SELECTED STORIES OF BRET HARTE




CONTENTS


INTRODUCTION

THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP

THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT

MIGGLES

TENNESSEE'S PARTNER

THE IDYL OF RED GULCH

BROWN OF CALAVERAS

HIGH-WATER MARK

A LONELY RIDE

THE MAN OF NO ACCOUNT

MLISS

THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER

NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD

AN EPISODE OF FIDDLETOWN

BARKER'S LUCK

A YELLOW DOG

A MOTHER OF FIVE

BULGER'S REPUTATION

IN THE TULES

A CONVERT OF THE MISSION

THE INDISCRETION OF ELSBETH

THE DEVOTION OF ENRIQUEZ



INTRODUCTION

The life of Bret Harte divides itself, without adventitious
forcing, into four quite distinct parts.  First, we have the
precocious boyhood, with its eager response to the intellectual
stimulation of cultured parents; young Bret Harte assimilated Greek
with amazing facility; devoured voraciously the works of
Shakespeare, Dickens, Irving, Froissart, Cervantes, Fielding; and,
with creditable success, attempted various forms of composition.
Then, compelled by economic necessity, he left school at thirteen,
and for three years worked first in a lawyer's office, and then in
a merchant's counting house.

The second period, that of his migration to California, includes
all that is permanently valuable of Harte's literary output.
Arriving in California in 1854, he was, successively, a school-
teacher, drug-store clerk, express messenger, typesetter, and
itinerant journalist.  He worked for a while on the NORTHERN
CALIFORNIA (from which he was dismissed for objecting editorially
to the contemporary California sport of murdering Indians), then on
the GOLDEN ERA, 1857, where he achieved his first moderate acclaim.
In this latter year he married Anne Griswold of New York.  In 1864
he was given the secretaryship of the California mint, a virtual
sinecure, and he was enabled do a great deal of writing.  The first
volume of his poems, THE LOST GALLEON AND OTHER TALES, CONDENSED
NOVELS (much underrated parodies), and THE BOHEMIAN PAPERS were
published in 1867.  One year later, THE OVERLAND MONTHLY, which had
aspirations of becoming "the ATLANTIC MONTHLY of the West," was
established, and Harte was appointed its first editor.  For it, he
wrote most of what still remains valid as literature--THE LUCK OF
ROARING CAMP, THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT, PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM
TRUTHFUL JAMES, among others.  The combination of Irvingesque
romantic glamor and Dickensian bitter-sweet humor, applied to
picturesquely novel material, with the addition of a trick ending,
was fantastically popular.  Editors began to clamor for his
stories; the University of California appointed him Professor of
recent literature; and the ATLANTIC MONTHLY offered him the
practically unprecedented sum of $10,000 for exclusive rights to
one year's literary output.  Harte's star was, briefly, in the
ascendant.

However, Harte had accumulated a number of debts, and his editorial
policies, excellent in themselves, but undiplomatically executed,
were the cause of a series of arguments with the publisher of the
OVERLAND MONTHLY.  Fairly assured of profitable pickings in the
East, he left California (permanently, as it proved).  The East,
however, was financially unappreciative.  Harte wrote an
unsuccessful novel and collaborated with Mark Twain on an
unremunerative play.  His attempts to increase his income by
lecturing were even less rewarding.  From his departure from
California in 1872 to his death thirty years later, Harte's
struggles to regain financial stability were unremitting: and to
these efforts is due the relinquishment of his early ideal of "a
peculiarly characteristic Western American literature."  Henceforth
Harte accepted, as Prof. Hicks remarks, "the role of entertainer,
and as an entertainer he survived for thirty years his death as an
artist."

The final period extends from 1878, when he managed to get himself
appointed consul to Crefeld in Germany, to 1902, when he died of a
throat cancer.  He left for Crefeld without his wife or son--
perhaps intending, as his letters indicate, to call them to him
when circumstances allowed; but save for a few years prior to his
death, the separation, for whatever complex of reasons, remained
permanent.  Harte, however, continued to provide for them as
liberally as he was able.  In Crefeld Harte wrote A LEGEND OF
SAMMERSTANDT, VIEWS FROM A GERMAN SPION, and UNSER KARL.  In 1880
he transferred to the more lucrative consulship of Glasgow, and
ROBIN GRAY, a tale of Scottish life, is the product of his stay
there.  In 1885 he was dismissed from his consulship, probably for
political reasons, though neglect of duty was charged against him.
He removed to London where he remained, for most part, until his
death.

Bret Harte never really knew the life of the mining camp.  His
mining experiences were too fragmentary, and consequently his
portraits of mining life are wholly impressionistic.  "No one,"
Mark Twain wrote, "can talk the quartz dialect correctly without
learning it with pick and shovel and drill and fuse."  Yet, Twain
added elsewhere, "Bret Harte got his California and his
Californians by unconscious absorption, and put both of them into
his tales alive."  That is, perhaps, the final comment.  Much could
be urged against Harte's stories: the glamor they throw over the
life they depict is largely fictitious; their pathetic endings are
obviously stylized; their technique is overwhelmingly derivative.
Nevertheless, so excellent a critic as Chesterton maintained that
"There are more than nine hundred and ninety-nine excellent reasons
which we could all have for admiring the work of Bret Harte."  The
figure is perhaps exaggerated, but there are many reasons for
admiration.  First, Harte originated a new and incalculably
influential type of story: the romantically picturesque "human-
interest" story.  "He created the local color story," Prof.
Blankenship remarks, "or at least popularized it, and he gave new
form and intent to the short story."  Character motivating action
is central to this type of story, rather than mood dominating
incident.  Again Harte's style is really an eminently skilful one,
admirably suited to his subjects.  He can manage the humorous or
the pathetic excellently, and his restraint in each is more
remarkable than his excesses.  His sentences have both force and
flow; his backgrounds are crisply but carefully sketched; his
characters and caricatures have their own logical consistency.
Finally, granted the desirability of the theatric finale, it is
necessary to admit that Harte always rings down his curtain
dramatically and effectively.

ARTHUR ZEIGER, M.A.



THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP


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

Perhaps the less said of her the better.  She was a coarse and,
it is to be feared, a very sinful woman.  But at that time she was
the only woman in Roaring Camp, and was just then lying in sore
extremity, when she most needed the ministration of her own sex.
Dissolute, abandoned, and irreclaimable, she was yet suffering a
martyrdom hard enough to bear even when veiled by sympathizing
womanhood, but now terrible in her loneliness.  The primal curse
had come to her in that original isolation which must have made
the punishment of the first transgression so dreadful.  It was,
perhaps, part of the expiation of her sin that, at a moment when
she most lacked her sex's intuitive tenderness and care, she met
only the half-contemptuous faces of her masculine associates.
Yet a few of the spectators were, I think, touched by her sufferings.
Sandy Tipton thought it was "rough on Sal," and, in the contemplation
of her condition, for a moment rose superior to the fact that he
had an ace and two bowers in his sleeve.

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

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

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

The assemblage numbered about a hundred men.  One or two of these
were actual fugitives from justice, some were criminal, and all
were reckless.  Physically they exhibited no indication of their
past lives and character.  The greatest scamp had a Raphael face,
with a profusion of blonde hair; Oakhurst, a gambler, had the
melancholy air and intellectual abstraction of a Hamlet; the
coolest and most courageous man was scarcely over five feet in
height, with a soft voice and an embarrassed, timid manner.  The
term "roughs" applied to them was a distinction rather than a
definition.  Perhaps in the minor details of fingers, toes, ears,
etc., the camp may have been deficient, but these slight omissions
did not detract from their aggregate force.  The strongest man had
but three fingers on his right hand; the best shot had but one eye.

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

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

The camp rose to its feet as one man!  It was proposed to explode a
barrel of gunpowder; but in consideration of the situation of the
mother, better counsels prevailed, and only a few revolvers were
discharged; for whether owing to the rude surgery of the camp, or
some other reason, Cherokee Sal was sinking fast.  Within an hour
she had climbed, as it were, that rugged road that led to the
stars, and so passed out of Roaring Camp, its sin and shame,
forever.  I do not think that the announcement disturbed them much,
except in speculation as to the fate of the child.  "Can he live
now?" was asked of Stumpy.  The answer was doubtful.  The only
other being of Cherokee Sal's sex and maternal condition in the
settlement was an ass.  There was some conjecture as to fitness,
but the experiment was tried.  It was less problematical than the
ancient treatment of Romulus and Remus, and apparently as
successful.

When these details were completed, which exhausted another hour,
the door was opened, and the anxious crowd of men, who had already
formed themselves into a queue, entered in single file.  Beside the
low bunk or shelf, on which the figure of the mother was starkly
outlined below the blankets, stood a pine table.  On this a candle-
box was placed, and within it, swathed in staring red flannel, lay
the last arrival at Roaring Camp.  Beside the candle-box was placed
a hat.  Its use was soon indicated.  "Gentlemen," said Stumpy, with
a singular mixture of authority and EX OFFICIO complacency,--
"gentlemen will please pass in at the front door, round the table,
and out at the back door.  Them as wishes to contribute anything
toward the orphan will find a hat handy."  The first man entered
with his hat on; he uncovered, however, as he looked about him, and
so unconsciously set an example to the next.  In such communities
good and bad actions are catching.  As the procession filed in
comments were audible,--criticisms addressed perhaps rather to
Stumpy in the character of showman; "Is that him?" "Mighty small
specimen;" "Has n't more 'n got the color;" "Ain't bigger nor a
derringer."  The contributions were as characteristic: A silver
tobacco box; a doubloon; a navy revolver, silver mounted; a gold
specimen; a very beautifully embroidered lady's handkerchief (from
Oakhurst the gambler); a diamond breastpin; a diamond ring
(suggested by the pin, with the remark from the giver that he "saw
that pin and went two diamonds better"); a slung-shot; a Bible
(contributor not detected); a golden spur; a silver teaspoon (the
initials, I regret to say, were not the giver's); a pair of
surgeon's shears; a lancet; a Bank of England note for 5 pounds;
and about $200 in loose gold and silver coin.  During these
proceedings Stumpy maintained a silence as impassive as the dead on
his left, a gravity as inscrutable as that of the newly born on his
right.  Only one incident occurred to break the monotony of the
curious procession.  As Kentuck bent over the candle-box half
curiously, the child turned, and, in a spasm of pain, caught at his
groping finger, and held it fast for a moment.  Kentuck looked
foolish and embarrassed.  Something like a blush tried to assert
itself in his weather-beaten cheek.  "The damned little cuss!" he
said, as he extricated his finger, with perhaps more tenderness and
care than he might have been deemed capable of showing.  He held
that finger a little apart from its fellows as he went out, and
examined it curiously.  The examination provoked the same original
remark in regard to the child.  In fact, he seemed to enjoy
repeating it.  "He rastled with my finger," he remarked to Tipton,
holding up the member, "the damned little cuss!"

It was four o'clock before the camp sought repose.  A light burnt
in the cabin where the watchers sat, for Stumpy did not go to bed
that night.  Nor did Kentuck.  He drank quite freely, and related
with great gusto his experience, invariably ending with his
characteristic condemnation of the newcomer.  It seemed to relieve
him of any unjust implication of sentiment, and Kentuck had the
weaknesses of the nobler sex.  When everybody else had gone to bed,
he walked down to the river and whistled reflectingly.  Then he
walked up the gulch past the cabin, still whistling with
demonstrative unconcern.  At a large redwood-tree he paused and
retraced his steps, and again passed the cabin.  Halfway down to
the river's bank he again paused, and then returned and knocked at
the door.  It was opened by Stumpy.  "How goes it?" said Kentuck,
looking past Stumpy toward the candle-box.  "All serene!" replied
Stumpy.  "Anything up?"  "Nothing."  There was a pause--an
embarrassing one--Stumpy still holding the door.  Then Kentuck had
recourse to his finger, which he held up to Stumpy.  "Rastled with
it,--the damned little cuss," he said, and retired.

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

The introduction of a female nurse in the camp also met with
objection.  It was argued that no decent woman could be prevailed
to accept Roaring Camp as her home, and the speaker urged that
"they didn't want any more of the other kind."  This unkind
allusion to the defunct mother, harsh as it may seem, was the first
spasm of propriety,--the first symptom of the camp's regeneration.
Stumpy advanced nothing.  Perhaps he felt a certain delicacy in
interfering with the selection of a possible successor in office.
But when questioned, he averred stoutly that he and "Jinny"--the
mammal before alluded to--could manage to rear the child.  There
was something original, independent, and heroic about the plan that
pleased the camp.  Stumpy was retained.  Certain articles were sent
for to Sacramento.  "Mind," said the treasurer, as he pressed a bag
of gold-dust into the expressman's hand, "the best that can be
got,--lace, you know, and filigree-work and frills,--damn the
cost!"

Strange to say, the child thrived.  Perhaps the invigorating
climate of the mountain camp was compensation for material
deficiencies.  Nature took the foundling to her broader breast.  In
that rare atmosphere of the Sierra foothills,--that air pungent
with balsamic odor, that ethereal cordial at once bracing and
exhilarating,--he may have found food and nourishment, or a subtle
chemistry that transmuted ass's milk to lime and phosphorus.
Stumpy inclined to the belief that it was the latter and good
nursing.  "Me and that ass," he would say, "has been father and
mother to him!  Don't you," he would add, apostrophizing the
helpless bundle before him, "never go back on us."

By the time he was a month old the necessity of giving him a name
became apparent.  He had generally been known as "The Kid,"
"Stumpy's Boy," "The Coyote" (an allusion to his vocal powers), and
even by Kentuck's endearing diminutive of "The damned little cuss."
But these were felt to be vague and unsatisfactory, and were at
last dismissed under another influence.  Gamblers and adventurers
are generally superstitious, and Oakhurst one day declared that the
baby had brought "the luck" to Roaring Camp.  It was certain that
of late they had been successful.  "Luck" was the name agreed upon,
with the prefix of Tommy for greater convenience.  No allusion was
made to the mother, and the father was unknown.  "It's better,"
said the philosophical Oakhurst, "to take a fresh deal all round.
Call him Luck, and start him fair."  A day was accordingly set
apart for the christening.  What was meant by this ceremony the
reader may imagine who has already gathered some idea of the
reckless irreverence of Roaring Camp.  The master of ceremonies was
one "Boston," a noted wag, and the occasion seemed to promise the
greatest facetiousness.  This ingenious satirist had spent two days
in preparing a burlesque of the Church service, with pointed local
allusions.  The choir was properly trained, and Sandy Tipton was to
stand godfather.  But after the procession had marched to the grove
with music and banners, and the child had been deposited before a
mock altar, Stumpy stepped before the expectant crowd.  "It ain't
my style to spoil fun, boys," said the little man, stoutly eyeing
the faces around him," but it strikes me that this thing ain't
exactly on the squar.  It's playing it pretty low down on this yer
baby to ring in fun on him that he ain't goin' to understand.  And
ef there's goin' to be any godfathers round, I'd like to see who's
got any better rights than me."  A silence followed Stumpy's
speech.  To the credit of all humorists be it said that the first
man to acknowledge its justice was the satirist thus stopped of his
fun.  "But," said Stumpy, quickly following up his advantage,
"we're here for a christening, and we'll have it.  I proclaim you
Thomas Luck, according to the laws of the United States and the
State of California, so help me God."  It was the first time that
the name of the Deity had been otherwise uttered than profanely in
the camp.  The form of christening was perhaps even more ludicrous
than the satirist had conceived; but strangely enough, nobody saw
it and nobody laughed.  "Tommy" was christened as seriously as he
would have been under a Christian roof and cried and was comforted
in as orthodox fashion.

And so the work of regeneration began in Roaring Camp.  Almost
imperceptibly a change came over the settlement.  The cabin
assigned to "Tommy Luck"--or "The Luck," as he was more frequently
called--first showed signs of improvement.  It was kept
scrupulously clean and whitewashed.  Then it was boarded, clothed,
and papered.  The rose wood cradle, packed eighty miles by mule,
had, in Stumpy's way of putting it, "sorter killed the rest of the
furniture."  So the rehabilitation of the cabin became a necessity.
The men who were in the habit of lounging in at Stumpy's to see
"how 'The Luck' got on" seemed to appreciate the change, and in
self-defense the rival establishment of "Tuttle's grocery"
bestirred itself and imported a carpet and mirrors.  The
reflections of the latter on the appearance of Roaring Camp tended
to produce stricter habits of personal cleanliness.  Again Stumpy
imposed a kind of quarantine upon those who aspired to the honor
and privilege of holding The Luck.  It was a cruel mortification to
Kentuck--who, in the carelessness of a large nature and the habits
of frontier life, had begun to regard all garments as a second
cuticle, which, like a snake's, only sloughed off through decay--to
be debarred this privilege from certain prudential reasons.  Yet
such was the subtle influence of innovation that he thereafter
appeared regularly every afternoon in a clean shirt and face still
shining from his ablutions.  Nor were moral and social sanitary
laws neglected.  "Tommy," who was supposed to spend his whole
existence in a persistent attempt to repose, must not be disturbed
by noise.  The shouting and yelling, which had gained the camp its
infelicitous title, were not permitted within hearing distance of
Stumpy's.  The men conversed in whispers or smoked with Indian
gravity.  Profanity was tacitly given up in these sacred precincts,
and throughout the camp a popular form of expletive, known as "D--n
the luck!" and "Curse the luck!" was abandoned, as having a new
personal bearing.  Vocal music was not interdicted, being supposed
to have a soothing, tranquilizing quality; and one song, sung by
"Man-o'-War Jack," an English sailor from her Majesty's Australian
colonies, was quite popular as a lullaby.  It was a lugubrious
recital of the exploits of "the Arethusa, Seventy-four," in a
muffled minor, ending with a prolonged dying fall at the burden of
each verse, "On b-oo-o-ard of the Arethusa."  It was a fine sight
to see Jack holding The Luck, rocking from side to side as if with
the motion of a ship, and crooning forth this naval ditty.  Either
through the peculiar rocking of Jack or the length of his song,--it
contained ninety stanzas, and was continued with conscientious
deliberation to the bitter end,--the lullaby generally had the
desired effect.  At such times the men would lie at full length
under the trees in the soft summer twilight, smoking their pipes
and drinking in the melodious utterances.  An indistinct idea that
this was pastoral happiness pervaded the camp.  "This 'ere kind o'
think," said the Cockney Simmons, meditatively reclining on his
elbow, "is 'evingly."  It reminded him of Greenwich.

On the long summer days The Luck was usually carried to the gulch
from whence the golden store of Roaring Camp was taken.  There, on
a blanket spread over pine boughs, he would lie while the men were
working in the ditches below.  Latterly there was a rude attempt to
decorate this bower with flowers and sweet-smelling shrubs, and
generally some one would bring him a cluster of wild honeysuckles,
azaleas, or the painted blossoms of Las Mariposas.  The men had
suddenly awakened to the fact that there were beauty and
significance in these trifles, which they had so long trodden
carelessly beneath their feet.  A flake of glittering mica, a
fragment of variegated quartz, a bright pebble from the bed of the
creek, became beautiful to eyes thus cleared and strengthened, and
were invariably pat aside for The Luck.  It was wonderful how many
treasures the woods and hillsides yielded that "would do for
Tommy."  Surrounded by playthings such as never child out of
fairyland had before, it is to he hoped that Tommy was content.  He
appeared to be serenely happy, albeit there was an infantine
gravity about him, a contemplative light in his round gray eyes,
that sometimes worried Stumpy.  He was always tractable and quiet,
and it is recorded that once, having crept beyond his "corral,"--a
hedge of tessellated pine boughs, which surrounded his bed,--he
dropped over the bank on his head in the soft earth, and remained
with his mottled legs in the air in that position for at least five
minutes with unflinching gravity.  He was extricated without a
murmur.  I hesitate to record the many other instances of his
sagacity, which rest, unfortunately, upon the statements of
prejudiced friends.  Some of them were not without a tinge of
superstition.  "I crep' up the bank just now," said Kentuck one
day, in a breathless state of excitement "and dern my skin if he
was a-talking to a jay bird as was a-sittin' on his lap.  There
they was, just as free and sociable as anything you please, a-
jawin' at each other just like two cherrybums."  Howbeit, whether
creeping over the pine boughs or lying lazily on his back blinking
at the leaves above him, to him the birds sang, the squirrels
chattered, and the flowers bloomed.  Nature was his nurse and
playfellow.  For him she would let slip between the leaves golden
shafts of sunlight that fell just within his grasp; she would send
wandering breezes to visit him with the balm of bay and resinous
gum; to him the tall redwoods nodded familiarly and sleepily, the
bumblebees buzzed, and the rooks cawed a slumbrous accompaniment.

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

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

The winter of 1851 will long be remembered in the foothills.  The
snow lay deep on the Sierras, and every mountain creek became a
river, and every river a lake.  Each gorge and gulch was
transformed into a tumultuous watercourse that descended the
hillsides, tearing down giant trees and scattering its drift and
debris along the plain.  Red Dog had been twice under water, and
Roaring Camp had been forewarned.  "Water put the gold into them
gulches," said Stumpy.  "It been here once and will be here again!"
And that night the North Fork suddenly leaped over its banks and
swept up the triangular valley of Roaring Camp.

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

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

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



THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT


As Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main street of
Poker Flat on the morning of the twenty-third of November, 1850, he
was conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the
preceding night.  Two or three men, conversing earnestly together,
ceased as he approached, and exchanged significant glances.  There
was a Sabbath lull in the air which, in a settlement unused to
Sabbath influences, looked ominous.

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

In point of fact, Poker Flat was "after somebody."  It had lately
suffered the loss of several thousand dollars, two valuable horses,
and a prominent citizen.  It was experiencing a spasm of virtuous
reaction, quite as lawless and ungovernable as any of the acts that
had provoked it.  A secret committee had determined to rid the town
of all improper persons.  This was done permanently in regard of
two men who were then hanging from the boughs of a sycamore in the
gulch, and temporarily in the banishment of certain other
objectionable characters.  I regret to say that some of these were
ladies.  It is but due to the sex, however, to state that their
impropriety was professional, and it was only in such easily
established standards of evil that Poker Flat ventured to sit in
judgment.

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

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

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

As the escort disappeared, their pent-up feelings found vent in a
few hysterical tears from the Duchess, some bad language from
Mother Shipton, and a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle
Billy.  The philosophic Oakhurst alone remained silent.  He
listened calmly to Mother Shipton's desire to cut somebody's heart
out, to the repeated statements of the Duchess that she would die
in the road, and to the alarming oaths that seemed to be bumped out
of Uncle Billy as he rode forward.  With the easy good humor
characteristic of his class, he insisted upon exchanging his own
riding horse, "Five Spot," for the sorry mule which the Duchess
rode.  But even this act did not draw the party into any closer
sympathy.  The young woman readjusted her somewhat draggled plumes
with a feeble, faded coquetry; Mother Shipton eyed the possessor of
"Five Spot" with malevolence, and Uncle Billy included the whole
party in one sweeping anathema.

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

The spot was singularly wild and impressive.  A wooded
amphitheater, surrounded on three sides by precipitous cliffs of
naked granite, sloped gently toward the crest of another precipice
that overlooked the valley.  It was, undoubtedly, the most suitable
spot for a camp, had camping been advisable.  But Mr. Oakhurst knew
that scarcely half the journey to Sandy Bar was accomplished, and
the party were not equipped or provisioned for delay.  This fact he
pointed out to his companions curtly, with a philosophic commentary
on the folly of "throwing up their hand before the game was played
out."  But they were furnished with liquor, which in this emergency
stood them in place of food, fuel, rest, and prescience.  In spite
of his remonstrances, it was not long before they were more or less
under its influence.  Uncle Billy passed rapidly from a bellicose
state into one of stupor, the Duchess became maudlin, and Mother
Shipton snored.  Mr. Oakhurst alone remained erect, leaning against
a rock, calmly surveying them.

