroiind 
 her small waist. 
 
 "Yes," she said eagerly, "it 's real leather." 
 
 He gently slipped the edge of the handkerchief under it 
 and knotted it. They were thus linked together by a foot 
 of handkerchief. 
 
 "I feel much safer," she said, with a faint smile. 
 
 "But if I should fall," he remarked, looking into her 
 ayes, "you would go too! Have you thought of that? " 
 
 "Yes." Her previous charming smile returned. "It 
 would be really Jack and Jill this time." 
 
 They passed out on the trail. "Now I must take your 
 arm," he said laughingly; "not you mine." He passed 
 his arm under hers, holding it firmly. It was the one he 
 had touched. For the first few steps her uncertain feet 
 took no hold of the sloping mountain side, which seemed to 
 slip sideways beneath her. He was litcirally carrying her 
 on his shoulder. But in a few moments she saw how clev- 
 erly he balanced himself, always leaning toward the hillside, 
 and presently she was able to help him by a few steps. 
 She expressed her surprise at his skill. 
 
74 A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIERRAS 
 
 " It 's nothing ; I carry a pail of water up here without 
 spilling a drop." 
 
 She stiffened slightly under this remark, and indeed so 
 far overdid her attempt to walk without his aid, that her 
 foot slipped on a stone, and she fell outward toward the 
 abyss. But in an instant his arm was transferred from her 
 elbow to her waist, and in the momentum of his quick re- 
 covery they both landed panting against the mountain side. 
 
 "I 'm afraid you 'd have spilt the pail that time," she 
 said, with a slightly heightened color, as she disengaged 
 herself gently from his arm. 
 
 "No," he answered boldly, "for the pail never would 
 have stiffened itself in a tiff, and tried to go alone." 
 
 "Of course not, if it were only a pail," she responded. 
 
 They moved on again in silence. The trail was growing 
 a little steeper toward the upper end and the road bank. 
 Bray was often himself obliged to seek the friendly aid of 
 a manzanita or thornbush to support them. Suddenly she 
 stopped and caught his arm. " There ! " she said. " Lis- 
 ten! They 're coming! " 
 
 Bray listened ; he could hear at intervals a far-off shout ; 
 then a nearer one — a name — " Eugenia. " So that was 
 hers ! 
 
 "Shall I shout back? " he asked. 
 
 "Not yet!" she answered. "Are we near the top?" 
 A sudden glow of pleasure came over him — he knew not 
 why, except that she did not look delighted, excited, or 
 even relieved. 
 
 "Only a few yards more," he said, with an unaffected 
 half sigh. 
 
 "Then I'd better untie this," she suggested, beginning 
 to fumble at the knot of the handkerchief which linked 
 them. 
 
 Their heads were close together, their fingers often met; 
 he would have liked to say something, but he could only 
 
A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIERRAS 75 
 
 add : " Are you sure you will feel quite safe 1 It is a little 
 steeper as we near the bank." 
 
 "You can hold me," she replied simply, with a superbly 
 unconscious lifting of her arm, as she yielded her waist to 
 him again, but without raising her eyes. 
 
 He did, — holding her rather tightly, I fear, as they 
 clambered up the remaining slope, for it seemed to him as 
 a last embrace. As he lifted her to the road bank, the 
 shouts came nearer; and glancing up, he saw two men and 
 a woman running down the hill toward them. He turned 
 to Eugenia. In that instant she had slipped the tattered 
 dust-coat from her shoulder, thrown it over her arm, set 
 her hat straight, and was calmly awaiting them with a self- 
 possession and coolness that seemed to shame their ex- 
 citement. He noticed, too, with the quick perception of 
 unimportant things which comes to some natures at such 
 moments, that she had plucked a sprig of wild myrtle 
 from the mountain side, and was wearing it on her breast. 
 
 "Goodness Heavens! Genie! What has happened! 
 Where have you been 1 " 
 
 "Eugenia! this is perfect madness!" began the elder 
 man didactically. " You have alarmed us beyond measure 
 — kept the stage waiting, and now it is gone ! " 
 
 "Genie! Look here, I say! We've been hunting for 
 you everywhere. What's up?" said the younger man, 
 with brotherly brusqueness. 
 
 As these questions were all uttered in the same breath, 
 Eugenia replied to them collectively. "It was so hot that 
 I kept along the bank here, while you were on the other 
 side. I heard the trickle of water somewhere down there, 
 and searching for it my foot slipped. This gentleman " — 
 she indicated Bray — "was on a little sort of trail there, 
 and assisted me back to the road again." 
 
 The two men and the woman turned and stared at Bray 
 with a look of curiosity that changed quickly into a half- 
 
76 A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIERRAS 
 
 cOtitemptuous unconcern. Th^y saw a youngish sort of 
 man, with a long mustache, a two days' growth of beard, 
 a not oterclean face, that was further streaked with red on 
 the temple, a torn flannel shirt, that showed a very white 
 shoulder beside a sunburnt throat and neck, and soiled 
 white trousers stuck into muddy high boots — in fact, the 
 pictute of a broken-down miner. But theit uncoricern was 
 as speedily changed again into Resentment at the perfect 
 ease and equality with which he regarded them, — - a regard 
 the more exasperating as it was not without a suspicion of 
 his perception of some satire or humor in the situation. 
 
 "Ahem! very much obliged, I am sure. I — er" — 
 
 "The lady has thanked rne," interrupted Bray, with a 
 smile. 
 
 " Did you fall far ? " said the younger mail to Eugenia, 
 ignoring Bfay. 
 
 "Not far," she answered, with a half-appealing look at 
 Bray. 
 
 " Only a few feetj " added the latter, with prompt men- 
 dacity, "just a little slip down." 
 
 The three newcomers here tvxrned away, and, .surround- 
 ing Eugenia, conversed in an undertone. Quite conscious 
 that he was the subject of discussion, Bray lingered only in 
 the hope of catching a parting glance from Eugenia. The 
 words " Ydu do it," "No, you! " "It would come better 
 from her, " were distinctly audible to him. To his surprise, 
 however, she suddenly broke through them, and advancing 
 to him, with a dangerous brightness in her beautiful eyes, 
 held out her slim hand. "My father, Mr. Neworth, my 
 brother, Harry Neworth, and my atint, Mrs. Dobbs," she 
 said, indicating each one with a graceful inclination of her 
 handsome head, "all think I ought to give you something 
 and send you away. I believe that is the way they put it. 
 / think differently ! I Oome to ask you to let me once 
 more thank you for your good service to me to-day — which 
 
A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIERRAS 77 
 
 I shall never forget." When he had returned her firm 
 handclasp for a minute, she coolly rejoined the discomfited 
 group. 
 
 "She 's no sardine," said Bray to himself emphatically, 
 "but I suspect she '11 catch it from her folks for this. I 
 ought to have gone away at once, like a gentleman, hang 
 it!" 
 
 He was even angrily debating with himself whether he 
 ought not to follow her to protect her from her gesticulat- 
 ing relations as they all trailed up the hill with her, when 
 he reflected that it would only make matters worse. And 
 with it came the dreadful reflection that as yet he had not 
 carried the water to his expecting and thirsty comrades. 
 He had forgotten them for these lazy, snobbish, purse-proud 
 San Franciscans — for Bray had the miner's supreme con- 
 tempt for the moneyed trading classes. What would the 
 boys think of him ! He flung himself over the bank, and 
 hastened recklessly down the trail to the spring. But here 
 again he lingered — the place had become suddenly hal- 
 lowed. How deserted it looked without her! He gazed 
 eagerly around on the ledge for any trace that she had left 
 — a bow, a bit of ribbon, or even a hairpin that had fallen 
 from her. 
 
 As the young man slowly filled the pail he caught sight 
 of his own reflection in the spring. It certainly was not 
 that of an Adonis ! He laughed honestly ; his sense of 
 humor had saved him from many an extravagance, and miti- 
 gated many a disappointment before this. Well ! She was 
 a plucky, handsome girl — even if she was not for him, and 
 he might never set eyes on her again. Yet it was a hard 
 pull up that trail once more, carrying an insensible pail of 
 water in the hand that had onoe sustained a lovely girl ! 
 He remembered her reply to his badinage, " Of course not 
 ■^if it were only a pail," and found a dozen pretty inter- 
 pretations of it. Yet he was not in love ! No ! He was 
 
78 A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIEKKAS 
 
 too poor and too level headed for that ! And he was unaf- 
 fectedly and materially tired, too, when he reached the road 
 again, and rested, leaving the spring and its little idyl 
 behind. 
 
 By this time the sun had left the burning ledge of the 
 Eureka Company, and the stage road was also in shadow, 
 so that his return through its heavy, dust was less difficult. 
 And when he at last reached the camp, he found to his re- 
 lief that his prolonged absence had been overlooked by his 
 thirsty companions in a larger excitement and disappoint- 
 ment; for it appeared that a well-known San Francisco 
 capitalist, whom the foreman had persuaded to visit their 
 claim with a view to advance and investment, had actually 
 come over from Red Dog for that purpose, and had got as 
 far as the summit when he was stopped by an accident, and 
 delayed so long that he was obliged to go on to Sacramento 
 without making his examination. 
 
 " That was only his excuse — mere flapdoodle ! " inter- 
 rupted the pessimistic Jerrold. "He was foolin' you; 
 he'd heard of suthin' better! The idea of calling that 
 affair an ' accident, ' or one that would stop any man who 
 meant business ! " 
 
 Bray had become uneasily conscious. "What was the 
 accident 1 " he asked. 
 
 "A d d fool woman's accident," broke in the misogy- 
 nist Parkhurst, "and it 's true! That 's what makes it so 
 cussed mean. Por there 's alius a woman at the bottom of 
 such things — bet your life ! Think of 'em comin' here. 
 Thar ought to be a law ag'in' it." 
 
 "But what was it? " persisted Bray, becoming more ap- 
 prehensive. 
 
 "Why, what does that blasted fool of a capitalist do but 
 bring with him his daughter and auntie to ' see the won- 
 derful scenery with popa dear ! ' as if it was a cheap Sun- 
 day-school panorama! And what do these chuckle-headed 
 
A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIERRAS 79 
 
 women do but get off the coach and go to wanderin' about, 
 and playin' ' here we go round the mulberry bush ' until 
 one of 'em tumbles down a ravine. And then there 's a 
 great to do ! and ' dear popa ' was up and down the road 
 yellin' 'Me cheyld! me cheyld!' And then there was 
 camphor and sal volatile and eau de cologne to be got, and 
 the coach goes off, and ' popa dear ' gets left, and then has 
 to hurry off in a buggy to catch it. So we get left too, 
 just because that God-forsaken fool, Neworth, brings his 
 women here." 
 
 Under this recital poor Bray sat as completely crushed 
 as when the fair daughter of Neworth had descended upon 
 his shoulders at the spring. He saw it all! His was the 
 fault. It was his delay and dalliance with her that had 
 checked Neworth 's visit; worse than that, it was his sub- 
 sequent audacity and her defense of him that would prob- 
 ably prevent any renewal of the negotiations. He had 
 shipwrecked his partners' prospects in his absurd vanity 
 and pride! He did not dare to raise his eyes to their de- 
 jected faces. He would have confessed everything to them, 
 but the same feeling of delicacy for her which had deter- 
 mined him to keep her adventures to himself now forever 
 sealed his lips. How might they not misconstrue his con- 
 duct — and hers ! Perhaps something of this was visible 
 in his face. 
 
 "Come, old man," said the cheerful misogynist, with 
 perfect innocence, "don't take it so hard. Some time in a 
 man's life a woman 's sure to get the drop on him, as I said 
 afore, and this yer woman 's got the drop on five of us ! But 
 — hallo, Ned, old man — what's the matter with your 
 head ? " He laid his hand gently on the matted temple of 
 his younger partner. 
 
 "I had — a slip — on the trail," he stammered. "Had 
 to go back again for another pailful. That 's what delayed 
 me, you know, boys," he added. "But it 's nothing! " 
 
80 A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIERRAS 
 
 "Nothing! " ejaculated Parkhurst, clapping him on the 
 back and twisting him around by the shoulders so that he 
 faced his companions. "Nothing! Look at him, gentle- 
 men; and he says it 's ' nothing.' That 's how a man takes 
 it! He didn't go round yellin' and wringin' his hands 
 and sayin' ' Me pay-1! me pay-1! ' when it spilt! He just 
 humped himself and trotted back for another. And yet 
 every drop of water in that overset bucket meant hard 
 work and hard sweat, and was as precious as ggld." 
 
 Luckily for Bray, whose mingled emotions under Parjjr 
 hurst's eloquence were beginning to be hysterical, the fore- 
 man interrupted. 
 
 " Well, boys ! it 's time we got to work again, and took 
 another heave at the old ledge! But now that this job of 
 Neworth's is over — I don't mind tellin' ye suthin'.'' As 
 their leader usually spoke but little, and to the point, the 
 four men gathered around him. "Although I engineered 
 this affair, and got it up, somehow I never saw that Neworth 
 standing on this ledge ! No, boys ! I never saw him here. " 
 The look of superstition which Bray and the others had 
 often seen on this old miner's face, and which so often 
 showed itself in his acts, was there. "And though I 
 wanted him to come, and allowed to have him come, I 'm 
 kinder relieved that he did n't, and so let whatsoever luck 's 
 in the air come to us five alone, boys, just as we stand." 
 
 The next morning Bray was up before his conjpanions, 
 and although it was not his turn, offered to bring water 
 from the spring. He was not in love with Eugenia — he 
 had not forgotten his remorse of the previous day — but he 
 would like to go there once more before he relentlessly 
 wiped out her image from his mind. And he had heard 
 that although Neworih had gone on to Sacramento, his son 
 and the two ladies had stopped on for a day or two at the 
 ditch superintendent's house on the summit, only two miles 
 away. She might pass on the road ; he might get a gliinpse 
 
A JACK AND JILL 0¥ THE SIERRAS 81 
 
 of her again and a wave of her hand before this thing 
 was over forever, and he should have to take up the daily- 
 routine of his work again. It was not love — of that he 
 was assured — but it was the way to stop it by convincing 
 himself of its madness. Besides, in view of all the cir- 
 cumstances, it was his duty as a gentleman to show some 
 concern for her condition after the accident and the dis- 
 agreeable contretemps which followed it. 
 
 Thus Bray ! Alas, none of these possibilities occurred. 
 He found the spring had simply lapsed into its previous 
 unsuggestive obscurity, — a mere niche in the mountain 
 side that held only — water ! The stage road was deserted 
 save for an early, curly-headed schoolboy, whom he found 
 lurking on the bank, but who evaded his company and con- 
 versation. He returned to the camp quite cured of his 
 fancy. His late zeal as a water-carrier had earned him a 
 day or two's exemption from that duty. His place was 
 taken the next afternoon by the woman-hating Parkhurst, 
 and he was the less concerned by it as he had heard that 
 the same afternoon the ladies were to leave the summit for 
 Sacramento. 
 
 But then occurred a singular coincidence. The new 
 water-bringer was as scandalously late in his delivery of 
 the precious fluid as his predecessor! An hour passed and 
 he did not return. His unfortunate partners, toiling away 
 with pick and crowbar on the burning ledge, were clamor- 
 ous from thirst, and Bray was becoming absurdly uneasy. 
 It could not be possible that Eugenia's accident had been 
 repeated! Or had she met him with inquiries? But no! 
 she was already gone. The mystery was presently' cleared, 
 however, by the abrupt appearance of Parkhurst running 
 towards them, but without his pail ! The cry of conster- 
 nation and despair which greeted that discovery was, how- 
 ever, quickly changed by a single breathless, half -intelligible 
 sentence he had shot before him from his panting lips. 
 
82 A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIERRAS 
 
 And he was holding something in his outstretched palm 
 that was more eloquent than words. Gold! 
 
 In an instant they had him under the shade of the pine 
 tree, and were squatting round him like schoolboys. He 
 was profoundly agitated. His story, far from being brief, 
 was incoherent and at times seemed irrelevant, but that was 
 characteristic. They would remember that he had always 
 held the theory that, even in quartz mining, the deposits 
 were always found near water, past or present, with signs 
 of fluvial erosion! He didn't call himself one of your 
 blanked scientific miners, but his head was level ! It was 
 all very well for them to say " Yes, yes ! " now, but they 
 didn't use to! Well! when he got to the spring, he no- 
 ticed that there had been a kind of landslide above it, of 
 course, from water cleavage, and there was a distinct mark 
 of it on the mountain side, where it had uprooted and 
 thrown over some small bushes ! 
 
 Excited as Bray was, he recognized with a hysterical 
 sensation the track made by Eugenia in her fall, which he 
 himself had noticed. But he had thought only of her. 
 
 "When I saw that," continued Parkhurst, more rapidly 
 and coherently, " I saw that there was a crack above the 
 hole where the water came through — as if it had been the 
 old channel of the spring. I widened it a little with my 
 clasp knife, and then — in a little pouch or pocket of de- 
 composed quartz — I found that! Not only that, boys," 
 he continued, rising, with a shout, " but the whole slope 
 above the spring is a mass of seepage underneath, as if 
 you 'd played a hydraulic hose on it, and it 's ready to 
 tumble and is just rotten with quartz ! " 
 
 The men leaped to their feet ; in another moment they 
 had snatched picks, pans, and shovels, and, the foreman 
 leading, with a coil of rope thrown over his shoulders, were 
 all flying down the trail to the highway. Their haste was 
 wise. The spring was not on theii- claim; it was known 
 
A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIERRAS 83 
 
 to others; it was doubtful if Parkhurst's discovery with 
 his knife amounted to actual work on the soil. They must 
 " take it up " with a formal notice, and get to work at 
 once! 
 
 In an hour they were scattered over the mountain side, 
 like bees clinging to the fragrant slope of laurel and myrtle 
 above the spring. An excavation was made beside it, and 
 the ledge broadened by a dozen feet. Even the spring it- 
 self was utilized to wash the hastily filled prospecting pans. 
 And when the Pioneer Coach slowly toiled up the road 
 that afternoon, the passengers stared at the scarcely dry 
 " Notice of Location " pinned to the pine by the road bank, 
 whence Eugenia had fallen two days before ! 
 
 Eagerly and anxiously as Edmund Bray worked with his 
 companions, it was with more conflicting feelings. There 
 was a certain sense of desecration in their act. How her 
 proud lip would have curled had she seen him — he who 
 but a few hours before would have searched the whole slope 
 for the treasure of a ribbon, a handkerchief, or a bow from 
 her dress — now delving and picking the hillside for that 
 fortune her accident had so mysteriously disclosed. Mys- 
 teriously he believed, for he had not fully accepted Park- 
 hurst's story. That gentle misogynist had never been an 
 active prospector; an inclination to theorize without prac- 
 tice and to combat his partners' experience were all against 
 his alleged process of discovery, although the gold was actu- 
 ally there; and his conduct that afternoon was certainly 
 peculiar. He did but little of the real work ; but wandered 
 from man to man, with suggestions, advice, and exhorta- 
 tions, and the air of a superior patron. This might have 
 been characteristic, but mingled with it was a certain ner- 
 vous anxiety and watchfulness. He was continually scan- 
 ning the stage road and the trail, staring eagerly at any 
 wayfarer in the distance, and at times falling into fits of 
 strange abstraction. At other times he would draw near 
 
84 A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIERRAS 
 
 to one of his fellow partners, as if for confidential disclo- 
 sure, and then check himself and wander aimlessly away. 
 And it was not until evening came that the mystery was 
 solved. 
 
 The prospecting pans had heen duly washed and exam- 
 ined, the slope above and below had been fully explored and 
 tested, with a result and promise that outran their most 
 sanguine hopes. There was no mistaking the fact that they 
 had made a " big " strike. That singular gravity and reti- 
 cence, so often observed in miners at these crises, had come 
 over them as they sat that night for the last time around 
 their old camp-fire on the Eureka ledge, when Parkhurst 
 turned impulsively to Bray. "Eoll over here," he said in 
 a whisper. "I want to tell ye suthin' ! " 
 
 Bray '' rolled " beyond the squatting circle, and the two 
 men gradually edged themselves out of hearing of the oth- 
 ers. In the silent abstraction that prevailed nobody no- 
 ticed them. 
 
 "It 's got suthin' to do with this discovery," said Park- 
 hurst, in a low, mysterious tone, "but as far as the gold 
 goes, arid our equal rights to it as partners, it don't affect 
 them. If I, " he continued in a slightly patronizing, pater- 
 nal tone, "choose to make you and the other boys sharers 
 in what seems to be a special Providence to w-e, I reckon 
 we won't quarrel on it. It 's a mighty curious, singular 
 thing. It 's one of those things ye read about in books and 
 don't take any stock in ! But we 've got the gold — and 
 I 've got the black and white to prove it — even if it ain't 
 exactly human." 
 
 His voice sank so low, his manner was so impressive, 
 that despite his known exaggeration, Bray felt a slight 
 thrill of superstition. Meantime Parkhurst wiped his brow, 
 took a folded slip of paper and a sprig of laurel from his 
 pocket, and drew a long breath. 
 
 " When I got to the spring this afternoon, " he went on. 
 
A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIERRAS 85 
 
 In a nervous, tremulous, and scarcely audible voice, " I saw 
 this bit o' paper, folded note-wise, lyin' on the ledge be- 
 fore it. On top of it was this sprig of laurel, to catch the 
 eye. I ain't the man to pry into other folks' secrets, or 
 read what ain't mine. But on the back o' this note was 
 written ' To Jack ! ' It 's a common enough name, but it 's 
 a singular thing, ef you '11 recollect, thar ain't another 
 Jack in this company, not on the whole ridge betwixt this 
 and the summit, except myself.' So I opened it, and this 
 is what it read ! " He held the paper sideways toward the 
 leaping light of the still near camp-fire, and read slowly, 
 with the emphasis of having read it many times before. 
 
 " ' I want you to believe that /, at least, respect and 
 honor your honest, manly calling, and when you strike it 
 rich, as you surely will, I hope you will sometimes think 
 of Jill.'" 
 
 In the thrill of joy, hope, and fear that came over Bray, 
 he could see that Parkhurst had hot only failed to detect 
 his secret, but had not even connected the two names with 
 their obvious suggestion. "But do you know anybody 
 named Jill ? " he asked breathlessly. 
 
 " It 's no name, " said Parkhurst in a sombre voice, " it 's 
 a thing ! " 
 
 "A thing?" repeated Bray, bewildered. 
 
 " Yes, a measure — you know — two fingers of whiskey." 
 
 "Oh, a 'gill,'" said Bray. 
 
 "That's what I said, young man," returned Parkhurst 
 gravely. 
 
 Bray choked back a hysterical laugh; spelling was noto- 
 riously not one of Parkhurst's strong points. "But what 
 has a ' gill ' got to do with it ? " he asked quickly. 
 
 "It's one of them Sphinx things, don't you see? A 
 sort of riddle or rebus, you know. You 've got to study 
 it out, as them old chaps did. But I fetched it. What 
 comes after ' gills, ' eh ? " 
 
86 A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIEKEAS 
 
 "Pints, I suppose," said Bray. 
 
 "And after pints?" 
 
 "Quarts." 
 
 " Quarts, and there you are. So I looked about me for 
 quartz, and sure enough struck it the first pop." 
 
 Bray cast a quick look at Parkhurst's grave face. The 
 man was evidently impressed and sincere. "Have you 
 told this to any one ? " he asked quickly. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Then don't ! or you '11 spoil the charm, and bring us 
 ill luck! That 's the rule, you know. I really don't know 
 that you ought to have told me," added the artful Bray, 
 dissembling his intense joy at this proof of Eugenia's 
 remembrance. 
 
 "But," said Parkhurst blankly, "you see, old man, 
 you 'd been the last man at the spring, and I kinder 
 thought " — 
 
 "Don't think," said Bray promptly, "and above all, 
 don't talk; not a word to the boys of this. Stay! Give 
 me the paper and the sprig. I 've got to go to San Fran- 
 cisco next week, and I '11 take care of it and think it out ! " 
 He knew that Parkhurst might be tempted to talk, but 
 without the paper his story would be treated lightly. 
 Parkhurst handed him the paper, and the two men re- 
 turned to the camp-fire. 
 
 That night Bray slept but little. The superstition of 
 the lover is no less keen than that of the gambler, and 
 Bray, while laughing at Parkhurst's extravagant fancy, I 
 am afraid was equally inclined to believe that their good 
 fortune came through Eugenia's influence. At least he 
 should tell her so, and her precious note became now an 
 invitation as well as an excuse for seeking her. The only 
 fear that possessed him was that she might have expected 
 some acknowledgment of her note before she left that after- 
 noon ; the only thing he could not understand was how she 
 
A JACK AND JILL OF THE SlKRfiAS 87 
 
 had managed to convey the note to the spring, for she could 
 not have taken it herself. But this would doubtless be 
 explained by her in San Francisco, whither he intended to 
 seek her. His affairs, the purchasing of machinery for 
 their new claim, would no doubt give him easy access to 
 her father. 
 
 But it was one thing to imagine this while procuring a 
 new and fashionable outfit in San Francisco, and quite an- 
 other to stand before the " palatial '' residence of the New- 
 orths on Eincon Hill, with the consciousness of no othef 
 introduction than the memory of the Neworths' discourtesy 
 on the mountain, and, even in his fine feathers, Bray 
 hesitated. At this moment a carriage rolled up to the 
 door, and Eugenia, an adorable vision of laces and silks, 
 alighted. 
 
 Forgetting everything else, he advanced toward her with 
 outstretched hand. He saw her start, a faint color come 
 into her face ; he knew he was recognized ; but she stiffened 
 quickly agaiuj the color vanished, her beautiful gray eyes 
 tested coldly on him for a moment, and then, with the 
 faintest inclination of her proud head, she swept by him 
 and entered the house. 
 
 But Bray, though shocked, was not daunted, and per- 
 haps his own pride was awakened. He ran to his hotel, 
 summoned a messenger, inclosed her note in an envelope, 
 and added these lines : — 
 
 Deak Miss Nbwokth, — I only wanted to thank you 
 an hour ago, as I should like to have done before, for the 
 kind note which I inclose, but which you have made me 
 feel I have no right to treasure any longer, and to tell you 
 that your most generous wish and prophecy has been more 
 than fulfilled. 
 
 Yours, very gratefully, 
 
 Edmund Beat. 
 
88 A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIERRAS 
 
 Within the hour the messenger returned with the still 
 briefer reply : — 
 
 " Miss Neworth has heen fully aware of that preoccupa- 
 tion with his good fortune which prevented Mr. Bray from 
 an earlier acknowledgment of her foolish note." 
 
 Cold as this response was, Bray's heart leaped. She 
 had lingered on the summit, and had expected a reply. 
 He seized his hat, and, jumping into the first cab at the 
 hotel door, drove rapidly back to the house. He had but 
 one idea, to see her at any cost, but one concern, to avoid 
 a meeting with her father first, or a denial at her very 
 door. 
 
 He dismissed the cab at the street corner and began to 
 reconnoitre the house. It had a large garden in the rear, 
 reclaimed from the adjacent "scrub oak " infested sand hill, 
 and protected by a high wall. If he could scale that wall, 
 he could command the premises. It was a bright morning; 
 she might be tempted into the garden. A taller scrub oak 
 grew near the wall ; to the mountain-bred Bray it was an 
 easy matter to swing himself from it to the wall, and he 
 did. But his momentum was so great that he touched the 
 wall only to be obliged to leap down into the garden to 
 save himself from falling there. He heard a little cry, felt 
 his feet strike some tin utensil, and rolled on the ground 
 beside Eugenia and her overturned watering-pot. 
 
 They both struggled to their feet with an astonishment 
 that turned to laughter in their eyes and the same thought 
 in the minds of each. 
 
 "But we are not on the mountains now, Mr. Bray," said 
 Eugenia, taking her handkerchief at last from her sobering 
 face and straightening eyebrows. 
 
 " But we are quits, " said Bray. " And you now know 
 my real name. I only came here to tell you why I could 
 not answer your letter the same day. I never got it — I 
 mean," he added hurriedly, "another man got it first." 
 
A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIERRAS 89 
 
 She threw up her head, and her face grew pale. "An- 
 other man got it," she repeated, "and you let another 
 man " — 
 
 "No, no," interrupted Bray imploringly. "You don't 
 understand. One of my partners went to the spring that 
 afternoon, and found it; but he neither knows who sent it, 
 nor for whom it was intended." He hastily recounted 
 Parkhurst's story, his mysterious belief, and his interpreta- 
 tion of the note. The color came back to her face and the 
 smile to her lips and eyes. "I had gone twice to the 
 spring after I saw you, but I could n't bear its deserted 
 look without you," he added boldly. Here, seeing her 
 face grew grave again, he added, " But how did you get the 
 letter to the spring? and how did you know that it was 
 found that day 1 " 
 
 It was her turn to look embarrassed and entreating, but 
 the combination was charming in her proud face. "I got 
 the little schoolboy at the summit," she said, with girlish 
 hesitation, "to take the note. He knew the spring, but 
 he didn't know you. I told him — it was very foolish, I 
 tnow — to wait until you came for water, to be certain 
 that you got the note, to wait until you came up, for I 
 thought you might question him, or give him some word." 
 Her face was quite rosy now. "But," she added, and her 
 lip took a divine pout, "he said he waited two hours; 
 that you never took the least concern of the letter or him, 
 but went around the mountain side, peering and picking in 
 every hole and corner of it, and then he got tired and ran 
 away. Of course I understand it now, it was n't you ; 
 but oh, please; I beg you, Mr. Bray, don't!" 
 
 Bray released the little hand which he had impulsively 
 caught, and which had allowed itself to be detained for a 
 blissful moment. 
 
 "And now, don't you think, Mr. Bray," she added de- 
 murely, "that you had better let me fill my pail again 
 
90 A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIEKEAS 
 
 while you go round to the front door and call upon me 
 properly 1 " 
 
 " But your father " — 
 
 "My father, as a well-known investor, regrets exceed- 
 ingly that he did not make your acquaintance more thor- 
 oughly in his late hrief interview. He is, as your foreman 
 knows, exceedingly interested in the mines on Eureka 
 ledge. He will be glad if you will call." She led him to 
 a little door in the wall, which she unbolted. " And now 
 ' Jill ' must say good-by to ' Jack, ' for she must make 
 herself ready to receive a Mr. Bray who is expected." 
 
 And when Bray a little later called at the front door, he 
 was respectfully announced. He called another day, and 
 many days after. He came frequently to San Francisco, 
 and one day did not return to his old partners. He had 
 entered into a new partnership with one who he declared 
 "had made the first strike on Eureka mountain.'' 
 
UNDER THE EAVES 
 
 The assistant editor of the San Francisco "Daily In- 
 former " was going home. So much of his time was spent 
 in the office of the "Informer" that no one ever cared to 
 know where he passed those six hours of sleep which pre- 
 sumably suggested a domicile. His business appointments 
 outside the office were generally kept at the restaurant 
 where he breakfasted and dined, or of evenings in the lob- 
 bies of theatres or the anterooms of public meetings. Yet 
 he had a home and an interval of seclusion of which he was 
 jealously mindful, and it was to this he was going to-night 
 at his usual hour. 
 
 His room was in a new building on one of the larger and 
 busier thoroughfares. The lower floor was occupied by a 
 bank, but as it was closed before he came home, and not 
 yet opened when he left, it did not disturb his domestic 
 sensibilities. The same may be said of the next floor, 
 which was devoted to stockbrokers' and companies' offices, 
 and was equally tomb-like and silent when he passed; the 
 floor above that was a desert of empty rooms, which echoed 
 to his footsteps night and morning, with here and there an 
 oasis in the green sign of a mining secretary's office, with, 
 however, the desolating announcement that it would only be 
 " open for transfers from two to four on Saturdays. " The 
 top floor had been frankly abandoned in an unfinished state 
 by the builder, whose ambition had "o'erleaped itself" in 
 that sanguine era of the city's growth. There was a smell 
 of plaster and the first coat of paint about it still, but the 
 whole front of the building was occupied by a long room 
 
92 UNDEE THE EAVES 
 
 with odd "bull's-eye" windows looking out through the 
 heavy ornamentations of the cornice over the adjacent roofs. 
 
 It had been originally intended for a club-room, but af- 
 ter the ill fortune which attended the letting of the floor 
 below, and possibly because the earthquake-fearing San 
 Franciscans had their doubts of successful hilarity at the 
 top of so tall a building, it remained unfinished, with the 
 two smaller rooms at its side. Its incomplete and lonely 
 grandeur had once struck the editor during a visit of in- 
 spection, and the landlord, whom he knew, had offered to 
 make it habitable for him at a nominal rent. It had a lav- 
 atory with a marble basin and a tap of cold water. The 
 offer was a novel one, but he accepted it, and fitted up the 
 apartment with some cheap second-hand furniture, quite 
 inconsistent with the carved mantels and decorations, and 
 made a fair sitting-room and bedroom of it. Here, on a 
 Sunday, when its stillness was intensified, and even a pass- 
 ing footstep on the pavement fifty feet below was quite 
 startling, he would sit and work by one of the quaint open 
 windows. In the rainy season, through the filmed panes 
 he sometimes caught a glimpse of the distant, white-capped 
 bay, but never of the street below him. 
 
 The lights were out, but, groping his way up to the first 
 landing, he took from a cupboarded niche in the waU his 
 candlestick and matches and continued the ascent to his 
 room. The humble candlelight flickered on the ostenta- 
 tious gold letters displayed on the ground-glass doors of 
 opulent companies which he knew were famous, and rooms 
 where millionaires met in secret conclave, but the contrast 
 awakened only his sense of humor. Yet he was always 
 relieved after he had reached his own floor. Possibly its 
 incompleteness and inchoate condition made it seem less 
 lonely than the desolation of the finished and furnished 
 rooms below, and it was only this recollection of past human 
 occupancy that was depressing. 
 
UNDER THE EAVES 93 
 
 He opened his door, lit the solitary gas jet that only half 
 illuminated the long room, and, it being already past mid- 
 night, began to undress himself. This process presently 
 brought him to that corner of his room where his bed stood, 
 when he suddenly stopped, and his sleepy yawn changed 
 to a gape of surprise. For, lying in the bed, its head upon 
 the pillow, and its rigid arms accurately stretched down 
 over the turned-back sheet, was a child's doll! It was a 
 small doll — a banged and battered doll, that had seen ser- 
 vice, but it had evidently been " tucked in " with maternal 
 tenderness, and lay there with its staring eyes turned to the 
 ceiling, the very genius of insomnia ! 
 
 His first start of surprise was followed by a natural re- 
 sentment of what might have been an impertinent intrusion 
 on his privacy by some practical-joking adult, for he knew 
 there was no child in the house. 
 
 His room was kept in order by the wife of the night 
 watchman employed by the bank, and no one else had a 
 right of access to it. But the woman might have brought 
 a child there and not noticed its disposal of its plaything. 
 He smiled. It might have been worse ! It might have 
 been a real baby ! 
 
 The idea tickled him with a promise of future " copy " 
 — of a story with farcical complications, or even a dramatic 
 ending, in which the baby, adopted by him, should turn 
 out to be somebody's stolen offspring. He lifted the little 
 image that had suggested these fancies, carefully laid it on 
 his table, went to bed, and presently forgot it all in slumber. 
 In the morning his good-humor and interest in it revived 
 to the extent of writing on a slip of paper, "Good-morn- 
 ing! Thank you — I 've slept very well," putting the slip 
 in the doll's jointed arms, and leaving it in a sitting pos- 
 ture outside his door when he left his room. When he 
 returned late at night it was gone. 
 
 But it so chanced that, a few days later, owing to press 
 
94 UNDER THE EAVES 
 
 of work on the "Informer," he was obliged to forego his 
 usual Sunday holiday out of town, and that morning found 
 him, while the bells were ringing for church, in his room 
 with a pile of manuscript and proof before him. For these 
 were troublous days in San Francisco ; the great Vigilance 
 Committee of '56 was in session, and the offices of the 
 daily papers were thronged with eager seekers of news. 
 Such affairs, indeed, were not in the functions of the assist- 
 ant editor, nor exactly to his taste; he was neither a par- 
 tisan of the so-called Law and Order Party, nor yet an en- 
 thusiastic admirer of the citizen Revolutionists known as 
 the Vigilance Committee, both extremes being incompatible 
 with his habits of thought. Consequently he was not dis- 
 pleased at this opportunity of doing his work away from 
 the office and the " heady talk " of controversy. 
 
 He worked on until the bells ceased and a more than 
 Sabbath stillness fell upon the streets. So quiet was it that 
 once or twice the conversation of passing pedestrians floated 
 up and into his window, as of voices at his elbow. 
 
 Presently he heard the sound of a child's voice singing 
 in subdued tone, as if fearful of being overheard. This 
 time he laid aside his pen — it certainly was no delusion ! 
 The sound did not come from the open window, but from 
 some space on a level with his room. Yet there was no 
 contiguous building as high. 
 
 He rose and tried to open his door softly, but it creaked, 
 and the singing instantly ceased. There was nothing be- 
 fore him but the bare, empty hall, with its lathed and plas- 
 tered partitions, and the two smaller rooms, unfinished like 
 his own, on either side of him. Their doors were shut; 
 the one at his right hand was locked, the other yielded to 
 his touch. 
 
 For the first moment he saw only the bare walls of the 
 apparently empty room. But a second glance showed him 
 two children — a boy of seven and a girl of five — sitting 
 
UNDER THE EAVES 95 
 
 on the floor, which was further littered by a mattress, pil- 
 low, and blanket. There was a cheap tray on one of the 
 trunks containing two soiled plates and cups and fragments 
 of a meal. But there was neither a chair nor table nor any 
 other article of furniture in the room. Yet he was struck 
 by the fact that, in spite of this poverty of surrounding, 
 the children were decently dressed, and the few scattered 
 pieces of luggage in quality bespoke a superior condition. 
 
 The children met his astonished stare with an equal 
 wonder and, he fancied, some little fright. The boy's lips 
 trembled a little as he said apologetically, — 
 
 " I told Jinny not to sing. But she did n't make much 
 noise. " 
 
 " Mamma said I could play with my dolly. But I fordot 
 and singed," said the little girl penitently. 
 
 " Where 's your mamma ? " asked the young man. The 
 fancy of their being near relatives of the night watchman 
 had vanished at the sound of their voices. 
 
 "Dorn out," said the girl. 
 
 " When did she go out ? " 
 
 "Last night." 
 
 " Were you all alone here last night ? " 
 
 "Yes!" 
 
 Perhaps they saw the look of indignation and pity in the 
 editor's face, for the boy said quickly, — ■ 
 
 "She don't go out every night; last night she went 
 to" — 
 
 He stopped suddenly, and both children looked at each 
 other with a half laugh and half cry, and then repeated in 
 hopeless unison, "She 's dorn out." 
 
 " When is she coming back again 1 " 
 
 "To-night. But we won't make any more noise." 
 
 " Who brings you your food 1 " continued the editor, 
 looking at the tray. 
 
 "WobeTts." 
 
96 UNDER THE EAVES 
 
 Evidently Roberts, the night watchman! The editor 
 felt relieved; here was a clue to some explanation. He 
 instantly sat down on the floor between them. 
 
 "So that was the dolly that slept in my bed," he said 
 gayly, taking it up. 
 
 God gives helplessness a wonderful intuition of its 
 friends. The children looked up at the face of their 
 grown-up companion, giggled, and then burst into a shrill 
 fit of laughter. He felt that it was the first one they had 
 really indulged in for many days. Nevertheless he said, 
 " Hush ! " confidentially ; why he scarcely knew, except to 
 intimate to them that he had taken in their situation thor- 
 oughly. "Make no noi?e," he added softly, "and come 
 into my big room." 
 
 They hung back, however, with frightened yet longing: 
 eyes. "Mamma said we mussent do out of this room," 
 said the girl. 
 
 "Not aZowe," responded the editor quickly, "but with 
 me, you know; that's difierent." 
 
 The logic sufficed them, poor as it was. Their hands 
 slid quite naturally into his. But at the door he stopped, 
 and motioning to the locked door of the other room, 
 asked : — 
 
 "And is that mamma's room, too! " 
 
 Their little hands slipped from his and they were silent. 
 Presently the boy, as if acted upon by some occult influence 
 of the girl, said in a half whisper, "Yes." 
 
 The editor did not question further, but led them into 
 his room. Here they lost the slight restraint they had 
 shown, and began, child fashion, to become questioners 
 themselves. 
 
 In a few moments they were in possession of his name, 
 his business, the kind of restaurant he frequented, where 
 he went when he left his room all day, the meaning of 
 those funny slips of paper, and the written manuscripts, 
 
UNDER THE EAVES 97 
 
 and why he was so quiet. But any attempt of his to re- 
 taliate by counter questions was met by a sudden reserve 
 so unchildlike and painful to him — as it was evidently to 
 themselves — that he desisted, wisely postponing his in- 
 quiries until he could meet Uoherts. 
 
 He was glad when they fell to playing games with each 
 other quite naturally, yet not entirely forgetting his pro- 
 pinquity, as their occasional furtive glances at his move- 
 ments shewed him. He, too, becanje presently absorbed 
 in his work, until it wai finished and it was time for him 
 to take it to the office of the "Informer." The wild idea 
 seized him of also taking the children afterwards for a holi- 
 day to the Mission Dolores, but he prudently remembered 
 that even this negligent mother of theirs might have some 
 rights over her offspring that he was bound to respect. 
 
 He took leave of them gayly, suggesting that the doll be 
 replaced in his bed while he was away, and even assisted in 
 "tucking it up." But during the afternoon the recollec- 
 tion of these lonely playfellows in the deserted house ob- 
 truded itself \ipon his work and the talk of his companionSj 
 Sunday night was his busiest night, and he could not, 
 therefore, hope to get away in time to assure himself of 
 their mother's return. 
 
 It was nearly two in the morning when he returned to 
 his room. He paused for a moment on the threshold to 
 listen for any sound from the adjoinirg room. But all was 
 hushed. 
 
 His intention of speaking to the night watchman was, 
 however, anticipated the next morning by that guardian 
 himself. A tap upon his door while he was dressing caused 
 him to open it somewhat hurriedly in the hope of finding 
 one of the children there, but he met only the embarrassed 
 face of Roberts. Inviting him into the room, the editor 
 -ontinued dressing. Carefully closing the door behind 
 him, the man began, with evident hesitation, — 
 
98 UNDER THE EAVES 
 
 "I ougMer hev told ye suthin' afoie, Mr. Breeze; but 
 I kalkilated, so to speak, that you would n't be bothered 
 one way or another, and so ye hadn't any call to know 
 that there was folks here " — 
 
 "Oh, I see," interrupted Breeze cheerfully; "you're 
 speaking of the family next door — the landlord's new 
 tenants. " 
 
 "They ain't exactly that," said Roberts, still with em- 
 barrassment. " The fact is — ye see — the thing points 
 this way; they ain't no right to be here, and it 's as much 
 as my place is worth if it leaks out that they are." 
 
 Mr. Breeze suspended his collar-buttoning, and stared at 
 Roberts. 
 
 "You see, sir, they 're mighty poor, and they 've nowhere 
 else to go — and I reckoned to take 'em in here for a spell 
 and say nothing about it." 
 
 "But the landlord wouldn't object, surely? I'll speak 
 to him myself," said Breeze impulsively. 
 
 "Oh, no; don't! " said Roberts in alarm; "he would n't 
 like it. You see, Mr. Breeze, it 's just this way : the 
 mother, she 's a born lady, and did my old woman a good 
 turn in old times when the family was rich; but now she 's 
 obliged — just to support herself, you know — ' to take up 
 with what she gets, and she acts in the bally in the theatre, 
 you see, and hez to come in late o' nights. In them cheap 
 boarding-houses, you know, the folks looks down upon her 
 for that, and won't hev her, and in the cheap hotels the men 
 are — you know — a darned sight wuss, and that 's how I 
 took her and her kids in here, where no one knows 'em." 
 
 "I see," nodded the editor sympathetically; "and very 
 good it was of you, my man. " 
 
 Roberts looked still more confused, and stammered with 
 a forced laugh, " And — so — I'm just keeping her on here, 
 unbeknownst, until her husband gets " — He stopped sud- 
 denly. 
 
UNDER THE EAVES 9& 
 
 " So she has a husband living, then ? " said Breeze in 
 surprise. 
 
 " In the mines, yes — in the mines ! " repeated Eoberts 
 with a monotonous deliberation quite distinct from his pre- 
 vious hesitation, "and she's only waitin' until he gets 
 money enough — to — to take her away." He stopped and 
 "wreathed hard. 
 
 "But couldn't you — couldn't we — get her some more 
 furniture 1 There 's nothing in that room, you know, not 
 a chair or table; and unless the other room is better fur- 
 nished " — 
 
 " Eh % Oh, yes ! " said Roberts quickly, yet still with a 
 certain embarrassment; "of course that 's better furnished, 
 and she 's quite satisfied, and so are the kids, with any- 
 thing. And now, Mr. Breeze, I reckon you '11 say nothin' 
 o' this, and you *11 never go back on me ? " 
 
 "My dear Mr. Roberts," said the editor gravely, "from 
 this moment I am not only blind, but deaf to the fact that 
 anybody occupies this floor but myself." 
 
 "I knew you was white all through, Mr. Breeze," said 
 the night watchman, grasping the young man's hand with 
 a grip of iron,_ " and I telled my wife so. I sez, ' Jest you 
 let me tell him everythin\' but she " — He stopped again 
 and became confused. 
 
 " And she was quite right, I dare say, " said Breeze, with 
 a laugh ; " and I do not want to know anything. And that 
 poor woman must never know that I ever knew anything, 
 either. But you may tell your wife that when the mother 
 is away she can bring the little ones in here whenever she 
 likes." 
 
 " Thank ye — thank ye, sir ! — and I '11 just run down 
 and tell the old woman now, and won't intrude upon your 
 dressin' any longer." 
 
 He grasped Breeze's hand again, went out and closed the 
 door behind him. It might have been the editor's fancy, 
 
iOO UNDER THE EAVES 
 
 but he thought there was a certain interval of silence out- 
 side the door before the night watchman's heavy tread was 
 heard along the hall again. 
 
 Per several evenings after this Mr. Breeze paid some 
 attention to the ballet in his usual round of the theatres. 
 Although he had never seen his fair neighbor, he had a 
 vague idea that he might recognize her through some like- 
 ness to her children. But in vain. In the opulent charms 
 of certain nymphs, and in the angular austerities of others, 
 he failed equally to discern any of those refinements which 
 might have distinguished the " born lady " of Roberts's 
 story, or which he himself had seen in her children. 
 
 These he did not meet again during the week, as his 
 duties kept him late at the office ; but from certain signs in 
 his room he knew that Mrs. Roberts had availed herself 
 of his invitation to bring them in with her, and he regu- 
 larly found "Jinny's" doll tucked up in his bed at night, 
 and he as regularly disposed of it outside his door in the 
 morning, with a few sweets, like an offering, tucked under 
 its rigid arms. 
 
 But another circumstance touched him more delicately; 
 his room was arranged with greater care than before, and 
 with an occasional exhibition of taste that certainly had not 
 distinguished Mrs. Roberts's previous ministrations. One 
 evening on his return he found a small bouquet of inexpen- 
 sive flowers in a glass on his writing-table. He loved flowers 
 too well not to detect that they were quite fresh, and could 
 have been put there only an hour or two before he arrived. 
 
 The next evening was Saturday, and as he usually left 
 the office earlier on that day, it occurred to him, as he 
 walked home, that it was about the time his fair neighbor 
 would be leaving the theatre, and that it was possible he 
 might meet her. 
 
 At the front door, however, he found Roberts, who re- 
 turned his greeting with a certain awkwardness which 
 
UNDER THE EAVES lOi 
 
 struck him as singular. When he reached the niche on the 
 landing he found his candle was gone, but he proceeded on, 
 groping his way up the stairs, with an odd conviction that 
 both these incidents pointed to the fact that the woman had 
 just returned or was expected. 
 
 He had also a strange feeling — which may have been 
 owing to the darkness — that some one was hidden on the 
 landing or on the stairs where he would pass. This was 
 further accented by a faint odor of patchouli, as, with his 
 hand on the rail, he turned the corner of the third landing, 
 and he was convinced that if he had put out his other hand 
 it would have come in contact with his mysterious neigh- 
 bor. But a certain instinct of respect for her secret, which 
 she was even now guarding in the darkness, withheld him, 
 and he passed on quickly to his own floor. 
 
 Here it was lighter; the moon shot a beam of silvei 
 across the passage from an unshuttered window as he 
 passed. He reached his room door, entered, but instead of 
 lighting the gas and shutting the door, stood with it half 
 open, listening in the darkness. 
 
 His suspicions were verified; there was a slight rustling 
 noise, and a figure which had evidently followed him ap- 
 peared at the end of the passage. It was that of a woman 
 habited in a grayish dress and cloak of the same color; but 
 as she passed across the band of moonlight he had a distinct 
 view of her anxious, worried face. It was a face no longer 
 young; it was worn with illness, but still replete with a 
 delicacy and faded beauty so inconsistent with her avowed 
 profession that he felt a sudden pang of pain and doubt. 
 The next moment she had vanished in her room, leaving 
 the same faint perfume behind her. He closed his door 
 softly, lit the gas, and sat down in a state of perplexity. 
 That swift glimpse of her face and figure had made her 
 story improbable to the point of absurdity, or possibly to 
 the extreme of pathos! 
 
102 UNDER THE EAVES 
 
 It seemed incredible that a woman of that quality should 
 be forced to accept a vocation at once so low, so distaste- 
 ful, and so unremunerative. With her evident antece- 
 dents, had she no friends but this common Western night 
 watchman of a bank 1 Had Roberts deceived him t Was 
 his whole story a fabrication, and was there some complicity 
 between the two ? What was it 1 He knit his brows. 
 
 Mr. Breeze had that overpowering knowledge of the 
 world which comes only with the experience of twenty-five, 
 and to this he superadded the active imagination of a news- 
 paper man. A plot to rob the bank ? These mysterious 
 absences, that luggage which he doubted not was empty and 
 intended for spoil! But why encumber herself with the 
 two children! Here his cpmmon sense and instinct of the 
 ludicrous returned and he smiled. 
 
 But he could not believe in the ballet dancer! He won- 
 dered, indeed, how any manager could have accepted the 
 grim satire of that pale, worried face among the fairies, 
 that sad refinement amid their vacant smiles and rouged 
 cheeks. And then, growing sad again, he comforted him- 
 self with the reflection that at least the children were not 
 alone that night, and so went to sleep. 
 
 For some days he had no further meeting with his neigh- 
 bors. The disturbed state of the city — for the Vigilance 
 Committee were still in session — obliged the daily press 
 to issue "extras," and his work at the office increased. 
 
 It was not until Sunday again that he was able to be at 
 home. Needless to say that his solitary little companions 
 were duly installed there, while he sat at work with his 
 proofs on the table before him. 
 
 The stillness of the empty house was broken only by the 
 habitually subdued voices of the children at their play, 
 when suddenly the harsh stroke of a distant bell came 
 through the open window. But it was no Sabbath bell, 
 and Mr. Breeze knew it. It was the tocsin of the Vigilance 
 
UNDER THE EAVES 103 
 
 Committee, summoning the members to assemble at their 
 quarters for a capture, a trial, or an execution of some 
 wrongdoer. To him it was equally a summons to the office 
 — to distasteful news and excitement. 
 
 He threw his proofs aside in disgust, laid down his pen, 
 seized his hat, and paused a moment to look round for his 
 playmates. But they were gone ! He went into the hall, 
 looked into the open door of their room, but they were not 
 there. He tried the door of the second room, but it was 
 locked. 
 
 Satisfied that they had stolen downstairs in their eager- 
 ness to know what the bell meant, he hurried down also, 
 met Eoberts in the passage, — a singularly unusual cir- 
 cumstance at that hour, — called to him to look after the 
 runaways, and hurried to his office. 
 
 Here he found the staff collected, excitedly discussing 
 the news. One of the Vigilance Committee prisoners, a 
 notorious bully and ruffian, detained as a criminal and a 
 witness, had committed suicide in his cell. Fortunately 
 this was all reportorial work, and the services of Mr. Breeze 
 were not required. He hurried back, relieved, to his room. 
 
 When he reached his landing, breathlessly, he heard the 
 same quick rustle he had heard that memorable evening, 
 and was quite satisfied that he saw a figure glide swiftly 
 out of the open door of his room. It was no doubt his 
 neighbor, who had been seeking her children, and as he 
 heard their voices as he passed, his uneasiness and suspi- 
 cions were removed. 
 
 He sat down again to his scattered papers and proofs, 
 finished his work, and took it to the office on his way to 
 dinner. He returned early, in the hope that he might 
 meet his neighbor again, and had quite settled his mind 
 that he was justified in offering a civil " Good-evening '' to 
 her, in spite of his previous respectful ignoring of her pre- 
 sence. She must certainly have become aware by this time 
 
104 UNDER THE EAVES 
 
 of his attention to her children and consideration for her- 
 self, and could not mistake his motives. But he was dis- 
 appointed, although he came up softly ; he found the flooi 
 in darkness and silence on his return, and he had to be 
 content with lighting his gas and settling down to work 
 again. 
 
 A near church clock had struck ten when he was startled 
 by the sound of an unfamiliar and uncertain step in the 
 hall, followed by a tap at his door. Breeze jumped to his 
 feet, and was astonished to find Dick, the "printer's 
 devil," standing on the threshold with a roll of proofs in 
 his hand. 
 
 " How did you get here ? " he asked testily. 
 
 " They told me at the restaurant they reckoned you lived 
 yere, and the night watchman at the door headed me 
 straight up. When he knew whar I kem from he wanted 
 to know what the news was, but I told him he 'd better 
 buy an extra and see." 
 
 " Well, what did you come for t " said the editor impa- 
 tiently. 
 
 "The foreman said it was important, and he wanted to 
 know afore he went to press ef this yer correction was 
 yours ? " 
 
 He went to the table, unrolled the proofs, and, taking 
 out the slip, pointed to a marked paragraph. "The fore- 
 man says the reporter who brought the news allows he got 
 it straight first-hand ! But ef you 've corrected it, he reck- 
 ons you know best." 
 
 Breeze saw at a glance that the paragraph alluded to was 
 not of his own writing, but one of several news items fur- 
 nished by reporters. These had been " set up " in the 
 same "galley," and consequently appeared in the same 
 proof-slip. He was about to say curtly that neither the mat- 
 ter nor the correction was his, when something odd in the 
 correction of the item struck him. It read as follows : — 
 
UNDER THE EAVES 105 
 
 " It appears that the notorious ' Jim Bodine, ' who is in 
 hiding and badly wanted by the Vigilance Committee, has 
 been tempted lately into a renewal of his old recklessness. 
 He was seen in Sacramento Street the other night by two 
 separate witnesses, one of whom followed him, but he es- 
 caped in some friendly doorway." 
 
 The words "in Sacramento Street" were stricken out 
 and replaced by the correction "'on the Saucelito shore," 
 and the words " friendly doorway " were changed to 
 "friendly dinghy." 
 
 The correction was not his, nor the handwriting, which 
 was further disguised by being an imitation of print. A 
 strange idea seized him. 
 
 "Has any one seen these proofs since I left them at the 
 office 1 " 
 
 "No, only the foreman, sir." 
 
 He remembered that he had left the proofs lying openly 
 on his table when he was called to the oifice at the stroke 
 of the alarm bell ; he remembered the figure he saw gliding 
 from his room on his return. She had been there alone 
 with the proofs; she only could have tampered with them. 
 
 The evident object of the correction was to direct the 
 public attention from Sacramento Street to Saucelito, as the 
 probable whereabouts of this "Jimmy Bodine." The street 
 below was Sacramento Street, the " friendly doorway " 
 might have been their own. 
 
 That she had some knowledge of this Bodine was not 
 more improbable than the ballet story. Her strange ab- 
 sences, the mystery surrounding her, all seemed to testify 
 that she had some connection — perhaps only an innocent 
 one — with these desperate people whom the Vigilance 
 Committee were hunting down. Her attempt to save the 
 man was, after all, no more illegal than their attempt to 
 capture him. True, she might have trusted him, Breeze, 
 without this tampering with his papers; yet perhaps she 
 
106 UNDER THE EAVES 
 
 thought he was certain to discover it — and it was only a 
 silent appeal to his mercy. The corrections were ingenious 
 and natural — it was the act of an intelligent, quick-witted 
 woman. 
 
 Mr. Breeze was prompt in acting upon hie intuition, 
 whether right or wrong. He took up his pen, wrote on 
 the margin of the proof, "Print as corrected," said to the 
 boy carelessly, "The corrections are all right," and dis- 
 missed him quickly. 
 
 The corrected paragraph which appeared in the "In- 
 former " the next morning seemed to attract little public 
 attention, the greater excitement being the suicide of the 
 imprisoned bully and the effect it might have upon the 
 prosecution of other suspected parties, against whom the 
 dead man had been expected to bear witness. 
 
 Mr. Breeze was unable to obtain any information regard- 
 ing the desperado Bodine's associates and relations ; his 
 correction of the paragraph had made the other members 
 of the staif believe he had secret and superior informa- 
 tion regarding the fugitive, and he thus was estopped from 
 asking questions. But he felt himself justified now in de- 
 manding fuller information from Roberts at the earliest 
 opportunity. 
 
 For this purpose he came home earlier that night, hoping 
 to find the night watchman still on his first beat in the 
 lower halls. But he was disappointed. He was amazed, 
 however, on reaching his own landing, to find the passage 
 piled with new luggage, some of that ruder type of rolled 
 blanket and knapsack known as a "miner's kit." He was 
 still more surprised to hear men's voices and the sound of 
 laughter proceeding from the room that was always locked. 
 A sudden sense of uneasiness and disgust, he knew not 
 why, came over him. 
 
 He passed quickly into his room, shut the door sharply, 
 and lit the gas. But he presently heard the door of the 
 
UNDEE THE EAVES 10'7 
 
 locked room open, a man's voice, slightly elevated by liquor 
 and opposition, saying, "I know what's due from one gen- 
 'leman to 'nother" — a querulous, objecting voice saying, 
 "Hole on! not now," and a fainter feminine protest, all 
 of which were followed by a rap on his door. 
 
 Breeze opened it to two strangers, one of whom lurchecs 
 forward unsteadily with outstretched hand. He had a 
 handsome face and figure, and a certain consciousness of it 
 even in the abandon of liquor ; he had an aggressive treach- 
 erousness of eye which his potations had not subdued. He 
 grasped Breeze's hand tightly, but dropped it the next mo- 
 ment perfunctorily as he glanced round the room. 
 
 "I told them I was bound to come in," he said, without 
 looking at Breeze, "and say ' Howdy! ' to the man that 's 
 been a pal to my women folks and the kids — and acted 
 white all through ! I said to Mame, ' I reckon he knows 
 who I am, and that I kin be high-toned to them that 's 
 high-toned ; kin return shake for shake and shot for shot ! ' 
 Aye ! that 's me ! So I was bound to come in like a gen- 
 'leman, sir, and here I am ! " 
 
 He threw himself in an unproffered chair and stared at 
 Breeze. 
 
 "I'm afraid," said Breeze dryly, "that, nevertheless, I 
 never knew who you were, and that even now I am igno- 
 rant whom I am addressing." 
 
 "That 's just it," said the second man, with a querulous 
 protest, which did not, however, conceal his admiring vas- 
 salage to his friend; "that 's what I 'm alius telling Jim. 
 ' Jim, ' I says, ' how is folks to know you 're the man that 
 shot Kernel Baxter, and dropped three o' them Mariposa 
 Vigilants? They didn't see you do it! They just look 
 at your fancy style and them mustaches of yours, and allow 
 ye might be death on the girls, but they don't know ye! 
 An' this man yere — he 's a scribe in them papers — writes 
 what the boss editor tells him, and lives up yere on the 
 
108 UNDER THE EAVES 
 
 roof, 'longside yer wife and the children — what's ha 
 knowin' about you ? ' Jim 's all right enough," he contin- 
 ued, in easy confidence to Breeze, "but he's too fresh 
 'bout himself." 
 
 Mr. James Bodine accepted this tribute and criticism of 
 his henchman with a complacent laugh, which was not, 
 however, without a certain contempt for the speaker and 
 the man spoken to. His bold, selfish eyes wandered round 
 the room as if in search of some other amusement than his 
 companions offered. 
 
 " I reckon this is the room which that hound of a land- 
 lord, Eakes, allowed he 'd fix up for our poker club — the 
 club that Dan Simmons and me got up, with a few other 
 sports. It was to be a slap-up affair, right under the roof, 
 where there was no chance of the police raiding us. But 
 the cur weakened when the Vigilants started out to make 
 war on any game a gen'leman might hev that wasn't in 
 their gummy-bag, salt pork trade. Well, it 's gettin' a 
 long time between drinks, gen'lemen, ain't it ? " He 
 looked round him significantly. 
 
 Only the thought of the woman and her children in the 
 next room, and the shame that he believed she was endur- 
 ing, enabled Breeze to keep his temper or even a show of 
 civility. 
 
 "I'm afraid," he said quietly, "that you '11 find very 
 little here to remind you of the club — not even the whis- 
 key; for I use the room only as a bedroom, and as I am 
 a workingman, and come in late and go out early, I have 
 never found it available for hospitality, even to my inti- 
 mate friends. I am very glad, however, that the little 
 leisure I have had in it has enabled me to make the floor 
 less lonely for your children." 
 
 Mr. Bodine got up with an affected yawn, turned an 
 embarrassed yet darkening eye on Breeze, and lunged uu' 
 steadily to the door. "And as I only happened in to do 
 
UNDER THE EAVES 10» 
 
 the reg'lar thing hetween high-toned gen'lemen, I reckon 
 we kin say ' Quits. ' " He gave a coarse laugh, said " So 
 long," nodded, stumbled into the passage, and thence into 
 the other room. 
 
 His companion watched him pass out with a relieved yet 
 protecting air, and then, closing the door softly, drew nearer 
 iio Breeze, and said in husky confidence, — 
 
 "Ye ain't seein' him at his best, mister! He 's been 
 drinkin' too much, and this yer news has upset him." 
 
 " What news ? " asked Breeze. 
 
 " This yer suicide o' Irish Jack ! " 
 
 " Was he his friend ? " 
 
 "Friend?" ejaculated the man, horrified at the mere 
 suggestion. "Not much! Why, Irish Jack was the only 
 man that could hev hung Jim! Now he 's dead, in course 
 the Vigilants ain't got no proof ag'in' Jim. Jim wants to 
 face it out now an' stay here, but his wife and me don't 
 see it noways ! So we are taking advantage o' the lull ag'in' 
 him to get him off down the coast this very night. That 's 
 ^^'hy he 's been off his head drinkin'. Ye see, when a 
 man has been for weeks hidin' — part o' the time in that 
 room and part o' the time on the wharf, where them Vigi- 
 lants has been watchin' every ship that left in order to 
 ketch him, he 's inclined to celebrate his chance o' getting 
 away " — 
 
 " Part of the time in that room ? " interrupted Breeze 
 quickly. 
 
 " Sartin ! Don't ye see 1 He alius kem in as you went 
 out — sabe ! — and got away before you kem back, his wife 
 all the time just a-hoverin' between the two places, and 
 keepin' watch for him. It was killin' to her, you see, for 
 she wasn't brought up to it, whiles Jim didn't keer — 
 had two revolvers and kalkilated to kill a dozen Vigilants 
 afore he dropped. But that 's over noAv, and when I 've 
 got him safe on that ' plunger ' down at the wharf to-night, 
 
110 UNDER THE EAVES 
 
 and put him aboard the schooner that 's lying off the 
 Heads, he 's all right ag'in." 
 
 "And Roberts knew all this and was one of his 
 friends 1 " asked Breeze. 
 
 " Roberts knew it, and Roberts's wife used to be a kind 
 of servant to Jim's wife in the South, when she was a girl, 
 but I don't know ez Roberts is his friend/ " 
 
 "He certainly has shown himself one," said Breeze. 
 
 " Ye-e-s, " said the stranger meditatively, "ye-e-s." Ht' 
 stopped, opened the door softly, and peeped out, and then 
 closed it again softly. "It's sing'lar, Mr. Breeze," he 
 went on in a sudden yet embarrassed burst of confidence, 
 " that Jim thar — a man thet can shoot straight, and hez 
 frequent; a man thet knows every skin game goin' — that 
 thet man Jim," very slowly^ "hez n't really — got — any 
 friends — 'cept me — and his wife. " 
 
 " Indeed 1 " said Mr. Breeze dryly. 
 