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

A horseman slowly ascended the trail.  In the fresh, open face of
the newcomer Mr. Oakhurst recognized Tom Simson, otherwise known as
the "Innocent" of Sandy Bar.  He had met him some months before
over a "little game," and had, with perfect equanimity, won the
entire fortune--amounting to some forty dollars--of that guileless
youth.  After the game was finished, Mr. Oakhurst drew the youthful
speculator behind the door and thus addressed him: "Tommy, you're a
good little man, but you can't gamble worth a cent.  Don't try it
over again."  He then handed him his money back, pushed him gently
from the room, and so made a devoted slave of Tom Simson.

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

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

Nothing but Mr. Oakhurst's admonishing foot saved Uncle Billy from
bursting into a roar of laughter.  As it was, he felt compelled to
retire up the canyon until he could recover his gravity.  There he
confided the joke to the tall pine trees, with many slaps of his
leg, contortions of his face, and the usual profanity.  But when he
returned to the party, he found them seated by a fire--for the air
had grown strangely chill and the sky overcast--in apparently
amicable conversation.  Piney was actually talking in an impulsive,
girlish fashion to the Duchess, who was listening with an interest
and animation she had not shown for many days.  The Innocent was
holding forth, apparently with equal effect, to Mr. Oakhurst and
Mother Shipton, who was actually relaxing into amiability.  "Is
this yer a damned picnic?" said Uncle Billy with inward scorn as he
surveyed the sylvan group, the glancing firelight, and the tethered
animals in the foreground.  Suddenly an idea mingled with the
alcoholic fumes that disturbed his brain.  It was apparently of a
jocular nature, for he felt impelled to slap his leg again and cram
his fist into his mouth.

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

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

He started to his feet with the intention of awakening the
sleepers, for there was no time to lose.  But turning to where
Uncle Billy had been lying, he found him gone.  A suspicion leaped
to his brain and a curse to his lips.  He ran to the spot where the
mules had been tethered; they were no longer there.  The tracks
were already rapidly disappearing in the snow.

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

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

Tom Simson not only put all his worldly store at the disposal of
Mr. Oakhurst, but seemed to enjoy the prospect of their enforced
seclusion.  "We'll have a good camp for a week, and then the
snow'll melt, and we'll all go back together."  The cheerful gaiety
of the young man, and Mr. Oakhurst's calm, infected the others.
The Innocent with the aid of pine boughs extemporized a thatch for
the roofless cabin, and the Duchess directed Piney in the
rearrangement of the interior with a taste and tact that opened the
blue eyes of that provincial maiden to their fullest extent.  "I
reckon now you're used to fine things at Poker Flat," said Piney.
The Duchess turned away sharply to conceal something that reddened
her cheeks through its professional tint, and Mother Shipton
requested Piney not to "chatter."  But when Mr. Oakhurst returned
from a weary search for the trail, he heard the sound of happy
laughter echoed from the rocks.  He stopped in some alarm, and his
thoughts first naturally reverted to the whisky, which he had
prudently cached.  "And yet it don't somehow sound like whisky,"
said the gambler.  It was not until he caught sight of the blazing
fire through the still-blinding storm and the group around it that
he settled to the conviction that it was "square fun."

Whether Mr. Oakhurst had cached his cards with the whisky as
something debarred the free access of the community, I cannot say.
It was certain that, in Mother Shipton's words, he "didn't say
cards once" during that evening.  Haply the time was beguiled by an
accordion, produced somewhat ostentatiously by Tom Simson from his
pack.  Notwithstanding some difficulties attending the manipulation
of this instrument, Piney Woods managed to pluck several reluctant
melodies from its keys, to an accompaniment by the Innocent on a
pair of bone castanets.  But the crowning festivity of the evening
was reached in a rude camp-meeting hymn, which the lovers, joining
hands, sang with great earnestness and vociferation.  I fear that a
certain defiant tone and Covenanter's swing to its chorus, rather
than any devotional quality, caused it speedily to infect the
others, who at last joined in the refrain:

     "I'm proud to live in the service of the Lord,
      And I'm bound to die in His army."

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

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

     "'I'm proud to live in the service of the Lord,
       And I'm bound to die in His army.'"

The third day came, and the sun, looking through the white-
curtained valley, saw the outcasts divide their slowly decreasing
store of provisions for the morning meal.  It was one of the
peculiarities of that mountain climate that its rays diffused a
kindly warmth over the wintry landscape, as if in regretful
commiseration of the past.  But it revealed drift on drift of snow
piled high around the hut--a hopeless, uncharted, trackless sea of
white lying below the rocky shores to which the castaways still
clung.  Through the marvelously clear air the smoke of the pastoral
village of Poker Flat rose miles away.  Mother Shipton saw it, and
from a remote pinnacle of her rocky fastness hurled in that
direction a final malediction.  It was her last vituperative
attempt, and perhaps for that reason was invested with a certain
degree of sublimity.  It did her good, she privately informed the
Duchess.  "Just you go out there and cuss, and see."  She then set
herself to the task of amusing "the child," as she and the Duchess
were pleased to call Piney.  Piney was no chicken, but it was a
soothing and original theory of the pair thus to account for the
fact that she didn't swear and wasn't improper.

When night crept up again through the gorges, the reedy notes of
the accordion rose and fell in fitful spasms and long-drawn gasps
by the flickering campfire.  But music failed to fill entirely the
aching void left by insufficient food, and a new diversion was
proposed by Piney--storytelling.  Neither Mr. Oakhurst nor his
female companions caring to relate their personal experiences, this
plan would have failed too but for the Innocent.  Some months
before he had chanced upon a stray copy of Mr. Pope's ingenious
translation of the ILIAD.  He now proposed to narrate the principal
incidents of that poem--having thoroughly mastered the argument and
fairly forgotten the words--in the current vernacular of Sandy Bar.
And so for the rest of that night the Homeric demigods again walked
the earth.  Trojan bully and wily Greek wrestled in the winds, and
the great pines in the canyon seemed to bow to the wrath of the son
of Peleus.  Mr. Oakhurst listened with quiet satisfaction.  Most
especially was he interested in the fate of "Ash-heels," as the
Innocent persisted in denominating the "swift-footed Achilles."

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

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

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

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

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

Toward morning they found themselves unable to feed the fire, which
gradually died away.  As the embers slowly blackened, the Duchess
crept closer to Piney, and broke the silence of many hours: "Piney,
can you pray?"  "No, dear," said Piney, simply.  The Duchess,
without knowing exactly why, felt relieved, and, putting her head
upon Piney's shoulder, spoke no more.  And so reclining, the
younger and purer pillowing the head of her soiled sister upon her
virgin breast, they fell asleep.

The wind lulled as if it feared to waken them.  Feathery drifts of
snow, shaken from the long pine boughs, flew like white-winged
birds, and settled about them as they slept.  The moon through the
rifted clouds looked down upon what had been the camp.  But all
human stain, all trace of earthly travail, was hidden beneath the
spotless mantle mercifully flung from above.

They slept all that day and the next, nor did they waken when
voices and footsteps broke the silence of the camp.  And when
pitying fingers brushed the snow from their wan faces, you could
scarcely have told from the equal peace that dwelt upon them which
was she that had sinned.  Even the law of Poker Flat recognized
this, and turned away, leaving them still locked in each other's
arms.

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


         BENEATH THIS TREE
          LIES THE BODY
                OF
          JOHN OAKHURST,
    WHO STRUCK A STREAK OF BAD LUCK
     ON THE 23D OF NOVEMBER, 1850,
               AND
        HANDED IN HIS CHECKS
     ON THE 7TH DECEMBER, 1850.


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



MIGGLES


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

"Try Miggles's."

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

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

The driver got down and tried the gate.  It was securely locked.
Miggles!  O Miggles!"

No answer.

"Migg-ells!  You Miggles!" continued the driver, with rising wrath.

"Migglesy!" joined the expressman, persuasively.  "O Miggy!  Mig!"

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

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

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

"Extraordinary echo," said the Judge.

"Extraordinary damned skunk!" roared the driver, contemptuously.
"Come out of that, Miggles, and show yourself!  Be a man, Miggles!
Don't hide in the dark; I wouldn't if I were you, Miggles,"
continued Yuba Bill, now dancing about in an excess of fury.

"Miggles!" continued the voice.  "O Miggles!"

"My good man!  Mr. Myghail!" said the Judge, softening the
asperities of the name as much as possible.  "Consider the
inhospitality of refusing shelter from the inclemency of the
weather to helpless females.  Really, my dear sir--"  But a
succession of "Miggles," ending in a burst of laughter, drowned his
voice.

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

"Do you know this Miggles?" asked the Judge of Yuba Bill.

"No, nor, don't want to," said Bill, shortly, who felt the Pioneer
Stage Company insulted in his person by the contumacious Miggles.

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

"Lookee here," said Yuba Bill, with fine irony, "hadn't you better
go back and sit in the coach till yer introduced?  I'm going in,"
and he pushed open the door of the building.

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

"Hello, be you Miggles?" said Yuba Bill to the solitary occupant.

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

Bill restrained himself with an effort.

"Miggles!  Be you deaf?  You ain't dumb anyhow, you know"; and Yuba
Bill shook the insensate figure by the shoulder.

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

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

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

"It is evident that either our distinguished friend here has
reached that condition described by Shakespeare as 'the sere and
yellow leaf,' or has suffered some premature abatement of his
mental and physical faculties.  Whether he is really the Miggles--"

Here he was interrupted by "Miggles! O Miggles! Migglesy! Mig!"
and, in fact, the whole chorus of Miggles in very much the same key
as it had once before been delivered unto us.

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

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

"Oh, if you please, I'm Miggles!"

And this was Miggles! this bright-eyed, full-throated young woman,
whose wet gown of coarse blue stuff could not hide the beauty of
the feminine curves to which it clung; from the chestnut crown of
whose head, topped by a man's oilskin sou'wester, to the little
feet and ankles, hidden somewhere in the recesses of her boy's
brogans, all was grace--this was Miggles, laughing at us, too, in
the most airy, frank, offhand manner imaginable.

"You see, boys," said she, quite out of breath, and holding one
little hand against her side, quite unheeding the speechless
discomfiture of our party, or the complete demoralization of Yuba
Bill, whose features had relaxed into an expression of gratuitous
and imbecile cheerfulness--"you see, boys, I was mor'n two miles
away when you passed down the road.  I thought you might pull up
here, and so I ran the whole way, knowing nobody was home but Jim,--
and--and--I'm out of breath--and--that lets me out."

And here Miggles caught her dripping oilskin hat from her head,
with a mischievous swirl that scattered a shower of raindrops over
us; attempted to put back her hair; dropped two hairpins in the
attempt; laughed and sat down beside Yuba Bill, with her hands
crossed lightly on her lap.

The Judge recovered himself first, and essayed an extravagant
compliment.

"I'll trouble you for that thar harpin," said Miggles, gravely.
Half a dozen hands were eagerly stretched forward; the missing
hairpin was restored to its fair owner; and Miggles, crossing the
room, looked keenly in the face of the invalid.  The solemn eyes
looked back at hers with an expression we had never seen before.
Life and intelligence seemed to struggle back into the rugged face.
Miggles laughed again--it was a singularly eloquent laugh--and
turned her black eyes and white teeth once more toward us.

"This afflicted person is--" hesitated the Judge.

"Jim," said Miggles.

"Your father?"

"No."

"Brother?"

"No."

"Husband?"

Miggles darted a quick, half-defiant glance at the two lady
passengers who I had noticed did not participate in the general
masculine admiration of Miggles, and said gravely, "No; it's Jim."

There was an awkward pause.  The lady passengers moved closer to
each other; the Washoe husband looked abstractedly at the fire; and
the tall man apparently turned his eyes inward for self-support at
this emergency.  But Miggles's laugh, which was very infectious,
broke the silence.  "Come," she said briskly, "you must be hungry.
Who'll bear a hand to help me get tea?"

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

The meal was a culinary success.  But more, it was a social
triumph--chiefly, I think, owing to the rare tact of Miggles in
guiding the conversation, asking all the questions herself, yet
bearing throughout a frankness that rejected the idea of any
concealment on her own part, so that we talked of ourselves, of our
prospects, of the journey, of the weather, of each other--of
everything but our host and hostess.  It must be confessed that
Miggles's conversation was never elegant, rarely grammatical, and
that at times she employed expletives the use of which had
generally been yielded to our sex.  But they were delivered with
such a lighting-up of teeth and eyes, and were usually followed by
a laugh--a laugh peculiar to Miggles--so frank and honest that it
seemed to clear the moral atmosphere.

Once during the meal we heard a noise like the rubbing of a heavy
body against the outer walls of the house.  This was shortly
followed by a scratching and sniffling at the door.  "That's
Joaquin," said Miggles, in reply to our questioning glances; "would
you like to see him?"  Before we could answer she had opened the
door, and disclosed a half-grown grizzly, who instantly raised
himself on his haunches, with his forepaws hanging down in the
popular attitude of mendicancy, and looked admiringly at Miggles,
with a very singular resemblance in his manner to Yuba Bill.
"That's my watch dog," said Miggles, in explanation.  "Oh, he don't
bite," she added, as the two lady passengers fluttered into a
corner.  "Does he, old Toppy?" (the latter remark being addressed
directly to the sagacious Joaquin).  "I tell you what, boys,"
continued Miggles after she had fed and closed the door on URSA
MINOR, "you were in big luck that Joaquin wasn't hanging round when
you dropped in tonight."  "Where was he?" asked the Judge.  "With
me," said Miggles.  "Lord love you; he trots round with me nights
like as if he was a man."

We were silent for a few moments, and listened to the wind.
Perhaps we all had the same picture before us--of Miggles walking
through the rainy woods, with her savage guardian at her side.  The
Judge, I remember, said something about Una and her lion; but
Miggles received it as she did other compliments, with quiet
gravity.  Whether she was altogether unconscious of the admiration
she excited--she could hardly have been oblivious of Yuba Bill's
adoration--I know not; but her very frankness suggested a perfect
sexual equality that was cruelly humiliating to the younger members
of our party.

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

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

But not, apparently, the same Miggles who a few hours before had
flashed upon us.  Her eyes were downcast, and as she hesitated for
a moment on the threshold, with a blanket on her arm, she seemed to
have left behind her the frank fearlessness which had charmed us a
moment before.  Coming into the room, she drew a low stool beside
the paralytic's chair, sat down, drew the blanket over her
shoulders, and saying, "If it's all the same to you, boys, as we're
rather crowded, I'll stop here tonight," took the invalid's
withered hand in her own, and turned her eyes upon the dying fire.
An instinctive feeling that this was only premonitory to more
confidential relations, and perhaps some shame at our previous
curiosity, kept us silent.  The rain still beat upon the roof,
wandering gusts of wind stirred the embers into momentary
brightness, until, in a lull of the elements, Miggles suddenly
lifted up her head, and, throwing her hair over her shoulder,
turned her face upon the group and asked:

"Is there any of you that knows me?"

There was no reply.

"Think again! I lived at Marysville in '53.  Everybody knew me
there, and everybody had the right to know me.  I kept the Polka
saloon until I came to live with Jim.  That's six years ago.
Perhaps I've changed some."

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

"Well, you see I thought some of you must have known me.  There's
no great harm done, anyway.  What I was going to say was this: Jim
here"--she took his hand in both of hers as she spoke--"used to
know me, if you didn't, and spent a heap of money upon me.  I
reckon he spent all he had.  And one day--it's six years ago this
winter--Jim came into my back room, sat down on my sofy, like as
you see him in that chair, and never moved again without help.  He
was struck all of a heap, and never seemed to know what ailed him.
The doctors came and said as how it was caused all along of his way
of life--for Jim was mighty free and wild-like--and that he would
never get better, and couldn't last long anyway.  They advised me
to send him to Frisco to the hospital, for he was no good to anyone
and would be a baby all his life.  Perhaps it was something in
Jim's eye, perhaps it was that I never had a baby, but I said 'No.'
I was rich then, for I was popular with everybody--gentlemen like
yourself, sir, came to see me--and I sold out my business and
bought this yer place, because it was sort of out of the way of
travel, you see, and I brought my baby here."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But you are young yet and attractive--"

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

It was nearly morning when I awoke from a troubled dream.  The
storm had passed, the stars were shining, and through the
shutterless window the full moon, lifting itself over the solemn
pines without, looked into the room.  It touched the lonely figure
in the chair with an infinite compassion, and seemed to baptize
with a shining flood the lowly head of the woman whose hair, as in
the sweet old story, bathed the feet of him she loved.  It even
lent a kindly poetry to the rugged outline of Yuba Bill, half-
reclining on his elbow between them and his passengers, with
savagely patient eyes keeping watch and ward.  And then I fell
asleep and only woke at broad day, with Yuba Bill standing over me,
and "All aboard" ringing in my ears.

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

But as we reached the highroad, Bill's dexterous hand laid the six
horses back on their haunches, and the stage stopped with a jerk.
For there, on a little eminence beside the road, stood Miggles, her
hair flying, her eyes sparkling, her white handkerchief waving, and
her white teeth flashing a last "good-by."  We waved our hats in
return.  And then Yuba Bill, as if fearful of further fascination,
madly lashed his horses forward, and we sank back in our seats.  We
exchanged not a word until we reached the North Fork, and the stage
drew up at the Independence House.  Then, the Judge leading, we
walked into the barroom and took our places gravely at the bar.

"Are your glasses charged, gentlemen?" said the Judge, solemnly
taking off his white hat.

They were.

"Well, then, here's to MIGGLES.  GOD BLESS HER!"

Perhaps He had.  Who knows?



TENNESSEE'S PARTNER


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

But to return to Tennessee's Partner, whom we never knew by any
other than this relative title; that he had ever existed as a
separate and distinct individuality we only learned later.  It
seems that in 1853 he left Poker Flat to go to San Francisco,
ostensibly to procure a wife.  He never got any farther than
Stockton.  At that place he was attracted by a young person who
waited upon the table at the hotel where he took his meals.  One
morning he said something to her which caused her to smile not
unkindly, to somewhat coquettishly break a plate of toast over his
upturned, serious, simple face, and to retreat to the kitchen.  He
followed her, and emerged a few moments later, covered with more
toast and victory.  That day week they were married by a justice of
the peace, and returned to Poker Flat.  I am aware that something
more might be made of this episode, but I prefer to tell it as it
was current at Sandy Bar--in the gulches and barrooms--where all
sentiment was modified by a strong sense of humor.

Of their married felicity but little is known, perhaps for the
reason that Tennessee, then living with his Partner, one day took
occasion to say something to the bride on his own account, at
which, it is said, she smiled not unkindly and chastely retreated--
this time as far as Marysville, where Tennessee followed her, and
where they went to housekeeping without the aid of a justice of the
peace.  Tennessee's Partner took the loss of his wife simply and
seriously, as was his fashion.  But to everybody's surprise, when
Tennessee one day returned from Marysville, without his Partner's
wife--she having smiled and retreated with somebody else--
Tennessee's Partner was the first man to shake his hand and greet
him with affection.  The boys who had gathered in the canyon to see
the shooting were naturally indignant.  Their indignation might
have found vent in sarcasm but for a certain look in Tennessee's
Partner's eye that indicated a lack of humorous appreciation.  In
fact, he was a grave man, with a steady application to practical
detail which was unpleasant in a difficulty.

Meanwhile a popular feeling against Tennessee had grown up on the
Bar.  He was known to be a gambler; he was suspected to be a thief.
In these suspicions Tennessee's Partner was equally compromised;
his continued intimacy with Tennessee after the affair above quoted
could only be accounted for on the hypothesis of a copartnership of
crime.  At last Tennessee's guilt became flagrant.  One day he
overtook a stranger on his way to Red Dog.  The stranger afterward
related that Tennessee beguiled the time with interesting anecdote
and reminiscence, but illogically concluded the interview in the
following words: "And now, young man, I'll trouble you for your
knife, your pistols, and your money.  You see your weppings might
get you into trouble at Red Dog, and your money's a temptation to
the evilly disposed.  I think you said your address was San
Francisco.  I shall endeavor to call."  It may be stated here that
Tennessee had a fine flow of humor, which no business preoccupation
could wholly subdue.

This exploit was his last.  Red Dog and Sandy Bar made common cause
against the highwayman.  Tennessee was hunted in very much the same
fashion as his prototype, the grizzly.  As the toils closed around
him, he made a desperate dash through the Bar, emptying his
revolver at the crowd before the Arcade Saloon, and so on up
Grizzly Canyon; but at its farther extremity he was stopped by a
small man on a gray horse.  The men looked at each other a moment
in silence.  Both were fearless, both self-possessed and
independent; and both types of a civilization that in the
seventeenth century would have been called heroic, but, in the
nineteenth, simply "reckless."  "What have you got there?--I call,"
said Tennessee, quietly.  "Two bowers and an ace," said the
stranger, as quietly, showing two revolvers and a bowie knife.
"That takes me," returned Tennessee; and with this gamblers'
epigram, he threw away his useless pistol, and rode back with his
captor.


It was a warm night.  The cool breeze which usually sprang up with
the going down of the sun behind the chaparral-crested mountain was
that evening withheld from Sandy Bar.  The little canyon was
stifling with heated resinous odors, and the decaying driftwood on
the Bar sent forth faint, sickening exhalations.  The feverishness
of day, and its fierce passions, still filled the camp.  Lights
moved restlessly along the bank of the river, striking no answering
reflection from its tawny current.  Against the blackness of the
pines the windows of the old loft above the express office stood
out staringly bright; and through their curtainless panes the
loungers below could see the forms of those who were even then
deciding the fate of Tennessee.  And above all this, etched on the
dark firmament, rose the Sierra, remote and passionless, crowned
with remoter passionless stars.

The trial of Tennessee was conducted as fairly as was consistent
with a judge and jury who felt themselves to some extent obliged to
justify, in their verdict, the previous irregularities of arrest
and indictment.  The law of Sandy Bar was implacable, but not
vengeful.  The excitement and personal feeling of the chase were
over; with Tennessee safe in their hands they were ready to listen
patiently to any defense, which they were already satisfied was
insufficient.  There being no doubt in their own minds, they were
willing to give the prisoner the benefit of any that might exist.
Secure in the hypothesis that he ought to be hanged, on general
principles, they indulged him with more latitude of defense than
his reckless hardihood seemed to ask.  The Judge appeared to be
more anxious than the prisoner, who, otherwise unconcerned,
evidently took a grim pleasure in the responsibility he had
created.  "I don't take any hand in this yer game," had been his
invariable but good-humored reply to all questions.  The Judge--who
was also his captor--for a moment vaguely regretted that he had not
shot him "on sight" that morning, but presently dismissed this
human weakness as unworthy of the judicial mind.  Nevertheless,
when there was a tap at the door, and it was said that Tennessee's
Partner was there on behalf of the prisoner, he was admitted at
once without question.  Perhaps the younger members of the jury, to
whom the proceedings were becoming irksomely thoughtful, hailed him
as a relief.

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

"I was passin' by," he began, by way of apology, "and I thought I'd
just step in and see how things was gittin' on with Tennessee thar--
my pardner.  It's a hot night.  I disremember any sich weather
before on the Bar."

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

"Have you anything to say in behalf of the prisoner?" said the
Judge, finally.

"Thet's it," said Tennessee's Partner, in a tone of relief.  "I
come yar as Tennessee's pardner--knowing him nigh on four year, off
and on, wet and dry, in luck and out o' luck.  His ways ain't
allers my ways, but thar ain't any p'ints in that young man, thar
ain't any liveliness as he's been up to, as I don't know.  And you
sez to me, sez you--confidential-like, and between man and man--sez
you, 'Do you know anything in his behalf?' and I sez to you, sez I--
confidential-like, as between man and man--'What should a man
know of his pardner?'"

"Is this all you have to say?" asked the Judge impatiently,
feeling, perhaps, that a dangerous sympathy of humor was beginning
to humanize the Court.

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

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

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

For a moment his life was in jeopardy.  One or two men sprang to
their feet, several hands groped for hidden weapons, and a
suggestion to "throw him from the window" was only overridden by a
gesture from the Judge.  Tennessee laughed.  And apparently
oblivious of the excitement, Tennessee's Partner improved the
opportunity to mop his face again with his handkerchief.