 "Sure! Why, you yourself didn't cotton to him — I 
 could see thet.'' 
 
 Mr. Breeze felt himself redden slightly, and looked curi- 
 ously at the man. This vulgar parasite, whom he had set 
 -down as a worshiper of sham heroes, undoubtedly did not 
 look like an associate of Bodine's, and had a certain serious- 
 ness that demanded respect. As he looked closer into his 
 wide, round face, seamed with smallpox, he fancied he saw 
 even in its fatuous imbecility something of that haunting 
 devotion he had seen on the refined features of the wife. 
 He said more gently, — 
 
 "But one friend like you would seem to be enough." 
 
 "I ain't what I uster be, Mr. Breeze," said the man 
 meditatively, "and mebbe ye don't know who I am. I'm 
 Abe Shuckster, of Shuckster's Ranch — one of the biggest 
 in Petalumy. I was a rich man until a year ago, when 
 Jim got inter trouble. What with mortgages and interest 
 payin' up Jim's friends and buying off some ez was set ag'in' 
 
UNDER THE EAVES 111 
 
 him, thar ain't much left, and when I 've settled that bill 
 for the schooner lying off the Heads there I reckon I 'm 
 about played out. But I 've alius a shanty at Petalumy, 
 and mebbe when things is froze over and Jim gets back — 
 you '11 come and see him — for you ain't seen him at his 
 best." 
 
 " I suppose his wife and children go with him 1 " said 
 Breeze. 
 
 "No! He 's ag'in' it, and wants them to come later. But 
 that 's all right, for you see she kin go back to their own 
 house at the Mission, now that the Vigilants are givin' up 
 shadderin' it. So long, Mr. Breeze! We're startin' afore 
 daylight. Sorry you did n't see Jim in condition." 
 
 He grasped Breeze's hand warmly and slipped out of the 
 door softly. For an instant Mr. Breeze felt inclined to fol- 
 low him into the room and make a kinder adieu to the pair, 
 hut the reflection that he might embarrass the wife, who, 
 it would seem, had purposely avoided accompanying her 
 husband when he entered, withheld him. And for the last 
 few minutes he had been doubtful if he had any right to 
 pose as her friend. Beside the devotion of the man who 
 had just left him, his own scant kindness to her children 
 seemed ridiculous. 
 
 He went to bed, but tossed uneasily until he fancied he 
 heard stealthy footsteps outside his door and in the passage. 
 Even then he thought of getting up, dressing, and going 
 out to bid farewell to the fugitives. But even while he 
 was thinking of it he fell asleep, and did not wake until 
 the sun was shining in at his windows. 
 
 He sprang to his feet, threw on his dressing-gown, and 
 peered into the passage. Everything was silent. He 
 stepped outside — the light streamed into the hall from the 
 open doors and windows of both rooms — the floor was 
 empty ; not a trace of the former occupants remained. He 
 was turning back when his eye fell upon the battered 
 
112 UNDER THE EAVES 
 
 ■wooden doll set upright against his door-jamb, holding 
 stiffly in its jointed arms a bit of paper folded like a note. 
 Opening it, he found a few lines written in pencil. 
 
 God bless you for your kindness to us, and try to forgive 
 me for touching your papers. But I thought that you 
 ■would detect it, know why I did it, and then help us. as 
 you did I Good-by ! 
 
 Mamie BoDiifE. 
 
 Mr. Breeze laid down the paper ■with a slight accession 
 of color, as if its purport had been ironical. How little had 
 he done compared to the devotion of this delicate ■woman 
 or the sacrifices of that rough friend ! How deserted looked 
 this nest under the eaves, which had so long borne its bur- 
 den of guilt, innocence, shame, and suffering! Por many 
 days afterwards he avoided it except at night, and even 
 then he often found himself lying awake to listen to the 
 lost voices of the children. 
 
 But one evening, a fortnight later, he came upon Rob- 
 erts in the hall. " Well, " said Breeze, with abrupt direct- 
 ness, " did he get away ? " 
 
 Roberts started, uttered an oath which it is possible the 
 Recording Angel passed to his credit, and said, "Yes, he 
 got away all right! " 
 
 "Why, has n't his wife joined him ? " 
 
 " No. Never, in this world, I reckon ; and if anywhere 
 in the next, I don't want to go there! " said Roberts furi- 
 ously. 
 
 "Is he dead 1" 
 
 " Dead ? That kind don't die ! " 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 Roberts's lips writhed, and then, with a strong effort, 
 he said with deliberate distinctness, "I mean — that the 
 hound went off with another woman — that — was — in — 
 
UNDER THE EAVES 113 
 
 that schooner, and left that fool Shuckster adrift in the 
 plunger. " 
 
 " And the wife and children ? " 
 
 "Shuckster sold his shanty at Petaluma to pay their 
 passage to the States. Good-night ! " 
 
HOW EEUBEN ALLEN "SAW LIFE" IN SAN 
 FRANCISCO 
 
 The junior partner of the firm of Sparlow & Kane, 
 Druggists and Apothecaries, of San Francisco, was gazing 
 meditatively out of the corner of the window of their little 
 shop in Dupont Street. He could see the dimly lit per- 
 spective of the narrow thoroughfare fade off into the level 
 sand wastes of Market Street on the one side, and plunge 
 into the half- excavated hulk of Telegraph Hill on the other. 
 He could see the glow and hear the rumble of Montgomery 
 Street — the great central avenue farther down the hill. 
 Above the housetops was spread the warm blanket of sea- 
 fog under which the city was regularly laid to sleep every 
 summer night to the cool lullaby of the Northwest Trades. 
 It was already half past eleven; footsteps on the wooden 
 pavement were getting rarer and more remote ; the last cart 
 had rumbled by ; the shutters were up along the street ; the 
 glare of his own red and blue jars was the only beacon left 
 to guide the wayfarers. Ordinarily he would have been 
 going home at this hour, when his partner, who occupied 
 the surgery and a small bedroom at the rear of the shop, 
 always returned to relieve him. That night, however, a 
 professional visit would detain the "Doctor" until half 
 past twelve. There was still an hour to wait. He felt 
 drowsy ; the mysterious incense of the shop, that combined 
 essence of drugs, spice, scented soap, and orris root — 
 which always reminded him of the Arabian Nights — was 
 affecting him. He yawned, and then, turning away, passed 
 behind the counter, took down a jar labeled " Glycyrr. 
 
fiOW EEUBEN ALLEN "SAW LIFE" 115 
 
 Glabra," selected a piece of Spanish licorice, and medita- 
 tively sucked it. ISTot receiving from it that diversion and 
 sustenance he apparently vras seeking, he also visited, in an 
 equally familiar manner, a jar marked "Jujubes," and re- 
 turned ruminatingly to his previous position. 
 
 If I have not in this incident sufificiently established the 
 youthfulness of the junior partner, I may add briefly that 
 he was just nineteen, that he had early joined the emigra- 
 tion to California, and after one or two previous light- 
 hearted essays at other occupations, for which he was sin- 
 gularly unfitted, he had saved enough to embark on his 
 present venture, stUl less suited to his temperament. In 
 those adventurous days trades and vocations were not al- 
 ways filled by trained workmen ; it was extremely probable 
 that the experienced chemist was already making his suc- 
 cess as a gold-miner, with a lawyer and a physician for his 
 partners, and Mr. Kane's inexperienced position was by no 
 means a novel one. A slight knowledge of Latin as a writ- 
 ten language, an American schoolboy's acquaintance with 
 chemistry and natural philosophy, were deemed sufificient 
 by his partner, a regular physician, for practical cooperation 
 in the vending of drugs and putting up of prescriptions. 
 He knew the difference between acids and alkalies and the 
 peculiar results which attended their incautious combina- 
 tion. But he was excessively deliberate, painstaking, and 
 cautious. The legend which adorned the desk at the 
 counter, "Physicians' prescriptions carefully prepared," 
 was more than usually true as regarded the adverb. There 
 was no danger of his poisoning anybody through haste or 
 carelessness, but it was possible that an urgent "case" 
 might have succumbed to the disease while he was putting 
 up the remedy. ISTor was his caution entirely passive. In 
 those days the " heroic " practice of medicine was in keep- 
 ing with the abnormal development of the country; there 
 were " record " doses of calomel and quinine, and he had 
 
116 HOW EEUBEN ALLEN "SAW LIFE" 
 
 once or twice incurred the fury of local practitioners by 
 sending back their prescriptions with a modest query. 
 
 The far-oflf clatter of carriage wheels presently arrested 
 his attention; looking down the street, he could see the 
 lights of a hackney carriage advancing towards him. They 
 had already flashed upon the open crossing a block beyond 
 before his vague curiosity changed into an active instinctive 
 presentiment that they were coming to the shop. He with- 
 drew to a more becoming and dignified position behind the 
 counter as the carriage drew up with a jerk before the door. 
 
 The driver rolled from his box and opened the carriage 
 door to a woman whom he assisted, between some hysteri- 
 cal exclamations on her part and some equally incoherent 
 explanations of his own, into the shop. Kane saw at a 
 glance that both were under the influence of liquor, and 
 one, the woman, was disheveled and bleeding about the 
 head. Yet she was elegantly dressed and evidently en 
 fete, with one or two "tricolor '' knots and ribbons mingled 
 with her finery. Her golden hair, matted and darkened 
 with blood, had partly escaped from her French bonnet and 
 hung heavily over her shoulders. The driver, who was 
 supporting her roughly, and with a familiarity that was 
 part of the incongruous spectacle, was the first to speak. 
 
 " Madame le Blanc ! ye know ! Got cut about the head 
 down at the fete at South Park ! Tried to dance upon the 
 table, and rolled over on some champagne bottles. See? 
 Wants plastering up ! " 
 
 " Ab brute ! Hog ! Nozzing of ze kine ! Why will you 
 lie? I dance! Ze cowards, fools, traitors zere upset ze 
 table and I fall. I am cut ! Ah, my God, how I am cut ! " 
 
 She stopped suddenly and lapsed heavily against the 
 counter. At which Kane hurried around to support her 
 into the surgery with the one fixed idea in his bewildered 
 mind of getting her out of the shop, and, suggestively, into 
 the domain and under the responsibility of his partner. 
 
tlOW EEUBEN ALLEN "SAW LIFE" 117 
 
 The hackman, apparently relieved and washing his hands 
 of any further complicity in the matter, nodded and smiled, 
 and saying, "I reckon I '11 wait outside, pardner," retreated 
 incontinently to his vehicle. To add to Kane's half-ludi- 
 crous embarrassment the fair patient herself slightly resisted 
 his support, accused the hackman of "abandoning her," and 
 demanded if Kane knew "zee reason of zees aifair," yet she 
 presently lapsed again into the large reclining-chair which 
 he had wheeled forward, with open mouth, half-shut eyes, 
 and a strange Pierrette mask of face, combined of the 
 pallor of faintness and chalk, and the rouge of paint and 
 blood. At which Kane's cautiousness again embarrassed 
 hiiq. A little brandy from the bottle labeled "Vini Galli " 
 seemed to be indicated, but his inexperience could not de- 
 termine if her relaxation was from bloodlessness or the re- 
 acting depression of alcohol. In this dilemma he chose a 
 medium course, with aromatic spirits of ammonia, and mix- 
 ing a diluted quantity in a measuring-glass, poured it be- 
 tween her white lips. A start, a struggle, a cough — a 
 volley of imprecatory French, and the knocking of the glass 
 from his hand followed — but she came to! He quickly 
 sponged her head of the half-coagulated blood, and removed 
 a few fragments of glass from a long laceration of the scalp. 
 The shock of the cold water and the appearance of the en- 
 sanguined basin frightened her into a momentary passivity. 
 But when Kane found it necessary to cut her hair in the 
 region of the wound in order to apply the adhesive plaster, 
 she again endeavored to rise and grasp the scissors. 
 
 "You'll bleed to death if you're not quiet," said the 
 young man with dogged gravity. 
 
 Something in his manner impressed her into silence 
 again. He cut whole locks away ruthlessly; he was deter- 
 mined to draw the edges of the wound together with the 
 strip of plaster and stop the bleeding — if he cropped the 
 whole head. His excessive caution for her physical condi- 
 
118 HOW REUBEN ALLEN "SAW LIFE" 
 
 tion did not extend to her superficial adornment. Her yel- 
 low tresses lay on the floor, her neck and shoulders were 
 saturated with water from the sponge which he continually 
 applied, until the heated strips of plaster had closed the 
 wound almost hermetically. She whimpered, tears ran 
 down her cheeks; but so long as it was not blood the young 
 man was satisfied. 
 
 In the midst of it he heard the shop door open, and 
 presently the sound of rapping on the counter. Another 
 customer ! 
 
 Mr. Kane called out, "Wait a moment," and continued 
 his ministrations. After a pause the rapping recommenced. 
 Kane was just securing the last strip of plaster and pre- 
 served a preoccupied silence. Then the door flew open 
 abruptly and a figure appeared impatiently on the thresh 
 old. It was that of a miner recently returned from the 
 gold diggings — so recently that he evidently had not had 
 time to change his clothes at his adjacent hotel, and stood 
 there in his high boots, duck trousers, and flannel shirt, 
 over which his coat was slung like a hussar's jacket from 
 his shoulder. Kane would have uttered an indignant pro- 
 test at the intrusion, had not the intruder himself as 
 quickly recoiled with an astonishment and contrition that 
 was beyond the effect of any reproval. He literally gasped 
 at the spectacle before him. A handsomely dressed woman 
 reclining in a chair; lace and jewelry and ribbons depend- 
 ing from her saturated shoulders; tresses of golden hair 
 filling her lap and lying on the floor ; a pail of ruddy water 
 and a sponge at her feet, and a pale young man bending 
 over her head with a spirit lamp and strips of yellow 
 plaster ! 
 
 "'Scuse me, pard! I was just dropping in; don't you 
 hurry! I kin wait," he stammered, falling back, and then 
 the door closed abruptly behind him. 
 
 Kane gathered up the shorn locks, wiped the face and 
 
HOW REUBEN ALLEN "SAW LIFE" 119 
 
 neck of his patient with a clean towel and his own hand- 
 kerchief, threw her gorgeous opera cloak over her shoulders, 
 and assisted her to rise. She did so, weakly but obedi- 
 ently ; she was evidently stunned and cowed in some mys- 
 terious way by his material attitude, perhaps, or her sudden 
 realization of her position; at least the contrast between 
 her aggressive entrance into the shop and her subdued pre- 
 paration for her departure was so remarkable that it affected 
 even Kane's preoccupation. 
 
 "There," he said, slightly relaxing his severe demeanor 
 with an encouraging smile, "I think this will do; we've 
 stopped the bleeding. It will probably smart a little as 
 the plaster sets closer. I can send my partner, Dr. Spar- 
 low, to you in the morning." 
 
 She looked at him curiously and with a strange smile. 
 "And zees Doctor Sparrlow — eez he like you, M'sieu? " 
 
 " He is older, and very well known, " said the young man 
 seriously. "I can safely recommend him." 
 
 "Ah," she repeated, with a pensive smile which made 
 Kane think her quite pretty. " Ah — he ez older — your 
 Doctor Sparrlow — but you are strong, M'sieu." 
 
 "And," said Kane vaguely, "he will tell you what to 
 do." 
 
 "Ah," she repeated again softly, with the same smile, 
 "he will tell me what to do if I shall not know myself. 
 Dat ez good." 
 
 Kane had already wrapped her shorn locks in a piece of 
 spotless white paper and tied it up with narrow white rib- 
 bon in the dainty fashion dear to druggists' clerks. As he 
 handed it to her she felt in her pocket and produced a 
 handful of gold. 
 
 "What shall I pay for zees, M'sieu?" 
 
 Kane reddened a little — solely because of his slow arith- 
 metical faculties. Adhesive plaster was cheap — he would 
 like to have charged proportionately for the exact amount 
 
120 HOW EEUBEN ALLEN "SAW LIFE" 
 
 he bad used; but the division was beyond him! And he 
 lacked the trader's instinct. 
 
 "Twenty-five cents, I think," he hazarded briefly. 
 
 She started, but smiled again. "Twenty-five cents for 
 all zees — ze medicine, ze strips for ze head, ze hair cut " 
 — she glanced at the paper parcel he had given her — " it 
 is only twenty-five cents 1 " 
 
 "That's all." 
 
 He selected from her outstretched palm, with some diffi- 
 culty, the exact amount, the smallest coin it held. She 
 again looked at him curiously — half confusedly — and 
 moved slowly into the shop. The miner, who was still 
 there, retreated as before with a gaspingly apologetic ges- 
 ture — even flattening himself against the window to give 
 her sweeping silk flounces freer passage. As she passed 
 into the street with a "Merci, M'sieu, good a'night," and 
 the hackman started from the vehicle to receive her, the 
 miner drew a long breath, and bringing his fist down upon 
 the counter, ejaculated, — 
 
 " B' gosh ! She 's a stunner ! " 
 
 Kane, a good deal relieved at her departure and the suc- 
 cess of his ministration, smiled benignly. 
 
 The stranger again stared after the retreating carriage, 
 looked around the shop, and even into the deserted surgery, 
 and approached the counter confidentially. "Look yer, 
 pardner. I kem straight from St. Jo, Mizzorri, to Gold 
 Hill — whar I've got a claim — and I reckon this is the 
 first time I ever struck San Francisker. I ain't up to 
 towny ways nohow, and I allow that mebbe I 'm rather 
 green. So we '11 let that pass ! Now look y er ! " he added, 
 leaning over the counter with still deeper and even myste- 
 rious confidence, "I suppose this yer kind o' thing is the 
 regular go here, eh 1 nothin' new to t/ou ! in course no ! 
 But to me, pard, it 's just fetchin' ftie ! Lifts me clear 
 outer my boots every time! Why, when I popped into 
 
HOW EEOBEN ALLEN "SAW LIFE" 121 
 
 that thar room, and saw that lady — all gold, furbelows, 
 and spangles — at twelve o'clock at night, sittin' in that 
 cheer and you a-cuttin' her h'r and swabbiu' her head o' 
 blood, and kinder prospectin' for ' indications,' so to speak, 
 and doin' it so kam and indifferent like, I sez to myself, 
 ' Rube, Eube, ' sez I, ' this yer 's life! city life! San Fran- 
 cisker life! and b' gosh, you 've dropped into it! ' Now, 
 pard, look yar! don't you answer, ye know, ef it ain't 
 square and above board for me to know ; I ain't askin' you 
 to give the show away, ye know, in the matter of high- 
 toned ladies like that, but " (very mysteriously, and sinking 
 his voice to the lowest confidential pitch, as he put his 
 hand to his ear as if to catch the hushed reply), "what 
 mout hev been happening, pard ? " 
 
 Considerably amused at the man's simplicity, Kane re- 
 plied good-humoredly : "Danced among some champagne 
 bottles on a table at a party, fell and got cut by glass." 
 
 The stranger nodded his head slowly and approvingly as 
 he repeated with infinite deliberateness : "Danced on cham- 
 pagne bottles, champagne ! you said, pard ? at a pahty ! 
 Yes!" (musingly and approvingly). "I reckon that's 
 about the gait they take. She 'd do it." 
 
 " Is there anything I can do for you ? sorry to have kept 
 you waiting," said Kane, glancing at the clock. 
 
 "0 me! Lord! ye needn't mind me. Why, I should 
 wait for anythin' o' the like o' that, and be just proud to 
 do it! And ye see, I sorter helped myself while you war 
 busy." 
 
 " Helped yourself ? " said Kane in astonishment. 
 
 " Yes, outer that bottle. " He pointed to the ammonia 
 bottle, which still stood on the counter. "It seemed to be 
 handy and popular." 
 
 "Man! you might have poisoned yourself." 
 
 The stranger paused a moment at the idea. " So I mout, 
 I reckon," he said musingly, "that's so! pizined myself 
 
122 HOW REUBEN ALLEN "SAW LIFE" 
 
 jest ez j'ou was lookin' arter that high-toned case, and 
 kinder bothered you ! It 's like me ! " 
 
 "I mean it required diluting; you ought to have taken 
 it in water," said Eane. 
 
 "I reckon! It did sorter h'ist me over to the door for 
 a little fresh air at first ! seemed ray ther scaldy to the lips. 
 But wot of it that got thar," he put his hand gravely to 
 his stomach, "did me pow'ful good." 
 
 " What was the matter with you ? " asked Kane. 
 
 "Well, ye see, pard" (confidentially again), "I reckon 
 it 's suthin' along o' my heart. Times it gets to poundin' 
 away like a quartz stamp, and then it stops suddent like, 
 and kinder leaves me out too. " 
 
 Kane looked at him more attentively. He was a strong, 
 powerfully built man with a complexion that betrayed no- 
 thing more serious than the effects of mining cookery. It 
 was evidently a common case of indigestion. 
 
 "I don't say it would not have done you some good if 
 properly administered," he replied. "If you like I '11 put 
 up a diluted quantity and directions ? " 
 
 "That's me, every time, pardner!" said the stranger 
 with an accent of relief. "And look yer, don't you stop 
 at that! Ye jest put me up some samples like of any thin' 
 lyou think mout be likely to hit. I '11 go in for a fair 
 show, and then meander in every now and then, betwixt 
 times, to let you know. Ye don't mind my drifting in 
 here, do ye ? It 's about ez likely a place ez I struck since 
 I 've left the Sacramento boat, and my hotel, just round the 
 corner. Ye jest sample me a bit o' everythin' ; don't mind 
 the expense. I '11 take your word for it. The way you — 
 a young fellow — jest stuck to your work in thar, cool and 
 kam as a woodpecker — not minding how high-toned she 
 was — nor the jewelery and spangles she had on — jest got 
 me ! I sez to myself, * Kube, ' sez I, ' whatever 's wrong o' 
 your insides, you jest stick to that feller to set ye right. ' " 
 
HOW REUBEN ALLEN "SAW LIFE" 123 
 
 The junior partner's face reddened as he turned to his 
 shelves ostensibly for consultation. Conscious of his inex- 
 perience-, the homely praise of even this ignorant man was 
 not ungrateful. He felt, too, that his treatment of the 
 FrenchvFoman, though successful, might not be considered 
 remunerative from a business point of view by his partner. 
 He accordingly acted upon the suggestion of the stranger 
 and put up two or three specifics for dyspepsia. They 
 were received with grateful alacrity and the casual display 
 of considerable gold in the stranger's pocket in the process 
 of payment. He was evidently a successful miner. 
 
 After bestowing the bottles carefully about his person, he 
 again leaned confidentially towards Kane. "I reckon of 
 course you know this high-toned lady, being in the way 
 of seein' that kind o' folks. I suppose you won't mind 
 telling me, ez a stranger. But " (he added hastily, with a 
 deprecatory wave of his hand), "perhaps ye would." 
 
 Mr. Kane, in fact, had hesitated. He knew vaguely 
 and by report that Madame le Blanc was the proprietress of 
 a famous restaurant, over which she had rooms where pri- 
 vate gambling was carried on to a great extent. It was also 
 alleged that she was protected by a famous gambler and a 
 somewhat notorious bully. Mr. Kane's caution suggested 
 that he had no right to expose the reputation of his chance 
 customer. He was silent. 
 
 The stranger's face became intensely sympathetic and 
 apologetic. "I see! — not another word, pard! It ain't 
 the square thing to be givin' her away, and I oughtn't to 
 hev asked. Well — so long! I reckon I '11 jest drift back 
 to the hotel. I ain't been in San Francisker mor' 'n three 
 hours, and I calkilate, pard, that I 've jest seen about ez 
 square a sample of high-toned life as fellers ez haz been here 
 a year. Well, hastermanyanner — ez the Greasers say. 
 I '11 be droppin' in to-morrow. My name 's Reuben Allen 
 o' Mariposa. I know yours; it 's on the sign, and it ain't 
 Sparlow. " 
 
124 HOW REUBEN ALLEN "SAW LIFE" 
 
 He cast another lingering glance around the shop, as if 
 loath to leave it, and then slowly sauntered out of the door, 
 pausing in the street a moment, in the glare of -the red 
 light, before he faded into darkness. Without knowing 
 exactly why, Kane had an instinct that the stranger knew 
 no one in San Prancisco, and after leaving the shop was 
 going into utter silence and obscurity. 
 
 A few moments later Dr. Sparlow returned to relieve his 
 wearied partner. A pushing, active man, he listened im- 
 patiently to Kane's account of his youthful practice with 
 Madame le Blanc, without, however, dwelling much on his 
 methods. "You ought to have charged her more," the 
 elder said decisively. "She'd have paid it. She only 
 came here because she was ashamed to go to a big shop in 
 Montgomery Street — and she won't come again." 
 
 " But she wants you to see her to-morrow, " urged Kane, 
 " and I told her you would ! " 
 
 " You say it was only a superficial cut 1 " queried the 
 doctor, "and you closed it? Umph! what can she want to 
 see me for 1 " He paid more attention, however, to the 
 case of the stranger, Allen. "When he comes here again, 
 manage to let me see him." Mr. Kane promised, yet for 
 some indefinable reason he went home that night not quite 
 as well satisfied with himself. 
 
 He was much more concerned the next morning when, 
 after relieving the doctor for his regular morning visits, he 
 was startled an hour later by the abrupt return of that gen- 
 tleman. His face was marked by some excitement and anx- 
 iety, which nevertheless struggled with that sense of the 
 ludicrous which Californians in those days imported into 
 most situations of perplexity or catastrophe. Putting his 
 hands deeply into his trousers pockets, he confronted his 
 youthful partner behind the counter. 
 
 "How much did you charge that Frenchwoman?" he 
 said gravely. 
 
Sow REUBEN ALLEN "SAW LIFE" 123 
 
 "Twenty-five cents," said Kane timidly. 
 
 "Well, I 'd give it back and add two hundred and fifty 
 dollars if she had never entered the shop." 
 
 "What's the matter?" 
 
 " Her head will be — and a mass of it, in a day, I reckon ! 
 Why, man, you put enough plaster on it to clothe and 
 paper the dome of the Capitol ! You drew her scalp to- 
 gether so that she could n't shut her eyes without climbing 
 up the bed-post ! You mowed her hair off so that she '11 
 have to wear a wig for the next two years — and handed it 
 to her in a beau-ti-ful sealed package! They talk of suing 
 me and killing you out of hand. " 
 
 "She was bleeding a great deal and looked faint," said 
 the junior partner; "I thought I ought to stop that." 
 
 "And you did — by thunder! Though it might have 
 been better business for the shop if I 'd found her a crum- 
 bling ruin here, than lathed and plastered in this fashion, 
 over there! However," he added, with a laugh, seeing an 
 angty light in his junior partner's eye, "'she donft seem to 
 mind it — the cursing all comes from them. She rather 
 likes your style and praises it — that 's what gets me ! Did 
 you talk to her much ! " he added, looking critically at his 
 partner. 
 
 "I only told her to sit still or she 'd bleed to death," 
 said Kane curtly. 
 
 "Humph! — she jabbered something about your being 
 ' strong ' and knowing just how to handle her. Well, it 
 can't be helped now. I think I came in time for the 
 worst of it and have drawn their fire. Don't do it again. 
 The next time a woman with a cut head and long hair 
 tackles you, fill up her scalp with lint and tannin, and pack 
 her off to some of the big shops and make them pick it 
 out." And with a good-humored nod he started off to 
 finish his interrupted visits. 
 
 With a vague sense of remorse, and yet a 
 
126 HOW REUBEN ALLEN "SAW LIFE" 
 
 of some injustice done him, Mr. Kane resumed his occupa- 
 tion with filters and funnels, and mortars and triturations. 
 He was so gloomily preoccupied that he did not, as usual, 
 glance out of the window, or he would have observed the 
 mining stranger of the previous night before it. It was not 
 until the man's bowed shoulders blocked the light of the 
 doorway that he looked up and recognized him. Kane was 
 in no mood to welcome his appearance. His presence, 
 too, actively recalled the last night's adventure of which he 
 was a witness — albeit a sympathizing one. Kane shrank 
 from the allusions which he felt he would be sure to make. 
 And with his present ill luck, he was by no means sure that 
 his ministrations even to him had been any more successful 
 than they had been to the Frenchwoman. But a glance at 
 his good-humored face and kindling eyes removed that suspi- 
 cion. Nevertheless, he felt somewhat embarrassed and im- 
 patient, and perhaps could not entirely conceal it. He for- 
 got that the rudest natures are sometimes the most delicately 
 sensitive to slights, and the stranger had noticed his man- 
 ner and began apologetically. 
 
 "I allowed I 'd just drop in anyway to tell ye that these 
 thar pills you giv' me did me a heap o' good so far — 
 though mebbe it 's only fair to give the others a show too, 
 which I'm reckoning to do.-" He paused, and then in a 
 submissive confidence went on : " But first I wanted to hev 
 you excuse me for bavin' asked all them questions about 
 that high-toned lady last night, when it warn't none of 
 my business. T am a darned fool." 
 
 Mr. Kane instantly saw that it was no use to keep up 
 his attitude of secrecy, or impose upon the ignorant, simple 
 man, and said hurriedly : " Oh, no. The lady is very well 
 known. She is the proprietress of a restaurant down the 
 street — a house open to everybody. Her name is Madame 
 le Blanc ; you may have heard of her before ? " 
 
 To his surprise the man exhibited no diminution of in- 
 
HOW EEUBEN ALLEN "SAW LIFE" 1-21 
 
 terest nor change of sentiment at this intelligence. " Then, " 
 he said slowly, " I reckon I might get to see her again. Ye 
 see, Mr. Kane, I rather took a fancy to her general style 
 and gait — arter seein' her in that fix last night. It was 
 rather like them play pictures on the stage. Ye don't 
 think she 'd make any fuss to seein' a rough old ' forty- 
 niner' like me 1 " 
 
 "Hardly," said Kane, "but there might be some objec- 
 tion from her gentlemen friends," he added, with a smile, 
 — " Jack Lane, a gambler, who keeps a faro bank in her 
 rooms, and Jimmy O'Eyan, a prize-fighter, who is one of 
 her ' chuckers out. ' " 
 
 His further relation of Madame le Blanc's entourage ap- 
 parently gave the miner no concern. He looked at Kane, 
 nodded, and repeated slowly and appreciatively: "Yes, 
 keeps a gamblin' and faro bank and a prize-fighter — I 
 reckon that might be about her gait and style too. And 
 you say she lives " — 
 
 He stopped, for at this moment a man entered the shop 
 quickly, shut the door behind him, and turned the key in 
 the lock. It was done so quickly that Kane instinctively 
 felt that the man had been loitering in the vicinity and had 
 approached from the side street. A single glance at the 
 intruder's face and figure showed him that it was the bully 
 of whom he had just spoken. He had seen that square, 
 brutal face once before, confronting the police in a riot, and 
 had not forgotten it. But to-day, with the flush of liquor 
 on it, it had an impatient awkwardness and confused em- 
 barrassment that he could not account for. He did not 
 comprehend that the genuine bully is seldom deliberate of 
 attack, and is obliged -^ in common with many of the com- 
 bative lower animals — to lash himself into a previous fury 
 of provocation. This probably saved him, as perhaps some 
 instinctive feeling that he was in no immediate danger 
 kept him cool. He remained standing quietly behind the 
 
128 HOW REUBEN ALLEN "SAW LIFE" 
 
 counter. Allen glanced around carelessly, looking at the 
 shelves. 
 
 The silence of the two men apparently increased the ruf- 
 fian's rage and embarrassment. Suddenly he leaped into 
 the air with a whoop and clumsily executed a negro double 
 shuffle on the floor, which jarred the glasses — yet was 
 otherwise so singularly ineffective and void of purpose that 
 he stopped in the midst of it and had to content himself 
 with glaring at Kane. 
 
 "Well," said Kane quietly, "what does all this mean! 
 What do you want here ? " 
 
 " What does it mean 1 " repeated the bully, finding his 
 Toice in a high falsetto, designed to imitate Kane's. "It 
 
 means I 'm going to play merry h 11 with this shop ! It 
 
 means I 'm goin' to clean it out and the blank hair-cuttin' 
 blank that keeps it. What do I want here ? Well — what • 
 
 I want I intend to help myself to, and 'all h- 11 can't 
 
 stop me ! And " (working himself to the striking point) 
 "who the blank are you to ask me?" He sprang towards 
 the counter, but at the same moment Allen seemed to slip 
 almost imperceptibly and noiselessly between them, ' and 
 Kane found himself confronted only by the miner's broad 
 back. 
 
 "Hoi' yer bosses, stranger," said Allen slowly, as the 
 ruffian suddenly collided with his impassive figure. "I'm 
 a sick man comin' in yer for medicine. I 've got somethin' 
 wrong with my heart, and goin's on like this yer kinder 
 sets it to thumpin'." 
 
 " Blank you and your blank heart ! " screamed the bully, 
 turning in a fury of amazement and contempt at this im- 
 potent interruption. "Who" — but his voice stopped. 
 Allen's powerful right arm had passed over his head and 
 shoulders like a steel hoop, and pinioned his elbows against 
 his sides. Held rigidly upright, he attempted to kick, but 
 Allen's right leg here advanced, and firmly held his lower 
 
HOW REUBEN ALLEN "SAW LIFE" 129 
 
 limbs against the counter that shook to his struggles and 
 hlasphemous outcries. Allen turned quietly to Kane, and, 
 with a gesture of his unemployed arm, said confiden- 
 tially : — 
 
 "Would ye mind passing me down that ar Eomantie 
 Spirits of Ammonyer ye gave me last night 1 " 
 
 Kane caught the idea, and handed him the bottle. 
 
 "Thar," said Allen, taking out the stopper and holding 
 the pungent spirit against the bully's dilated nostrils and 
 vociferous mouth, "thar, smell that, and taste it, it will do 
 ye good; it was powerful kammin' to me last night." 
 
 The ruffian gasped, coughed, choked, but his blasphem- 
 ing voice died away in a suffocating hiccough. 
 
 "Thar," continued Allen, as his now subdued captive 
 relaxed his struggling, "ye 'r' better, and so am I. It's 
 quieter here now, and ye ain't aifeotin' my heart so bad. 
 A little fresh air will make us both all right." He turned 
 again to Kane in his former subdued confidential manner. 
 
 "Would ye mind openin' that door? " 
 
 Kane flew to the door, unlocked it, and held it wide 
 open. The bully again began to struggle, but a second in- 
 halation of the hartshorn quelled him, and enabled his 
 captor to drag him' to the door. As they emerged upon 
 the sidewalk, the bully, with a final desperate struggle, 
 freed his arm and grasped his pistol at his hip-pocket, but 
 at the same moment Allen deliberately caught his hand, 
 and with a powerful side throw cast him on the pavement, 
 retaining the weapon in his own hand. "I 've one of my 
 own," he said to the prostrate man, "but I reckon I'll 
 keep this yer too, until you 're better." 
 
 The crowd that had collected quickly, recognizing the 
 notorious and discomfited bully, were not of a class to offer 
 him any sympathy, and he slunk away followed by their 
 .jeers. Allen returned quietly to the shop. Kane was pro- 
 fuse in his thanks, and yet oppressed with his simple 
 
130 HOW REUBEN ALLEN "SAW LIFE" 
 
 friend's fatuous admiration for a woman who could keep 
 such ruffians in her employ. " You know who that man 
 was, I suppose? " he said. 
 
 "I reckon it was that 'er prize-fighter helongin' to that 
 high-toned lady," returned Allen simply. "But he don't 
 know anything about rastlin', b' gosh; only that I was 
 afraid o' bringin' on that heart trouble, I mout hev hurt 
 him bad." 
 
 "They think "— hesitated Kane, "that — I— -was 
 rough in my treatment of that woman and maliciously cut 
 off her hair. This attack was revenge — or " — he hesi- 
 tated still more, as he remembered Dr. Sparlow's indication 
 of the woman's feeling — "or that bully's idea of revenge." 
 
 "I see," nodded Allen, opening his small sympathetic 
 eyes on Kane with an exasperating air of secrecy — "just 
 jealousy." 
 
 Kane reddened in sheer hopelessness of explanation. 
 "No; it was earning his wages, as he thought." 
 
 "Never ye mind, pard," said Allen confidentially. 
 "I'll set 'em both right. Ye see, this sorter gives me a 
 show to call at that thar restaurant and give him back his 
 six-shooter, and set her on the right trail for you. Why, 
 Lordy ! I was here when you was fixin' her — I 'm testi- 
 mony o' the way you did it — and she '11 remember me. 
 I '11 sorter waltz round thar this afternoon. But I reckon 
 I won't be keepin' you from your work any longer. And 
 look yar! — I say, pard! — this is seein' life in 'Frisco — 
 ain't it? Gosh! I 've had more high times in this very 
 shop in two days, than I 've had in two years of St. Jo. 
 So long, Mr. Kane ! " He waved his hand, lounged slowly 
 out of the shop, gave a parting glance up the street, passed 
 the window, and was gone. 
 
 The next day being a half-holiday for Kane, he did not 
 reach the shop until afternoon. " Your mining friend Allen 
 has been here," said Dr. Sparlow. "I took the liberty 
 
HOW REUBEN ALLEN "SAW LIFE" 131 
 
 of introducing myself, and induced him to let me carefully 
 examine him. He was a little shy, and 1 am sorry for it, 
 as I fear he has some serious organic trouble with his heart 
 and ought to have a more thorough examination." Seeing 
 Kane's unaffected concern, he added, " You might influence) 
 him to do so. He 's a good fellow and ought to take some 
 care of himself. By the way, he told me to tell you that 
 he 'd seen Madame le Blanc and made it all right about 
 you. He seems to be quite infatuated with the woman." 
 
 "I 'm sorry he ever saw her," said Kane bitterly. 
 
 " Well, his seeing her seems to have saved the shop from 
 being smashed up, and you from getting a punched head," 
 returned the Doctor, with a laugh. "He 's no fool — yet 
 it 's a freak of human nature that a simple hayseed like 
 that — a man who's lived in the backwoods all his life, is 
 likely to be the first to tumble before a pot of French rouge 
 like her." 
 
 Indeed, in a couple of weeks, there was no further doubt 
 of Mr. Eeuben Allen's infatuation. He dropped into the 
 shop frequently on his way to and from the restaurant, 
 where he now regularly took his meals ; he spent his even- 
 ings in gambling in its private room. Yet Kane was by 
 no means sure that he was losing his money there unfairly, 
 or that he was used as a pigeon by the proprietress and her 
 friends. The bully 0'E.yan was turned away; Sparlow 
 grimly suggested that Allen had simply taken his place, 
 but Kane ingeniously retorted that the Doctor was only 
 piqued because Allen had evaded his professional treat- 
 ment. Certainly the patient had never consented to an- 
 other examination, although he repeatedly and gravely 
 bought medicines, and was a generous customer. Once or 
 twice Kane thought it his duty to caution Allen against his 
 new friends and enlighten him as to Madame le Blanc's 
 reputation, but his suggestions were received with a good- 
 humored submission that was either the effect of unbelief 
 
132 HOW REUBEN ALLEN "SAW LIFE" 
 
 or of perfect resignation to the fact, and he desisted. One 
 morning Dr. Sparlow said cheerfully : — 
 
 " Would you like to hear the last thing about your friend 
 and the Frenchwoman? The hoys can't account for her 
 singling out a fellow like that for her friend, so they say 
 that the night that she cut herself at the fete and dropped 
 in here for assistance, she found nobody here but Allen — 
 a chance customer! That it was he who cut off her hair 
 and bound up her wounds in that sincere fashion, and she 
 believed he had saved her life." The Doctor grinned ma- 
 liciously as he added: "And as that's the waj' history is 
 ■written you see your reputsition is safe." 
 
 It may have been a month later that San Francisco was 
 thrown into a paroxysm of horror and indignation over the 
 assassination of a prominent citizen and official in the gam- 
 bling-rooms of Madame le Blanc, at the hands of a notori- 
 ous gambler. The gambler had escaped, but in one of 
 those rare spasms of vengeful morality which sometimes 
 overtake communities who have too long winked at and 
 suffered the existence of evil, the fair proprietress and her 
 whole entourage were arrested and haled before the coro- 
 ner's jury at the inquest. The greatest excitement pre- 
 vailed ; it was said that if the jury failed in their duty, the 
 Vigilance Committee had arranged for the destruction of 
 the establishment and the deportation of its inmates. The 
 crowd that had collected around the building was reinforced 
 by Kane and Dr. Sparlow, who had closed their shop in 
 the next block to attend. When Kane had fought his way 
 into the building and the temporary court, held in the 
 Splendidly furnished gambling saloon, whose gilded mirrors 
 reflected the eager faces of the crowd, the Chief of Police 
 was giving his testimony in a formal official manner, im- 
 pressive only for its relentless and impassive revelation of 
 the character and antecedents of the proprietress. The 
 house had been long under the espionage of the police; 
 
HOW REUBEN ALLEN "SAW LIFE" 133 
 
 Madame le Blanc had a dozen aliases ; she was " wanted " 
 in New Orleans, in New York, in Havana! It was in her 
 house that Dyer, the bank clerk, committed suicide ; it was 
 there that Colonel Hooley was set upon hy her hully, 
 0'E.yan; it was she — Kane heard with reddening cheeks 
 — who defied the police with riotous conduct at a fete, two 
 months ago. As he coolly recited the counts of this shame- 
 ful indictment, Kane looked eagerly around for Allen, whom 
 he knew had been arrested as a witness. How would he 
 take this terrible disclosure ? He was sitting with the oth- 
 ers, his arm thrown over the back of his chair, and his 
 good-humored face turned towards the woman, in his old 
 confidential attitude. She, gorgeously dressed, painted, 
 but unblushing, was cool, collected, and cynical. 
 
 The Coroner next called the only witness of the actual 
 tragedy, "Eeuben Allen." The man did not move nor 
 change his position. The summons was repeated; a po- 
 liceman touched him on the shoulder. There was a pause,: 
 and the officer announced : " He has fainted, your Honor ! " 
 
 "Is there a physician present? " asked the Coroner. 
 
 Sparlow edged his way quickly to the front. "I'm a 
 medical man, " he said to the Coroner, as he passed quickly 
 to the still, upright, immovable figure and knelt beside it 
 with his head upon his heart. There was an awed silence 
 as, after a pause, he rose slowly to his feet. 
 
 "The witness is a patient, your Honor, whom I exam- 
 ined some weeks ago and found suffering from vaivukr 
 disease of the heart. He is dead." 
 
BOHEMIAN DAYS IN SAN FEANCISCO 
 
 It is but just to the respectable memory of San Fran- 
 cisco that in these vagrant recollections I should deprecate 
 at once any suggestion that the levity of my title described 
 its dominant tone at any period of my early experiences. 
 On the contrary, it was a singular fact that while the rest 
 of California was swayed by an easy, careless unconvention- 
 alism, or swept over by waves of emotion and sentiment, 
 San Francisco preserved an intensely material and practical 
 attitude, and even a certain austere morality. I do not, of 
 course, allude to the brief days of '49, when it was a strag- 
 gling beach of huts and stranded hulks, but to the earlier 
 stages of its development into the metropolis of California. 
 Its first tottering steps in that direction were marked by a 
 distinct gravity and decorum. Even during the period 
 when the revolver settled small private difficulties, and 
 Vigilance Committees adjudicated larger public ones, an 
 unmistakable seriousness and respectability was the ruling 
 sign of its governing class. It was not improbable that 
 under the reign of the Committee the lawless and vicious 
 class were more appalled by the moral spectacle of several 
 thousand black-coated, serious-minded business men in em- 
 battled procession than by mere force of arms, and one 
 " suspect " — a prize-fighter — is known to have committed 
 suicide in his cell after confrontation with his grave and 
 passionless shopkeeping judges. Even that peculiar qual- 
 ity of Californian humor which was apt to mitigate the ex- 
 travagances of the revolver and the uncertainties of poker 
 had no place in the decorous and responsible utterance of 
 
BOHEMIAN DAYS IN SAN I'EANCISCO 135 
 
 San Francisco. The press was sober, materialistic, practi- 
 cal — when it was not severely admonitor)' of existing evil ; 
 the few smaller papers that indulged in levity were consid- 
 ered libelous and improper. Fancy was displaced by heavy 
 articles on the revenues of the State and inducements to the 
 investment of capital. Local news was under an implied 
 censorship which suppressed anything that might tend to 
 discourage timid or cautious capital. Episodes of romantic 
 lawlessness or pathetic incidents of mining life were care- 
 fully edited — with the comment that these things belonged 
 to the past, and that life and property were now "as safe 
 in San Francisco as in New York or London." 
 
 Wonder-loving visitors in quest of scenes characteristic 
 of the civilization were coldly snubbed with this assurance. 
 Fires, floods, and even seismic convulsions were subjected 
 to a like grimly materialistic optimism. I have a vivid re- 
 collection of a ponderous editorial on one of the severer 
 earthquakes, in which it was asserted that only the unex- 
 pectedness of the onset prevented San Francisco from meet- 
 ing it in a way that would be deterrent of all future attacks. 
 The unconsciousness of the humor was only equaled by the 
 gravity with which it was received by the whole business 
 community. Strangely enough, this grave materialism flour- 
 ished side by side with — and was even sustained by — a 
 narrow religious strictness more characteristic of the Pilgrim 
 Fathers of a past century than the Western pioneers of the 
 present. San Francisco was early a city of churches and 
 church organizations to which the leading men and mer- 
 chants belonged. The lax Sundays of the dying Spanish 
 race seemed only to provoke a revival of the rigors of the 
 Puritan Sabbath. With the Spaniard and his Sunday af- 
 ternoon bullfight scarcely an hour distant, the San Francisco 
 pulpit thundered against Sunday picnics. One of the pop- 
 ular preachers, declaiming upon the practice of Sunday din- 
 ner-giving, averred that, when he saw a guest in his best 
 
136 BOHEMIAN DAYS IN SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 Sunday clothes standing shamelessly upon the doorstep of 
 his host, he felt like seizing him by the shoulder and drag- 
 ging him from that threshold of perdition. 
 
 Against the actual heathen the feeling was even stronger, 
 and reached its climax one Sunday when a Chinaman was 
 stoned to death by a crowd of children returning from Sun- 
 day-school. I am offering these examples with no ethical 
 purpose, but merely to indicate a singular contradictory 
 condition which I do not think writers of early Californian 
 history have fairly recorded. It is not my province to 
 suggest any theory for these appalling exceptions to the 
 usual good-humored lawlessness and extravagance of the 
 rest of the State. They may have been essential agencies 
 to the growth and evolution of the city. They were un- 
 doubtedly sincere. The impressions I propose to give of 
 certain scenes and incidents of my early experience must, 
 therefore, be taken as purely personal and Bohemian, and 
 their selection as equally individual and vagrant. I am 
 writing of what interested me at the time, though not 
 perhaps of what was more generally characteristic of San 
 Francisco. 
 
 I had been there a week — an idle week, spent in listless 
 outlook for employment; a full week in my eager absorp,- 
 tion of the strange life around me and a photographic sen- 
 sitiveness to certain scenes and incidents of those days, 
 which start out of my memory to-day as freshly as the day 
 they impressed me. 
 
 One of these recollections is -of "steamer night," as it 
 was called, — the night of "steamer day," — preceding the 
 departure of the mail steamship with the mails for "home." 
 Indeed, at that time San Francisco may be said to have 
 lived from steamer day to steamer day; bills were made 
 due on that day, interest computed to that period, and ac- 
 counts settled. The next day was the turning of a new 
 leaf: another essay to fortune, another inspiration of en; 
 
BOHEMIAN DAYS IN SAN FEANCiSCO 137 
 
 ergy. So recognized was the fact that even ordinary 
 changes of condition social and domestic, were put aside 
 until after steamer day. " I '11 see what I can do after 
 next steamer day " was the common cautious or hopeful 
 formula. It was the " Saturday night " of many a wage- 
 earner — and to him a night of festivity. The thorough- 
 fares were animated and crowded ; the saloons and theatres 
 full. I can recall myself at such times wandering along 
 the City Front, as the husiness part of San Francisco was 
 then known. Here the lights were burning all night, the 
 first streaks of dawn finding the merchants still at their 
 counting-house desks. I remember the dim lines of ware- 
 houses lining the insecure wharves of rotten piles, half filled 
 in — that had ceased to be wharves, but had not yet be- 
 come streets, — their treacherous yawning depths, with the 
 uncertain gleam of tar-like mud below, at times still vocal 
 with the lap and gurgle of the tide. I remember the weird 
 stories of disappearing men found afterward imbedded in 
 the ooze in which they had fallen and gasped their life away. 
 I remember the two or three ships, still left standing where 
 they were beached a year or two before, built in between 
 warehouses, their bows projecting into the roadway. There 
 was the dignity of the sea and its boundless freedom in 
 their beautiful curves, which the abutting houses could not 
 destroy, and even something of the sea's loneliness in the 
 far-spaced ports and cabin windows lit up by the lamps of 
 the prosaic landsmen who plied their trades behind them. 
 One of these ships, transformed into a hotel, retained its 
 name, the Niantic, and part of its characteristic interior 
 unchanged. I remember these ships' old tenants — the 
 rats — who had increased and multiplied to such an extent 
 that at night they fearlessly crossed the wayfarer's path at 
 every turn, and even invaded the gilded saloons of Mont- 
 gomery Street. In the Niantic their pit-a-pat was met on 
 every staircase, and it was said that sometimes in an excess 
 
138 BOHEMIAN DAYS IN SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 of sociability they accompanied the traveler to his room. 
 In the early " cloth-and-papered " houses — so called be- 
 cause the ceilings were not plastered, but simply covered by 
 stretched and whitewashed cloth — their scamperings were 
 plainly indicated in zigzag movements of the sagging cloth, 
 or they became actually visible by finally dropping through 
 the holes they had worn in it. I remember the house 
 whose foundations were made of boxes of plug tobacco — 
 part of a jettisoned cargo — used instead of more expensive 
 lumber; and the adjacent warehouse where the trunks of 
 the early and forgotten "forty-niners" were stored, and — 
 never claimed by their dead or missing owners — were finally 
 sold at auction. I remember the strong breath of the sea 
 over all, and the constant onset of the trade winds which 
 helped to disinfect the deposit of dirt and grime, decay and 
 wreckage, which were stirred up in the later evolutions of 
 the city. 
 
 Or I recall, with the same sense of youthful satisfaction 
 and unabated wonder, my wanderings through the Spanish 
 Quarter, where three centuries of quaint customs, speech, 
 and dress were still preserved; where the proverbs of Sancho 
 Panza were still spoken in the language of Cervantes, and 
 the high-flown illusions of the La Manchian knight still a 
 part of the Spanish Californian hidalgo's dream. I recall 
 the more modern "Greaser," or Mexican — his index finger 
 steeped in cigarette stains; his velvet jacket and his crim- 
 son sash; the many-flounced skirt and lace manta of his 
 women, and their caressing intonations — the one musical 
 utterance of the whole hard-voiced city. I suppose I had 
 a boy's digestion and bluntness of taste in those days, for 
 the combined odor of tobacco, burned paper, and garlic, 
 which marked that melodious breath, did not afi'ect me. 
 
 Perhaps from my Puritan training I experienced a more 
 fearful joy in the gambling saloons. They were the largest 
 and most comfortable, even as they were the most expen- 
 
BOHEMIAN DAYS IN SAN FRANCISCO 139 
 
 sively decorated rooms in San Francisco. Here again the 
 gravity and decorum which I have already alluded to were 
 present at that earlier period — though perhaps from con- 
 centration of another kind. People staked and lost their 
 last dollar with a calm solemnity and a resignation that was 
 almost Christian. The oaths, exclamations, and feverish 
 interruptions which often characterized more dignified as- 
 semblies were absent here. There was no room for the 
 lesser vices; there was little or no drunkenness; the gaud- 
 ily dressed and painted women who presided over the 
 wheels of fortune or performed on the harp and piano at- 
 tracted no attention from those ascetic players. The man 
 who had won ten thousand dollars and the man who had 
 lost everything rose from the table with equal silence and 
 imperturbability. I never witnessed any tragic sequel to 
 those losses; I never heard of any suicide on account of 
 them. Neither can I recall any quarrel or murder directly 
 attributable to this kind of gambling. It must be remem- 
 bered that these public games were chiefly rouge et noir, 
 monte, faro, or roulette, in which the antagonist was Fate, 
 Chance, Method, or the impersonal "bank," which was 
 supposed to represent them all; there was no individual 
 opposition or rivalry; nobody challenged the decision of 
 the "croupier," or dealer. 
 
 I remember a conversation at the door of one saloon 
 which was as characteristic for its brevity as it was a type 
 of the prevailing stoicism. " Hello ! " said a departing 
 miner, as he recognized a brother miner coming in, " when 
 did you come down?" "This morning," was the reply. 
 " Made a strike on the bar ? " suggested the first speaker. 
 "You bet!" said the other, and passed in. I chanced an 
 hour later to be at the same place as they met again — their 
 relative positions changed. " Hello ! Whar now ? " said 
 the incomer. " Back to the bar. " " Cleaned out ? " " You 
 bet ! " Not a .word more explained a common situation. 
 
140 BOHEMIAN DAYS IN SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 My first youthful experience at those tables was an acA. 
 dental one. I was watching roulette one evening, intensely 
 absorbed in the mere movement of the players. Either they 
 ■were so preoccupied with the game, or I was really older 
 looking than my actual years, but a bystander laid his hand 
 familiarly on my shoulder, and said, as to an ordinary 
 habitue, " Ef you 're not chippin' in yourself, pardner, 
 s'pose you give me a show. " Now, I honestly believe that 
 up to that moment I had no intention, nor even a desire, 
 to try my own fortune. But in the embarrassment of the 
 sudden address I put my hand in my pocket, drew out a 
 coin, and laid it, with an attempt at carelessness, but a 
 vivid consciousness that I was blushing, upon a vacant 
 number. To my horror I saw that I had put down a large 
 coin — the bulk of my possessions ! I did not flinch, how- 
 ever; I think any boy who reads this will understand my 
 feeling ; it was not only my coin but my manhood at stake. 
 I gazed with a miserable show of indifference at the players, 
 at the chandelier — anywhere but at the dreadful ball spin- 
 ning round the wheel. There was a pause; the game was 
 declared, the rake rattled up and down, but still I did not 
 look at the table. Indeed, in my inexperience of the game 
 and my embarrassment, I doubt if I should have known if 
 I had won or not. I had made up my mind that I should 
 lose, but I must do so like a man, and, above all, without 
 giving the least suspicion that I was a greenhorn. I even 
 affected to be listening to the music. The wheel spun 
 again; the game was declared, the rake was busy, but I 
 did not move. At last the man I had displaced touched 
 me on the arm and whispered, "Better make a straddle 
 and divide your stake this time." I did not understand 
 him, but as I saw he was looking at the board, I was obliged 
 to look, too. I drew back dazed and bewildered ! Where 
 my coin had lain a moment before was a glittering heap of 
 gold. 
 
BOHEMIAN DAYS IN SAN FRANCISCO 141 
 
 My stake had doubled, quadrupled, and doubled again. 
 I did not know how much then — I do not know now — 
 it may have been not more than three or four hundred dol- 
 lars — but it dazzled and frightened me. "Make your 
 game, gentlemen," said the croupier monotonously. I 
 thought he looked at me — indeed, everybody seemed to be 
 looking at me — and my companion repeated his warning. 
 But here I must again appeal to the boyish reader in de- 
 fense of my idiotic obstinacy. To have taken advice would 
 have shbwn my youth. I shook my head — I could not 
 trijst my voice. I smiled, but with a sinking heart, and 
 let my stake remain. The ball again sped round the wheel, 
 and stopped. There was a pause. The croupier indo- 
 lently advanced his rake and swept my whole pile with 
 others into the bank! I had lost it all. Perhaps it may 
 be difficult for me to explain why I actually felt relieved, 
 and even to some extent triumphant, but I seemed to have 
 asserted my grown-up independence — possibly at the cost 
 of reducing the number of my meals for days; but what of 
 that ! I was a man ! I wish I could say that it was a les- 
 son to me. I am afraid it was not. It was true that I did 
 not gamble again, but then I had no especial desire to — 
 and there was no temptation. I am afraid it was an inci- 
 dent without a moral. Yet it had one touch characteristic 
 of the period which I like to remember. The man who 
 had spoken to me, I think, suddenly realized, at the mo- 
 ment of my disastrous coup, the fact of my extreme youth. 
 He moved toward the banker, and leaning over him whis- 
 pered a few words. The banker looked up, half impa- 
 tiently, half kindly, — his hand straying tentatively toward 
 the pile of coin. I instinctively knew what he meant, and, 
 summoning my determination, met his eyes with all the in- 
 difference I could assume, and walked away. 
 
 I had at that period a small room at the top of a house 
 owned by a distant relation — a second or third cousin, I 
 
142 BOHEMIAN DAYS IN SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 think. He was a man of independent and original charao- 
 ter, had a Ulyssean experience of men and cities, and an 
 old English name of which he was proud. While in Lon- 
 don he had procured from the Heralds' College his family 
 arms, whose crest was stamped upon a quantity of plate he 
 had brought with him to California. The plate, together 
 with an exceptionally good cook, which he had also brought, 
 and his own epicurean tastes, he utilized in the usual prac- 
 tical Californian fashion by starting a rather expensive half- 
 club, half -restaurant in the lower part of the building — 
 which he ruled somewhat autocratically, as became his 
 crest. The restaurant was too expensive for me to patron- 
 ize, but I saw many of its' frequenters as well as those who 
 had rooms at the club. They were men of very distinct 
 personality; a few celebrated, and nearly all notorious. 
 They represented a Bohemianism — if such it could be 
 called — less innocent than my later experiences. I re- 
 member, however, one handsome young fellow whom I used 
 to meet occasionally on the staircase, who captured my 
 youthful fancy. I met him only at midday, as he did not 
 rise till late, and this fact, with a certain scrupulous ele- 
 gance and neatness in his dress, ought to have made me 
 suspect that he was a gambler. In my inexperience it only 
 invested him with a certain romantic mystery. 
 
 One morning as I was going out to my very early break- 
 fast at a cheap Italian cafe on Long Wharf, I was surprised 
 to find him also descending the s^.aircase. He was scrupu- 
 lously dressed even at that early hour, but I was struck by 
 the fact that he was all in black, and his slight figure, but- 
 toned to the throat in a tightly fitting frock coat, gave, I 
 fancied, a singular melancholy to his pale Southern face. 
 Nevertheless, he greeted me with more than his usual se- 
 rene cordiality, and I remembered that he looked up with 
 ?. half-puzzled, half-amused expression at the rosy morning 
 sky as he walked a few steps with me down the deserted 
 
BOHEMIAN DAYS IN SAN FRANCISCO 143 
 
 street. I could not help saj'ing that I was astonished to 
 see him up so early, and he admitted that it was a hreak in 
 his usual habits, but added with a smiling significance I 
 afterwards remembered that it was "an even chance if he 
 did it again. " As we neared the street corner a man in a 
 buggy drove up impatiently. In spite of the driver's evi- 
 dent haste, my handsome acquaintance got in leisurely, and, 
 lifting his glossy hat to me with a pleasant smile, was 
 driven away. I have a very lasting recollection of his face 
 and figure as the buggy disappeared down the empty street. 
 I never saw him again. It was not until a week later that 
 I knew that an hour after he left me that morning he was 
 lying dead in a little hollow behind the Mission Dolores — • 
 shot through the heart in a duel for which he had risen so 
 early. 
 
 I recall another incident of that period, equally charac- 
 teristic, but happily less tragic in sequel. I was in the 
 restaurant one morning talking to my cousin when a man 
 entered hastily and said something to him in a hurried 
 whisper. My cousin contracted his eyebrows and uttered 
 a suppressed oath. Then with a gesture of warning to the 
 man he crossed the room quietly to a table where a regular 
 habitue of the restaurant was lazily finishing his breakfast. 
 A large silver coffee-pot with a stiff wooden handle stood 
 on the table before him. My cousin leaned over the guest 
 familiarly and apparently made some hospitable inquiry as 
 to his wants, with his hand resting lightly on the coffee- 
 pot handle. Then — possibly because, my curiosity having 
 been excited, I was watching him more intently than the 
 others — I saw what probably no one else saw — that he 
 deliberately upset the coffee-pot and its contents over the 
 guest's shirt and waistcoat. As the victim sprang up with 
 an exclamation, my cousin overwhelmed bim with apologies 
 for his carelessness, and, with protestations of sorrow for 
 the accident, actually insisted upon dragging the man up- 
 
144 BOHEMIAK DAYS IN SAN FKANCISCO 
 
 stairs into his own private room, where he furnished him 
 with a shirt and waistcoat of his own. The side door had 
 scarcely closed upon them, and I was still lost in .wonder 
 at what I had seen, when a man entered from the street. 
 He was one of the desperate set I have already spoken of, 
 and thoroughly well known to those present. He cast a 
 glance around the room, nodded to one or two of the guests, 
 and then walked to a side table and took up a newspaper. 
 I was conscious at once that a singular constraint had come 
 over the other guests — a nervous awkwardness that at last 
 seemed to make itself known to the man himself,, who, after 
 an affected yawn or two, laid down the paper and walked 
 out. 
 
 "That was a mighty close call," said one of the guests 
 with a sigh of relief. 
 
 " You bet ! And that coffee-pot spill was the luckiest 
 kind of accident for Peters," returned another. 
 
 "For both," added the first speaker, "for Peters was 
 armed too, and would have seen him come in ! " 
 
 A word or two explained all. Peters and the last comer 
 had quarreled a day or two before, and had separated with 
 the intention to " shoot on sight, " that is, wherever they 
 met, — a form of duel common to those days. The acci- 
 dental meeting in the restaurant would have been the occa- 
 sion, with the usual sanguinary consequence, but for the 
 word of warning given to my cousin by a passer-by who 
 knew that Peters's antagonist was coming to the restaurant 
 to look at the papers. Had my cousin repeated the warn- 
 ing to Peters himself he would only have prepared him for 
 the conflict — which he would not have shirked — and so 
 precipitated the affray. 
 
 The ruse of upsetting the coffee-pot, which everybody 
 but myself thought an accident, was to get him out of the 
 room before the other entered. I was too young then to 
 venture to intrude upon iny cousin's secrets, but two or 
 
BOHEMIAN DAYS IN SAN FEANCISCO 145 
 
 three years afterwards I taxed him with the trick and he 
 admitted it regretfully. I believe that a strict interpreta- 
 tion of the " code " would have condemned his act as un- 
 sportsmanlike, if not unfair ! 
 
 I recall another incident, connected with the building, 
 equally characteristic of the period. The United States 
 Branch Mint stood very near it, and its tall, factory-like 
 chimneys overshadowed my cousin's roof. Some scandal 
 had arisen from an alleged leakage of gold in the manipula- 
 tion of that metal during the various processes of smelting 
 and refining. One of the excuses offered was the volatili- 
 zation of the precious metal and its escape through the 
 draft of the tall chimneys. All San Francisco laughed at 
 this explanation until it learned that a corroboration of the 
 theory had been established by an assay of the dust and 
 grime of the roofs in the vicinity of the Mint. These had 
 yielded distinct traces of gold. San Francisco stopped 
 laughing, and that portion of it which had roofs in the 
 neighborhood at once began prospecting. Claims were 
 staked out on these airy placers, and my cousin's roof, be- 
 ing the very next one to the chimney, and presumably " in 
 the lead, " was disposed of to a speculative company for a 
 considerable sum. I remember my cousin telling me the 
 story — for the occurrence was quite recent — and taking 
 me with him to the roof to explain it, but I am afraid I 
 was more attracted by the mystery of the closely guarded 
 building, and the strangely tinted smoke which arose from 
 this temple where money was actually being "made," than 
 by anything else. Nor did I dream as I stood there — a 
 very lanky, open-mouthed youth — that only three or four 
 years later I should be the secretary of its superintendent. 
 In ray more adventurous ambition I am afraid I would 
 have accepted the suggestion half-heartedly. Merely to 
 have helped to stamp the gold which other people had ad- 
 venturously found was by no means a part of my youthful 
 dreams. 
 