When order was restored, and the man was made to understand, by the
use of forcible figures and rhetoric, that Tennessee's offense
could not be condoned by money, his face took a more serious and
sanguinary hue, and those who were nearest to him noticed that his
rough hand trembled slightly on the table.  He hesitated a moment
as he slowly returned the gold to the carpetbag, as if he had not
yet entirely caught the elevated sense of justice which swayed the
tribunal, and was perplexed with the belief that he had not offered
enough.  Then he turned to the Judge, and saying, "This yer is a
lone hand, played alone, and without my pardner," he bowed to the
jury and was about to withdraw when the Judge called him back.  "If
you have anything to say to Tennessee, you had better say it now."
For the first time that evening the eyes of the prisoner and his
strange advocate met.  Tennessee smiled, showed his white teeth,
and, saying, "Euchred, old man!" held out his hand.  Tennessee's
Partner took it in his own, and saying, "I just dropped in as I was
passin' to see how things was gettin' on," let the hand passively
fall, and adding that it was a warm night, again mopped his face
with his handkerchief, and without another word withdrew.

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

How he met it, how cool he was, how he refused to say anything, how
perfect were the arrangements of the committee, were all duly
reported, with the addition of a warning moral and example to all
future evildoers, in the RED DOG CLARION, by its editor, who was
present, and to whose vigorous English I cheerfully refer the
reader.  But the beauty of that midsummer morning, the blessed
amity of earth and air and sky, the awakened life of the free woods
and hills, the joyous renewal and promise of Nature, and above all,
the infinite Serenity that thrilled through each, was not reported,
as not being a part of the social lesson.  And yet, when the weak
and foolish deed was done, and a life, with its possibilities and
responsibilities, had passed out of the misshapen thing that
dangled between earth and sky, the birds sang, the flowers bloomed,
the sun shone, as cheerily as before; and possibly the RED DOG
CLARION was right.

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

It was noon when the body of Tennessee was delivered into the hands
of his Partner.  As the cart drew up to the fatal tree, we noticed
that it contained a rough, oblong box--apparently made from a
section of sluicing and half-filled with bark and the tassels of
pine.  The cart was further decorated with slips of willow, and
made fragrant with buckeye blossoms.  When the body was deposited
in the box, Tennessee's Partner drew over it a piece of tarred
canvas, and gravely mounting the narrow seat in front, with his
feet upon the shafts, urged the little donkey forward.  The
equipage moved slowly on, at that decorous pace which was habitual
with "Jenny" even under less solemn circumstances.  The men--half
curiously, half jestingly, but all good-humoredly--strolled along
beside the cart; some in advance, some a little in the rear of the
homely catafalque.  But, whether from the narrowing of the road or
some present sense of decorum, as the cart passed on, the company
fell to the rear in couples, keeping step, and otherwise assuming
the external show of a formal procession.  Jack Folinsbee, who had
at the outset played a funeral march in dumb show upon an imaginary
trombone, desisted, from a lack of sympathy and appreciation--not
having, perhaps, your true humorist's capacity to be content with
the enjoyment of his own fun.

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

Viewed under more favorable circumstances, it would not have been a
cheerful place.  The unpicturesque site, the rude and unlovely
outlines, the unsavory details, which distinguish the nest-building
of the California miner, were all here, with the dreariness of
decay superadded.  A few paces from the cabin there was a rough
enclosure, which in the brief days of Tennessee's Partner's
matrimonial felicity had been used as a garden, but was now
overgrown with fern.  As we approached it we were surprised to find
that what we had taken for a recent attempt at cultivation was the
broken soil about an open grave.

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

"When a man," began Tennessee's Partner, slowly, "has been running
free all day, what's the natural thing for him to do?  Why, to come
home.  And if he ain't in a condition to go home, what can his best
friend do?  Why, bring him home!  And here's Tennessee has been
running free, and we brings him home from his wandering."  He
paused, and picked up a fragment of quartz, rubbed it thoughtfully
on his sleeve, and went on: "It ain't the first time that I've
packed him on my back, as you see'd me now.  It ain't the first
time that I brought him to this yer cabin when he couldn't help
himself; it ain't the first time that I and 'Jinny' have waited for
him on yon hill, and picked him up and so fetched him home, when he
couldn't speak, and didn't know me.  And now that it's the last
time, why"--he paused and rubbed the quartz gently on his sleeve--
"you see it's sort of rough on his pardner.  And now, gentlemen,"
he added, abruptly, picking up his long-handled shovel, "the
fun'l's over; and my thanks, and Tennessee's thanks, to you for
your trouble."

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


In the reaction that followed the feverish excitement of that day,
Tennessee's Partner was not forgotten.  A secret investigation had
cleared him of any complicity in Tennessee's guilt, and left only a
suspicion of his general sanity.  Sandy Bar made a point of calling
on him, and proffering various uncouth, but well-meant kindnesses.
But from that day his rude health and great strength seemed visibly
to decline; and when the rainy season fairly set in, and the tiny
grass-blades were beginning to peep from the rocky mound above
Tennessee's grave, he took to his bed.  One night, when the pines
beside the cabin were swaying in the storm, and trailing their
slender fingers over the roof, and the roar and rush of the swollen
river were heard below, Tennessee's Partner lifted his head from
the pillow, saying, "It is time to go for Tennessee; I must put
'Jinny' in the cart"; and would have risen from his bed but for the
restraint of his attendant.  Struggling, he still pursued his
singular fancy: "There, now, steady, 'Jinny'--steady, old girl.
How dark it is!  Look out for the ruts--and look out for him, too,
old gal.  Sometimes, you know, when he's blind-drunk, he drops down
right in the trail.  Keep on straight up to the pine on the top of
the hill.  Thar--I told you so!--thar he is--coming this way, too--
all by himself, sober, and his face a-shining.  Tennessee!
Pardner!"

And so they met.



THE IDYL OF RED GULCH


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

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

Meanwhile the shadows of the pine trees had slowly swung around
until they crossed the road, and their trunks barred the open
meadow with gigantic parallels of black and yellow.  Little puffs
of red dust, lifted by the plunging hoofs of passing teams,
dispersed in a grimy shower upon the recumbent man.  The sun sank
lower and lower; and still Sandy stirred not.  And then the repose
of this philosopher was disturbed, as other philosophers have been,
by the intrusion of an unphilosophical sex.

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

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

As she stood there she noticed, also, that the slant sunbeams were
heating Sandy's head to what she judged to be an unhealthy
temperature, and that his hat was lying uselessly at his side.  To
pick it up and to place it over his face was a work requiring some
courage, particularly as his eyes were open.  Yet she did it, and
made good her retreat.  But she was somewhat concerned, on looking
back, to see that the hat was removed, and that Sandy was sitting
up and saying something.

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

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

"Wass up?  Wasser maar?" continued Sandy, in a very high key.

"Get up, you horrid man!" said Miss Mary, now thoroughly incensed;
"get up, and go home."

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

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

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

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

"Goodness heavens!--the man will be drowned!" said Miss Mary; and
then, with feminine inconsistency, she ran back to the schoolhouse
and locked herself in.

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

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

These facts Miss Mary was not slow to take a feminine advantage of,
in her present humor.  But it was somewhat confusing to observe,
also, that the beast, despite some faint signs of past dissipation,
was amiable-looking--in fact, a kind of blond Samson whose corn-
colored, silken beard apparently had never yet known the touch of
barber's razor or Delilah's shears.  So that the cutting speech
which quivered on her ready tongue died upon her lips, and she
contented herself with receiving his stammering apology with
supercilious eyelids and the gathered skirts of uncontamination.
When she re-entered the schoolroom, her eyes fell upon the azaleas
with a new sense of revelation.  And then she laughed, and the
little people all laughed, and they were all unconsciously very
happy.

It was on a hot day--and not long after this--that two short-legged
boys came to grief on the threshold of the school with a pail of
water, which they had laboriously brought from the spring, and that
Miss Mary compassionately seized the pail and started for the
spring herself.  At the foot of the hill a shadow crossed her path,
and a blue-shirted arm dexterously but gently relieved her of her
burden.  Miss Mary was both embarrassed and angry.  "If you carried
more of that for yourself," she said, spitefully, to the blue arm,
without deigning to raise her lashes to its owner, "you'd do
better."  In the submissive silence that followed she regretted the
speech, and thanked him so sweetly at the door that he stumbled.
Which caused the children to laugh again--a laugh in which Miss
Mary joined, until the color came faintly into her pale cheek.  The
next day a barrel was mysteriously placed beside the door, and as
mysteriously filled with fresh spring water every morning.

Nor was this superior young person without other quiet attentions.
"Profane Bill," driver of the Slumgullion Stage, widely known in
the newspapers for his "gallantry" in invariably offering the box
seat to the fair sex, had excepted Miss Mary from this attention,
on the ground that he had a habit of "cussin' on upgrades," and
gave her half the coach to herself.  Jack Hamlin, a gambler, having
once silently ridden with her in the same coach, afterward threw a
decanter at the head of a confederate for mentioning her name in a
barroom.  The overdressed mother of a pupil whose paternity was
doubtful had often lingered near this astute Vestal's temple, never
daring to enter its sacred precincts, but content to worship the
priestess from afar.

With such unconscious intervals the monotonous procession of blue
skies, glittering sunshine, brief twilights, and starlit nights
passed over Red Gulch.  Miss Mary grew fond of walking in the
sedate and proper woods.  Perhaps she believed, with Mrs. Stidger,
that the balsamic odors of the firs "did her chest good," for
certainly her slight cough was less frequent and her step was
firmer; perhaps she had learned the unending lesson which the
patient pines are never weary of repeating to heedful or listless
ears.  And so, one day, she planned a picnic on Buckeye Hill, and
took the children with her.  Away from the dusty road, the
straggling shanties, the yellow ditches, the clamor of restless
engines, the cheap finery of shop windows, the deeper glitter of
paint and colored glass, and the thin veneering which barbarism
takes upon itself in such localities--what infinite relief was
theirs!  The last heap of ragged rock and clay passed, the last
unsightly chasm crossed--how the waiting woods opened their long
files to receive them!  How the children--perhaps because they had
not yet grown quite away from the breast of the bounteous Mother--
threw themselves face downward on her brown bosom with uncouth
caresses, filling the air with their laughter; and how Miss Mary
herself--felinely fastidious and intrenched as she was in the
purity of spotless skirts, collar, and cuffs--forgot all, and ran
like a crested quail at the head of her brood until, romping,
laughing, and panting, with a loosened braid of brown hair, a hat
hanging by a knotted ribbon from her throat, she came suddenly and
violently, in the heart of the forest, upon--the luckless Sandy!

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

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

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

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

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

"I heerd tell that you were goin' down to the Bay tomorrow, and I
couldn't let you go until I came to thank you for your kindness to
my Tommy."

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

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

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

"It ain't for you to be complimented by the like of me, I know,"
she went on, hurriedly.  "It ain't for me to be comin' here, in
broad day, to do it, either; but I come to ask a favor--not for me,
miss--not for me, but for the darling boy."

Encouraged by a look in the young schoolmistress's eye, and putting
her lilac-gloved hands together, the fingers downward, between her
knees, she went on, in a low voice:

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

"It is natural," she went on, rapidly, in a voice that trembled
strangely between pride and humility--"it's natural that he should
take to you, miss, for his father, when I first knew him, was a
gentleman--and the boy must forget me, sooner or later--and so I
ain't goin' to cry about that.  For I come to ask you to take my
Tommy--God bless him for the bestest, sweetest boy that lives--to--
to--take him with you."

She had risen and caught the young girl's hand in her own, and had
fallen on her knees beside her.

"I've money plenty, and it's all yours and his.  Put him in some
good school, where you can go and see him, and help him to--to--to
forget his mother.  Do with him what you like.  The worst you can
do will be kindness to what he will learn with me.  Only take him
out of this wicked life, this cruel place, this home of shame and
sorrow.  You will; I know you will--won't you?  You will--you must
not, you cannot say no!  You will make him as pure, as gentle as
yourself; and when he has grown up, you will tell him his father's
name--the name that hasn't passed my lips for years--the name of
Alexander Morton, whom they call here Sandy!  Miss Mary!--do not
take your hand away!  Miss Mary, speak to me!  You will take my
boy?  Do not put your face from me.  I know it ought not to look on
such as me.  Miss Mary!--my God, be merciful!--she is leaving me!"

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

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

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

"I will take the boy.  Send him to me tonight."

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

"Does--this man--know of your intention?" asked Miss Mary,
suddenly.

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

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

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

"Good night."

She would have fallen at Miss Mary's feet.  But at the same moment
the young girl reached out her arms, caught the sinful woman to her
own pure breast for one brief moment, and then closed and locked
the door.


It was with a sudden sense of great responsibility that Profane
Bill took the reins of the Slumgullion Stage the next morning, for
the schoolmistress was one of his passengers.  As he entered the
highroad, in obedience to a pleasant voice from the "inside," he
suddenly reined up his horses and respectfully waited as Tommy
hopped out at the command of Miss Mary.  "Not that bush, Tommy--the
next."

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

"All right now?"

"All right."

And the stage door closed on the Idyl of Red Gulch.



BROWN OF CALAVERAS


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

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

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

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

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

The sweating flanks of his gray at length recalled him to himself.
He checked his speed, and, turning into a by-road, sometimes used
as a cutoff, trotted leisurely along, the reins hanging listlessly
from his fingers.  As he rode on, the character of the landscape
changed and became more pastoral.  Openings in groves of pine and
sycamore disclosed some rude attempts at cultivation--a flowering
vine trailed over the porch of one cabin, and a woman rocked her
cradled babe under the roses of another.  A little farther on Mr.
Hamlin came upon some barelegged children wading in the willowy
creek, and so wrought upon them with a badinage peculiar to himself
that they were emboldened to climb up his horse's legs and over his
saddle, until he was fain to develop an exaggerated ferocity of
demeanor, and to escape, leaving behind some kisses and coin.  And
then, advancing deeper into the woods, where all signs of
habitation failed, he began to sing--uplifting a tenor so
singularly sweet, and shaded by a pathos so subduing and tender,
that I wot the robins and linnets stopped to listen.  Mr. Hamlin's
voice was not cultivated; the subject of his song was some
sentimental lunacy borrowed from the Negro minstrels; but there
thrilled through all some occult quality of tone and expression
that was unspeakably touching.  Indeed, it was a wonderful sight to
see this sentimental blackleg, with a pack of cards in his pocket
and a revolver at his back, sending his voice before him through
the dim woods with a plaint about his "Nelly's grave" in a way that
overflowed the eyes of the listener.  A sparrow hawk, fresh from
his sixth victim, possibly recognizing in Mr. Hamlin a kindred
spirit, stared at him in surprise, and was fain to confess the
superiority of man.  With a superior predatory capacity, HE
couldn't sing.

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

Mr. Hamlin did not sing in his cage.  He lay still, looking at a
highly colored painting above him representing a young creature of
opulent charms.  It occurred to him then, for the first time, that
he had never seen exactly that kind of a woman, and that if he
should, he would not, probably, fall in love with her.  Perhaps he
was thinking of another style of beauty.  But just then someone
knocked at the door.  Without rising, he pulled a cord that
apparently shot back a bolt, for the door swung open, and a man
entered.

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

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

"You didn't come up on the stage," continued the newcomer, "did
you?"

"No," replied Hamlin; "I left it at Scott's Ferry.  It isn't due
for half an hour yet.  But how's luck, Brown?"

Damn bad," said Brown, his face suddenly assuming an expression of
weak despair; "I'm cleaned out again, Jack," he continued, in a
whining tone that formed a pitiable contrast to his bulky figure,
"can't you help me with a hundred till tomorrow's cleanup?  You see
I've got to send money home to the old woman, and--you've won
twenty times that amount from me."

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

"Fact, sir," said Brown, with a sudden gravity, as if the mere
contact of the gold with the palm of the hand had imparted some
dignity to his frame.  "I've got a wife--a damned good one, too, if
I do say it--in the States.  It's three year since I've seen her,
and a year since I've writ to her.  When things is about straight,
and we get down to the lead, I'm going to send for her."

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

Mr. Brown of Calaveras essayed an archness of glance, to cover his
confusion, which his weak face and whisky-muddled intellect but
poorly carried out, and said:

"Damn it, Jack, a man must have a little liberty, you know.  But
come, what do you say to a little game?  Give us a show to double
this hundred."

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

"It's Kate," said Mr. Brown.

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

"My old woman, by thunder!"

They say that Mrs. Brown burst into tears, and reproaches of her
husband.  I saw her, in 1857, at Marysville, and disbelieve the
story.  And the WINGDAM CHRONICLE, of the next week, under the head
of "Touching Reunion," said: "One of those beautiful and touching
incidents, peculiar to California life, occurred last week in our
city.  The wife of one of Wingdam's eminent pioneers, tired of the
effete civilization of the East and its inhospitable climate,
resolved to join her noble husband upon these golden shores.
Without informing him of her intention, she undertook the long
journey, and arrived last week.  The joy of the husband may be
easier imagined than described.  The meeting is said to have been
indescribably affecting.  We trust her example may be followed."


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

Yet it was noted that in proportion as he waxed wealthy and
fortunate, he grew pale, thin, and anxious.  As his wife's
popularity increased, he became fretful and impatient.  The most
uxorious of husbands, he was absurdly jealous.  If he did not
interfere with his wife's social liberty, it was because it was
maliciously whispered that his first and only attempt was met by an
outburst from Mrs. Brown that terrified him into silence.  Much of
this kind of gossip came from those of her own sex whom she had
supplanted in the chivalrous attentions of Wingdam, which, like
most popular chivalry, was devoted to an admiration of power,
whether of masculine force or feminine beauty.  It should be
remembered, too, in her extenuation that since her arrival, she had
been the unconscious priestess of a mythological worship, perhaps
not more ennobling to her womanhood than that which distinguished
an older Greek democracy.  I think that Brown was dimly conscious
of this.  But his only confidant was Jack Hamlin, whose INFELIX
reputation naturally precluded any open intimacy with the family,
and whose visits were infrequent.

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

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

"Dust," said Mrs. Brown, with a sigh.  "Only Sister Anne's 'flock
of sheep.'"

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

But the Judge didn't know; and as Mrs. Brown suggested the air was
growing too cold for further investigations, they retired to the
parlor.

Mr. Brown was in the stable, where he generally retired after
dinner.  Perhaps it was to show his contempt for his wife's
companions; perhaps, like other weak natures, he found pleasure in
the exercise of absolute power over inferior animals.  He had a
certain gratification in the training of a chestnut mare, whom he
could beat or caress as pleased him, which he couldn't do with Mrs.
Brown.  It was here that he recognized a certain gray horse which
had just come in, and, looking a little farther on, found his
rider.  Brown's greeting was cordial and hearty, Mr. Hamlin's
somewhat restrained.  But at Brown's urgent request, he followed
him up the back stairs to a narrow corridor, and thence to a small
room looking out upon the stable yard.  It was plainly furnished
with a bed, a table, a few chairs, and a rack for guns and whips.

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

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

Mr. Hamlin did not avail himself of the information.  Brown of
Calaveras turned his face to the wall and continued:

"If I didn't love the woman, Jack, I wouldn't mind.  But it's
loving her, and seeing her, day arter day, goin' on at this rate,
and no one to put down the brake; that's what gits me!  But I'm
glad to see ye, Jack, damn glad."

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

"Ever since she came here; ever since the day she walked into the
Magnolia.  I was a fool then; Jack, I'm a fool now; but I didn't
know how much I loved her till then.  And she hasn't been the same
woman since.

"But that ain't all, Jack; and it's what I wanted to see you about,
and I'm glad you've come.  It ain't that she doesn't love me any
more; it ain't that she fools with every chap that comes along,
for, perhaps, I staked her love and lost it, as I did everything
else at the Magnolia; and, perhaps, foolin' is nateral to some
women, and thar ain't no great harm done, 'cept to the fools.  But,
Jack, I think--I think she loves somebody else.  Don't move, Jack;
don't move; if your pistol hurts ye, take it off.

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

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

"But, Jack?"

"He's took the risk!"

"But will that bring HER back?"

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

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

Jack hesitated, and then complied.  He drew a pack of cards from
his pocket and shuffled them, glancing at the bed.  But Brown's
face was turned to the wall.  When Mr. Hamlin had shuffled the
cards, he cut them, and dealt one card on the opposite side of the
table and toward the bed, and another on his side of the table for
himself.  The first was a deuce, his own card, a king.  He then
shuffled and cut again.  This time "dummy" had a queen, and himself
a four-spot.  Jack brightened up for the third deal.  It brought
his adversary a deuce, and himself a king again.  "Two out of
three," said Jack, audibly.

"What's that, Jack?" said Brown.

"Nothing."

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

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

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

"Be at the corral, with the buggy, at three."

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

"Yes."

"Don't go yet.  I dreamed just now, Jack--dreamed of old times.  I
thought that Sue and me was being married agin, and that the
parson, Jack, was--who do you think?--you!"

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

"It's a good sign, ain't it?" queried Brown.

"I reckon.  Say, old man, hadn't you better get up?"

The "old man," thus affectionately appealed to, rose, with the
assistance of Hamlin's outstretched hand.

"Smoke?"

Brown mechanically took the proffered cigar.

"Light?"

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

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

He tore himself from Brown's grasp, and leaped down the stairs like
a deer.  At the stable door he collared the half-sleeping hostler
and backed him against the wall.  "Saddle my horse in two minutes,
or I'll--"  The ellipsis was frightfully suggestive.

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

"Damn the buggy!"

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

"Is anything up, Mr. Hamlin?" said the man, who, like all his
class, admired the elan of his fiery patron, and was really
concerned in his welfare.

"Stand aside!"

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

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



HIGH-WATER MARK


When the tide was out on the Dedlow Marsh, its extended dreariness
was patent.  Its spongy, low-lying surface, sluggish, inky pools,
and tortuous sloughs, twisting their slimy way, eel-like, toward
the open bay, were all hard facts.  So were the few green tussocks,
with their scant blades, their amphibious flavor and unpleasant
dampness.  And if you choose to indulge your fancy--although the
flat monotony of the Dedlow Marsh was not inspiring--the wavy line
of scattered drift gave an unpleasant consciousness of the spent
waters, and made the dead certainty of the returning tide a gloomy
reflection which no present sunshine could dissipate.  The greener
meadowland seemed oppressed with this idea, and made no positive
attempt at vegetation until the work of reclamation should be
complete.  In the bitter fruit of the low cranberry bushes one
might fancy he detected a naturally sweet disposition curdled and
soured by an injudicious course of too much regular cold water.

The vocal expression of the Dedlow Marsh was also melancholy and
depressing.  The sepulchral boom of the bittern, the shriek of the
curlew, the scream of passing brent, the wrangling of quarrelsome
teal, the sharp, querulous protest of the startled crane, and
syllabled complaint of the "killdeer" plover, were beyond the power
of written expression.  Nor was the aspect of these mournful fowls
at all cheerful and inspiring.  Certainly not the blue heron
standing mid-leg deep in the water, obviously catching cold in a
reckless disregard of wet feet and consequences; nor the mournful
curlew, the dejected plover, or the low-spirited snipe, who saw fit
to join him in his suicidal contemplation; nor the impassive
kingfisher--an ornithological Marius--reviewing the desolate
expanse; nor the black raven that went to and fro over the face of
the marsh continually, but evidently couldn’t make up his mind
whether the waters had subsided, and felt low-spirited in the
reflection that, after all this trouble, he wouldn't be able to
give a definite answer.  On the contrary, it was evident at a
glance that the dreary expanse of Dedlow Marsh told unpleasantly on
the birds, and that the season of migration was looked forward to
with a feeling of relief and satisfaction by the full-grown, and of
extravagant anticipation by the callow, brood.  But if Dedlow Marsh
was cheerless at the slack of the low tide, you should have seen it
when the tide was strong and full.  When the damp air blew chilly
over the cold, glittering expanse, and came to the faces of those
who looked seaward like another tide; when a steel-like glint
marked the low hollows and the sinuous line of slough; when the
great shell-incrusted trunks of fallen trees arose again, and went
forth on their dreary, purposeless wanderings, drifting hither and
thither, but getting no farther toward any goal at the falling tide
or the day's decline than the cursed Hebrew in the legend; when the
glossy ducks swung silently, making neither ripple nor furrow on
the shimmering surface; when the fog came in with the tide and shut
out the blue above, even as the green below had been obliterated;
when boatmen lost in that fog, paddling about in a hopeless way,
started at what seemed the brushing of mermen's fingers on the
boat's keel, or shrank from the tufts of grass spreading around
like the floating hair of a corpse, and knew by these signs that
they were lost upon Dedlow Marsh and must make a night of it, and a
gloomy one at that--then you might know something of Dedlow Marsh
at high water.