146 BOHEMIAN DAYS IN SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 At the time of these earlier impressions the Chinese had 
 not yet become the recognized factors in the domestic and 
 business economy of the city which they had come to be 
 ■when I returned from the mines three years later. Yet 
 they were even then a more remarkable and picturesque 
 contrast to the bustling, breathless, and brand-new life of 
 San Francisco than the Spaniard. The latter seldom 
 flaunted his faded dignity in the principal thoroughfares. 
 "John" was to be met everywhere. It was a common 
 thing to see a long file of sampan coolies carrying their 
 baskets slung between them, on poles, jostling a modern, 
 well-dressed crowd in Montgomery Street, or to get a whiff 
 of their burned punk in the side streets; while the road 
 leading to their temporary burial-ground at Lone Mountain 
 was littered with slips of colored paper scattered from their 
 funerals. They brought an atmosphere of the Arabian 
 Nights into the hard, modern civilization; their shops — ■. 
 not always confined at that time to a Chinese quarter — 
 Were replicas of the bazaars of Canton and Peking, with 
 their quaint display of little dishes on which tidbits of food 
 delicacies were exposed for sale, all of the dimensions and 
 unreality of a doll's kitchen or a child's housekeeping. 
 
 They were a revelation to the Eastern immigrant, whose 
 preconceived ideas of them were borrowed from the ballet 
 or pantomime; they did not wear scalloped drawers and 
 hats with jingling bells on their jjoints, nor did I ever 
 see them dance with their forefingers vertically extended. 
 They were always neatly dressed, even the commonest of 
 coolies, and their festive dresses Were marvels. As traders 
 they were grave and patient ; as servants they were sad and 
 civil, and all were singularly infantine in their natural sim- 
 plicity. The living representatives of the oldest civiliza- 
 tion in the world, they seemed like children. Yet they 
 kept their beliefs and sympathies to themselves, never fra- 
 ternizing with the fanqui, or foreign devil, or losing their 
 
BOHEMIAN DAYS IN SAN FEANCISOO 147 
 
 singular racial qualities. They indulged in their own pecu- 
 liar habits; of their social and inner life, San Francisco 
 knew but little and cared less. Even at this early period, 
 and before I came to know them more intimately, I remem- 
 ber an incident of their daring fidelity to their own customs 
 that was accidentally revealed to me. I had become ac- 
 quainted with a Chinese youth of about my own age, as I 
 imagined, — although from mere outward appearance it was 
 generally impossible to judge of a Chinaman's age between 
 the limits of seventeen and forty years, — and he had, in a 
 burst of confidence, taken me to see some characteristic 
 sights in a Chinese warehouse within a stone's throw of the 
 Plaza. I was struck by the singular circumstance that 
 while the warehouse was an erection of wood in the ordi- 
 nary hasty Californian style, there were certain brick and 
 stone divisions in its interior, like small rooms or closets, 
 evidently added by the Chinamen tenants. My companion 
 stopped before a long, very narrow entrance, a mere longi- 
 tudinal slit in the brick wall, and with a wink of infantine 
 deviltry motioned me to look inside. I did so, and saw a 
 room, really a cell, of fair height but scarcely six feet 
 square, and barely able to contain a rude, slanting couch 
 of stone covered with matting, on which lay, at a painful 
 angle, a richly dressed Chinaman. A single glance at his 
 staring, abstracted eyes and half-opened mouth showed me 
 he was in an opium trance. This was not in itself a novel 
 sight, and I was moving away when I was suddenly startled 
 by the appearance of his handr, which were stretched help- 
 lessly before him on his body, and at first sight seemed to 
 be in a kind of wicker cage. 
 
 I then saw that his finger-nails were seven or eight inches 
 long, and were supported by bamboo splints. Indeed, they 
 were no longer human nails, but twisted and distorted 
 quills, giving him the appearance of having gigantic claws. 
 "Velly big Chinaman," whispered my cheerful friend; 
 
148 BOHEMIAN DAYS IN SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 " first-ahop man — high classee — no can washee — no can 
 eat — no dlinke, no catchee him own glub allee same nothee 
 man — China boy must catchee glub for him, allee time ! 
 Oh, him first-chop man — you bet-tee ! " 
 
 I had heard of this singular custom of indicating caste 
 before, and was amazed and disgusted, but I was not pre- 
 pared for what followed. My companion, evidently think- 
 ing he had impressed me, grew more reckless as showman, 
 and saying to me, "Now me showee you one funny thing 
 — heap makee you laugh," led me hurriedly across a little 
 courtyard swarming with chickens and rabbits, when he 
 stopped before another inclosure. Suddenly brushing past 
 an astonished Chinaman who seemed to be standing guard, 
 he thrust me into the inclosure in front of a most extraor- 
 dinary object. It was a Chinaman, wearing a huge, square, 
 wooden frame fastened around his neck like a collar, and 
 fitting so tightly and rigidly that the flesh rose in puffy 
 weals around his cheeks. He was chained to a post, al- 
 though it was as impossible for him to have escaped with 
 his wooden cage through the narrow doorway as it was for 
 him to lie down and rest in it. Yet I am bound to say 
 that his eyes and face expressed nothing but apathy, and 
 there was no appeal to the sympathy of the stranger. My 
 companion said hurriedly, — 
 
 "Velly bad man; stealee heap from Chinaman," and 
 then, apparently alarmed at his own indiscreet intrusion, 
 hustled me away as quickly as possible amid a shrill cack- 
 ling of protestation from a few of his own countrymen who 
 had joined the one who was keeping guard. In another 
 moment we were in the street again — scarce a step from the 
 Plaza, in the full light of Western civilization — not a stone's 
 throw from the courts of justice. 
 
 My companion took to his heels and left me standing there 
 bewildered and indignant. I could not rest until I had told 
 my story, but without betraying my companion, to an elder 
 
BOHEMIAN DAYS IN SAN FRANCISCO 149 
 
 aoquaintance, who laid the facts before the police authorities. 
 I had expected to be closely cross-examined — to be doubted 
 — to be disbelieved. To my surprise, I was told that the 
 police had already cognizance of similar cases of illegal and 
 barbarous punishments, but that the victims themselves re- 
 fused to testify against their countrymen — and it was im- 
 possible to convict or even to identify them. "A white 
 man can't tell one Chinese from another, and there are al- 
 ways a dozen of 'em ready to swear that the man you 've 
 got isn't the one." I was startled to reflect that I, too, 
 could not have conscientiously sworn to either jailor or th< 
 tortured prisoner — or perhaps even to my cheerful com. 
 panion. The police, on some pretext, made a raid upon 
 the premises a day or two afterwards, but without result. 
 I wondered if they had caught sight of the high-class, firsl^ 
 chop individual, with the helplessly outstretched fingers, as 
 that story I had kept to myself. 
 
 But these barbaric vestiges in John Chinaman's habits 
 did not affect his relations with the San ^Franciscans. He 
 was singularly peaceful, docile, and harmless as a servant. 
 and, with rare exceptions, honest and temperate. If he 
 sometimes matched cunning with cunning, it was the flat- 
 tery of imitation. He did most of the menial work of San 
 Francisco, and did it cleanly. Except that he exhaled a 
 peculiar druglike odor, he was not personally offensive in 
 domestic contact, and by virtue of being the recognized 
 laundryman of the whole community his own blouses were 
 always freshly washed and ironed. His conversational re- 
 serve arose, not from his having to deal with an unfamiliar 
 language, — for he had picked up a picturesque and varied 
 vocabulary with ease, — but from his natural temperament. 
 He was devoid of curiosity, and utterly unimpressed by 
 anything but the purely business concerns of those he 
 served. Domestic secrets were safe with him ; his indiffer- 
 ence to your thoughts, actions, and feelings had all the con- 
 
150 BOHEMIAN DAYS IN SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 tempt which his three thousand years of history and his in. 
 nate belief in your inferiority seemed to justify. He was 
 blind and deaf in your household because you did n't inter- 
 est nim in the least. It was said that a gentleman who 
 wished to test his impassiveness; arranged with his wife to 
 come home one day and, in the hearing of his Chinese 
 waiter — who was more than usually intelligent — to dis- 
 close with well-simulated emotion the details of a murder 
 he had just committed. He did so. The Chinaman heard 
 it without a sign of horror or attention even to the lifting 
 of an eyelid, but continued his duties unconcerned. Un- 
 fortunately, the gentleman, in order to increase the horror 
 of the situation, added that now there was nothing left for 
 him but to cut his throat. At this John quietly left the 
 room. The gentleman was delighted at the success of his 
 ruse until the door reopened and John reappeared with hia 
 master's razor, which he quietly slipped — as if it had been 
 a forgotten fork — beside his master's plate, and calmly re- 
 sumed his serving. I have always considered this story to 
 be quite as improbable as it was inartistic, from its tacit 
 admission of a certain interest on the part of the Chinaman. 
 / never knew one who would have been sufficiently con- 
 cerned to go for the razor. 
 
 His taciturnity and reticence may have been confounded 
 with rudeness of address, although he was always civil 
 enough. "I see you have listened to me and done exactly 
 what I told you," said a ladj', commending some perform- 
 ance of her servant after a previous lengthy lecture; "that 's 
 very nice." "Yes," said John calmly, "you talkee allee 
 time ; talkee allee too much. " " I always find Ling very 
 polite," said another lady, speaking of her cook, "but I 
 wish he did not always say to me, ' Good-night, John, ' in 
 a high falsetto voice. " She had not recognized the fact that 
 he was simply repeating her own salutation with his mar- 
 velous instinct of relentless imitation, even as to voice. I 
 
BOHEMIAN DAYS IN SAN FRANCISCO 151 
 
 hesitate to record the endless stories of his misapplication 
 of that faculty which were then current, from the one of 
 the laundryman who removed the buttons from the shirts 
 that were sent to him to wash that they might agree with 
 the condition of the one offered him as a pattern for "do- 
 ing up," to that of the unfortunate employer who, while 
 showing John how to handle valuable china carefully, had 
 the misfortune to drop a plate himself — an accident which 
 was followed by the prompt breaking of another by the neo- 
 phyte, with the addition of " Oh, hellee ! " in humble imi- 
 tation of his master. 
 
 I have spoken of his general cleanliness ; I am reminded 
 of one or two exceptions, which I think, however, were 
 errors of zeal. His manner of sprinkling clothes in prepar- 
 ing them for ironing was peculiar. He would fill his mouth 
 with perfectly pure water from a glass beside him, and 
 then, by one dexterous movement of his lips in a prolonged 
 expiration, squirt thei water in an almost invisible misty 
 shower on the article before him. Shocking as this was at 
 first to the sensibilities of many American employers, it was 
 finally accepted, and even commended. It was some time 
 after this that the mistress of a household, admiring the 
 deft way in which her cook had spread a white sauce on 
 certain dishes, was cheerfully informed that the method was 
 "allee same." 
 
 His recreations at that time were chiefly gambling, for 
 the Chinese theatre wherein the latter produced his plays 
 (which lasted for several months and comprised the events 
 of a whole dynasty) was not yet built. But he had one or 
 two companies of jugglers who occasionally performed also 
 at American theatres. I remember a singular incident 
 which attended the debut of a newly arrived company. It 
 seemed that the company had been taken on their Chinese 
 reputation solely, and there had been no previous rehearsal 
 before the American stage manager. The theatre was filled 
 
152 BOHEMIAN DAYS IN SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 ■with an audience of decorous and respectable San Francis, 
 cans of both sexes. It was suddenly emptied in the middle 
 of the performance; the curtain came down with an alarmed 
 and blushing manager apologizing to deserted benches, and 
 the show abruptly terminated. Exactly what had happened 
 never appeared in the public papers, nor in the published 
 apology of the manager. It afforded a few days' mirth for 
 wicked San Erancisco, and it was epigrammatically summed 
 up in the remark that "no woman could be found in San 
 Francisco who was at that performance, and no man who 
 was not." Yet it was alleged even by John's worst de-, 
 tractors that he was innocent of any intended offense. 
 Equally innocent, but perhaps more morally instructive, 
 was an incident that brought his career as a singularly suc- 
 cessful physician to a disastrous close. An ordinary native 
 Chinese doctor, practising entirely among his own country- 
 men, was reputed to have made extraordinary cures with 
 two or three American patients. With no other advertising 
 than this, and apparently no other inducement offered to 
 the public than what their curiosity suggested, he was pres- 
 ently besieged by hopeful and eager sufferers. Hundreds 
 of patients were turned away from his crowded doors. Two 
 interpreters sat, day and night, translating the ills of ailing 
 San Francisco to this medical oracle, and dispensing his 
 prescriptions — usually small powders — in exchange for 
 current coin. In vain the regular practitioners pointed out 
 that the Chinese possessed no superior medical knowledge, 
 and that their religion, which proscribed dissection and au- 
 topsies, naturally limited their understanding of the body 
 into which they put their drugs. Finally they prevailed 
 upon an eminent Chinese authority to give them a list of 
 the remedies generally used in the Chinese pharmacopoeia, 
 and this was privately circulated. For obvious reasons I 
 may not repeat it here. But it was summed up — again 
 after the usual Californian epigrammatic style — by the re- 
 
BOHEMIAN DAYS IN SAN FRANCISCO 153 
 
 mark that " whatever were the comparative merits of Chi- 
 nese and American practice, a simple perusal of the list 
 would prove that the Chinese were capable of producing the 
 most powerful emetic known." The craze subsided in a 
 single day ; the interpreters and their oracle vanished ; the 
 Chinese doctors' signs, which had multiplied, disappeared, 
 and San Francisco awoke cured of its madness, at the cost 
 of some thousand dollars. 
 
 My Bohemian wanderings were confined to the limits of 
 the city, for the very good reason that there was little else- 
 where to go. San Francisco was then bounded on one side 
 by the monotonously restless waters of the bay, and on the 
 other by a stretch of equally restless and monotonously 
 shifting sand dunes as far as the Pacific shore. Two roads 
 penetrated this waste: one to Lone Mountain — the ceme- 
 tery ; the other to the Cliff House — happily described as 
 "an eight-mile drive with a cocktail at the end of it." 
 Nor was the humor entirely confined to this felicitous 
 description. The Cliff House itself, half restaurant, half 
 drinking-saloon, fronting the ocean and the Seal Eock, 
 where disporting seals were the chief object of interest, 
 had its own peculiar symbol. The decanters, wine-glasses, 
 and tumblers at the bar were all engraved in old English 
 script with the legal initials "L. S." (Locus Sigilli), — 
 "the place of the seal." 
 
 On the other hand, Lone Mountain, a dreary promontory 
 giving upon the Golden Gate and its striking sunsets, had 
 little to soften its weird suggestiveness. As the common 
 goal of the successful and unsuccessful, the carved and let- 
 tered shaft of the man who had made a name, and the star- 
 ing blank headboard of the man who had none, climbed the 
 sandy slopes together. I have seen the funerals of the re- 
 s,pectable citizen who had died peacefully in his bed, and 
 the notorious desperado who had died " with his boots on, " 
 fallowed by an equally impressive cortege of sorrowing 
 
154 BOHEMIAN DAYS IN SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 friends, and often the self-same priest. But more awful 
 than its barren loneliness was the utter absence of peaceful- 
 ness and rest in this dismal promontory. By some wicked 
 irony of its situation and climate it was the personification 
 of unrest and change. The incessant trade winds carried 
 its loose sands hither and thither, uncovering the decaying 
 coffins of early pioneers, to bury the wreaths and flowers, 
 laid on a grave of to-day, under their obliterating waves. 
 No tree to shade them from the glaring sky above could 
 live in those sands, no turf would lie there to resist the 
 encroaching sand below. The dead were harried and hus- 
 tled even in their graves by the persistent sun, the unremit- 
 ting wind, and the unceasing sea. The departing mourner 
 saw the contour of the very mountain itself change with 
 the shifting dunes as he passed, and his last look beyond 
 rested on the hurrying, eager waves forever hastening to 
 the Golden Gate. 
 
 If I were asked to say what one thing impressed me as 
 the dominant and characteristic note of San Francisco, I 
 should say it was this untiring presence of sun and wind 
 and sea. They typified, even if they were not, as I some- 
 times fancied, the actual incentive to the fierce, restless life 
 of the city. I could not think of San Francisco without 
 the trade winds; I could not imagine its strange, incongru- 
 ous, multigenerous procession marching to any other music. 
 They were always there in my youthful recollections ; they 
 were there in my more youthful dreams of the past as the 
 mysterious vientes generales that blew the Philippine gal- 
 leons home. 
 
 For six- months they blew from the northwest, for six 
 months from the southwest, with unvarying persistency. 
 They were there every morning, glittering in the equally 
 persistent sunlight, to chase the San Franciscan from his 
 slumber; they were there at midday, to stir his pulses with 
 their beat; they were there again at night, to hurry him 
 
BOHEMIAN DAYS IN SAN FRANCISCO 155 
 
 through the bleak and flaring gas-lit streets to bed. They 
 left their mark on every windward street or fence or gable, 
 on the outlying sand dunes; they lashed the slow coasters 
 home, and hurried them to sea again ; they whipped the 
 bay into turbulence on their way to Contra Costa, whose 
 level shoreland oaks they had trimmed to windward as 
 cleanly and sharply as with a pruning-shears. Untiring 
 themselves, they allowed no laggards; they drove the San 
 Franciscan from the wall against which he would have 
 leaned, from the scant shade in which at noontide he might 
 have rested. They turned his smallest fires into conflagra- 
 tions, and kept him ever alert, watchful, and eager. In 
 return, they scavenged his city and held it clean and whole- 
 some ; in summer they brought him the soft sea- fog for a 
 few hours to soothe his abraded surfaces; in winter they 
 brought the rains and dashed the whole coast-line with 
 flowers, and the staring sky above it with soft, unwonted 
 clouds. They were always there — strong, vigilant, relent- 
 less, material, unyielding, triumphant. 
 
A VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN 
 
 Me. Jackson Potter halted before the little cottage, 
 half shop, half hostelry, opposite the great gates of Domes- 
 day Park, where tickets of admission to that venerable 
 domain were sold. Here Mr. Potter revealed his nation- 
 ality as a Western American, not only in his accent, but in 
 a certain half-humorous, half- practical questioning of the 
 ticket-seller — as that quasi-ojficial stamped his ticket — 
 which was nevertheless delivered with such unfailing good- 
 humor, and such frank suggestiveness of the perfect equal- 
 ity of the ticket-seller and the well-dressed stranger that, 
 far from producing any irritation, it attracted the pleased 
 attention not only of the official, but his wife and daughter 
 and a customer. Possibly the good looks of the stranger 
 had something to do with it. Jackson Potter was a singu- 
 larly handsome young fellow, with one of those ideal faces 
 and iigures sometimes seen in Western frontier villages, at- 
 tributable to no ancestor, but evolved possibly from novels 
 and books devoured by ancestresses in the long solitary 
 winter evenings of their lonely cabins on the frontier. A 
 beardless, classical head, covered by short flocculent blonde 
 curls, poised on a shapely neck and shoulders, was more 
 Greek in outline than suggestive of any ordinary American 
 type. Finally, after having thoroughly amused his small 
 audience, he lifted his straw hat to the "ladies," and 
 lounged out across the road to the gateway. Here he 
 paused, consulting his guide-book, and read aloud: "St. 
 John's Gateway. This massive structure, according to 
 Leland, was built in " — murmured — "never mind when; 
 
A VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN 157 
 
 ■we '11 pass St. John," marked the page with his pencil, and 
 tendering his ticket to the gate-keeper, heard, with some 
 satisfaction, that, as there were no other visitors just then, 
 and as the cicerone only accompanied parties, he would be 
 left to himself, and at once plunged into a by-path. 
 
 It was that loveliest of rare creations — a hot summer 
 day in England, with all the dampness of that sea-blown 
 isle wrung out of it, exhaled in the quivering blue vault 
 overhead, or passing as dim wraiths in the distant wood, 
 and all the long-matured growth of that great old garden 
 vivified and made resplendent by the fervid sun. The 
 ashes of dead and gone harvests, even the dust of those 
 who had for ages wrought in it, turned again and again 
 through incessant cultivation, seemed to move and live once 
 more in that present sunshine. All color appeared to be 
 deepened and mellowed, until even the very shadows of the 
 trees were as velvety as the sward they fell upon. The 
 prairie-bred Potter, accustomed to the youthful caprices and 
 extravagances of his own virgin soil, could not help feeling 
 the influence of the ripe restraints of this. 
 
 As he glanced through the leaves across green sunlit 
 spaces to the ivy-clad ruins of Domesday Abbey, which 
 seemed itself a growth of the very soil, he murmured to 
 himself: "Things had been made mighty comfortable for 
 folks here, you bet ! " Forgotten books he had read as a 
 boy, scraps of school histories, or rather novels, came back 
 to him as he walked along, and peopled the solitude about 
 him with their heroes. 
 
 Nevertheless, it was unmistakably hot — a heat homelike 
 in its intensity, yet of a different effect, throwing him into 
 languid reverie rather than filling his veins with fire. Se- 
 cure in his seclusion in the leafy chase, he took off his 
 jacket and rambled on in his shirt sleeves. Through the 
 opening he presently saw the Abbey again, with the restored 
 wing where the noble owner lived for two or three weeks 
 
158 A VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN 
 
 in the year, but now given over to the prevailing solitude. 
 And then, issuing from the chase, he came upon a broad, 
 moss-grovfn terrace. Before him stretched a tangled and 
 luxuriant wilderness of shrubs and flowers, darkened by 
 cypress and cedars of Lebanon; its dim depths illuminated 
 by dazzling white statues, vases, trellises, and paved paths, 
 choked and lost in the trailing growths of years of aban- 
 donment and forgetfuluess. He consulted his guide-book 
 again. It was the "old Italian garden," constructed under 
 the design of a famous Italian gardener by the third duke ; 
 but its studied formality being displeasing to his successor, 
 it was allowed to fall into picturesque decay and negligent 
 profusion, which were not, however, disturbed by later de- 
 scendants, — a fact deplored by the artistic writer of the 
 guide-book, who mournfully called attention to the rare 
 beauty of the marble statues, urns, and fountains, ruined 
 by neglect, although one or two of the rarer objects had 
 been removed to Deep Dene Lodge, another seat of the 
 present duke. 
 
 It is needless to say that Mr. Potter conceived at once a 
 humorous opposition to the artistic enthusiasm of the critic, 
 and, plunging into the garden, took a mischievous delight 
 in its wildness and the victorious struggle of nature with 
 the formality of art. At every step through the tangled 
 labyrinth he could see where precision and order had been 
 invaded, and even the rigid masonry broken or upheaved 
 by the rebellious force. Yet here and there the two powers 
 had combined to offer an example of beauty neither could 
 have effected alone. A passion vine had overrun and en- 
 clasped a vase with a perfect symmetry no sculptor could 
 have achieved. A heavy balustrade was made ethereal 
 with a delicate fretwork of vegetation between its balusters 
 like lace. Here, however, the lap and gurgle of water fell 
 gratefully upon the ear of the perspiring and thirsty Mr. 
 Potter, and turned his attention to more material things. 
 
A VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN 159 
 
 Following the sound, he presently came upon an enormoua 
 oblong marble basin containing three time-worn fountains 
 with grouped figures. The pipes were empty, silent, and 
 choked with reeds and water plants, but the great basin it- 
 self was filled with water from some invisible source. 
 
 A terraced walk occupied one side of the long parallelo- 
 gram; at intervals and along the opposite bank, half shad- 
 owed by willows, tinted marble figures of tritons, fauns, 
 and dryads arose half hidden in the reeds. They were 
 more or less mutilated by time, and here and there only 
 the empty, moss-covered plinths that had once supported 
 them could be seen. But they were so lifelike in their 
 subdued color in the shade that he was for a moment star- 
 tled. 
 
 The water looked deliciously cool. An, audacious thought 
 struck him. He was alone, and the place was a secluded 
 one. He knew there were no other visitors; the marble 
 basin was quite hidden from the rest of the garden, and 
 approached only from the path by which he had come, and 
 whose entire view he commanded. He quietly and delib- 
 erately undressed himself under the willows, and unhesita- 
 tingly plunged into the basin. The water was four or five 
 feet deep, and its extreme length afforded an excellent 
 swimming bath, despite the water-lilies and a few aquatic 
 plants that mottled its clear surface, or the sedge that clung 
 to the bases of the statues. He disported for some moments 
 in the delicious element, and then seated himself upon one 
 of the half- submerged plinths, almost hidden by reeds, that 
 had once upheld a river god. Here, lazily resting himself 
 upon his elbow, half his body still below the water, his quick 
 ear was suddenly startled by a rustling noise and the sound 
 of footsteps. For a moment he was inclined to doubt his 
 senses ; he could see only the empty path before him and 
 the deserted terrace. But the sound became more distinct, 
 and to his great uneasiness, appeared to come from the 
 
160 A VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN 
 
 other side of the fringe of willows, where there was un- 
 doubtedly a path to the fountain which he had overlooked. 
 His clothes were under those willows, but he was at least 
 twenty yards from the bank and an equal distance from the 
 terrace. He was about to slip beneath the water when, to 
 his crowning horror, before he could do so, a young girl 
 slowly appeared from the hidden willow path full upon the 
 terrace. She was walking leisurely with a parasol over her 
 head and a book in her hand. Even in his intense conster- 
 nation her whole figure — a charming one in its white 
 dress, sailor hat, and tan shoes — was imprinted on his 
 memory as she instinctively halted to look upon the foun- 
 tain, evidently an unexpected surprise to her. 
 
 A sudden idea flashed upon him. She was at least sixty 
 yards away ; he was half hidden in the reeds and well in 
 the long shadows of the willows. If he remained perfectly 
 motionless she might overlook him at that distance, or take 
 him for one of the statues. He remembered also that as 
 he was resting on his elbow, his half-submerged body lying 
 on the plinth below water, he was somewhat in the attitude 
 of one of the river gods. And there was no other escape. 
 If he dived he might not be able to keep under water as long 
 as she remained, and any movement he knew would betray 
 him. He stiffened himself and scarcely breathed. Luck- 
 ily for him his attitude had been a natural one and easy to 
 keep. It was well, too, for she was evidently in no hurry 
 and walked slowly, stopping from time to time to admire 
 the basin and its figures. Suddenly he was instinctively 
 aware that she was looking towards him and even changing 
 her position, moving her pretty head and shading her eyes 
 with her hand as if for a better view. He remained mo- 
 tionless, scarcely daring to breathe. Yet there was some- 
 thing so innocently frank and undisturbed in her obser- 
 vation, that he knew as instinctively that she suspected 
 nothing, and took him for a half-submerged statue. He 
 
A VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN 161 
 
 breathed more freely. But presently she stopped, glanced 
 around her, and, keeping her eyes fixed in his direction, 
 began to walk backwards slowly until she reached a stone 
 balustrade behind her. On this she leaped, and, sitting 
 down, opened in her lap the sketch-book she was carrying, 
 and, taking out a pencil, to his horror began to sketch ! 
 
 For a wild moment he recurred to his first idea of diving 
 and swimming at all hazards to the bank, but the conviction 
 that now his slightest movement must be detected held him 
 motionless. He must save her the mortification of know- 
 ing she was sketching a living man, if he died for it. She 
 sketched rapidly but fixedly and absorbedly, evidently for- 
 getting all else in her work. From time to time she held 
 out her sketch before her to compare it with her subject. 
 Yet the seconds seemed minutes and the minutes hours. 
 Suddenly, to his great relief, a distant voice was heard 
 calling, "Lottie." It was a woman's voice; by its accent 
 it also seemed to him an American one. 
 
 The young girl made a slight movement of impatience, 
 but did not look up, and her pencil moved still more rap- 
 idly. Again the voice called, this time nearer. The young 
 girl's pencil fairly flew over the paper, as, still without 
 looking up, she lifted a pretty voice and answered back, 
 " Y-e-e-s ! " 
 
 It struck him that her accent was also that of a compa- 
 triot. 
 
 " Where on earth are you ? " continued the first voice, 
 which now appeared to come from the other side of the 
 wUlows on the path by which the young girl had ap- 
 proached. "Here, aunty," replied the girl, closing her 
 sketch-book with a snap and starting to her feet. 
 
 A stout woman, fashionably dressed, made her appear- 
 ance from the willow path. 
 
 " What have you been doing all this while ? " she said 
 querulously. "Not sketching, I hope," she added, with a 
 
162 A VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN 
 
 suspicious glance at the book. " You know your professor 
 expressly forbade you to do so in your holidays." 
 
 The young girl shrugged her shoulders. "I've been 
 looking at the fountains, " she replied evasively. 
 
 "And horrid- looking pagan things they are, too," said 
 the elder woman, turning from them disgustedly, without 
 vouchsafing a second glance. " Come. If we expect to do 
 the Abbey, we must hurry up, or we won't catch the train. 
 Your uncle is waiting for us at the top of the garden." 
 
 And, to Potter's intense relief, she grasped the young 
 girl's arm and hurried her away, their figures the next mo- 
 ment vanishing in the tangled shrubbery. 
 
 Potter lost no time in plunging with his cramped limbs 
 into the water and regaining the other side. Here he 
 quickly half dried himself with some sun-warmed leaves 
 and baked mosses, hurried on his clothes, and hastened off 
 in the opposite direction to the path taken by them, yet 
 with such circuitous skill and speed that he reached the 
 great gateway without encountering anybody. A brisk 
 walk brought him to the station in time to catch a stopping 
 train, and in half an hour he was speeding miles away from 
 Domesday Park and his half-forgotten episode. 
 
 Meantime the two ladies continued on their way to the 
 Abbey. "I don't see why I mayn't sketch things I see 
 about me," said the young lady impatiently. "Of course, 
 I understand that I must go through the rudimentary 
 drudgery of my art and study from casts, and learn per- 
 spective, and all that; but I can't see what 's the difference 
 between working in a stuffy studio over a hand or arm that 
 I know is only a study, and sketching a full or half length 
 in the open air with the wonderful illusion of light and 
 shade and distance — and grouping and combining them all 
 — that one knows and feels makes a picture. The real pic- 
 ture one makes is already in one's self." 
 
A VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN 163 
 
 "For goodness' sake, Lottie, don't go on again with 
 your usual absurdities. Since you are bent on being an 
 artist, and your Popper has consented and put you under 
 the most expensive master in Paris, the least you can do i& 
 to follow the rules. And I dare say he only wanted you 
 to ' sink the shop ' in company. It 's such horrid bad 
 form for you artistic people to be always dragging out your 
 sketch-books. What would you say if your Popper came 
 over here, and began to examine every lady's dress in so- 
 ciety to see what material it was, just because he was a big 
 dry-goods dealer in America t " 
 
 The young girl, accustomed to her aunt's extravagances, 
 made no reply. But that night she consulted her sketch, 
 and was so far convinced of her own instincts, and the pro- 
 found impression the fountain had made upon her, that she 
 was enabled to secretly finish her interrupted sketch from 
 memory. For Miss Charlotte Forrest was a born artist, 
 and in no mere caprice had persuaded her father to let her 
 adopt the profession, and accepted the drudgery of a novi- 
 tiate. She looked earnestly upon this first real work of 
 her hand and found it good! Still, it was but a pencil 
 sketch, and wanted the vivifioation of color. 
 
 When she returned to Paris she began — still secretly — 
 a larger study in oils. She worked upon it in her own 
 room every moment she could spare from her studio prac- 
 tice, unknown to her professor. It absorbed her existence ; 
 she grew thin and pale. When it was finished, and only 
 then, she showed it tremblingly to her master. He stood 
 silent, in profound astonishment. The easel before him 
 showed a foreground of tangled luxuriance, from which 
 stretched a sheet of water like a darkened mirror, while 
 through parted reeds on its glossy surface arose the half-sub- 
 merged figure of a river god, exquisite in contour, yet whose 
 delicate outlines were almost a vision by the crowning illu- 
 sion of light, shadow, and atmosphere. 
 
164 A VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN 
 
 " It is a beautiful copy, mademoiselle, and I forgive you 
 breaking my rules," he said, drawing a long breath. "But 
 I cannot now recall the original picture." 
 
 "It's no copy of a picture, professor," said the young 
 girl timidly, and she disclosed her secret. " It was the 
 only perfect statue there," she added diffidently; "but I 
 think it wanted — something. " 
 
 "True," said the professor abstractedly. "Where the 
 elbow rests there should be a half-inverted urn flowing with 
 water ; but the drawing of that shoulder is so perfect — as 
 is your study of it — that one guesses the missing forearm 
 one cannot see, which clasped it. Beautiful ! beautiful ! " 
 
 Suddenly he stopped, and turned his eyes almost search- 
 ingly on hers. 
 
 "You say you have never drawn from the human model, 
 mademoiselle ? " 
 
 "Never," said the young girl innocently. 
 
 "True," murmured the professor again. "These are the 
 classic ideal measurements. There are no limbs like those 
 now. Yet it is wonderful! And this gem, you say, is in 
 England ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Good ! I am going there in a few days. I shall make 
 a pilgrimage to see it. Until then, mademoiselle, I beg 
 you to break as many of my rules as you like." 
 
 Three weeks later she found the professor one morning 
 standing before her picture in her private studio. "You 
 have returned from England," she said joyfully. 
 
 "I have," said the professor gravely. 
 
 "You have seen the original subject?" she said timidly. 
 
 ■'I have not. I have not seen it, mademoiselle," he 
 said, gazing at her mildly through his glasses, " because it 
 does not exist, and never existed." 
 
 The young girl turned pale. 
 
 "Listen. I have go to England. I arrive at the Park 
 
A VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN 165 
 
 of Domeeday. I penetrate the beautiful, wild garden. I 
 approach the fountain. I see the wonderful water, the ex- 
 quisite light and shade, the lilies, the mysterious reeds — 
 beautiful, yet not as beautiful as you have made it, made- 
 moiselle, but no statue — no river god ! I demand it of 
 the concierge. He knows of it absolutely nothing. I 
 transport myself to the noble proprietor. Monsieur le Due, 
 at a distant chateau where he has collected the ruined mar- 
 bles. It is not there." 
 
 "Yet I saw it," said the young girl earnestly, yet with 
 a troubled face. "0 professor," she burst out appealingly, 
 " what do you think it was ? " 
 
 "I think, mademoiselle," said the professor gravely, 
 "that you created it. Believe me, it is a function of ge- 
 nius ! More, it is a proof, a necessity ! You saw the beau- 
 tiful lake, the ruined fountain, the soft shadows, the empty 
 plinth, curtained by reeds. You yourself say you feel 
 there was ' something wanting. ' Unconsoiouslj' you your- 
 self supplied it. AH that you had ever dreamt of mytho- 
 logy, all that you had ever seen of statuary, thronged upon 
 you at that supreme moment, and, evolved from your own 
 fancy, the river god was born. It is your own, chere en- 
 fant, as much the offspring of your genius as the exquisite 
 atmosphere you have caught, the charm of light and shadow 
 that you have brought away. Accept my felicitations. You 
 have little more to learn of me." 
 
 As he bowed himself out and descended the stairs he 
 shrugged his shoulders slightly. " She is an adorable ge- 
 nius," he murmured. "Yet she is also a woman. Being a 
 woman, naturally she has a lover — this river god !. Why 
 not ? " 
 
 The extraordinary success of Miss Forrest's picture and 
 the instantaneous recognition of her merit as an artist, 
 apart from her novel subject, perhaps went further to re- 
 move her uneasiness than any serious conviction of the pro- 
 
166 A VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN 
 
 fessor's theory. Nevertheless, it appealed to her poetic and 
 mystic imagination, and although other subjects from her 
 brush met with equally phenomenal success, and she was 
 able in a year to return to America with a reputation as- 
 sured beyond criticism, she never entirely forgot the strange 
 incident connected with her initial effort. 
 
 And by degrees a singular change came over her. Rich, 
 famous, and attractive, she began to experience a senti- 
 mental and romantic interest in that episode. Once, when 
 reproached by her friends for her indifference to her admir- 
 ers, she had half laughingly replied that she had once found 
 her "ideal," but never would again. Yet the jest had 
 scarcely passed her lips before she became pale and silent. 
 With this change came also a desire to re-purchase the pic- 
 ture, which she had sold in her early success to a specula- 
 tive American picture-dealer. On inquiry she found, alas! 
 that it had been sold only a day or two before to a Chicago 
 gentleman, of the name of Potter, who had taken a fancy 
 to it. 
 
 Miss Forrest curled her pretty lip, but, nothing daunted, 
 resolved to effect her purpose, and sought the purchaser at 
 his hotel. She was ushered into a private drawing-room, 
 where, on a handsome easel, stood the newly acgiured pur- 
 chase. Mr. Potter was out, "but would return in a mo- 
 ment. " 
 
 Miss Forrest was relieved, for, alone and undisturbed, 
 she could now let her full soul go out to her romantic crea- 
 tion. As she stood there, she felt the glamour of the old 
 English garden come back to her, the play of light and 
 shadow, the silent pool, the godlike face and bust, with its 
 cast-down, meditative eyes, seen through the parted reeds. 
 She clasped her hands silently before her. Should she 
 never see it again as then ? 
 
 "Pray don't let me disturb you; but won't you take a 
 Beat!" 
 
A VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN 167 
 
 Miss Forrest turned sharply round. Then she started, 
 uttered a frightened little cry, and fainted away. 
 
 Mr. Potter was touched, but a master of himself. As 
 she came to, he said quietly: "I came upon you suddenly 
 — as you stood entranced by this picture — just as I did 
 when I first saw it. That 's why I bought it. Are you 
 any relative of the Miss Forrest who painted it 1 " he con- 
 tinned, quietly looking at her caid, which he' held in his 
 hand. 
 
 Miss Forrest recovered herself sufficiently to reply, and 
 stated her business with some dignity. 
 
 "Ah," said Mr. Potter, "that is another question. You 
 see, the picture has a special value to me, as I once saw an 
 old-fashioned garden like that in England. But that chap 
 there, — I beg your pardon, I mean that figure, — I fancy, 
 is your own creation, entirely. However, I '11 think over 
 your proposition, and if you will allow me I '11 call and see 
 you about it." 
 
 Mr. Potter did call — not once, but many times — and 
 showed quite a remarkable interest in Miss Forrest's art. 
 The question of the sale of the picture, however, remained 
 in abeyance. A few weeks later, after a longer call than 
 usual, Mr. Potter said, — 
 
 "Don't you think the best thing we can do is to make 
 a kind of compromise, and let us own the picture to- 
 gether?" 
 
 And they did. 
 
A EOMANCE OF THE LINE 
 
 As the train moved slowly out of the station, the Writer 
 of Stories looked up wearily from the illustrated pages of 
 the magazines and weeklies on his lap to the illustrated ad- 
 vertisements on the walls of the station sliding past his car- 
 riage windows. It was getting to be monotonous. For a 
 while he had been hopefully interested in the bustle of the 
 departing trains, and looked up from his comfortable and 
 early invested position to the later comers with that sense 
 of superiority common to travelers; had watched the con- 
 ventional leave-takings — always feebly prolonged to the 
 uneasiness of both parties — and contrasted it with the im- 
 passive business promptitude of the railway officials; but it 
 was the old experience repeated. Falling back on the illus- 
 trated advertisements again, he wondered if their perpetual 
 recurrence at every station would not at last bring to the 
 tired traveler the loathing of satiety ; whether the passenger 
 in railway carriages, continually offered Somebody's oats, 
 inks, washing blue, candles, and soap, apparently as a ne- 
 cessary equipment for a few hours' journey, would not there 
 and thereafter forever ignore the use of these articles, or 
 recoil from that particular quality. Or, as an unbiased ob- 
 server, he wondered if, on the other hand, impressible pas- 
 sengers, after passing three or four stations, had ever leaped 
 from the train and refused to proceed further until they 
 were supplied with one or more of those articles. Had he 
 ever known any one who confided to him in a moment of 
 expansiveness that he had dated his use of Somebody's soap 
 to an advertisement nersistently borne upon him through 
 
A ROMANCE OF THE LINE 169 
 
 the medium of a railway carriage window 1 No ! Would 
 he not have connected that man with that other certifying 
 individual who always appends a name and address singu- 
 larly obscure and unconvincing, yet who, at some supreme 
 moment, recommends Somebody's pills to a dying friend, 
 — afflicted with a similar address, — which restore him to 
 life and undying obscurity. Yet these pictorial and liter- 
 ary appeals must have a potency independent of the wares 
 they advertise, or they would n't be there. 
 
 Perhaps he was the more sensitive to this monotony as 
 he was just then seeking change and novelty in order to 
 write a new story. He was not looking for material, — 
 his subjects were usually the same, — he was merely hop- 
 ing for that relaxation and diversion which should freshen 
 and fit him for later concentration. Still, he had often 
 heard of the odd circumstances to which his craft were 
 sometimes indebted for suggestion. The invasion of an 
 eccentric-looking individual — probably an innocent trades- 
 man — into a railway carriage had given the hint for " A 
 Night with a Lunatic;" a nervously excited and belated 
 passenger had once unconsciously sat for an escaped forger; 
 the picking up of a forgotten novel in the rack, with pas- 
 sages marked in pencil, had afforded the plot of a love 
 story ; or the germ of a romance had been found in an ob- 
 scure news paragraph which, under less listless moments, 
 would have passed unread. On the other hand, he recalled 
 these inconvenient and inconsistent moments from which 
 the so-called " inspiration " sprang, the utter incongruity of 
 time and place in some brilliant conception, and wondered 
 if sheer vacuity of mind were really so favorable. 
 
 Going back to his magazine again, he began to get mildly 
 interested in a story. Turning the page, however, he was 
 confronted by a pictorial advertising leaflet inserted between 
 the pages, yet so artistic in character that it might have 
 been easily mistaken for an illustration of the story he was 
 
170 A EOMANCE OF THE LINE 
 
 reading, and perhaps was not more remote or obscure in 
 reference than many he had known. But the next moment 
 he recognized with despair that it was only a smaller copy 
 of one he had seen on the hoarding at the last station. He 
 threw the leaflet aside, but the flavor of the story was gone. 
 The peerless detergent of the advertisement had erased it 
 fiom the tablets of his memory.. He leaned back in his 
 seat again, and lazily watched the flying suburbs. Here 
 were the usual promising open spaces and pfitches of green, 
 quickly succeeded again by solid blocks of houses whose rear 
 windows gave directly upon the line, yet seldom showed an 
 inquisitive face — even of a wondering child. It was a 
 strange revelation of the depressing effects of familiarity. 
 Expresses might thunder by, goods trains drag their slow 
 length along, shunting trains pipe all day beneath their 
 windows, but the tenants heeded them not. Here, too, 
 was the junction, with its labyrinthine interlacing of tracks 
 that dazed the tired brain; the overburdened telegraph 
 posts, that looked as if they really could not stand another 
 wire ; the long lines of empty, homeless, and deserted trains 
 in sidings that had seen better days ; the idle trains, with 
 staring vacant windows, which were eventually seized by a 
 pert engine hissing, " Come along, will you 1 " and departed 
 with a discontented grunt from every individual carriage 
 coupling ; the racing trains, that suddenly appeared parallel 
 with one's carriage windows, begot false hopes of a challenge 
 of speed, and then, without warning, drew contemptuously 
 and superciliously away; the swift eclipse of everything in 
 a tunneled bridge; the long, slithering passage of an "up" 
 express, and then the flash of a station, incoherent and un- 
 intelligible with pictorial advertisements again. 
 
 He closed his eyes to concentrate his thought, and by 
 degrees a pleasant languor stole over him. The train had 
 by this time attained that rate of speed which gave it a 
 slight swing and roll on curves and switches not unlike the 
 
A ROMANCE OF THE LINE 171 
 
 rocking of a cradle. Once or twice he opened his eyes 
 sleepily upon the waltzing trees in the double planes of dis- 
 tance, and again closed them. Then, in one of these slight 
 oscillations, he felt himself ridiculousy slipping into slum- 
 ber, and awoke with some indignation. Another station 
 was passed, in which process the pictorial advertisements 
 on the hoardings and the pictures in his lap seemed to have 
 become jumbled up, confused, and to dance before him, 
 and then suddenly and strangely, without warning, the train 
 stopped short — at another station. And then he arose, 
 and — what five minutes before he never conceived of doing 
 — gathered his papers and slipped from the carriage to the 
 platform. When I say " he " I mean, of course, the Writer 
 of Stories; yet the man who slipped out was half his age 
 and a different-looking person. 
 
 The change from the motion of the train — for it seemed 
 that he had been traveling several hours — to the firmer 
 platform for a moment bewildered him. The station looked 
 strange, and he fancied it lacked a certain kind of distinct- 
 ness. But that quality was also noticeable in the porters 
 and loungers on the platform. He thought it singular, 
 until it seemed to him that they were not characteristic, 
 nor in any way important or necessary to the business he 
 had in hand. Then, with an effort, he tried to remember 
 himself and his purpose, and made his way through the 
 station to the open road beyond. A van, bearing the in- 
 scription, "Removals to Town and Country," stood before 
 him and blocked his way, but a dogcart was in waiting, and 
 a grizzled groom, who held the reins, touched his hat re- 
 spectfully. Although still dazed by his journey and uncer- 
 tain of himself, he seemed to recognize in the man that dis- 
 tinctive character which was wanting in the others. The 
 correctness of his surmise was revealed a few moments later, 
 when, after he had taken his seat beside him, and they 
 
172 A ROMANCE OF THE LINE 
 
 were rattling out of the village street, the man turned to- 
 wards him and said : — 
 
 "Tha '11 know Sir Jarge?" 
 
 "I do not," said the young man. 
 
 "Ay! but theer 's many as cooms here as doan't, for all 
 they cooms. Tha 'U say it ill becooms mea as war man 
 and boy in Sir Jarge 's sarvice for fifty year, to say owt agen 
 him, but I 'm here to do it, or they could n't foolfil their 
 business. Tha wast to ax me questions about Sir Jarge 
 and the Grange, and I wor to answer soa as to make tha 
 think thar was suthing wrong wi' un. Howbut I may save 
 tha time and tell thea downroight that Sir Jarge forged his 
 uncle's will, and so gotten the Grange. That 'ee keeps his 
 niece in mortal fear o' he. That tha '11 be put in haunted 
 chamber wi' a boggle." 
 
 " I think," said the young man hesitatingly, " that there 
 must be some mistake. I do not know any Sir George, 
 and I am not going to the Grange." 
 
 "Eay! Then thee aren't the 'ero sent down from Lon- 
 don by the story writer ? " 
 
 " Not by that one, " said the young man diffidently. 
 
 The old man's face changed. It was no mere figure of 
 speech : it actually was another face that looked down upon 
 the traveler. 
 
 "Then mayhap your honor will be bespoken at the An- 
 gel's Inn," he said, with an entirely distinct and older dia- 
 lect, "and a finer hostel for a young gentleman of your 
 condition ye '11 not find on this side of Oxford. A fair 
 chamber, looking to the sun ; sheets smelling of lavender 
 from Dame Margery's own store, and, for the matter of that, 
 spread by the fair hands of Maudlin, her daughter — the 
 best favored lass that ever danced under a Maypole. Ha ! 
 have at ye there, young sir! Not to speak of the October 
 ale of old Gregory, her father — ay, nor the rare Hollands, 
 that never paid excise duties to the king." 
 
A EOMANCE OF THE LINE 173 
 
 "I 'm afraid," said the young traveler timidly, "there 's 
 over a century hetween us. There 's really some mistake." 
 
 "What? " said the groom, "ye are not the young spark 
 ■who is to marry Mistress Amy at the Hall, yet makes a 
 pother and mess of it all by a duel with Sir Roger de Cadg- 
 erly, the wicked baronet, for his over-free discourse with 
 our fair Maudlin this very eve 1 Ye are not the traveler 
 whose post-chaise is now at the Falcon ? Ye are not he 
 that was bespoken by the story writer in London ? " 
 
 "I don't think I am," said the young man apologeti- 
 cally. "Indeed, as I am feeling far from well, I think I '11 
 get oiTt and walk." 
 
 He got down — the vehicle and driver vanished in the 
 distance. It did not surprise him. "I must collect my 
 thoughts," he said. He did so. Possibly the collection 
 was not large, for presently he said, with a sigh of relief : — 
 
 "I see it all now! My name is Paul Bunker. I am of 
 the young branch of an old Quaker family, rich and re- 
 spected in the country, and I am on a visit to my ancestral 
 home. But I have lived since a child in America, and am 
 alien to the traditions and customs of the old country, and 
 even of the seat to which my fathers belong. I have 
 brought with me from the far West many peculiarities of 
 speech and thought that may startle my kinsfolk. But I 
 certainly shall not address my uncle as ' Hoss ! ' nor shall 
 I say ' guess ' of tener than is necessary. " 
 
 Much brightened and refreshed by his settled identity, 
 he had time, as he walked briskly along, to notice the scen- 
 ery, which was certainly varied and conflicting in character, 
 and quite inconsistent with his preconceived notions of an 
 English landscape. On his right, a lake of the brightest 
 cobalt blue stretched before a many-towered and terraced 
 town, which was relieved by a background of luxuriant 
 foliage and emerald-green mountain; on his left arose a 
 rugged mountain, which he was surprised to see was snow- 
 
174 A EOMANCK OF THE LINE 
 
 capped, albeit a tunnel was observable midway of its height, 
 and a train just issuing from it. Almost regretting that ho 
 had not continued on his journey, as he was fully sensioie 
 that it was in some way connected with the railway he had 
 quitted, presently his attention was directed to the gateway 
 of a handsome park, whose mansion was faintly seen in the 
 distance. Hurrying towards him, down the avenue of 
 limes, was a strange figure. It was that of a man of mid- 
 dle age, clad in Quaker garb, yet with an extravagance of 
 cut and detail which seemed antiquated even for England. 
 He had evidently seen the young man approaching, and his 
 face was beaming with welcome. If Paul had doubted that 
 it was his uncle, the first words he spoke would have reas- 
 sured him. 
 
 "Welcome to Hawthorn Hall," said the figure, grasping 
 his hand heartily, "but thee will excuse me if I do not 
 tarry with thee long at present, for I am hastening, even 
 now, with some nourishing and sustaining food for Giles 
 Hay ward, a farm laborer." He pointed to a package he 
 was carrying. "But thee will find thy cousins Jane and 
 Dorcas Bunker taking tea in the summer-house. Go to 
 them ! Nay — positively — I may not linger, but will re- 
 turn to thee quickly." And, to Paul's astonishment, he 
 trotted away on his sturdy, respectable legs, still beaming 
 and carrying his package in his hand. 
 
 "Well, I '11 be dog-goned! but the old man ain't going 
 to be left, you bet!" he ejaculated, suddenly remembering 
 his dialect. "He'll get there, whether school keeps or 
 not ! " Then, reflecting that no one heard him, he added 
 simply, "He certainly was not over civil towards the 
 nephew he has never seen before. And those girls — 
 whom I don't know! How very awkward! " 
 
 Nevertheless, he continued his way up the avenue to- 
 wards the mansion. The park was beautifully kept. Re- 
 membering the native wildness and virgin seclusion of the 
 
A ROMANCE OP* THE LINE 175 
 
 Western forest, he could not help contrasting it with the 
 conservative gardening of this pretty woodland, every rood 
 of which had been patrolled by keepers and rangers, and 
 preserved and fostered hundreds of years before he was born, 
 until warmed for human occupancy. At times the avenue 
 was crossed by grass drives, where the original woodland 
 had been displaced, not by the exigency of a "cfearing" for 
 tillage, as in his own West, but for the leisurely pleasure 
 of the owner. Then, a few hundred yards from the house 
 itself, — a quaint Jacobean mansion, — he came to an open 
 space where the sylvan landscape had yielded to floral cul- 
 tivation, and so fell upon a charming summer-house, or ar- 
 bor, embowered with roses. It must have been the one of 
 which his uncle had spoken, for there, to his wondering 
 admiration, sat two little maids before a rustic table, drink- 
 ing tea demurely, yes, with all the evident delight of a 
 childish escapade from their elders. While in the pictur- 
 esque quaintness of their attire there was still a formal sug- 
 gestion of the sect to which their father belonged, their 
 summer frocks — differing in color, yet each of the same 
 subdued tint — were alike in cut and fashion^ and short 
 enough to show their dainty feet in prim slippers and silken 
 hose that matched their frocks. As the afternoon sun 
 glanced through the leaves upon their pink cheeks, tied up 
 in quaint hats by ribbons under their chins, they made a 
 charming picture. At least Paul thought so as he advanced 
 towards them, hat in hand. They looked up at his ap- 
 proach, but again cast down their eyes with demure shy- 
 ness; yet he fancied that they first exchanged glances with 
 each other, full of mischievous intelligence. 
 
 "I am your cousin Paul," he said smilingly, "though I 
 am afraid I am introducing myself almost as briefly as your 
 father just now excused himself to me. He told me I 
 would find you here, but he himself was hastening on a 
 Samaritan mission." 
 
176 A EOMANCE OF THE LINE 
 
 " With a box in his hand 1 " said the girls simultaneously, 
 exchanging glances with each other again. 
 
 "With a box containing some restorative, I think," re- 
 sponded Paul, a little wonderingly. 
 
 "Restorative! So that 's what he calls it now, is it? '' 
 said one of the girls saucily. "Well, no one knows what 's 
 in the box; though he always carries it with him. Thee 
 never sees him without it " — 
 
 "And a roll of paper," suggested the other girl. 
 " Yes, a roll of paper — but one never knows what it 
 is!" said the first speaker. "It 's very strange. But no 
 matter now, Paul. Welcome to Hawthorn Hall. I am 
 Jane Bunker, and this is Dorcas. " She stopped, and then, 
 looking down demurely, added, "Thee may kiss us both, 
 cousin Paul." 
 
 The young man did not wait for a second invitation, but 
 gently touched his lips to their soft young cheeks. 
 
 " Thee does not speak like an American, Paul. Is thee 
 really and truly one ? " continued Jane. 
 
 Paul remembered that he had forgotten his dialect, but 
 it was too late now. 
 
 "I am really and truly one, and your own cousin, and I 
 hope you will find me a very dear " — 
 
 " Oh ! " said Dorcas, starting up primly. " You must 
 really allow me to withdraw." To the young man's aston- 
 ishment, she seized her parasol, and, with a youthful affec- 
 tation of dignity, glided from the summer-house and was 
 lost among the trees. 
 
 "Thy declaration to me was rather sudden," said Jane 
 quietly, in answer to his look of surprise, "and Dorcas is 
 peculiarly sensitive and less like the ' world's people ' than 
 I am. And it was just a little cruel, considering that she 
 has loved thee secretly all these years, followed thy fortunes 
 in America with breathless eagerness, thrilled at thy narrow 
 escapes, and wept at thy privations." 
 
A KOMANCE OF THE LINE 177 
 
 " But she has never seen me before ! " said the astounded 
 Paul. 
 
 "And thee had never seen me before, and yet thee has 
 dared to propose to me five minutes after thee arrived, and 
 in her presence." 
 
 " But, my dear girl ! " expostulated Paul. 
 
 " Stand off ! " she said, rapidly opening her parasol and 
 interposing it between them. "Another step nearer — ay, 
 even another word of endearment — and I shall be com- 
 pelled — nay, forced, " she added in a lower voice, " to re- 
 move this parasol, lest it should be crushed and ruined ! " 
 
 "I see," he said gloomily, "you have been reading nov- 
 els; but so have I, and the same ones! Nevertheless, I 
 intended only to tell you that I hoped you would always 
 find me a kind friend. " 
 
 She shut her parasol up with a snap. " And I only in- 
 tended to tell thee that my heart was given to another." 
 
 " You intended — and now 1 " 
 
 " Is it the ' kind friend ' who asks 1 " 
 
 "If it were not?" 
 
 "Eeally?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 " But thee loves another ? " she said, toying with her cup. 
 
 He attempted to toy with his, but broke it. A man 
 lacks delicacy in this kind of persiflage. " You mean I am 
 loved by another," he said, bluntly. 
 
 " You dare to say that ! " she said, flashing, in spite of 
 her prim demeanor. 
 
 "No, but you did just now ! You said your sister loved 
 me!" 
 
 "Did I?" she said dreamilj'. "Dear! dear! That's 
 the trouble of trying to talk like Mr. Blank's delightful 
 dialogues. One gets so mixed ! " 
 
178 A ROMANCE OF THE LINE 
 
 "Yet you will be a sister to me? " he said. " 'Tis an 
 old American joke, but 'twill serve." 
 
 There was a long silence. 
 
 " Had thee not better go to sister Dorcas ? She is play- 
 ing with the cows," said Jane plaintively. 
 
 "You forget," he returned gravely, "that, on page 27 of 
 the novel we have both read, at this point he is supposed 
 to kiss her." 
 
 She bad forgotten, but they both remembered in time. 
 At this moment a scream came faintly from the distance. 
 They both started, and rose. 
 
 "It is sister Dorcas," said Jane, sitting down again and 
 pouring out another cup of tea. "I have always told her 
 that one of those Swiss cows would hook her. " 
 
 Paul stared at her with a strange revulsion of feeling. 
 "I could save Dorcas," he muttered to himself, "in less 
 time than it takes to describe." He paused, however, as 
 he reflected that this would depend entirely upon the meth- 
 ods of the writer of this description. "I could rescue her! 
 I have only to take the first clothes-line that I find, and 
 with that knowledge and skill with the lasso which I learned 
 in the wilds of America, I could stop the charge of the most 
 furious ruminant. I will ! " and without another word he 
 turned and rushed off in the direction of the sound. 
 
 He had not gone a hundred yards before he paused, a 
 little bewildered. To the left could still be seen the cobalt 
 lake with the terraced background ; to the right the rugged 
 mountains. He chose the latter. Luckily for him a cot- 
 tager's garden lay in his path, and from a line supported 
 by a single pole depended the homely linen of the cottager. 
 To tear these garments from the line was the work of a 
 moment (although it represented the whole week's wash- 
 ing), and hastily coiling the rope dexterously in his hand, 
 he sped onward. Already panting with exertion and ex- 
 
A EOMANCE OF THE LINK 179 
 
 citement, a few roods farther he was confronted with a 
 spectacle that left him breathless. 
 
 A woman — young, robust, yet gracefully formed — was 
 running ahead of him, driving before her with an open 
 parasol an animal which he instantly recognized as one of 
 that simple yet treacherous species most feared by the sex 
 — known as the "Moo Cow." 
 
 For a moment he was appalled by the spectacle. But it 
 was only for a moment! Recalling his manhood and her 
 weakness, he stopped, and bracing his foot against a stone, 
 with a graceful flourish of his lasso around his head, threw 
 it in the air. It uncoiled slowly, sped forward with un- 
 erring precision, and missed ! With the single cry of 
 " Saved ! " the fair stranger sank fainting in his arms ! He 
 held her closely until the color came back to her pale face. 
 Then he quietly disentangled the lasso from his legs. 
 
 " Where am 1 1 " she said faintly. 
 
 "In the same place," he replied, slowly but firmly. 
 "But," he added, "you have changed! " 
 
 She had, indeed, even to her dress. It was now of a 
 vivid brick red, and so much longer in the skirt that it 
 seemed to make her taller. Only her hat remained the 
 same. 
 
 "Yes," she said, in a low, reflective voice and a disre- 
 gard of her previous dialect, as she gazed up in his eyes 
 with an eloquent lucidity, " I have changed, Paul ! I felt 
 myself changing at those words you uttered to Jane. There 
 are moments in a woman's life that man knows nothing of; 
 moments bitter and cruel, sweet and merciful, that change 
 her whole being; moments in which the simple girl be- 
 comes a worldly woman; moments in which the slow pro- 
 cession of her years is never noted — except by anoth.ei 
 woman ! Moments that change her outlook on the world 
 and her relations to it — and her husband's relations. Mo- 
 ments when the maid becomes a wife, the wife a widow, 
 
180 A ROMANCE OF THE LINE 
 
 the widow a re-married woman, by a simple, swift illumi- 
 nation of the fancy. Moments when, wrought upon by a 
 single word — a look — an emphasis and rising inflection, 
 all logical sequence is cast away, processes are lost — in- 
 ductions lead nowhere. Moments when the inharmonious 
 becomes harmonious, the indiscreet discreet, the inefficient 
 efficient, and the inevitable evitable. I mean," she cor- 
 rected herself hurriedly — " You know what I mean ! If 
 you have not felt it you have read it ! " 
 
 "I have," he said thoughtfully. " We have both read 
 it in the same novel. She is a fine writer." 
 
 " Ye-e-s." She hesitated with that slight resentment of 
 praise of another woman so delightful in her sex. " But 
 you have forgotten the Moo Cow ! " and she pointed to 
 where the distracted animal was careering across the lawn 
 towards the garden. 
 
 " You are right, " he said, " the incident is not yet closed. 
 Let us pursue it." 
 
 They both pursued it. Discarding the useless lasso, he 
 had recourse to a few well-aimed epithets. The infuriated 
 animal swerved and made directly towards a small fountain 
 in the centre of the garden. In attempting to clear it, it 
 fell directly into the deep cup-like basin and remained help- 
 lessly fixed, with its fore-legs projecting uneasily beyond 
 the rim. 
 
 "Let us leave it there," she said, "and forget it — and 
 all that has gone before. Believe me," she added, with a 
 faint sigh, "it is best. Our paths diverge from this mo- 
 ment. I go to the summer-house, and you go to the Hall, 
 where my father is expecting you." He would have de- 
 tained her a moment longer, but she glided away and was 
 gone. 
 
 Left to himself again, that slight sense of bewilderment 
 which had clouded his mind for the last hour began to 
 clear away; his singular encounter with the girls strangely 
 
A ROMANCE OF THE LINE 181 
 
 enough affected him less strongly than his brief and unsat- 
 isfactory interview with his uncle. For, after all, he was 
 his host, and upon him depended his stay at Hawthorn 
 Hall. The mysterious and slighting allusions of his cous- 
 ins to the old man's eccentricities also piqued his curiosity. 
 Why had they sneered at his description of the contents of 
 the package he carried — and what did it really contain! 
 He did not reflect that it was none of his business, — peo- 
 ple in his situation seldom do, — and he eagerly hurried 
 towards the Hall. But he found in his preoccupation he 
 had taken the wrong turning in the path, and that he was 
 now close to the wall which bounded and overlooked the 
 highway. Here a singular spectacle presented itself. A 
 cyclist covered with dust was seated in the middle of the 
 road, trying to restore cii'culation to his bruised and injured 
 leg by chafing it with his hands, while beside him lay his 
 damaged bicycle. He had evidently met with an accident. 
 In an instant Paul had climbed the wall and was at his side. 
 
 " Can I offer you any assistance 1 " he asked eagerly. 
 
 " Thanks — no ! I ' ve come a beastly cropper over some- 
 thing or other on this road, and I 'm only bruised, though 
 the machine has suffered worse," replied the stranger, in a 
 fresh, cheery voice. He was a good-looking fellow of 
 about Paul's own age, and the young American's heart 
 went out towards him. 
 
 " How did it happen ? " asked Paul. 
 
 "That 's what puzzles me," said the stranger. "I was 
 getting out of the way of a queer old chap in the road, and 
 I ran over something that seemed only an old scroll of pa- 
 per; but the shock was so great that I was thrown, and I 
 fancy I was for a few moments unconscious. Yet I can- 
 not see any other obstruction in the road, and there 's only 
 that bit of paper. " He pointed to the paper, — a half- 
 crushed roll of ordinary foolscap, showing the mark of the 
 bicycle upon it. 
 
182 A ROMANCE OF THE LINE 
 
 A strange idea came into Paul's mind. He picked up 
 che paper and examined it closely. Besides the mark al- 
 ready indicated, it showed two sharp creases about nine 
 inches long, and another exactly at the point of the impact 
 of the bicycle. Taking a folded two-foot rule from his 
 pocket, he carefully measured these parallel creases and 
 made an exhaustive geometrical calculation with his pencil 
 on the paper. The stranger watched him with awed and 
 admiring interest. Rising, he again carefully examined the 
 road, and was finally rewarded by the discovery of a sharp 
 indentation in the dust, which, on measurement and com- 
 parison with the creases in the paper and the calculations 
 he had just made, proved to be identical. 
 
 "There was a solid body in that paper," said Paul 
 quietly; "a parallelogram exactly nine inches long and 
 three wide. " 
 
 "I say! you're wonderfully clever, don't you know," 
 said the stranger, with unaffected wonder. "I see it all 
 . — a brick." 
 