Let me recall a story connected with this latter view which never
failed to recur to my mind in my long gunning excursions upon
Dedlow Marsh.  Although the event was briefly recorded in the
counry paper, I had the story, in all its eloquent detail, from the
lips of the principal actor.  I cannot hope to catch the varying
emphasis and peculiar coloring of feminine delineation, for my
narrator was a woman; but I'll try to give at least its substance.

She lived midway of the great slough of Dedlow Marsh and a good-
sized river, which debouched four miles beyond into an estuary
formed by the Pacific Ocean, on the long sandy peninsula which
constituted the southwestern boundary of a noble bay.  The house in
which she lived was a small frame cabin raised from the marsh a few
feet by stout piles, and was three miles distant from the
settlements upon the river.  Her husband was a logger--a profitable
business in a county where the principal occupation was the
manufacture of lumber.

It was the season of early spring when her husband left on the ebb
of a high tide, with a raft of logs for the usual transportation to
the lower end of the bay.  As she stood by the door of the little
cabin when the voyagers departed she noticed a cold look in the
southeastern sky, and she remembered hearing her husband say to his
companions that they must endeavor to complete their voyage before
the coming of the southwesterly gale which he saw brewing.  And
that night it began to storm and blow harder than she had ever
before experienced, and some great trees fell in the forest by the
river, and the house rocked like her baby's cradle.

But however the storm might roar about the little cabin, she knew
that one she trusted had driven bolt and bar with his own strong
hand, and that had he feared for her he would not have left her.
This, and her domestic duties, and the care of her little sickly
baby, helped to keep her mind from dwelling on the weather, except,
of course, to hope that he was safely harbored with the logs at
Utopia in the dreary distance.  But she noticed that day, when she
went out to feed the chickens and look after the cow, that the tide
was up to the little fence of their garden-patch, and the roar of
the surf on the south beach, though miles away, she could hear
distinctly.  And she began to think that she would like to have
someone to talk with about matters, and she believed that if it had
not been so far and so stormy, and the trail so impassable, she
would have taken the baby and have gone over to Ryckman's, her
nearest neighbor.  But then, you see, he might have returned in the
storm, all wet, with no one to see to him; and it was a long
exposure for baby, who was croupy and ailing.

But that night, she never could tell why, she didn't feel like
sleeping or even lying down.  The storm had somewhat abated, but
she still "sat and sat," and even tried to read.  I don't know
whether it was a Bible or some profane magazine that this poor
woman read, but most probably the latter, for the words all ran
together and made such sad nonsense that she was forced at last to
put the book down and turn to that dearer volume which lay before
her in the cradle, with its white initial leaf as yet unsoiled, and
try to look forward to its mysterious future.  And, rocking the
cradle, she thought of everything and everybody, but still was
wide-awake as ever.

It was nearly twelve o'clock when she at last lay down in her
clothes.  How long she slept she could not remember, but she awoke
with a dreadful choking in her throat, and found herself standing,
trembling all over, in the middle of the room, with her baby
clasped to her breast, and she was "saying something."  The baby
cried and sobbed, and she walked up and down trying to hush it when
she heard a scratching at the door.  She opened it fearfully, and
was glad to see it was only old Pete, their dog, who crawled,
dripping with water, into the room.  She would like to have looked
out, not in the faint hope of her husband's coming, but to see how
things looked; but the wind shook the door so savagely that she
could hardly hold it.  Then she sat down a little while, and then
walked up and down a little while, and then she lay down again a
little while.  Lying close by the wall of the little cabin, she
thought she heard once or twice something scrape slowly against the
clapboards, like the scraping of branches.  Then there was a little
gurgling sound, "like the baby made when it was swallowing"; then
something went "click-click" and "cluck-cluck," so that she sat up
in bed.  When she did so she was attracted by something else that
seemed creeping from the back door toward the center of the room.
It wasn't much wider than her little finger, but soon it swelled to
the width of her hand, and began spreading all over the floor.  It
was water.

She ran to the front door and threw it wide open, and saw nothing
but water.  She ran to the back door and threw it open, and saw
nothing but water.  She ran to the side window, and throwing that
open, she saw nothing but water.  Then she remembered hearing her
husband once say that there was no danger in the tide, for that
fell regularly, and people could calculate on it, and that he would
rather live near the bay than the river, whose banks might overflow
at any time.  But was it the tide?  So she ran again to the back
door, and threw out a stick of wood.  It drifted away toward the
bay.  She scooped up some of the water and put it eagerly to her
lips.  It was fresh and sweet.  It was the river, and not the tide!

It was then--O God be praised for his goodness! she did neither
faint nor fall; it was then--blessed be the Saviour, for it was his
merciful hand that touched and strengthened her in this awful
moment--that fear dropped from her like a garment, and her
trembling ceased.  It was then and thereafter that she never lost
her self-command, through all the trials of that gloomy night.

She drew the bedstead toward the middle of the room, and placed a
table upon it and on that she put the cradle.  The water on the
floor was already over her ankles, and the house once or twice
moved so perceptibly, and seemed to be racked so, that the closet
doors all flew open.  Then she heard the same rasping and thumping
against the wall, and, looking out, saw that a large uprooted tree,
which had lain near the road at the upper end of the pasture, had
floated down to the house.  Luckily its long roots dragged in the
soil and kept it from moving as rapidly as the current, for had it
struck the house in its full career, even the strong nails and
bolts in the piles could not have withstood the shock.  The hound
had leaped upon its knotty surface, and crouched near the roots
shivering and whining.  A ray of hope flashed across her mind.  She
drew a heavy blanket from the bed, and, wrapping it about the babe,
waded in the deepening waters to the door.  As the tree swung
again, broadside on, making the little cabin creak and tremble, she
leaped on to its trunk.  By God's mercy she succeeded in obtaining
a footing on its slippery surface, and, twining an arm about its
roots, she held in the other her moaning child.  Then something
cracked near the front porch, and the whole front of the house she
had just quitted fell forward--just as cattle fall on their knees
before they lie down--and at the same moment the great redwood tree
swung round and drifted away with its living cargo into the black
night.

For all the excitement and danger, for all her soothing of her
crying babe, for all the whistling of the wind, for all the
uncertainty of her situation, she still turned to look at the
deserted and water-swept cabin.  She remembered even then, and she
wonders how foolish she was to think of it at that time, that she
wished she had put on another dress and the baby's best clothes;
and she kept praying that the house would be spared so that he,
when he returned, would have something to come to, and it wouldn't
be quite so desolate, and--how could he ever know what had become
of her and baby?  And at the thought she grew sick and faint.  But
she had something else to do besides worrying, for whenever the
long roots of her ark struck an obstacle, the whole trunk made half
a revolution, and twice dipped her in the black water.  The hound,
who kept distracting her by running up and down the tree and
howling, at last fell off at one of these collisions.  He swam for
some time beside her, and she tried to get the poor beast up on the
tree, but he "acted silly" and wild, and at last she lost sight of
him forever.  Then she and her baby were left alone.  The light
which had burned for a few minutes in the deserted cabin was
quenched suddenly.  She could not then tell whither she was
drifting.  The outline of the white dunes on the peninsula showed
dimly ahead, and she judged the tree was moving in a line with the
river.  It must be about slack water, and she had probably reached
the eddy formed by the confluence of the tide and the overflowing
waters of the river.  Unless the tide fell soon, there was present
danger of her drifting to its channel, and being carried out to sea
or crushed in the floating drift.  That peril averted, if she were
carried out on the ebb toward the bay, she might hope to strike one
of the wooded promontories of the peninsula, and rest till
daylight.  Sometimes she thought she heard voices and shouts from
the river, and the bellowing of cattle and bleating of sheep.  Then
again it was only the ringing in her ears and throbbing of her
heart.  She found at about this time that she was so chilled and
stiffened in her cramped position that she could scarcely move, and
the baby cried so when she put it to her breast that she noticed
the milk refused to flow; and she was so frightened at that, that
she put her head under her shawl, and for the first time cried
bitterly.

When she raised her head again, the boom of the surf was behind
her, and she knew that her ark had again swung round.  She dipped
up the water to cool her parched throat, and found that it was salt
as her tears.  There was a relief, though, for by this sign she
knew that she was drifting with the tide.  It was then the wind
went down, and the great and awful silence oppressed her.  There
was scarcely a ripple against the furrowed sides of the great trunk
on which she rested, and around her all was black gloom and quiet.
She spoke to the baby just to hear herself speak, and to know that
she had not lost her voice.  She thought then--it was queer, but
she could not help thinking it--how awful must have been the night
when the great ship swung over the Asiatic peak, and the sounds of
creation were blotted out from the world.  She thought, too, of
mariners clinging to spars, and of poor women who were lashed to
rafts, and beaten to death by the cruel sea.  She tried to thank
God that she was thus spared, and lifted her eyes from the baby,
who had fallen into a fretful sleep.  Suddenly, away to the
southward, a great light lifted itself out of the gloom, and
flashed and flickered, and flickered and flashed again.  Her heart
fluttered quickly against the baby's cold cheek.  It was the
lighthouse at the entrance of the bay.  As she was yet wondering,
the tree suddenly rolled a little, dragged a little, and then
seemed to lie quiet and still.  She put out her hand and the
current gurgled against it.  The tree was aground, and, by the
position of the light and the noise of the surf, aground upon the
Dedlow Marsh.

Had it not been for her baby, who was ailing and croupy, had it not
been for the sudden drying up of that sensitive fountain, she would
have felt safe and relieved.  Perhaps it was this which tended to
make all her impressions mournful and gloomy.  As the tide rapidly
fell, a great flock of black brent fluttered by her, screaming and
crying.  Then the plover flew up and piped mournfully as they
wheeled around the trunk, and at last fearlessly lit upon it like a
gray cloud.  Then the heron flew over and around her, shrieking and
protesting, and at last dropped its gaunt legs only a few yards
from her.  But, strangest of all, a pretty white bird, larger than
a dove--like a pelican, but not a pelican--circled around and
around her.  At last it lit upon a rootlet of the tree, quite over
her shoulder.  She put out her hand and stroked its beautiful white
neck, and it never appeared to move.  It stayed there so long that
she thought she would lift up the baby to see it, and try to
attract her attention.  But when she did so, the child was so
chilled and cold, and had such a blue look under the little lashes
which it didn't raise at all, that she screamed aloud, and the bird
flew away, and she fainted.

Well, that was the worst of it, and perhaps it was not so much,
after all, to any but herself.  For when she recovered her senses
it was bright sunlight, and dead low water.  There was a confused
noise of guttural voices about her, and an old squaw, singing an
Indian "hushaby," and rocking herself from side to side before a
fire built on the marsh, before which she, the recovered wife and
mother, lay weak and weary.  Her first thought was for her baby,
and she was about to speak, when a young squaw, who must have been
a mother herself, fathomed her thought and brought her the
"mowitch," pale but living, in such a queer little willow cradle
all bound up, just like the squaw's own young one, that she laughed
and cried together, and the young squaw and the old squaw showed
their big white teeth and glinted their black eyes and said,
"Plenty get well, skeena mowitch," "wagee man come plenty soon,"
and she could have kissed their brown faces in her joy.  And then
she found that they had been gathering berries on the marsh in
their queer, comical baskets, and saw the skirt of her gown
fluttering on the tree from afar, and the old squaw couldn't resist
the temptation of procuring a new garment, and came down and
discovered the "wagee" woman and child.  And of course she gave the
garment to the old squaw, as you may imagine, and when HE came at
last and rushed up to her, looking about ten years older in his
anxiety, she felt so faint again that they had to carry her to the
canoe.  For, you see, he knew nothing about the flood until he met
the Indians at Utopia, and knew by the signs that the poor woman
was his wife.  And at the next high tide he towed the tree away
back home, although it wasn't worth the trouble, and built another
house, using the old tree for the foundation and props, and called
it after her, "Mary's Ark!"  But you may guess the next house was
built above high-water mark.  And that's all.

Not much, perhaps, considering the malevolent capacity of the
Dedlow Marsh.  But you must tramp over it at low water, or paddle
over it at high tide, or get lost upon it once or twice in the fog,
as I have, to understand properly Mary's adventure, or to
appreciate duly the blessings of living beyond High-Water Mark.



A LONELY RIDE


As I stepped into the Slumgullion stage I saw that it was a dark
night, a lonely road, and that I was the only passenger.  Let me
assure the reader that I have no ulterior design in making this
assertion.  A long course of light reading has forewarned me what
every experienced intelligence must confidently look for from such
a statement.  The storyteller who willfully tempts Fate by such
obvious beginnings; who is to the expectant reader in danger of
being robbed or half-murdered, or frightened by an escaped lunatic,
or introduced to his ladylove for the first time, deserves to be
detected.  I am relieved to say that none of these things occurred
to me.  The road from Wingdam to Slumgullion knew no other banditti
than the regularly licensed hotelkeepers; lunatics had not yet
reached such depth of imbecility as to ride of their own free will
in California stages; and my Laura, amiable and long-suffering as
she always is, could not, I fear, have borne up against these
depressing circumstances long enough to have made the slightest
impression on me.

I stood with my shawl and carpetbag in hand, gazing doubtingly on
the vehicle.  Even in the darkness the red dust of Wingdam was
visible on its roof and sides, and the red slime of Slumgullion
clung tenaciously to its wheels.  I opened the door; the stage
creaked easily, and in the gloomy abyss the swaying straps beckoned
me, like ghostly hands, to come in now and have my sufferings out
at once.

I must not omit to mention the occurrence of a circumstance which
struck me as appalling and mysterious.  A lounger on the steps of
the hotel, who I had reason to suppose was not in any way connected
with the stage company, gravely descended, and walking toward the
conveyance, tried the handle of the door, opened it, expectorated
in the carriage, and returned to the hotel with a serious demeanor.
Hardly had he resumed his position when another individual, equally
disinterested, impassively walked down the steps, proceeded to the
back of the stage, lifted it, expectorated carefully on the axle,
and returned slowly and pensively to the hotel.  A third spectator
wearily disengaged himself from one of the Ionic columns of the
portico and walked to the box, remained for a moment in serious and
expectorative contemplation of the boot, and then returned to his
column.  There was something so weird in this baptism that I grew
quite nervous.

Perhaps I was out of spirits.  A number of infinitesimal
annoyances, winding up with the resolute persistency of the clerk
at the stage office to enter my name misspelt on the waybill, had
not predisposed me to cheerfulness.  The inmates of the Eureka
House, from a social viewpoint, were not attractive.  There was the
prevailing opinion--so common to many honest people--that a serious
style of deportment and conduct toward a stranger indicates high
gentility and elevated station.  Obeying this principle, all
hilarity ceased on my entrance to supper, and general remark merged
into the safer and uncompromising chronicle of several bad cases of
diphtheria, then epidemic at Wingdam.  When I left the dining-room,
with an odd feeling that I had been supping exclusively on mustard
and tea leaves, I stopped a moment at the parlor door.  A piano,
harmoniously related to the dinner bell, tinkled responsive to a
diffident and uncertain touch.  On the white wall the shadow of an
old and sharp profile was bending over several symmetrical and
shadowy curls.  "I sez to Mariar, Mariar, sez I, 'Praise to the
face is open disgrace.'"  I heard no more.  Dreading some
susceptibility to sincere expression on the subject of female
loveliness, I walked away, checking the compliment that otherwise
might have risen unbidden to my lips, and have brought shame and
sorrow to the household.

It was with the memory of these experiences resting heavily upon me
that I stood hesitatingly before the stage door.  The driver, about
to mount, was for a moment illuminated by the open door of the
hotel.  He had the wearied look which was the distinguishing
expression of Wingdam.  Satisfied that I was properly waybilled and
receipted for, he took no further notice of me.  I looked longingly
at the box seat, but he did not respond to the appeal.  I flung my
carpetbag into the chasm, dived recklessly after it, and--before I
was fairly seated--with a great sigh, a creaking of unwilling
springs, complaining bolts, and harshly expostulating axle, we
moved away.  Rather the hotel door slipped behind, the sound of the
piano sank to rest, and the night and its shadows moved solemnly
upon us.

To say it was dark expressed but faintly the pitchy obscurity that
encompassed the vehicle.  The roadside trees were scarcely
distinguishable as deeper masses of shadow; I knew them only by the
peculiar sodden odor that from time to time sluggishly flowed in at
the open window as we rolled by.  We proceeded slowly; so leisurely
that, leaning from the carriage, I more than once detected the
fragrant sigh of some astonished cow, whose ruminating repose upon
the highway we had ruthlessly disturbed.  But in the darkness our
progress, more the guidance of some mysterious instinct than any
apparent volition of our own, gave an indefinable charm of security
to our journey that a moment's hesitation or indecision on the part
of the driver would have destroyed.

I had indulged a hope that in the empty vehicle I might obtain that
rest so often denied me in its crowded condition.  It was a weak
delusion.  When I stretched out my limbs it was only to find that
the ordinary conveniences for making several people distinctly
uncomfortable were distributed throughout my individual frame.  At
last, resting my arms on the straps, by dint of much gymnastic
effort I became sufficiently composed to be aware of a more refined
species of torture.  The springs of the stage, rising and falling
regularly, produced a rhythmical beat which began to absorb my
attention painfully.  Slowly this thumping merged into a senseless
echo of the mysterious female of the hotel parlor, and shaped
itself into this awful and benumbing axiom--"Praise-to-the-face-is-
open-disgrace.  Praise-to-the-face-is-open-disgrace."  Inequalities
of the road only quickened its utterance or drawled it to an
exasperating length.

It was of no use to consider the statement seriously.  It was of no
use to except to it indignantly.  It was of no use to recall the
many instances where praise to the face had redounded to the
everlasting honor of praiser and bepraised; of no use to dwell
sentimentally on modest genius and courage lifted up and
strengthened by open commendation; of no use to except to the
mysterious female, to picture her as rearing a thin-blooded
generation on selfish and mechanically repeated axioms--all this
failed to counteract the monotonous repetition of this sentence.
There was nothing to do but to give in--and I was about to accept
it weakly, as we too often treat other illusions of darkness and
necessity, for the time being, when I became aware of some other
annoyance that had been forcing itself upon me for the last few
moments.  How quiet the driver was!

Was there any driver?  Had I any reason to suppose that he was not
lying gagged and bound on the roadside, and the highwayman with
blackened face who did the thing so quietly driving me--whither?
The thing is perfectly feasible.  And what is this fancy now being
jolted out of me?  A story?  It's of no use to keep it back--
particularly in this abysmal vehicle, and here it comes: I am a
Marquis--a French Marquis; French, because the peerage is not so
well known, and the country is better adapted to romantic incident--
a Marquis, because the democratic reader delights in the nobility.
My name is something LIGNY.  I am coming from Paris to my country
seat at St. Germain.  It is a dark night, and I fall asleep and
tell my honest coachman, Andre, not to disturb me, and dream of an
angel.  The carriage at last stops at the chateau.  It is so dark
that when I alight I do not recognize the face of the footman who
holds the carriage door.  But what of that?--PESTE!  I am heavy
with sleep.  The same obscurity also hides the old familiar
indecencies of the statues on the terrace; but there is a door, and
it opens and shuts behind me smartly.  Then I find myself in a
trap, in the presence of the brigand who has quietly gagged poor
Andre and conducted the carriage thither.  There is nothing for me
to do, as a gallant French Marquis, but to say, "PARBLEU!" draw my
rapier, and die valorously!  I am found a week or two after outside
a deserted cabaret near the barrier, with a hole through my ruffled
linen and my pockets stripped.  No; on second thoughts, I am
rescued--rescued by the angel I have been dreaming of, who is the
assumed daughter of the brigand but the real daughter of an
intimate friend.

Looking from the window again, in the vain hope of distinguishing
the driver, I found my eyes were growing accustomed to the
darkness.  I could see the distant horizon, defined by India-inky
woods, relieving a lighter sky.  A few stars widely spaced in this
picture glimmered sadly.  I noticed again the infinite depth of
patient sorrow in their serene faces; and I hope that the vandal
who first applied the flippant "twinkle" to them may not be driven
melancholy-mad by their reproachful eyes.  I noticed again the
mystic charm of space that imparts a sense of individual solitude
to each integer of the densest constellation, involving the
smallest star with immeasurable loneliness.  Something of this calm
and solitude crept over me, and I dozed in my gloomy cavern.  When
I awoke the full moon was rising.  Seen from my window, it had an
indescribably unreal and theatrical effect.  It was the full moon
of NORMA--that remarkable celestial phenomenon which rises so
palpably to a hushed audience and a sublime andante chorus, until
the CASTA DIVA is sung--the "inconstant moon" that then and
thereafter remains fixed in the heavens as though it were a part of
the solar system inaugurated by Joshua.  Again the white-robed
Druids filed past me, again I saw that improbable mistletoe cut
from that impossible oak, and again cold chills ran down my back
with the first strain of the recitative.  The thumping springs
essayed to beat time, and the private-box-like obscurity of the
vehicle lent a cheap enchantment to the view.  But it was a vast
improvement upon my past experience, and I hugged the fond
delusion.

My fears for the driver were dissipated with the rising moon.  A
familiar sound had assured me of his presence in the full
possession of at least one of his most important functions.
Frequent and full expectoration convinced me that his lips were as
yet not sealed by the gag of highwaymen, and soothed my anxious
ear.  With this load lifted from my mind, and assisted by the mild
presence of Diana, who left, as when she visited Endymion, much of
her splendor outside my cavern--I looked around the empty vehicle.
On the forward seat lay a woman's hairpin.  I picked it up with an
interest that, however, soon abated.  There was no scent of the
roses to cling to it still, not even of hair oil.  No bend or twist
in its rigid angles betrayed any trait of its wearer's character.
I tried to think that it might have been "Mariar's."  I tried to
imagine that, confining the symmetrical curls of that girl, it
might have heard the soft compliments whispered in her ears which
provoked the wrath of the aged female.  But in vain.  It was
reticent and unswerving in its upright fidelity, and at last
slipped listlessly through my fingers.

I had dozed repeatedly--waked on the threshold of oblivion by
contact with some of the angles of the coach, and feeling that I
was unconsciously assuming, in imitation of a humble insect of my
childish recollection, that spherical shape which could best resist
those impressions, when I perceived that the moon, riding high in
the heavens, had begun to separate the formless masses of the
shadowy landscape.  Trees isolated, in clumps and assemblages,
changed places before my window.  The sharp outlines of the distant
hills came back, as in daylight, but little softened in the dry,
cold, dewless air of a California summer night.  I was wondering
how late it was, and thinking that if the horses of the night
traveled as slowly as the team before us, Faustus might have been
spared his agonizing prayer, when a sudden spasm of activity
attacked my driver.  A succession of whip-snappings, like a pack of
Chinese crackers, broke from the box before me.  The stage leaped
forward, and when I could pick myself from under the seat, a long
white building had in some mysterious way rolled before my window.
It must be Slumgullion!  As I descended from the stage I addressed
the driver:

"I thought you changed horses on the road?"

"So we did.  Two hours ago."

"That's odd.  I didn't notice it."

"Must have been asleep, sir.  Hope you had a pleasant nap.  Bully
place for a nice quiet snooze--empty stage, sir!"