 Paul smiled gently and shook his head. " That is the 
 hasty inference of an inexperienced observer. You will 
 observe at the point of impact of your wheel the parallel 
 crease is curved, as from the yielding of the resisting sub- 
 stance, and not broken, as it would be by the crumbling of 
 a brick." 
 
 " I say, you 're awfully detective, don't you know ! just 
 like that fellow — what's his name?" said the stranger 
 admiringly. 
 
 The words recalled Paul to himself. Why was he act- 
 ing like a detective ? and what was he seeking to discover 1 
 Nevertheless, he felt impelled to continue. "And that 
 queer old chap whom you met — why did n't he help you '/ " 
 
 " Because I passed him before I ran into the — the paral- 
 lelogram, and I suppose he did n't know what happened 
 behind him." 
 
A ROMANCE OF THE LINE 183 
 
 " Did he have anything in his hand 1 " 
 
 "Can't say." 
 
 " And you say you were unconscious afterwards 1 " 
 
 "Yes!" 
 
 "Long enough for the culprit to remove the principal 
 evidence of his crime 1 " 
 
 " Come ! I say, really you are — you know you are ! " , 
 
 " Have you any secret enemy 1 " 
 
 "No." 
 
 "And you don't know Mr. Bunker, the man who owns 
 this vast estate ? " 
 
 "Not at all. I 'm from Upper Tooting." 
 
 " G ood afternoon, " said Paul abruptly, and turned away. 
 
 It struck him afterwards that his action might have 
 seemed uncivil, and even inhuman, to the bruised cyclist, 
 who could hardly walk. But it was getting late, and he 
 was still far from the Hall, which, oddly enough, seemed 
 to be no longer visible from the road. He wandered on 
 for some time, half convinced that he had passed the lodge 
 gates, yet hoping to find some other entrance to the domain. 
 Dusk was falling; the rounded outlines of the park trees 
 beyond the wall were solid masses of shadow. The full 
 moon, presently rising, restored them again to symmetry, 
 and at last he, to his relief, came upon the massive gate- 
 way. Two lions ramped in stone on the side pillars. He 
 thought it strange that he had not noticed the gateway on 
 his previous entrance, but he remembered that he was fully 
 preoccupied with the advancing figure of his uncle. In a 
 few minutes the Hall itself appeared, and here again he 
 was surprised that he had overlooked before its noble pro- 
 portions and picturesque outline. Its broad terraces, daz- 
 zlingly white in the moonlight; its long line of mullioned 
 windows, suffused with a warm red glow from within, made 
 it look like part of a wintry landscape — and suggested a 
 Christmas card. The venerable ivy that hid the ravages 
 
184 A EOMANCE OF THE LINE 
 
 time had made in its walls looked like black carving. His 
 heart swelled with strange emotions as he gazed at his an- 
 cestral hall. How many of his blood had lived and died 
 there; how many had gone forth from that great porch to 
 distant lands ! He tried to think of his father — a little 
 child — peeping between the balustrades of that terrace. 
 He tried to think of it, and perhaps would have succeeded 
 had it not occurred to him that it was a known fact that 
 his uncle had bought the estate and house of an impover- 
 ished nobleman only the year before. Yet — he could not 
 tell why — he seemed to feel higher and nobler for that 
 trial. 
 
 The terrace was deserted, and so quiet that as he as- 
 cended to it his footsteps seemed to echo from the walls. 
 When he reached the portals, the great oaken door swung 
 noiselessly on its hinges — opened by some unseen but wait- 
 ing servitor — and admitted him to a lofty hall, dark with 
 hangings and family portraits, but warmed by a red carpet 
 the whole length of its stone floor. For a moment he 
 waited for the servant to show him to the drawing-room or 
 his uncle's study. But no one appeared. Believing this 
 to be a part of the characteristic simplicity of the Quaker 
 hoiisehold, he boldly entered the first door, and found him- 
 self in a brilliantly lit and perfectly empty drawing-room. 
 The same experience met him with the other rooms on that 
 floor, — the dining-room displaying an already set, exqui- 
 sitely furnished and decorated table, with chairs for twenty 
 guests! He mechanically ascended the wide oaken stair- 
 case that led to the corridor of bedrooms above a central 
 salon. Here he found only the same solitude. Bedroom 
 doors yielded to his touch, only to show the same brilliantly 
 lit vacancy. He presently came iipon one room which 
 seemed to give unmistakable signs of his ovm occupancy. 
 Surely there stood his own dressing-case on the table! and 
 his own evening clothes carefully laid out on another, as if 
 
A ROMANCE OF THE LINE 185 
 
 fresh from a valet's hands. He stepped hastily into the 
 corridor — there was no one there ; lie rang the hell — there 
 was no response ! But he noticed that there was a jug of 
 hot water in his hasin, and he began dressing mechanically. 
 
 There was little doubt that he was in a haunted house, 
 but this did not particularly disturb him. Indeed, he 
 found himself wondering if it could be logically called a 
 haunted house — unless he himself was haunting it, for 
 there seemed to be no other there. Perhaps the appari- 
 tions would come later, when he was dressed. Clearly it 
 was not his uncle's house — and yet, as he had never been 
 inside his uncle's house, he reflected that he ought not to 
 be positive. 
 
 He finished dressing and sat down in an armchair with a 
 kind of thoughtful expectancy. But presently his curiosity 
 became impatient of the silence and mystery, and he ven- 
 tured once more to explore the house. Opening his bed- 
 room door, he found himself again upon the deserted corri- 
 dor, but this time he could distinctly hear a buzz of voices 
 from the drawing-room below. Assured that he was near 
 a solution of the mystery, he rapidly descended the broad 
 staircase and made his way to the open door of the draw- 
 ing-room. But although the sound of voices increased as 
 he advanced, when he entered the room, to his utter aston- 
 ishment, it was as empty as before. 
 
 Yet, in spite of his bewilderment and confusion, he was 
 able to follow one of the voices, which, in its peculiar dis- 
 tinctness and half-perfunctory tone, he concluded must be- 
 long to the host of the invisible assembly. 
 
 "Ah," said the voice, greeting some unseen visitor, "so 
 glad you have come ! Afraid your engagements just now 
 would keep you away." Then the voice dropped to a lower 
 and more confidential tone. " You must take down Lady 
 Dartman, but you will have Miss Morecamp — a clever girl 
 — on the other side of you. Ah, Sir George ! So good of 
 
186 A ROMANCE OF THE LINE 
 
 you to come. All well at the Priory 1 So glad to hear 
 it." (Lower and more confidentially.) "You know Mrs. 
 Monkston. You '11 sit by her. A little cut up by her 
 husband losing his seat. Try to amuse her." 
 
 Emboldened by desperation, Paul turned in the direction 
 of the voice. " I am Paul Bunker, " he said hesitatingly. 
 " I 'm afraid you '11 think me intrusive, but I was looking 
 for my uncle, and " — 
 
 " Intrusive, my dear boy ! The son of my near neighbor 
 in the country intrusive? Eeally, now, I like that! 
 Grace" (the voice turned in another direction), "here is 
 the American nephew of our neighbor Bunker at Widdle- 
 stone, who thinks he is ' a stranger. ' " 
 
 "We all knew of your expected arrival at Widdlestone 
 — it was so good of you to waive ceremony and join us," 
 said a well-bred feminine voice, which Paul at once as- 
 sumed to belong to the hostess. "But I must find some 
 one for your dinner partner. Mary " (here her voice was 
 likewise turned away), "this is Mr. Bunker, the nephew 
 of an old friend and neighbor in Upshire ; " (the voice 
 again turned to him) "you will take Miss Morecamp in. 
 My dear" (once again averted), "I must find some one else 
 to console poor dear Lord Billingtree with." Here the 
 hostess's voice was drowned by fresh arrivals. 
 
 Bewildered and confused as he was, standing in this 
 empty desert of a drawing-room, yet encompassed on every 
 side by human voices, so marvelous was the power of sug- 
 gestion, he seemed to almost feel the impact of the invisible 
 crowd. He was trying desperately to realize his situation 
 when a singularly fascinating voice at his elbow unexpect- 
 edly assisted him. It was evidently his dinner partner. 
 
 "I suppose you must be tired after your journey. When 
 did you arrive ? " 
 
 "Only a few hours ago," said Paul. 
 
 "And I dare say you haven't slept since you arrived. 
 
A EOMANCE OF THE LINE 187 
 
 One does n't on the passage, you know; the twenty hours 
 pass so quickly, and the experience is so exciting — to us 
 at least. But I suppose as an American you are used to 
 it." 
 
 Paul gasped. He had passively accepted the bodiless 
 conversation, because it was at least intelligible ! But now! 
 Was he going mad? 
 
 She evidently noticed his silence. "Never mind," she 
 continued, "you can tell me all about it at dinner. Do 
 you know I always think that this sort of thing — what 
 we 're doing now, — this ridiculous formality of reception, 
 — which I suppose is after all only a concession to our Eng- 
 lish force of habit — is absurd ! We ought to pass, as it 
 were, directly from our houses to the dinner-table. It 
 saves time." 
 
 "Yes — no — that is — I 'm afraid I don't follow you," 
 stammered Paul. 
 
 There was a slight pout in her voice as she replied: "No 
 matter now — we must follow them — for our host is mov- 
 ing off with Lady Billingtree, and it 's our turn now." 
 
 So great was the illusion that he found himself mechani- 
 cally offering his arm as he moved through the empty room 
 towards the door. Then he descended the staircase with- 
 out another word, preceded, however, by the sound of his 
 host's voice. Following this as a blind man might, he en- 
 tered the dining-room, which to his discomfiture was as 
 empty as the salon above. StiU following the host's voice, 
 he dropped into a chair before the empty table, wondering 
 what variation of the Barmecide feast was in store for him. 
 Yet the hum of voices from the vacant chairs around the 
 board so strongly impressed him that he could almost be- 
 lieve that he was actually at dinner. 
 
 "Are you seated? " asked the charming voice at his side. 
 
 "Yes," a little wonderingly, as his was the only seat 
 visibly occupied. 
 
188 A KOMANCE OF THE LINE 
 
 " I am SO glad that this silly ceremony is over. By the 
 way, where are you ? " 
 
 Paul woald have liked to answer, "Lord only knows!" 
 hut he reflected that it might not sound polite. " Where 
 am I ! " he feebly repeated. 
 
 "Yes; where are you dining?" 
 
 It seemed a cool question under the circumstances, but 
 he answered promptly, — 
 
 "With you." 
 
 "Of course," said the charming voice; "but where are 
 you eating your dinner 1 " 
 
 Considering that he was not eating anything, Paul 
 thought this cooler still. But he answered briefly, "In 
 Upshire. " 
 
 "Oh! At your uncle's?" 
 
 "No," said Paul bluntly; "in the next house." 
 
 "Why, that 's Sir William's — our host's — and he and 
 his family are here in London. You are joking." 
 
 "Listen! " said Paul desperately. Then in a voice un- 
 consciously lowered he hurriedly told her where he was — 
 how he came there — the empty house — the viewless com- 
 pany ! To his surprise the only response was a musical 
 little laugh. But the next moment her voice rose higher, 
 with an unmistakable concern in it, apparently addressing 
 their invisible host. 
 
 "Oh, Sir William, .only think how dreadful! Here's 
 poor Mr. Bunker, alone in an empty house, which he has 
 mistaken for his uncle's — and without any dinner! " 
 
 "Eeally; dear, dear! How provoking! But how does 
 he happen to be with us ? James, how is this ? " 
 
 "If you please, Sir William," said a servant's respectful 
 voice, "Widdlestone is in the circuit and is switched on 
 with the others. We heard that a gentleman's luggage had 
 arrived at Widdlestone, and we telegraphed for the rooms 
 to be made ready, thinking we 'd have her ladyship's orders 
 later." 
 
A ROMANCE OF THE LINE 189 
 
 A single gleam of intelligence flashed upon Paul. His 
 luggage — yes, had been sent from the station to the wrong 
 house, and he had unwittingly followed. But these voices ! 
 whence did they come ! And where was the actual dinner 
 at which his host was presiding 1 It clearly was not at this 
 empty table. 
 
 "See that he has everything he wants at once," said Sir 
 William; "there must he some one there." Then his voice 
 turned iu the direction of Paul again, and he said laugh- 
 ingly, "Possess your soul and appetite in patience for a 
 moment, Mr. Bunker; you will be only a course behind us. 
 But we are lucky in having your company — even at your 
 own discomfort." 
 
 Still more bewildered, Paul turned to his invisible part- 
 ner. "May I ask where you are dining? " 
 
 "Certainly; at home in Curzbn Street," returned the 
 pretty voice. "It was raining so, I did not go out." 
 
 "And — Lord Billington?" faltered Paul. 
 
 "Oh, he 's in Scotland — at his own place." 
 
 " Then, in fact, nobody is dining here at all, " said Paul 
 desperately. 
 
 There was a slight pause, and then the voice responded, 
 with a touch of startled suggestion in it: "Good heavens, 
 Mr. Bunker! Is it possible you don't know we 're dining 
 by telephone ? " 
 
 "By what?" 
 
 "Telephone. Yes. We 're a telephonic dinner-party. 
 We are dining in our own houses ; but, being all friends, 
 we 're switched on to each other, and converse exactly as 
 we would at table. It saves a great trouble and expense, 
 for any one of us can give the party, and the poorest can 
 equal the most extravagant. People who are obliged to 
 diet can partake of their own slops at home, and yet mingle 
 with the gourmets without awkwardness or the necessity 
 of apology. We are spared the spectacle, at least, of those 
 
190 A ROMANCE OF THE LINE 
 
 ■who eat and drink too much. We can switch off a bore at 
 once. We can retire when we are fatigued, without leav- 
 ing a blank space before the others. And all this without 
 saying anything of the higher spiritual and intellectual 
 effect — freed from material grossness of appetite and show 
 
 — which the dinner party thus attains. But you are surely 
 joking! You, an American, and not know it! Why, it 
 comes from Boston. Have n't you read that book, ' Jump- 
 ing a Century ' 1 It 's by an American." 
 
 A strange illumination came upon Paul. Where had he 
 heard something like this before 1 But at the same moment 
 his thoughts were diverted by the material entrance of a 
 footman, bearing a silver salver with his dinner. It was 
 part of his singular experience that the visible entrance of 
 this real, commonplace mortal — the only one he had seen 
 
 — in the midst of this voiceless solitude was distinctly un- 
 real, and had all the effect of an apparition. He distrusted 
 it and the dishes before him. But his lively partner's 
 voice was now addressing an unseen occupant of the next 
 chair. Had she got tired of his ignorance, or was it fem- 
 inine tact to enable him to eat something? He accepted 
 the latter hypothesis, and tried to eat. But he felt himself 
 following the fascinating voice in all the charm of its youth- 
 ful and spiritual inflections. Taking advantage of its mo- 
 mentary silence, he said gently, — 
 
 " I confess my ignorance, and am willing to admit all you 
 claim for this wonderful invention. But do you think it 
 compensates for the loss of the individual person 1 Take 
 my own case — if you will not think me personal. I have 
 never had the pleasure of seeing you; do you believe that 
 I am content with only that suggestion of your person- 
 ality which the satisfaction of hearing your voice affords 
 me?" 
 
 There was a pause, and then a very mischievous ring in 
 the voice that replied: "It certainly is a personal question, 
 
A ROMANCE OF THE LINE 191 
 
 and it is another blessing of this invention that you '11 
 never know whether I am blushing or not; but I forgive 
 you, for I never before spoke to any one I had never seen 
 — and I suppose it 's confusion. But do you really think 
 you would know me — the real one — any better % It is 
 the real person who thinks and speaks, not the outward 
 semblance that we see, which very often unfairly either 
 attracts or repels us. We can always show ourselves at 
 our best, but we must, at last, reveal our true colors through 
 our thoughts and speech. Is n't it better to begin with the 
 real thing first ? " 
 
 "I hope, at least, to have the privilege of judging by 
 myself," said Paul gallantly. "You will not be so cruel 
 as not to let me see you elsewhere, otherwise I shall feel 
 as if I were in some dream, and will certainly be opposed 
 to your preference for realities." 
 
 " I am not certain if the dream would not be more inter- 
 esting to you," said the voice laughingly. "But I think 
 your hostess is already saying ' good-by. ' You know every- 
 body goes at once at this kind of party; the ladies don't 
 retire first, and the gentlemen join them afterwards. In 
 another moment we '11 all be switched o£f; but Sir William 
 •wants me to tell you that his coachman will drive you to 
 your uncle's, unless you prefer to try and make yourself 
 comfortable for the night here. Good-by ! " 
 
 The voices around him seemed to grow fainter, and then 
 utterly cease. The lights suddenly leaped up, went out, 
 and left him in complete darkness. He attempted to rise, 
 but in doing so overset the dishes before him, which slid 
 to the floor. A cold air seemed to blow across his feet. 
 
 The " good-by " was still ringing in his ears as he 
 straightened himself to find he was in his railway carriage, 
 whose door had just been opened for a young lady who was 
 entering the compartment from a wayside station. " Good- 
 by," she repeated to the friend who was seeing her oif 
 
192 A ROMANCE OF THE LTNB 
 
 The Writer of Stories hurriedly straightened himself, 
 gathered up the magazines and papers that had fallen from 
 his lap, and glanced at the station walls. The old illus- 
 trations glanced hack at him ! He looked at his watch ; he 
 had heen asleep just ten minutes. 
 
A BUCKEYE HOLLOW INHERITANCE 
 
 The four men on the " Zip Coon " Ledge had not got 
 fairly settled to their morning's work. There was the 
 usual lingering hesitation which is apt to attend the takin^'- 
 up of any regular or monotonous performance, shown in 
 this instance in the prolonged scrutiny of a pick's point, 
 the solemn selection of a shovel, or the " hefting " or weigh- 
 ing of a tapping-iron or drill. One member, becoming 
 interested in a funny paragraph he found in the scrap of 
 newspaper wrapped around his noonday cheese, shamelessly 
 sat down to finish it, regardless of the prospecting pan 
 thrown at him by another. They had taken up their daily 
 routine of mining life like schoolboys at their tasks. 
 
 "Hello! " said Ned Wyngate, joyously recognizing a pos- 
 sible further interruption. " Blamed if the Express rider 
 ain't comin' here ! " 
 
 He was shading his eyes with his hand as he gazed over 
 the broad sun-baked expanse of broken " flat " between 
 them and the high-road. They all loolfed up, and saw the 
 figure of a mounted man, with a courier's bag thrown over 
 his shoulder, galloping towards them. It was really an 
 event, as their letters were usually left at the grocery at 
 the crossroads. 
 
 "I knew something was goin' to happen," said Wyngate. 
 "I did n't feel a bit like work this morning." 
 
 Here one of their number ran off to meet the advancing 
 horseman. They watched him until they saw the latter 
 rein up, and hand a brown envelope to their messenger, 
 who ran breathlessly back with it to the Ledge as the 
 horseman galloped away again. 
 
194 A IsUCKEYE HOLLOW INHEEITANCK 
 
 "A telegraph for Jackson Wells," he said, handing it to 
 the young man who had been reading the scrap of paper. 
 
 There was a dead silence. Telegrams were expensive 
 rarities in those days, especially with the youthful Bohe- 
 mian miners of the Zip Coon Ledge. They were burning 
 with curiosity, yet a singular thing happened. Accustomed 
 as they had been to a life of brotherly familiarity and un- 
 ceremoniousness, this portentous message from the outside 
 world of civilization recalled their old formal politeness. 
 They looked steadily away from the receiver of the telegram, 
 and he on his part stammered an apologetic "Excuse me, 
 boys,'? as he broke the envelope. 
 
 There was another pause, which seemed to be intermi- 
 nable to the waiting partners. Then the voice of Wells, in 
 quite natural tones, said, "By gum! that 's funny! Read 
 that, Dexter, — read it out loud. " 
 
 Dexter Eice, the foreman, took the proffered telegram 
 from Wells's hand, and read as follows: — 
 
 Your uncle, Quincy Wells, died yesterday, leaving you 
 sole heir. Will attend you to-morrow for instructions. 
 Baker and Twiggs, 
 
 Attorneys, Sacramento. 
 
 The three miners' faces lightened and turned joyously to 
 Wells; but his face looked puzzled. 
 
 "May we congratulate you, Mr. Wells? " said Wyngate, 
 with aifected politeness ; " or possibly your uncle may have 
 been English, and a title goes with the ' prop, ' and you 
 may be Lord Wells, or Very Wells — at least. " 
 
 But here Jackson Wells's youthful face lost its perplex- 
 ity, and he began to laugh long and silently to himself. 
 This was protracted to such an extent that Dexter asserted 
 himself, — as foreman and senior partner. 
 
 "Look here. Jack! don't sit there cackling like a 
 chuckle -headed magpie, if you are the heir." 
 
A BUCKEYE HOLLOW INHERITANCE 195 
 
 "I — can't — help it, " gasped Jackson. " I am the heir 
 — but you see, boys, there ain't any property." 
 
 "What do you mean? Is all that a selU " demanded 
 Eice. 
 
 "Not much! Telegraph's too expensive for that sort 
 o' feelin'. You see, boys, I 've got an Uncle Quincy, 
 though I don't know him much, and he may be dead. But 
 his whole fixin's consisted of a claim the size of ours, and 
 played out long ago; a ramshackle lot o' sheds called a cot- 
 tage, and a kind of market garden of about three acres, 
 where he reared and sold vegetables. He was always poor, 
 and as for calling it ' property, ' and me the ' heir ' — good 
 Lord!" 
 
 " A miser, as sure as you 're born ! " said Wyngate, with 
 optimistic decision. "That's always the way. You'll 
 find every crack of that blessed old shed stuck full of green- 
 backs and certificates of deposit, and lots of gold dust and 
 coin buried all over that cow patch ! And of course no one 
 suspected it ! And of course he lived alone, and never let 
 any one get into his house — and nearly starved himself ! 
 Lord love you! There 's hundreds of such cases. The 
 world is full of 'em ! " 
 
 "That 's so," chimed in Pulaski Briggs, the fourth part- 
 ner, "and I tell you what, Jacksey, we '11 come over with 
 you the day you take possession, and just ' prospect ' the 
 whole blamed shanty, pigsties, and potato patch, for fun — 
 and won't charge you anything." 
 
 For a moment Jackson's face had really brightened under 
 the infection of enthusiasm, but it presently settled into 
 perplexity again. 
 
 "No ! You bet the boys around Buckeye Hollow would 
 have spotted anything like that long ago." 
 
 " Buckeye Hollow ! " repeated Eice and his partners. 
 
 "Yes! Buckeye Hollow, that 's the place; not twenty 
 miles from here, and a God-forsaken hole, as you know." 
 
196 A BUCKEYE HOLLOW INHERITANCE 
 
 A cloud had settled on Zip Coon Ledge. They knew of 
 Buckeye Hollow, and it was evident that no good had ever 
 yet come out of that Nazareth. 
 
 "There 's no use of talking now," said Eice conclusively. 
 "You '11 draw it all from that lawyer shark who 's coming 
 here to-morrow, and you can bet your life he would n't 
 have taken this trouble if there was n't suthin' in it. Any- 
 how we'll knock off work now and call it half a day, in 
 honor of our distinguished young friend's accession to his 
 baronial estates of Buckeye Hollow. We '11 just toddle 
 down to Tomlinsbn's at the crossroads, and have a nip and 
 a quiet game of old sledge at Jacksey's expense. I reckon 
 the estate 's good for that," he added, with severe gravity. 
 "And, speaking as a fa'r-minded man and the president of 
 this yer Company, if Jackson would occasionally take out 
 and air that telegraphic dispatch of his while we 're at 
 Tomlinson's, it might do something for that Company's 
 credit, with Tomlinson ! We 're wantin' some new blastin' 
 plant bad ! " 
 
 Oddly enough the telegram — accidentally shown at Tom- 
 linson's — produced a gratifying effect, and the Zip Coon 
 Ledge materially advanced in public estimation. With 
 this possible infusion of new capital into its resources, the 
 Company was beset by offers Of machinery and goods; and 
 it was deemed expedient by the sapient Bice, that to pre- 
 vent the dissemination of any more accurate information 
 regarding Jackson's property the next day, the lawyer 
 should be met at the stage office by one of the members, 
 and'convfeyed secretly past Tomlinson's to the Ledge. 
 
 "T 'd let you go," he said to Jackson, "only it won't do 
 
 for that d d skunk of a lawyer to think you 're too 
 
 anxious — sahe ? We want to rub into him that we are in 
 the habit out yer of havin' things left to us, and a fortin' 
 more or less, falling into us now and then, ain't nothin' 
 alongside of the Zip Coon claim. It won't hurt ye to keep 
 
A BUCKEYE HOLLOW INHEKITANCE 197 
 
 up a big bluff on that hand of yours. Nobody would dare 
 to ' call ' you. " 
 
 Indeed this idea was carried out with such elaboration 
 the next day that Mr. Twiggs, the attorney, was consider- 
 ably impressed both by the conduct of his guide, who (al- 
 though burning with curiosity) expressed absolute indiffer- 
 ence regarding Jackson Wells's inheritance, and the calmness 
 of Jackson himself, who had to be ostentatiously called from 
 his work on the Ledge to meet him, and who even gave him 
 an audience in the hearing of his partners. Forced into an 
 apologetic attitude, he expressed his regret at being obliged 
 to bother Mr. Wells with an affair of such secondary im- 
 portance, but he was obliged to carry out the formalities of 
 the law. 
 
 " What do you suppose the estate is worth ? " asked Wells 
 carelessly. 
 
 _ " I should not think that the house, the claim, and the 
 land would bring more than fifteen hundred dollars," re- 
 plied Twiggs submissively. 
 
 To the impecunious owners of Zip Coon Ledge it seemed 
 a large sum, but they did not show it. 
 
 "You see," continued Mr. Twiggs, "it 's really a case of 
 ' willing away ' property from its obvious or direct inheri- 
 tors, instead of a beneficial grant. I take it that you and 
 your uncle were not particularly intimate, — at least, so I 
 gathered when 1 made the will, — and his simple object was 
 to disinherit his only daughter, with whom he had had some 
 quarrel, and who had left him to live with his late wife's 
 brother, Mr. Morley Brown, who is quite wealthy and re- 
 siding in the same township. Perhaps you remember the 
 young lady 1 " 
 
 Jackson Wells had a dim recollection of this cousin, a 
 hateful, red-haired schoolgirl, and an equally unpleasant 
 memory of this other uncle, who was purse-proud and had 
 never taken any notice of him. He answered affirmatively. 
 
198 A BUCKEYE HOLLOW INHEKITANCE 
 
 "There may be some attempt to contest the will," con- 
 tinued Mr. Twiggs, "as the disinheriting of an only child 
 and a daughter offends the sentiment of the people and of 
 judges and jury, and the law makes such a will invalid, un- 
 less a reason is given. Fortunately your uncle has placed 
 his reasons on record. I have a copy of the will here, and 
 can show you the clause." He took it from his pocket, 
 and read as follows : " ' I exclude my daughter, Jocelinda 
 Wells, from any benefit or provision of this my will and 
 testament, for the reason that she has voluntarily aban- 
 doned her father's roof for the house of her mother's 
 brother, Morley Brown; has preferred the fleshpots of 
 Egypt to the virtuous frugalities of her own home, and has 
 discarded the humble friends of her youth, and the associ- 
 ates of her father, for the meretricious and slavish sympa- 
 thy of wealth and position. In lieu thereof and as compen- 
 sation therefor, I do hereby give and bequeath to her my 
 full and free permission to gratify her frequently expressed 
 wish of another guardian in place of myself, and to become 
 the adopted daughter of the said Morley Brown, with the 
 privilege of assuming the name of Brown as aforesaid.' 
 You see," he continued, "as the young lady's present posi- 
 tion is a better one than it would be if she were in her 
 father's house, and was evidently a compromise, the senti- 
 mental consideration of her being left homeless and penni- 
 less falls to the ground. However, as the inheritance is 
 small, and might be of little account to you, if you choose 
 to waive it, I dare say we may make some arrangement." 
 
 This was an utterly unexpected idea to the Zip Coon 
 Company, and Jackson Wells was for a moment silent. 
 But Dexter Eice was equal to the emergency, and turned 
 to the astonished lawyer with severe dignity. 
 
 "You'll excuse me for interferin', but, as the senior 
 partner of this yer Ledge, and Jackson Wells yer bein' a 
 most important member, what affects his usefulness on this 
 
A BUCKEYE HOLLOW INHERITANCE 199 
 
 claim affects us. And we propose to carry out this yer 
 will, with all its dips and spurs and angles ! " 
 
 As the surprised Twiggs turned from one to the other, 
 ilice continued, "Ez far as we kin understand this little 
 game, it 's the just punishment of a high-flying girl as 
 breaks her pore old father's heart, and the re-ward of a 
 young feller ez has bin to our knowledge ez devoted a 
 nephew as they make 'em. Time and time again, sittin' 
 around our camp fire at night, we 've heard Jacksey say, — 
 kinder to himself, and kinder to us, — ' Now I wonder 
 what 's gone o' old uncle Quincy; ' and he never sat down 
 to a square meal, or ever rose from a square game, hut 
 what he alius said, ' If old uncle Quince was only here 
 now, boys, I 'd die happy.' I leave it to you, gentlemen, 
 if that wasn't Jackson Wells's gait all the time? " 
 
 There was a prolonged murmur of assent, and an affect- 
 ing corroboration from Ned Wyngate of "That was him; 
 that was Jacksey all the time ! " 
 
 "Indeed, indeed," said the lawyer nervously. "I had 
 quite the idea that there was very little fondness " — 
 
 "Not on your side — not on your side," said Eice 
 quickly. "Uncle Quincy may not have anted up in this 
 matter o' feelin', nor seen his nephew's rise. You know 
 how it is yourself in these things — being a lawyer and a 
 fa'r-minded man — it 's all on one side, ginerally ! There 's 
 always one who loves and sacrifices, and all that, and 
 there 's always one who rakes in the pot! That 's the way 
 o' the world; and that's why," continued Eice, abandon- 
 ing his slightly philosophical attitude, and laying his hand 
 tenderly, and yet with a singularly significant grip, on 
 Wells's arm, "we say to him, ' Hang on to that will, and 
 uncle Quincy's memory.' And we hev to say it. "For 
 he 's that tender-hearted and keerless of money — having 
 his own share in this Ledge — that ef that girl came whim- 
 perin' to him he 'd let her take the ' prop ' and let the hull 
 
200 A BUCKEYE HOLLOW INHERITANCE 
 
 thing slide ! And then he 'd remember that he had re 
 warded that gal that broke the old man's heart, and that 
 would upset him again in his work. And there, you see, 
 is just where we come in! And we say, ' Hang on to that 
 will like grim death ! ' " 
 
 The lawyer looked curiously at Kice and his companions, 
 and then turned to Wells. "Nevertheless, I must look to 
 you for instructions," he said dryly. 
 
 But by this time Jackson Wells, although really dubious 
 about supplanting the orphan, had gathered the sense of his 
 partners, and said with a frank show of decision, "I think 
 I must stand by the will." 
 
 "Then I'll have it proved," said Twiggs rising. "In 
 the meantime, if there is any talk of contesting " — 
 
 "If there is, you might say," suggested Wyngate, who 
 felt he had not had a fair show in the little comedy, — "ye 
 might say to that old skeesicks of a wife's brother, if he 
 wants to nipple in, that there are four men on the Ledge 
 — and four revolvers ! We are gin'rally fa'r-minded, 
 peaceful men, but when an old man's heart is broken, and 
 his gray hairs brought down in sorrow to the grave, so to 
 speak, we 're bound to attend the funeral — sabe ? " 
 
 When Mr. Twiggs had departed again, accompanied by 
 a partner to guide him past the dangerous shoals of Tom- 
 linson's grocery, Rice clapped his hand on Wells's shoul- 
 der. " If it had n't been for me, sonny, that shark would 
 have landed you into some compromise with that red-haired 
 gal! I saw you weakenin', and then I chipped in. I may 
 have piled up the agony a little on your love for old Quince, 
 but if you are n't an ungrateful cub, that 's how you ought 
 to hev been feelin', anyhow! " 
 
 Nevertheless, the youthful Wells, although touched by 
 his elder partner's loyalty, and convinced 'of his own disin. 
 terestedness, felt a painful sense of lost chivalrous opportu- 
 nity. 
 
A BUCKEYE HOLLOW INHERITANCE 201 
 
 On mature consideration it was finally settled that Jack- 
 son Wells should make his preliminary examination of his 
 inheritance alone, as it might seem inconsistent with the 
 previous indifferent attitude of his partners if they accom- 
 panied him. But he was implored to yield to no blandish- 
 ments of the enemy, and to even make his visit a secret. 
 
 He went. The familiar flower-spiked trees which had 
 given their name to Buckeye Hollow had never yielded en- 
 tirely to improvements and the incursions of mining enter- 
 prise, and many of them had even survived the disused 
 ditches, the scarred flats, the discarded levels, ruined flumes, 
 and roofless cabins of the earlier occupation, so that when 
 Jackson Wells entered the wide, straggling street of Buck- 
 eye, that summer morning was filled with the radiance of 
 its blossoms and fragrant with their incense. His first 
 visit there, ten years ago, had been a purely perfunctory 
 and hasty one, yet he remembered the ostentatious hotel, 
 built in the " flush time " of its prosperity, and already in 
 a green premature decay; he recalled the Express Office 
 and Town Hall, also passing away in a kind of similar 
 green deliquescence; the little zinc church, now overgrown 
 with fern and brambles, and the two or three fine substan- 
 tial houses in the outskirts, which seemed to have sucked 
 the vitality of the little settlement. One of these — he 
 had been told — was the property of his rich and wicked 
 maternal uncle, the hated appropriator of his red-headed 
 cousin's affections. He recalled his brief visit to the de- 
 parted testator's claim and market garden, and his by no 
 means favorable impression of the lonely, crabbed old man, 
 as well as his relief that his objectionable cousin, whom he 
 had not seen since he was a boy, was then absent at the 
 rival uncle's. He made his way across the road to a sunny 
 slope where the market garden of three acres seemed to roll 
 like a river of green rapids to a little "run" or brook, 
 which, even in the dry season, showed a trickling rill 
 
202 A BUCKEYE HOLLOW INHEKITANCE 
 
 But here he was struck by a singular circumstance. The 
 garden rested in a rich, alluvial soil, and under the quick- 
 ening Californian sky had developed far beyond the ability 
 of its late cultivator to restrain or keep it in order. Every, 
 thing had grown luxuriantly, and in monstrous size and 
 profusion. The garden had even trespassed its bounds, 
 and impinged upon the open road, the deserted claims, and 
 the ruins of the past. Stimulated by the little cultivation 
 Quincy Wells had found time to give it, it had leaped its 
 three acres and rioted through the Hollow. There were 
 scarlet runners crossing the abandoned sluices, peas climbing 
 the court-house wall, strawberries matting the trail, while 
 the seeds and pollen of its few homely Eastern flowers had 
 been blown far and wide through the woods. By a grim 
 satire. Nature seemed to have been the only thing that still 
 prospered in that settlement of man. 
 
 The cabin itself, built of unpainted boards, consisted of 
 a sitting-room, dining-room, kitchen, and two bedrooms, all 
 plainly furnished, although one of the bedrooms was better 
 ordered, and displayed certain signs of. feminine decoration, 
 which made Jackson believe it had been his cousin's room. 
 Luckily, the slight, temporary structure bore no deep traces 
 of its previous occupancy to disturb him with its memories, 
 and for the same reason it gained in cleanliness and fresh- 
 ness. The dry, desiccating summer wind that blew through 
 it had carried away both the odors and the sense of domes- 
 ticity ; even the adobe hearth had no fireside tales to tell, 
 — its very ashes had been scattered by the winds ; and the 
 gravestone of its dead owner on the hill was no more fla- 
 vorless of his personality than was this plain house in which 
 he had lived and died. The excessive vegetation produced 
 by the stirred-up soil had covered and hidden the empty 
 tin cans, broken boxes, and fragments of clothing which 
 usually heaped and littered the tent-pegs of the pioneer. 
 Nature's own profusion had thrust them into obscurity. 
 
A BUCKEYE HOLLOW INHERITANCE 203 
 
 Jackson Wells smiled as he recalled his sanguine partner's 
 idea of a treasure-trove concealed and stuffed in the crev- 
 ices of this tenement, already so palpably picked clean by 
 those wholesome scavengers of California, the dry air and. 
 burning sun. Yet he was not displeased at this oblitera- 
 tion of a previous tenancy ; there was the better chance for 
 him to originate something. He whistled hopefully as he 
 lounged, with his hands in his pockets, towards the only 
 fence and gate that gave upon the road. Something stuck 
 up on the gate-post attracted his attention. It was a sheet 
 of paper bearing the inscription in a large hand: "Notice 
 to trespassers. Look out for the Orphan Eobber ! " A 
 plain signboard in faded black letters on the gate, which 
 had borne the legend: "Quincy Wells, Dealer in Fruit and 
 Vegetables," had been rudely altered in chalk to read: 
 "Jackson Wells, Double Dealer in Wills and Codicils," 
 and the intimation " Bouquets sold here " had been changed 
 to "Bequests stole here." For an instant the simple- 
 minded Jackson failed to discover any significance of this 
 outrage, which seemed to him to be merely the wanton mis- 
 chief of a schoolboy. But a sudden recollection of the 
 lawyer's caution sent the blood to his cheeks and kindled 
 his indignation. He tore down the paper and rubbed out 
 the chalk interpolation — and then laughed at his own 
 anger. Nevertheless, he would not have liked his belliger- 
 ent partners to see it. 
 
 A little curious to know the extent of this feeling, he 
 entered one of the shops, and by one or two questions 
 which judiciously betrayed his ownership of the property, 
 he elicited only a tradesman's interest in a possible future 
 customer, and the ordinary curiosity about a stranger. The 
 barkeeper of the hotel was civil, but brief and gloomy. 
 He had heard the property was " willed away " on account 
 of some family quarrel which "war n't none of his." Mr. 
 Wells would find Buckeye Hollow a mighty dull place after 
 
204 A BUCKEYE HOLLOW INHERITANCE 
 
 the mines. It was played out, sucked dry by two or three 
 hig mine owners who were trying to "freeze out '' the other 
 settlers, so as they might get the place to themselves and 
 "boom it." Brown, who had the big house over the hill, 
 was the head devil of the gang! Wells felt his indigna- 
 tion kindle anew. And this girl that he had ousted was 
 Brown's friend. Was it possible that she was a party to 
 Brown's designs to get this three acres with the other lands? 
 If so, his long-suffering uncle was only just in his revenge. 
 
 He put all this diffidently before his partners on his re- 
 turn, and was a little startled at their adopting it with san- 
 guine ferocity. They hoped that he would put an end to 
 his thoughts of backing out of it. Such a course now would 
 be dishonorable to his uncle's memory. It was clearly his 
 duty to resist these blasted satraps of capitalists; he was 
 providentially selected for the purpose — a village Hamp- 
 den to withstand the tyrant. " And I reckon that shark of 
 a lawyer knew all about it when he was gettin' off that 
 ' purp stuff ' about people's sympathies with the girl," said 
 Rice belligerently. " Contest the will, would he ? Why, 
 if we caught that Brown with a finger in the pie we 'd just 
 whip up the boys on this Ledge and lynch him. You hang 
 on to that three acres and the garden patch of your fore- 
 fathers, sonny, and we '11 see you through ! " 
 
 Nevertheless it was with some misgivings that Wells 
 consented that his three partners should actually accompany 
 him and see him put in peaceable possession of his inheri- 
 tance. His instinct told him that there would be no con- 
 test of the will, and still less any opposition on the part of 
 the objectionable relative. Brown. When the wagon v/hich 
 contained his personal effects and the few articles of furni- 
 ture necessary for his occupancy of the cabin arrived, the 
 exaggerated swagger which his companions had put on in 
 bheir passage through the settlement gave way to a pastoral 
 indolence, equally half real, half affected. Lying on their 
 
A BUCKEYE HOLLOW INHERITANCE 296 
 
 backs under a buckeye, they permitted Rice to voice the 
 general sentiment. "There 's a suthin' soothin' and dreamy 
 in this kind o' life, Jacksey, and we '11 make a point of 
 comin' here for a couple of days every two weeks to lend 
 you a hand; it will be a mighty good change from our nig- 
 ger work on the claim." 
 
 In spite of this assurance, and the fact that they had 
 voluntarily come to help him put the place in order, they 
 did very little beyond lending a cheering expression of un- 
 qualified praise and unstinted advice. At the end of four 
 hours' weeding and trimming the boundaries of the garden, 
 they unanimously gave their opinion that it would be more 
 systematic for him to employ Chinese labor at once. 
 
 "You see," said Ned Wyngate, "the Chinese naturally 
 take to this kind o' business. Why, you can't take up a 
 china plate or saucer but you see 'em pictured there work- 
 ing at jobs like this, and they kin live on green things ancl 
 rice that cost nothin', and 'chickens. You '11 keep chick- 
 ens, of course." 
 
 Jackson thought that his hands would be full enough 
 with the garden, but he meekly assented. 
 
 "I'll get a pair — you only want tv,'o to begin with," 
 continued Wyngate cheerfully, "and in a month or two 
 you 've got all you want, and eggs enough for market. On 
 second thoughts, I don't know whether you hadn't better 
 begin with eggs first. That is, you borry some eggs from 
 one man and a hen from another. Then you set 'em, and 
 when the chickens are hatched out you just return the hen 
 to the second man, and the eggs, when your chickens begin 
 to lay, to the first man, and you 've got your chickens for 
 nothing — and there you are. " 
 
 This ingenious proposition, which was delivered on the 
 last slope of the domain, where the partners were lying 
 exhausted from their work, was broken in upon by the 
 appearance of a small boy, barefooted, sunburnt, and tow^ 
 
206 A BUCKEYE HOLLOW INHEEITANCE 
 
 headed, who, after a moment's hurried scrutiny of the 
 group, threw a letter with unerring precision into the lap 
 of Jackson Wells, and then fled precipitately. Jackson in- 
 stinctively suspected he was connected with the outrage on 
 his fence and gate-post, but as he had avoided telling his 
 partners of the incident, fearing to increase their belliger- 
 ent attitude, he felt now an awkward consciousness mingled 
 with his indignation as he broke the seal and read as fol- 
 lows : — 
 
 SiK, — This is to inform you that although you have got 
 hold of the property by underhanded and sneaking ways, 
 you ain't no right to touch or lay your vile hands on the 
 Cherokee Eose alongside the house, nor on the Giant of 
 Battles, nor on the Maiden's Pride by the gate — the same 
 being the property of Miss Jocelinda Wells, and planted by 
 her, under the penalty of the Law. And if you, or any of 
 your gang of ruffians, touches it or them, or any thereof, 
 or don't deliver it up when called for in good order, you 
 will be persecuted by them. 
 
 Avenger. 
 
 It is to be feared that Jackson would have suppresssd 
 this also, but the keen eyes of his partners, excited by the 
 abruptness of the messenger, were upon him. He smiled 
 feebly, and laid the letter before them. But he was un- 
 prepared for their exaggerated indignation, and with diffi- 
 culty restrained them from dashing oif in the direction of 
 the vanished herald. " And what could you do 1 " he said. 
 "The boy's only a messenger." 
 
 "I '11 get at that d d skunk Brown, who 's back of 
 
 him," said Dexter Rice. 
 
 "And what then?" persisted Jackson, with a certain 
 show of independence. "If this stuff belongs to the girl, 
 I 'm not certain I shan't give them up without any fusa 
 
A BUCKEYE HOLLOW INHERITANCE 20< 
 
 Lord ! I want nothing but what the old man left me — and 
 certainly nothing of hers." 
 
 Here Ned Wyngate was heard to murmur that Jackson 
 was one of those men who would lie down and let coyotes 
 crawl over him if they first presented a girl's visiting card, 
 but he was stopped by Eice demanding paper and pencil. 
 The former being torn from a memorandum book, and a 
 stub of the latter produced from another pocket, he wrote 
 as follows : — 
 
 SiK, — In reply to the hogwash you have kindly exuded 
 in your letter of to-day, I have to inform you that you can 
 have what you ask for Miss "Wells, and perhaps a trifle on 
 your own account, by calling this afternoon on — Yours 
 truly — 
 
 "Now sign it," continued Eice, handing him the pencil. 
 
 "But this will look as if we were angry and wanted to 
 keep the plants," protested Wells. 
 
 "Never you mind, sonny, but sign! Leave the rest to 
 your partners, and when you lay your head on your pillow 
 to-night return thanks to an overruling Providence for pro- 
 viding you with the right gang of rufiians to look after 
 you ! " 
 
 Wells signed reluctantly, and Wyngate ofi'ered to find a 
 Chinaman in the gulch who would take the missive. " And 
 being a Chinaman, Brown can do any cussin' or buck talk 
 through him ! " he added. 
 
 The afternoon wore on; the tall Douglas pines near the 
 water pools wheeled their long shadows round and halfway 
 up the slope, and the sun began to peer into the faces of 
 the reclining men. Subtle odors of mint and southern- 
 wood, stragglers from the garden, bruised by their limbs, 
 replaced the fumes of their smoked-out pipes, and the ham- 
 mers of the woodpeckers were busy in the grove as they lay 
 
208 1^ BUCKEYE HOLLOW INHERITANCE 
 
 lazily nibbling the fragrant leaves like peaceful ruminanta 
 Then came the sound of approaching wheels along the in- 
 visible highway beyond the buckeyes, and then a halt and 
 silence. Eice rose slowly, bright pin points in the pupils 
 of his gray eyes. 
 
 "Bringin' a wagon with him to tote the hull shanty 
 away," suggested Wyngate. 
 
 "Or fetched his own ambulance," said Briggs. 
 
 Nevertheless, after a pause, the wheels presently rolled 
 away again. 
 
 "We 'd better go and meet him at the gate," said Kice, 
 hitching his revolver holster nearer his hip. " That wagon 
 stopped long enough to put down three or four men." 
 
 They walked leisurely but silently to the gate. It is 
 probable that none of them believed in a serious collision, 
 but now the prospect had enough possibility in it to quicken 
 their pulses. They reached the gate. But it was stiU 
 closed; the road beyond it empty. 
 
 "Mebbe they've sneaked round to the cabin," said 
 Briggs, "and are holdin' it inside." 
 
 They were turning quickly in that direction, when Wyn- 
 gate said, " Hush ! — some one 's there in the brush under 
 the buckeyes." 
 
 They listened ; there was a faint rustling in the shadows. 
 
 "Come out o' that, Brown — into the open. Don't be 
 shy, " called out Rice in cheerful irony. " We 're waitin' 
 for ye." 
 
 But Briggs, who was nearest the wood, here suddenly 
 uttered an exclamation, "B'gosh!" and fell back, open- 
 mouthed, upon his companions. They too, in another mo- 
 ment, broke into a feeble laugh, and lapsed against each 
 other in sheepish silence. For a very pretty girl, hand- 
 somely dressed, swept out of the wood and advanced to- 
 wards them. 
 
 Even at any time she would have been an enchanting 
 
A BUCKEYE HOLLOW INHERITANCE 209 
 
 vision to these men, but in the glow of exercise and sparkle 
 of anger she was bewildering. Her wonderful hair, the 
 color of freshly hewn redwood, had escaped from her hat 
 in her passage through the underbrush, and even as she 
 swept down upon them in her majesty she was jabbing a 
 hairpin into it with a dexterous feminine hand. 
 
 The three partners turned quite the color of her hair; 
 Jackson Wells alone remained white and rigid. She came 
 on, her very short upper lip showing her white teeth with 
 her panting breath. 
 
 Rice was first to speak. " I beg — your pardon, Miss — 
 I thought it was Brown — you know, " he stammered. 
 
 But she only turned a blighting brown eye on the cul- 
 prit, curled her short lip till it almost vanished in her 
 scornful nostrils, drew her skirt aside with a jerk, and con- 
 tinued her way straight to Jackson Wells, where she halted. 
 
 "We did not know you were — here alone," he said 
 apologetically. 
 
 "Thought I was afraid to come alone, didn't you? 
 Well, you see, I 'm not. There! " She made another dive 
 at her hat and hair, and brought the hat down wickedly 
 over her eyebrows. "Gimme my plants." 
 
 Jackson had been astonished. He would have scarcely 
 recognized in this willful beauty the red-haired girl whom 
 he had boyishly hated, and with whom he had often quar- 
 reled. But there was a recollection — and with that recol- 
 lection came an instinct of habit. He looked her squarely 
 in the face, and, to the horror of his partners, said, "Say 
 please ! " 
 
 They had expected to see him fall, smitten with the hair- 
 pin ! But she only stopped, and then in bitter irony said, 
 " Please, Mr. Jackson Wells. " 
 
 "I haven't dug them up yet — and it would serve you 
 just right if I made you get them for yourself. But per- 
 haps my friends here might help you — if you were civil. " 
 
210 A BUCKEYE HOLLOW INHERITANCE 
 
 The three partners seized spades and hoes and rushed 
 forward eagerly. "Only show us what you want," they 
 said in one voice. The young girl stared at them, and at 
 Jackson. Then, with swift determination, she turned her 
 back scornfully upon him, and with a dazzling smile which 
 reduced the three men to absolute idiocy, said to the others, 
 "I '11 show j/oii," and marched away to the cabin. 
 
 "Ye mustn't mind Jacksey," said Eice, sycophantically 
 edging to her side, "he 's so cut up with losin' your father 
 that he loved like a son, he is n't himself, and don't seem 
 to know whether to ante up or pass out. And as for your- 
 self, Miss — why — What was it he was sayin' only just 
 as the young lady came 1 " he added, turning abruptly to 
 Wyngate. 
 
 "Everything that cousin Josey planted with her own 
 hands must be took up carefully and sent back — even 
 though it 's killin' me to part with it," quoted Wyngate 
 unblushingly, as he slouched along on the other side. 
 
 Miss Wells's eyes glared at them, though her mouth still 
 smiled ravishingly. "I 'm sure I 'm troubling you." 
 
 In a few moments the plants were dug up and carefully 
 laid together; indeed, the servile Briggs had added a few 
 that she had not indicated. 
 
 "Would you mind bringing them as far as the buggy 
 that 'a coming down the hill ? " she said, pointing to a buggy 
 driven by a small hoy which was slowly approaching the 
 gate. The men tenderly lifted the iiprooted plants, and 
 proceeded solemnly. Miss Wells bringing up the rear, 
 towards the gate, where Jackson Wells was still surlily 
 lounging. 
 
 They passed out first. Miss Wells lingered for an in- 
 stant, and then advancing her beautiful but audacious face 
 within an inch of Jackson's, hissed out, "Make-believe! 
 and hypocrite ! " 
 
 " Cross-patch and sauce-box ! " returned Jackson readily, 
 
A BUCKEYE HOLLOW INHEKITANCE 211 
 
 still under the malign influence of his hoyisb past, as she 
 flounced away. 
 
 Presently he heard the huggy rattle away with his per- 
 secutor. But his partners still lingered on the road in ear- 
 nest conversation, and when they did return it, was with a 
 singular awkwardness and embarrassment, which he natu- 
 rally put down to a guilty consciousness of their foolish 
 weakness in succumbing to the girl's demands. 
 
 But he was a little surprised when Dexter Eice ap- 
 proached him gloomily. "Of course," he began, "it ain't 
 no call of ours to interfere in family affairs, and you 've a 
 right to keep 'em to yourself, but if you 'd been fair and 
 square and above-board in what you got off on us about 
 this per — " 
 
 " What do you mean 1 " demanded the astonished Wells. 
 
 "Well — callin' her a ' red-haired gal. ' " 
 
 " Well — she is a red-haired girl ! " said Wells impa- 
 tiently. 
 
 "A man," continued Eice pityingly, "that is so preju- 
 diced as to apply such language to a beautiful orphan — 
 torn with grief at the loss of a beloved but d d miscon- 
 struing parent — merely because she begs a few vegetables 
 out of his potato patch, ain't to be reasoned with. But 
 when you come to look at this thing by and large, and as 
 a fa'r-minded man, sonny, you '11 agree with us that the 
 sooner you make terms with her the better. Considerin' 
 your interest, Jacksey, — let alone the claims of humanity, 
 — vve 've concluded to withdraw from here until this thing 
 is settled. She 's. sort o' mixed us up with your feelings 
 agin her, and naturally supposed we object to the color of 
 her hair! and bein' a penniless orphan, rejected by her re- 
 lations " — 
 
 " What stuff are you talking 1 " burst in Jackson. 
 "Why, you saw she treated you better than she did me." 
 
 " Steady ! There you go with that temper of yours that 
 
212 A BUCKEYE HOLLOW INHERITANCE 
 
 frightened the girl! Of course she could see that we were 
 fa'r-minded men, accustomed to the ways of society, and not 
 upset by the visit of a lady, or the givin' up of a few green 
 sticks! But let that slide! We 're goin' back home to- 
 night, sonny, and when you 've thought this thing over and 
 are straightened up and get your right bearin's, we '11 stand 
 by you as before. We '11 put a man on to do your work 
 on the Ledge, so ye needn't worry about that." 
 
 They were quite firm in this decision, — however absurd 
 or obscure their conclusions, — and Jackson, after his first 
 flash of indignation, felt a certain relief in their departure. 
 But strangely enough, while he had hesitated about keeping 
 the property when they were violently in favor of it, he now 
 felt he was right in retaining it against their advice to 
 compromise. The sentimental idea had vanished, with his 
 recognition of his hateful cousin in the role of the injured 
 orphan. And for the same odd reason her prettiness only 
 increased his resentment. He was not deceived, — it was 
 the same capricious, willful, red-haired girl. 
 
 The next day he set himself to work with that dogged 
 steadiness that belonged to his simple nature, and which 
 had endeared him to his partners. He set half a dozen 
 Chinamen to work, and followed, although apparently di- 
 recting, their methods. The great difficulty was to restrain 
 and control the excessive vegetation, and he matched the 
 small economies of the Chinese against the opulence of the 
 Calif ornian soil. The "garden patch " prospered ; the neigh- 
 bors spoke well of it and of him. But Jackson knew that 
 this fierce harvest of early spring was to be followed by the 
 sterility of the dr}' season, and that irrigation could alone 
 make his work profitable in the end. He brought a pump 
 to force the water from the little stream at the foot of 
 the slope to the top, and allowed it to flow back through 
 parallel trenches. Again Buckeye applauded! Only the 
 gloomy barkeeper shook his head. " The moment you get 
 
A BUCKT!YE HOLLOW INHERITANCE 213 
 
 that thing to pay, Mr. Wells, you '11 find the hand of 
 Brown, somewhere, getting ready to squeeze it dry ! " 
 
 But Jackson Wells did not trouble himself about Brown, 
 ■whom he scarcely knew. Once indeed, while trenching 
 the slope, he was conscious that he was watched by two 
 men from the opposite bank ; but they were apparently sat- 
 isfied by their scrutiny, and turned away. Still less did 
 he concern himself with the movements of his cousin, who 
 once or twice passed him superciliously in her buggy on the 
 road. Again, she met him as one of a cavalcade of riders, 
 mounted on a handsome but ill-tempered mustang, which 
 she was managing with an ill-temper and grace equal to the 
 brute's, to the alternate delight and terror of her cavalier. 
 He could see that she had been petted and spoiled by her 
 new guardian and his friends far beyond his conception. 
 But why she should grudge him the little garden and the 
 pastoral life for which she was so unsuited, puzzled him 
 greatly. 
 
 One afternoon he was working near the road, when he 
 was startled by an outcry from his Chinese laborers, their 
 rapid dispersal from the strawberry beds where they were 
 working, the splintering crash of his fence rails, and a com- 
 motion among the buckeyes. Furious at what seemed to 
 him one of the usual wanton attacks upon coolie labor, he 
 seized his pick and ran to their assistance. But he was 
 surprised to find Jocelinda's mustang caught by the saddle 
 and struggling between two trees, and its unfortunate mis- 
 tress lying upon the strawberry bed. Shocked but cool- 
 headed, Jackson released the horse first, who was lashing 
 out and destroying everything within his reach, and then 
 turned to his cousin. But she had already lifted herself to 
 her elbow, and with a trickle of blood and mud on one fair 
 cheek was surveying him scornfully under her tumbled hair 
 and hanging hat. 
 
 "You don't suppose I was trespassing on your wretched 
 
214 A BUCKEYE HOLLOW INHERITANCE 
 
 patch again, do you 1 " she said in a voice she was trying 
 to keep from hreaking. "It was that brute — who bolted." 
 
 "I don't suppose you were bullying me this time," he 
 said, " but you were your horse — or it would n't have hap- 
 pened. Are you hurt 1 " 
 
 She tried to move; he offered her his hand, but she 
 shied from it and struggled to her feet. She took a step 
 forward — but limped. 
 
 "If you don't want my arm, let me call a Chinaman," 
 he suggested. 
 
 She glared at him. " If you do I '11 scream ! " she said 
 in a low voice, and he knew she would. But at the same 
 moment her face whitened, at which he slipped his arm 
 under hers in a dexterous, business-like way, so as to sup- 
 port her weight. Then her hat got askew, and down came 
 a long braid over his shoulder. He remembered it of old, 
 only it was darker than then and two or three feet longer. 
 
 "If you could manage to limp as far as the gate and sit 
 down on the bank, I 'd get your horse for you," he said. 
 "I hitched it to a sapling." 
 
 " I saw you did — before you even offered to help me, " 
 she said scornfully. 
 
 "The horse would have got away — you couldn't." 
 
 " If you only knew how I hated you ! " she said, with a 
 white face, but a trembling lip. 
 
 "I don't see how that would make things any better," he 
 said. "Better wipe your face; it's scratched and muddy, 
 and you 've been rubbing your nose in my strawberry bed." 
 
 She snatched his proffered handkerchief suddenly, ap- 
 plied it to her face, and said, " I suppose it looks dread- 
 ful." 
 
 "Like a pig's," he returned cheerfully. 
 
 She walked a little more firmly after this, until they 
 reached the gate. He seated her on the bank, and went 
 back for the mustang. That beautiful brute, astounded 
 
A BUCKEYE HOLLOW INHERITANCE 2l5 
 
 and sore from its contact with the top rail and hrambleSj 
 was cowed and subdued as he led it back. 
 
 She had finished wiping her face, and was hurriedly dis- 
 entangling two stinging tears from her long lashes, before 
 she threw back his handkerchief. Her sprained ankle 
 obliged him to lift her into the saddle and adjust her little 
 shoe in the stirrup. He remembered when it was stiU 
 smaller. "You used to ride astride," he said, a flood of 
 recollection coming over him, " and it 's much safer with 
 your temper and that brute." 
 
 " And you, " she said in a lower voice, " used to be " — 
 But the rest of her sentence was lost in the switch of the 
 whip and the jump of her horse, but he thought the word 
 was "kinder." 
 
 Perhaps this was why, after he watched her canter away, 
 he went back to the garden, and from the bruised and tram- 
 pled strawberry bed gathered a small basket of the finest 
 ■fruit, covered them with leaves, added a paper with the 
 highly ingenious witticism, "Picked up with you," and 
 sent them to her by one of the Chinamen. Her forcible 
 entry moved Li Sing, his foreman, also chief laundryman 
 to the settlement, to reminiscences : — 
 
 "Me heap knew Missy Wells and ole man, who go dead. 
 Ole man allee time make chin music to Missy. Allee time 
 jaw jaw — allee time make lows — allee time cuttee up 
 Missy ! Plenty time lockee up Missy top-side house ; no can 
 walkee — no can talkee — no hab got — how can get 1 — 
 must washee washee allee same Chinaman. Ole man go 
 dead — Missy all lightee now. Plenty fun. Plenty stay 
 in Blown's big house, top-side hill; Blown first-chop man." 
 Had he inquired he might have found this pagan testi- 
 mony, for once, corroborated by the Christian neighbors. 
 
 But another incident drove all this from his mind. The 
 little stream — the life blood of his garden — ran dry ! In- 
 quiry showed that it had been diverted two miles away into 
 
216 A BUCKEYE HOLLOW INHERITANCE 
 
 Brown's ditch! Wells's indignant protest elicited a formal 
 reply from Brown, stating that he owned the adjacent min- 
 ing claims, and reminding him that mining rights to water 
 took precedence of the agricultural claim, but offering, by 
 way of compensation, to purchase the land thus made use- 
 less and sterile. Jackson suddenly recalled the prophecy 
 of the gloomy barkeeper. The end had come ! But what 
 could the scheming capitalist want with the land, equaUj- 
 useless — as his uncle had proved — for mining purposes ? 
 Could it be sheer malignity, incited by his vengeful cousin ? 
 But here he paused, rejecting the idea as quickly as it 
 came. No ! his partners were right ! He was a trespasser 
 on his cousin's heritage — there was no luck in it — he was 
 wrong, and this was his punishment ! Instead of yielding 
 gracefully as he might, he must back down now, and she 
 would never know his first real feelings. Even now he 
 would make over the property to her as a free gift. But 
 his partners had advanced him money from their scanty 
 means to plant and work it. He believed that an appeal 
 to their feelings would persuade them to forego even that, 
 but he shrank even more from confessing his defeat to them 
 than to her. 
 
 He had little heart in his labors that day, and dismissed 
 the Chinamen early. He again examined his uncle's old 
 mining claim on the top of the slope, but was satisfied that 
 it had been a hopeless enterprise and wisely abandoned. It 
 was sunset when he stood under the buckeyes, gloomily 
 looking at the glow fade out of the west, as it had out of 
 his boyish hopes. He had grown to like the place. It 
 was the hour, too, when the few flowers he had cultivated 
 gave back their pleasant odors, as it grateful for his care. 
 And then he heard his name called. 
 
 It was his cousin, standing a few yards from him in evi- 
 dent hesitation. She was quite pale, and for a moment he 
 thought she was still suffering from her fall, until he saw 
 
A BUCKEYE HOLLOW INHERITANCE 217 
 
 in her nervous, half-embarrassed manner that it had no 
 physical cause. Her old audacity and anger seemed gone, 
 yet there was a queer determination in her pretty brows. 
 
 "Good-evening," he said. 
 
 She did not return his greeting, but pulling uneasily at 
 her glove, said hesitatingly, " Uncle has asked you to sell 
 him this land?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Well — don't! " she burst out abruptly. 
 
 He stared at her. 
 
 "Oh, I'm not trying to keep you here," she went on, 
 flashing back into her old temper; "so you needn't stare 
 like that. I say ' Don't, ' because it ain't right, it ain't fair." 
 
 " Why, he 's left me no alternative, " he said. 
 
 "That's just it — that's why it's mean and low. I 
 don't care if he is our uncle." 
 
 Jackson was bewildered and shocked. 
 
 "I know it's horrid to say it,", she said, with a white 
 lace; "but it's horrider to keep it in! Oh, Jack! when 
 we were little, and used to fight and quarrel, I never was 
 mean — was I ? I never was underhanded — was I ? I 
 never lied — did I? And I can't lie now. Jack," she 
 looked hurriedly around her, " he wants to get hold of the 
 land — he thinks there 's gold in the slope and bank by the 
 stream. He says dad was a fool to have located his claim 
 60 high up. Jack ! did you ever prospect the bank ? " 
 
 A dawning of intelligence came upon Jackson. "No," 
 he said; "but," he added bitterly, "what 's the use? He 
 owns the water now, — I couldn't work it." 
 
 "But, Jack, if you found the color, this would be a 
 mining claim! You could claim the water right; and, as 
 it 's your land, your claim would be first! " 
 
 Jackson was startled. "Yes, ifl found the color." 
 
 " You would find it. " 
 "Would?" 
 
218 A BUCKEYE HOLLOW INHERITANCE 
 
 " Yes ! I did — on the sly ! Yesterday morning on 
 your slope by the stream, when no one was up ! I washed 
 a panful and got that." She took a piece of tissue paper 
 from her pocket, opened it, and shook into her little palm 
 three tiny pin points of gold. 
 
 "And that was your own idea, Jossy 1 " 
 
 " Yes ! " 
 
 " Your very own ? " 
 
 "Honest Inj in!" 
 
 " Wish you may die 1 " 
 
 "True, OKing!" 
 
 He opened his arms, and they mutually embraced. Then 
 they separated, taking hold of each other's hands solemnly, 
 and falling back until they were at arm's length. Then 
 they slowly extended their arms sideways at full length, 
 until this action naturally brought their faces and lips to- 
 gether. They did this with the utmost gravity three times, 
 and then embraced again, rocking on pivoted feet like a 
 metronome. Alas ! it was no momentary inspiration. The 
 most casual and indifferent observer could see that it was 
 the result of long previous practice and shameless experience. 
 And as such — it was a revelation and an explanation. 
 
 "I always suspected that Jackson was playin' us about 
 that red-haired cousin," said Rice two weeks later; "but I 
 can't swallow that purp stuff about her puttin' him up to 
 that dodge about a new gold discovery on a fresh claim, 
 just to knock out Brown. No, sir. He found that gold in 
 openin' these irrigatin' trenches, — the usual nigger luck, 
 findin' what you 're not lookin' arter." 
 
 "Well, we can't complain, for he 's offered to work it on 
 shares with us," said Briggs. 
 
 "Yes — until he 's ready to take in another partner." 
 
 " Not — Brown 1 " said his horrified companions. 
 
 "No! — but Brown's adopted daughter, — that red« 
 haired cousin ! " 
 
MISS PEGGY'S PEOTEGES 
 
 The string of Peggy's sunbonnet had beooms untied — 
 so had her right shoe. These were not unusual accidents 
 to a country girl of ten, but as both of her hands were full 
 she felt obliged to put down what she was carrying. This 
 was further complicated by the nature of her burden — a 
 half-fledged shrike and a baby gopher — picked up in her 
 walk. It was impossible to wrap them both in her apron 
 without serious peril to one or the other; she could not 
 put either down without the chance of its escaping. "It 's 
 like that dreadful riddle of the ferryman who had to take 
 the wolf and the sheep in his boat," said Peggy to herself, 
 "though I don't believe anybody was ever so silly as to 
 want to take a wolf across the river." 
 
 But, looking up, she beheld the approach of Sam Bedell, 
 a six-foot tuhnelman of the "Blue Cement Lead," and, 
 hailing' him, begged him to hold one of her captives. The 
 giant, loathing the little mouse-like ball of fur, chose the 
 shrike. "Hold him by the feet, for he bites awful," said 
 Peggy, as the bird regarded Sam with the diabolically in- 
 tense frown of his species. Then, dropping the gopher 
 unconcernedly in her pocket, she proceeded to rearrange her 
 toilet. The tunnelman waited patiently until Peggy had 
 secured the nankeen sunbonnet around her fresh but freck- 
 led cheeks, and, with a reckless display of yellow flannel 
 petticoat and stockings like peppermint sticks, had double- 
 knotted her shoestrings viciously, when he ventured to 
 speak. 
 
 "Same old game, Peggy? Thought you'd got rather 
 
220 MISS PEGGY'S PROTEGES 
 
 discouraged with your ' tappy family, ' arter that new owl 
 o' yours had gathered 'em in." 
 
 Peggy's cheek flushed slightly at this ungracious allusion 
 to a former collection of hers, which had totally disap- 
 peared one evening after the introduction of a new member 
 in the shape of a singularly venerable and peaceful-looking 
 horned owi. 
 
 "I could have tamed him, too," said Peggy indignantly, 
 " if 'Ned Myers, who gave him to me, had n't been training 
 him to ketch things, and never let on anything about it to 
 me. He was a reg'lar game owl! " 
 
 " And wot are ye goin' to do with the Colonel here 1 " 
 said Sam, indicating under that gallant title the infant 
 shrike, who, with his claws deeply imbedded in Sam's fin- 
 ger, was squatting like a malignant hunchback, and resist- 
 ing his transfer to Peggy. "Won't he make it rather 
 lively for the others? He looks pow'ful discontented for 
 one so young." 
 
 "That's his nater," said Peggy promptly. "Jess wait 
 till I tame him. Ef he 'd been left along o' his folks, 
 he'd grow up like 'em. He's a 'butcher bird' — wot 
 they call a ' nine-killer ' — kills nine birds a day ! Yes ! 
 True ez you live ! Sticks 'em up on thorns outside his 
 nest, jest like a butcher's shop, till he gets hungry. I 've 
 seen 'em! " 
 
 " And how do you kalkilate to tame him ? " asked Sam. 
 
 "By being good to him and lovin' him," said Peggy, 
 stroking the head of the bird with infinite gentleness. 
 
 "That means yow 've got to do all the butchering for 
 him ? " said the cynical Sam. 
 
 Peggy shook her head, disdaining a verbal reply. 
 
 "Ye can't bring him up on sugar and crackers, like a 
 Polly," persisted Sam. 
 
 "Ye ken do anythin' with critters, if you ain't afeerd of 
 'em and love 'em," said Peggy shyly. 
 
MISS PEGGY'S PROTEGES 221 
 
 The tall tunnelman, looking down into the depths of 
 Peggy's sunbonnet, saw something in the round blue eyes 
 and grave little mouth that made him think so too. But 
 here Peggy's serious little face took a shade of darker con- 
 cern as her arm went down deeper into her pocket, and her 
 eyes got rounder. 
 
 " It 's — it 's — burrered out ! " she said breathlessly. 
 
 The giant leaped briskly to one side. "Hoi' on," said 
 Peggy abstractedly. With infinite gravity she followed, 
 with her fingers, a seam of her skirt down to the hem, 
 popped them quickly under it, and produced, with a sigh 
 of relief, the missing gopher. 
 
 "You '11 do," said Sam, in fearful admiration. "Mebbe 
 you '11 make suthin' out o' the Colonel too. But I never 
 took stock in that there owl. He was too durned self- 
 righteous for a decent bird. Now, run along afore anythin' 
 else fetches loose ag'in. So long! " 
 
 He patted the top of her sunbonnet, gave a little pull to 
 the short brown braid that hung behind her temptingly, — 
 ■which no miner was ever known to resist, — and watched 
 her flutter off with her spoils. He had done so many times 
 before, for the great, foolish heart of the Blue Cement Eidge 
 had gone out to Peggy Baker, the little daughter of the 
 blacksmith, quite early. There were others of the family, 
 notably two elder sisters, invincible at picnics and dances, 
 but Peggy was as necessary to these men as the blue jay 
 that swung before them in the dim woods, the squirrel that 
 whisked across their morning path, or the woodpecker who 
 beat his tattoo at their midday meal from the hollow pine 
 above them. She was part of the nature that kept them 
 young. Her truancies and vagrancies concerned them not, 
 — she was a law to herself, like the birds and squirrels. 
 There were bearded lips to hail her wherever she went, and 
 a blue or red-shirted arm always stretched out in any per< 
 jlous pass or dangerous crossing. 
 
222 MISS PEGGY'S PROTEGES 
 
 Her peculiar tastes were an outcome of her nature, as- 
 sisted by her surroundings. Left a good deal to herself 
 in her infancy, she made playfellows of animated nature 
 around her, without much reference to selection or fitness, 
 but always with a fearlessness that was the result of her 
 own observation, and unhampered by tradition or other 
 children's timidity. She had no superstition regarding the 
 venom of toads, the poison of spiders, or the ear-penetra- 
 ting capacity of earwigs. She had experiences and revela- 
 tions of her own, — which she kept sacredly to herself, as 
 children do, — and one was in regard to a rattlesnake, 
 partly induced, however, by the indiscreet warning of her 
 elders. She was cautioned not to take her bread and milk 
 into the woods, and was told the affecting story of the little 
 girl who was once regularly visited by a snake that partook 
 of her bread and milk, and who was ultimately found rap- 
 ping the head of the snake for gorging more than his share, 
 and not "taking a 'peon as me do." It js needless to say 
 that this incautious caution fired Peggy's adventurous 
 spirit. She took a bowlful of milk to the haunt of a "rat- 
 tler " near her home, but, without making the pretense of 
 sharing it, generously left the whole to the reptile. After 
 repeating this hospitality for three or four days, she was 
 amazed one morning on returning to the house to find the 
 snake — an elderly one with a dozen rattles — devotedly 
 following her. Alarmed, not for her own safety nor that 
 of her family, but for the existence of her grateful friend 
 in danger of the blacksmith's hammer, she took a circuitous 
 route leading it away. Then recalling a bit of woodland 
 lore once communicated to her by a charcoal-burner, she 
 broke a spray of the white ash, and laid it before her in 
 the track of the rattlesnake. He stopped instantly, and 
 remained motionless without crossing the slight barrier. 
 She repeated this experiment on later occasions, until the 
 reptile understood her. She kept the experience to hei'self, 
 
MISS PEGGY'S PROTEGES 223 
 
 tut one day it was witnessed by a tunnelman. On that 
 day Peggy's reputation was made ! 
 
 From this time henceforth the major part of Blue Ce- 
 ment Ridge became serious collectors for what was known 
 as "Peggy's menagerie," and two of the tunnelmen con- 
 structed a stockaded inclosure — not half a mile from the 
 blacksmith's cabin, but unknown to him — for the reception 
 of specimens. For a long time its existence was kept a 
 secret between Peggy and her loyal friends. Her parents, 
 aware of her eccentric tastes only through the introduction 
 of such smaller creatures as lizards, toads, and tarantulas 
 into their house, — which usually escaped from their tin 
 cans and boxes and sought refuge in the family slippers, — 
 had frowned upon her zoological studies. Her mother found 
 that her woodland rambles entailed an extraordinary wear 
 and tear of her clothing. A pinafore reduced to ribbons by 
 a young fox, and a straw hat half swallowed by a mountain 
 kid, did not seem to be a natural incident to an ordinary 
 walk to the schoolhouse. Her sisters thought her tastes 
 "low," and her familiar association with the miners incon- 
 sistent with their own dignity. But Peggy went regularly 
 to school, was a fair scholar in elementary studies (what she 
 knew of natural history, in fact, quite startled her teach- 
 ers), and being also a teachable child, was allowed some 
 latitude. As for Peggy herself, she kept her own faith 
 unshaken; her little creed, whose shibboleth was not "to 
 be afraid" of God's creatures, but to "love 'em," sustained 
 her through reprimand, torn clothing, and, it is to be 
 feared, occasional bites and scratches from the loved ones 
 themselves. 
 
 The unsuspected contiguity of the " menagerie " to the 
 house had its drawbacks, and once nearly exposed her. A 
 mountain wolf cub, brought especially for her from the 
 higher northern Sierras with great trouble and expense by 
 Jack Ryder, of the Lone Star Lead, unfortunately escaped 
 
224 MISS PEGGY'S PEOTKGES 
 
 from the menagerie just as the child seemed to be in a fair 
 ■way of taming it. Yet it had been already familiarized 
 enough with civilization to induce it to stop in its flight and 
 curiously examine the blacksmith's shop. A shout from 
 the blacksmith and a hurled hammer sent it flying again, 
 with Mr. Baker and his assistant in full pursuit. But it 
 quickly distanced them with its long, tireless gallop, and 
 they were obliged to return to the forge, lost in wonder and 
 conjecture. For the blacksmith had recognized it as a 
 stranger to the locality, and as a man of oracular pretension 
 had a startling theory to account for its presence. This he 
 confided to the editor of the local paper, and the next issue 
 contained an editorial paragraph : " Our presage of a severe 
 winter in the higher Sierras, and consequent spring floods 
 in the valleys, has been startlingly confirmed! Mountain 
 ■wolves have been seen in Blue Cement Ridge, and our es- 
 teemed fellow citizen, Mr. Ephraim Baker, yesterday en- 
 countered a half-starved cub entering his premises in search 
 of food. Mr. Baker is of the opinion that the mother of 
 the cub, driven down by stress of weather, was in the im- 
 mediate vicinity." Nothing but the distress of the only 
 responsible mother of the cub, Peggy, and loyalty to her, 
 kept Jack Ryder from exposing the absurdity publicly, but 
 for weeks the camp fires of Blue Cement Ridge shook with 
 the suppressed and unhallowed joy of the miners, who were 
 in the guilty secret. 
 
 But, fortunately for Peggy, the most favored of her cher- 
 ished possessions was not obliged to be kept secret. That 
 one exception was an Indian dog ! This was also a gift, 
 and had been procured with great " difficulty " by a 
 "packer" from an Indian encampment on the Oregon fron- 
 tier. The " difficulty " was, in plain English, that it had 
 been stolen from the Indians at some peril to the stealer's 
 scalp. It was a mongrel to all appearances, of no recog- 
 nized breed or outward significance, yet of a quality dis- 
 
MISS Peggy's proteges 225 
 
 tinctly its own. It was absolutely and totally uncivilized. 
 Whether this was a hereditary trait or the result of degen- 
 eracy, no one knew. It refused to enter a house; it would 
 not stay in a kennel. It would not eat in public, but 
 gorged ravenously and stealthily in the shadows. It had 
 the slink of a tramp, and in its patched and mottled hide 
 seemed to simulate the rags of a beggar. It had the tire- 
 lessness without the affected limp of a coyote. Yet it had 
 none of the ferocity of barbarians. With teeth that could 
 gnaw through the stoutest rope and toughest lariat, it never 
 bared them in anger. It was cringing without being ami- 
 able or submissive ; it was gentle without being affectionate.! 
 Yet almost insensibly it began to yield to Peggy's faith 
 and kindness. Gradually it seemed to single her out as 
 the one being in this vast white-faced and fully clothed 
 community that it could trust. It presently allowed her to 
 half drag, half lead it to and from school, although on the 
 approach of a stranger it would bite through the rope or 
 frantically endeavor to efface itself in Peggy's petticoats. 
 It was trying, even to the child's sweet gravity,, to face the 
 ridicule excited by its appearance on the road; and its 
 habit of carrying its tail between its legs — at such an in- 
 flexible curve that, on the authority of Sam Bedell, a mis- 
 step caused it to " turn a back somersault " — was painfully 
 disconcerting. But Peggy endured this^ as. she did the 
 greater dangers of the High Street in the settlement, where 
 she had often, at her own risk, absolutely, to drag the dazed 
 and bewildered creature from under the wheels of carts and 
 the heels of horses. But this shynefes wore off — or rather 
 was eventually lost in the dog's complete and utter absorp- 
 tion in Peggy. His limited intelligence and imperfect per- 
 ceptions were excited for her alone. His singularly keen 
 scent detected her wherever or how remote she might be. 
 Her passage along a "blind trail," her deviations from the 
 school path, her more distant excursions, were all mysteri- 
 
226 MISS PEGGY'S PROTEGES 
 
 ously known to him. It seemed as if his senses were con- 
 centrated in this one faculty. No matter how unexpected 
 or unfamiliar the itinerary, " Lo, the poor Indian " — as 
 the men had nicknamed him (in possible allusion to his 
 " untutored mind ") — always arrived promptly and silently. 
 
 It was to this singular faculty that Peggy owed one of 
 her strangest experiences. One Saturday afternoon she was 
 returning from an errand to the village when she was star- 
 tled by the appearance of Lo in her path. For the reason 
 already given, she no longer took him with her to these ac- 
 tive haunts of civilization, but had taught him on such 
 occasions to remain as a guard outside the stockade which 
 contained her treasures. After reading him a severe lec- 
 ture on this flagrant abandonment of his trust, enforced 
 ■with great seriousness and an admonitory forefinger, she 
 was concerned to see that the animal appeared less agitated 
 by her reproof than by some other disturbance. He ran 
 ahead of her, instead of at her heels as was his usual cus- 
 tom, and barked — a thing he rarely did. Presently she 
 thought she discovered the cause of this in the appearance 
 from the wood of a dozen men armed with guns. They 
 seemed to be strangers, but among them she recognized the 
 deputy sheriff of the settlement. The leader noticed her, 
 aud, after a word or two with the others, the deputy ap- 
 proached her. 
 
 " You and Lo had better be scooting home by the high- 
 road, outer this — or ye might get hurt," he said, half 
 playfully, half seriously. 
 
 Peggy looked fearlessly at the men and their guns. 
 
 "Look ez ef you was huntin'," she said curiously. 
 
 " We are ! " said the leader. 
 
 " Wot you huntin' ? " 
 
 The deputy glanced at the others. " B'ar ! " he replied. 
 
 "B'ar!" repeated the child with the quick resentment 
 which a palpable falsehood always provoked in her. "There 
 
MISS PEGGY'S PROTEGES 227 
 
 ain't no b'ar in ten miles! See yourself huntin' b'ar! 
 Ho!" 
 
 The man laughed. "Never you mind, missy," said the 
 deputy, " you trot along ! " He laid his hand very gently 
 on her head, faced her sunbonnet towards the near high- 
 way, gave the usual parting pull to her brown pigtail, 
 added, "Make a bee-line home," and turned away. 
 
 Lo uttered the first growl known in his history. Whereat 
 Peggy said, with lofty forbearance, "Serve you jest right 
 ef I set my dog on you." 
 
 But force is no argument, and Peggy felt this truth even 
 of herself and Lo. So she trotted away. Nevertheless, 
 Lo showed signs of hesitation. After a few moments Peggy 
 herself hesitated and looked back. The men had spread 
 out under the trees, and were already lost in the woods. 
 But there was more than one trail through it, and Peggy 
 knew it. 
 
 And here an alarming occurrence startled her. A curi- 
 ously striped brown and white squirrel whisked past her 
 and ran up a tree. Peggy's round eyes became rounder. 
 There was but one squirrel of that kind in all the length 
 and breadth of Blue Cement Eidge, and that was in the 
 menagerie I Even as she looked it vanished. Peggy faced 
 about and ran back to the road in the direction of the stock- 
 ade, Lo bounding before her. But another surprise awaited 
 her. There was the clutter of short wings under the 
 branches, and the sunlight flashed upon the iris throat of a 
 wood-duck as it swung out of sight past her. But in this 
 single glance Peggy recognized one of the latest and most 
 precious of her acquisitions. There was no mistake now ! 
 With a despairing little cry to Lo, "The menagerie's broke 
 loose ! " she ran like the wind towards it. She cared no 
 longer for the mandate of the men ; the trail she had taken 
 was out of their sight; they were proceeding so slowly and 
 cautiously that she and Lo quickly distanced them in the 
 
228 MISS PEGGY'S PROTEGES 
 
 same direction. She would have yet time to reach the 
 stockade and secure what was left of her treasures before 
 they came up and drove her away. Yet she had to make 
 a long circuit to avoid the blacksmith's shop and cahin, be- 
 fore she saw the stockade, lifting its four-foot walls around 
 an inclosure a dozen feet square, in the midst of a manzanita 
 thicket. But she could see also broken coops, pens, cages, 
 and boxes lying before it, and stopped once, even in her 
 grief and indignation, to pick up a ruby-throated lizard, 
 one of its late inmates that had stopped in the trail, stif- 
 fened to stone at her approach. The next moment she was 
 before the roofless walls, and then stopped, stiffened like 
 the lizard. For out of that peaceful ruin which had once 
 held the wild and untamed vagabonds of earth and sky, 
 arose a type of savagery and barbarism the child had never 
 before looked upon, — the head and shoulders of a hunted, 
 desperate man! 
 
 His head was bare, and his hair matted with sweat over 
 his forehead; his face was unshorn, and the black roots of 
 his beard showed against the deadly pallor of his skin, ex- 
 cept where it was scratched by thorns, or where the red 
 spots over his cheek bones made his cheeks look as if 
 painted. His eyes were as insanely bright, he panted as 
 quickly, he showed his white teeth as perpetually, his 
 movements were as convulsive, as those captured animals 
 she had known. Yet he did not attempt to fly, and it was 
 only when, with a sudden effort and groan of pain, he half 
 lifted himself above the stockade, that she saw that his leg, 
 bandaged with his cravat and handkerchief, stained a dull 
 red, dragged helplessly beneath him. He stared at her 
 vacantly for a moment, and then looked hurriedly into the 
 wood behind her. 
 
 The child was more interested than frightened, and more 
 curious than either. She had grasped the situation at a 
 glance. It was the hunted and the hunters. Suddenly he 
 
MISS PEGGY'S PROTEGES 229 
 
 started and reached for his rifle, which he had apparently 
 set down outside when he climbed into the stockade. He 
 had just caught sight of a figure emerging from the wood at 
 a distance. But the weapon was out of his reach. 
 
 "Hand me that gun! " he said roughly. 
 
 But Peggy did not stir. The figure came more plainly 
 and, quite unconsciously into full view, an easy shot at that 
 distance. 
 
 The man uttered a horrible curse, and turned a threaten- 
 ing face on the child. But Peggy had seen something like 
 that in animals she had captured. She only said gravely, — 
 
 "Ef you shoot that gun you'll bring 'em all down on 
 you ! " 
 
 "All?" he demanded. 
 
 "Yes! a dozen folks with guns like yours," said Peggy. 
 "You jest crouch down and lie low. Don't move! Watch 
 me." 
 
 The man dropped below the stockade. Peggy ran swiftly 
 towards the unsuspecting figure, evidently the leader of the 
 party, but deviated slightly to snatch a tiny spray from a 
 white-ash tree. She never knew that in that brief interval 
 the wounded man, after a supreme effort, had possessed 
 himself of his weapon, and for a moment had covered her 
 with its deadly muzzle. She ran on fearlessly until she saw 
 that she had attracted the attention of the leader, when she 
 stopped and began to wave the white-ash wand before her. 
 The leader halted, conferred with some one behind him, 
 who proved to be the deputy sheriff. Stepping out he ad- 
 vanced towards Peggy, and called sharply, — 
 
 "I told you to get out of this! Come, be quick! " 
 
 "You'd better get out yourself," said Peggy, waving 
 her ash spray, "and quicker, too." 
 
 The deputy stopped, staring at the spray. "Wot's 
 up?" 
 
 "Battlers." 
 
230 MISS PEGGY'S PROTEGES 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "Everywhere round ye — a reg'lar nest of 'em ! That 's 
 your way round ! " She pointed to the right, and again 
 began beating the underbrush with her wand. The men 
 had, meantime, huddled together in consultation. It was 
 evident that the story of Peggy and her influence on rattle- 
 snakes was well known, and, in all probability, exaggerated. 
 After a pause, the whole party filed off to the right, making 
 a long circuit of the unseen stockade, and were presently 
 lost in the distance. Peggy ran back to the fugitive. The 
 fire of savagery and desperation in his eyes had gone out, 
 but had been succeeded by a glazing film of faintness. 
 
 "Can you — get me — some water?" he whispered. 
 
 The stockade was near a spring, — a necessity for the 
 menagerie. Peggy brought him water in a dipper. She 
 sighed a little ; her " butcher bird " — now lost forever — '■ 
 had been the last to drink from it! 
 
 The water seemed to revive him. "The rattlesnakes 
 scared the cowards," he said, with an attempt to smile. 
 " Were there many rattlers 1 " 
 
 "There wasn't any," said Peggy, a little spitefully, 
 " 'cept you — a two-legged rattler ! " 
 
 The rascal grinned at the compliment. 
 
 " Owe-legged, you mean, " he said, indicating his helpless 
 limb. 
 
 Peggy's heart relented slightly. "Wot you goin' to do 
 now?" she said. "You can't stay on there, you know. 
 It b'longs to me ! " She was generous, but practical, 
 
 "Were those things I fired out yours? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Mighty rough of me." 
 
 Peggy was slightly softened. " Kin you walk ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Kin you crawl ? " 
 
 "Not as far as a rattler." 
 
MISS PEGGY'S PROTEGES 231 
 
 "Ez far ez that clearin' 1 " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "There's a boss tethered out in that clearin'. I kin 
 shift him to this end." 
 
 " You 're white all through, " said the man gravely. 
 
 Peggy ran off to the clearing. The horse belonged to 
 Sam Bedell, but he had. given Peggy permission to ride it 
 whenever she wished. This was equivalent, in Peggy's 
 mind, to a permission to piace him where she wished. She 
 consequently led him to a point nearest the stockade, and, 
 thoughtfully, close beside a stump. But this took some 
 time, and when she arrived she found the fugitive already 
 there, very thin and weak, but still smiling. 
 
 " Ye kin turn him loose when you get through with him ; 
 he '11 find his way back," said Peggy. "Now I must go." 
 
 Without again looking at the man, she ran back to the 
 stockade. Then she paused until she heard the sound of 
 hoofs crossing the highway in the opposite direction from 
 which the pursuers had crossed, and knew that the fugitive 
 had got away. Then she took the astonished and still mo- 
 tionless lizard from her pocket, and proceeded to restore the 
 broken coops and cages to the empty stockade. 
 
 But she never reconstructed her menagerie nor renewed 
 her collection. People said she had tired of her whim, and 
 that really she was getting too old for such things. Per- 
 haps she was. But she never got old enough to reveal her 
 story of the last wild animal she had tamed by kindness. 
 Nor was she quite sure of it herself, until a few years after- 
 wards on Commencement Day at a boarding-school at San 
 Jose, when they pointed out to her one of the most respect- 
 able trustees. But they said he was once a gambler, who 
 had shot a man with whom he had quarreled, and was nearly 
 caught and lynched by a Vigilance Committee. 
 
THE GODDESS OF EXCELSIOR 
 
 When the two isolated mining companies encamped on 
 Sycamore Creek discovered on the same day the great "Ex- 
 celsior Lead, " they met around a neutral camp fire with that 
 grave and almost troubled demeanor which distinguished the 
 successful prospector in those days. Perhaps the term " pro- 
 spectors " could hardly be used for men who had labored 
 patiently and light-heartedly in the one spot for over three 
 years to gain a daily yield from the soil which gave them 
 barely the necessaries of life. Perhaps this was why, now 
 that their reward was beyond their most sanguine hopes, 
 they mingled with this characteristic gravity an ambition and 
 resolve peculiarly their own. Unlike most successful min- 
 ers, they had no idea of simply realizing their wealth and 
 departing to invest or spend it elsewhere, as was the com- 
 mon custom. On the contrary, that night they formed a 
 high resolve to stand or fall by their claims, to develop the 
 resources of the locality, to build up a town, and to devote 
 themselves to its growth and welfare. And to this purpose 
 they bound themselves that night by a solemn and legal 
 compact. 
 
 Many circumstances lent themselves to so original a de- 
 termination. The locality was healthful, picturesque, and 
 fertile. Sycamore Creek, a considerable tributary of the 
 Sacramento, furnished them a generous water supply at all 
 seasons; its banks were well wooded and interspersed with 
 undulating meadow land. Its distance from stage-coach 
 communication — nine miles — could easily be abridged by 
 a wagon road over a practically level country. Indeed, all 
 
THE GODDESS OF EXCELSIOR 233 
 
 the conditions for a thriving settlement were already there. 
 It was natural, therefore, that the most sanguine anticipa- 
 tions were indulged by the more youthful of the twenty 
 members of this sacred compact. The sites of a hotel, a 
 bank, the express company's office, stage office, and court- 
 house, with other necessary buildings, were all mapped out, 
 and supplemented by a theatre, a public park, and a terrace 
 along the river bank ! It was only when Clinton Grey, an 
 intelligent but youthful member, on offering a plan of the 
 town with five avenues eighty feet wide, radiating from a 
 central plaza and the court-house, explained that "it could 
 be commanded by artillery in case of an armed attack upon 
 the building, " that it was felt that a line must be drawn in 
 anticipatory suggestion. Nevertheless, although their de- 
 termination was unabated, at the end of six months little 
 had been done beyond the building of a wagon road and the 
 importation of new machinery for the working of the lead. 
 The peculiarity of their design debarred any tentative or 
 temporary efforts; they wished the whole settlement to 
 spring up in equal perfection, so that the first stage-coach 
 over the new road could arrive upon the completed town. 
 " We don't want to show up in a ' b'iled shirt ' and a plug 
 hat, and our trousers stuck in our boots," said a figurative 
 speaker. Nevertheless, practical necessity compelled them 
 to build the hotel first for their own occupation, pending 
 the erection of their private dwellings on allotted sites. 
 The hotel, a really elaborate structure for the locality and 
 period, was a marvel to the workmen and casual teamsters; 
 It was luxuriously fitted and furnished. Yet it was in 
 connection with this outlay that the event occurred which 
 had a singular effect upon the fancy of the members. 
 
 Washington Trigg, a Western member, who had brought 
 up the architect and builder from San Francisco, had re- 
 turned in a state of excitement. He had seen at an art ex- 
 hibition in that city a small replica of a famous statue of 
 
234 THE GODDESS OF EXCELSIOR 
 
 California, and, without consulting his fellow members, had 
 ordered a larger copy for the new settlement. He, how- 
 ever, made up for his precipitancy by an extravagant de- 
 scription of his purchase, which impressed even the most 
 cautious. "It 's the figger of a mighty pretty girl, in them 
 spirit clothes they alius wear, holding a divinin' rod for 
 findin' gold afore her in one hand; all the while she's 
 hidin' behind her, in the other hand, a branch o' thorns 
 out of' sight. The idea bein' — don't you see? — that 
 blamed old 'forty-niners like us, or ordinary greenhorns, 
 ain't allowed to see the difficulties they 've got to go 
 through before reaching a strike. Mighty cute, ain't it? 
 It 's to be made life-size, — that is, about the size of a girl 
 of that kind, don't you see?" he explained somewhat 
 vaguely, "and will look powerful fetchin' standin' onto a 
 pedestal in the hall of the hotel." In reply to some fur- 
 ther cautious inquiry as to the exact details of the raiment 
 and of any possible shock to the modesty of lady guests at 
 the hotel, he replied confidently, " Oh, that 's all right ! 
 It 's the regulation uniform of goddesses and angels, — 
 sorter as if they 'd caught up a sheet or a cloud to fling 
 round 'em before coming into this world afore folks; and 
 being an allegory, so t'o speak, it ain't as if it was me or 
 you prospectin' in high water. And, being of bronze, it " — 
 
 " Looks like a squaw, eh ? " interrupted a critic, " or 
 a cursed Chinaman ? " 
 
 " And if it 's of metal it will weigh a ton ! How are- we 
 going to get it up here ? " said another. 
 
 But here Mr. Trigg was on sure ground. "I 've ordered 
 it cast holler, and, if necessary, in two sections," he re- 
 turned triumphantly. " A child could tote it round and set 
 it up." 
 
 Its arrival was therefore looked forward to with great 
 expectancy when the hotel was finished and occupied by 
 the combined Excelsior companies. It was to come from 
 
THE GODDESS OF EXCELSIOR 235 
 
 New York via San Francisco, where, however, there was 
 some delay in its transshipment, and still further delay at 
 Sacramento. It finally reached the settlement over the 
 new wagon road, and was among the first freight carried 
 there by the new express company, and delivered into the 
 new express office. The box — a packing-case, nearly three 
 feet square by five feet long — bore superficial marks of 
 travel and misdirection, inasmuch as the original address 
 was quite obliterated and the outside lid covered with cor- 
 rected labels. It was carried to a private sitting-room in 
 the hotel, where its beauty was to be first disclosed to the 
 president of the united companies, three of the committee, 
 and the excited and triumphant purchaser. A less favored 
 crowd of members and workmen gathered curiously outside 
 the room. Then the lid was carefully removed, revealing 
 a quantity of shavings and packing paper which still hid 
 the outlines of the goddess. When this was promptly lifted 
 a stare of blank astonishment fixed the faces of the party ! 
 It was succeeded by a quick, hysteric laugh, and then a 
 dead silence. 
 
 Before them lay a dressmaker's dummy, the wire and 
 padded model on which dresses are fitted and shown. With 
 its armless and headless bust, abruptly ending in a hooped 
 wire skirt, it completely filled the sides of the box. 
 
 " Shut the door, " said the president promptly. 
 
 The order was obeyed. The single hysteric shriek of 
 laughter had been followed by a deadly, ironical silence. 
 The president, with supernatural gravity, lifted it out and 
 set it up on its small, round, disk-like pedestal. 
 
 "It's some cussed fool blunder of that confounded ex- 
 press compauy," burst out the unlucky purchaser. But 
 there was no echo to his outburst. He looked around with 
 a timid, tentative smile. But no other smile followed his. 
 
 "It looks," said the president, with portentous gravity, 
 " like the beginnings of a fine woman, that might show up. 
 
236 THE GODDESS OF EXCELSIOR 
 
 if you gave her time, into a first-class goddess. Of course 
 she ain't all here; other boxes with sections of her, I 
 reckon, are under way from her factory, and will meander 
 along in the course of the year. Considerin' this as a sam- 
 ple — I think, gentlemen, " he added, with gloomy pred- 
 ion, "we are prepared to accept it, and signify we '11 take 
 more." 
 
 "It ain't, perhaps, exactly the idee that we 've been led 
 to expect from previous description," said Dick Flint, with 
 deeper seriousness ; " for instance, this yer branch of thorns 
 we heard of ez bein' held behind her is wantin', as is the 
 arms that held it; but even if they had arrived, anybody 
 could see the thorns through them wires, and so give the 
 hull show away." 
 
 "Jam it into its box again, and we '11 send it back to the 
 confounded express company with a cussin' letter," again 
 thundered the wretched purchaser. 
 
 "No, sonny," said the president with gentle but gloomy 
 ■determination, "we '11 fasten on to this little show jest as 
 it is, and see what follows. It ain't every day that a first- 
 class sell like this is worked off on us accidentally." 
 
 It was quite true! The settlement had long since ex- 
 hausted every possible form of practical joking, and lan- 
 guished for a new sensation. And here it was ! It was 
 not a thing to be treated angrily, nor lightly, nor dismissed 
 with that single hysteric laugh. It was capable of the 
 greatest possibilities ! Indeed, as Washington Trigg looked 
 around on the imperturbably ironical faces of his compan- 
 ions, he knew that they felt more true joy over the blun- 
 der than they would in the possession of the real statue. 
 But an exclamation from the fifth member, who was exam- 
 ining the box, arrested their attention. 
 
 "There's suthin' else here!" 
 
 He had found under the heavier wrapping a layer of 
 tissue-paper, and under that a further envelope of linen, 
 
THE GODDESS OF EXCELSIOE 237 
 
 lightly stitched together. A knife blade quickly separated 
 the stitches, and the linen was carefully unfolded. It dis- 
 played a beautifully trimmed evening dress of pale blue 
 satin, with a dressing-gown of some exquisite white fabric 
 armed with lace. The men gazed at it in silence, and then 
 the one single expression broke from their lips, — 
 
 "Her duds!" 
 
 "Stop, boys," said "Clint" Grey, as a movement was 
 made to lift the dress towards the model, "leave that to a 
 man who knows. What's the use of my having left five 
 grown-up sisters in the States if I haven't brought a little 
 experience away with me 1 This sort of thing ain't to be 
 ' pulled on ' like trousers. No, sir ! — this is the way she 's 
 worked. " 
 
 With considerable dexterity, unexpected gentleness, and 
 some taste, he shook out the folds of the skirt delicately 
 and lifted it over the dummy, settling it skillfully upon the 
 wire hoops, and drawing the bodice over the padded shoul- 
 ders. This he then proceeded to fasten with hooks and 
 eyes, — a work of some patience. Porty eager fingers 
 stretched out to assist him, but were waved aside, with a 
 look of pained decorum as he gravely completed his task. 
 Then falling back, he bade the others do the same, and they 
 formed a contemplative semicircle before the figure. 
 
 Up to that moment a delighted but unsmiling conscious- 
 ness of their own absurdities, a keen sense of the humorous 
 possibilities of the original blunder, and a mischievous re- 
 cognition of the mortification of Trigg — whose only safety 
 now lay in accepting the mistake in the same spirit — had 
 determined these grown-up schoolboys to artfully protract 
 a joke that seemed to be providentially delivered into their 
 hands. But now an odd change crept on them. The light 
 from the open window that gave upon the enormous pines 
 and the rolling prospect up to the dim heights of the Sierras 
 fell upon this strange, incongruous, yet perfectly artistic fig- 
 
238 THE GODDESS OF EXCELSIOR 
 
 ure. For the dress was the skillful creation of a great Pari- 
 sian artist, and in its exquisite harmony of color, shape, 
 and material it not only hid the absurd model, but clothed 
 it with an alarming grace and refinement ! A queer feeling 
 of awe, of ohame, and of unwilling admiration took posses- 
 sion of them. Some of them — from remote Western towns 
 — had never seen the like before; those y>\io had had for- 
 gotten it in those five years of self-exile, of healthy inde- 
 pendence, and of contiguity to Nature in her unaffected sim- 
 plicity. All had been familiar with the garishj extravagant, 
 and dazzling femininity of the Californian towns and cities, 
 but never had they known anything approaching the ideal 
 grace of this type of exalted; even if artificial, womanhood. 
 And although in the fierce freedom of their little republic 
 they had laughed to scorn such artificiality, a few yards of 
 satin and lace cunningly fashioned, and thrown over a frame 
 of wood and wire, touched them now with a strange sense 
 of its superiority. The better to show its attractions, Clin- 
 ton Grey had placed the figure near a full-length, gold- 
 framed mirror, beside a marble-topped tabid Yet how 
 cheap and tawdry these splendors showed beside this work 
 of art! How cruel was the contrast of their own rough 
 working clothes to this miracle of adornment which that 
 same mirror reflected ! And even when Qlinton Grey, the 
 enthusiast, looked towards his beloved woods for relief, he 
 could not help thinking of them as a more fitting frame for 
 this strange goddess than this new house into which she 
 had strayed. Their gravity became real'; their gibes in 
 some strange way had vanished. 
 
 "Must have cost a pile of money," said one, merely tf 
 break an embarrassing silence. 
 
 " My sister had a friend who brought over a dress from 
 Paris, not as high-toned as that, that cost five hundred dol- 
 lars," said Clinton Grey. 
 
 " How much did you say that spirit-clad old hag of yours 
 
THE GODDESS OF EXCELSIOK 239 
 
 cost — thorns and all 1 " said the president, turning sharply 
 on Trigg. 
 
 Trigg swallowed this depreciation of his own purchase 
 meekly. "Seven hundred and fifty dollars, without the 
 express charges." 
 
 "That's only two- fifty more," said the president 
 thoughtfully, "if we call it quits." 
 
 "But," said Trigg in alarm, "we must send it back." 
 
 "Not much, sonny," said the president promptly. 
 "We '11 hang on to this until we hear where that thorny 
 old chump of yours has fetched up and is actin' her conun- 
 drums, and mebbe we can swap even. " 
 
 "But how will we explain it to the boys?" queried 
 Trigg. "They 're waitin' outside to see it." 
 
 "There won't be any explanation," said the president, in 
 the same tone of voice in which he had ordered the door 
 shut. "We '11 just say that the statue has n't come, which 
 is the frozen truth; and this box only contained some sPk 
 curtain decorations We 'd ordered, which is only half a lie. 
 And," still more firmly, " this secret does n't go out of this 
 room, gentlemen — or I ain't your president! I'm not 
 going to let you give yourselves away to that crowd outside 
 — you hear me 1 Have you ever allowed your unfettered 
 intellect to consider what they 'd say about this, — what a 
 godsend it would be to every man we 'd ever had a ' pull ' 
 on in this camp? Why, it would last 'em a whole year; 
 we 'd never hear the end of it! No, gentlemen! I prefer 
 to live here without shootin' my fellow man, but I can't 
 promise it if they once start this joke agin us! " 
 
 There was a swift approval of this sentiment, and the 
 five members shook hands solemnly. 
 
 "Now," said the president, "we'll just fold up that 
 dress again, and put it with the figure in this closet " — he 
 opened a large dressing-chest in the suite of rooms in which 
 they stood — "and we '11 each keep a key. We '11 retain 
 
240 THE GODDESS OF EXCELSIOR 
 
 this room for committee purposes, so that no one need see 
 the closet. See? Now take off the dress! Be careful 
 there! You 're not handlin' pay dirt, though it 's about as 
 expensive ! Steady ! " 
 
 Yet it was wonderful to see the solicitude and care with 
 which the dress was re-covered and folded in its linen 
 wrapper. 
 
 " Hold on," exclaimed Trigg, — as the dummy was lifted 
 into the chest, — " we have n't tried on the other dress ! " 
 
 "Yes! yes! " repeated the others eagerly; "there 's an- 
 other ! " 
 
 " We '11 keep that for next committee meeting, gentle- 
 men," said the president decisively. "Lock her up, 
 Trigg." 
 
 The three following months wrought a wonderful change 
 in Excelsior, — wonderful even in that land of rapid growth 
 and progress. Their organized and matured plans, exe- 
 cuted by a full force of workmen from the county town, 
 completed the twenty cottages for the members, the bank, 
 and the town hall. Visitors and intending settlers flocked 
 over the new wagon road to see this new Utopia, whose 
 founders, holding the land and its improvements as a cor- 
 porate company, exercised the right of dictating the terms 
 on which settlers were admitted. The feminine invasion 
 was not yet potent enough to affect their consideration, 
 either through any refinement or attractiveness, being com- 
 posed chiefly of the industrious wives and daughters of 
 small traders or temporary artisans. Yet it was found ne- 
 cessary to confide the hotel to the management of Mr. Dex- 
 ter Marsh, his wife, and one intelligent but somewhat plain 
 daughter, who looked after the accounts. There were occa- 
 sional lady visitors at the hotel, attracted from the neigh- 
 boring towns and settlements by its picturesqueness and 
 a vague suggestiveness of its being a watering-place — and 
 
THK GODDESS OF EXCELSIOR 241 
 
 there was the occasional flash in the decorous street of a 
 Sacramento or San Francisco gown. It is needless to say 
 that to the five men who held the guilty secret of Commit 
 tee Eoom No. 4 it only strengthened their belief in the 
 superelegance of their hidden treasure. At their last meet- 
 ing they had fitted the second dress — which turned out to 
 be a vapory summer house-frock or morning wrapper — over 
 the dummy, and opinions were divided as to its equality 
 with the first. However, the same subtle harmony of de- 
 tail and grace of proportion characterized it. 
 
 "And you see," said Clint Grey, "it 's jest the sort o' 
 rig in which a man would be most likely to know her — 
 and not in her war-paint, which would be only now and 
 then." 
 . Already "she" had become an individuality! 
 
 " Hush ! " said the president. He had turned towards 
 the door, at which some one was knocking lightly. 
 
 "Come in." 
 
 The door opened upon Miss Marsh, secretary and hotel 
 assistant. She had a business aspect, and an open letter in 
 her hand, but hesitated at the evident confusion she had 
 occasioned. Two of the gentlemen had absolutely blushed, 
 and the others regarded her with inane smiles or affected 
 seriousness. They all coughed slightly. 
 
 "I beg your pardon," she said, not ungracefully, a slight 
 color coming into her sallow cheek, which, in conjunction 
 with the gold eye-glasses, gave her, at least in the eyes of 
 the impressible Clint, a certain piquancy. " But my father 
 said you were here in committee and I might consult you. 
 I can coqie again, if you are busy." 
 
 She had addressed the president, partly from his office, 
 his comparatively extreme age — he must have been at least 
 thirty ! — and possibly for his extremer good looks. He 
 said hurriedly, "It 's just an informal meeting; " and then, 
 more politely, " What can we do for you ? " 
 
242 THE GODDESS OF EXCELSIOR 
 
 "We have an application for a suite of rooms next 
 ■week," she said, referring to the letter, "and as we shall 
 be rather full, father thought you gentlemen might be will- 
 ing to take another larger room for your meetings, and give 
 up these, which are part of a suite — and perhaps not ex- 
 actly suitable " — 
 
 "Quite impossible! " "Quite so! " "Really out of the 
 question," said the members, in a rapid chorus. 
 
 The young girl was evidently taken aback at this unanim- 
 ity of opposition. She stared at them curiously, and then 
 glanced around the room. " We 're quite comfortable 
 here," said the president explanatorily, "and — in fact — • 
 it 's just what we want." 
 
 "We could give you a closet like that which you could 
 lock up, and a mirror," she suggested, with the faintest 
 trace of a smile. 
 
 "Tell your father. Miss Marsh," said the president, with 
 dignified politeness, "that while we cannot submit to any 
 change, we fully appreciate his business foresight, and are 
 quite prepared to see that the hotel is properly compensated 
 for our retaining these rooms." As the young girl with- 
 drew with a puzzled curtsy he closed the door, placed his 
 back against it, and said, — 
 
 " What the deuce did she mean by speaking of that 
 closet 1 " 
 
 " Reckon she allowed we kept some fancy drinks in 
 there," said Trigg; "and calkilated that we wanted the 
 marble stand and mirror to put our glasses on and make it 
 look like a swell private bar, that 's all! " 
 
 "Humph," said the president. . 
 
 Their next meeting, however, was a hurried one, and as 
 the president arrived late, when the door closed smartly be- 
 hind him he was met by the worried faces of his colleagues. 
 
 "Here 's a go! " said Trigg excitedly, producing a folded 
 paper. " The game 's up, the hull show is busted ; that ■ 
 
THE GODDESS OF EXCELSIOR 243. 
 
 cussed old statue — the reg'lar old hag herself — is on her 
 way here! There 's a bill o' lading and the express com- 
 pany's letter, and she '11 be trundled down here by express 
 at any moment." 
 
 " Well 1 " said the president quietly. 
 
 " Well !" replied the members aghast. "Do you know 
 what that means ? " 
 
 "That we must rig her up in the hall on a pedestal, as 
 we reckoned to do, " returned the president coolly. 
 
 "But you don't safte," said Clinton Grey; "that's all 
 very well as to the hag, but now we must give her up," 
 with an adoring glance towards the closet. 
 
 " Does the letter say so ? " 
 
 " No, " said Trigg hesitatingly, " no ! But I reckon we 
 can't keep both." 
 
 " Why not ? " said the president imperturbably, " if we 
 paid for 'em? " 
 
 As the men only stared in reply he condescended to ex- 
 plain. 
 
 " Look here ! I calculated all these risks after our last 
 meeting. While you boys were just fussin' round, doin' 
 nothing, I wrote to the express company that a box of 
 women's damaged duds had arrived here, while we were 
 looking for our statue; that you chaps were so riled at bein' 
 sold by them that you dumped the whole blamed thing in 
 the creek. But I added, if they 'd let me know what the 
 damage was, I 'd send 'em a draft to cover it. After a 
 spell of waitin' they said they 'd call it square for two hun- 
 dred dollars, considering our disappointment. And I sent 
 the draft. That 's spurred them up to get over our statue, 
 I reckon. And now that it 's coming, it will set us right 
 with the boys." 
 
 "And she," said Clinton Grey again, pointing to the 
 locked chest, "belongs to us? " 
 
244 THE GODDESS OF EXCELSIOE 
 
 " Until we can find some lady guest that will take her 
 with the rooms," returned the president, a little cynically. 
 
 But the arrival of the real statue and its erection in the 
 hotel vestibule created a new sensation. The members of 
 the Excelsior Company were loud in its praises, except the 
 executive committee, whose coolness was looked Upon by 
 the others as an affectation of superiority. It awakened 
 the criticism and jealousy of the nearest town. 
 
 "We hear," said the "Eed Dog Advertiser," "that the' 
 long-promised statue has been put up in that high-toned 
 Hash Dispensary they call a hotel at Excelsior. It repre-- 
 sents an emaciated squaw in a scanty blanket gathering" 
 roots, and carrying a bit of thom-bush kindlings behind 
 her. The high-toned, close corporation of Excelsior may 
 consider this a fair allegory of California ; we should say ib 
 looks mighty like a prophetic forecast of a hard winter 
 on Sycamore Creek and scarcity of provisions. However,; 
 it is n't our funeral, though it 's rather depressing to the 
 casual visitor on his way to dinner. For a long time this 
 work of art was missing and siipposed to be lost, but by be- 
 ing sternly and persistently rejected at every express office 
 on the route, it was at last taken in at Excelsior." 
 
 There was some criticism nearer home. 
 
 " What do you think of it, Miss Marsh ? " said the presi- 
 dent politely to that active young secretary, as he stood 
 before it in the hall. The young woman adjusted her eye- 
 glasses over her aquiline nose. 
 
 " As an idea or a woman, sir ? " 
 
 "As a woman, madam," said the president, letting his 
 brown eyes slip for a moment from Miss Marsh's corn-col- 
 ored crest over her straight but scant figure down to her 
 smart slippers. 
 
 " Well, sir, she could wear your boots, and there is n't 
 a corset in Sacramento would go round her." 
 
 " Thank you ! " he returned gravely, and moved away. 
 
THE GODDESS OE EXCELSIOR 245 
 
 Tor a moment a wild idea of securing possession of the fig- 
 ure some dark night, and, in company with his fellow-con- 
 spirators, of trying those heautiful clothes upon her, passed 
 through his mind, but he dismissed it. And then occurred 
 a strange incident, which startled even his cool, American 
 sanity. 
 
 It was a beautiful moonlight night, and he was returning 
 to a bedroom at the hotel which he temporarily occupied 
 during the painting of his house. It was quite late, he 
 having spent the evening with a San Francisco friend after 
 a business conference which assured him of the remarkable 
 prosperity of Excelsior. It was therefore with some human 
 exaltation that he looked around the sleeping settlement 
 which had sprung up under the magic wand of their good 
 fortune. The full moon had idealized their youthful de- 
 signs with something of their own youthful coloring, gra- 
 ciously softening the garish freshness of paint and plaster, 
 hiding with discreet obscurity the disrupted banks and 
 broken woods at the beginning and end of their broad ave- 
 nues, paving the rough river terrace with tessellated shad- 
 ows, and even touching the rapid stream which was the 
 source of their wealth with a Pactolean glitter. 
 
 The windows of the hotel before him, darkened within, 
 flashed in the moonbeams like the casements of Aladdin's 
 palace. Mingled with his ambition, to-night, were some 
 softer fancies, rarely indulged by him in his forecast of the 
 future of Excelsior, — a dream of some fair partner in his 
 life, after this task was accomplished, yet always of some 
 one moving in a larger world than his youth had known. 
 Rousing the half sleeping porter, he found, however, only 
 the spectral gold-seeker in the vestibule, — the rays of his 
 solitary candle falling upon her divining-rod with a quaint 
 persistency that seemed to point to the stairs he was ascend- 
 ing. When he reached the first landing the rising wind 
 through an open window put out his light, but, although 
 
■246 THE GODDESS OF EXCELSIOK 
 
 the staircase was in darkness, he could see the long corridor 
 above illuminated by the moonlight throughout its whole 
 length. He had nearly reached it when the slow but un- 
 mistakable rustle of a dress in the distance caught his ear. 
 He paused, not only in the interest of delicacy, but with a 
 sudden nervous thrill he could not account for. The rustle 
 came nearer — he could hear the distinct frou-frou of satin; 
 and then, to his bewildered eyes, what seemed to be the fig- 
 ure of the dummy, arrayed in the pale blue evening dress he 
 knew so well, passed gracefully and majestically down the 
 corridor. He could see the shapely folds of the skirt, the 
 symmetry of the bodice, even the harmony of the trimmings. 
 He raised his eyes, half affrightedly, prepared to see the 
 headless shoulders, but they — and what seemed to be a 
 head — were concealed in a floating " cloud " or nubia of 
 some fleecy tissue, as if for protection from the evening air. 
 He remained for an instant motionless, dazed by this appar- 
 ent motion of an inanimate figure; but as the absurdity of 
 the idea struck him he hurriedly but stealthily ascended 
 the remaining stairs, resolved to follow it. But he was 
 only in time to see it turn into the angle of another corri- 
 dor, which, when he had reached it, was empty. The fig- 
 ure had vanished ! 
 
 His first thought was to go to the committee loom and 
 examine the locked closet. But the key was in his desk at 
 home, he had no light, and the room was on the other side 
 of the house. Besides, he reflected that even the detection 
 of the figure would involve the exposure of the very secret 
 they had kept intact so long. He sought his bedroom, and 
 went quietly to bed. But not to sleep; a curiosity more 
 potent than any sense of the trespass done him kept him 
 tossing half the night. Who was this woman whom the 
 clothes fitted so well ? He reviewed in his mind the guests 
 in the house, but he knew none who could have carried ofi 
 this masquerade so bravely. 
 
THE GODDESS OF EXCELSIOR 247 
 
 ' In the morning early he made his way to the committee 
 room, but as he approached was startled to observe two 
 pairs of boots, a man's and a woman's, conjugally placed 
 before its door. Now thoroughly indignant, he hurried to 
 the office, and was confronted by the face of the fair secre- 
 tary. She colored quickly on seeing him — but the reason 
 was obvious. 
 
 ' "You are coming to scold me, sir! But it is not my 
 fault. We were full yesterday afternoon when your friend 
 from San Francisco came here with his wife. We told him 
 those were your rooms, but he said he would make it right 
 with you — and my father thought you would not be dis- 
 pleased for once. Everything of yours was put into an- 
 other room, and the closet remains, looked as you left it." 
 
 Amazed and bewildered, the president could only mutter 
 a vague apology and turn away. Had his friend's wife 
 opened the door with another key in some fit of curiosity 
 and disported herself in those clothes 1 If so, she dare not 
 speak of her discovery. 
 
 An introduction to the lady at breakfast dispelled this 
 faint hope. She was a plump woman, whose generous pro- 
 portions could hardly have been confined in that pale blue 
 bodice ; she was frank and communicative, with no sugges- 
 tion of mischievous concealment. 
 
 Nevertheless, he made a firm resolution. As soon as his 
 friends left he called a meeting of the committee. He 
 briefly informed them of the accidental occupation of the 
 room, but for certain reasons of his own said nothing of his 
 ghostly experience. But he put it to them plainly that no 
 more risks must be run, and that he should remove the 
 dresses and dummy to his own house. To his considerable 
 surprise this suggestion was received with grave approval 
 and a certain strange relief. 
 
 "We kinder thought of suggesting it to you before," said 
 Mr. Trigg slowly, "and that mebbe we 've played this little 
 
248 THE GODDESS OF EXCELSIOR 
 
 game long enough — for suthin 's happened that 'a makin' 
 it anything hut funny. We'd have told you- before, but 
 ■we dassent ! Speak out, Clint, and tell the president what 
 we saw the other night, and don't mince matters." 
 
 The president glanced quickly and warningly around 
 him. "I thought," he said sternly, "that we'd dropped 
 all fooling. It 's no time for practical joking now! " 
 
 " Honest Injun — it 's gospel truth ! Speak up, Clint ! " 
 
 The president looked on the serious faces around him, 
 and was himself slightly awed. 
 
 "It's a matter of two or three nights ago," said Grey 
 slowly, "that Trigg and I were passing through Sycamore 
 Woods, just below the hotel. It was after twelve — bright 
 moonlight, so that we could see everything as plain as day, 
 and we were dead sober. Just as we passed under the syca- 
 mores, Trigg grabs my arm, and says, ' Hi ! ' I looked up, 
 and there, not ten yards away, standing dead in the moon- 
 light, was that dummy ! She was all in white — that dress 
 with. the fairy frills, you know — and had, what's more, a 
 head ! At least, something white all wrapped around it, 
 and over her shoulders. At first we thought you or some 
 of the boys had dressed her up and lifted her out there for 
 a joke, and left her to frighten us! So we started forward, 
 and then — it 's the gospel truth ! — she moved away, glid- 
 ing like the moonbeams, and vanished among the trees ! " 
 
 " Did you see her face ? " asked the president. 
 
 "No! you bet! I did n't try to — it would have haunted 
 me forever." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " This — I mean it was that girl the box belonged to I 
 She 's dead somewhere — as you '11 find out sooner or later 
 — and has come back for her clothes / I 've often heard 
 of such things before." 
 
 Despite his coolness, at this corroboration of his own 
 experience, and impressed by Grey's unmistakable awe, a 
 
THE GODDESS OF EXCELSIOR 249 
 
 thrill went through the president. For an instant he was 
 silent. 
 
 "That will do, hoys," he said finally. "It's a queer 
 story; but remember, it 's all the more reason now for our 
 keeping our secret. As for those things, I '11 remove them 
 quietly and at once." 
 
 But he did not. 
 
 On the contrary, prolonging his stay at the hotel with 
 plausible reasons, he managed frequently to visit the com- 
 mittee room or its vicinity, at different and unsuspected 
 hours of the day and night. More than that, he found op- 
 portunities to visit the office, and under pretexts of busi- 
 ness connected with the economy of the hotel management, 
 informed himself through Miss Marsh on many points. A. 
 few of these details naturally happened to refer to herself, 
 her prospects, her tastes, and education. He learned inci- 
 dentally, what he had partly known, that her father had 
 been in better circumstances, and that she had been gently 
 nurtured — though of this she made little account in her 
 pride in her own independence and devotion to her duties. 
 But in his own persistent way he also made private notes 
 of the breadth of her shoulders, the size of her waist, her 
 height, length of her skirt, her movements in walking, and 
 other apparently extraneous circumstances. It was natural 
 that he acquired some supplemental facts, — that her eyes, 
 under her eye-glasses, were a tender gray, and touched with 
 the melancholy beauty of near-sightedness; that her face 
 had a sensitive mobility beyond the mere charm of color,, 
 and like most people lacking this primitive and striking 
 element of beauty, what was really fine about her escaped 
 the first sight. As, for instance, it was only by bending 
 over to examine her accounts that he found that her indis- 
 tinctive hair was as delicate as floss silk, and as electrical. 
 It was only by finding her romping with the children of a 
 guest one evening that he was startled by the appalling fact 
 
250 THE GODDESS OF EXCELSIOR 
 
 of her youth ! But about this time he left the hotel and 
 returned to his house. 
 
 On the first yearly anniversary of the great strike at Ex- 
 celsior there were some changes in the settlement, notably 
 the promotion of Mr. Marsh to a more important position 
 in the company, and the installation of Miss Cassie Marsh 
 as manageress of the hotel. As Miss Marsh read the oifi- 
 cial letter, signed by the president, conveying in compli- 
 mentary but formal terms this testimony of their approval 
 and confidence, her lip trembled slightly, and a tear tric- 
 kling from her light lashes dimmed her eye-glasses, so that 
 she was fain to go up to her room to recover herself alone. 
 When she did so she was startled to find a wire dummy 
 standing near the door, and neatly folded upon the bed two 
 elegant dresses. A note in the president's own hand lay 
 beside them. A swift blush stung her cheek as she read, — 
 
 Deak Miss Mabsh, — Will you make me happy by 
 keeping the secret that no other woman but yourself knows, 
 and by accepting the clothes that no other woman but 
 yourself can wear? 
 
 The next moment, with the dresses over her arm and the 
 ridiculous dummy swinging by its wires from her other 
 hand, she was flying down the staircase to Committee Room 
 No. 4. The door opened upon its sole occupant, the presi- 
 dent. 
 
 "Oh, sir, how cruel of you! " she gasped. "It was only 
 a joke of mine. ... I always intended to tell you. . . . 
 It was very foolish, but it seemed so funny. . . . You see, 
 I thought it was . . . tlie dress you had bought for your 
 future intended — some young lady you were going to 
 marry ! " 
 
 " It is ! " said the president quietly, and he closed the 
 door behind her. 
 
 And it was. 
 
HOW I WENT TO THE MINES 
 
 I HAD been two years in California before I ever thought 
 of going to the mines, and my initiation into the vocation 
 of gold digging was partly compulsory. The little pioneer 
 settlement school, of which I was the somewhat youthful 
 and, I fear, the not over-competent master, was state-aided 
 only to a limited extent; and as the bulk of its expense 
 was borne by a few families in its vicinity, when two of 
 them — representing perhaps a dozen children or pupils — 
 one morning announced their intention of moving to a more 
 prosperous and newer district, the school was incontinently 
 closed. 
 
 In twenty-four hours I found myself destitute alike of 
 my flock and my vocation. I am afraid I regretted the 
 former the most. Some of the children I had made my 
 companions and friends; and as I stood that bright May 
 morning before the empty little bark-thatched schoolhouse 
 in the wilderness, it was with an odd sensation that our 
 little summer "play" at being schoolmaster and pupil was 
 over. Indeed, I remember distinctly that a large hunk of 
 gingerbread — a parting gift from a prize scholar a year 
 older than myself — stood me in good stead in my future 
 wanderings, for I was alone in the world at that moment 
 and constitutionally improvident. 
 
 I had been frightfully extravagant even on my small in- 
 come, spending much money on "boiled shirts," and giving 
 as an excuse, which I since believe was untenable, that 1 
 ought to set an example in dress to my pupils. The result 
 was that at this crucial moment I had only seven dollars in 
 
252 HOW I WENT TO THE MINES 
 
 my pocket, five of which went to the purchase of a second- 
 hand revolver, that I felt was necessary to signalize my 
 abandonment of a peaceful vocation for one of greed and 
 adventure. 
 
 For I had finally resolved to go to the mines and become 
 a gold-digger. Other occupations and my few friends in 
 San Francisco were expensively distant. The nearest min- 
 ing district was forty miles away ; the nearest prospect of 
 aid was the hope of finding a miner whom I had casually 
 met in San Francisco, and whom I shall call "Jim." With 
 only this name upon my lips I expected, like the deserted 
 Eastern damsel in the ballad, to find my friend among the 
 haunts of mining men. But my capital of two dollars would 
 not allow the expense of stage-coach fare; I must walk to 
 the mines, and I did. 
 
 I cannot clearly recall how I did it. The end of my first 
 day's journey found me with blistered feet and the convic- 
 tion that varnished leather shoes, however proper for the 
 Master of Madrono Valley School in the exercise of his 
 functions, were not suited to him when he was itinerant. 
 Nevertheless, I clung to them as the last badge of my 
 former life, carrying them in my hands when pain and 
 pride made me at last forsake the frequented highway to 
 travel barefooted in the trails. 
 
 I am afraid that my whole equipment was rather incon- 
 gruous, and I remember that the few travelers I met on the 
 road glanced at me with curiosity and some amusement. 
 The odds and ends of my "pack " — a faded morocco dress- 
 ing-case, an early gift from my mother, and a silver-handled 
 riding-whip, also a gift — in juxtaposition with my badly 
 rolled, coarse blue blanket and tin coffee-pot, were sufficiently 
 provocative. My revolver, too, which would not swing 
 properly in its holster from my hip, but worked around un- 
 til it hung down in front like a Highlander's dirk, gave 
 me considerable mortification. 
 
HOW I WENT TO THE MINES 253 
 
 A sense of pride, which kept me from arriving at my 
 friend's cabin utterly penniless, forbade my seeking shelter 
 and food at a wayside station. I ate the remainder of my 
 gingerbread, and camped out in the woods. To preclude 
 any unnecessary sympathy, I may add that I was not at all 
 hungry and had no sense of privation. 
 
 The loneliness that had once or twice come over me in 
 meeting strangers on the traveled road, with whom I was 
 too shy and proud to converse, vanished utterly in the 
 sweet and silent companionship of the woods. I believe I 
 should have felt my solitary vagabond condition greater in 
 a strange hostelry or a crowded cabin. I heard the soft 
 breathings of the lower life in the grass and ferns around 
 me, saw the grave, sleepy stars above my head, and slept 
 Soundly, quite forgetting the pain of my blistered feet, or 
 the handkerchiefs I had sacrificed for bandages. 
 
 In the morning, finding that I had emptied my water 
 flask, I also found that I had utterly overlooked the first 
 provision of camping, — nearness to a water supply, — and 
 was fain to chew some unboiled coffee grains to flavor my 
 scant breakfast, when I again took the trail. 
 
 I kept out of the main road as much as possible that 
 day, although my detours cost me some extra walking, and 
 by this time my bandaged feet had accumulated so much of 
 the red dust that I suppose it would have been difficult to 
 say what I wore on them. But in these excursions the bal- 
 samic air of the pines always revived me ; the reassuring 
 changes of scenery and distance viewed from those mountain 
 ridges, the most wonderful I had ever seen, kept me in a 
 state of excitement, and there was an occasional novelty of 
 "outcrop" in the rocky trail that thrilled me with myste- 
 rious anticipation. 
 
 For this outcrop — a strange, white, porcelain-like rock, 
 glinting like a tooth thrust through the red soil — was 
 quartz, which I had been told indicated the vicinity of the 
 
254 HOW I WENT TO THE MINES 
 
 gold-bearing district. Following these immaculate finger- 
 posts, I came at about sunset upon a mile-long slope of 
 pines still baking in the western glare, and beyond it, 
 across an unfathomable abyss, a shelf in the opposite moun- 
 tain side, covered with white tents, looking not unlike the 
 quartz outcrop I have spoken of. It was " the diggings " ! 
 
 I do not know what I had expected, but I was conscious 
 of some bitter disappointment. As I gazed, the sun sank 
 below the serried summit of the slope on which I stood; a 
 great shadow seemed to steal up rather than down the 
 mountain, the tented shelf faded away, and a score of tiny 
 diamond points of light, like stars, took its place. A cold 
 wind rushed down the mountain side, and I shivered in my 
 thin clothes, drenched with the sweat of my day-long tramp. 
 