THE MAN OF NO ACCOUNT


His name was Fagg--David Fagg.  He came to California in '52 with
us, in the SKYSCRAPER.  I don't think he did it in an adventurous
way.  He probably had no other place to go to.  When a knot of us
young fellows would recite what splendid opportunities we resigned
to go, and how sorry our friends were to have us leave, and show
daguerreotypes and locks of hair, and talk of Mary and Susan, the
man of no account used to sit by and listen with a pained,
mortified expression on his plain face, and say nothing.  I think
he had nothing to say.  He had no associates except when we
patronized him; and, in point of fact, he was a good deal of sport
to us.  He was always seasick whenever we had a capful of wind.  He
never got his sea legs on, either.  And I never shall forget how we
all laughed when Rattler took him the piece of pork on a string,
and--  But you know that time-honored joke.  And then we had such a
splendid lark with him.  Miss Fanny Twinkler couldn't bear the
sight of him, and we used to make Fagg think that she had taken a
fancy to him, and send him little delicacies and books from the
cabin.  You ought to have witnessed the rich scene that took place
when he came up, stammering and very sick, to thank her!  Didn't
she flash up grandly and beautifully and scornfully?  So like
"Medora," Rattler said--Rattler knew Byron by heart--and wasn't old
Fagg awfully cut up?  But he got over it, and when Rattler fell
sick at Valparaiso, old Fagg used to nurse him.  You see he was a
good sort of fellow, but he lacked manliness and spirit.

He had absolutely no idea of poetry.  I've seen him sit stolidly
by, mending his old clothes, when Rattler delivered that stirring
apostrophe of Byron's to the ocean.  He asked Rattler once, quite
seriously, if he thought Byron was ever seasick.  I don't remember
Rattler's reply, but I know we all laughed very much, and I have no
doubt it was something good for Rattler was smart.

When the SKYSCRAPER arrived at San Francisco we had a grand "feed."
We agreed to meet every year and perpetuate the occasion.  Of
course we didn't invite Fagg.  Fagg was a steerage passenger, and
it was necessary, you see, now we were ashore, to exercise a little
discretion.  But Old Fagg, as we called him--he was only about
twenty-five years old, by the way--was the source of immense
amusement to us that day.  It appeared that he had conceived the
idea that he could walk to Sacramento, and actually started off
afoot.  We had a good time, and shook hands with one another all
around, and so parted.  Ah me! only eight years ago, and yet some
of those hands then clasped in amity have been clenched at each
other, or have dipped furtively in one another's pockets.  I know
that we didn't dine together the next year, because young Barker
swore he wouldn't put his feet under the same mahogany with such a
very contemptible scoundrel as that Mixer; and Nibbles, who
borrowed money at Valparaiso of young Stubbs, who was then a waiter
in a restaurant, didn't like to meet such people.

When I bought a number of shares in the Coyote Tunnel at
Mugginsville, in '54, I thought I'd take a run up there and see it.
I stopped at the Empire Hotel, and after dinner I got a horse and
rode round the town and out to the claim.  One of those individuals
whom newspaper correspondents call "our intelligent informant," and
to whom in all small communities the right of answering questions
is tacitly yielded, was quietly pointed out to me.  Habit had
enabled him to work and talk at the same time, and he never
pretermitted either.  He gave me a history of the claim, and added:
"You see, stranger," (he addressed the bank before him) "gold is
sure to come out'er that theer claim, (he put in a comma with his
pick) but the old pro-pri-e-tor (he wriggled out the word and the
point of his pick) warn't of much account (a long stroke of the
pick for a period).  He was green, and let the boys about here jump
him"--and the rest of his sentence was confided to his hat, which
he had removed to wipe his manly brow with his red bandanna.

I asked him who was the original proprietor.

"His name war Fagg."

I went to see him.  He looked a little older and plainer.  He had
worked hard, he said, and was getting on "so-so."  I took quite a
liking to him and patronized him to some extent.  Whether I did so
because I was beginning to have a distrust for such fellows as
Rattler and Mixer is not necessary for me to state.

You remember how the Coyote Tunnel went in, and how awfully we
shareholders were done!  Well, the next thing I heard was that
Rattler, who was one of the heaviest shareholders, was up at
Mugginsville keeping bar for the proprietor of the Mugginsville
Hotel, and that old Fagg had struck it rich, and didn't know what
to do with his money.  All this was told me by Mixer, who had been
there, settling up matters, and likewise that Fagg was sweet upon
the daughter of the proprietor of the aforesaid hotel.  And so by
hearsay and letter I eventually gathered that old Robins, the hotel
man, was trying to get up a match between Nellie Robins and Fagg.
Nellie was a pretty, plump, and foolish little thing, and would do
just as her father wished.  I thought it would be a good thing for
Fagg if he should marry and settle down; that as a married man he
might be of some account.  So I ran up to Mugginsville one day to
look after things.

It did me an immense deal of good to make Rattler mix my drinks for
me--Rattler! the gay, brilliant, and unconquerable Rattler, who had
tried to snub me two years ago.  I talked to him about old Fagg and
Nellie, particularly as I thought the subject was distasteful.  He
never liked Fagg, and he was sure, he said, that Nellie didn't.
Did Nellie like anybody else?  He turned around to the mirror
behind the bar and brushed up his hair!  I understood the conceited
wretch.  I thought I'd put Fagg on his guard and get him to hurry
up matters.  I had a long talk with him.  You could see by the way
the poor fellow acted that he was badly stuck.  He sighed, and
promised to pluck up courage to hurry matters to a crisis.  Nellie
was a good girl, and I think had a sort of quiet respect for old
Fagg's unobtrusiveness.  But her fancy was already taken captive by
Rattler's superficial qualities, which were obvious and pleasing.
I don't think Nellie was any worse than you or I.  We are more apt
to take acquaintances at their apparent value than their intrinsic
worth.  It's less trouble, and, except when we want to trust them,
quite as convenient.  The difficulty with women is that their
feelings are apt to get interested sooner than ours, and then, you
know, reasoning is out of the question.  This is what old Fagg
would have known had he been of any account.  But he wasn't.  So
much the worse for him.

It was a few months afterward and I was sitting in my office when
in walked old Fagg.  I was surprised to see him down, but we talked
over the current topics in that mechanical manner of people who
know that they have something else to say, but are obliged to get
at it in that formal way.  After an interval Fagg in his natural
manner said:

"I'm going home!"

"Going home?"

"Yes--that is, I think I'll take a trip to the Atlantic States.  I
came to see you, as you know I have some little property, and I
have executed a power of attorney for you to manage my affairs.  I
have some papers I'd like to leave with you.  Will you take charge
of them?"

"Yes," I said.  "But what of Nellie?"

His face fell.  He tried to smile, and the combination resulted in
one of the most startling and grotesque effects I ever beheld.  At
length he said:

"I shall not marry Nellie--that is"--he seemed to apologize
internally for the positive form of expression--"I think that I had
better not."

"David Fagg," I said with sudden severity, "you're of no account!"

To my astonishment his face brightened.  "Yes," said he, "that's
it!--I'm of no account!  But I always knew it.  You see I thought
Rattler loved that girl as well as I did, and I knew she liked him
better than she did me, and would be happier I dare say with him.
But then I knew that old Robins would have preferred me to him, as
I was better off--and the girl would do as he said--and, you see, I
thought I was kinder in the way--and so I left.  But," he
continued, as I was about to interrupt him, "for fear the old man
might object to Rattler, I've lent him enough to set him up in
business for himself in Dogtown.  A pushing, active, brilliant
fellow, you know, like Rattler can get along, and will soon be in
his old position again--and you needn't be hard on him, you know,
if he doesn't.  Good-by."

I was too much disgusted with his treatment of that Rattler to be
at all amiable, but as his business was profitable, I promised to
attend to it, and he left.  A few weeks passed.  The return steamer
arrived, and a terrible incident occupied the papers for days
afterward.  People in all parts of the State conned eagerly the
details of an awful shipwreck, and those who had friends aboard
went away by themselves, and read the long list of the lost under
their breath.  I read of the gifted, the gallant, the noble, and
loved ones who had perished, and among them I think I was the first
to read the name of David Fagg.  For the "man of no account" had
"gone home!"



MLISS


CHAPTER I

Just where the Sierra Nevada begins to subside in gentler
undulations, and the rivers grow less rapid and yellow, on the side
of a great red mountain, stands "Smith's Pocket."  Seen from the
red road at sunset, in the red light and the red dust, its white
houses look like the outcroppings of quartz on the mountainside.
The red stage topped with red-shirted passengers is lost to view
half a dozen times in the tortuous descent, turning up unexpectedly
in out-of-the-way places, and vanishing altogether within a hundred
yards of the town.  It is probably owing to this sudden twist in
the road that the advent of a stranger at Smith's Pocket is usually
attended with a peculiar circumstance.  Dismounting from the
vehicle at the stage office, the too-confident traveler is apt to
walk straight out of town under the impression that it lies in
quite another direction.  It is related that one of the tunnel men,
two miles from town, met one of these self-reliant passengers with
a carpetbag, umbrella, Harper's Magazine, and other evidences of
"Civilization and Refinement," plodding along over the road he had
just ridden, vainly endeavoring to find the settlement of Smith's
Pocket.

An observant traveler might have found some compensation for his
disappointment in the weird aspect of that vicinity.  There were
huge fissures on the hillside, and displacements of the red soil,
resembling more the chaos of some primary elemental upheaval than
the work of man; while halfway down, a long flume straddled its
narrow body and disproportionate legs over the chasm, like an
enormous fossil of some forgotten antediluvian.  At every step
smaller ditches crossed the road, hiding in their sallow depths
unlovely streams that crept away to a clandestine union with the
great yellow torrent below, and here and there were the ruins of
some cabin with the chimney alone left intact and the hearthstone
open to the skies.

The settlement of Smith's Pocket owed its origin to the finding of
a "pocket" on its site by a veritable Smith.  Five thousand dollars
were taken out of it in one half-hour by Smith.  Three thousand
dollars were expended by Smith and others in erecting a flume and
in tunneling.  And then Smith's Pocket was found to be only a
pocket, and subject like other pockets to depletion.  Although
Smith pierced the bowels of the great red mountain, that five
thousand dollars was the first and last return of his labor.  The
mountain grew reticent of its golden secrets, and the flume
steadily ebbed away the remainder of Smith's fortune.  Then Smith
went into quartz-mining; then into quartz-milling; then into
hydraulics and ditching, and then by easy degrees into
saloonkeeping.  Presently it was whispered that Smith was drinking
a great deal; then it was known that Smith was a habitual drunkard,
and then people began to think, as they are apt to, that he had
never been anything else.  But the settlement of Smith's Pocket,
like that of most discoveries, was happily not dependent on the
fortune of its pioneer, and other parties projected tunnels and
found pockets.  So Smith's Pocket became a settlement, with its two
fancy stores, its two hotels, its one express office, and its two
first families.  Occasionally its one long straggling street was
overawed by the assumption of the latest San Francisco fashions,
imported per express, exclusively to the first families; making
outraged Nature, in the ragged outline of her furrowed surface,
look still more homely, and putting personal insult on that greater
portion of the population to whom the Sabbath, with a change of
linen, brought merely the necessity of cleanliness without the
luxury of adornment.  Then there was a Methodist Church, and hard
by a Monte Bank, and a little beyond, on the mountainside, a
graveyard; and then a little schoolhouse.

"The Master," as he was known to his little flock, sat alone one
night in the schoolhouse, with some open copybooks before him,
carefully making those bold and full characters which are supposed
to combine the extremes of chirographical and moral excellence, and
had got as far as "Riches are deceitful," and was elaborating the
noun with an insincerity of flourish that was quite in the spirit
of his text, when he heard a gentle tapping.  The woodpeckers had
been busy about the roof during the day, and the noise did not
disturb his work.  But the opening of the door, and the tapping
continuing from the inside, caused him to look up.  He was slightly
startled by the figure of a young girl, dirty and shabbily clad.
Still, her great black eyes, her coarse, uncombed, lusterless black
hair falling over her sunburned face, her red arms and feet
streaked with the red soil, were all familiar to him.  It was
Melissa Smith--Smith's motherless child.

"What can she want here?" thought the master.  Everybody knew
"Mliss," as she was called, throughout the length and height of Red
Mountain.  Everybody knew her as an incorrigible girl.  Her fierce,
ungovernable disposition, her mad freaks and lawless character,
were in their way as proverbial as the story of her father's
weaknesses, and as philosophically accepted by the townsfolk.  She
wrangled with and fought the schoolboys with keener invective and
quite as powerful arm.  She followed the trails with a woodman's
craft, and the master had met her before, miles away, shoeless,
stockingless, and bareheaded on the mountain road.  The miners'
camps along the stream supplied her with subsistence during these
voluntary pilgrimages, in freely offered alms.  Not but that a
larger protection had been previously extended to Mliss.  The Rev.
Joshua McSnagley, "stated" preacher, had placed her in the hotel as
servant, by way of preliminary refinement, and had introduced her
to his scholars at Sunday school.  But she threw plates
occasionally at the landlord, and quickly retorted to the cheap
witticisms of the guests, and created in the Sabbath school a
sensation that was so inimical to the orthodox dullness and
placidity of that institution that, with a decent regard for the
starched frocks and unblemished morals of the two pink-and-white-
faced children of the first families, the reverend gentleman had
her ignominiously expelled.  Such were the antecedents, and such
the character of Mliss as she stood before the master.  It was
shown in the ragged dress, the unkempt hair, and bleeding feet, and
asked his pity.  It flashed from her black, fearless eyes, and
commanded his respect.

"I come here tonight," she said rapidly and boldly, keeping her
hard glance on his, "because I knew you was alone.  I wouldn't come
here when them gals was here.  I hate 'em and they hates me.
That's why.  You keep school, don't you?  I want to be teached!"

If to the shabbiness of her apparel and uncomeliness of her tangled
hair and dirty face she had added the humility of tears, the master
would have extended to her the usual moiety of pity, and nothing
more.  But with the natural, though illogical, instincts of his
species, her boldness awakened in him something of that respect
which all original natures pay unconsciously to one another in any
grade.  And he gazed at her the more fixedly as she went on still
rapidly, her hand on that door latch and her eyes on his:

"My name's Mliss--Mliss Smith!  You can bet your life on that.  My
father's Old Smith--Old Bummer Smith--that's what's the matter with
him.  Mliss Smith--and I'm coming to school!"

"Well?" said the master.

Accustomed to be thwarted and opposed, often wantonly and cruelly,
for no other purpose than to excite the violent impulses of her
nature, the master's phlegm evidently took her by surprise.  She
stopped; she began to twist a lock of her hair between her fingers;
and the rigid line of upper lip, drawn over the wicked little
teeth, relaxed and quivered slightly.  Then her eyes dropped, and
something like a blush struggled up to her cheek and tried to
assert itself through the splashes of redder soil, and the sunburn
of years.  Suddenly she threw herself forward, calling on God to
strike her dead, and fell quite weak and helpless, with her face on
the master's desk, crying and sobbing as if her heart would break.

The master lifted her gently and waited for the paroxysm to pass.
When, with face still averted, she was repeating between her sobs
the MEA CULPA of childish penitence--that "she'd be good, she
didn't mean to," etc., it came to him to ask her why she had left
Sabbath school.

Why had she left the Sabbath school?--why?  Oh, yes.  What did he
(McSnagley) want to tell her she was wicked for?  What did he tell
her that God hated her for?  If God hated her, what did she want to
go to Sabbath school for?  SHE didn't want to be "beholden" to
anybody who hated her.

Had she told McSnagley this?

Yes, she had.

The master laughed.  It was a hearty laugh, and echoed so oddly in
the little schoolhouse, and seemed so inconsistent and discordant
with the sighing of the pines without, that he shortly corrected
himself with a sigh.  The sigh was quite as sincere in its way,
however, and after a moment of serious silence he asked about her
father.

Her father?  What father?  Whose father?  What had he ever done for
her?  Why did the girls hate her?  Come now! what made the folks
say, "Old Bummer Smith's Mliss!" when she passed?  Yes; oh yes.
She wished he was dead--she was dead--everybody was dead; and her
sobs broke forth anew.

The master then, leaning over her, told her as well as he could
what you or I might have said after hearing such unnatural theories
from childish lips; only bearing in mind perhaps better than you or
I the unnatural facts of her ragged dress, her bleeding feet, and
the omnipresent shadow of her drunken father.  Then, raising her to
her feet, he wrapped his shawl around her, and, bidding her come
early in the morning, he walked with her down the road.  There he
bade her "good night."  The moon shone brightly on the narrow path
before them.  He stood and watched the bent little figure as it
staggered down the road, and waited until it had passed the little
graveyard and reached the curve of the hill, where it turned and
stood for a moment, a mere atom of suffering outlined against the
far-off patient stars.  Then he went back to his work.  But the
lines of the copybook thereafter faded into long parallels of
never-ending road, over which childish figures seemed to pass
sobbing and crying into the night.  Then, the little schoolhouse
seeming lonelier than before, he shut the door and went home.

The next morning Mliss came to school.  Her face had been washed,
and her coarse black hair bore evidence of recent struggles with
the comb, in which both had evidently suffered.  The old defiant
look shone occasionally in her eyes, but her manner was tamer and
more subdued.  Then began a series of little trials and self-
sacrifices, in which master and pupil bore an equal part, and which
increased the confidence and sympathy between them.  Although
obedient under the master's eye, at times during recess, if
thwarted or stung by a fancied slight, Mliss would rage in
ungovernable fury, and many a palpitating young savage, finding
himself matched with his own weapons of torment, would seek the
master with torn jacket and scratched face and complaints of the
dreadful Mliss.  There was a serious division among the townspeople
on the subject, some threatening to withdraw their children from
such evil companionship, and others as warmly upholding the course
of the master in his work of reclamation.  Meanwhile, with a steady
persistence that seemed quite astonishing to him on looking back
afterward, the master drew Mliss gradually out of the shadow of her
past life, as though it were but her natural progress down the
narrow path on which he had set her feet the moonlit night of their
first meeting.  Remembering the experience of the evangelical
McSnagley, he carefully avoided that Rock of Ages on which that
unskillful pilot had shipwrecked her young faith.  But if, in the
course of her reading, she chanced to stumble upon those few words
which have lifted such as she above the level of the older, the
wiser, and the more prudent--if she learned something of a faith
that is symbolized by suffering, and the old light softened in her
eyes, it did not take the shape of a lesson.  A few of the plainer
people had made up a little sum by which the ragged Mliss was
enabled to assume the garments of respect and civilization; and
often a rough shake of the hand, and words of homely commendation
from a red-shirted and burly figure, sent a glow to the cheek of
the young master, and set him to thinking if it was altogether
deserved.

Three months had passed from the time of their first meeting, and
the master was sitting late one evening over the moral and
sententious copies, when there came a tap at the door and again
Mliss stood before him.  She was neatly clad and clean-faced, and
there was nothing perhaps but the long black hair and bright black
eyes to remind him of his former apparition.  "Are you busy?" she
asked.  "Can you come with me?"--and on his signifying his
readiness, in her old willful way she said, "Come, then, quick!"

They passed out of the door together and into the dark road.  As
they entered the town the master asked her whither she was going.
She replied, "To see my father."

It was the first time he had heard her call him by that filial
title, or indeed anything more than "Old Smith" or the "Old Man."
It was the first time in three months that she had spoken of him at
all, and the master knew she had kept resolutely aloof from him
since her great change.  Satisfied from her manner that it was
fruitless to question her purpose, he passively followed.  In out-
of-the-way places, low groggeries, restaurants, and saloons; in
gambling hells and dance houses, the master, preceded by Mliss,
came and went.  In the reeking smoke and blasphemous outcries of
low dens, the child, holding the master's hand, stood and anxiously
gazed, seemingly unconscious of all in the one absorbing nature of
her pursuit.  Some of the revelers, recognizing Mliss, called to
the child to sing and dance for them, and would have forced liquor
upon her but for the interference of the master.  Others,
recognizing him mutely, made way for them to pass.  So an hour
slipped by.  Then the child whispered in his ear that there was a
cabin on the other side of the creek crossed by the long flume,
where she thought he still might be.  Thither they crossed--a
toilsome half-hour's walk--but in vain.  They were returning by the
ditch at the abutment of the flume, gazing at the lights of the
town on the opposite bank, when, suddenly, sharply, a quick report
rang out on the clear night air.  The echoes caught it, and carried
it round and round Red Mountain, and set the dogs to barking all
along the streams.  Lights seemed to dance and move quickly on the
outskirts of the town for a few moments, the stream rippled quite
audibly beside them, a few stones loosened themselves from the
hillside and splashed into the stream, a heavy wind seemed to surge
the branches of the funereal pines, and then the silence seemed to
fall thicker, heavier, and deadlier.  The master turned toward
Mliss with an unconscious gesture of protection, but the child had
gone.  Oppressed by a strange fear, he ran quickly down the trail
to the river's bed, and, jumping from boulder to boulder, reached
the base of Red Mountain and the outskirts of the village.  Midway
of the crossing he looked up and held his breath in awe.  For high
above him on the narrow flume he saw the fluttering little figure
of his late companion crossing swiftly in the darkness.

He climbed the bank, and, guided by a few lights moving about a
central point on the mountain, soon found himself breathless among
a crowd of awe-stricken and sorrowful men.  Out from among them the
child appeared, and, taking the master's hand, led him silently
before what seemed a ragged hole in the mountain.  Her face was
quite white, but her excited manner gone, and her look that of one
to whom some long-expected event had at last happened--an
expression that to the master in his bewilderment seemed almost
like relief.  The walls of the cavern were partly propped by
decaying timbers.  The child pointed to what appeared to be some
ragged, castoff clothes left in the hole by the late occupant.  The
master approached nearer with his flaming dip, and bent over them.
It was Smith, already cold, with a pistol in his hand and a bullet
in his heart, lying beside his empty pocket.


CHAPTER II


The opinion which McSnagley expressed in reference to a "change of
heart" supposed to be experienced by Mliss was more forcibly
described in the gulches and tunnels.  It was thought there that
Mliss had "struck a good lead."  So when there was a new grave
added to the little enclosure, and at the expense of the master a
little board and inscription put above it, the RED MOUNTAIN BANNER
came out quite handsomely, and did the fair thing to the memory of
one of "our oldest Pioneers," alluding gracefully to that "bane of
noble intellects," and otherwise genteelly shelving our dear
brother with the past.  "He leaves an only child to mourn his
loss," says the BANNER, "who is now an exemplary scholar, thanks to
the efforts of the Rev. Mr. McSnagley."  The Rev. McSnagley, in
fact, made a strong point of Mliss's conversion, and, indirectly
attributing to the unfortunate child the suicide of her father,
made affecting allusions in Sunday school to the beneficial effects
of the "silent tomb," and in this cheerful contemplation drove most
of the children into speechless horror, and caused the pink-and-
white scions of the first families to howl dismally and refuse to
be comforted.

The long dry summer came.  As each fierce day burned itself out in
little whiffs of pearl-gray smoke on the mountain summits, and the
upspringing breeze scattered its red embers over the landscape, the
green wave which in early spring upheaved above Smith's grave grew
sere and dry and hard.  In those days the master, strolling in the
little churchyard of a Sabbath afternoon, was sometimes surprised
to find a few wild flowers plucked from the damp pine forests
scattered there, and oftener rude wreaths hung upon the little pine
cross.  Most of these wreaths were formed of a sweet-scented grass,
which the children loved to keep in their desks, intertwined with
the plumes of the buckeye, the syringa, and the wood anemone, and
here and there the master noticed the dark-blue cowl of the
monkshood, or deadly aconite.  There was something in the odd
association of this noxious plant with these memorials which
occasioned a painful sensation to the master deeper than his
esthetic sense.  One day, during a long walk, in crossing a wooded
ridge he came upon Mliss in the heart of the forest, perched upon a
prostrate pine on a fantastic throne formed by the hanging plumes
of lifeless branches, her lap full of grasses and pine burrs, and
crooning to herself one of the Negro melodies of her younger life.
Recognizing him at a distance, she made room for him on her
elevated throne, and with a grave assumption of hospitality and
patronage that would have been ridiculous had it not been so
terribly earnest, she fed him with pine nuts and crab apples.  The
master took that opportunity to point out to her the noxious and
deadly qualities of the monkshood, whose dark blossoms he saw in
her lap, and extorted from her a promise not to meddle with it as
long as she remained his pupil.  This done--as the master had
tested her integrity before--he rested satisfied, and the strange
feeling which had overcome him on seeing them died away.