 It was nine o'clock when I reached the mining camp, it- 
 self only a fringe of the larger settlement beyond, and I had 
 been on my feet since sunrise. Nevertheless, I halted at 
 the outskirts, deposited my pack in the bushes, bathed my 
 feet in a sluice of running water, so stained with the soil 
 that it seemed to run blood, and, putting on my dreadful 
 varnished shoes again, limped once more into respectability 
 and the first cabin. 
 
 Here I found that my friend " Jim " was one of four part- 
 ners on the "Gum Tree " claim, two miles on the other side 
 of the settlement. There was nothing left for me but to 
 push on to the "Magnolia Hotel," procure the cheapest re- 
 freshment and an hour's rest, and then limp as best I could 
 to the " Gum Tree '' claim. 
 
 I found the "Magnolia" a large wooden building, given 
 over, in greater part, to an enormous drinking "saloon," 
 filled with flashing mirrors and a mahogany bar. In the 
 unimportant and stuff'y little dining-room or restaurant, I 
 selected some "fish-balls and coifee," I think more with a 
 view to cheapness and expedition than for their absolute 
 sustaining power. The waiter informed me that it was pos- 
 
HOW I WENT TO THE MINES 255 
 
 sible that my friend " Jim " might be in the settlement, 
 but that the barkeeper, who knew everything and every- 
 body, could tell me or give me "the shortest cut to the 
 claim. " 
 
 From sheer fatigue I lingered at my meal, I fear, long 
 past anj' decent limit, and then reentered the bar-room. It 
 was crowded with miners and traders and a few smartly 
 dressed professional-looking men. Here again my vanity 
 led me into extravagance. I could not bear to address the 
 important, white-shirt-sleeved and diamond-pinned bar- 
 keeper as a mere boyish suppliant for information. I was 
 silly enough to demand a drink, and laid down, alas ! an- 
 other quarter. 
 
 I had asked my question, the barkeeper had handed me 
 the decanter, and I had poured out the stuff with as much 
 ease and grown-up confidence as I could assume, when a 
 singular incident occurred. As it had some bearing upon 
 my fortune, I may relate it here. 
 
 The ceiling of the saloon was supported by a half-dozen 
 wooden columns, about eighteen inches Square, standing in 
 a line, parallel with the counter of the bar and about two 
 feet from it. The front of the bar was crowded with cus- 
 tomers, when suddenly, to my astonishment, they one and 
 all put down their glasses and hurriedly backed into the 
 spaces between the columns. At the same moment a shot 
 was fired from the street through the large open doors that 
 stood at right angles with the front of the counter and the 
 columns. 
 
 The bullet raked and splintered the mouldings of the 
 counter front, but with no other damage. The shot was 
 returned from the upper end of the bar, and then for the 
 first time I became aware that two men with leveled revolv- 
 ers were shooting at each other through the saloon. 
 
 The bystanders in range were fully protected by the 
 wooden columns; the barkeeper had "ducked" below the 
 
256 HOW I WENT TO THE MINES 
 
 counter at the first shot. Six shots were exchanged by the 
 duelists, but, as far as I could see, nobody was hurt. A 
 mirror was smashed, and my glass had part of its rim car- 
 ried cleanly away by the third shot and its contents spilt. 
 
 I had remained standing near the counter, and I presume 
 I may have been protected by the columns. But the whole 
 thing passed so quickly, and I was so utterly absorbed in 
 its dramatic novelty, that I cannot recall having the slight- 
 est sensation of physical fear; indeed, I had been much 
 more frightened in positions of less peril. 
 
 My only concern, and this was paramount, was that I 
 might betray by any word or movement my youthfulness, 
 astonishment, or unfamUiarity with such an experience. I 
 think that any shy,' vain schoolboy will understand this, 
 and would probably feel as I did. So strong was this feel- 
 ing, that while the sting of gunpowder was still in my nos- 
 trils I moved towards the bar, and, taking up my broken 
 glass, said to the barkeeper, perhaps somewhat slowly and 
 diffidently, ^- 
 
 "Will you please fill me another glass? It's not my 
 fault if this was broken." 
 
 The barkeeper, rising flushed and excited from behind 
 the bar, looked at me with a queer smile, and then passed 
 the decanter and a fresh glass. I heard a laugh and an oath 
 behind me, and my cheeks flushed as I took a single gulp 
 of the fiery spirit and hurried away. 
 
 But my blistered feet gave me a twinge of pain, and I 
 limped on the threshold. I felt a hand on my shoulder, 
 and a voice said quickly: "You ain't hurt, old man?" I 
 recognized the voice of the man who had laughed, and re- 
 sponded quickly, growing more hot and scarlet, that my 
 feet were blistered by a long walk, and that I was in a 
 hurry to go to " Gum Tree Claim. " 
 
 "Hold on," said the stranger. Preceding me to the 
 street, he called to a man sitting in a buggy, "Drop him," 
 
HOW I WiENT TO THE MINES 2o7 
 
 pointing to me, "at Gum Tree Claim, and then come back 
 here," helped me into the vehicle, clapped his hand on my 
 shoulder, said to me enigmatically, "You'll do!" and' 
 quickly reentered the saloon. 
 
 It was from the driver only that I learned, during th( 
 drive, that the two combatants had quarreled a week before, 
 had sworn to shoot each other "on sight," i. e., on their 
 first accidental meeting, and that each " went armed. " He 
 added, disgustedly, that it was "mighty bad shooting," tc 
 which T, in my very innocence of these lethal weapons, and 
 truthfulness to my youthful impressions, agreed! 
 
 I said nothing else of my own feelings, and, indeed, 
 soon forgot them; for I was nearing the end of my jour- 
 ney, and now, for the first time, although I believe it a 
 common experience of youth, I began to feel a doubt of the 
 wisdom of my intentions. During my long tramp, and in 
 the midst of my privations, I had never doubted it; hut 
 now, as I neared "Jim's" cabin, my youthfulness and in- 
 efficiency and the extravagance of my quest of a mere ac- 
 quaintance for aid and counsel came to me like a shock. 
 But it was followed by a greater one. When at last I took 
 leave of my driver and entered the humble little log cabin 
 of the " Gum Tree Company, " I was informed that " Jim "' 
 only a few days before had given up his partnership and 
 gone to San Francisco. 
 
 Perhaps there was something in my appearance that 
 showed my weariness and disappointment, for one of the 
 partners dragged out the only chair in the cabin, — he and 
 the other partners had been sitting on boxes tilted on end, 
 
 and offered it to me, with the inevitable drink. With 
 
 this encouragement, I stammered out my story. I think I 
 told the exact truth. I was too weary to even magnify my 
 acquaintance with the absent "Jim." 
 
 They listened without comment. I dare say they had 
 heerd the story before. I am quite convinced they had each 
 
258 HOW I WENT TO THE MINES 
 
 gone through a harder experience than mine. Then oc- 
 curred what I believe could have occurred only in Califor- 
 nia in that age of simplicity and confidence. Without a 
 ■word of discussion among themselves, without a word of 
 inquiry as to myself, my character or prospects, they offered 
 me the vacant partnership "to try." 
 
 In any event I was to stay there until I could make up 
 my mind. As I was scarcely able to stand, one of them 
 volunteered to fetch my pack from its " cache " in the 
 bushes four miles away; and then, to my astonishment, 
 conversation instantly turned upon other topics, — litera- 
 ture, science, philosophy, everything but business and prac- 
 tical concerns. Two of the partners were graduates of a 
 Southern college and the other a bright young farmer. 
 
 I went to bed that night in the absent Jim's bunk, one 
 fourth owner of a cabin and a claim I knew nothing of. 
 As I looked about me at the bearded faces of my new part- 
 ners, although they were all apparently only a few years 
 older than myself, I wondered if we were not " playing " at 
 being partners in "Gum Tree Claim," as I had played at 
 being schoolmaster in Madrono Valley. 
 
 When I awoke late the next morning and stared around 
 the empty cabin, I could scarcely believe that the events of 
 the preceding night were not a dream. My pack, whicli I 
 had left four miles away, lay at my feet. By the truthful 
 light of day I could see that I was lying apparently in a 
 parallelogram of untrimmed logs, between whose interstices, 
 here and there, the glittering sunlight streamed. 
 
 A roof qf bark thatch, on which a woodpecker was fool- 
 ishly experimenting, was above my head; four wooden 
 "bunks," like a ship's berth, were around the two sides of 
 the room; a table, a chair, and three stools, fashioned from 
 old packing-boxes, were the only furniture. The cabin was 
 lighted by a window of two panes let into one gable, by the 
 open door, and by a chimney of adobe, that entirely filled 
 
HOW I WENT TO THE MINES 259 
 
 the other gable, and projected scarcely a foot above the apex 
 of the roof. 
 
 I was wondering whether I had not strayed into a deserted 
 cabin, a dreadful suspicion of the potency of the single 
 drink I had taken in the saloon coming over me, when my 
 three partners entered. Their explanation was brief. 1 had 
 needed rest, they had delicately forborne to awaken me be- 
 fore. It was twelve o'clock! My breakfast was ready. 
 They had something " funny " to tell me ! I was a hero ! 
 
 My conduct during the shooting aifray at the "Magno- 
 lia " had been discussed, elaborately exaggerated, and inter- 
 preted, by eye-witnesses; the latest version being that I 
 had calmly stood at the bar, coolly demanding to be served 
 by the crouching barkeeper, while the shots were being 
 fired! I am afraid even my new friends put down my 
 indignant disclaimer to youthful bashfulness, but seeing 
 that I was distressed, they changed the subject. 
 
 Yes ! I might, if I wanted, do some " prospecting " that 
 day. Where 1 Oh, anywhere on ground not already 
 claimed; there were hundreds of square miles to choose 
 from. What was I to do? What! was it possible I had 
 never prospected before? No! Nor dug gold at all? 
 Never! 
 
 I saw them glance hurriedly at each other; my heart 
 sank, until I noticed that their eyes were eager and spar- 
 kling ! Then I learned that my ignorance was blessed ! 
 Gold miners were very superstitious; it was one of their 
 firm beliefs that "luck" would inevitably follow the first 
 essay of the neophyte or "greenhorn." This was called 
 " nigger luck ; " i. e. , the inexplicable good fortune of the 
 inferior and incompetent. It was not very complimentary 
 to myself, but in my eagerness to show my gratitude to my 
 new partners I accepted it. 
 
 I dressed hastily, and swallowed my breakfast of coffee, 
 salt pork, and "flapjacks." A pair of old deerskin mocca 
 
260 HOW I WENT TO THE MINES 
 
 sins, borrowed from a squaw who did the camp washing, 
 was a luxury to my blistered feet; and equipped with a 
 pick, a long-handled shovel, and a prospecting pan, I de- 
 manded to be led at once to my field of exploit. But I 
 was told that this was impossible ; I must find it myself, 
 alone, or the charm would be broken ! 
 
 I fixed upon a grassy slope, about two hundred yards 
 from the cabin, and limped thither. The slope faced the 
 magnificent canon and the prospect I had seen the day be- 
 fore from the further summit. In my vivid recollection of 
 that eventful morning I quite distinctly remember that I 
 was, nevertheless, so entranced with the exterior "pro- 
 spect " that for some moments I forgot the one in the 
 ground at my feet. Then I began to dig. 
 
 My instructions were to fill my pan with the dirt taken 
 from as large an area as possible near the surface. In do- 
 ing this I was sorely tempted to dig lower in search of more 
 hidden treasure, and in one or two deeper strokes of my pick 
 I unearthed a bit of quartz with little seams or veins that 
 glittered promisingly. I put them hopefully in my pocket, 
 but duly filled my pan. This I took, not without some dif- 
 ficulty, owing to its absurd weight, to the nearest sluice-box, 
 and, as instructed, tilted my pan in the running water. 
 
 As I rocked it from side to side, in a surprisingly short 
 time the lighter soil of deep red color was completely washed 
 away, leaving a glutinous clayey pudding mixed with small 
 stones, like plums. Indeed, there was a fascinating remi- 
 niscence of "dirt pies" in this boyish performance. The 
 mud, however, soon yielded to the flowing water, and left 
 only the stones and "black sand." I removed the former 
 with my fingers, retaining only a small, flat, pretty, disk- 
 like stone, heavier than the others, — it looked like a black- 
 ened coin, — and this I put in my pocket with the quartz. 
 Then I proceeded to wash away the black sand. 
 
 I must leave my youthful readers to imagine my sensa- 
 
■ HOW I WENT TO THE MINES 261 
 
 tions when at last I saw a dozen tiny star-points of gold ad- 
 hering to the bottom of the pan! They were so small that 
 I was fearful of washing further, lest they should wash 
 away. It was not uiitil later that I found that their specific 
 gravity made that almost impossible. I ran joyfully to 
 where my partners were at work, holding out my pan. 
 
 "Yes, he 's got the color," said one blandly. "I knew 
 it." 
 
 I was disappointed. "Then I haven't struck it?" I 
 said hesitatingly. 
 
 "Not in this pan. You 've got about a quarter of a dol- 
 lar here." 
 
 My face fell. "But," he continued smilingly, "you've 
 only to get that amount in four pans, and you 've made 
 your daily ' grub. ' " 
 
 "And that's all," added the other, "that we, or indeed 
 any one on this hill, have made for the last six months ! " 
 
 This was another shock to me. But I do not know 
 whether I was as much impressed by it as by the perfect 
 good humor and youthful unconcern with which it was ut- 
 tered. Still, I was disappointed in my first eifort. I hesi- 
 tatingly drew the two bits of quartz from my pocket. 
 
 "I found them," I said. "They look as if they had 
 some metal in them. See how it sparkles." 
 
 My partner smiled. "Iron pyrites," he said; "but 
 what 's that? " he added quickly, taking the little disk-like 
 stone from my hand. " Where did you get this ? " 
 
 " In the same hole. Is it good for anything ? " 
 
 He did not reply to me, but turned to his two other part- 
 ners, who had eagerly pressed around him. " Look ! " 
 
 He laid the fragment on another stone, and gave it a 
 smart blow with the point of his pick. To my astonish- 
 ment it did not crumble or break, but showed a little dent 
 from the pick point that was bright yellow ! 
 
 I had no time, nor indeed need, to ask another question- 
 
262 HOW I WENT TO THE MINES . 
 
 "Eun for your barrow!" he said to one. "Write out a 
 ' Notice, ' and bring the stakes," to the other; and the next 
 moment, forgetful of my blistered feet, we were flying over 
 to the slope. A claim was staked out, the " Notice " put 
 up, and we all fell to work to load up our wheelbarrow. 
 We carried four loads to the sluice-boxes before we began 
 to wash. 
 
 The nugget I had picked up was worth about twelve dol- 
 lars. We carried many loads ; we worked that day and the 
 next, hopefully, cheerfully, and without weariness. Then 
 we worked at the claim daily, dutifully, and regularly for 
 three weeks. We sometimes got "the color," we some- 
 times did n't, but we nearly always got enough for our 
 daily "grub." We laughed, joked, told stories, "spouted 
 poetry," and enjoyed ourselves as in a perpetual picnic. 
 But that twelve-dollar nugget was the first and ^ast 
 "strike" we made on the new "Tenderfoot" Claim! 
 
CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 NEW BUELESQUES 
 
 RUPERT THE RESEMBLER 
 
 BT A-TH-Y H-PE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 BUPEET OF TRULYRURAIiANIA 
 
 When I state that I was own brother to Lord Burleydon, 
 had an income of two thousand a year, could speak all the 
 polite languages fluently, was a powerful swordsman, a good 
 shot, and could ride anything from an elephant to a clothes- 
 horse, I really think I have said enough to satisfy any fem- 
 inine novel-reader of Bayswater or South Kensington that 
 I was a hero. My brother's wife, however, did not seem 
 to incline to this belief. 
 
 "A more conceited, self-satisfied little cad I never met 
 than you," she said. "Why don't you try to do some- 
 thing instead of sneering at others who do? You never 
 take anything seriously — -except yourself, which isn't 
 worth it. You are proud of your red hair and peaked nose 
 just because you fondly believe that you got them from the 
 Prince of Trulyruralania, and are willing to think evil of 
 your ancestress to satisfy your snobbish little soul. Let 
 me tell you, sir, that there was no more truth about that 
 than there was in that silly talk of her partiality for her 
 husband's red-haired gamekeeper in Scotland. Ah! that 
 makes you start — don't it? But I have always observed 
 
264 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 that a mule is apt to remember only the horse side of his 
 ancestry ! " 
 
 Whenever my pretty sister-in-law talks in this way I 
 always try to forget that she came of a family far inferior 
 to our own, the Kazorbills. Indeed, her people — of the 
 Nonconformist stock — really had nothing Ijut wealth and 
 rectitude, and I think my brother Bob, in his genuine love 
 for her, was willing to overlook the latter for the sake of 
 the former. 
 
 My pretty sister-in-law's interest in my affairs always 
 made me believe that she secretly worshiped me — although 
 it was a fact, as will be seen in the progress of this story, 
 that most women blushed on my addressing them. I used 
 to say it "was the reflection of my red hair on a trans- 
 parent complexion," which was rather neat — wasn't it? 
 And subtle? But then, I was always saying such subtle 
 things. 
 
 " My dear Eose, " I said, laying down my egg spoon (the 
 egg spoon really had nothing to do with this speech, but it 
 imparted such a delightfully realistic flavor to the scene), 
 "I'm not to blame if I resemble the S'helpburgs." 
 
 "It 's your being so beastly proud of it that I object to ! " 
 she replied. "And for Heaven's sake, try to he something; 
 and not merely resemble things ! The fact is you resemble 
 too much — you're always resembling. You resemble a 
 man of fashion, and you 're not; a wit, and you 're not; a 
 soldier, a sportsman, a hero — and you 're none of 'em. Al- 
 together, you 're not in the least convincing. Now, listen! 
 There 's a good chance for you to go as our attache with 
 Lord Mumblepeg, the new Ambassador to Cochin China. 
 In all the novels, you know, attaches are always the confi- 
 dants of Grand Duchesses, and know more state secrets than 
 their chiefs; in real life, I believe they are something like 
 a city clerk with a leaning to private theatricals. Say you '11 
 go! Do!" 
 
EUPERT THE EESEMBLEK 265 
 
 "I '11 take a few months' holiday, first," I replied, "and 
 then," I added in my gay, dashing way, "if the place is 
 open — hang it if I don't go! " 
 
 "Good old hounder!" she said, "and don't think too 
 much of that precious Prince Eupert. He was a bad lot." 
 
 She blushed again at me — as her husband entered. 
 
 "Take Rose's advice, Rupert, my boy," he said, "and 
 go!" 
 
 And that is how I came to go to Trulyruralania. For I 
 secretly resolved to take my holiday in traveling in that 
 country and trying, as dear Lady Burleydon put it, really 
 to be somebody, instead of resembling anybody in particu- 
 lar. A precious lot she knew about it ! 
 
 CHAPTER n 
 IK WHICH MY HAIE CAUSES A LOT OF THINGS 
 
 You go to Trulyruralania from Charing Cross. In pass- 
 ing through Paris we picked up Mile. Beljambe, who was 
 going to Kbhlslau, the capital of Trulyruralania, to marry 
 the Grand Duke Michael, who, however, as I was informed, 
 was in love with the Princess Flirtia. She blushed on see- 
 ing me — but, I was told afterwards, declined being intro- 
 duced to me on any account. However, I thought nothing 
 of this, and went on to Bock, the next station to KBhlslau. 
 At the little inn in the forest I was informed I was just in 
 time to see the coronation of the new king the next day. 
 The landlady and her daughter were very communicative, 
 and, after the fashion of the simple, guileless stage peasant, 
 instantly informed me what everybody was doing, and at 
 once explained the situation. She told me that the Grand 
 Duke Michael — or Black Michael as he was called — him- 
 self aspired to the throne, as well as to the hand of the 
 Princess Flirtia, but was hated by the populace, who pre- 
 
266 CONDENSKD NOVELS 
 
 f erred the young heir, Prince Rupert ; because he had the 
 hair and features of the dynasty of the S'helpburgg, 
 •'which," she added, "are singularly like your own." 
 
 " But is red hair so very peculiar here ? " I asked. 
 
 "Among the Jews — yes, sire! I mean yes, sir," she 
 corrected herself. " You seldom see a red-headed Jew. " 
 
 " The Jews ! " I repeated in astonishment. 
 
 "Of course you know the S'helpburgs are descended di- 
 rectly from Solomon — and have indeed some of his matri- 
 monial peculiarities," she said, blushing. 
 
 I was amazed — but recalled myself. "But why do they 
 call the Duke of KShlslau Black Michael ? " I asked care- 
 lessly. 
 
 "Because he is nearly black, sir. You see, when the 
 great Prince Rupert went abroad in the old time he visited 
 England, Scotland, and Africa. They say he married an 
 African lady there — and that the Duke is reaUy more in 
 the direct line of succession than Prince Rupert." 
 
 But here the daughter showed me to my room. She 
 blushed, of course, and apologized for not bringing a candle, 
 as she thought my hair was sufficiently illuminating. 
 "But," she added with another blush, "I do so like it.'' 
 
 I replied by giving her something of no value, — a Bel- 
 gian nickel which would n't pass in Bock, as I had found 
 to my cost. But my hair had evidently attracted attention 
 from others, for on my return to the guest-room a stranger 
 approached me, and in the purest and most precise German 
 — the Court or 'Olland Hof speech — addressed me: — 
 
 " Have you the red hair of the fair King or the hair of 
 your father ? " 
 
 Luckily I was able to reply with the same purity and 
 precision : " I have both the hair of the fair King and my 
 own. But I have not the hair of my father nor of Black 
 Michael, nor of the innkeeper nor the innkeeper's wife. 
 The red heir of the fair King would be a son." 
 
RUPERT THE EESEMBLER 267 
 
 Possibly this delicate Tnot on the approaching marriage of 
 the King was lost in the translation, for the stranger strode 
 abruptly away. I learned, however, that the King was 
 actually then in Bock, at the castle a few miles distant, in. 
 the woods. I resolved to stroll thither. 
 
 It was a fine old mediaeval structure. But as the singular 
 incidents I am about to relate combine the romantic and ad- 
 venturous atmosphere of the middle ages with all the appli- 
 ances of modern times, I may briefly state that the castle 
 was lit by electricity, had fire-escapes on each of the turrets, 
 four lifts, and was fitted up by one of the best West End 
 establishments. The sanitary arrangements were excellent, 
 and the drainage of the most perfect order, as I had reason 
 to know personally later. I was so affected by the peaceful 
 solitude that I lay down under a tree and presently fell 
 asleep. I was awakened by the sound of voices, and, look- 
 ing up, beheld two men bending over me. One was a griz- 
 zled veteran and the other a younger dandyfied man; both 
 were dressed in shooting suits. 
 
 "Never saw such a resemblance before in all my life," 
 said the elder man. "'Pon my soul! if the King hadn't 
 got shaved yesterday because the Princess Plirtia said his 
 beard tickled her, I 'd swear it was he ! " 
 
 I could not help thinking how lucky it was — for this 
 narrative — that the King had shaved, otherwise my story 
 would have degenerated into a mere Comedy of Errors. 
 Opening my eyes, I said boldly : — 
 
 "Now that you are satisfied whom I resemble, gentlemen, 
 perhaps you will tell me who you are ? " 
 
 "Certainly," said the elder curtly. "I am Spitz — a 
 simple colonel of his Majesty's, yet, nevertheless, the one 
 man who runs this whole dynasty — and this young gentle- 
 man is Fritz, my lieutenant. And you are " — 
 
 "My name is Eazorbill — brother to Lord Burleydon," I 
 replied calmly. 
 
268 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 " Good heavens ! another of the lot ! " he muttered. 
 Then, correcting himself, he said brusquely : " Any relation 
 to that Englishwoman who was so sweet on the old Rupert 
 centuries ago 1 " 
 
 Here, again, I suppose my sister-in-law would have had 
 ine knock down the foreign insulter of my English ances- 
 tress — but I colored to the roots of my hair, and even far- 
 ther — with pleasure at this proof of my royal descent ! 
 And then a cheery voice was heard calling " Spitz ! " and 
 " Eritz ! " through the woods. 
 
 "The King!" said Spitz to Eritz quickly. "He must 
 not see him." 
 
 " Too late, " said Eritz, as a young man bounded lightly 
 out of the bushes. 
 
 I was thunderstruck ! It was as if I had suddenly been 
 confronted with a mirror — and beheld myself I Of course 
 he was not quite so good-looking, or so tall, but he was still 
 a colorable imitation ! I was delighted. 
 
 Nevertheless, for a moment he did not seem to recipro- 
 cate my feeling. He stared at me, staggered back and 
 passed his hand across his forehead. " Can it be, " he mut- 
 tered thickly, "that I've got 'em ag'in? Yet I only had 
 — shingle glash ! " 
 
 But Eritz quickly interposed. 
 
 "Your Majesty is all right — though," he added in a 
 lower voice, " let this be a warning to you for to-morrow ! 
 This gentleman is Mr. Razorbill — you know the old story 
 of the Razorbills ? — Ha ! ha ! " 
 
 But the King did not laugh; he extended his hand 
 and said gently, " You are welcome — my cousin ! " In- 
 deed, my sister-in-law would have probably said that — 
 dissipated though he was — he was the only gentleman 
 there. 
 
 "I have come to seo the coronation, your Majesty," 1 
 said. 
 
EUPERT THE EESEMBLEIl 269 
 
 "And you shall," said the King heartily, "and shall go 
 ■with us! The show can't begin without us — eh. Spitz?" 
 he added playfully, poking the veteran in the ribs, " what- 
 ever Michael may do ! " 
 
 Then he linked his arms in Spitz's and mine. "Let's 
 go to the hut — and have some supper and fizz," he said 
 
 gayly. 
 
 We went to the hut. We had supper. We ate and 
 drank heavily. We danced madly around the table. Nev- 
 ertheless I thought that Spitz and ~Fvitz were worried by 
 the King's potations, and Spitz at last went so far as to re- 
 mind his Majesty that they were to start early in the morn-; 
 ing for Kbhlslau. I noticed also that as the King drank, 
 his speech grew thicker and Spitz and Eritz exchanged; 
 glances. At last Spitz said with stern significance : — 
 
 " Your Majesty has not forgotten the test invariably sub>i' 
 mitted to the King at his coronation? " 
 
 "Shertenly not," replied the King, with his reckless., 
 laugh. " The King mush be able to pronounsh — name of 
 his country — intel-lillil-gibly : mush shay (hie!): 'I'm 
 King of — King of — Too-too-tooral-looral-anyer. ' " He; 
 staggered, laughed, and fell under the table. 
 
 " He cannot say it ! " gasped Fritz and Spitz in one voice.? 
 "He is lost!" 
 
 "Unless," said Fritz suddenly, pointing at me with a, 
 flash of intelligence, "he can personate him, and say it. 
 Can you t " he turned to me brusquely. 
 
 It was an awful moment. I had been drinking heavily; 
 too, but I resolved to succeed. "I'm King of Trooly-rooly " 
 — I murmured ; but I could not master it — I staggered; 
 and followed the King under the table. 
 
 "Is there no one here," roared Spitz, "who can shav^ 
 
 thish dynasty, and shay ' Tooral ' — No ! it ! I mean 
 
 ' Trularlooral ' " — but he, too, lurched hopelessly forward.. 
 
 "No one can say ' Tooral-looral ' " — muttered Fritz j, 
 
270 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 and, grasping Spitz in despair, they both rolled under the 
 table. 
 
 How long we lay there Heaven knows ! I was awakened 
 by Spitz playing the garden hose on me. He was booted 
 and spurred, with Fritz by his side. The King was lying 
 on a bench, saying feebly: "Blesh you, my chillen." 
 
 " By politely acceding to Black Michael's request to ' try 
 our one-and-six sherry, ' he has been brought to this condi- 
 tion," said Spitz bitterly. "It 's a trick to keep him from 
 being crowned. In this country if the King is crowned 
 while drunk, the kingdom instantly reverts to a villain — 
 no matter who. But in this case the villain is Black Mi- 
 chael. Ha ! What say you, lad 1 Shall we frustrate the 
 rascal, by having you personate the King ? " 
 
 I was — well ! — intoxicated at the thought ! But what 
 would my sister-in-law say ? Would she — in her Noncon- 
 formist conscience — consider it strictly honorable 1 But I 
 swept all scruples aside. A King was to be saved ! " I 
 will go," I said. "Let us on to Kohlslau — riding like 
 the wind ! " We rode like the wind, furiously, madly. 
 Mounted on a wild, dashing bay — known familiarly as the 
 " Bay of Biscay " from its rough turbulence — I easily kept 
 the lead. But our horses began to fail. Suddenly Spitz 
 halted, clapped his hand to his head, and threw himself 
 from his horse. "Tools! " he said, "we should have taken 
 the train ! It will get there an hour before we will ! " He 
 pointed to a wayside station where the 7.15 excursion train 
 for Kohlslau was waiting. 
 
 "But how dreadfully unmediasval! What will the pub- 
 lic say ? " I began. 
 
 "Bother the public! " he said gruffly. "Who 's running 
 this dynasty — you or I? Come! " With the assistance of 
 Fritz he tied up my face with a handkerchief to simulate 
 toothache, and then, with a shout of defiance, we three 
 rushed madly into a closely packed third-class carriage. 
 
KUPERT THE KESEMBLER 271 
 
 Never shall I forget the perils, the fatigue, the hopes 
 and fears of that mad journey. Panting, perspiring, packed 
 together with cheap trippers, but exalted with the one hope 
 of saving the King, we at last staggered out on the Kbhlslau 
 platform utterly exhausted. As we did so we heard a dis- 
 tant roar from the city. Fritz turned an ashen gray, Spitz 
 a livid blue. " Are we too late t " he gasped, as we madly 
 fought our way into the street, where shouts of " The King ! 
 The King ! " were rending the air. " Can it be Black Mi- 
 chael ? " But here the crowd parted, and a procession, pre- 
 ceded by outriders, flashed into the square. And there, 
 seated in a carriage beside the most beautiful red-haired girl 
 I had ever seen, was the King, — the King whom we had 
 left two hours ago, dead drunk in the hut in the forest! 
 
 CHAPTERS m TO XXir (Inclusive) 
 
 IN WHICH THINGS GET MIXED 
 
 We reeled against each other aghast! Spitz recovered 
 himself first. "We must fly! " he said hoarsely. "If the 
 King has discovered our trick — we are lost ! " 
 
 " But where shall we got " I asked. 
 
 "Back to the hut." 
 
 We caught the next train to Bock. An hour later we 
 stood panting within the hut. Its walls and ceiling were 
 splashed with sinister red stains. " Blood ! " I exclaimed 
 joyfully. "At last we have a real mediaeval adventure! " 
 
 "It's Burgundy, you fool," growled Spitz; "good Bur- 
 gundy wasted ! " At this moment Fritz appeared dragging 
 in the hut-keeper. 
 
 " Where is the King 1 " demanded Spitz fiercely of the 
 trembling peasant. 
 
 " He was carried away an hour ago by Black Michael and 
 taken to the castle." 
 
272 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 " And when did he leave the castle ? " roared Spitz. 
 
 " He never left the castle, sir, and, alas ! I fear nevei 
 will, alive ! " replied the man shuddering. 
 
 We stared at each other ! Spitz bit his grizzled mus- 
 tache. " So, " he said bitterly, " Black Michael has simply • 
 anticipated us with the same game ! We have been tricked. 
 I knew it could not be the King whom they crowned! 
 No ! " he added quickly, " I see it all — it was Eupert of 
 Glasgow ! " 
 
 " Who is Rupert of Glasgow ? " I cried. 
 
 "Oh, I really can't go over all that family rot again,", 
 grunted Spitz. "Tell him, Pritz." 
 
 Then, taking me aside, Fritz delicately informed me that 
 Rupert of Glasgow — a young Scotchman — claimed equally [ 
 with myself descent from the old Rupert, and that equally 
 with myself he resembled the King. That Michael had 
 got possession of him on his arrival in the country, kept 
 him closely guarded in the castle, and had hid his resem- 
 blance in a black wig and false mustache; that the young 
 Scotchman, however, seemed apparently devoted to Michael 
 and his plots; and there was undoubtedly some secret un- 
 derstanding between them. That it was evidently Mi- 
 chael's trick to have the pretender crowned, and then, by 
 exposing the fraud and the condition of the real King, ex- 
 cite the indignation of the duped people, and seat himself 
 on the throne! "But," I burst out, "shall this base-born 
 pretender remain at Kohlslau beside the beautiful Princess 
 Mirtia ? Let us to Kfjhlslau at once and hurl him from the 
 throne ! " 
 
 " One pretender is as good as another, " said Spitz dryly. 
 "But leave him to me. 'Tis the King we must protect 
 and succor! As for that Scotch springald, before midnight 
 I shall have him kidnaped, brought back to his master in a 
 close carriage, and you — you shall take his place at KShls- 
 lau." 
 
RUPERT THE RESEMBLER 273 
 
 "I will," I said enthusiastically, drawing my sword; 
 " but I have done nothing yet. Please let me kill some- 
 thing!" 
 
 "Aye, lad! " said Spitz, with a grim smile at my enthu- 
 siasm. "There 's a sheep in your path. Go out and cleave 
 it to the saddle. And bring the saddle home ! " 
 
 My sister-in-law might have thought me cruel — but I 
 did it. 
 
 CHAP XXni AND SOME OTHER CHAPS 
 
 I know not how it was compassed, but that night Ru- 
 pert of Glasgow was left bound and gagged against the door 
 of the castle, and the night-bell pulled. And that night I 
 was seated on the throne of the S'helpburgs. As I gazed 
 at the Princess Flirtia, glowing in the characteristic beauty 
 of the S'helpburgs, and admired her striking profile, I mur- 
 mured softly and half audibly: "Her nose is as a tower 
 that looketh toward Damascus." 
 
 She looked puzzled, and knitted her pretty brows. "Is 
 that poetry 1 " she asked. 
 
 " No, " I said promptly. " It 's only part of a song of 
 our great Ancestor." As she blushed slightly, I playfully 
 flung around her fair neck the jeweled collar of the Order 
 of the S'helpburgs — three golden spheres pendant, quar- 
 tered from the arms of Lombardy — with the ancient Syriac 
 motto, M Uss Dee. 
 
 She toyed with it a moment, and then said softly : " You 
 have changed, Eupert. Do ye no ken hoo 1 " 
 
 I looked at her — as surprised at her dialect as at the 
 imputation. 
 
 "You don't talk that way, as you did. And you don't 
 say, 'It will be twelve o'clock,' when you mean, 'It is 
 twelve o'clock,' nor ' I will be going out,' when you mean 
 ' I am. ' And you did n't say, ' Eh, sirs! ' or ' Eh, mon,' 
 
274 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 to any of the Court — nor ' Hoot awa ! ' nor any of those 
 things. And," she added with a divine little pout, "you 
 have n't told me I was ' sonsie ' or ' bonnie ' once." 
 
 I could with difficulty restrain myself. Rage, indigna- 
 tion, and jealousy filled my heart almost to bursting. I 
 understood it all; that rascally Scotchman had made the 
 most of his time, and dared to get ahead of me ! I did not 
 mind being taken for the King, but to be confounded with 
 this infernal descendant of a gamekeeper — was too much. 
 Yet with a superhuman effort I remained calm — and even 
 smiled. 
 
 " You are not well ? " said the Princess earnestly. " I 
 thought you were taking too much of the Strasbourg pie at 
 supper ! And you are not going, surely — so soon 1 " she 
 added, as I rose. 
 
 "I must go at once," I said. "I have forgotten some 
 important business at Bock." 
 
 " Not boar hunting again 1 " she said poutingly. 
 
 "No, I 'm hunting a red dear," I said with that playful 
 subtlety which would make her take it as a personal com- 
 pliment, though I was only thinking of that imposter, and 
 longing to get at him, as I bowed and withdrew. 
 
 In another hour I was before Black Michael's castle at 
 Bock. These are lightning changes, I know — and the sov- 
 ereignty of Trulyruralania was somewhat itinerant — but 
 when a kingdom and a beautiful Princess are at stake, what 
 are you to do 1 Fritz had begged me to take him along, but 
 I arranged that he should come later, and go up unostenta- 
 tiously in the lift. I was going by way of the moat. I was 
 to succor the King, but I fear my real object was to get at 
 Eupert of Glasgow. 
 
 I had noticed the day before that a large outside drain 
 pipe, decreed by the Bock County Council, ran from the 
 moat to the third floor of the donjon keep. I surmised 
 that the King was imprisoned on that floor. Examining 
 
KUPEET THE EESEMBLPR 275 
 
 the pipe closely, I saw that it was really a pneumatic dis- 
 patch tube, for secretly conveying letters and. dispatches 
 from the castle through the moat beyond the castle walls. 
 Its extraordinary size, however, gave me the horrible con- 
 viction that it was to be used to convey the dead body of 
 the King to the moat. I grew cold with horror — but I 
 was determined. ■<^^ 
 
 I crept up the pipe. As I expected, it opened funnel- 
 wise into a room where the poor King was playing poker 
 with Black Michael. It took me but a moment to dash 
 through the window into the room, push the King aside, 
 gag and bind Black Michael, and lower him by a stout rope 
 into the pipe he had destined for another. Having him in 
 my power, I lowered him until I heard his body splash in 
 the water in the lower part of the pipe. Then I proceeded 
 to draw him up again, intending to question him in regard 
 to Rupert of Glasgow. But this was difficult, as his satu- 
 rated clothing made him fit the smooth pipe closely. At 
 last I had him partly up, when I was amazed at a rush of 
 water from the pipe which flooded the room. I dropped 
 him and pulled him up again with the same result. Then 
 in a flash I saw it all. His body, acting like a piston in 
 the pipe, had converted it into a powerful pump.. Mad 
 ■with joy, I rapidly lowered and pulled him up again and 
 again, until the castle was flooded — and the moat com- 
 pletely drained! I had created the diversion I wished; 
 the tenants of the castle were disorganized and bewildered 
 in trying to escape from the deluge, and the moat was ac- 
 cessible to my friends. Placing the poor King on a table 
 to be out of the water, and tying up his head in my hand- 
 kerchief to disguise him from Michael's guards, I drew my 
 sword and plunged downstairs with the cataract in search 
 of the miscreant Rupert. I reached the drawbridge, when 
 I heard the sounds of tumult and was twice fired at, — once, 
 as I have since learned, by my friends, under the impres- 
 
276 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 sion that I was the escaping Rupert of Glasgow, and once 
 by Black Michael's myrmidons, under the belief that I was 
 the King. I was struck by the fact that these resemblances 
 were confusing and unfortunate! At this moment, how- 
 ever, I caught sight of a kilted figure leaping from a lower 
 window into the moat. Some instinct impelled me to fol- 
 low it. It rapidly crossed the moat and plunged into the 
 forest, with me in pursuit. I gained upon it ; suddenly it 
 turned, and I found myself again confronted with myself 
 — and apparently the King! But that very resemblance 
 made me recognize the Scotch pretender, Rupert of Glas- 
 gow. Yet he would have been called a " braw laddie, " and 
 his handsome face showed a laughing good humor, even 
 while he opposed me, claymore in hand. 
 
 "Bide a wee, Maister Rupert Razorbill," he said lightly, 
 lowering his sword, "before we slit ane anither's weasands. 
 I 'm no claimin' any descent frae kings, and I 'm no ac- 
 ceptin' any auld wife's clavers against my women forbears, 
 as ye are ! I 'm just paid gude honest siller by Black Mi- 
 chael for the using of ma face and figure — sic time as his 
 Majesty is tae worse frae trink! And I 'm commeesioned 
 frae Michael to ask ye what price ye would take to join me 
 in performing these duties — turn and turn aboot. Eh, 
 laddie — but he would pay ye mair than that daft beggar. 
 Spitz." 
 
 Rage and disgust overpowered me. "And this is my 
 answer," I said, rushing upon him. 
 
 I have said earlier in these pages that I was a " strong " 
 swordsman. In point of fact, I had carefully studied in 
 the transpontine theatres that form of melodramatic medi- 
 seval sword-play known as " two up and two down. " To 
 my disgust, however, this wretched Scotchman did not seem 
 to understand it, but in a twinkling sent my sword' flying 
 over my head. Before I could recover it, he had mounted 
 a horse ready saddled in the wood, and, shouting to me 
 
EUPEKT THE EESEMBLEK 277 
 
 that he would take my " compleements " to the Princess, 
 galloped away. Even then I would have pursued him 
 afoot, but, hearing shouts behind me, I turned as Spitz and 
 Fritz rode up. 
 
 " Has the King escaped to Kbhlslau ? " asked Fritz, star- 
 ing at me. 
 
 "No," I said, "but Eupert of Glasgow" — 
 
 "Rupert of Glasgow ! " growled Spitz. " Wc 've settled 
 him! He 's gagged and bound and is now on his way to 
 the frontier in a close carriage." 
 
 " Eupert — on his way to the frontier 1 " I gasped. 
 
 " Yes. Two of my men found him, disguised with a 
 handkerchief over his face, trying to escape from the castle. 
 And while we were looking for the King, whom we sup- 
 posed was with you, they have sent the rascally Scotchman 
 home. " 
 
 " Fool ! " I gasped. " Eupert of Glasgow has just left 
 me ! You have deported your own King. " And over- 
 come by my superhuman exertions, I sank unconscious to 
 the ground. 
 
 When I came to, I found myself in a wagon lit, speed- 
 ing beyond the Trulyruralania frontier. On my berth was 
 lying a missive with the seal of the S'helpburgs. Tearing 
 it open I'recognized the handwriting of the Princess Flirtia. 
 
 My dear Eupert, — Owing to the confusion that arises 
 from there being so many of you, I have concluded to ac- 
 cept the hand of the Duke Michael. I may not become a 
 Queen, but I shall bring rest to my country, and Michael 
 assures me in his playful manner that "three of a kind," 
 "even of the same color," do not always win at poker. It 
 will tranquilize you somewhat to know that the Lord Chan- 
 cellor assures me that on examining the records of the 
 dynasty he finds that my ancestor Eupert never left his 
 kingdom during his entire reign, and that consequently 
 
278 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 your ancestress has been grossly maligned. I am sending 
 typewritten copies of this to Eupert of Glasgow and the 
 King. Parewell. 
 
 Flibtia. 
 
 Once a year, at Christmastide, I receive a simple foreign 
 hamper via Charing Cross, marked "Return empty." I 
 take it in silence to my own room, and there, opening it, I 
 find — unseen by any other eyes but my own — a modest 
 pate de foie gras, of the kind I ate with the Princess 
 Plirtia. I take out the pate, replace the label, and have 
 the hamper reconveyed to Charing Cross, 
 
THE STOLEN CIGAE CASE 
 
 BY A. CO-N D-LE 
 
 I found Hemlock Jones in the old Brook Street lodg- 
 ings, musing before the fire. With the freedom of an old 
 friend I at once threw myself in my usual familiar attitude 
 at his feet, and gently caressed his boot. I was induced to 
 do this for two reasons: one, that it enabled me to get a 
 good look at his bent, concentrated face, and the other, 
 that it seemed to indicate my reverence for his superhuman 
 insight. So absorbed was he even then, in tracking some 
 mysterious clue, that he did not seem to notice me. But 
 therein I was wrong — as I always was in my attempt to 
 understand that powerful intellect. 
 
 "It is raining," he said, without lifting his head, 
 
 " You have been out, then 1" 1 said quickly. 
 
 "No. But I see that your umbrella is wet, and that 
 your overcoat has drops of water on it." 
 
 I sat aghast at his penetration. After a pause he said 
 carelessly, as if dismissing the subject: "Besides, I hear 
 the rain on the window. Listen." 
 
 I listened. I could scarcely credit my ears, but there 
 was the soft pattering of drops on the panes. It was evi- 
 dent there was no deceiving this man ! 
 
 " Have you been busy lately ? " I asked, changing the 
 Aubject. "What new problem — given up by Scotland 
 Yard as inscrutable — has occupied that gigantic intellect ? " 
 
 He drew back his foot slightly, and seemed to hesitate 
 ere he returned it to its original position. Then he 
 
280 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 answered wearily : " Mere trifles — nothing to speak of. The 
 Prince Kupoli has been here to get my advice regarding the 
 disappearance of certain ruhies from the Kremlin; the Eajah 
 of Pootibad, after vainly beheading his entire bodyguard, 
 has been obliged to seek my assistance to recover a jeweled 
 sword. The Grand Duchess of Pretzel-Brauntswig is desir- 
 ous of discovering where her husband was on the night of 
 February 14; and last night" — he lowered his voice 
 slightly — "a lodger in this very house, meeting me on the 
 stairs, wanted to know why they didn't answer his bell." 
 
 I could not help smiling — until I saw a frown gathering 
 on his inscrutable forehead. 
 
 "Pray remember," he said coldly, "that it was through 
 such an apparently trivial question that I found out Why 
 Paul Perroll Killed His Wife, and What Happened to 
 Jones ! " 
 
 I became dumb at once. He paused for a moment, and 
 then suddenly changing back to his usual pitiless, analytical 
 style, he said : " When I say these are trifles, they are so 
 in comparison to an afi'air that is now before me. A crime 
 has been committed, — and, singularly enough, against my- 
 self. You start," he said. "Tou wonder who would have 
 dared to attempt it. So did I; nevertheless, it has been 
 done. I have been rohbed ! " 
 
 " You robbed ! You, Hemlock Jones, the Terror of 
 Peculators ! " I gasped in amazement, arising and gripping 
 the table as I faced him. 
 
 "Yes! Listen. I would confess it to no other. But 
 you who have followed my career, who know my methods; 
 you, for whom I have partly lifted the veil that conceals 
 my plans from ordinary humanity, — you, who have for 
 years rapturously accepted my coniidences, passionately ad- 
 mired my inductions and inferences, placed yourself at my 
 beck and call, become my slave, groveled at my feet, given 
 up your practice except those few unremunerative and rap- 
 
THE STOLEN CIGAR CASE 281 
 
 ; Jly decreasing patients to whom, in moments of abstraction 
 over my problems, you have administered strychnine for 
 quinine and arsenic for Epsom salts; you, who have sacri- 
 ficed anything and everybody to me, — you I make my con- 
 fidant!" 
 
 I arose and embraced him warmly, yet he was already so 
 engrossed in thought that at the same moment he mechani- 
 cally placed his hand upon his watch chain as if to consult 
 the time. " Sit down, " he said. " Have a cigar 1 " 
 
 "I have given up cigar smoking," I said. 
 
 "Why?" he asked. 
 
 I hesitated, and perhaps colored. I had really given it 
 up because, with my diminished practice, it was too expen- 
 sive. I could afford only a pipe. "I prefer a pipe," I 
 said laughingly. "But tell me of this robbery. What have 
 you lost ? " 
 
 He arose, and planting himself before the fire with his 
 hands under his coat-tails, looked down upon me reflectively 
 for a moment. " Do you remember the cigar case presented 
 to me by the Turkish Ambassador for discovering the miss- 
 ing favorite of the Grand Vizier in the fifth chorus girl at 
 the Hilarity Theatre? It was that one. I mean the cigar 
 case. It was incrusted with diamonds." 
 
 "And the largest one had been supplanted by paste," I 
 said. 
 
 "Ah," he said, with a reflective smile, "you know 
 that?" 
 
 "You told me yourself. I remember considering it a 
 proof of your extraordinary perception. But, by Jove, you 
 don't mean to say you have lost it? " 
 
 He was silent for a moment. "No; it has been stolen, 
 it is true, but I shall still find it. And by myself alone ! 
 In your profession, my dear fellow, when a member is 
 seriously ill, he does not prescribe for himself, but calls 
 in a brother doctor. Therein we difi'er. I shall take this 
 matter in my own hands." 
 
282 CONDENSED NOTELS 
 
 " And where could you find better J " I said enthusiasti- 
 cally. " I should say the cigar case is as good as recovered 
 already." 
 
 "I shall remind you of that again," he said lightly. 
 "And now, to show you my confidence in your judgment, 
 in spite of my determination to pursue this alone, I am 
 willing to listen to any suggestions from you." 
 
 He drew a memorandum book from his pocket and, with 
 a grave smile, took up his pencil. 
 
 I could scarcely believe my senses. He, the great Hem- 
 lock Jones, accepting suggestions from a humble individual 
 like myself! I kissed his hand reverently, and began in a 
 joyous tone : — 
 
 "First, I should advertise, offering a reward; I should 
 give the same intimation in hand-bills, distributed at the 
 ' pubs ' and the pastry-cooks'. I should next visit the dif- 
 ferent pawnbrokers; I should give notice at the police sta- 
 tion. I should examine the servants. I should thoroughly 
 search the house and my own pockets. I speak relatively," 
 I added, with a laugh; "of course I mean your own." 
 
 He gravely made an entry of these details. 
 
 "Perhaps," I added, "you have already done this?" 
 
 "Perhaps," he returned enigmatically. "Now, my dear 
 friend," he continued, putting the note-book in his pocket 
 and rising, "would you excuse me for a few moments! 
 Make yourself perfectly at home unfU I return; there may 
 be some things," he added with a sweep of his hand toward 
 his heterogeneously filled shelves, " that may interest you 
 and while away the time. There are pipes and tobacco in 
 that corner." 
 
 Then nodding to me with the same inscrutable face, he 
 left the room. I was too well accustomed to his methods 
 to think much of his unceremonious withdrawal, and made 
 no doubt he was off to investigate some clue which had sud- 
 denly occurred to his active intelligence. 
 
THE STOLEN CIGAK CASE 283 
 
 Left to myself, I cast a cursory glance over his shelves. 
 There were a number of small glass jars containing earthy 
 substances, labeled "Pavement and Eoad Sweepings," from 
 the principal thoroughfares and suburbs of London, with 
 the sub-directions "for identifying foot-tracks." There 
 were several other jars, labeled " Fluff from Omnibus and 
 Eoad Car Seats," "Cocoanut Fibre and Eope Strands from 
 Mattings in Public Places," "Cigarette Stumps and Match 
 Ends from Floor of Palace Theatre, Row A, 1 to 50." 
 Everywhere were evidences of this wonderful man's system 
 and perspicacity. 
 
 I was thus engaged when I heard the slight creaking of 
 a door, and I looked up as a stranger entered. He was a, 
 rough-looking man, with a shabby overcoat and a still more 
 disreputable muffler around his throat and the lower part of 
 his face. Considerably annoyed at his intrusion, I turned 
 upon him rather sharply, when, with a mumbled, growling 
 apology for mistaking the room, he shuffled out again and 
 closed the door. I followed him quickly to the landing 
 and saw that he disappeared down the stairs. With my 
 mind full of the robbery, the incident made a singular im- 
 pression upon me. I knew my friend's habit of hasty ab- 
 sences from his room in his moments of deep inspiration; 
 it was only too probable that, with his powerful intellect 
 and magnificent perceptive genius concentrated on one sub- 
 ject, he should be careless of his own belongings, and no 
 doubt even forget to take the ordinary precaution of locking 
 up his drawers. I tried one or two and found that I was 
 right, although for some reason I was unable to open one to 
 its fullest extent. The handles were sticky, as if some one 
 had opened them with dirty fingers. Knowing Hemlock's 
 fastidious cleanliness, I resolved to inform him of this cir- 
 cumstance, but I forgot it, alas ! until — but I am antici- 
 pating my story. 
 
 His absence was strangely prolonged. I at last seated 
 
284 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 myself by the fire, and lulled by warmth and the patter of 
 the rain on the window, I fell asleep. I may have dreamt, 
 but during my sleep I had a vague semi-consciousness as of 
 hands being softly pressed on my pockets — no doubt in- 
 duced by the story of the robbery. When I came fully to 
 my senses, I found Hemlock Jones sitting on the other side 
 of the hearth, his deeply concentrated gaze fixed on the fire. 
 
 " I found you so comfortably asleep that I could not bear 
 to awaken you," he said with a smile. 
 
 I rubbed my eyes. " And what news ? " I asked. " How 
 have you succeeded ? " 
 
 "Better than I expected," he said, "and I think," he 
 added, tapping his note-book, "I owe much to you." 
 
 Deeply gratified, I awaited more. But in vain. I ought 
 to have remembered that in his moods Hemlock Jones was 
 reticence itself. I told him simply of the strange intru- 
 sion, but he only laughed. 
 
 Later, when I arose to go, he looked at me playfully. 
 "If you were a married man," he said, "I would advise 
 you not to go home until you had brushed your sleeve. 
 There are a few short brown sealskin hairs on the inner side 
 of your forearm, just where they would have adhered if 
 your arm had encircled a sealskin coat with some pressure ! " 
 
 "Tor once you are at fault," I said triumphantly; "the 
 hair is my own, as you will perceive; I have just had it 
 cut at the hairdresser's, and no doubt this arm projected 
 beyond the apron." 
 
 He frowned slightly, yet, nevertheless, on my turning 
 to go he embraced me warmly — a rare exhibition in that 
 man of ice. He even helped me on with my overcoat and 
 pulled out and smoothed down the flaps of my pockets. 
 He was particular, too, in fitting my arm in my overcoat 
 sleeve, shaking the sleeve down from the armhole to the 
 cufif with his deft fingers. " Come again soon ! " he said, 
 clapping me on the back. 
 
THE STOLEN CIGAR CASE 285 
 
 "At any and all times," I said enthusiastically; "I only 
 ask ten minutes twice a day to eat a crust at my office, and 
 four hours' sleep at night, and the rest of my time is de- 
 voted to you always, as you know." 
 
 "It is indeed," he said, with his impenetrable smile. 
 
 Nevertheless, I did not find him at home when I next 
 called. One afternoon, when nearing my own home, I met 
 him in one of his favorite disguises, — a long blue swallow- 
 tailed coat, striped cotton trousers, large turn-over collar, 
 blacked face, and white hat, carrying a tambourine. Of 
 course to others the disguise was perfect, although it was 
 known to myself, and I passed him — according to an old 
 understanding between us — without the slightest recogni- 
 tion, trusting to a later explanation. At another time, as 
 I was making a professional visit to the wife of a publican 
 at the East End, I saw him, in the disguise of a broken- 
 down artisan, looking into the window of an adjacent pawn- 
 shop. I was delighted to see that he was evidently follow- 
 ing my suggestions, and in my joy I ventured to tip him a 
 ■wink ; it was abstractedly returned. 
 
 Two days later I received a note appointing a meeting at 
 his lodgings that night. That meeting, alas! was the one 
 memorable occurrence of my life, and the last meeting I 
 ever had with Hemlock Jones! I will try to set it down 
 calmly, though my pulses still throb with the recollection 
 of it. 
 
 I found him standing before the fire, with that look upon 
 his face which I had seen only once or twice in our ac- 
 quaintance, — a look which I may call an absolute concat- 
 enation of inductive and deductive ratiocination, — from 
 which all that was human, tender, or sympathetic was ab- 
 solutely discharged. He was simply an icy algebraic sym- 
 bol! Indeed, his whole being was concentrated to that 
 extent that his clothes fitted loosely, and his head was aD- 
 solutely so much reduced in size by his mental compression 
 
286 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 tbat his hat tipped back from his forehead and literally 
 hung on his massive ears. 
 
 After I had entered he locked the doors, fastened the 
 windows, and even placed a chair before the chimney. As 
 I watched these significant precautions with absorbing in- 
 terest, he suddenly drew a revolver and, presenting it to 
 my temple, said in low, icy tones : — 
 
 " Hand over that cigar case ! " 
 
 Even in my bewilderment my reply was truthful, spon^ 
 taneous, and involuntary. "I have n't got it," I said. 
 
 He smiled bitterly, and threw down his revolver. "I 
 expected that reply ! Then let me now confront you with 
 something more awful, more deadly, more relentless and 
 convincing than that mere lethal Weapon, — the damning 
 inductive and deductive proofs of your guilt ! " He drew 
 from his pocket a roll of paper and a note-book. 
 
 "But surely," I gasped, "you are joking! You could 
 not for a moment believe '' — 
 
 " Silence ! Sit down ! " I obeyed. 
 
 "You have condemned yourself," he went on pitilessly. 
 " Condemned yourself on my processes, processes familiar to 
 you, applauded by you, accepted by you for years ! We will 
 go back to the time when you first saw the cigar case. Your 
 expressions," he said in cold, deliberate tones, consulting 
 his paper, "were, 'How beautiful! I wish it were mine.' 
 This was your first step in crime — and my first indication. 
 From ' I wish it were mine ' to ' I will have it mine, ' and 
 the mere detail, ' How can I make it mine 1 ' the advance 
 was obvious. Silence ! But as in my methods it was 
 necessary that there should be an overwhelming inducement 
 to the crime, that unholy admiration of yours for the mere 
 trinket itself was not enough. You are a smoker of cigars." 
 
 "But," I burst out passionately, "I told you I had given 
 up smoking cigars." 
 
 " Fool ! " he said coldly, " that is the second time you 
 
THE STOLEN CIGAE CASE 287 
 
 have committed yourself. Of course you told me ! What 
 more natural than for you to blazon forth that prepared and 
 unsolicited statement to prevent accusation. Yet, as I said 
 before, even that wretched attempt to cover up your tracks 
 was not enough. I still had to find that overwhelming, 
 impelling motive necessary to affect a man like you. That 
 motive I found in the strongest of all impulses — Love, I 
 suppose you would call it," he added bitterly, "that night 
 you called ! You had brought the most conclusive proofs 
 of it on your sleeve." 
 
 " But " — I almost screamed. 
 
 " Silence ! " he thundered. " I know what you would 
 say. You would say that even if you had embraced some 
 Young Person in a sealskin coat, what had that to do with 
 the robbery ? Let me tell you, then, that that sealskin coat 
 represented the quality and character of your fatal entangle- 
 ment ! You bartered your honor for it — that stoleij. cigar 
 case was the purchaser of the sealskin coat! 
 
 " Silence ! Having thoroughly established your motive, 
 I now proceed to the commission of the crime itself. Or- 
 dinary people would have begun with that — with an at- 
 tempt to discover the whereabouts of the missing object. 
 These are not my methods." 
 
 So overpowering was his penetration that, although I 
 knew myself innocent, I licked my lips with avidity to hear 
 the further details of this lucid exposition of my crime. 
 
 " You committed that theft the night I showed you the 
 cigar case, and after I had carelessly thrown it in that 
 drawer. You were sitting in that chair, and I had arisen 
 to take something from that shelf. In that instant you se- 
 cured your booty without rising. Silence ! Do you remem- 
 ber when I helped you on with your overcoat the other 
 night ? I was particular about fitting your arm in. While 
 doing so I measured your arm with a spring tape measure, 
 from the shoulder to the cuff. A later visit to your tailor 
 
288 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 confirmed that measurement. It proved to be the exact 
 distance betiveen your chair and that drawer ! " 
 
 I sat stunned. 
 
 "The rest are mere corroborative details! You were 
 again tampering with the drawer when I discovered you 
 doing so ! Do not start ! The stranger that blundered into 
 the room with a muffler on — was myself ! More, I had 
 placed a little soap on the drawer handles when I purposely 
 left you alone. The soap was on your hand when I shook 
 it at parting. I softly felt your pockets, when you were 
 asleep, for further developments. I embraced you when 
 ;;ou left — that I might feel if you had the cigar case or 
 any other articles hidden on your body. This confirmed 
 me in the belief that you had already disposed of it in the 
 manner and for the purpose I have shown you. As I still 
 Relieved you capable of remorse and confession, I twice al- 
 lowed you to see I was on your track: once in the garb of 
 an itinerant negro minstrel, and the second time as a work- 
 man looking in the window of the pawnshop where you 
 pledged your booty." 
 
 "But," I burst out, "if you had asked the pawnbroker, 
 you would have seen how unjust " — 
 
 " Eool ! " he hissed, " that was one of your suggestions — 
 to search the pawnshops! Do you suppose I followed any 
 of your suggestions, the suggestions of the thief? On the 
 contrary, they told me what to avoid." 
 
 "And I suppose," I said bitterly, "you have not even 
 searched your drawer ? " 
 
 "No," he said calmly. 
 
 I was for the first time really vexed. I went to the 
 nearest drawer and pulled it out sharply. It stuck as 
 it had before, leaving a part of the drawer unopened. By 
 working it, however, I discovered that it was impeded by 
 some obstacle that had slipped to the upper part of the 
 drawer, and held it firmly fast. Inserting my hand, I 
 
THE STOLEN CIGAE CASE 289 
 
 pulled out the impeding object. It was the missing cigar 
 case! I turned to him with a cry of joy. 
 
 But I was appalled at his expression. A look of con- 
 tempt was now added to his acute, penetrating gaze. "I 
 have been mistaken," he said slowly; "I had not allowed 
 for your weakness and cowardice ! I thought too highly of 
 you even in your guilt ! But I see now why you tampered 
 with that drawer the other night. By some inexplicable 
 means — possibly another theft — ■ you took the cigar case 
 out of pawn and, like a whipped hound, restored it to me 
 in this feeble, clumsy fashion. You thought to deceive 
 me, Hemlock Jones! More, you thought to destroy my 
 infallibility. Go! I give you your liberty. I shall not 
 summon the three policemen who wait in the adjoining 
 room — but out of my sight forever! " 
 
 As I stood once more dazed and petrified, he took me 
 firmly by the ear and led me into the hall, closing the door 
 behind him. This reopened presently, wide enough to per- 
 mit him to thrust out my hat, overcoat, umbrella, and over- 
 shoes, and then closed against me forever! 
 
 I never saw him again. I am bound to say, however, 
 that thereafter my business increased, I recovered much of 
 my old practice, and a few of my patients recovered also. 
 I became rich. I had a brougham and a house in the West 
 End. But I often wondered, pondering on that wonderful 
 man's penetration and insight, if, in some lapse of con- 
 sciousness, I had not really stolen his cigar case ! 
 
GOLLY AND THE CHRISTIAN; OR, THE 
 MINX AND THE MANXMAN 
 
 BY H-LL C-NB 
 BOOK 1 
 
 GoLLT CoYLE was the only granddaughter of a vague 
 and somewhat simple clergyman who existed, with an 
 aant, solely for Golly's epistolary purposes. There was, of 
 course, intermediate ancestry, — notably a dead mother who 
 was French, and therefore responsible for any later naugh- 
 tiness in Golly, — but they have no purpose here. They 
 lived in the Isle of Man. Golly knew a good deal of Man, 
 for even at the age of twelve she was in love with John 
 Gale — only son of Lord Gale, who was connected with the 
 Tempests. Gales, however, were frequent and remarkable 
 along the coast, so that it was not singular that one day 
 she found John " coming on " on a headland where she was 
 sitting. His dog had "pointed'- her. "It 's exceedingly 
 impolite to point to anything you want," said Golly. 
 Touched by this, and overcome by a strange emotion, John 
 Gale turned away and went to Canada. Slight as the inci- 
 dent was, it showed that inborn chivalry to women, that 
 desire for the Perfect Life, that intense eagerness to incar- 
 nate Christianity in modern society, which afterward dis- 
 tinguished him. Golly loved him ! For all that, she still 
 remained a " tom-boy " as she was, — robbing orchards, 
 mimicking tramps and policemen, buttering the stairs and 
 the steps of houses, tying kettles to dogs' tails, and march- 
 ing in a white jersey, with the curate's hat on, through the 
 
GOLLY AND THE CHRISTIAN 291 
 
 streets of the village. " Gol dern my skin ! " said the dear 
 old clergyman, as he tried to emerge from a surplice which 
 Golly had stitched together. "What spirits the child do 
 have ! " Yet everybody loved her ! And when John Gale 
 returned from Canada and looked into her big blue eyes 
 one day at church, small wonder that he immediately went 
 off again to Paris, and an extended Continental sojourn, 
 with a serious leaning to theology ! Golly bore his absence 
 meekly but characteristically ; got a boat, disported like a 
 duck in the water, attempted to elope with a boy appropri- 
 ately named Drake, but encountered a half gale at sea and 
 a whole Gale in John on a yacht, who rescued them both. 
 Convinced now that there was but one way to escape from 
 his Fate — Golly! — John Gale took holy orders and at 
 once started for London. As he stood on the deck of the 
 steamer he heard an imbecile chuckle in his par. It was 
 the simple old clergyman: "You are going to London to 
 join the Church, John; Golly is going there, too, as hos- 
 pital nurse. There 's a pair of you! He! he! Look after 
 her, John, and protect her Manx simplicity." Before 
 John could recover himself. Golly was at '.lis side executing 
 the final steps of a "cellar-door flap, jig" to the light- 
 hearted refrain : — 
 
 " We are a simple family — we are — we are — we are ! " 
 
 And even as her pure young voice arose above the screams 
 of the departure whistle, she threw a double back-somer- 
 sault on the quarter-deck, cleverly alighting on the spikes 
 of the wheel before the delighted captain. 
 