Of the homes that were offered Mliss when her conversion became
known, the master preferred that of Mrs. Morpher, a womanly and
kindhearted specimen of Southwestern efflorescence, known in her
maidenhood as the "Per-rairie Rose."  Being one of those who
contend resolutely against their own natures, Mrs. Morpher, by a
long series of self-sacrifices and struggles, had at last
subjugated her naturally careless disposition to principles of
"order," which she considered, in common with Mr. Pope, as
"Heaven's first law."  But she could not entirely govern the orbits
of her satellites, however regular her own movements, and even her
own "Jeemes" sometimes collided with her.  Again her old nature
asserted itself in her children.  Lycurgus dipped into the cupboard
"between meals," and Aristides came home from school without shoes,
leaving those important articles on the threshold, for the delight
of a barefooted walk down the ditches.  Octavia and Cassandra were
"keerless" of their clothes.  So with but one exception, however
much the "Prairie Rose" might have trimmed and pruned and trained
her own matured luxuriance, the little shoots came up defiantly
wild and straggling.  That one exception was Clytemnestra Morpher,
aged fifteen.  She was the realization of her mother's immaculate
conception--neat, orderly, and dull.

It was an amiable weakness of Mrs. Morpher to imagine that "Clytie"
was a consolation and model for Mliss.  Following this fallacy,
Mrs. Morpher threw Clytie at the head of Mliss when she was "bad,"
and set her up before the child for adoration in her penitential
moments.  It was not, therefore, surprising to the master to hear
that Clytie was coming to school, obviously as a favor to the
master and as an example for Mliss and others.  For "Clytie" was
quite a young lady.  Inheriting her mother's physical
peculiarities, and in obedience to the climatic laws of the Red
Mountain region, she was an early bloomer.  The youth of Smith's
Pocket, to whom this kind of flower was rare, sighed for her in
April and languished in May.  Enamored swains haunted the
schoolhouse at the hour of dismissal.  A few were jealous of the
master.

Perhaps it was this latter circumstance that opened the master's
eyes to another.  He could not help noticing that Clytie was
romantic; that in school she required a great deal of attention;
that her pens were uniformly bad and wanted fixing; that she
usually accompanied the request with a certain expectation in her
eye that was somewhat disproportionate to the quality of service
she verbally required; that she sometimes allowed the curves of a
round, plump white arm to rest on his when he was writing her
copies; that she always blushed and flung back her blond curls when
she did so.  I don't remember whether I have stated that the master
was a young man--it's of little consequence, however; he had been
severely educated in the school in which Clytie was taking her
first lesson, and, on the whole, withstood the flexible curves and
factitious glance like the fine young Spartan that he was.  Perhaps
an insufficient quality of food may have tended to this asceticism.
He generally avoided Clytie; but one evening, when she returned to
the schoolhouse after something she had forgotten, and did not find
it until the master walked home with her, I hear that he endeavored
to make himself particularly agreeable --partly from the fact, I
imagine, that his conduct was adding gall and bitterness to the
already overcharged hearts of Clytemnestra's admirers.

The morning after this affecting episode Mliss did not come to
school.  Noon came, but not Mliss.  Questioning Clytie on the
subject, it appeared that they had left the school together, but
the willful Mliss had taken another road.  The afternoon brought
her not.  In the evening he called on Mrs. Morpher, whose motherly
heart was really alarmed.  Mr. Morpher had spent all day in search
of her, without discovering a trace that might lead to her
discovery.  Aristides was summoned as a probable accomplice, but
that equitable infant succeeded in impressing the household with
his innocence.  Mrs. Morpher entertained a vivid impression that
the child would yet be found drowned in a ditch, or, what was
almost as terrible, muddied and soiled beyond the redemption of
soap and water.  Sick at heart, the master returned to the
schoolhouse.  As he lit his lamp and seated himself at his desk, he
found a note lying before him addressed to himself, in Mliss's
handwriting.  It seemed to be written on a leaf torn from some old
memorandum book, and, to prevent sacrilegious trifling, had been
sealed with six broken wafers.  Opening it almost tenderly, the
master read as follows:


RESPECTED SIR--When you read this, I am run away.  Never to come
back.  NEVER, NEVER, NEVER.  You can give my beeds to Mary
Jennings, and my Amerika's Pride [a highly colored lithograph from
a tobacco-box] to Sally Flanders.  But don't you give anything to
Clytie Morpher.  Don't you dare to.  Do you know what my opinion is
of her, it is this, she is perfekly disgustin.  That is all and no
more at present from

Yours respectfully,

MELISSA SMITH.


The master sat pondering on this strange epistle till the moon
lifted its bright face above the distant hills, and illuminated the
trail that led to the schoolhouse, beaten quite hard with the
coming and going of little feet.  Then, more satisfied in mind, he
tore the missive into fragments and scattered them along the road.

At sunrise the next morning he was picking his way through the
palmlike fern and thick underbrush of the pine forest, starting the
hare from its form, and awakening a querulous protest from a few
dissipated crows, who had evidently been making a night of it, and
so came to the wooded ridge where he had once found Mliss.  There
he found the prostrate pine and tasseled branches, but the throne
was vacant.  As he drew nearer, what might have been some
frightened animal started through the crackling limbs.  It ran up
the tossed arms of the fallen monarch and sheltered itself in some
friendly foliage.  The master, reaching the old seat, found the
nest still warm; looking up in the intertwining branches, he met
the black eyes of the errant Mliss.  They gazed at each other
without speaking.  She was first to break the silence.

"What do you want?" she asked curtly.

The master had decided on a course of action.  "I want some crab
apples," he said humbly.

"Sha'n't have 'em! go away.  Why don't you get 'em of
Clytemnerestera?"  (It seemed to be a relief to Mliss to express
her contempt in additional syllables to that classical young
woman's already long-drawn title.)  "O you wicked thing!"

"I am hungry, Lissy.  I have eaten nothing since dinner yesterday.
I am famished!" and the young man in a state of remarkable
exhaustion leaned against the tree.

Melissa's heart was touched.  In the bitter days of her gypsy life
she had known the sensation he so artfully simulated.  Overcome by
his heartbroken tone, but not entirely divested of suspicion, she
said:

"Dig under the tree near the roots, and you'll find lots; but mind
you don't tell," for Mliss had HER hoards as well as the rats and
squirrels.

But the master, of course, was unable to find them; the effects of
hunger probably blinding his senses.  Mliss grew uneasy.  At length
she peered at him through the leaves in an elfish way, and
questioned:

"If I come down and give you some, you'll promise you won't touch
me?"

The master promised.

"Hope you'll die if you do!"

The master accepted instant dissolution as a forfeit.  Mliss slid
down the tree.  For a few moments nothing transpired but the
munching of the pine nuts.  "Do you feel better?" she asked, with
some solicitude.  The master confessed to a recuperated feeling,
and then, gravely thanking her, proceeded to retrace his steps.  As
he expected, he had not gone far before she called him.  He turned.
She was standing there quite white, with tears in her widely opened
orbs.  The master felt that the right moment had come.  Going up to
her, he took both her hands, and looking in her tearful eyes, said,
gravely, "Lissy, do you remember the first evening you came to see
me?"

Lissy remembered.

"You asked me if you might come to school, for you wanted to learn
something and be better, and I said--"

"Come," responded the child, promptly.

"What would YOU say if the master now came to you and said that he
was lonely without his little scholar, and that he wanted her to
come and teach him to be better?"

The child hung her head for a few moments in silence.  The master
waited patiently.  Tempted by the quiet, a hare ran close to the
couple, and raising her bright eyes and velvet forepaws, sat and
gazed at them.  A squirrel ran halfway down the furrowed bark of
the fallen tree, and there stopped.

"We are waiting, Lissy," said the master, in a whisper, and the
child smiled.  Stirred by a passing breeze, the treetops rocked,
and a long pencil of light stole through their interlaced boughs
full on the doubting face and irresolute little figure.  Suddenly
she took the master's hand in her quick way.  What she said was
scarcely audible, but the master, putting the black hair back from
her forehead, kissed her; and so, hand in hand, they passed out of
the damp aisles and forest odors into the open sunlit road.


CHAPTER III


Somewhat less spiteful in her intercourse with other scholars,
Mliss still retained an offensive attitude in regard to
Clytemnestra.  Perhaps the jealous element was not entirely lulled
in her passionate little breast.  Perhaps it was only that the
round curves and plump outline offered more extended pinching
surface.  But while such ebullitions were under the master's
control, her enmity occasionally took a new and irrepressible form.

The master in his first estimate of the child's character could not
conceive that she had ever possessed a doll.  But the master, like
many other professed readers of character, was safer in a
posteriori than a priori reasoning.  Mliss had a doll, but then it
was emphatically Mliss's doll--a smaller copy of herself.  Its
unhappy existence had been a secret discovered accidentally by Mrs.
Morpher.  It had been the old-time companion of Mliss's wanderings,
and bore evident marks of suffering.  Its original complexion was
long since washed away by the weather and anointed by the slime of
ditches.  It looked very much as Mliss had in days past.  Its one
gown of faded stuff was dirty and ragged, as hers had been.  Mliss
had never been known to apply to it any childish term of
endearment.  She never exhibited it in the presence of other
children.  It was put severely to bed in a hollow tree near the
schoolhouse, and only allowed exercise during Mliss's rambles.
Fulfilling a stern duty to her doll, as she would to herself, it
knew no luxuries.

Now Mrs. Morpher, obeying a commendable impulse, bought another
doll and gave it to Mliss.  The child received it gravely and
curiously.  The master on looking at it one day fancied he saw a
slight resemblance in its round red cheeks and mild blue eyes to
Clytemnestra.  It became evident before long that Mliss had also
noticed the same resemblance.  Accordingly she hammered its waxen
head on the rocks when she was alone, and sometimes dragged it with
a string round its neck to and from school.  At other times,
setting it up on her desk, she made a pincushion of its patient and
inoffensive body.  Whether this was done in revenge of what she
considered a second figurative obtrusion of Clytie's excellences
upon her, or whether she had an intuitive appreciation of the rites
of certain other heathens, and, indulging in that "fetish"
ceremony, imagined that the original of her wax model would pine
away and finally die, is a metaphysical question I shall not now
consider.

In spite of these moral vagaries, the master could not help
noticing in her different tasks the working of a quick, restless,
and vigorous perception.  She knew neither the hesitancy nor the
doubts of childhood.  Her answers in class were always slightly
dashed with audacity.  Of course she was not infallible.  But her
courage and daring in passing beyond her own depth and that of the
floundering little swimmers around her, in their minds outweighed
all errors of judgment.  Children are not better than grown people
in this respect, I fancy; and whenever the little red hand flashed
above her desk, there was a wondering silence, and even the master
was sometimes oppressed with a doubt of his own experience and
judgment.

Nevertheless, certain attributes which at first amused and
entertained his fancy began to afflict him with grave doubts.  He
could not but see that Mliss was revengeful, irreverent, and
willful.  That there was but one better quality which pertained to
her semisavage disposition--the faculty of physical fortitude and
self-sacrifice, and another, though not always an attribute of the
noble savage--Truth.  Mliss was both fearless and sincere; perhaps
in such a character the adjectives were synonymous.

The master had been doing some hard thinking on this subject, and
had arrived at that conclusion quite common to all who think
sincerely, that he was generally the slave of his own prejudices,
when he determined to call on the Rev.  McSnagley for advice.  This
decision was somewhat humiliating to his pride, as he and McSnagley
were not friends.  But he thought of Mliss, and the evening of
their first meeting; and perhaps with a pardonable superstition
that it was not chance alone that had guided her willful feet to
the schoolhouse, and perhaps with a complacent consciousness of the
rare magnanimity of the act, he choked back his dislike and went to
McSnagley.

The reverend gentleman was glad to see him.  Moreover, he observed
that the master was looking "peartish," and hoped he had got over
the "neuralgy" and "rheumatiz."  He himself had been troubled with
a dumb "ager" since last conference.  But he had learned to "rastle
and pray."

Pausing a moment to enable the master to write his certain method
of curing the dumb "ager" upon the book and volume of his brain,
Mr. McSnagley proceeded to inquire after Sister Morpher.  "She is
an adornment to ChrisTEWanity, and has a likely growin' young
family," added Mr. McSnagley; "and there's that mannerly young gal-
-so well behaved--Miss Clytie."  In fact, Clytie's perfections
seemed to affect him to such an extent that he dwelt for several
minutes upon them.  The master was doubly embarrassed.  In the
first place, there was an enforced contrast with poor Mliss in all
this praise of Clytie.  Secondly, there was something unpleasantly
confidential in his tone of speaking of Mrs. Morpher's earliest
born.  So that the master, after a few futile efforts to say
something natural, found it convenient to recall another
engagement, and left without asking the information required, but
in his after reflections somewhat unjustly giving the Rev. Mr.
McSnagley the full benefit of having refused it.

Perhaps this rebuff placed the master and pupil once more in the
close communion of old.  The child seemed to notice the change in
the master's manner, which had of late been constrained, and in one
of their long postprandial walks she stopped suddenly, and mounting
a stump, looked full in his face with big, searching eyes.  "You
ain't mad?" said she, with an interrogative shake of the black
braids.  "No."  "Nor bothered?"  "No."  "Nor hungry?"  (Hunger was
to Mliss a sickness that might attack a person at any moment.)
"No."  "Nor thinking of her?"  "Of whom, Lissy?"  "That white
girl."  (This was the latest epithet invented by Mliss, who was a
very dark brunette, to express Clytemnestra.)  "No."  "Upon your
word?"  (A substitute for "Hope you'll die!" proposed by the
master.)  "Yes."  "And sacred honor?"  "Yes."  Then Mliss gave him
a fierce little kiss, and, hopping down, fluttered off.  For two or
three days after that she condescended to appear more like other
children, and be, as she expressed it, "good."

Two years had passed since the master's advent at Smith's Pocket,
and as his salary was not large, and the prospects of Smith's
Pocket eventually becoming the capital of the State not entirely
definite, he contemplated a change.  He had informed the school
trustees privately of his intentions, but educated young men of
unblemished moral character being scarce at that time, he consented
to continue his school term through the winter to early spring.
None else knew of his intention except his one friend, a Dr.
Duchesne, a young Creole physician known to the people of Wingdam
as "Duchesny."  He never mentioned it to Mrs. Morpher, Clytie, or
any of his scholars.  His reticence was partly the result of a
constitutional indisposition to fuss, partly a desire to be spared
the questions and surmises of vulgar curiosity, and partly that he
never really believed he was going to do anything before it was
done.

He did not like to think of Mliss.  It was a selfish instinct,
perhaps, which made him try to fancy his feeling for the child was
foolish, romantic, and unpractical.  He even tried to imagine that
she would do better under the control of an older and sterner
teacher.  Then she was nearly eleven, and in a few years, by the
rules of Red Mountain, would be a woman.  He had done his duty.
After Smith's death he addressed letters to Smith's relatives, and
received one answer from a sister of Melissa's mother.  Thanking
the master, she stated her intention of leaving the Atlantic States
for California with her husband in a few months.  This was a slight
superstructure for the airy castle which the master pictured for
Mliss's home, but it was easy to fancy that some loving,
sympathetic woman, with the claims of kindred, might better guide
her wayward nature.  Yet, when the master had read the letter,
Mliss listened to it carelessly, received it submissively, and
afterward cut figures out of it with her scissors, supposed to
represent Clytemnestra, labeled "the white girl," to prevent
mistakes, and impaled them upon the outer walls of the schoolhouse.

When the summer was about spent, and the last harvest had been
gathered in the valleys, the master bethought him of gathering in a
few ripened shoots of the young idea, and of having his Harvest
Home, or Examination.  So the savants and professionals of Smith's
Pocket were gathered to witness that time-honored custom of placing
timid children in a constrained positions and bullying them as in a
witness box.  As usual in such cases, the most audacious and self-
possessed were the lucky recipients of the honors.  The reader will
imagine that in the present instance Mliss and Clytie were
preeminent, and divided public attention; Mliss with her clearness
of material perception and self-reliance, Clytie with her placid
self-esteem and saintlike correctness of deportment.  The other
little ones were timid and blundering.  Mliss's readiness and
brilliancy, of course, captivated the greatest number and provoked
the greatest applause.  Mliss's antecedents had unconsciously
awakened the strongest sympathies of a class whose athletic forms
were ranged against the walls, or whose handsome bearded faces
looked in at the windows.  But Mliss's popularity was overthrown by
an unexpected circumstance.

McSnagley had invited himself, and had been going through the
pleasing entertainment of frightening the more timid pupils by the
vaguest and most ambiguous questions delivered in an impressive
funereal tone; and Mliss had soared into astronomy, and was
tracking the course of our spotted ball through space, and keeping
time with the music of the spheres, and defining the tethered
orbits of the planets, when McSnagley impressively arose.
"Meelissy! ye were speaking of the revolutions of this yere yearth
and the move-MENTS of the sun, and I think ye said it had been a
doing of it since the creashun, eh?"  Mliss nodded a scornful
affirmative.  "Well, war that the truth?" said McSnagley, folding
his arms.  "Yes," said Mliss, shutting up her little red lips
tightly.  The handsome outlines at the windows peered further in
the schoolroom, and a saintly Raphael face, with blond beard and
soft blue eyes, belonging to the biggest scamp in the diggings,
turned toward the child and whispered, "Stick to it, Mliss!"  The
reverend gentleman heaved a deep sigh, and cast a compassionate
glance at the master, then at the children, and then rested his
look on Clytie.  That young woman softly elevated her round, white
arm.  Its seductive curves were enhanced by a gorgeous and massive
specimen bracelet, the gift of one of her humblest worshipers, worn
in honor of the occasion.  There was a momentary silence.  Clytie's
round cheeks were very pink and soft.  Clytie's big eyes were very
bright and blue.  Clytie's low-necked white book muslin rested
softly on Clytie's white, plump shoulders.  Clytie looked at the
master, and the master nodded.  Then Clytie spoke softly:

"Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and it obeyed him!"
There was a low hum of applause in the schoolroom, a triumphant
expression on McSnagley's face, a grave shadow on the master's, and
a comical look of disappointment reflected from the windows.  Mliss
skimmed rapidly over her astronomy, and then shut the book with a
loud snap.  A groan burst from McSnagley, an expression of
astonishment from the schoolroom, a yell from the windows, as Mliss
brought her red fist down on the desk, with the emphatic
declaration:

"It's a damn lie.  I don't believe it!"


CHAPTER IV


The long wet season had drawn near its close.  Signs of spring were
visible in the swelling buds and rushing torrents.  The pine
forests exhaled the fresher spicery.  The azaleas were already
budding, the ceanothus getting ready its lilac livery for spring.
On the green upland which climbed Red Mountain at its southern
aspect the long spike of the monkshood shot up from its broad-
leaved stool, and once more shook its dark-blue bells.  Again the
billow above Smith's grave was soft and green, its crest just
tossed with the foam of daisies and buttercups.  The little
graveyard had gathered a few new dwellers in the past year, and the
mounds were placed two by two by the little paling until they
reached Smith's grave, and there there was but one.  General
superstition had shunned it, and the plot beside Smith was vacant.

There had been several placards posted about the town, intimating
that, at a certain period, a celebrated dramatic company would
perform, for a few days, a series of "side-splitting" and
"screaming farces"; that, alternating pleasantly with this, there
would be some melodrama and a grand divertisement which would
include singing, dancing, etc.  These announcements occasioned a
great fluttering among the little folk, and were the theme of much
excitement and great speculation among the master's scholars.  The
master had promised Mliss, to whom this sort of thing was sacred
and rare, that she should go, and on that momentous evening the
master and Mliss "assisted."

The performance was the prevalent style of heavy mediocrity; the
melodrama was not bad enough to laugh at nor good enough to excite.
But the master, turning wearily to the child, was astonished and
felt something like self-accusation in noticing the peculiar effect
upon her excitable nature.  The red blood flushed in her cheeks at
each stroke of her panting little heart.  Her small passionate lips
were slightly parted to give vent to her hurried breath.  Her
widely opened lids threw up and arched her black eyebrows.  She did
not laugh at the dismal comicalities of the funny man, for Mliss
seldom laughed.  Nor was she discreetly affected to the delicate
extremes of the corner of a white handkerchief, as was the tender-
hearted "Clytie," who was talking with her "feller" and ogling the
master at the same moment.  But when the performance was over, and
the green curtain fell on the little stage, Mliss drew a long deep
breath, and turned to the master's grave face with a half-
apologetic smile and wearied gesture.  Then she said, "Now take me
home!" and dropped the lids of her black eyes, as if to dwell once
more in fancy on the mimic stage.

On their way to Mrs. Morpher's the master thought proper to
ridicule the whole performance.  Now he shouldn't wonder if Mliss
thought that the young lady who acted so beautifully was really in
earnest, and in love with the gentleman who wore such fine clothes.
Well, if she were in love with him it was a very unfortunate thing!
"Why?" said Mliss, with an upward sweep of the drooping lid.  "Oh!
well, he couldn't support his wife at his present salary, and pay
so much a week for his fine clothes, and then they wouldn't receive
as much wages if they were married as if they were merely lovers--
that is," added the master, "if they are not already married to
somebody else; but I think the husband of the pretty young countess
takes the tickets at the door, or pulls up the curtain, or snuffs
the candles, or does something equally refined and elegant.  As to
the young man with nice clothes, which are really nice now, and
must cost at least two and a half or three dollars, not to speak of
that mantle of red drugget which I happen to know the price of, for
I bought some of it for my room once--as to this young man, Lissy,
he is a pretty good fellow, and if he does drink occasionally, I
don't think people ought to take advantage of it and give him black
eyes and throw him in the mud.  Do you?  I am sure he might owe me
two dollars and a half a long time, before I would throw it up in
his face, as the fellow did the other night at Wingdam."

Mliss had taken his hand in both of hers and was trying to look in
his eyes, which the young man kept as resolutely averted.  Mliss
had a faint idea of irony, indulging herself sometimes in a species
of sardonic humor, which was equally visible in her actions and her
speech.  But the young man continued in this strain until they had
reached Mrs. Morpher's, and he had deposited Mliss in her maternal
charge.  Waiving the invitation of Mrs. Morpher to refreshment and
rest, and shading his eyes with his hand to keep out the blue-eyed
Clytemnestra's siren glances, he excused himself, and went home.

For two or three days after the advent of the dramatic company,
Mliss was late at school, and the master's usual Friday afternoon
ramble was for once omitted, owing to the absence of his
trustworthy guide.  As he was putting away his books and preparing
to leave the schoolhouse, a small voice piped at his side, "Please,
sir?"  The master turned and there stood Aristides Morpher.

"Well, my little man," said the master, impatiently, "what is it?
quick!"

"Please, sir, me and 'Kerg' thinks that Mliss is going to run away
agin."

"What's that, sir?" said the master, with that unjust testiness
with which we always receive disagreeable news.

"Why, sir, she don't stay home any more, and 'Kerg' and me see her
talking with one of those actor fellers, and she's with him now;
and please, sir, yesterday she told 'Kerg' and me she could make a
speech as well as Miss Cellerstina Montmoressy, and she spouted
right off by heart," and the little fellow paused in a collapsed
condition.

"What actor?" asked the master.

"Him as wears the shiny hat.  And hair.  And gold pin.  And gold
chain," said the just Aristides, putting periods for commas to eke
out his breath.

The master put on his gloves and hat, feeling an unpleasant
tightness in his chest and thorax, and walked out in the road.
Aristides trotted along by his side, endeavoring to keep pace with
his short legs to the master's strides, when the master stopped
suddenly, and Aristides bumped up against him.  "Where were they
talking?" asked the master, as if continuing the conversation.

"At the Arcade," said Aristides.

When they reached the main street the master paused.  "Run down
home," said he to the boy.  "If Mliss is there, come to the Arcade
and tell me.  If she isn't there, stay home; run!"  And off trotted
the short-legged Aristides.

The Arcade was just across the way--a long, rambling building
containing a barroom, billiard room, and restaurant.  As the young
man crossed the plaza he noticed that two or three of the passers-
by turned and looked after him.  He looked at his clothes, took out
his handkerchief, and wiped his face before he entered the barroom.
It contained the usual number of loungers, who stared at him as he
entered.  One of them looked at him so fixedly and with such a
strange expression that the master stopped and looked again, and
then saw it was only his own reflection in a large mirror.  This
made the master think that perhaps he was a little excited, and so
he took up a copy of the RED MOUNTAIN BANNER from one of the
tables, and tried to recover his composure by reading the column of
advertisements.