 "Jingle my electric bells," he said, looking at the bright 
 young thing, "but you 're a regular minx " — 
 
 "I beg your pardon," interrupted John Gale, with a 
 quick flush. 
 
 "I mean a regular Manx," said the captain hurriedly. 
 
 A lingular paleness crossed the deeply religious facf ^f 
 
292 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 John. As the vessel rose on the ■waves, he passed his 
 hand hurriedly first across his brows and then over his 
 high-buttoned clerical waistcoat, that visible sign of a de- 
 voted ascetic life ! Then murmuring in his low, deep voice, 
 "^Brandy, steward," he disappeared below. 
 
 BOOK 11 
 
 Glorious as were Golly 's spirits, exquisitely simple her 
 worldly ignorance, and irresistible her powers of mimicry, 
 strangely enough they were considered out of place in St. 
 Barabbas' Hospital. A light-hearted disposition to mistake 
 a blister for a poultice; that rare Manx conscientiousness 
 which made her give double doses to the patients as a com- 
 pensation when she had omitted to give them a single one, 
 and the faculty of bursting into song at the bedside of a 
 dying patient, produced some liveliness not unmixed with 
 perplexity among the hospital staff. It is true, however, 
 that her performance of clog-dancing during the night- 
 watches drew a larger and more persistent attendance of 
 students and young surgeons than ever was seen before. 
 Yet everybody loved her! Even her patients! "If it 
 amooses you, miss, to make me tyke the pills wot 's meant 
 for the lydy in the next ward, I ain't complyning, " said 
 an East End newsboy. "When ye tyke ofi' the style of 
 the doctor wot wisits me, miss, and imitates his wyes, 
 Lawd ! it does me as much good as his mixtures, " said a 
 consumptive charwoman. Even thus, old and young basked 
 in the radiant youth of Golly. She found time to write to 
 her family : — 
 
 Dbae old Pals ! I 'm here. J'y suis ! bet your boots ! 
 While you 're wondering what has become of the Bright 
 Young Thing, the B. Y. T. is lookin' out of the winder of 
 St. Barabbas' Hospital — just taking in all of dear, roar- 
 
GOLLY AND THE CHRISTIAN 293 
 
 ing, dirty London in one gulp! Such a place — Lordy! 
 I 've been waiting three hours to see the crowd go by, and 
 they haven't gone yet! Such crowds, such busses, — all 
 green and blue, only a penny fare, and you can ride on top 
 if you want to ! Think of that, you dear old Manx people ! 
 But there — " the bell goes a-ringing for Sarah ! " — they 're 
 calling for Nurse! That 's the worst of this job: they 're 
 always a-dyin' just as you 're getting interested in some- 
 thing else! Ta-ta! 
 
 Golly ! 
 
 Then her dear old grandfather wrote : — 
 
 I 'm wondering where my diddleums. Golly, is ! We all 
 miss you so much, deary, though we don't miss so many 
 little things as when you were here. My dear, consci- 
 entious, unselfish little girl! You don't say where John 
 Gale is. Is he still protecting you — he-he ! — you giddy, 
 naughty thing! People wonder on the island why I let 
 you go alone to London — they forget your dear mother 
 was a Frenchwoman! If you see anything your dear old 
 grandfather would like — send it on. 
 
 Gbanfek. 
 
 Later, her aunt wrote : — 
 
 Have you seen the Queen yet, and does she wear her 
 crown at breakfast 1 You might get over the area railing 
 at Buckingham Palace — it would be nothing for a girl like 
 you to do — and see if you can find out. 
 
 To these letters Golly answered, in her own light-hearted 
 way: — 
 
 Dear Geankins, — I have n't seen John much, but I 
 think he 's like the Private Secretary at the play — he " don't 
 
294 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 like London." Lordy! there — I 've let it out! I 've been 
 to a theayter. Nurse Jinny Jones and me scrouged into 
 the pit one night without paying, "pertendin'," as -we were 
 in uniform, we had come to take out a " Lydy " that had 
 fainted. Such larks! and such a glprious theayter! I'll 
 tell you another time. Tell aunty the Queen 's always out 
 when I call. But that 's nothing, everybody else is so affa- 
 ble and polite in London. Gentlemen — "real toffs," they 
 call 'em — whom you don't know from Adam — think 
 nothing of speaking to you in the street. Why, Nurse 
 Jinny says — but there, another patient 's going off who 
 by rights oughter have died only to-morrow. " To-morrow 
 and to-morrow and to-morrow," as that barn-stormer actor 
 said. But they 're always calling for that giddy young 
 thing, Your 
 
 Golly. 
 
 Meantime, John Gale, having abruptly left Golly at the 
 door of St. Barabbas' Hospital, tactfully avoiding an un- 
 seemly altercation with the cab-driver regarding her exact 
 fare, pursued his way thoughtfully to the residence of his 
 uncle, the First Lord of the Admiralty. He found his 
 Lordship in his bath-room. He was leaning over the bath- 
 tub, which was half full of water, contemplating with some 
 anxiety the model of a line-of-battle ship which was float- 
 ing on it, bottom upward. "I don't think it can be quite 
 right — do you? " he said, nervously grasping his nephew's 
 hand as he pointed to the capsized vessel; "yet they al- 
 ways do it. Tell me ! " he went on appealingly, " tell me, 
 as a professing Christian and a Perfect Man — is it quite 
 right?" 
 
 "I should think, sir," responded John Gale, with un- 
 compromising truthfulness, "that the average vessel of 
 commerce is not built in that way." 
 
 "Yet," said the First Lord of the Admiralty, with a 
 
GOLLY AND THE CHEISTIAN 295 
 
 far-off look, "they all do it! And they don't steer! The 
 larger they are and the more recent the model, the less they 
 steer ._ Dear me — you ought to see 'em go round and 
 round in that tub." Then, apparently recalling the prob- 
 able purpose of John's visit, he led the way into his dress- 
 ing-room. "So you are in London, dear boy. Is there 
 any little thing you want? I have," he continued, ab- 
 sently fumbling in the drawers of his dressing-table, "a 
 few curacies and a bishopric somewhere, but with these 
 blessed models — I can't think where they are. Or what 
 would you say to a nice chaplaincy in the navy, with a 
 becoming uniform, on one of those thingummies ? " He 
 pointed to the bath-room. "Stay," he continued, as he 
 passed his hand over his perplexed brows, " now I think of 
 it — you're quite unorthodox! Dear me! that wouldn't 
 do. You see, Drake, " — he paused, as John Gale started, 
 — "I mean Sir Prancis Drake, once suspended his chaplain 
 for unorthodoxy, according to Eroude's book. These ad- 
 mirals are dreadfully strict Churchmen. No matter ! Come 
 again some other time," he added, gently pushing his nephew 
 downstairs and into the street, " and we '11 see about it. " , 
 
 With a sinking heart, John turned his steps toward 
 Westminster. He would go and see Golly ; perhaps he had 
 not looked after her as he ought. Suddenly a remembered 
 voice, in mimicking accents, fell upon his ear with the 
 quotation, "Do you know?" Then, in a hansom passing 
 swiftly by him, Golly, in hospital dress with flying ribbons, 
 appeared, sitting between Lord Brownstone Ewer and Fran- 
 cis Horatio Nelson Drake, completely grown up. And from 
 behind floated the inexpressibly sad refrain, " Hi tiddli hi ! " 
 
 This is how it happened. One morning. Jinny Jones, 
 another hospital nurse, had said to her, "Have you any 
 objection, dear, to seeing a friend of another gent, a friend 
 of mine ? " 
 
 ''None in the least, dear," said Golly, "I want to see 
 
296 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 all that can be seen, and do all that can be done in Lon. 
 don, and know the glory thereof. I only require that I 
 shall be allowed to love John Gale whenever he pernvits it, 
 which is n't often, and that I may be permitted to write 
 simple letters to my doting relations at the rate of twelve 
 pages a day, giving an account — my own account — of my 
 doings. There ! Go on now I Bring on your bears. '■■ 
 
 They had visited the chambers which Lord Brownstone 
 and Drake occupied together, and in girlish innocence had 
 put on the gentlemen's clothes and danced before them. 
 Then they all went to the theatre, where GoUy's delightful 
 simplicity and childish ignorance of the world had charmed 
 them. Everything to her was new, strange, and thrilling. 
 She even leaned from the carriage windows to see the 
 "wheels go round." She was surprised at the number of 
 people in the theatre, and insisted on knowing if it was 
 church, because they all sat there in their best clothes so 
 quietly. She believed that the play was real, and fre- 
 quently, from a stage box, interrupted the acting with ex- 
 planations. She informed the heroine of the design of the 
 villain waiting at the wings. And when the aged mother 
 of the heroine was dying of starvation in a hovel, and she 
 threw a bag of bonbons on the stage, with the vociferous 
 declaration that "Lord Brownstone had just given them to 
 her — but — Lordy! — she didn't want them," they were 
 obliged to lead her away, closely followed by an usher and 
 a policeman. "To think," she wrote to John Gale, "that 
 the audience only laughed and shouted, and never offered 
 to help ! And yet look at the churches in London, where 
 they dare to preach the gospel ! " 
 
 Fired by this simple letter, and alarmed by Golly 's sim- 
 plicity, John Gale went to his clerical chief. Archdeacon 
 Luxury, and demanded permission to preach next Sunday. 
 "Certainly," said the Archdeacon; "you shall take my cu- 
 rate's place. I shall inform the congregation that you are 
 
GOLLY AND THE CHRISTIAN 297 
 
 the son of Lord Gale. They are very particular Churchmen 
 — all society people — and of course will be satisfied with 
 the work of the Lord, especially," he added, with a polite 
 smile, "when that work happens to be — the Lord Gale's 
 eon." Accordingly, the next Sunday, John Gale occupied 
 the pulpit of St. Swithin. But an unexpected event hap- 
 pened. His pent-up eagerness to denounce the present meth- 
 ods of Christianity, his fullness of utterance, defeated his 
 purpose. He was overcome with a kind of pulpit fright. 
 His ideas of time and place fled him. After beginning, " Mr. 
 Chairman, in rising to propose the toast of our worthy 
 Archdeacon — Fellow Manxmen — the present moment — 
 er — er — the proudest in my — er — life — Dearly beloved 
 Golly — unaccustomed as I am to public speaking," he 
 abruptly delivered the benediction and sat down. The in- 
 cident, however, provoked little attention. The congrega- 
 tion, accustomed to sleep through the sermon, awoke at the 
 usual time and went home. Only a single Scotchwoman 
 said to him in passing: "Verra weel for a beginning, lad- 
 die. But give it hotter to 'em next time." Di.scomfited 
 and bewildered, he communed with himself gloomily. "I 
 can't marry Golly. I can't talk. I hate society. "What 's 
 to be done? I have it! I '11 go into a monastery." 
 
 He went into a monastery in Bishopsgate Street, reached 
 by a threepenny 'bus. He gave out vaguely that he had 
 got into "Something Good, in the City." Society was 
 satisfied. Only Golly suspected the truth. She wrote to 
 her grandfather : — 
 
 "I saw John Gale the other day with a crowd following 
 him in the Strand. He had on only a kind of brown serge 
 dressing-gown, tied around his waist by a rope, and a hood 
 on his head. I think his poor ' toe-toes ' were in sandals, 
 and I dare say his legs were cold, poor dear. However, if 
 he calls that protection of Golly — /don't! I might be 
 run off at any moment — for all he 'd help. No matter I 
 
298 CONDENSEB NOVELS 
 
 If this Court understands herself, and she thinks she do. 
 Golly can take care of herself — you het." 
 
 Nevertheless, Golly lost her place at the hospital through 
 her heroic defense of her friend Jinny Jones, who had been 
 deceived by Lord Brownstone Ewer. "You would drive 
 that poor girl into the street," she said furiously to the 
 Chairman of the Board, throwing her cap and apron in their 
 faces. " You 're a lot of rotten old hypocrites, and I 'm 
 glad to get shut of you." Not content with that, she went 
 to Drake and demanded that he should make his friend 
 Lord Brownstone marry Jinny. 
 
 " Sorry — awfully sorry — my dear Golly, but he 's en- 
 gaged to a rich American girl who is to pay his debts; but 
 I '11 see that he does something handsome for Jinny. And 
 you, my child, what are you going to do without a situa- 
 tion ? " he added, with touching sympathy. " You see, 
 I've some vague idea of marrying you myself," he con- 
 cluded meditatively. 
 
 "Thank you for nothing," interrupted Golly gayly, "but 
 I can take care of myself and follow out my mission like 
 John Gale." 
 
 "There 's a pair of you, certainly," said Drake, with a 
 tinge of jealous bitterness. 
 
 "You bet it 's 'a pair ' that will take your ' two knaves,' 
 you and your Lord Brownstone," returned Golly, dropping 
 a mock courtesy. "Ta-ta; I 'm going on the stage." 
 
 BOOK m 
 
 She went first into a tobacconist's — and sold cigarettes. 
 Sometimes she suffered from actual want, and ate fried fish. 
 " Do you know how nice fried fish tastes in London, — you 
 on 'the Oilan ' ? " she wrote gayly. "I'm getting on 
 splendidly; so 's John Gale, I suppose, though he's look- 
 ing cadaverous from starving himself all round. Tell aunty 
 
GOLLY AND THE CHRISTIAK 299 
 
 I have n't seen the Queen yet, though after all I really be- 
 lieve she has not seen me." 
 
 Then, after a severe struggle, she succeeded in getting 
 on the stage as a song and dance girl. She sang melodi- 
 ously and danced divinely, so remarkably that the ignorant 
 public, knowing her to be a Manx girl, and vaguely asso- 
 ciating her -with the symbol of the Isle of Man, supposed 
 she had three legs. She was the success of the season ; 
 her cup of ambition was filled. It was slightly embittered 
 by the news that her friend Jinny Jones had killed herself 
 in the church at the wedding of her recreant lover and the 
 American heiress. But the affair was scarcely alluded to by 
 the Society papers — who were naturally shocked at the bad 
 taste of the deceased. And even Golly forgot it all — on 
 the stage. 
 
 BOOK IV 
 
 Meanwhile John Gale, or Brother Boreas, as he was 
 known in the monastery, was submitting — among other 
 rigors — to an exceptionally severe winter in Bishopsgate 
 Street, which seemed to have an Arctic climate of its own, 
 — possibly induced by the " freezing-out " process of cer- 
 tain stock companies in its vicinity. 
 
 "You are miserable, and eager to get out in the wicked 
 world again, my son," said the delightful old Superior, as 
 he sat by the only fire, sipping a glass of mulled port, when 
 John came in from shoveling snow outside. "I, therefore, 
 merely to try you, shall make you gatekeeper. The keys 
 of the monastery front door are under the door-mat in my 
 cell, but I am a sound sleeper." He smiled seraphically, 
 and winked casually as he sipped his port. " We will call 
 it, if you please — a penance. " 
 
 John threw himself in an agony of remorse and shame 
 at the feet of the Superior. " It is n't of myself I 'm think- 
 ing," he confessed wildly, "but of that poor young man, 
 
300 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 Brother Bones, in the next cell to mine. He is a living 
 skeleton, has got only one lung and an atrophied brain. A 
 night out might do him good." 
 
 The Father Superior frowned. "Do you know who he 
 \sV' 
 
 "No." 
 
 "His real name is Jones. Why do you start? You 
 have heard it before ? " 
 
 John had started, thinking of Jinny Jones, Golly 's de- 
 serted and self-immolated friend. 
 
 "It is an uncommon name," he stammered — "for a 
 monastery, I mean." 
 
 "He is or was an uncommon man!" said the Superior 
 gravely. "But," he added resignedly, "we cannot pick and 
 choose our company here. Most of us have done something 
 and have our own reasons for this retreat. Brother Polyga- 
 mus escaped here from the persecutions of his sixth wife. 
 Even I," continued the Superior with a gentle smile, put- 
 ting his feet comfortably on the mantelpiece, " have had my 
 little fling, and the dear boys used to say — ahem ! — but this 
 is mere worldly vanity. You alone, my dear son," he went 
 on with slight severity, " seem to be wanting in some crimi- 
 nality, or — shall I say 1 — some appropriate besetting sin 
 to qualify you for this holy retreat. An absolutely gratui- 
 tous and blameless idiocy appears to be your only peculiar- 
 ity, and for this you must do penance. From this day 
 henceforth, I make you doorkeeper! Go on with your 
 shoveling at present, and shut the door behind you; there 's 
 a terrible draught in these corridors." 
 
 For three days John Gale underwent an agony of doubt 
 and determination, and it still snowed in Bishopsgate 
 Street. 
 
 On the fourth evening he went to Brother Bones. 
 
 "Would you like to have an evening out? " 
 
 "I would," said Brother Bones. 
 
GOLLY AND THE CHRISTIAN 301 
 
 " What would you do ? " 
 
 "I would go to see my remaining sister." His left eye- 
 lid trembled slowly in his cadaverous face. 
 
 " But if you should hear she was ruined like the other t 
 What would you do ? " 
 
 A shudder passed over the man. " I have not got my 
 little knife," he said vacantly. 
 
 True, he had not! The Brotherhood had no pockets, 
 — or rather only a corporate one, which belonged to the 
 Superior. John Gale lifted his eyes in sublime exaltation. 
 "You shall go out," he said with decision. "Muffle up 
 until you are well out of Bishopsgate Street, where it still 
 snows. " 
 
 "But how did you get the keys? " said Brother Bones. 
 
 "From under the Father Superior's door-mat." 
 
 "But that was wrong, Brother." 
 
 "The mat bore the inscription, ' Salve,' which you know 
 in Latin means 'Welcome,'" returned John Gale. "It 
 was logically a permission." 
 
 The two men gazed at each other silently. A shudder 
 passed over the two left eyelids of their wan spiritual faces. 
 
 " But I have no money, " said Brother Bones. 
 
 "Nor have I. But here is a 'bus ticket and a free pass 
 to the Gaiety. You will probably find Golly somewhere 
 about. Tell her," he said in a hollow voice, "that I'm 
 getting on." 
 
 "I will," said Brother Bones, with a deep cough. 
 
 The gate opened and he disappeared in the falling snow. 
 The bloodhound kept by the monastery — one of the real 
 Bishopsgate breed — bayed twice, and licked its huge jaws 
 in ghastly anticipation. "I wonder," said John Gale as he 
 resumed his shoveling, "if I have done exactly right. 
 Candor compels me to admit that it is an open ques- 
 tion." 
 
302 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 BOOK V 
 
 Early the next morning, Brother Bones was hrought 
 home by Policeman X, his hat crushed, his face haggard, his 
 voice husky and unintelligible. He only said vaguely, 
 " Washertime ? " 
 
 "It is," said John Gale timidly, in explanation to Police- 
 man X, "a case of spiritual exhaustion following a vigil." 
 
 "That war n't her name," said Policeman X sternly. 
 "But don't let this 'ere 'appen again." 
 
 John Gale turned to Brother Bones. "Then you saw 
 her — Golly?" 
 
 "No," said Brother Bones. 
 
 " Why ? What on earth have you been doing 1 " 
 
 "Dunno! Found myself in stashun — zis morning! 
 Thashall!" 
 
 Then John Gale sought the Superior in an agony of re- 
 morse, and confessed all. "I am unfit to remain door- 
 keeper. Remove me," he groaned bitterly. 
 
 The old man smiled gently. "On the contrary, I 
 should have given you the keys myself. Hereafter you can 
 keep them. The ways of our Brotherhood are mysterious, 
 — indeed, you may think idiotic, — but we are not respon- 
 sible for them. It 's all Brother Caine's doing — it 's 'AH 
 Caine ! " 
 
 BOOK VI 
 
 Nevertheless, John Gale left the monastery. "The 
 Bishopsgate Street winter does not suit me," he briefly ex- 
 plained to the Superior. ' "I must go south or southwest." 
 
 But he did neither. He saw Golly, who was living 
 west. He upbraided her for going on the stage. She re- 
 torted: "Whose life is the more artificial, yours or mine' 
 It is true that we are both imperfectly clothed," she added, 
 glancing at a photograph of herself in a short skirt, "and 
 
GOLLY AND THE CHRISTIAN 303 
 
 not always in our right mind — but you 've caught nothing 
 but a cold! Nevertheless, I love you and you love me." 
 
 Then he begged her to go with him to the South Seas 
 and take the place of Father Damien among the colony of 
 lepers. "It is a beautiful place, and inexpensive, for we 
 shall live only a few weeks. What do you say, dearest? 
 You know," he added, with a faint, sad smile, glancing at 
 another photograph of her, — executing the high kick, — 
 " you 're quite a leaper yourself. " 
 
 But that night she received an offer of a new engage- 
 ment. She wrote to John Gale: "The South Seas is 
 rather an expensive trip to take simply to die. Could n't 
 we do it as cheaply at home ? Or could n't you prevail on 
 your Father Superior to set up his monastery there 1 I 'm 
 afraid I 'm not up to it. Why don't you try the old 
 ' Oilan, ' nearer home? There 's lots of measles and diph- 
 theria about there lately." 
 
 When the heartbroken John Gale received this epistle, 
 be also received a letter from his uncle, the First Lord of 
 the Admiralty. "I don't fancy this Damien whim of 
 yours. If you 're really in earnest about killing yourself, 
 why not take a brief trial trip in one of our latest iron- 
 clads? It 's just as risky, although — as we are obliged tc 
 keep these things quiet in the Office — you will not of 
 course get that publicity your noble soul craves." 
 
 Abandoned by all in his noble purposes, John Gale took 
 the first steamer to the Isle of Man. 
 
 BOOK VII 
 
 But he did not remain there long. Once back in that 
 epistolary island, he wrote interminable letters to Golly, 
 When they began to bore each other, he returned to Lon^ 
 don and entered the Salvation Army. Crowds flocked to 
 hear him preach. He inveighed against Society and Wi3k' 
 
804 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 edness as represented in his mind by Golly and har friends, 
 and praised a perfect Christianity represented by himself 
 and his friends. A panic of the same remarkable character 
 as the Bishopsgate Street winter took possession of Lon- 
 don. Old Moore's, Zadkiel's, and Mother Shipton's pro- 
 phecies were to be fulfilled at an early and fixed date, with 
 no postponement on account of weather. Suddenly Society, 
 John Drake, and Antichrist generally combined by ousting 
 him from his church, and turning it into a music-hall for 
 Golly ! Then John Gale took his last and sublime re- 
 solve. His duty as a perfect Christian was to kill Golly ! 
 His logic was at once inscrutable, perfect, and — John 
 Galish! 
 
 With this sublime and lofty purpose, he called upon 
 Golly. The heroic girl saw his purpose in his eye — an 
 eye at once black, murderous, and Christian-like. Tor an 
 instant she thought it was better to succumb at once and 
 thus end this remarkable attachment. Suddenly through 
 this chaos of Spiritual, Religious, Ecstatic, Super-Egotistic 
 whirl of confused thought, darted a gleam of Common, Or- 
 dinary Horse Sense! John Gale saw it illumine her blue 
 eyes, and trembled. God in Mercy ! If it came to that ! 
 
 "Sit down, John," she said calmly. Then, in her 
 sweet, clear voice, she said: "Did it ever occur to you, 
 dearest, that a more ridiculous, unconvincing, purposeless, 
 insane, God-forsaken idiot than you never existed ? That 
 you eclipse the wildest dreams of insanity ? That you are 
 a mental and moral ' What-is-it 1 ' " 
 
 "It has occurred to me," he replied simply. "I began 
 life with vast asinine possibilities which fall to the lot of 
 few men ; yet I cannot say that I have carried even them 
 to a logical conclusion ! But you, love ! i/ou, darling ! con- 
 ceived in extravagance, born to impossibility, a challenge to 
 credulity, a problem to the intellect, a ' missing word ' for 
 all ages, — are you aware of any one as utterly unsympa- 
 
GOLLY AND THE CHRISTIAN 305 
 
 thetic, unreal, and vintrue to nature as you are, existing on 
 the face of tlie earth, or in the waters under the earth ? " 
 
 "You are right, dearest; there are none," she returned 
 ■with the same calm, level voice. "It is true that I have 
 at times tried to do something real and womanly, and not, 
 you know, merely to complicate a — a " — her voice fal- 
 tered — "theatrical situation — but I couldn't! Some- 
 thing impelled me otherwise. Now you know why 1 be- 
 came an actress ! But even there I fail ! They are allowed 
 reasoning power off the stage — I have none at any time ! 
 I laugh in the wrong place — I do the unnecessary, extrav- 
 agant thing. Endowed by some strange power with ex- 
 traordinary attributes, I am supposed to make everybody 
 love me, but I don't — I satisfy nobody; I convince none! 
 I have no idea what will happen to me next. I am doomed 
 to — I know not what. " 
 
 " And I, " he groaned bitterly, — " I, in some rare and 
 lucid moments, have had a glimpse of this too. We are in 
 the hands of some inscrutable but awful power. Tell me, 
 Golly, tell me, darling, who is it % " 
 
 Again that gleam of Common or Ordinary Horse Sense 
 came in her eye. 
 
 " I have found out who, " she whispered. " I have found 
 out who has created us, and made us as puppets in his 
 hands." 
 
 "Is it the Almighty? " he asked. 
 
 "No; it is" — she said, with a burst of real laughter — 
 "it is — the 'All Caine!" 
 
 "What! our countryman the Manxman? The only 
 great Novelist ? The beloved of Gladstone ? " he gasped. 
 
 " Yes — and he intends to kill you — and we 're only to 
 be married at your deathbed ! " 
 
 John Gale arose with a look of stern determination. " I 
 have suffered much and idiotically — but I draw a line at 
 this. I shall kick ! " 
 
306 CONDENSED NOVELS 1 
 
 Golly clapped her hands joyfully. "We will! " 
 
 "And we '11 chuck him." 
 
 "We will." 
 
 They were choking with laughter. 
 
 "And go and get married in a natural, simple way like 
 anyhody else — and try — to do our duty — to God — to 
 each other — and to our fellow-beings — and quit this — 
 damned — nonsense — and in-fer-nal idiocy forever ! " 
 
 "Amen!" 
 
 Publishee's Note. — "In that supreme work of my 
 life, ' The Christian, ' " said the gifted novelist to a reporter 
 in speakin,g of his methods, "I had endowed the characters 
 of Golly and John Gale with such superhuman vitality and 
 absolute reality that -r- as is well known in the experience of 
 great writers — they became thinking beings, and actually 
 criticised my work, and even interfered and rebelled to the 
 point of altering my climax and the end ! " The present 
 edition gives that ending, which of course is the only real 
 one. 
 
THE ADVENTURES OF JOHN LONGBOWE, 
 YEOMAN 
 
 BEING A MODEEHr-ANTIQUE REALISTIC ROMANCE 
 (compiled FEOM SBVEBAl, EMINENT SOUBCBS.) 
 
 It seemeth but fair that I, John Longbowe, should set 
 down this account of such hap and adventure as hath be- 
 fallen me, without flourish, vaporing, or cozening of speech, 
 but as becometh one who, not being a ready writer, goeth 
 straight to the matter in hand in few words. So, though 
 I offend some, I shall yet convince all, the which lieth 
 closer to my purpose. Thus, it was in the year 1560, or 
 1650, or mayhap 1710 — for my memory is not what it 
 hath been and I ever cared little for monkish calendars or 
 such dry-as-dust matter, being active as becometh one who 
 hath to make his way in the world — yet I wot well it was 
 after the Great Plague, which I have great cause to remem- 
 ber, lying at my cozen 's in Wardour Street, London, in that 
 lamentable year, eating of gilly flowers, sulphur, hartes 
 tongue and many stynking herbes; touching neither man 
 nor mayd, save with a great tongs steept in pitch ; wearing 
 a fine maske of silk with a mouth piece of aromatic stuff — 
 by reason of which acts of hardihood and courage I was 
 miraculously preserved. This much I shall say as to the 
 time of these happenings,, and no more. I am a plain, blunt 
 man — mayhap rude of speech should occasion warrant — 
 so let them who require the exactness of a scrivener or a 
 pedagogue go elsewhere for their entertainment and be 
 hanged to them ! 
 
 Howbeit, though no scholar, I am not one of those who 
 
308 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 misuse the English speech, and, being foolishly led by the 
 hasty custom of scriveners and printers to write the letters 
 "T" and "H" joined together, which resembleth a "Y," 
 do incontinently jump to the conclusion the THE is pro- 
 nounced "Ye," — the like of which I never heard in all 
 England. And though this be little toward those great 
 enterprises and happenings I shall presently shew, I set it 
 down for the behoof of such malapert wights as must needs 
 gird at a man of spirit and action — and yet, in sooth, 
 know not their own letters. 
 
 So to my tale. There was a great frost when my Lord 
 bade me follow him to the water gate near our lodgings in 
 the Strand. When we reached it we were amazed to see 
 that the Thames was frozen over and many citizens disport- 
 ing themselves on the ice — the like of which no man had 
 seen before. There were fires built thereon, and many 
 ships and barges were stuck hard and fast, and my Lord 
 thought it vastly pretty that the people were walking under 
 their bows and cabbin windows and climbing of their sides 
 like mermen, but I, being a plain, blunt man, had no joy 
 in such idlenesse, deeming it better that in these times of 
 pith and enterprise they should be more seemly employed. 
 My Lord, because of one or two misadventures by reason of 
 the slipperiness of the ice, was fain to go by London Bridge, 
 which we did ; my Lord as suited his humor ruffling the 
 staid citizens as he passed or peering under the hoods of 
 their wives and daughters — as became a young gallant of 
 the time. I, being a plain, blunt man, assisted in no such 
 folly, but contented myself, when they complayned to me, 
 with damning their souls for greasy interfering varlets. 
 For I shall now make no scruple in declaring that my Lord 
 was the most noble Earl of Southampton, being withheld 
 from so saying before through very plainness and bluntness, 
 desiring as a simple yeoman to make no boast of serving a 
 man of so high quality. 
 
THE ADVENTURES OF JOHN LONGBOWE 309 
 
 We fared on over Bankside to the Globe playhouse, 
 where my Lord bade me dismount and deliver a secret mes- 
 sage to the chief player — which message was, " Had he dili- 
 gently perused and examined that he wot of, and what said 
 he thereof ? " Which I did. Thereupon he that was called 
 the chief player did incontinently proceed to load mine arms 
 and wallet with many and divers rolls of manuscripts in my 
 Lord's own hand, and bade me say unto him that there was 
 a great frost over London, but that if he were to perform 
 those plays and masques publickly, there would be a greater 
 frost there — to wit, in the Globe playhouse. This I did 
 deliver with the Manuscripts to my Lord, who changed 
 countenance mightily at the sight of them, but could make 
 nought of the message. At which the lad who held the 
 horses before the playhouse — one Will Shakespeare — split 
 with laughter. Whereat my Lord cursed him for a deer- 
 stealing, coney-catching Warwickshire lout, and cuffed him 
 soundly. I wot there, will be those who remember that this 
 Will Shakespeare afterwards became a player and did write 
 plays — which were acceptable even to the Queen's Majes- 
 ty's self — and I set this down not from vanity to shew I 
 have held converse with such, nor to give a seemingness 
 and colour to my story, but to shew what ill-judged, mis- 
 informed knaves were they who did afterwards attribute 
 friendship between my Lord and this Will Shakespeare, 
 even to the saying that he made sonnets to my Lord. How- 
 beit, my Lord was exceeding wroth, and I, to beguile him, 
 did propose that we should leave our horses and cargoes of 
 manuscript behind and cross on the ice afoot, which conceit 
 pleased him mightily. In sooth it chanced weU with what 
 followed, for hardly were we on the river when we saw a 
 great crowd coming from Westminster, before a caravan of 
 strange animals and savages in masks, capering and capricol- 
 ling, dragging after them divers sledges quaintly fashioned 
 like swannes, in which were ladies attired as fairies and 
 
310 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 goddesses and such like heathen and wanton trumpery, 
 which I, as a plain, blunt man, would have fallen to curs- 
 ing, had not my Lord himself damned me under his breath 
 to hold my peace, for that he had recognized my Lord of 
 Leicester's colours and that he made no doubt they were of 
 the Court. As forsooth this did presently appear; also that 
 one of the ladies was her Gracious Majesty's self — masked 
 to the general eye, the better to enjoy these miscalled fes- 
 tivities. I say miscalled, for, though a loyal subject of her 
 Majesty, and one who hath borne arms at Tilbury Fort in 
 defence of her Majesty, it inflamed my choler, as a plain 
 and blunt man, that her Mightiness should so degrade her 
 dignity. Howbeit, as a man who hath his way to make in 
 the world, I kept mine eyes well upon the anticks of the 
 Great, whUe my Lord joined the group of maskers and their 
 foUies. I recognized her Majesty's presence by her dis- 
 course in three languages to as many Ambassadors that were 
 present — though I marked well that she had not forgot- 
 ten her own tongue, calling one of her ladies "a sluttish 
 wench," nor her English spirit in cuffing my Lord of Es- 
 sex's ears for some indecorum — which, as a plain man my- 
 self, curt in speech and action, did rejoice me greatly. But 
 I must relate one feat, the like of which I never saw in 
 England before or since. There was a dance of the mask- 
 ers, and in the midst of it her Majesty asked the Ambassa- 
 dor from Spayne if he had seen the latest French dance. 
 He replied that he had not. Whereupon Her Most Excel- 
 lent Majesty skipt back a pace and forward a pace, and lift- 
 ing her hoop, delivered a kick at his Excellency's hat which 
 sent it flying the space of a good English ell above his head ! 
 Howbeit so great was the acclamation that her Majesty was 
 graciously moved to repeat it to my Lord of Leicester, but, 
 tripping back, her high heels caught in her farthingale, and 
 she would have fallen on the ice, but for that my Lord, 
 with exceeding swiftness and dexterity, whisked his cloak 
 
THE ADVENTURES OF JOHN LONGBOWE 311 
 
 from his shoulder, spreading it under her, and so received 
 her body in its folds on the ice, without himself touching 
 her Majesty's person. Her Majesty was greatly pleased at 
 this and bade my Lord buy another cloak at her cost, though 
 it swallowed an estate; but hiy Lord replyed, after the ly- 
 ing fashion of the time, that it was honour enough for him 
 to be permitted to keep it after "it had received her Eoyal 
 person." I know that this hap hath been partly related of 
 another person — the shipman Ealeigh — but I tell such as 
 deny me that they lie iii their teeth, for, I John Longbowe, 
 have cause — miserable cause enough, I warrant — to re- 
 member it, and my Lord can bear me out ! Tor, spite of 
 his fair speeches, when he was quit of the Eoyal presence, 
 he threw me his wet and bedraggled cloak and bade me 
 change it with him for mine own, which was dry and warm. 
 And it was this simple act which wrought the lamentable 
 and cruel deed of which I was the victim, for, as I followed 
 my Lord, thus apparelled, across the ice, I was suddenly 
 set upon and seized, a choke-pear clapt into my mouth so 
 that I could not cry aloud, mine eyes bandaged, mine el- 
 bows pinioned at my side in that fatall cloak like to a 
 trussed fowl, and so I was carried to where the ice was 
 broken, and thrust into a boat. Thence I was conveyed in 
 the same rude sort to a ship, dragged up her smooth, wet 
 side, and clapt under hatches. Here I lay helpless as in a 
 swoon. When I came to, it was with a great trampling on 
 the decks above and the washing of waves below, and I 
 made that the ship was moving — but where I knew not. 
 After a little space the hatch was lifted from where I lay, 
 the choke-pear taken from my mouth ; but not the bandage 
 from mine eyes, so I could see nought around me. But I 
 heard a strange voice say : " What coil is this ? This is mv 
 Lord's cloak in sooth, but not my Lord that lieth in it! 
 Who is this fellow ? " At which I did naturally discover 
 the great misprise of those varlets who had taken me for my' 
 
312 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 dear Lord, ■whom I now damned in my heart for changing 
 of the cloaks! Howbeit, when I had fetched my breath 
 with difficulty, being well nigh spent by reason of the gag, 
 I replyed that I was John Longbowe, my Lord's true yeo- 
 man, as good a man as any, as they should presently dis- 
 cover when they set me ashore. That I knew — " Softly, 
 friend," said the Voice, "thou knowest too much for the 
 good of England and too little for thine own needs. Thou 
 shalt be sent where thou mayest forget the one and improve 
 thy knowledge of the other." Then as if turning to those 
 about him, for I could not see by reason of the blindfold, 
 he next said : " Take him on your voyage, and see that he 
 escape not till ye are quit of England. " And with that 
 they clapt to the hatch again, and I heard him cast off from 
 the ship's side. There was I, John Longbowe, an English 
 yeoman, — I, who but that day had held converse with Will 
 Shakespeare and been cognizant of the revels of Her Most 
 Christian Majesty even to the spying of her garter! — I 
 was kidnapped at the age of forty-five or thereabout — for 
 I will not be certain of the year — and forced to sea, for that 
 my Lord of Southampton had provoked the jealousie and 
 envy of divers other great nobles. 
 
 CHAPTERS I TO XX 
 
 1 AM FORCED TO SEA AND TO BECOME A PIEATE ! I SUF- 
 FER LAMENTABLY FROM SICKNESS BY REASON OF THE 
 BIGNBSSE OF THE WAVES. I COMMIT MANY CRUELTIES 
 AND BLOODSHED. BUT BY THE DIVINE INTERCESSION 
 I EVENTUALLY THROW THE WICKED CAPTAIN OVER- 
 BOARD AND AM ELECTED IN HIS STEAD. I DISCOVER 
 AN ISLAND OF TREASTTKE, OBTAIN POSSESSION THEREOF 
 BY A TRICKE, AND PUT THE NATIVES TO THE SWORD 
 
 I marvel much at those who deem it necessary in the 
 setting down of their adventures to gloze over the whiles 
 
THE ADVENTDEES OF JOHN LONGBOWE 313 
 
 between with much matter of the country, the peoples, and 
 even their own foolish reflections thereon, hoping in this 
 way to cozen the reader with a belief in their own truthful- 
 ness, and encrease the extravagance of their deeds. I, be- 
 ing a plain, blunt man, shall simply say for myself that for 
 many days after being taken from the bilboes and made free 
 of the deck, I was grievously distempered by reason of the 
 waves, and so collapsed in the bowels that I could neither 
 eat, stand, nor lie. Being thus in great fear of death, from 
 which I was miraculously preserved, I, out of sheer grati- 
 tude to my Maker, did incontinently make oath and sign 
 articles to be one of the crew — which were buccaneers. I 
 did this the more readily as we were to attack the ships of 
 Spayne only, and through there being no state of Warre at 
 that time between England and that country, it was wisely 
 conceived that this conduct would provoke it, and we should 
 thus be forearmed, as became a juste man in his quarrel. 
 For this we had the precious example of many great Cap- 
 tains. We did therefore heave to and burn many ships — 
 the quality of those engagements I do not set forth, not 
 having a seaman's use of ship speech, and despising, as a 
 plain, blunt man, those who misuse it, having it not. 
 
 But this I do know, that, having some conceit of a ship- 
 man's ways and of pirates, I did conceive at this time a 
 pretty song for my comradoes, whereof the words ran 
 thus : — 
 
 Yo ho ! when the Dog Watch baveth loud 
 In the light of a mid-sea moon ! 
 
 And the Dead JvVes glare in the stifEening Shroud, 
 For that is the Pirate's noon ! 
 
 When the Night Mayres sit on the Dead Man's Chest 
 Where no manne's breath may come — 
 
 Then hey for a bottle of Kum ! Rum ! Eum ! 
 And a passage to Kingdom come ! 
 
 I take no credit to myself for the same, except so far as 
 it may shew a touch of my Lord of Southampton's manner 
 -vve being intimate — but this I know, that it was much 
 
314 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 acclaimed by the crew. Indeed they, observing that the 
 Captain was of a cruel nature, would fain kill him and put 
 me in his stead, but I, objecting to the shedding of pre- 
 cious blood in such behoof, did prevent such a lamentable 
 and inhuman action by stealthily throwing him by night 
 from his cabbin window into the sea — where, owing to 
 the inconceivable distance of the ship from shore, he was 
 presently drowned. Which untoward fate had a great effect 
 upon my fortunes, since, burthening myself with his goods 
 and effects, I found in his chest a printed proclamation from 
 an aged and infirm clergyman in the West of England cove- 
 nanting that, for the sum of two crowns, he would send to 
 whoso offered, the chart of an island of great treasure in the 
 Spanish Main, whereof he had had confession from the lips 
 of a dying parishioner, and the amount gained thereby he 
 would use for the restoration of his parish church. Now I, 
 reading this, was struck by a great remorse and admiration 
 for our late Captain, for that it would seem that he was, 
 like myself, a staunch upholder of the Protestant Paith and 
 the Church thereof, as did appear by his possession of the 
 chart, for which he had no doubt paid the two good crowns. 
 As an act of penance I resolved upon finding the same island 
 by the aid of the chart, and to that purpose sailed East 
 many days, and South, and North, and West as many other 
 days ^r- the manner whereof and the latitude and longitude 
 of which I shall not burden the reader with, holding it, as 
 a plain, blunt man, mere padding and impertinence to fill 
 out my narrative, which helpeth not the general reader. 
 So, I say, when we sighted the Island, which seemed to be 
 swarming with savages, I ordered the masts to be stripped, 
 save but for a single sail which hung sadly and distractedly, 
 and otherwise put the ship into the likeness of a forlorn 
 wreck, clapping the men, save one or two, under hatches. 
 This I did to prevent the shedding of precious blood, know- 
 ing full well that the ignorant savages, believing the ship in 
 
THE ADVENTTJEES OF JOHN LONGBOWE 8l5 
 
 sore distress, would swim off to her with provisions and 
 fruit, bearing no arms. Which they did, while we, as fast 
 as they clomb the sides, despatched them at leisure, without 
 unseemly outcry or alarms. Having thus disposed of the 
 most adventurous, we landed and took possession of the 
 island, finding thereon many kegs of carbuncles and rubies 
 and pieces of eight — the treasure store of those lawless pi- 
 rates who infest the seas, having no colour of war or teach- 
 ing of civilisation to atone for their horrid deeds. 
 
 I diseov-ered also, by an omission in the chart, that this 
 was not the Island wot of by the good and aged Devonshire 
 divine — and so w« eased our consciences of accounting for 
 the treasure to him. We then sailed away, arriving after 
 many years' absence at the Port of Bristol in Merrie Eng- 
 land, where I took leave of the Jolly Roger, that being 
 the name of my ship ; it was a strange conceit of seamen in 
 after years ever to call the device of my flag — to wit, a 
 skull and bones made in the sign of a Cross — by the name 
 Tay ship bore, and if I have only corrected the misuse of 
 history by lying knaves, I shall be content with this writ- 
 ing. But alas! such are the uncertainties of time; I found 
 my g<Jod Lord of Southampton dead and most of his friends 
 beheaded, and the blessed King James of Scotland — if I 
 mistake not, for these also be the uncertainties of time — 
 on the throne. In due time I married Mistress Marian 
 Straitways. I might have told more of trifling, and how 
 she fared, poor wench! in mine absence, even to the fol- 
 lowing of me in another ship, in a shipboy's disguise, and 
 how I rescued her from a scheming Pagan villain; but, as 
 a plain, blunt man, I am no hand at the weaving of puling 
 love tales and such trifling diversions for lovesick mayda 
 and their puny gallants — having only consideration fol 
 men and their deeds, which I have here set down bluntly 
 and even at mine advanced years am ready to maintain with 
 the hand that set it down. 
 
DAN'L BOEEM 
 
 BY E. N-S W-T-T 
 I 
 
 Dan'l Bokem poured half of his second cup of tea ab- 
 stractedly into his lap. 
 
 "Guess you've got suthin' on yer mind, Dan'l," said 
 his sister. 
 
 "More 'n likely I 've got suthin' on my pants," returned 
 Dan'l with that exquisitely dry, though somewhat pro- 
 tracted humor which at once thrilled and bored his ac- 
 quaintances. " But — speakin' o' that boss trade " — 
 
 "For goodness' sake, don't! " interrupted his sister wea- 
 rily ; " yer alius doin' it. Jest tell me about that young 
 man — the new clerk ye think o' gettin'." 
 
 "Well, I telegraphed him to come over, arter I got this 
 letter from him," he returned, handing her a letter. 
 "Bead it out loud." 
 
 But his sister, having an experienced horror of prolixity, 
 glanced over it. " Far as I kin see he takes more 'n two 
 hundred words to say you 've got to take him on trust, and 
 sez it suthin' in a style betwixt a business circular and 
 them Polite Letter Writers. I thought you allowed he was 
 a tony feller." 
 
 " Ef he does not brag much, ye see, I kin offer him small 
 wages," said Dan'l, with a wink. "It 's kinder takin' him 
 at his own figger." 
 
 " And that might n't pay ! But ye don't think o' bring- 
 in' him here — in this house? 'Cept you're thinkin' o' 
 tellin' him that yarn o' yours about the boss trade to be- 
 
DAN'li BOREM 317 
 
 guile the winter evenings. I told ye ye 'd hev to pay yet 
 to get folks to listen to it." 
 
 "Wrong agin — ez you '11 see ! Wot ef I get a hundred 
 thousand folks to pay me for telliu' it? But, speakin' o' 
 this young feller, I calkilated to send him to the Turkey 
 Buzzard Hotel ; " and he looked at his sister with a shrewd 
 yet humorous smile. 
 
 "What!" said his sister in alarm. "The Turkey Buz- 
 zard! Why, he '11 be starved or pizoned! He won't stay 
 there a week." 
 
 "Ef he 's pizoned to death he won't be able to demand 
 any wages; ef he leaves because he can't stand it — it's 
 proof positive he could n't stand me. Ef he 's only starved 
 and made weak and miserable he '11 be easy to make terms 
 with. It may seem hard what I 'm sayin', but what seems 
 hard on the other feller always comes mighty easy to you. 
 The thing is not to be the ' other feller. ' Ye ain't listenin'. 
 Yet these remarks is shrewd and humorous, and hez been 
 thought so by literary fellers." 
 
 " H'm ! " said his sister. " What 's that ye was jest say- 
 in' about folks bein' willin' to pay ye for tellin' that hoss- 
 trade yarn o' yours 1 " 
 
 "Thet 's only what one o' them smart New York pub- 
 lishers allowed it was worth arter hearin' me tell it," said 
 Dan'l dryly. 
 
 " Go way ! You or him must be crazy. Why, it ain't 
 ez good as that story 'bout a man who had a balky hoss 
 that could be made to go only by buildin' a fire under him, 
 and arter the man sells that hoss and the secret, and the 
 man wot bought him tries it on, the blamed hoss lies down 
 over the fire, and puts it out." 
 
 "I 've alius allowed that the story ye hev to tell your- 
 self is a blamed sight funnier than the one ye 're listenin' 
 to," said Dan'l. "Put that down among my sayin's, will 
 ye?" 
 
31» CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 "But your story was never anythin' more than one o' 
 them snippy things ye see in tlie papers, drored out to no' 
 end by you. It 's only one o' them funny paragraphs ye 
 kin read in a minit in the papers that takes you an hour to 
 tell." 
 
 To h^e^ surprise Dan'I only looked at his sister with com- 
 placency. 
 
 "That," he said', "ia jest what the New York publisher 
 sez. ' The 'Merrikan people,' sez he,. ' is ashamed o' bein' 
 short and peart and funny ; it lacks dignity, ' sez he ; ' it 
 Iboks funny,.' seis he, ' but it ain't d«ep-seated nash'nul lit- 
 erature, ' sez: he. ' Them snips o' funny stories and short: 
 dialogues in the' comic papers — they make ye lafF, ' sez he, 
 ' buit laffin' isn't no sign o' deep morril purpose,' sez he, 
 ' and it ain't genteel and refined. Abraham Linkin with 
 his pat, anecdotes ruined our standin' with dignified na- 
 shuns, ' sez he. ' Wo cultivated publishers is sick o' hearin' 
 furrin nashuns roarin' over funny 'Merrikan stories; we 're 
 goin' to show 'em that, even ef we have n't classes and titles 
 and sich, we kin be dull. We 're workin' the historical 
 racket for all that it 's worth, — ef we can't go back more 'n 
 a hundred years or so, we kin rake in a Lord and a Lady 
 when we do, and we 're gettin' in some ole-fashioned 
 spellin' and " mothinkses " and " peiadventures. " We're 
 doin' the religious bizness ez slick ez Robert Elsmere, and 
 we find lots o' soul in folks — and heaps o' q.uaint morril 
 charactersj ' sez he. " 
 
 "Sakes alive, Dan'I!" broke in his sister; "what's all 
 that got to do with your yarn 'bout the hoss trade? " 
 
 "Everythin'," returned Dan'I. "'For,' sez he, 'Mr. 
 Borem, ' sez he, ' you 're a quaint morril character. You ' ve 
 got protracted humor, ' sez he. ' You 've been an hour tellin' 
 that yarn o' yours! Ef ye could spin it out to fill two 
 chapters of a book — yer fortune 's made! Eor you '11 show 
 that a successful hoss trade involves the highest nash'nul 
 
dan'l borem 319 
 
 characteristics. That what common folk calls "selfish- 
 ness," "revenge," "mean lyin'," and "low-down money- 
 grubbin' ambishun," is really " quaintness, " and will go in 
 double harness with the bizness of a Christian banker, ' sez 
 he." 
 
 "Created goodness, Dan'l! You 're designin' ter " — 
 Dan'l Borem rose, coughed, expectorated carefully at the 
 usual spot in the fender, his general custom of indicating 
 the conclusion of a subject or an interview, and said dryly: 
 "I'm thar!" 
 
 II 
 
 To return to the writer of the letter, whose career wa& 
 momentarily cut ofif by the episode of the horse trade (who, 
 if he had previously received a letter written by somebody 
 else would have been an entirely different person and not in 
 this novel at all) : John Lummox — known to his family 
 as " the perfect Lummox " — had been two years in college, 
 but thought it rather fine of himself — a habit of thought 
 in which he frequently indulged — to become a clerk, but 
 finally got tired of it, and to his father's relief went to 
 Europe for a couple of years, returning with some know- 
 ledge of French and German, and the cutting end of a Ger- 
 man student's blunted dueling-sword. Having, as he felt, 
 thus equipped himself for the hero of an American "good 
 society" novel, he went on board a "liner," where there 
 would naturally be susceptible young ladies. One he. 
 thought he recognized as a girl with whom he used to play 
 " forfeits " in the vulgar past of his boyhood. She sat at 
 his table, accompanied by another lady whose husband 
 seemed to be a confirmed dyspeptic. His remarks struck 
 Lummox as peculiar. 
 
 " Shall I begin dinner with pudding and cheese or take 
 the ordinary soup first? I quite forget which I did last 
 night," he said anxiously to his wife. 
 
320 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 But Mrs. Starling hesitated. 
 
 "Tell me, Mary," he said, appealing to Miss Bike, the 
 young lady. 
 
 " I should begin with the pudding, " said Miss Bike de- 
 cisively, "and between that and the arrival of the cheese 
 you can make up your mind, and then, if you think better, 
 go back to the soup." 
 
 " Thank you so much. Now, as to drink 1 Shall I take 
 the Friedrichshalle first or the Benedictine? You know 
 the doctor insists upon the Friedrichshalle, but I don't 
 think I did well to mix them as I did yesterday. Or shall 
 I take simply milk and beer 1 " 
 
 "I should say simplicity was best. Besides, you can al- 
 ways fill up with champagne later." 
 
 How splendidly this clear-headed, clear-eyed girl domi- 
 nated the man ! Lummox felt that really he might renew 
 her acquaintance ! He did so. 
 
 "I remembered you," she said. "You 've not changed 
 a bit since you were eight years old." 
 
 John, wishing to change the subject, said that he thought 
 Mr. Starling seemed an uncertain man. 
 
 "Very! He 's even now in his stateroom sitting in his 
 pyjamas with a rubber shoe on one foot and a pump on the 
 other, wondering whether he ought to put on golf knicker- 
 bockers with a dressing-gown and straw hat before he comes 
 on deck. He has already put on and taken off about twenty 
 suits. " 
 
 "He certainly is very trying," returned Lummox. He 
 paused and colored deeply. "I beg," he stammered, "I 
 hope — you don't think me guilty of a pun! When I said 
 ' trying ' I referred entirely to the effect on your sensitive- 
 ness of these tentative attempts toward clothing himself." 
 
 "I should never accuse you of levity, Mr. Lummox," 
 said the young lady, gazing thoughtfully upon his calm but 
 somewhat heavy features, — "never." 
 
DAN L BOEEM 321 
 
 Yet he would have liked to reclaim himself by a show of 
 lightness. He was leaning on the rail, looking at the sea. 
 The scene was beautiful. 
 
 "I suppose," he said, rolling with the sea and his early 
 studies of Doctor Johnson, "that one would in the more 
 superior manner show his appreciation of all this by refrain- 
 ing from the obvious comment which must needs be recog- 
 nized as comparatively commonplace and vulgar ; but really 
 this is so superb that I must express some of my emotion, 
 even at the risk of lowering your opinion of my good taste, 
 provided, of course, that you have any opinion on the one 
 hand or any good taste on the other." 
 
 "Without that undue depreciation of one's self which 
 must ever be a sign of self-conscious demerit," said the 
 young girl lightly, " I may say that T am not generally good 
 at Johnsonese ; but it may relieve your mind to know that 
 had you kept silence one instant longer, I should have 
 taken the risk of lowering your opinion of my taste, pro- 
 vided, of course, that you have one to lower and are capable 
 of that exertion, — if such indeed it may be termed, — by 
 remarking that this is perfectly magnificent." 
 
 "Do you think," he said gloomily, still leaning on the 
 rail, "that we can keep this kind of thing up — perhaps I 
 should say down — much longer ? For myself, I am feel- 
 ing far from well ; it may have been the lobster — or that 
 last sentence — but " — 
 
 They were both silent. "Yet," she said, after a pause, 
 "you can at least take Mr. Starling and his dyspepsia ofif 
 my hands. You might be equal to that exertion." 
 
 "I suppose that by this time I ought to be doing some- 
 thing for somebody," he said thoughtfully. "Yes, I 
 will." 
 
 That evening after dinner he took Mr. Starling into the 
 smoking-room and card-room. They had something hot. 
 At 4 A. M., with the assistance of the steward, he projected 
 
322 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 Mr. Starling into Mrs. Starling's stateroom, delicately with- 
 drawing to evade the lady's Uianks. 
 
 At breakfast he saw Miss Bike. "Thank you so much," 
 she said; "Mrs. Starling found Starling greatly improved. 
 He himself admitted he was ' never berrer, ' and, far from 
 worrying about what night-clothes he should wear, went to 
 bed as he was — even to his hat. Mrs. Starling calls you 
 ' her preserver, ' and Mr. Starling distinctly stated that you 
 were a ' joUy-good-fler. ' " 
 
 " Aind you 1 " asked John Lummox. 
 
 "In your present conditioii of abnormal self-conscious- 
 ness and apperceptive egotism, I really should n't like to 
 say. " 
 
 Whett the voyage was ended Mr. Lummox went to see 
 Mary Bike at her house, and his father — whom he had 
 not seen for ten years — at Ids house. With a refined ab- 
 sence of natural affection he contented himself with inquir- 
 ing, of the servants as to his- father's habits, and if he still 
 wore dress-clothes at dinner. The information thus elicited 
 forced him to the conclusion that the old gentleman's cir- 
 cumstances were reduced, and that it was possible that he, 
 John Lummox, might be actually compelled to earn his own 
 living. He communicated that suspicion to his father at 
 dinner, and over the last bottle of " Mouton, " a circum- 
 stance which also had determined him in- his resolution. 
 
 "You might," said his father thoughtfully, "offer your- 
 .self to some rising American novelist as a study for the new 
 hero, — one absolutely without ambition, capacity, or en- 
 ergy ; willing, however, to be whatever the novelist chooses 
 to make him, so long as he has n't to choose for himself. 
 If your inordinate self-consciousness is still in your way, I 
 could give him a few points about you, myself." 
 
 "I had thought," said John, hesitatingly, "of going 
 into your office and becoming your partner in the business. 
 You could always look after me, you know." 
 
dan'l boebm 323 
 
 A shudder passed over the old man. Then he trem- 
 blingly muttered to himself : — 
 
 "Thank heaven! There iS' one way it may still be 
 averted ! " 
 
 Retiring to his room he calmly committed suicide, 
 thoughtfully leaving the empty poison-bottle in the' fender. 
 
 And this is how John Lummox came to offer himself as 
 a clerk to Dan'l Borem. The ways of Providence are in- 
 deed strange, yet those of the novelist are only occasionally 
 novel. 
 
 Ill 
 
 John K. Lummox lived for a week at the Turkey Buz- 
 zard Hotel exclusively on doughnuts and innuendoes. He 
 was informed by Mr. Borem's clerk — whose place he was* 
 to fill — that he wouldn't be able to stand' it, and thus 
 received the character of his employer from his last em- 
 ployee. 
 
 "I suppose," said Dan'l Borem-, chuckling, "that he said 
 I was a old skinflint, good only at a boss- trade, uneddi- 
 cated, ignorant, and unable to keep- accounts, and an op' 
 pressor, o' the widder and orphan. Allowed that my cute 
 sayin's was a kind o' ten-cent parody o' them proverbs in 
 Poor E.iohaTd's Almanack ! " 
 
 "Omitting a few expletives, he certainly did," returned 
 Lummox with great delicacy. 
 
 "Pie allowed to me," said Dan'l thoughtfully, "that you 
 was a poor critter that had n't a single reason to show for 
 livin' ; that the fool-killer had been shadderin' you from, 
 your birth, and that you hadn't paid a cent- profit on your 
 father's original investment in ye, nor on the assessments 
 he 'd paid on ye ever since. He seems to be a cute feller 
 arter all, and I 'm rather sorry he 's leavin'." 
 
 "I am quite willing to abandon my position in his favor, 
 now," said Lummox with alacrity. 
 
324 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 "No," said Dan'l, rubbing his chin argumentatively ; 
 " the only way for us to do is to circumvent him like in a 
 hoss trade — with suthin' unexpected. When he thinks 
 you 're goin' to sleep in the shafts you '11 run away; and 
 when he thinks I 'm vicious I '11 let a woman or a child 
 drive me." 
 
 rv 
 
 " Well, Dan'l, how 's that new clerk o' yours gettin' 
 on 1 " said Mrs. Bigby a week later. 
 
 "Purty fine! He's good at accounts and hez got to 
 know the bank's customers by this time. But I alius reck- 
 oned he 'd get stuck with some o' them counterfeit notes — 
 and he hez! Ye see he ain't accustomed to look at a five 
 or a ten dollar note as sharp as some men, and he 's already 
 taken in two tens and a five, counterfeits." 
 
 " Gracious ! " said Mrs. Bigsby. " What did the poor 
 feller do?" 
 
 " Oh, he ups and tells me, all right, after he discovered 
 it. And sez he: ' I 've charged my account with 'em,' sez 
 he, ' so the bank won't lose it.' " 
 
 "Why, Dan'l," said Mrs. Bigsby, "ye didn't let that 
 poor feller " — 
 
 " You hoi' on ! " said her brother ; " business is business ; 
 but I sez to him : ' Ye oughter put it down to Profit and 
 Loss account. Or perhaps we '11 have a chance o' gettin' 
 rid o' them, — not in Noo York, where folks is sharp, but 
 here in the country, and then ye kin credit yourself with 
 the amount arter you 've got rid o' them.' " 
 
 "Laws! I'm sorry ye did that, Dan'l," said Mrs. 
 Bigsby. 
 
 "With that he riz up," continued Dan'l, ignoring his 
 sister, "and, takin' them counterfeit notes from my hand, 
 sez he : ' Them notes belong to me now, ' sez he, ' and I 'm 
 goin' to destroy 'em. ' And with that he walks over to the 
 
dan'l borem 325 
 
 fire as stiff as a poker, and held them notes in it until they 
 were burnt clean up." 
 
 "Well, but that was honest and straightforward in 
 him ! " said Mrs. Bigsby. 
 
 " Um ! but it was n't business — and ye see " — Dan'l 
 paused and rubbed his chin. 
 
 "Well, go on!" said Mrs. Bigsby impatiently. 
 
 "Well, ye see, neither him nor me was very smart in 
 detectin' counterfeits, or even knowin' 'em, and" — 
 
 "Well! For goodness' sake, Dan'l, speak out!" 
 
 " Well — the dum fool burnt up three good bills, and 
 we neither of us knew it ! " 
 
 The "unexpected " which Dan'l Borem had hinted might 
 characterize his future conduct was first intimated by his 
 treatment of the " Widow Cully, " an aged and impoverished 
 woman whose property was heavily mortgaged to him. He 
 had curtly summoned her to come to his office on Christmas 
 Day and settle up. Frightened, hopeless, and in the face 
 of a snowstorm, the old woman attended, but was surprised 
 by receiving a " satisfaction piece " in full from the banker, 
 and a gorgeous Christmas dinner. 
 
 "All the same," said Mrs. Bigsby to Lummox, "Dan'l 
 might hev done all this without frightenin' the poor old 
 critter into a nervous fever, chillin' her through by makin' 
 her walk two miles through the snow, and keepin' her on 
 the ragged edge o' despair for two mortal hours ! But it 's 
 his humorous way." 
 
 "Did he give any reason for being so lenient to the 
 widow 1 " asked Lummox. 
 
 " He said that her son had given him a core of his apple 
 when they were boys together. Dan'l is mighty thoughtful 
 o' folks that was kind to him in them days." 
 
326 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 "Is that all?" said Lummox, astonished. 
 
 "Well — I've kinder thought suthin' else," said Mrs. 
 Bigsby hesitatingly. 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " That it 's bein' Christmas Day — and as I ' ve heard tell 
 that 's no day in law, but just like Sunday — Dan'l mebbe 
 thought he might crawl outer that satisfaction piece, ef he 
 ever wanted ter! Dan'l is mighty cute." 
 
 VI 
 
 Mr. John Lummox was not behind his employer in de- 
 veloping unexpected traits of character. Hitherto holding 
 aloof from his neighbors in Old Polksville, he suddenly 
 went to a social gathering, and distinguished himself as the 
 principal and popular guest of the evening. As Dan'l Borem 
 afterward told his sister : " He was one o' them combinatioa 
 minstrels and variety shows in one. He sang through a 
 ■whole opery, made the planner jest howl, gave some recita- 
 tions, Casabianker and Betsy and I are Out; imitated all 
 them tragedians; did tricks with cards and fetched rabbits 
 outer hats, besides liftin' the planner with two men sittin' 
 on it, jest by his teeth. Created snakes ! " said Borem, con^ 
 eluding his account, which here is necessarily abbreviated, 
 "ef he learnt all that in his two years in Europe I ain't 
 sayin' anythin' more agin eddication and furrin' travel after 
 this ! Why, the next day there was quite a run on the bank 
 jest to see him. He is makin' the bizness pop'lar." 
 
 " Then ye think ye '11 get along together ? " 
 
 "I reckon we '11 hitch bosses," said Dan'l, with a smile. 
 
 A few weeks later, one evening, Dan'l Borem sat with 
 lais sister alone. John Lummox, who was now residing 
 with them, was attending a social engagement. Mrs. Bigsby 
 knew that Dan'l had something to communicate, but knew 
 that he would do so in his own way. 
 
dan'l boeem 327 
 
 "Speakin' o' boss trades," he began. 
 
 "We wasn't and we ain't goin' to," said Mrs. Bigsby 
 with great promptness. "I 've heard enough of 'em." 
 
 "But this here one hez suthiji' to do with your fr'en', 
 John Lummox," said Dan'l, with 9 chuckle. 
 
 Mrs. Bigsby stared. "Go on, then," she said, "but, for 
 goodness' sake, cut it short."' 
 
 Dan'l threw away his quid and repleijished it from his 
 silver tobacco box. Mrs. Bigsby shuddered slightly as she 
 recognized the usual prelinjinary to prolixity, but deter- 
 mined, as far as possible, to make her brother brief. 
 
 "It mout iDe two weeks ago," began Dan'l, "that I see 
 John Lummox over at Palmyra, where he 'd been visitin'. 
 He was drivin' a boss, the beautifulest critter — for color — 
 I ever saw. It was yaller, with niane ai)d tail a kinder 
 golden, like the hair o' them British blondes that was here 
 in the variety show." 
 
 "Dan'l! " exclaimed Mrs. Bigsby, horrified. "And you 
 allowed you never went thar ! " 
 
 "Saw 'em on the posters — and mebbe the color was a 
 little brighter thar," said Dan'l carelessly — "but who's 
 interruptin' now ? " 
 
 " Go on, " said Mrs. Bigsby. 
 
 " ' Got a fine hoss thar, ' sez I ; ' reckon I never see such 
 a purty color,' sez I. ' He is purty, ' sez he; ' per'aps too 
 purty for me to be a-drivin', but he is n't fast.' ' I ain't 
 speakin' o' that,' sez I; ' it 's his looks that I 'm talkin' of; 
 whar might ye hev got him? ' ' He was offered to me by 
 a fr'en' o' me boyhood,' sez he; 'he 's a, pinto mustang,' 
 sez he, ' from Californy, whar they breed 'em. ' ' What 's a 
 pinto hoss? ' sez I. 'The same ez a calico hoss,' sez he; 
 ' what they have in cirkises, but ye never see 'em that 
 color. ' An' he was right, for when I looked him over I 
 never did see such a soft and silky coat, and his mane and 
 tail jest glistened. ' It is a little too showy for ye,' sez I, 
 
328 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 ' but 1 might take him at a fair price. What 's your fr'en' 
 askin' ? ' ' He won't sell him to anybody but me, ' sez 
 Lummox; 'he's a horror o' hoss-traders, anyway, and his 
 price is more like a gift to a fr'en'.' 'What might that 
 price be, ef it's a fair question?' sez I, for the more I 
 looked at the boss the more I liked him. ' A hundred and 
 iifty dollars,' sez he; ' but my fr'en' would ask you double 
 that. ' ' Could n't you and me make a trade ? ' sez I; ' I '11 
 exchange ye that roan mare, that 's worth two hundred, for 
 this boss and fifty dollars. ' With that he drew himself up, 
 and sez he: 'Mr. Borem, ' sez he, 'I share my fr'en's 
 opinion about boss tradin', and I promised my mother 
 I 'd never swap bosses. You ought to know me by this 
 time.'" 
 
 "That's so!" said Mrs. Bigsby; "I'm wonderin' ye 
 dared to ax him." 
 
 Dan'l passed his hand over his mouth, and continued: 
 '"I dunno but you're right. Lummox,' sez I; ' per'aps 
 it 's jest as well as thar was n't two in the bank in that 
 bizness. ' But the more I looked at the boss the more I 
 hankered arter him. ' Look here, ' sez I, ' I tell ye what 
 I '11 do ! I '11 lend you my boss and you 'U lend me yourn. 
 I '11 draw up a paper to that effect, and provide that in case 
 o' accidents, ef I don't return you your boss, I '11 agree to 
 pay you a hundred and fifty dollars. You '11 give me the 
 same kind o' paper about my boss — with tlie proviso that 
 you pay me two hundred for him ! ' ' Excuse me, Mr. 
 Borem, ' sez be, ' but that difl'erence of fifty makes a hoss 
 trade accordin' to my mind. It 's agin my principles to 
 make such an agreement. ' " 
 
 "An' be was right, Dan'l," said Mrs. Bigsby approv- 
 ingly. 
 
 But Dan'l wiped bis mouth again, leaving, however, a 
 singular smile on it. "Well, ez I wanted that hoss, I jest 
 thought and thought ! I knew I could get two hundred 
 
DAN L BOEEM 329 
 
 and fifty for him easy, and that Lummox did n't know any- 
 thin' of his valoo, and I finally agreed to make the swap 
 even. ' What do you call him 1 ' sez I. ' Pegasus, ' sez he, 
 — ' the poet's hoss, on account o' his golden mane,' sez he. 
 That made me laff, for I never knew a poet ez could afford 
 to hev a hoss, — much less one like that ! But I said : 
 ' I'll bony Pegasus o' you on those terms. ' The next day 
 I took the hoss to Jonesville ; Lummox was right : he was 
 n't fast, but, jest as I expected, he made a sensation! 
 Folks crowded round him whenever I stopped; women 
 followed him and children cried for him. I could hev sold 
 him for three hundred without leavin' town ! ' So ye call 
 him Pegasus,' sez Doc Smith, grinnin'; ' I didn't know ye 
 was subject to the divine afflatus, Dan'l. ' ' I don't offen 
 hev it, ' sez I, ' but when I do I find a little straight gin 
 does me good. ' ' So did Byron, ' sez he, chucklin'. But 
 even if I had called him ' Beelzebub ' the hull town would 
 hev been jest as crazy over him. Well, as it was comin' on 
 to rain I started jest after sundown for home. But it 
 came ter blow, an' ter pour cats and dogs, an' I was nigh 
 washed out o' the buggy, besides losin' my way and gettin' 
 inter ditches and puddles, and I hed to stop at Staples' 
 Half- Way House and put up for the night. In the morn- 
 in' I riz up early and goes into the stable-yard, and the 
 first thing I sees was the 'ostler. ' I hope ye giv' my hoss 
 a good scrub down, ' I sez, ' as I told ye, for his color is 
 that delicate the smallest spot shows. It 's a very rare 
 color for a hoss. ' ' I was hopin' it might be, ' sez he. 
 I was a little huffed at that, and I sez : ' It 's considered a 
 very beautiful color. ' ' Mebbe it is, ' sez he, ' but I never 
 cared much for fireworks. ' ' What yer mean ? ' sez I. 
 'Look here. Squire! ' sez he; 'I don't mind scourin' and 
 rubbin' down a hoss that M'ill stay the same color twice, 
 but when he gets to playin' a kaladeoskope on me, I kick! ' 
 ' Trot him out, ' sez I, beginnin' to feel queer. With that 
 
330 CONI-ENSED NOVELS 
 
 he fetched out the hoss ! For a minute I had to ketch on 
 to the fence to keep myself frotn fallin'. I swonny ! ef he 
 didn't look like a case of measles on top o' yaller fever — . 
 'cept where the harness had touched him, and that was 
 kinder stenciled out all over him. Thar was places whar 
 the 'ostler had washed down to the foundation color, a kind 
 o' chewed licorice ! Then I knew that somebody had been 
 sold terrible, and I reckoned it might be me ! But I said 
 nothin' to the 'ostler, and waited until dark, when I drove 
 him over here, and put him in the stables, lettin' no one 
 see him* In the mornin' Lummox comes to me, and sez 
 he: ' I 'm glad to see you back,' sez he, ' for my conscience 
 is troublih' me about that hoss agreement; it looks too 
 much like a hoss trade,' sez he, ' and I 'm goin' to send the 
 hoss back.' ' Mebbe your conscience,' sez I, ' may trouble 
 you a little more ef you '11 step this way ; ' aud with that 
 I takes his arm and leads him round to the stable and 
 brings out the hoss. 
 
 "Well, Lummox never changes ez much ez a hair, ez he 
 puts up his eye-glasses. ' I 'm not good at what 's called 
 "Pop'lar Art,"' sez he. 'Is it a chromo, or your own 
 work?' sez he, critical like. 'It's your hoss,' sez I. 
 He looks at me a minute and then drors a paper from 
 his pocket. ' This paper, ' sez he in his quiet way, ' was 
 drored up by you and is a covenant to return to me a yal- 
 ler hoss with golden mane and tail — or a hundred and fifty 
 dollars. Ez I don't see the hoss anywhere — mebbe you 
 've got the hundred and fifty dollars handy?' sez he. 
 'Suppose I had il't the money?' sez I. 'I should be 
 obliged,' sez he in a kind o' pained, Christiail-martyr way, 
 ' ter sell your hoss for two hundred, and send the money 
 to my fr'en'. ' We looked at each other steddy for a minute 
 and then I counts him out a hundred and fifty. He took 
 the money sad-like and then sez : ' Mr. Borem, ' sez he, 
 " this is a great morril lesson to us, ' and went back to the 
 
DAN'L BOEKM 331 
 
 office. In the arternoon I called in an old hoss-dealer that 
 I knew and shows him Pegasus. 'He wants renewin',' 
 sez he. ' Wot 's that?' sez I. 'A few more hottles o' 
 that British Blonde Hair Dye to set him up agin. That 's 
 wot they alius do in the cirkis, whar he kern from. ' Then 
 I went back to the office and I took down my sign. 
 ' What 's that you 're doin' ? ' sez Lummox, with a sickly 
 kind o' smile. 'Are you goin' out o' the bizness ? ' ' No, 
 I 'm only goin' to change that sign from "Dan'l Borem " 
 to "Borem and Lummox," ' sez I. ' I 've concluded it 's 
 cheaper for me to take you inter partnership now than to 
 continue in this way, which would only end in your hevin' 
 to take me in later. I preferred to do it fust. ' " 
 
 VII 
 
 A rich man, and settled in business, John Lummox con- 
 cluded that he would marry Mary Bike. With that far- 
 sighted logic which had always characterized him he rea- 
 soned that, having first met her on a "liner, "he would find 
 her again on one if he took passage to Europe. He did 
 — but she was down on the passenger list as Mrs. Edwin 
 Wraggles. The result of their interview was given to Mrs. 
 Bigsby by Dan'l Borem in his own dialect. 
 
 "Ez far as I kin see, it was like the Deacon's Sunday 
 boss trade, bein' all ' Ef it wassent. ' ' Ef ye was n't Mrs. 
 Wraggles,' sez Lummox, sez he, 'I'd be tellin' ye how 
 I 've loved ye ever sence I first seed ye. Ef ye was n't 
 Mrs. Wraggles, I 'd be squeezin' yer hand,' sez he; ' ef ye 
 wasn't Mrs. Wraggles, I'd be askin' ye to marry me.' 
 Then the gal ups and sez, sez she: 'But I ain't Mrs. 
 Wraggles, ' sez she ; ' Mrs. Wraggles is my sister, and could 
 n't come, so I 'm travelin' on her ticket, and that 's how 
 my name is Wraggles on the passenger list. ' ' But why 
 did n't ye tell me so at once? ' sez Lummox. ' This is an 
 
332 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 episode o' protracted humor, ' sez she, ' and I 'm bound to 
 have a show in it somehow ! ' " 
 
 " "Well ! " said Mrs. Bigsby breathlessly ; " then he did 
 marry her 1 " 
 
 " Darned ef I know. He never said so straight out — > 
 but that 's like Lummox." 
 
STORIES THREE 
 
 BY R-DY-D K-PL-G 
 I 
 
 FOR SIMLA REASONS 
 
 Some people say that improbable things don't necessarily 
 happen in India — but these people never find improbabil- 
 ities anywhere. This sounds clever, but you will at once 
 perceive that it really means the opposite of what I in- 
 tended to say. So we '11 drop it. What I am trying to 
 tell you is that after Sparkley had that affair with Miss Mil- 
 likens a singular change came over him. He grew ab- 
 stracted and solitary, — holding dark stances with himself, 
 — which was odd, as everybody knew he never cared a rap 
 for the Millikens girl. It was even said that he was off 
 his head — which is rhyme. But his reason was undoubt- 
 edly affected, for he had been heard to mutter incoherently 
 at the club, and, strangest of all, to answer questions that 
 were never asked ! This was so awkward in that branch 
 of the Civil Department of which he was a high official — 
 where the rule was exactly the reverse — that he was pre- 
 sently invalided on full pay ! Then he disappeared. Clever 
 people said it was because the Department was afraid he had 
 still much to answer for ; stupid people simply envied him. 
 
 Mrs. Awksby, whom everybody knew had been the cause 
 of breaking off the match, was now wild to know the reason 
 of Sparkley's retirement. She attacked heaven and earth, 
 and even went a step higher — to the Viceroy. At the vice- 
 regal ball I saw, behind the curtains of a window, her roll- 
 
334 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 ing violet-blue eyes with a singular glitter in them. It was 
 the reflection of the Viceroy's star, although the rest of his 
 Excellency was hidden in the curtain. I heard him saying, 
 " Come, now ! really, now, you are — you know you are ! " 
 in reply to her cooing questioning. 
 
 Then she made a dash at me and captured me. 
 
 "What did you hear?" 
 
 "Nothing I should not have heard." 
 
 "Don't be like all the other men — you silly boy!" she 
 answered. "I was only trying to find out something about 
 Sparkley. And I will find it out, too," she said, clinching 
 her thin little hand. "And what 's more," she added, 
 turning on me suddenly, "you shall help me! " 
 
 "I? " I said in surprise. 
 
 "Don't pretend!" she said poutingly. "You're too 
 clever to believe he 's cut up over the Millikens. No — it 's 
 something awful or — another woman ! Now, if I knew as 
 much of India as you do — and wasn't a woman,, and could 
 go where I liked — I 'd go to Bungloor^ and find him." 
 
 " Oh ! You have bis address ? " I said. 
 
 "Certainly! What did you expect I was behind the 
 curtain with the Viceroy for ? " she said, opening her violet 
 eyes innocently. "It 's Bungloore — First Turning to the 
 Eight — At the End of the Passage." 
 
 Bungloor^ — near Ghouli Pass — in the Jungle ! I 
 knew the place, a spot of dank pestilence, and mystery. 
 "You never could have gone there," I said. 
 
 "You do not know what I could do for a, friend " she 
 said sweetly, veiling her eyes in demure significance. 
 
 "Oh, come off the roof! " I said bluntly. 
 
 She could be obedient when it was necessary. She came 
 off. Not without her revenge. " Try to remember you are 
 not at school with the Stalkies," she said, and turned away. 
 
 I went to Bungloore, — not on her account, but my own. 
 If you don't know India, you won't know Bungloore. It 's 
 
ST0KIE9 THREE 335 
 
 all that and more. An egg dropped by a vulture, sat upon 
 and addled by the Department. But I knew the house and 
 walked boldly in. A lion -walked out of one door as I came 
 in at another. We did this two or three times — and 
 found it amusing. A large cobra in the hall rose up, 
 bowed as I passed, and respectfully removed his hood. 
 
 I found the poor old boy at the end of the passage. It 
 might have been the passage between Calais and Dover, — 
 he looked so green, so limp and dejected. I affected not 
 to notice it, and threw myself in a chair. 
 
 He gazed at me for a moment and then said, "Did you 
 hear what the chair was saying?" 
 
 It was an ordinary bamboo armchair, and had creaked 
 after the usual fashion of bamboo chairs. I said so. 
 
 He cast his eyes to the ceiling. "He calls it 'creak- 
 ing,' " he murmured. "No matter," he contimied aloud, 
 "its remark was not of a complimentary nature. It 's very 
 difficult to get really polite furniture." 
 
 The man was evidently stark, staring mad. I still af- 
 fected not to observe it, and asked him if that was why he 
 left Simla. 
 
 "There were Simla reasons, certainly," he replied. "But 
 you think I came here for solitude ! Solitude ! " he repeated, 
 with a laugh. " Why, I hold daily conversations with any 
 blessed thing in this house, from the veranda to the chim- 
 ney-stack, with any stick of furniture, from the footstool 
 to the towel-horse. I get more out of it than the gabble at 
 the club. You look surprised. Listen! I took this thing 
 up in my leisure hours in the Department. I had read 
 much about the conversation of animals. I argued that if 
 finimals conversed, why should n't inanimate things com- 
 municate with each other? You cannot prove that animals 
 don't converse — neither can you prove that inanimate ob- 
 jects do not. See ? " 
 
 I was thunderstruck with the force of his logic. 
 
836 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 " Of course, " he continued, " there are degrees of intelli- 
 gence, and that makes it difficult. For instance, a mahog- 
 any table would not talk like a rush-hottomed kitchen 
 chair." He stopped suddenly, listened, and replied, "I 
 really could n't say." 
 
 "I didn't speak," I said. 
 
 "I know you didn't. But your chair asked me 'how 
 long that fool was going to stay. ' I replied as you heard. 
 Pray don't move — I intend to change that chair for one 
 more accustomed to polite society. To continue: I per- 
 fected myself in the language, and it was awfully jolly at 
 first. Whenever I went by train, I heard not only all the 
 engines said, but what every blessed carriage thought, that 
 joined in the conversation. If you chaps only knew what 
 rot those whistles can get off ! And as for the brakes, they 
 can beat any mule driver in cursing. Then, after a time, 
 it got rather monotonous, and I took a short sea trip for 
 my health. But, by Jove, every blessed inch of the whole 
 ship — from the screw to the bowsprit — had something to 
 say, and the bad language used by the garboard strake when 
 the ship rolled was something too awful! You don't hap- 
 pen to know what the garboard strake is, do you ! " 
 
 "No," I replied. 
 
 "No more do I. That's the dreadful thing about it. 
 You 've got to listen to chaps that you don't know. Why, 
 coming home on my bicycle the other day there was an 
 awful row beween some infernal ' sprocket ' and the ' ball 
 bearings ' of the machine, and I never knew before there 
 were such things in the whole concern." 
 
 I thought I had got at his secret, and said carelessly: 
 "Then I suppose this was the reason why you broke off 
 your engagement with Miss Millikens ? " 
 
 "Not at all," he said coolly; "nothing to do with it. 
 Tliat is quite another affair. It 's a very queer story; would 
 you like to hear it ? " 
 
STORIES THBEE 337 
 
 "By all means." I took out my note-book. 
 
 "You remember that night of the amateur theatricals, 
 got up by the White Hussars, when the lights suddenly 
 went out all over the house ? " 
 
 "Yes," I replied, "I heard about it." 
 
 "Well, I had gone down there that evening with the 
 determination of proposing to Mary Millikens the first 
 chance that offered. She sat just in front of me, her sister 
 Jane next, and her mother, smart Widow Millikens, — 
 who was a bit larky on her own account, you remember, — 
 the next on the bench. When the lights went out and the 
 panic and tittering began, I saw my chance ! I leaned for- 
 ward, and in a voice that would just reach Mary's ear I 
 said, ' I have long wished to tell you how my life is bound 
 up with you, dear, and I never, never can be happy without 
 you ' — when just then there was a mighty big shove down 
 my bench from the fellows beyond me, who were trying to 
 get out. But I held on like grim death, and struggled 
 back again into position, and went on: ' You '11 forgive my 
 taking a chance like this, but I felt 1 could no longer con- 
 ceal my love for you, ' when I 'm blest if there was n't 
 another shove, and though I 'd got hold of her little hand 
 and had a kind of squeeze in return, I was drifted away 
 again and had to fight my way back. But I managed to 
 finish, and said, ' If the devotion of a lifetime will atone 
 for this hurried avowal of my love for you, let me hope 
 for a response ; ' and just then the infernal lights were 
 turned on, and there I was holding the widow 's hand and 
 she nestling on my shoulder, and the two girls in hysterics 
 on the other side. You see, I never knew that they were 
 shoved down on their bench every time, just as I was, and 
 of course when I got back to where I was I 'd just skipped 
 one of them each time ! Yes, sir ! I had made that pro- 
 posal in three sections — a part to each girl, winding up 
 with the mother! No explanation was possible, and I left 
 
338 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 Simla next day, Naturally, it wasn't a thing they could 
 talk about, either ! " 
 
 "Then you think Mrs. Awksby had nothing to do with 
 it 1" I said. 
 
 "Nothing — absolutely nothing. By the way, if you 
 see that lady, you might tell her that I have possession of 
 that brocade easy-chair which used to stand in the corner 
 of her boudoir. You remember it, — faded white and 
 yellow, with one of the casters oflf and a little frayed at the 
 back, but rather soft-spoken and amiable 1 But of course 
 you don't understand that. I bought it after she moved 
 into her new bungalow. " 
 
 " But why should I tell her that ? " I asked in wonder. 
 
 " Nothing — except that I find it very amusing with its 
 reminiscences of the company she used to entertain, and her 
 confidences generally. Good-by — take care of the lion in 
 the hall. He always couches on the left for a spring. 
 Ta-ta!" 
 
 I hurried away. When I returned to Simla I told Mrs. 
 Awksby of my discoveries, and spoke of the armchair. 
 
 I fancied she colored slightly, but quickly recovered. 
 
 " Dear old Sparkley," she said sweetly ; " he was a cham- 
 pion liar ! " 
 
 II 
 
 A pbitate's honoe 
 
 I had not seen Mulledwiney for several days. Knowing 
 the man — this looked bad. So I dropped in on the Colo- 
 nel. I found him in deep thought. This looked bad, too, 
 for old Cockey Wax — as he was known to everybody in the 
 Hill districts but himself — wasn't given to thinking. I 
 guessed the cause and told him so. 
 
 "Yes," he said wearily, "you are right! It's the old 
 story. Mulledwiney, Bleareyed, and Otherwise are at it 
 
STORIES THREE 339 
 
 again, — drink followed by clink. Even now two corporals 
 and a private are sitting on Mulledwiney's head to keep 
 him quiet, and Bleareyed is chained to an elephant." 
 
 "Perhaps," I suggested, "you are unnecessarily severe." 
 
 " Do you really think so 1 Thank you so much ! I am 
 always glad to have a civilian's opinion on military matters 
 — and vice versa — it broadens one so ! And yet — am I 
 severe ? I am willing, for instance, to overlook their raid 
 upon a native village, and the ransom they demanded for a 
 native inspector ! I have overlooked their taking the horses 
 out of my carriage for their own use. I am content also to 
 believe that my fowls meekly succumb to jungle fever and 
 cholera. But there are some things I cannot ignore. The 
 carrying off of the great god Vishnu from the Sacred Shrine 
 at Ducidbad by The Three for the sake of the priceless opals 
 in its eyes " — 
 
 "But I never heard of that," I interrupted eagerly. 
 "Tell me." 
 
 "Ah!" said the Colonel playfully, "that — as you so 
 often and so amusingly say — is ' Another Story ' ! Yet I 
 would have overlooked the theft of the opals if they had 
 not substituted two of the Queen's regimental buttons for 
 the eyes of the god. This, while it did not deceive the 
 ignorant priests, had a deep political and racial significance. 
 You are aware, of course, that the great mutiny was occa- 
 sioned by the issue of cartridges to the native troops greased 
 with hog's fat — forbidden by their religion." 
 
 "But these three men could themselves alone quell a 
 mutiny," I replied. 
 
 The Colonel grasped my hand Warmly. "Thank you. 
 So they could. I never thought of that." He looked 
 relieved. For all that, he presently passed his hand over 
 his forehead and nervously chewed his cheroot. 
 
 "There is something else," I said. 
 
 "You are right. There is. It is a secret. Promise 
 
340 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 me it shall go no further — than the Press 1 Nay, swear 
 that you will keep it for the Press ! " 
 
 "I promise." 
 
 "Thank you so much. It is a matter of my own and 
 MuUedwiney's. The fact is, we have had a personal 
 diificulty." He paused, glanced around him, and continued 
 in a low, agitated voice : " Yesterday I came upon him as he 
 was sitting leaning against the barrack wall. In a spirit of 
 playfulness — mere playfulness, I assure you, sir — I poked 
 him lightly in the shoulder with my stick, saying ' Boo ! ' 
 He turned — and I shall never forget the look he gave me. " 
 
 " Good heavens !" I gasped, "you touched — absolutely 
 touched — MuUedwiney 1 " 
 
 "Yes," he said hurriedly, "I knew what you would say; 
 it was against the Queen's Regulations — and — there was 
 his sensitive nature which shrinks from even a harsh word; 
 but I did it, and of course he has me in his power." 
 
 " And you have touched him ? " I repeated, — " touched 
 his private honor ! " 
 
 "Yes! But I shall atone for it! I have already ar- 
 ranged with him that we shall have it out between ourselves 
 alone, in the jungle, stripped to the buff, with our fists — 
 Queensberry rules! I haven't fought since I stood up 
 against Spinks Major — you remember old Spinks, now of 
 the Bombay Offensibles? — at Eton." And the old boy 
 pluckily bared his skinny arm. 
 
 "It may be serious," I said. 
 
 " I have thought of that. I have a wife, several children, 
 and an aged parent in England. If I fall, they must never 
 know. You must invent a story for them. I have thought 
 of cholera, but that is played out; you know we have al- 
 ready tried it on The Boy who was Thrown Away. Invent 
 something quiet, peaceable, and respectable — as far re- 
 moved from fighting as possible. What do you say to 
 measles 1 " 
 
STORIES THREE 341 
 
 "Not half bad," I returned. 
 
 "Measles let it be, then! Say I caught it from Wee 
 Willie Winkie. You do not think it too incredible 1 " he 
 added timidly. 
 
 "Not more than your story," I said. 
 
 He grasped my hand, struggling violently with his emo- 
 tion. Then he struggled with me — and I left hurriedly. 
 Poor old boy ! The funeral was well attended, however, 
 and no one knew the truth, not even myself. 
 
 Ill 
 
 JtTNGLB FOLK 
 
 It was high noon of a warm summer's day when Moo 
 Kow came down to the watering-place. Miaow, otherwise 
 known as "Puskat," — the warmth- loving one, — was 
 crouching on a limb that overhung the pool, sunning her-- 
 self. Brer Eabbit — but that is Another Story by Another 
 Person. 
 
 Three or four Gee Gees, already at the pool, moved away 
 on the approach of Moo Kow. 
 
 " Why do ye stand aside 1 " said the Moo Kow. 
 
 "Why do you say ' ye ' ? " said the Gee Gees together. 
 
 "Because it 's more impressive than ' you.' Don't you 
 know that all animals talk that way in English 1 " said the 
 Moo Kow. 
 
 "And they also say 'thou,' and don't you forget it!" 
 interrupted Miaow from the tree. " I learnt that from a 
 Man Cub." 
 
 The animals were silent. They did not like Miaow's 
 slang, and were jealous of her occasionally sitting on a 
 Man Cub's lap. Once Dun-kee, a poor relation of the Gee 
 Gees, had tried it on, disastrously — but that is also An- 
 other and a more Aged Story. 
 
 " We are ridden by The English — please to observe the 
 
342 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 Capital letters," said Pi B5l, the leader of fne Gee Gees 
 proudly. " They are a mighty race who ride anything and 
 everybody. D' ye mind that — I mean, look ye well to 
 it!" 
 
 " What should they know of England who only England 
 know 1 " said Miaow. 
 
 " Is that a conundrum ? " asked the Moo Kow. 
 
 "No; it 's poetry," said the Miaow; 
 
 "I know England," said Pi Bbl prancingly. "I used 
 to go from the Bank to Islington three times a day — I 
 mean, " he added hurriedly, " before I became a screw — 
 I should say, a screw-gun horse." 
 
 "And I," said the Moo Kow, "am terrible. When the 
 young women and children in the village see me approach 
 they fly shriekingly. My presence alone has scattered their 
 sacred festival — The Sundds Kool Piknik. I strike terror 
 to their inmost souls, and am more feared by them than 
 even Kreep-mows, the insidious! And yet, behold I I 
 have taken the place of the mothers of men, and I have 
 nourished the mighty ones of the earth! But that," said 
 the Moo Kow, turning her head aside bashfully — " that 
 is Anudder Story." 
 
 A dead silence fell on the pool. 
 
 "And I," said Miaow, lifting up her voice, "I am the 
 horror and haunter of the night season. When I pass like 
 the night wind over the roofs of the houses men shudder in 
 their beds and tremble. When they hear my voice as I 
 creep stealthily along their balconies they cry to their gods 
 for succor. They arise, and from their windows they offer 
 me their priceless household treasures — the sacred vessels 
 dedicated to their great god Shiv — which they call ' Shivin 
 Mugs' — the Kloes Brbsh, the Boo-jak, urging me to fly 
 them! And yet," said Miaow mournfully, "it is but my 
 love-song ! Think ye what they would do if I were on the 
 war-path." 
 
STORIES THtiEE 343 
 
 Another dead silence fell on the pool. Then arose that 
 strange, mysterious, indefinable Thing, known as "The 
 Scent." The animals sniffed. 
 
 " It heralds the approach of the Stalkies — the most fa- 
 mous of British Skool Boaz," said the Moo Kow. "They 
 have just placed a decaying guinea-pig, two white mice in 
 an advanced state of decomposition, and a single slice of 
 Limburger cheese in the bed of their tutor. They had 
 previously skillfully diverted the drains so that they emptied 
 into the drawing-room of the head-master. They have just 
 burned down his house in an access of noble zeal, and are 
 fighting among themselves for the spoil. Hark ! do ye hear 
 them 1 " 
 
 A wild medley of shrieks and howls had arisen, and an 
 irregular mob of strange creatures swept out of the distance 
 toward the pool. Some were like pygmies, some had bloody 
 noses. Their talk consisted of feverish, breathless ejacu- 
 lations, — a gibberish in which the words "rot," "oach," 
 and "giddy " were preeminent. Some were exciting them- 
 selves by chewing a kind of " bhang " made from the plant 
 called pappahmint; others had their faces streaked with 
 djam. 
 
 " But who is this they are ducking in the pool 1 " asked 
 Pi Bol. 
 
 " It is one who has foolishly and wantonly conceived that 
 his parents have sent him here to study," said the Moo 
 Kow; "but that is against the rules of the Stalkies, who 
 accept study only as a punishment." 
 
 " Then these be surely the ' Bander Log ' — the monkey 
 folk — of whom the good Ehuddyidd has told us," said a 
 Gee Gee — " the ones who have no purpose — and forget 
 everything." 
 
 " Fool ! " said the Moo Kow. " Know ye not that the 
 great Rhuddyidd has said that the Stalkies become Major- 
 Generals, T. C.'s, and C. B.'sof the English? Truly, they 
 
344 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 are great. Look now; ye shall see one of the greatest 
 traits of the English Stalky." 
 
 One of the pygmy Stalkies was offering a bun to a larger 
 one, who hesitated, but took it coldly. 
 
 " Behold ! it is one of the greatest traits of this mighty 
 race not to show any emotion. He would take the bun — 
 he has taken it ! He is pleased — but he may not show 
 it. Observe him eat." 
 
 The taller Stalky, after eating the bun,- quietly kicked 
 the giver, knocked off his hat, and turned away with a calm, 
 immovable face. 
 
 " Good ! " said the Moo Kow. " Ye would not dream 
 that he was absolutely choking with grateful emotion ? " 
 
 "We would not," said the animals. 
 
 " But why are they all running back the way they came 1 * 
 asked Pi Bbl. 
 
 "They are going back to punishment. Great is its 
 power. Have ye not heard the gospel of Khuddyidd the 
 mighty? 'Force is everything! Gentleness won't wash, 
 courtesy is deceitful. Politeness is foreign. Be ye beaten 
 that ye may beat. Pass the kick on. ' " 
 
 But here he was interrupted by the appearance of three 
 soldiers who were approaching the watering-place. 
 
 "Ye are now," said the Moo Kow, ''with the main 
 guard. The first is Bleareyed, who carries a raven in a 
 cage, which he has stolen from the wife of a deputy com- 
 missioner. He will paint the bird snow white and sell it 
 as a dove to the same lady. The second is Otherwise, who 
 is dragging a small garden engine, of which he has despoiled 
 a native gardener, whom he has felled with a single blow. 
 The third is Mulledwiney, swinging a cut-glass decanter of 
 sherry which he has just snatched from the table of his 
 colonel. Mulledwiney and Otherwise will play the engine 
 upon Bleareyed, who is suffering from heat, apoplexy, and 
 djim-djams. " 
 
STORIES THREE 845 
 
 The three soldiers seated themselves in the pool. 
 
 " They are going to tell awful war stories now, " said the 
 Moo Kow ; " stories that are large and strong ! Some peo- 
 ple are shocked — others like 'em." 
 
 Then he that was called Mulledwiney told a story. In 
 the middle of it Miaow got up from the limb of the tree, 
 coughed slightly, and put her paw delicately over her 
 mouth. "You must excuse me," she said faintly. "lam 
 taken this way sometimes — and I have left my salts at 
 home. Thanks ! I can get down myself ! " The next mo- 
 ment she had disappeared, but was heard coughing in the 
 distance. 
 
 Mulledwiney winked at his companions and continued his 
 story : — 
 
 " Wid that we wor in the thick av the foif^ht. Whin 1 
 say ' thick ' I mane it, sorr ! We wor that jammed to- 
 gether, divil a bit cud we shoot or cut! At furrest, I had 
 lashed two mushkits together wid the baynits out so, like a 
 hay fork, and getting the haymaker's lift on thim, I just 
 lifted two Pay thians out — one an aych baynit — and 
 passed 'em, aisy-like, over me head to the rear rank for 
 them to finish. But what wid the blud gettin' into me ois, 
 I was blinded, and the pressure kept incraysin' until me 
 arrums was thrussed like a fowl to me sides, and sorra a bit 
 cud I move but me jaws ! " 
 
 "And bloomin' well you knew how to use them," said 
 Otherwise. 
 
 "Thrue for you — though ye don't mane it!" said 
 Mulledwiney, playfully tapping Otherwise on the head with 
 a decanter till the cut-glass slowly shivered. "So, begorra! 
 there wor nothing left for me to do but to ate thim! 
 Wirra! but it was the crooel worruk." 
 
 "Excuse me, my lord," interrupted the gasping voice of 
 Pi BBl as he began to back from the pool; "I am but a 
 horse, I know, and being built in that way — naturally 
 
346 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 have the stomach of one — yet, really, my lord, this ^ 
 er " — And his voice was gone. 
 
 The next moment he had disappeared. Mulledwiney 
 looked around with affected concern. 
 
 "Save us! But we Vb cleaned out the Jungle! Sure, 
 there 's not a baste left but ourselves ! " 
 
 It was true. The watering-place was empty. Moo Kow, 
 Miaow, and the Gee Grees had disappeared. Presently there 
 was a booming crash and a long, deep rumbling among the 
 distant hills. Then they knew they were near the old 
 Moulmein Pagoda, and the dawn had come up like thunder 
 out of China 'cross the bay. It always came up that way 
 there. The strain was too great, and day was actually 
 breaking. 
 
"ZUT-SKI" 
 THE PROBLEM OF A AVICKED FEME SOLE 
 
 BY M-E-E C-R-LLI 
 
 The great pyramid towered up from the desert with its 
 apex toward the moon which hung in the sky. For cen- 
 turies it h^d stood thus, disdaining the aid of gods or man, 
 being, as the Sphinx herself observed, able to stand up for 
 itself. And this was no small praise from that sublime yet 
 mysterious female who had seen the ages come and go, em- 
 pires rise and fall, novelist succeed novelist, and who, for 
 aeons and cycles the cynosure and centre of admiration and 
 men's idolatrous worship, had yet — wonderful for a woman 
 — through it all kept her head, which now alone remained 
 to survey calmly the present. Indeed, at that moment that 
 magnificent and peaceful face seemed to have lost — with 
 a few unimportant features — its usual expression of specu- 
 lative wisdom and intense disdain; its mouth smiled, its 
 left eyelid seemed to droop. As the opal tints of dawn 
 deepened upon it, the eyelid seemed to droop lower, closed, 
 and quickly recovered itself twice. You would have 
 thought the Sphinx had winked. 
 
 Then arose a voice like a wind on the desert, — but really 
 from the direction of the Nile, where a hired dahabiyeh lay 
 moored to the bank, — " ' Arry Axes ! 'Arry Axes ! " With 
 it came also a flapping, trailing vision from the water, — the 
 sacred Ibis itself, — and with wings aslant drifted mourn- 
 
348 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 fully away to its own creaking echo : " K'raksis ! K'raksis ! " 
 Again arose the weird voice : "'ArryAxes! Wotcher doin' 
 of? " And again the Ibis croaked its wild refrain: "K'rak- 
 sis ! K'raksis ! " Moonlight and the hour wove their own 
 mystery (for which the author is not responsible), and the 
 voice was heard no more. But when the full day sprang in 
 glory over the desert, it illuminated the few remaining but 
 sufficiently large features of the Sphinx with a burning saf- 
 fron radiance ! The Sphinx had indeed blushed ! 
 
 n 
 
 It was the full season at Cairo. The wealth and fashion 
 of Bayswater, South Kensington, and even the bosky Wood 
 of the Evangelist had sent their latest luxury and style to 
 flout the tombs of the past with the ghastly flippancy of 
 to-day. The cheap-tripper was there, — the latest example 
 of the Darwinian theory, — ape-like, flea and curio hunting! 
 Shamelessly inquisitive and always hungry, what did he 
 know of the Sphinx or the pyramids or the voice — and, 
 for the matter of that, what did they know of him? And 
 yet he was not half bad in comparison with the "swagger 
 people," — these people who pretend to have lungs and 
 what not, and instead of galloping on merry hunters through 
 the frost and snow of Piccadilly and Park, instead of en- 
 joying the roaring fires of piled logs in the evening, at the 
 first approach of winter steal away to the Land of the Sun, 
 and decline to die, like honest Britons, on British soil. 
 And then they knew nothing of the Egyptians and are hor- 
 rified at "bakshish," which they really ought to pay for 
 the privilege of shocking the straight-limbed, naked-footed 
 Arab in his single rough garment with their baggy, elephant- 
 legged trousers! And they knew nothing of the mystic 
 land of the old gods, filled with profound enigmas of the 
 supernatural, dark secrets yet unexplored except in this 
 
" Z0T-SKI " 349 
 
 book. Well might the great Memnon murmur after this 
 lapse of these thousand years, "They 're making me tired! " 
 
 Such was the blissful, self-satisfied ignorance of Sir Midas 
 Pyle, or as Lord Pitz-Fulke, with his delightful imitation 
 of the East London accent, called him, Sir "Myde His 
 Pyle," as he leaned back on his divan in the Grand Cairo 
 Hotel. He was the vulgar editor and proprietor of a vulgar 
 London newspaper, and had brought his wife with him, who 
 was vainly trying to marry off his faded daughters. There 
 was to be a fancy-dress ball at the hotel that night, and 
 Lady Pyle hoped that her girls, if properly disguised, might 
 have a better chance. Here, too, was Lady Fitz-Fulke, 
 whose mother was immortalized by Byron, — sixty if a day, 
 yet still dressing youthfully, — who had sought the land of 
 the Sphinx in the faint hope that in the contiguity of that 
 lady she might pass for being young. Alaster McFeckless, 
 a splendid young Scotchman, — already dressed as a Flor- 
 entine sailor of the fifteenth century, which enabled him to 
 show his magnificent calves quite as well as in his native 
 Highland dress, and who had added with characteristic noble 
 pride a sporran to his costume, — was lolling on another 
 divan. 
 
 "Oh, those exquisite, those magnificent eyes of hers! 
 Eh, sirs ! " he murmured suddenly, as waking from a dream. 
 
 " Oh, damn her eyes ! " said Lord Fitz-Fulke languidly. 
 "Tell you what, old man, you 're just gone on that girl! " 
 
 "Ha!" roared McFeckless, springing to his feet; "ye 
 will be using such language of the bonniest " — 
 
 "You will excuse me, gentlemen," said Sir Midas, — 
 who hated scenes unless he had a trusted reporter with 
 him, — " but I think it is time for me to go upstairs and 
 put on my Windsor uniform, which I find exceedingly con- 
 venient for these mixed assemblies." 
 
 He withdrew, caressing his protuberant paunch with 
 some dignity, as the two men glanced fiercely at each other. 
 
350 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 In another moment they might have sprung at 3ach 
 other's throats. But luckily at this instant a curtain was 
 pushed aside as if by some waiting listener, and a thin man 
 entered, dressed in cap and gown, — which would have been 
 simply academic but for his carrying in one hand behind 
 him a bundle of birch twigs. It was Dr. Haustus Pilgrim, 
 a noted London practitioner and specialist, dressed as "Ye 
 Olde-fashioned Pedagogue." He was presumably spending 
 his holiday on the Nile in a large dahabiyeh with a number 
 of friends, among whom he counted the two momentary 
 antagonists he had just interrupted; but those who knew 
 the doctor's far-reaching knowledge and cryptic researches 
 believed he had his own scientific motives. 
 
 The two men turned quickly as he entered; the angry 
 light faded from their eyes, and an awed and respectful sub- 
 mission to the intruder took its place. He walked quietly 
 toward them, put a lozenge in the mouth of one and felt 
 the pulse of the other, gazing critically at both. 
 
 "We will be all right in a moment," he said, with pro- 
 fessional confidence. 
 
 "I say ! " said Fitz-Fulke, gazing at the doctor's costume: 
 "you look dooced smart in those togs, don'tcherknow." 
 
 " They suit me, " said the doctor, with a playful swish of 
 his birch twigs, at which the two grave men shuddered. 
 "But you were speaking of somebody's beautiful eyes." 
 
 "The Princess Zut-Ski's," returned McFeckless eagerly ; 
 " and this daft callant said " — 
 
 "He didn't like them," put in Pitz-Pulke promptly. 
 
 " Ha ! " said the doctor sharply ; " and why not, sir 1 " 
 As Fitz-Pulke hesitated, he added brusquely: ''There! 
 Run away and play! I 've business with this young man," 
 pointing to McFecldess. 
 
 As Fitz-Fulke escaped gladly from the room, the doctor 
 turned to McFeckless. "It won't do, my boy. The Prin- 
 cess is not for you — you '11 only break your heart and 
 
"ZUT-SKI" 351 
 
 ruin your family over her! That's my advice. Chuck 
 her!" 
 
 "But I cannot," said McFeckless humbly. ''Think of 
 her weirdly beautiful eyes." 
 
 "I see," said the doctor meditatively; "sort of makes 
 you feel creepy 1 Kind of all-overishness, eh 1 That 's like 
 her. But whom have we here? " 
 
 He was staring at a striking figure that had just entered, 
 closely followed by a crowd of admiring spectators. And, 
 indeed, he seemed worthy of the homage. His magnificent 
 form was closely attired in a velveteen jacket and trousers, 
 with a singular display of pearl buttons along the seams 
 that were absolutely lavish in their quantity ; a hat adorned 
 with feathers and roses completed his singularly picturesque 
 equipment. 
 
 '' Chevalier ! " burst out McFeckless in breathless greet- 
 ing. 
 
 "Ah, mon ami! What good chance?" returned the 
 newcomer, rushing to him and kissing him on both cheeks, 
 to the British horror of Sir Midas, who had followed. 
 " Ah, but you are perfect ! " he added, kissing his fingers 
 in admiration of McFeckless's Florentine dress. 
 
 "But you? — what is this ravishing costume?" asked 
 McFeckless, with a pang of jealousy. "You are god-like." 
 
 "It is the dress of what you call the Koster, a trans- 
 planted Phoenician tribe," answered the other. "They who 
 knocked 'em in the road of Old Kent — know you not the 
 legend ? " As he spoke, he lifted his superb form to a war- 
 rior's height and gesture. 
 
 " But is this quite correct ? " asked Fitz-Fulke of the 
 doctor. 
 
 "Perfectly," said the doctor oracularly. "The renowned 
 ' ' Arry Axes ' — I beg his pardon, " he interrupted himself 
 hastily, "I mean the Chevalier — is perfect in his archseo- 
 logy and ethnology. The Koster is originally a Gypsy 
 
352 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 which is but a corruption of the word ' Egyptian, ' and, if 
 I mistake not, that gentleman is a lineal descendant." 
 
 "But he is called 'Chevalier,' and he speaks like a 
 Frenchman," said Flossy. 
 
 "And, being a Frenchman, of course knows nothing out- 
 side of Paris," said Sir Midas. 
 
 "We are in the Land of Mystery," said the doctor 
 gravely in a low voice. " You have heard of the Egyptian 
 Hall and the Temple of Mystery 1 " 
 
 A shudder passed through many that were there ; but the 
 majority were following with wild adulation the superb 
 Koster, who, with elbows slightly outward and hands turned 
 inward, was passing toward the ballroom. McFeckless ac- 
 companied him with conflicting emotions. Would he see 
 the incomparable Princess, who was lovelier and even still 
 more a mystery than the Chevalier 1 Would she — terrible 
 thought ! — succumb to his perfections ? 
 
 Ill 
 
 The Princess was already there, surrounded by a crowd 
 of admirers, equal if not superior to those who were follow- 
 ing the superb Chevalier. Indeed, they met almost as 
 rivals ! Their eyes sought each other in splendid competi- 
 tion. 
 
 The Chevalier turned away, dazzled and incoherent. 
 " She is adorable, magnificent ! " he gasped to McFeckless. 
 "I love her on the instant! Behold, I am transported, 
 ravished ! Present me. " 
 
 Indeed, as she stood there in a strange gauzy garment of 
 exquisite colors, apparently shapeless, yet now and then re- 
 vealing her perfect figure like a bather seen through undu- 
 lating billows, she was lovely. Two wands were held in 
 her taper fingers, whose mystery only added to the general 
 curiosity, but whose weird and cabalistic uses were to be 
 
"ZUT-SKI" 353 
 
 seen later. Her magnificent face — strange in its beauty 
 
 — was stranger still, since, with perfect archseological 
 Egyptian correctness, she presented it only in profile, at 
 whatever angle the spectator stood. But such a profile! 
 The words of the great Poet-King rose to McFeckless^s 
 lips : " Her nose is as a tower that looketh toward Damas- 
 cus. " 
 
 He hesitated a moment, torn with love and jealousy, and 
 then presented his friend. " You will fall in love with her 
 
 — and then — you will fall also by my hand, " he hissed in 
 his rival's ear, and fled tumultuously. 
 
 " Voulez-vous danser, mademoiselle ? " whispered the 
 Chevalier in the perfect accent of the boulevardier. 
 
 " Merci, beaucoup," she replied in the diplomatic cour- 
 tesies of the Ambassadeurs. 
 
 They danced together, not once, but many times, to the 
 admiration, the wonder, and envy of all; to the scandalized 
 reprobation of a proper few. Who was she ? Who was he 1 
 It was easy to answer the last question: the world rang 
 with the reputation of " Chevalier the Artist. " But she 
 was still a mystery. 
 
 Perhaps they were not so to each other! He was gazing 
 deliriously into her eyes. She was looking at him in dis- 
 dainful curiosity. "I've seen you before somewhere, 
 haven't I? " she said at last, with a crushing significance. 
 
 He shuddered, he knew not why, and passed his hand 
 over his high forehead. " Yes, I go there very often, " he 
 replied vacantly. " But you, mademoiselle — you — I have 
 met before 1 " 
 
 " Oh, ages, ages ago ! " There was something weird in. 
 her emphasis. 
 
 " Ha ! " said a voice near them, " I thought so ! " It was 
 the doctor, peering at them curiously. " And you both feel 
 rather dazed and creepy 1 " He suddenly felt their pulses, 
 lingering, however, as the Chevalier fancied, somewhat longer 
 
354 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 than necessary over the lady's wrist and beautiful arm. He 
 then put a small round box in the Chevalier's hand, saying, 
 "One before each meal," and turning to the lady with ca- 
 ressing professional accents said, "We must wrap ourselves 
 closely and endeavor to induce perspiration," and hurried 
 away, dragging the Chevalier with him. When they reached 
 a secluded corner, he said, " You had just now a kind of 
 feeling, don't you know, as if you 'd sort of been there be- 
 fore, didn't you? " 
 
 " Yes, what you call a — preexistence, " said the Chevalier 
 wonderingly. 
 
 "Yes; I have often observed that those who doubt a 
 future state of existence have no hesitation in accepting a 
 previous one," said the doctor dryly. "But come, I see 
 from the way the crowd is hurrying that your divinity's 
 number is up — I mean," he corrected himself hastily, 
 "that she is probably dancing again." 
 
 "Aha! with him, the imbecile McEeckless?" gasped 
 the Chevalier. 
 
 "No, alone." 
 
 She was indeed alone, in the centre of the ballroom — . 
 with outstretched arms revolving in an occult, weird, 
 dreamy, mystic, druidical, cabalistic circle. They now for 
 the first time perceived the meaning of those strange wands 
 which appeared to be attached to the many folds of her 
 diaphanous skirts and involved her in a fleecy, whirling 
 cloud. Yet in the wild convolutions of her garments and 
 the mad gyrations of her figure, her face was upturned with 
 the seraphic intensity of a devotee, and her lips parted as 
 with the impassioned appeal for " Light ! more light ! " 
 And the appeal was answered. A flood of blue, crimson, 
 yellow, and green radiance was alternately poured upon 
 her from the black box of a mysterious Nubian slave in the 
 gallery. The effect was marvelous; at one moment she 
 appeared as a martyr in a sheet of flame, at another as an 
 
" ZUT-SKI " 355 
 
 angel wrapped in white and muffled purity, and again as a 
 nymph of the cerulean sea, and then suddenly a cloud of 
 darkness seemed to descend upon her, through which for an 
 instant her figure, as immaculate and perfect as a marble 
 statue, showed distinctly — then the light went out and she 
 ■vanished ! 
 
 The whole assembly burst into a rapturous cry. Even 
 the common Arab attendants who were peeping in at the 
 doors raised their melodious native cry, "Alloc, FuUah! 
 Alloe, FuUah ! " again and again. 
 
 A shocked silence followed. Then the voice of Sir 
 Midas Pyle was heard addressing Dr. Haustus Pilgrim : — 
 
 "May we not presume, sir, that what we have just seen 
 is not unlike that remarkable exhibition when I was pained 
 to meet you one evening at the Alhambra t " 
 
 The doctor coughed slightly. "The Alhambra — ah, 
 yes ! — you — er — refer, I presume, to Granada and the 
 Land of the Moor, where we last met. The music and' 
 dance are both distinctly Moorish — which, after all, is akin 
 to the Egyptian. I am gratified indeed that your memory 
 should be so retentive and your archaeological comparison so 
 accurate. But see ! the ladies are retiring. Let us follow. " 
 
 IV 
 
 The intoxication produced by the performance of the 
 Princess naturally had its reaction. The British moral soul, 
 startled out of its hypocrisy the night before, demanded the 
 bitter beer of aelf-conscioushess and remorse the next morn- 
 inc. The ladies were now openly shocked at what they 
 had secretly envied. Lady Pyle was, however, propitiated 
 by the doctor's assurance that the Princess was a friend of 
 Lady Fitz-Eulke, who had promised to lend her youthful 
 age and aristocratic prestige to the return ball which the 
 Princess had determined to give at her own home. 
 
356 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 "Still, I think the Princess open to criticism," said Sir 
 Midas oracularly. 
 
 " Damn all criticism and critics ! " burst out McFeckless, 
 ■with the noble frankness of a passionate and yet unfettered 
 soul. Sir Midas, who employed critics in his business, 
 as he did other base and ignoble slaves, drew up himself 
 and his paunch and walked away. 
 
 The Chevalier cast a superb look at McFeckless. 
 " Voilh 1 Kegard me well ! I shall seek out this Princess 
 when she is with herself ! Alone ; comprenes ? I shall 
 seek her at her hotel in the Egyptian Hall. Ha! ha! I 
 shall seek Zut-Ski! Zut! " And he made that rapid, yet 
 graceful motion of his palm against his thigh known only 
 to the true Parisian. 
 
 "It's a rum hole where she lives, and nobody gets a 
 sight of her," said Flossy. "It's like a beastly family 
 vault, don't you know, outside, and there 's a kind of nig- 
 ger doorkeeper that vises you and chucks you out if you 
 have n't the straight tip. I '11 show you the way, if you 
 like." 
 
 " Allans, en avant ! " said the Chevalier gayly. " I pre- 
 cipitate myself there on the instant." 
 
 " Kemember ! " hissed McFeckless, grasping his arm, 
 "you shall account to me! " 
 
 "Bien!" said the Chevalier, shaking him off lightly. 
 "All a-r-r-right. " Then, in that incomparable baritone, 
 which had so often enthralled thousands, he moved away, 
 trolling the first verse of the Princess's own faint, sweet, 
 sad song of the "Lotus Lily," that thrilled McFeckless 
 even through the Chevalier's marked French accent : — 
 
 "Oh, a hard zing to get is ze Lotus Lillee! 
 She lif in ze swamp — in ze watair chillee; 
 She make your foot wet — and you look sillee, 
 But you bu}' her for sixpence in Piccadillee! " 
 
" ZUT-SKI " 357 
 
 In half an hour the two men reached the remote suhurb 
 ■where the Princess lived, a gloomy, windowless building. 
 Pausing under a low archway over which in Egyptian char- 
 acters appeared the faded legend, " Sta Ged Oor," they found 
 a Nubian slave blocking the dim entrance. 
 
 "I leave you here," said Flossy hurriedly, "as even I 
 left once before — only then I was lightly assisted by his 
 sandaled foot," he added, rubbing himself thoughtfully. 
 "But better luck to you." 
 
 As his companion retreated swiftly, the Chevalier turned 
 to the slave and would have passed in, but the man stopped 
 him. " Got a pass, boss ? " 
 
 "No," said the Chevalier. 
 
 The man looked at him keenly. "Oh, I see! one of de 
 profesh. " 
 
 The Chevalier nodded haughtily. The man preceded 
 him by devious, narrow ways and dark staircases, coming 
 abruptly upon a small apartment where the Princess sat on 
 a low divan. A single lamp inclosed in an ominous wire 
 cage flared above her. Strange things lay about the floor 
 and shelves, and from another door he could see hideous 
 masks, frightful heads, and disproportionate faces. He 
 shuddered slightly, but recovered himself and fell on his 
 knees before her. 
 
 " I lof e you, " he said madly. " I have always lofed you ! " 
 
 "For how long? " she asked, with a strange smile. 
 
 He covertly consulted his shirt-cuff. "For tree tousand 
 fife hundred and sixty-two years," he said rapidly. 
 
 She looked at him disdainfully. "The doctor has been 
 putting you up to that! It won't wash! I don't refer to 
 your shirt-cuff," she added, with deep satire. 
 
 " Adorable one ! " he broke out passionately, attempting 
 to embrace her, "I have come to take you." 
 
 Without moving, she touched a knob in the wall. A 
 trap-door beyond him sank, and out of the bowels of the 
 
358 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 earth leaped three indescribable demons. Then, rising, she 
 took a cake of chalk from the table and, drawing a mystic 
 half circle on the floor, returned to the divan, lit a cigarette, 
 and leaning comfortably back, said in a low, monotonous 
 voice, "Advance one foot within that magic line, and on 
 that head, although it wore a crown, I launch the curse of 
 Eome." 
 
 "I — only wanted to take you — with a kodak, " he said, 
 with a light laugh to conceal his confusion, as he produced 
 the instrument from his coat-tail pocket. 
 
 "Not with that cheap box," she said, rising with mag- 
 nificent disdain. "Come again with a decent instrument 
 — and perhaps " — Then, lightly humming in a pure con- 
 tralto, " I ' ve been photographed like this — I ' ve been pho- 
 tographed like that," she summoned the slave to conduct 
 him back, and vanished through a canvas screen, which 
 nevertheless seemed to the dazed Chevalier to be the stony 
 front of the pyramids. 
 
 "And you saw her? " said the doctor in French. 
 
 "Yes; but the three-thousand-year gag did not work! 
 She spotted you, cher ami, on the instant. And she 
 would n't let me takQ her with my kodak." 
 
 The doctor looked grave. "I see," he mused thought- 
 fully. " You must have my camera, a larger one and more 
 bulky, perhaps, to carry; but she will not object to that 
 — she who has stood for full lengths. I will give you 
 some private instructions." 
 
 " But, cher doctor, this previous-existence idea — at 
 what do you arrive 1 " 
 
 " There is much to say for it, " said the doctor oracularly. 
 " It has survived in the belief of all ages. Who can tell 1 
 That some men in a previous existence may have been goats 
 
" ZDT-SKI " 359 
 
 or apes," continued the doctor, looking at him curiously, 
 " does not seem improbable ! Prom the time of Pythagoras 
 we have known that; but that the individual as an indi- 
 vidual ego has been remanded or projected, has harked back 
 or anticipated himself, is, we may say, with our powers of 
 apperception, — that is, the perception that we are perceiv- 
 ing, — is " — 
 
 But the Chevalier had fled. 
 
 "No matter," said the doctor, "I will see McFeckless." 
 He did. He found him gloomy, distraught, baleful. He 
 felt his pulse. "The mixture as before," he said briefly, 
 " and a little innocent diversion. There is an Aunt Sally 
 on the esplanade — two throws for a penny. It will do you 
 good. Think no more of this woman! Listen, — I wish 
 you well; your family have always been good patients of 
 mine. Marry some good Scotch girl; I know one with 
 fifty thousand pounds. Let the Princess go ! " 
 
 "To him — never! I will marry her! Yet," he mur- 
 mured softly to himself, " feefty thousand pun' is nae small 
 sum. Ay ! Not that I care for siller — but feefty thou- 
 sand pun' ! Eh, sirs ! " 
 
 VI 
 
 Dr. Haustus knew that the Chevalier had again visited 
 the Princess, although he had kept the visit a secret, — and 
 indeed was himself invisible for a day or two afterwards. 
 At last the doctor's curiosity induced him to visit the 
 Chevalier's apartment. Entering, he was surprised — even 
 in that Land of Mystery — to find the room profoundly 
 dark, smelling of Eastern drugs, and the Chevalier sitting 
 before a large plate of glass which he was examining by the 
 aid of a lurid ruby lamp, — the only light in the weird 
 gloom. His face was pale and distraught, his locks were 
 disheveled. 
 
360 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 •' Voilh ! " he said. '' Mon Dieu ! It is my third at 
 tempt. Always the same — hideous, monstrous, unearthly ! 
 It is she, and yet it is not she ! " 
 
 The doctor, professional man as he was and iniired to 
 such spectacles, was startled ! The plate before him showed 
 the Princess's face in all its beautiful contour, but only 
 dimly veiling a ghastly death's-head below. There was the 
 whole bony structure of the head and the eyeless sockets; 
 even the graceful, swan-like neck showed the articulated 
 vertebral column that supported it in all its hideous reality. 
 The beautiful shoulders were there, dimly as in a dream — 
 but beneath was the empty clavicle, the knotty joint, the 
 hollow sternum, and the ribs of a skeleton half length! 
 
 The doctor's voice broke the silence. "My friend," he 
 said dryly, "you see only the truth! You see what she 
 really is, this peerless Princess of yours. You see her as 
 she is to-day, and you see her kinship to the bones that 
 have lain for centuries in yonder pyramid. Yet they were 
 once as fair as this, and this was as fair as they — in effect 
 the same! You that have madly, impiously adored her 
 superficial beauty, the mere dust of to-morrow, let this be 
 a warning to you ! You that have no soul to speak of, let 
 that suffice you ! Take her and be happy. Adieu ! " 
 
 Yet, as he passed out of the fitting, tomb-like gloom of 
 the apartment and descended the stairs, he murmured to 
 himself: " Odd that I should have lent him my camera with 
 the Ebntgen-ray attachment still on. No matter ! It is 
 not the first time that the Princess has appeared in two 
 parts the same evening." 
 
 vn 
 
 In spite of envy, jealousy, and malice, a certain curiosity 
 greater than all these drew everybody to the Princess Zut- 
 Ski's ball. Lady Fitz-Fulke was there in virgin white. 
 
" ZUT-SKI " 361 
 
 looking more youthful than ever, in spite of her sixty-five 
 years and the card labeled "Fresh Paint" which somebody 
 had playfully placed upon her enameled shoulder. The 
 McFecklesses, the Pyles, Flossy, the doctor, and the Cheva- 
 lier — looking still anxious — were in attendance. 
 
 The mysterious Nubian doorkeeper admitted the guests 
 through the same narrow passages, much to the disgust of 
 Lady Pyle and the discomfiture of her paunchy husband; 
 but on reaching a large circular interior hall, a greater sur- 
 prise was in store for them. It was found that the only 
 entrance to the body of the hall was along a narrow ledge 
 against the bare wall some distance from the floor, which 
 obliged the guests to walk slowly, in single file, along this 
 precarious strip, giving them the attitudes of an Egyptian 
 frieze, which was suggested in the original plaster above 
 them. It is needless to say that, while the effect was in- 
 genious and striking from the centre of the room, where the 
 Princess stood with a few personal friends, it was exceed- 
 ingly uncomfortable to the figures themselves, in their en- 
 forced march along the ledge, — especially a figure of Sir 
 Midas Pyle's proportions. Suddenly an exclamation broke 
 from the doctor. 
 
 "Do you see," he said to the Princess, pointing to the 
 figure of the Chevalier, who was filing along with his sin- 
 ewy hands slightly turned inward, "how surprisingly liko 
 he is to the first attendant on the king in the real frieze 
 above ? And that, " added the doctor, " was none other 
 than 'Arry Axes, the Egyptian you are always thinking 
 of." And he peered curiously at her. 
 
 " Goodness me ! " murmured the Princess, in an Arabic 
 much more soft and fluent than the original gum. " So he 
 does — look like him." 
 
 " And do you know you look like him, too 1 Would you 
 mind taking a walk around together 1 " 
 
 They did, amid the acclamations of the crowd. The 
 
362 CONDENSED NOVELS 
 
 likeness was perfect. The Princess, however, was quite 
 white as she eagerly rejoined the doctor. 
 
 "And this means? " — she hissed in a low whisper. 
 
 "That he is the real 'Arry Axes! Hush, not a word 
 now ! We join the dahabiyeh to-night. At daybreak you 
 will meet him at the fourth angle of the pyramid, first turn- 
 ing from the Nile ! " 
 
 YIII 
 
 The crescent moon hung again over the apex of the Great 
 Pyramid, like a silver cutting from the rosy nail of a houri. 
 The Sphinx — mighty guesser of riddles, reader of rebuses, 
 and universal solver of missing words — looked over the 
 unfathomable desert and these few pages, with the worried, 
 hopeless expression of one who is obliged at last to give it 
 up. And then the wailing voice of a woman, toiling up 
 ^he steep steps of the pyramid, was heard above the creak- 
 ing of the Ibis : " 'Arry Axes ! Where are you ! Wait for 
 me." 
 
 "J'y suis," said a voice from the very summit of the 
 stupendous granite bulk, "yet I cannot reach it." 
 
 And in that faint light the figure of a man was seen, lift- 
 ing his arms wildly toward the moon. 
 
 "'Arry Axes," persisted the voice, drifting higher, 
 " wait for me ; we are pursued. " 
 
 And indeed it was true. A band of iN'ubians, headed by 
 the doctor, was already swarming like ants up the pyramid, 
 and the unhappy pair were secured. And when the sun 
 rose, it was upon the white sails of the dahabiyeh, the va- 
 cant pyramid, and the slumbering Sphinx. 
 
 There was great excitement at the Cairo Hotel the next 
 morning. The Princess and the Chevalier had disappeared, 
 and with them Alaster McEeckless, Lady Fitz-Fulke, the 
 
"ZUT-SKI" 363 
 
 doctor, and even his dahabiyeh.! A thousand rumors had 
 been in circulation. Sir Midas Pyle looked up from the 
 " Times " with his usual I-told-you-so expression. 
 
 " It is the most extraordinary thing, don'tcherknow," said 
 f itz-Fulke. " It seems that Dr. Haustus Pilgrim was here 
 professionally — as a nerve specialist — in the treatment of 
 hallucinations produced by neurotic conditions, you know. " 
 
 " A mad doctor, here ! " gasped Sir Midas. 
 
 "Yes. The Princess, the Chevalier, McFeckless, and 
 even my mother were all patients of his on the dahabiyeh. 
 He believed, don'tcherknow, in humoring them and letting 
 them follow out their cranks, under his management. The 
 Princess was a music-hall artist who imagined she was a 
 dead and gone Egyptian Princess ; and the queerest of all, 
 'Arry Axes was also a music-hall singer who imagined him- 
 self Chevalier, — you know, the great Koster artist, — and 
 that 's how we took him for a Frenchman. McFeckless and 
 my poor old mother were the only ones with any real rank 
 and position — but you know what a beastly bounder Mac 
 was, and the poor mater did overdo the youthful! We 
 never called the doctor in until the day she wanted to go to 
 a swell ball in London as Little Eed Eiding-Hood. But 
 the doctor writes me that the experiment was a success, and 
 they '11 be all right when they get back to London." 
 
 " Then, it seems, sir, that you and I were the only sane 
 ones here, " said Sir Midas furiously. 
 
 "Eeally it 's as much as I can do to be certain about 
 myself, old chappie," said Fitz-Fulke, turning away. 
 

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