He then walked through the barroom, through the restaurant, and
into the billiard room.  The child was not there.  In the latter
apartment a person was standing by one of the tables with a broad-
brimmed glazed hat on his head.  The master recognized him as the
agent of the dramatic company; he had taken a dislike to him at
their first meeting, from the peculiar fashion of wearing his beard
and hair.  Satisfied that the object of his search was not there,
he turned to the man with a glazed hat.  He had noticed the master,
but tried that common trick of unconsciousness in which vulgar
natures always fail.  Balancing a billiard cue in his hand, he
pretended to play with a ball in the center of the table.  The
master stood opposite to him until he raised his eyes; when their
glances met, the master walked up to him.

He had intended to avoid a scene or quarrel, but when he began to
speak, something kept rising in his throat and retarded his
utterance, and his own voice frightened him, it sounded so distant,
low, and resonant.  "I understand," he began, "that Melissa Smith,
an orphan, and one of my scholars, has talked with you about
adopting your profession.  Is that so?"

The man with the glazed hat leaned over the table and made an
imaginary shot that sent the ball spinning round the cushions.
Then, walking round the table, he recovered the ball and placed it
upon the spot.  This duty discharged, getting ready for another
shot, he said:

"S'pose she has?"

The master choked up again, but, squeezing the cushion of the table
in his gloved hand, he went on:

"If you are a gentleman, I have only to tell you that I am her
guardian, and responsible for her career.  You know as well as I do
the kind of life you offer her.  As you may learn of anyone here, I
have already brought her out of an existence worse than death--out
of the streets and the contamination of vice.  I am trying to do so
again.  Let us talk like men.  She has neither father, mother,
sister, or brother.  Are you seeking to give her an equivalent for
these?"

The man with the glazed hat examined the point of his cue, and then
looked around for somebody to enjoy the joke with him.

"I know that she is a strange, willful girl," continued the master,
"but she is better than she was.  I believe that I have some
influence over her still.  I beg and hope, therefore, that you will
take no further steps in this matter, but as a man, as a gentleman,
leave her to me.  I am willing--"  But here something rose again in
the master's throat, and the sentence remained unfinished.

The man with the glazed hat, mistaking the master's silence, raised
his head with a coarse, brutal laugh, and said in a loud voice:

"Want her yourself, do you?  That cock won't fight here, young
man!"

The insult was more in the tone than in the words, more in the
glance than tone, and more in the man's instinctive nature than all
these.  The best appreciable rhetoric to this kind of animal is a
blow.  The master felt this, and, with his pent-up, nervous energy
finding expression in the one act, he struck the brute full in his
grinning face.  The blow sent the glazed hat one way and the cue
another, and tore the glove and skin from the master's hand from
knuckle to joint.  It opened up the corners of the fellow's mouth,
and spoilt the peculiar shape of his beard for some time to come.

There was a shout, an imprecation, a scuffle, and the trampling of
many feet.  Then the crowd parted right and left, and two sharp
quick reports followed each other in rapid succession.  Then they
closed again about his opponent, and the master was standing alone.
He remembered picking bits of burning wadding from his coat sleeve
with his left hand.  Someone was holding his other hand.  Looking
at it, he saw it was still bleeding from the blow, but his fingers
were clenched around the handle of a glittering knife.  He could
not remember when or how he got it.

The man who was holding his hand was Mr. Morpher.  He hurried the
master to the door, but the master held back, and tried to tell him
as well as he could with his parched throat about "Mliss."  "It's
all right, my boy," said Mr. Morpher.  "She's home!"  And they
passed out into the street together.  As they walked along Mr.
Morpher said that Mliss had come running into the house a few
moments before, and had dragged him out, saying that somebody was
trying to kill the master at the Arcade.  Wishing to be alone, the
master promised Mr. Morpher that he would not seek the agent again
that night, and parted from him, taking the road toward the
schoolhouse.  He was surprised in nearing it to find the door open-
-still more surprised to find Mliss sitting there.

The master's nature, as I have hinted before, had, like most
sensitive organizations, a selfish basis.  The brutal taunt thrown
out by his late adversary still rankled in his heart.  It was
possible, he thought, that such a construction might be put upon
his affection for the child, which at best was foolish and
Quixotic.  Besides, had she not voluntarily abnegated his authority
and affection?  And what had everybody else said about her?  Why
should he alone combat the opinion of all, and be at last obliged
tacitly to confess the truth of all they predicted?  And he had
been a participant in a low barroom fight with a common boor, and
risked his life, to prove what?  What had he proved?  Nothing?
What would the people say?  What would his friends say?  What would
McSnagley say?

In his self-accusation the last person he should have wished to
meet was Mliss.  He entered the door, and going up to his desk,
told the child, in a few cold words, that he was busy, and wished
to be alone.  As she rose he took her vacant seat, and, sitting
down, buried his head in his hands.  When he looked up again she
was still standing there.  She was looking at his face with an
anxious expression.

"Did you kill him?" she asked.

"No!" said the master.

"That's what I gave you the knife for!" said the child, quickly.

"Gave me the knife?" repeated the master, in bewilderment.

"Yes, gave you the knife.  I was there under the bar.  Saw you hit
him.  Saw you both fall.  He dropped his old knife.  I gave it to
you.  Why didn't you stick him?" said Mliss rapidly, with an
expressive twinkle of the black eyes and a gesture of the little
red hand.

The master could only look his astonishment.

"Yes," said Mliss.  "If you'd asked me, I'd told you I was off with
the play-actors.  Why was I off with the play-actors?  Because you
wouldn't tell me you was going away.  I knew it.  I heard you tell
the Doctor so.  I wasn't a goin' to stay here alone with those
Morphers.  I'd rather die first."

With a dramatic gesture which was perfectly consistent with her
character, she drew from her bosom a few limp green leaves, and,
holding them out at arm's length, said in her quick vivid way, and
in the queer pronunciation of her old life, which she fell into
when unduly excited:

"That's the poison plant you said would kill me.  I'll go with the
play-actors, or I'll eat this and die here.  I don't care which.  I
won't stay here, where they hate and despise me!  Neither would you
let me, if you didn't hate and despise me too!"

The passionate little breast heaved, and two big tears peeped over
the edge of Mliss's eyelids, but she whisked them away with the
corner of her apron as if they had been wasps.

"If you lock me up in jail," said Mliss, fiercely, "to keep me from
the play-actors, I'll poison myself.  Father killed himself--why
shouldn't I?  You said a mouthful of that root would kill me, and I
always carry it here," and she struck her breast with her clenched
fist.

The master thought of the vacant plot beside Smith's grave, and of
the passionate little figure before him.  Seizing her hands in his
and looking full into her truthful eyes, he said:

"Lissy, will you go with ME?"

The child put her arms around his neck, and said joyfully, "Yes."

"But now--tonight?"

"Tonight."

And, hand in hand, they passed into the road--the narrow road that
had once brought her weary feet to the master's door, and which it
seemed she should not tread again alone.  The stars glittered
brightly above them.  For good or ill the lesson had been learned,
and behind them the school of Red Mountain closed upon them
forever.



THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER


The year of grace 1797 passed away on the coast of California in a
southwesterly gale.  The little bay of San Carlos, albeit sheltered
by the headlands of the blessed Trinity, was rough and turbulent;
its foam clung quivering to the seaward wall of the Mission garden;
the air was filled with flying sand and spume, and as the Senor
Commandante, Hermenegildo Salvatierra, looked from the deep
embrasured window of the Presidio guardroom, he felt the salt
breath of the distant sea buffet a color into his smoke-dried
cheeks.

The Commander, I have said, was gazing thoughtfully from the window
of the guardroom.  He may have been reviewing the events of the
year now about to pass away.  But, like the garrison at the
Presidio, there was little to review; the year, like its
predecessors, had been uneventful--the days had slipped by in a
delicious monotony of simple duties, unbroken by incident or
interruption.  The regularly recurring feasts and saints' days, the
half-yearly courier from San Diego, the rare transport ship and
rarer foreign vessel, were the mere details of his patriarchal
life.  If there was no achievement, there was certainly no failure.
Abundant harvests and patient industry amply supplied the wants of
Presidio and Mission.  Isolated from the family of nations, the
wars which shook the world concerned them not so much as the last
earthquake; the struggle that emancipated their sister colonies on
the other side of the continent to them had no suggestiveness.  In
short, it was that glorious Indian summer of California history
around which so much poetical haze still lingers--that bland,
indolent autumn of Spanish rule, so soon to be followed by the
wintry storms of Mexican independence and the reviving spring of
American conquest.

The Commander turned from the window and walked toward the fire
that burned brightly on the deep ovenlike hearth.  A pile of
copybooks, the work of the Presidio school, lay on the table.  As
he turned over the leaves with a paternal interest, and surveyed
the fair round Scripture text--the first pious pothooks of the
pupils of San Carlos--an audible commentary fell from his lips:
"'Abimelech took her from Abraham'--ah, little one, excellent!--
'Jacob sent to see his brother'--body of Christ! that upstroke of
thine, Paquita, is marvelous; the Governor shall see it!"  A film
of honest pride dimmed the Commander's left eye--the right, alas!
twenty years before had been sealed by an Indian arrow.  He rubbed
it softly with the sleeve of his leather jacket, and continued:
"'The Ishmaelites having arrived--'"

He stopped, for there was a step in the courtyard, a foot upon the
threshold, and a stranger entered.  With the instinct of an old
soldier, the Commander, after one glance at the intruder, turned
quickly toward the wall, where his trusty Toledo hung, or should
have been hanging.  But it was not there, and as he recalled that
the last time he had seen that weapon it was being ridden up and
down the gallery by Pepito, the infant son of Bautista, the
tortilla-maker, he blushed and then contented himself with frowning
upon the intruder.

But the stranger's air, though irreverent, was decidedly peaceful.
He was unarmed, and wore the ordinary cape of tarpaulin and sea
boots of a mariner.  Except a villainous smell of codfish, there
was little about him that was peculiar.

His name, as he informed the Commander, in Spanish that was more
fluent than elegant or precise--his name was Peleg Scudder.  He was
master of the schooner GENERAL COURT, of the port of Salem in
Massachusetts, on a trading voyage to the South Seas, but now
driven by stress of weather into the bay of San Carlos.  He begged
permission to ride out the gale under the headlands of the blessed
Trinity, and no more.  Water he did not need, having taken in a
supply at Bodega.  He knew the strict surveillance of the Spanish
port regulations in regard to foreign vessels, and would do nothing
against the severe discipline and good order of the settlement.
There was a slight tinge of sarcasm in his tone as he glanced
toward the desolate parade ground of the Presidio and the open
unguarded gate.  The fact was that the sentry, Felipe Gomez, had
discreetly retired to shelter at the beginning of the storm, and
was then sound asleep in the corridor.

The Commander hesitated.  The port regulations were severe, but he
was accustomed to exercise individual authority, and beyond an old
order issued ten years before, regarding the American ship
COLUMBIA, there was no precedent to guide him.  The storm was
severe, and a sentiment of humanity urged him to grant the
stranger's request.  It is but just to the Commander to say that
his inability to enforce a refusal did not weigh with his decision.
He would have denied with equal disregard of consequences that
right to a seventy-four-gun ship which he now yielded so gracefully
to this Yankee trading schooner.  He stipulated only that there
should be no communication between the ship and shore.  "For
yourself, Senor Captain," he continued, "accept my hospitality.
The fort is yours as long as you shall grace it with your
distinguished presence"; and with old-fashioned courtesy, he made
the semblance of withdrawing from the guardroom.

Master Peleg Scudder smiled as he thought of the half-dismantled
fort, the two moldy brass cannon, cast in Manila a century
previous.  and the shiftless garrison.  A wild thought of accepting
the Commander's offer literally, conceived in the reckless spirit
of a man who never let slip an offer for trade, for a moment filled
his brain, but a timely reflection of the commercial unimportance
of the transaction checked him.  He only took a capacious quid of
tobacco as the Commander gravely drew a settle before the fire, and
in honor of his guest untied the black-silk handkerchief that bound
his grizzled brows.

What passed between Salvatierra and his guest that night it becomes
me not, as a grave chronicler of the salient points of history, to
relate.  I have said that Master Peleg Scudder was a fluent talker,
and under the influence of divers strong waters, furnished by his
host, he became still more loquacious.  And think of a man with a
twenty years' budget of gossip!  The Commander learned, for the
first time, how Great Britain lost her colonies; of the French
Revolution; of the great Napoleon, whose achievements, perhaps,
Peleg colored more highly than the Commander's superiors would have
liked.  And when Peleg turned questioner, the Commander was at his
mercy.  He gradually made himself master of the gossip of the
Mission and Presidio, the "small-beer" chronicles of that pastoral
age, the conversion of the heathen, the Presidio schools, and even
asked the Commander how he had lost his eye!  It is said that at
this point of the conversation Master Peleg produced from about his
person divers small trinkets, kickshaws, and newfangled trifles,
and even forced some of them upon his host.  It is further alleged
that under the malign influence of Peleg and several glasses of
aguardiente, the Commander lost somewhat of his decorum, and
behaved in a manner unseemly for one in his position, reciting
high-flown Spanish poetry, and even piping in a thin, high voice
divers madrigals and heathen canzonets of an amorous complexion;
chiefly in regard to a "little one" who was his, the Commander's,
"soul"!  These allegations, perhaps unworthy the notice of a
serious chronicler, should be received with great caution, and are
introduced here as simple hearsay.  That the Commander, however,
took a handkerchief and attempted to show his guest the mysteries
of the SEMICUACUA, capering in an agile but indecorous manner about
the apartment, has been denied.  Enough for the purposes of this
narrative that at midnight Peleg assisted his host to bed with many
protestations of undying friendship, and then, as the gale had
abated, took his leave of the Presidio and hurried aboard the
GENERAL COURT.  When the day broke the ship was gone.

I know not if Peleg kept his word with his host.  It is said that
the holy fathers at the Mission that night heard a loud chanting in
the plaza, as of the heathens singing psalms through their noses;
that for many days after an odor of salt codfish prevailed in the
settlement; that a dozen hard nutmegs, which were unfit for spice
or seed, were found in the possession of the wife of the baker, and
that several bushels of shoe pegs, which bore a pleasing
resemblance to oats, but were quite inadequate to the purposes of
provender, were discovered in the stable of the blacksmith.  But
when the reader reflects upon the sacredness of a Yankee trader's
word, the stringent discipline of the Spanish port regulations, and
the proverbial indisposition of my countrymen to impose upon the
confidence of a simple people, he will at once reject this part of
the story.


A roll of drums, ushering in the year 1798, awoke the Commander.
The sun was shining brightly, and the storm had ceased.  He sat up
in bed, and through the force of habit rubbed his left eye.  As the
remembrance of the previous night came back to him, he jumped from
his couch and ran to the window.  There was no ship in the bay.  A
sudden thought seemed to strike him, and he rubbed both of his
eyes.  Not content with this, he consulted the metallic mirror
which hung beside his crucifix.  There was no mistake; the
Commander had a visible second eye--a right one--as good, save for
the purposes of vision, as the left.

Whatever might have been the true secret of this transformation,
but one opinion prevailed at San Carlos.  It was one of those rare
miracles vouchsafed a pious Catholic community as an evidence to
the heathen, through the intercession of the blessed San Carlos
himself.  That their beloved Commander, the temporal defender of
the Faith, should be the recipient of this miraculous manifestation
was most fit and seemly.  The Commander himself was reticent; he
could not tell a falsehood--he dared not tell the truth.  After
all, if the good folk of San Carlos believed that the powers of his
right eye were actually restored, was it wise and discreet for him
to undeceive them?  For the first time in his life the Commander
thought of policy--for the first time he quoted that text which has
been the lure of so many well-meaning but easy Christians, of being
"all things to all men."  Infeliz Hermenegildo Salvatierra!

For by degrees an ominous whisper crept though the little
settlement.  The Right Eye of the Commander, although miraculous,
seemed to exercise a baleful effect upon the beholder.  No one
could look at it without winking.  It was cold, hard, relentless,
and unflinching.  More than that, it seemed to be endowed with a
dreadful prescience--a faculty of seeing through and into the
inarticulate thoughts of those it looked upon.  The soldiers of the
garrison obeyed the eye rather than the voice of their commander,
and answered his glance rather than his lips in questioning.  The
servants could not evade the ever watchful but cold attention that
seemed to pursue them.  The children of the Presidio school
smirched their copybooks under the awful supervision, and poor
Paquita, the prize pupil, failed utterly in that marvelous upstroke
when her patron stood beside her.  Gradually distrust, suspicion,
self-accusation, and timidity took the place of trust, confidence,
and security throughout San Carlos.  Whenever the Right Eye of the
Commander fell, a shadow fell with it.

Nor was Salvatierra entirely free from the baleful influence of his
miraculous acquisition.  Unconscious of its effect upon others, he
only saw in their actions evidence of certain things that the
crafty Peleg had hinted on that eventful New Year's eve.  His most
trusty retainers stammered, blushed, and faltered before him.
Self-accusations, confessions of minor faults and delinquencies, or
extravagant excuses and apologies met his mildest inquiries.  The
very children that he loved--his pet pupil, Paquita--seemed to be
conscious of some hidden sin.  The result of this constant
irritation showed itself more plainly.  For the first half-year the
Commander's voice and eye were at variance.  He was still kind,
tender, and thoughtful in speech.  Gradually, however, his voice
took upon itself the hardness of his glance and its skeptical,
impassive quality, and as the year again neared its close it was
plain that the Commander had fitted himself to the eye, and not the
eye to the Commander.

It may be surmised that these changes did not escape the watchful
solicitude of the Fathers.  Indeed, the few who were first to
ascribe the right eye of Salvatierra to miraculous origin and the
special grace of the blessed San Carlos, now talked openly of
witchcraft and the agency of Luzbel, the evil one.  It would have
fared ill with Hermenegildo Salvatierra had he been aught but
Commander or amenable to local authority.  But the reverend father,
Friar Manuel de Cortes, had no power over the political executive,
and all attempts at spiritual advice failed signally.  He retired
baffled and confused from his first interview with the Commander,
who seemed now to take a grim satisfaction in the fateful power of
his glance.  The holy Father contradicted himself, exposed the
fallacies of his own arguments, and even, it is asserted, committed
himself to several undoubted heresies.  When the Commander stood up
at mass, if the officiating priest caught that skeptical and
searching eye, the service was inevitably ruined.  Even the power
of the Holy Church seemed to be lost, and the last hold upon the
affections of the people and the good order of the settlement
departed from San Carlos.

As the long dry summer passed, the low hills that surrounded the
white walls of the Presidio grew more and more to resemble in hue
the leathern jacket of the Commander, and Nature herself seemed to
have borrowed his dry, hard glare.  The earth was cracked and
seamed with drought; a blight had fallen upon the orchards and
vineyards, and the rain, long-delayed and ardently prayed for, came
not.  The sky was as tearless as the right eye of the Commander.
Murmurs of discontent, insubordination, and plotting among the
Indians reached his ears; he only set his teeth the more firmly,
tightened the knot of his black-silk handkerchief, and looked up
his Toledo.

The last day of the year 1798 found the Commander sitting, at the
hour of evening prayers, alone in the guardroom.  He no longer
attended the services of the Holy Church, but crept away at such
times to some solitary spot, where he spent the interval in silent
meditation.  The firelight played upon the low beams and rafters,
but left the bowed figure of Salvatierra in darkness.  Sitting
thus, he felt a small hand touch his arm, and looking down, saw the
figure of Paquita, his little Indian pupil, at his knee.  "Ah,
littlest of all," said the Commander, with something of his old
tenderness, lingering over the endearing diminutives of his native
speech--"sweet one, what doest thou here?  Art thou not afraid of
him whom everyone shuns and fears?"

"No," said the little Indian, readily, "not in the dark.  I hear
your voice--the old voice; I feel your touch--the old touch; but I
see not your eye, Senor Commandante.  That only I fear--and that, O
senor, O my father," said the child, lifting her little arms
towards his--"that I know is not thine own!"

The Commander shuddered and turned away.  Then, recovering himself,
he kissed Paquita gravely on the forehead and bade her retire.  A
few hours later, when silence had fallen upon the Presidio, he
sought his own couch and slept peacefully.

At about the middle watch of the night a dusky figure crept through
the low embrasure of the Commander's apartment.  Other figures were
flitting through the parade ground, which the Commander might have
seen had he not slept so quietly.  The intruder stepped noiselessly
to the couch and listened to the sleeper's deep-drawn inspiration.
Something glittered in the firelight as the savage lifted his arm;
another moment and the sore perplexities of Hermenegildo
Salvatierra would have been over, when suddenly the savage started
and fell back in a paroxysm of terror.  The Commander slept
peacefully, but his right eye, widely opened, fixed and unaltered,
glared coldly on the would-be assassin.  The man fell to the earth
in a fit, and the noise awoke the sleeper.

To rise to his feet, grasp his sword, and deal blows thick and fast
upon the mutinous savages who now thronged the room was the work of
a moment.  Help opportunely arrived, and the undisciplined Indians
were speedily driven beyond the walls, but in the scuffle the
Commander received a blow upon his right eye, and, lifting his hand
to that mysterious organ, it was gone.  Never again was it found,
and never again, for bale or bliss, did it adorn the right orbit of
the Commander.

With it passed away the spell that had fallen upon San Carlos.  The
rain returned to invigorate the languid soil, harmony was restored
between priest and soldier, the green grass presently waved over
the sere hillsides, the children flocked again to the side of their
martial preceptor, a TE DEUM was sung in the Mission Church, and
pastoral content once more smiled upon the gentle valleys of San
Carlos.  And far southward crept the GENERAL COURT with its master,
Peleg Scudder, trafficking in beads and peltries with the Indians,
and offering glass eyes, wooden legs, and other Boston notions to
the chiefs.



NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD


PART I--IN THE FIELD

It was near the close of an October day that I began to be
disagreeably conscious of the Sacramento Valley.  I had been riding
since sunrise, and my course through the depressing monotony of the
long level landscape affected me more like a dull dyspeptic dream
than a business journey, performed under that sincerest of natural
phenomena--a California sky.  The recurring stretches of brown and
baked fields, the gaping fissures in the dusty trail, the hard
outline of the distant hills, and the herds of slowly moving
cattle, seemed like features of some glittering stereoscopic
picture that never changed.  Active exercise might have removed
this feeling, but my horse by some subtle instinct had long since
given up all ambitious effort, and had lapsed into a dogged trot.

It was autumn, but not the season suggested to the Atlantic reader
under that title.  The sharply defined boundaries of the wet and
dry seasons were prefigured in the clear outlines of the distant
hills.  In the dry atmosphere the decay of vegetation was too rapid
for the slow hectic which overtakes an Eastern landscape, or else
Nature was too practical for such thin disguises.  She merely
turned the Hippocratic face to the spectator, with the old
diagnosis of Death in her sharp, contracted features.

In the contemplation of such a prospect there was little to excite
any but a morbid fancy.  There were no clouds in the flinty blue
heavens, and the setting of the sun was accompanied with as little
ostentation as was consistent with the dryly practical atmosphere.
Darkness soon followed, with a rising wind, which increased as the
shadows deepened on the plain.  The fringe of alder by the
watercourse began to loom up as I urged my horse forward.  A half-
hour's active spurring brought me to a corral, and a little beyond
a house, so low and broad it seemed at first sight to be half-
buried in the earth.

My second impression was that it had grown out of the soil, like
some monstrous vegetable, its dreary proportions were so in keeping
with the vast prospect.  There were no recesses along its roughly
boarded walls for vagrant and unprofitable shadows to lurk in the
daily sunshine.  No projection for the wind by night to grow
musical over, to wail, whistle, or whisper to; only a long wooden
shelf containing a chilly-looking tin basin and a bar of soap.  Its
uncurtained windows were red with the sinking sun, as though
bloodshot and inflamed from a too-long unlidded existence.  The
tracks of cattle led to its front door, firmly closed against the
rattling wind.

To avoid being confounded with this familiar element, I walked to
the rear of the house, which was connected with a smaller building
by a slight platform.  A grizzled, hard-faced old man was standing
there, and met my salutation with a look of inquiry, and, without
speaking, led the way to the principal room.  As I entered, four
young men who were reclining by the fire slightly altered their
attitudes of perfect repose, but beyond that betrayed neither
curiosity nor interest.  A hound started from a dark corner with a
growl, but was immediately kicked by the old man into obscurity,
and silenced again.  I can't tell why, but I instantly received the
impression that for a long time the group by the fire had not
uttered a word or moved a muscle.  Taking a seat, I briefly stated
my business.

Was a United States surveyor.  Had come on account of the Espiritu
Santo Rancho.  Wanted to correct the exterior boundaries of
township lines, so as to connect with the near exteriors of private
grants.  There had been some intervention to the old survey by a
Mr. Tryan who had preempted adjacent--"settled land warrants,"
interrupted the old man.  "Ah, yes!  Land warrants--and then this
was Mr. Tryan?"

I had spoken mechanically, for I was preoccupied in connecting
other public lines with private surveys as I looked in his face.
It was certainly a hard face, and reminded me of the singular
effect of that mining operation known as "ground sluicing"; the
harder lines of underlying character were exposed, and what were
once plastic curves and soft outlines were obliterated by some
powerful agency.

There was a dryness in his voice not unlike the prevailing
atmosphere of the valley, as he launched into an EX PARTE statement
of the contest, with a fluency, which, like the wind without,
showed frequent and unrestrained expression.  He told me--what I
had already learned--that the boundary line of the old Spanish
grant was a creek, described in the loose phraseology of the DESENO
as beginning in the VALDA or skirt of the hill, its precise
location long the subject of litigation.  I listened and answered
with little interest, for my mind was still distracted by the wind
which swept violently by the house, as well as by his odd face,
which was again reflected in the resemblance that the silent group
by the fire bore toward him.  He was still talking, and the wind
was yet blowing, when my confused attention was aroused by a remark
addressed to the recumbent figures.

"Now, then, which on ye'll see the stranger up the creek to
Altascar's, tomorrow?"

There was a general movement of opposition in the group, but no
decided answer.

"Kin you go, Kerg?"

"Who's to look up stock in Strarberry perar-ie?"

This seemed to imply a negative, and the old man turned to another
hopeful, who was pulling the fur from a mangy bearskin on which he
was lying, with an expression as though it were somebody's hair.

"Well, Tom, wot's to hinder you from goin'?"

"Mam's goin' to Brown's store at sunup, and I s'pose I've got to
pack her and the baby agin."

I think the expression of scorn this unfortunate youth exhibited
for the filial duty into which he had been evidently beguiled was
one of the finest things I had ever seen.

"Wise?"

Wise deigned no verbal reply, but figuratively thrust a worn and
patched boot into the discourse.  The old man flushed quickly.

"I told ye to get Brown to give you a pair the last time you war
down the river."

"Said he wouldn't without'en order.  Said it was like pulling gum
teeth to get the money from you even then."

There was a grim smile at this local hit at the old man's
parsimony, and Wise, who was clearly the privileged wit of the
family, sank back in honorable retirement.

"Well, Joe, ef your boots are new, and you aren't pestered with
wimmin and children, p'r'aps you'll go," said Tryan, with a nervous
twitching, intended for a smile, about a mouth not remarkably
mirthful.

Tom lifted a pair of bushy eyebrows, and said shortly:

"Got no saddle."

"Wot's gone of your saddle?"

"Kerg, there"--indicating his brother with a look such as Cain
might have worn at the sacrifice.

"You lie!" returned Kerg, cheerfully.

Tryan sprang to his feet, seizing the chair, flourishing it around
his head and gazing furiously in the hard young faces which
fearlessly met his own.  But it was only for a moment; his arm soon
dropped by his side, and a look of hopeless fatality crossed his
face.  He allowed me to take the chair from his hand, and I was
trying to pacify him by the assurance that I required no guide when
the irrepressible Wise again lifted his voice:

"Theer's George comin'! why don't ye ask him?  He'll go and
introduce you to Don Fernandy's darter, too, ef you ain't
pertickler."

The laugh which followed this joke, which evidently had some
domestic allusion (the general tendency of rural pleasantry), was
followed by a light step on the platform, and the young man
entered.  Seeing a stranger present, he stopped and colored, made a
shy salute and colored again, and then, drawing a box from the
corner, sat down, his hands clasped lightly together and his very
handsome bright blue eyes turned frankly on mine.

Perhaps I was in a condition to receive the romantic impression he
made upon me, and I took it upon myself to ask his company as
guide, and he cheerfully assented.  But some domestic duty called
him presently away.

The fire gleamed brightly on the hearth, and, no longer resisting
the prevailing influence, I silently watched the spurting flame,
listening to the wind which continually shook the tenement.
Besides the one chair which had acquired a new importance in my
eyes, I presently discovered a crazy table in one corner, with an
ink bottle and pen; the latter in that greasy state of
decomposition peculiar to country taverns and farmhouses.  A goodly
array of rifles and double-barreled guns stocked the corner; half a
dozen saddles and blankets lay near, with a mild flavor of the
horse about them.  Some deer and bear skins completed the
inventory.  As I sat there, with the silent group around me, the
shadowy gloom within and the dominant wind without, I found it
difficult to believe I had ever known a different existence.  My
profession had often led me to wilder scenes, but rarely among
those whose unrestrained habits and easy unconsciousness made me
feel so lonely and uncomfortable I shrank closer to myself, not
without grave doubts--which I think occur naturally to people in
like situations--that this was the general rule of humanity and I
was a solitary and somewhat gratuitous exception.  It was a relief
when a laconic announcement of supper by a weak-eyed girl caused a
general movement in the family.  We walked across the dark
platform, which led to another low-ceiled room.  Its entire length
was occupied by a table, at the farther end of which a weak-eyed
woman was already taking her repast as she at the same time gave
nourishment to a weak-eyed baby.  As the formalities of
introduction had been dispensed with, and as she took no notice of
me, I was enabled to slip into a seat without discomposing or
interrupting her.  Tryan extemporized a grace, and the attention of
the family became absorbed in bacon, potatoes, and dried apples.

The meal was a sincere one.  Gentle gurglings at the upper end of
the table often betrayed the presence of the "wellspring of
pleasure."  The conversation generally referred to the labors of
the day, and comparing notes as to the whereabouts of missing
stock.  Yet the supper was such a vast improvement upon the
previous intellectual feast that when a chance allusion of mine to
the business of my visit brought out the elder Tryan, the interest
grew quite exciting.  I remember he inveighed bitterly against the
system of ranch-holding by the "greasers," as he was pleased to
term the native Californians.  As the same ideas have been
sometimes advanced under more pretentious circumstances they may be
worthy of record.

"Look at 'em holdin' the finest grazin' land that ever lay outer
doors.  Whar's the papers for it?  Was it grants?  Mighty fine
grants--most of 'em made arter the 'Merrikans got possession.  More
fools the 'Merrikans for lettin' 'em hold 'em.  Wat paid for 'em?
'Merrikan and blood money.

"Didn't they oughter have suthin' out of their native country?  Wot
for?  Did they ever improve?  Got a lot of yaller-skinned diggers,
not so sensible as niggers to look arter stock, and they a sittin'
home and smokin'.  With their gold and silver candlesticks, and
missions, and crucifixens, priests and graven idols, and sich?
Them sort things wurent allowed in Mizzoori."

At the mention of improvements, I involuntarily lifted my eyes, and
met the half laughing, half embarrassed look of George.  The act
did not escape detection, and I had at once the satisfaction of
seeing that the rest of the family had formed an offensive alliance
against us.

"It was agin Nater, and agin God," added Tryan.  "God never
intended gold in the rocks to be made into heathen candlesticks and
crucifixens.  That's why he sent 'Merrikans here.  Nater never
intended such a climate for lazy lopers.  She never gin six months'
sunshine to be slept and smoked away."

How long he continued and with what further illustration I could
not say, for I took an early opportunity to escape to the sitting-
room.  I was soon followed by George, who called me to an open door
leading to a smaller room, and pointed to a bed.

"You'd better sleep there tonight," he said; "you'll be more
comfortable, and I'll call you early."

I thanked him, and would have asked him several questions which
were then troubling me, but he shyly slipped to the door and
vanished.

A shadow seemed to fall on the room when he had gone.  The "boys"
returned, one by one, and shuffled to their old places.  A larger
log was thrown on the fire, and the huge chimney glowed like a
furnace, but it did not seem to melt or subdue a single line of the
hard faces that it lit.  In half an hour later, the furs which had
served as chairs by day undertook the nightly office of mattresses,
and each received its owner's full-length figure.  Mr. Tryan had
not returned, and I missed George.  I sat there until, wakeful and
nervous, I saw the fire fall and shadows mount the wall.  There was
no sound but the rushing of the wind and the snoring of the
sleepers.  At last, feeling the place insupportable, I seized my
hat and opening the door, ran out briskly into the night.

The acceleration of my torpid pulse in the keen fight with the
wind, whose violence was almost equal to that of a tornado, and the
familiar faces of the bright stars above me, I felt as a blessed
relief.  I ran not knowing whither, and when I halted, the square
outline of the house was lost in the alder bushes.  An
uninterrupted plain stretched before me, like a vast sea beaten
flat by the force of the gale.  As I kept on I noticed a slight
elevation toward the horizon, and presently my progress was impeded
by the ascent of an Indian mound.  It struck me forcibly as
resembling an island in the sea.  Its height gave me a better view
of the expanding plain.  But even here I found no rest.  The
ridiculous interpretation Tryan had given the climate was somehow
sung in my ears, and echoed in my throbbing pulse as, guided by the
star, I sought the house again.

But I felt fresher and more natural as I stepped upon the platform.
The door of the lower building was open, and the old man was
sitting beside the table, thumbing the leaves of a Bible with a
look in his face as though he were hunting up prophecies against
the "Greaser."  I turned to enter, but my attention was attracted
by a blanketed figure lying beside the house, on the platform.  The
broad chest heaving with healthy slumber, and the open, honest face
were familiar.  It was George, who had given up his bed to the
stranger among his people.  I was about to wake him, but he lay so
peaceful and quiet, I felt awed and hushed.  And I went to bed with
a pleasant impression of his handsome face and tranquil figure
soothing me to sleep.


I was awakened the next morning from a sense of lulled repose and
grateful silence by the cheery voice of George, who stood beside my
bed, ostentatiously twirling a riata, as if to recall the duties of
the day to my sleep-bewildered eyes.  I looked around me.  The wind
had been magically laid, and the sun shone warmly through the
windows.  A dash of cold water, with an extra chill on from the tin
basin, helped to brighten me.  It was still early, but the family
had already breakfasted and dispersed, and a wagon winding far in
the distance showed that the unfortunate Tom had already "packed"
his relatives away.  I felt more cheerful--there are few troubles
Youth cannot distance with the start of a good night's rest.  After
a substantial breakfast, prepared by George, in a few moments we
were mounted and dashing down the plain.

We followed the line of alder that defined the creek, now dry and
baked with summer's heat, but which in winter, George told me,
overflowed its banks.  I still retain a vivid impression of that
morning's ride, the far-off mountains, like silhouettes, against
the steel-blue sky, the crisp dry air, and the expanding track
before me, animated often by the well-knit figure of George Tryan,
musical with jingling spurs and picturesque with flying riata.  He
rode powerful native roan, wild-eyed, untiring in stride and
unbroken in nature.  Alas! the curves of beauty were concealed by
the cumbrous MACHILLAS of the Spanish saddle, which levels all
equine distinctions.  The single rein lay loosely on the cruel bit
that can gripe, and if need be, crush the jaw it controls.

Again the illimitable freedom of the valley rises before me, as we
again bear down into sunlit space.  Can this be "Chu Chu," staid
and respectable filly of American pedigree--Chu Chu, forgetful of
plank roads and cobblestones, wild with excitement, twinkling her
small white feet beneath me?  George laughs out of a cloud of dust.
"Give her her head; don't you see she likes it?" and Chu Chu seems
to like it, and whether bitten by native tarantula into native
barbarism or emulous of the roan, "blood" asserts itself, and in a
moment the peaceful servitude of years is beaten out in the music
of her clattering hoofs.  The creek widens to a deep gully.  We
dive into it and up on the opposite side, carrying a moving cloud
of impalpable powder with us.  Cattle are scattered over the plain,
grazing quietly or banded together in vast restless herds.  George
makes a wide, indefinite sweep with the riata, as if to include
them all in his vaquero's loop, and says, "Ours!"

"About how many, George?"

"Don't know."

"How many?"

"'Well, p'r'aps three thousand head," says George, reflecting.  "We
don't know, takes five men to look 'em up and keep run."

"What are they worth?"

"About thirty dollars a head."

I make a rapid calculation, and look my astonishment at the
laughing George.  Perhaps a recollection of the domestic economy of
the Tryan household is expressed in that look, for George averts
his eye and says, apologetically:

"I've tried to get the old man to sell and build, but you know he
says it ain't no use to settle down, just yet.  We must keep
movin'.  In fact, he built the shanty for that purpose, lest titles
should fall through, and we'd have to get up and move stakes
further down."

Suddenly his quick eye detects some unusual sight in a herd we are
passing, and with an exclamation he puts his roan into the center
of the mass.  I follow, or rather Chu Chu darts after the roan, and
in a few moments we are in the midst of apparently inextricable
horns and hoofs.  "TORO!" shouts George, with vaquero enthusiasm,
and the band opens a way for the swinging riata.  I can feel their
steaming breaths, and their spume is cast on Chu Chu's quivering
flank.

Wild, devilish-looking beasts are they; not such shapes as Jove
might have chosen to woo a goddess, nor such as peacefully range
the downs of Devon, but lean and hungry Cassius-like bovines,
economically got up to meet the exigencies of a six months'
rainless climate, and accustomed to wrestle with the distracting
wind and the blinding dust.

"That's not our brand," says George; "they're strange stock," and
he points to what my scientific eye recognizes as the astrological
sign of Venus deeply seared in the brown flanks of the bull he is
chasing.  But the herd are closing round us with low mutterings,
and George has again recourse to the authoritative "TORO," and with
swinging riata divides the "bossy bucklers" on either side.  When
we are free, and breathing somewhat more easily, I venture to ask
George if they ever attack anyone.

"Never horsemen--sometimes footmen.  Not through rage, you know,
but curiosity.  They think a man and his horse are one, and if they
meet a chap afoot, they run him down and trample him under hoof, in
the pursuit of knowledge.  But," adds George, "here's the lower
bench of the foothills, and here's Altascar's corral, and that
White building you see yonder is the casa."

A whitewashed wall enclosed a court containing another adobe
building, baked with the solar beams of many summers.  Leaving our
horses in the charge of a few peons in the courtyard, who were
basking lazily in the sun, we entered a low doorway, where a deep
shadow and an agreeable coolness fell upon us, as sudden and
grateful as a plunge in cool water, from its contrast with the
external glare and heat.  In the center of a low-ceiled apartment
sat an old man with a black-silk handkerchief tied about his head,
the few gray hairs that escaped from its folds relieving his
gamboge-colored face.  The odor of CIGARRITOS was as incense added
to the cathedral gloom of the building.

As Senor Altascar rose with well-bred gravity to receive us, George
advanced with such a heightened color, and such a blending of
tenderness and respect in his manner, that I was touched to the
heart by so much devotion in the careless youth.  In fact, my eyes
were still dazzled by the effect of the outer sunshine, and at
first I did not see the white teeth and black eyes of Pepita, who
slipped into the corridor as we entered.

It was no pleasant matter to disclose particulars of business which
would deprive the old senor of the greater part of that land we had
just ridden over, and I did it with great embarrassment.  But he
listened calmly--not a muscle of his dark face stirring--and the
smoke curling placidly from his lips showed his regular
respiration.  When I had finished, he offered quietly to accompany
us to the line of demarcation.  George had meanwhile disappeared,
but a suspicious conversation in broken Spanish and English, in the
corridor, betrayed his vicinity.  When he returned again, a little
absent-minded, the old man, by far the coolest and most self-
possessed of the party, extinguished his black-silk cap beneath
that stiff, uncomely sombrero which all native Californians affect.
A serape thrown over his shoulders hinted that he was waiting.
Horses are always ready saddled in Spanish ranchos, and in half an
hour from the time of our arrival we were again "loping" in the
staring sunlight.

But not as cheerfully as before.  George and myself were weighed
down by restraint, and Altascar was gravely quiet.  To break the
silence, and by way of a consolatory essay, I hinted to him that
there might be further intervention or appeal, but the proffered
oil and wine were returned with a careless shrug of the shoulders
and a sententious "QUE BUENO?--Your courts are always just."

The Indian mound of the previous night's discovery was a bearing
monument of the new line, and there we halted.  We were surprised
to find the old man Tryan waiting us.  For the first time during
our interview the old Spaniard seemed moved, and the blood rose in
his yellow cheek.  I was anxious to close the scene, and pointed
out the corner boundaries as clearly as my recollection served.

"The deputies will be here tomorrow to run the lines from this
initial point, and there will be no further trouble, I believe,
gentlemen."

Senor Altascar had dismounted and was gathering a few tufts of
dried grass in his hands.  George and I exchanged glances.  He
presently arose from his stooping posture, and advancing to within
a few paces of Joseph Tryan, said, in a voice broken with passion:

"And I, Fernando Jesus Maria Altascar, put you in possession of my
land in the fashion of my country."

He threw a sod to each of the cardinal points.

"I don't know your courts, your judges, or your CORREGIDORES.  Take
the LLANO!--and take this with it.  May the drought seize your
cattle till their tongues hang down as long as those of your lying
lawyers!  May it be the curse and torment of your old age, as you
and yours have made it of mine!"

We stepped between the principal actors in this scene, which only
the passion of Altascar made tragical, but Tryan, with a humility
but ill concealing his triumph, interrupted:

"Let him curse on.  He'll find 'em coming home to him sooner than
the cattle he has lost through his sloth and pride.  The Lord is on
the side of the just, as well as agin all slanderers and revilers."

Altascar but half guessed the meaning of the Missourian, yet
sufficiently to drive from his mind all but the extravagant power
of his native invective.

"Stealer of the Sacrament!  Open not!--open not, I say, your lying,
Judas lips to me!  Ah! half-breed, with the soul of a coyote!--car-
r-r-ramba!"

With his passion reverberating among the consonants like distant
thunder, he laid his hand upon the mane of his horse as though it
had been the gray locks of his adversary, swung himself into the
saddle and galloped away.

George turned to me:

"Will you go back with us tonight?"

I thought of the cheerless walls, the silent figures by the fire,
and the roaring wind, and hesitated.

"Well then, goodby."

"Goodby, George."

Another wring of the hands, and we parted.  I had not ridden far
when I turned and looked back.  The wind had risen early that
afternoon, and was already sweeping across the plain.  A cloud of
dust traveled before it, and a picturesque figure occasionally
emerging therefrom was my last indistinct impression of George
Tryan.


PART II--IN THE FLOOD


Three months after the survey of the Espiritu Santo Rancho, I was
again in the valley of the Sacramento.  But a general and terrible
visitation had erased the memory of that event as completely as I
supposed it had obliterated the boundary monuments I had planted.
The great flood of 1861-62 was at its height when, obeying some
indefinite yearning, I took my carpetbag and embarked for the
inundated valley.

There was nothing to be seen from the bright cabin windows of the
GOLDEN CITY but night deepening over the water.  The only sound was
the pattering rain, and that had grown monotonous for the past two
weeks, and did not disturb the national gravity of my countrymen as
they silently sat around the cabin stove.  Some on errands of
relief to friends and relatives wore anxious faces, and conversed
soberly on the one absorbing topic.  Others, like myself, attracted
by curiosity listened eagerly to newer details.  But with that
human disposition to seize upon any circumstance that might give
chance event the exaggerated importance of instinct, I was half-
conscious of something more than curiosity as an impelling motive.

The dripping of rain, the low gurgle of water, and a leaden sky
greeted us the next morning as we lay beside the half-submerged
levee of Sacramento.  Here, however, the novelty of boats to convey
us to the hotels was an appeal that was irresistible.  I resigned
myself to a dripping rubber-cased mariner called "Joe," and,
wrapping myself in a shining cloak of the like material, about as
suggestive of warmth as court plaster might have been, took my seat
in the stern sheets of his boat.  It was no slight inward struggle
to part from the steamer that to most of the passengers was the
only visible connecting link between us and the dry and habitable
earth, but we pulled away and entered the city, stemming a rapid
current as we shot the levee.

We glided up the long level of K Street--once a cheerful, busy
thoroughfare, now distressing in its silent desolation.  The turbid
water which seemed to meet the horizon edge before us flowed at
right angles in sluggish rivers through the streets.  Nature had
revenged herself on the local taste by disarraying the regular
rectangles by huddling houses on street corners, where they
presented abrupt gables to the current, or by capsizing them in
compact ruin.  Crafts of all kinds were gliding in and out of low-
arched doorways.  The water was over the top of the fences
surrounding well-kept gardens, in the first stories of hotels and
private dwellings, trailing its slime on velvet carpets as well as
roughly boarded floors.  And a silence quite as suggestive as the
visible desolation was in the voiceless streets that no longer
echoed to carriage wheel or footfall.  The low ripple of water, the
occasional splash of oars, or the warning cry of boatmen were the
few signs of life and habitation.

With such scenes before my eyes and such sounds in my ears, as I
lie lazily in the boat, is mingled the song of my gondolier who
sings to the music of his oars.  It is not quite as romantic as his
brother of the Lido might improvise, but my Yankee "Giuseppe" has
the advantage of earnestness and energy, and gives a graphic
description of the terrors of the past week and of noble deeds of
self-sacrifice and devotion, occasionally pointing out a balcony
from which some California Bianca or Laura had been snatched, half-
clothed and famished.  Giuseppe is otherwise peculiar, and refuses
the proffered fare, for--am I not a citizen of San Francisco, which
was first to respond to the suffering cry of Sacramento? and is not
he, Giuseppe, a member of the Howard Society?  No! Giuseppe is
poor, but cannot take my money.  Still, if I must spend it, there
is the Howard Society, and the women and children without food and
clothes at the Agricultural Hall.

I thank the generous gondolier, and we go to the Hall--a dismal,
bleak place, ghastly with the memories of last year's opulence and
plenty, and here Giuseppe's fare is swelled by the stranger's mite.
But here Giuseppe tells me of the "Relief Boat" which leaves for
the flooded district in the interior, and here, profiting by the
lesson he has taught me, I make the resolve to turn my curiosity to
the account of others, and am accepted of those who go forth to
succor and help the afflicted.  Giuseppe takes charge of my
carpetbag, and does not part from me until I stand on the slippery
deck of "Relief Boat No. 3."

An hour later I am in the pilothouse, looking down upon what was
once the channel of a peaceful river.  But its banks are only
defined by tossing tufts of willow washed by the long swell that
breaks over a vast inland sea.  Stretches of "tule" land fertilized
by its once regular channel and dotted by flourishing ranchos are
now cleanly erased.  The cultivated profile of the old landscape
had faded.  Dotted lines in symmetrical perspective mark orchards
that are buried and chilled in the turbid flood.  The roofs of a
few farmhouses are visible, and here and there the smoke curling
from chimneys of half-submerged tenements shows an undaunted life
within.  Cattle and sheep are gathered on Indian mounds waiting the
fate of their companions whose carcasses drift by us, or swing in
eddies with the wrecks of barns and outhouses.  Wagons are stranded
everywhere where the tide could carry them.  As I wipe the
moistened glass, I see nothing but water, pattering on the deck
from the lowering clouds, dashing against the window, dripping from
the willows, hissing by the wheels, everywhere washing, coiling,
sapping, hurrying in rapids, or swelling at last into deeper and
vaster lakes, awful in their suggestive quiet and concealment.

As day fades into night the monotony of this strange prospect grows
oppressive.  I seek the engine room, and in the company of some of
the few half-drowned sufferers we have already picked up from
temporary rafts, I forget the general aspect of desolation in their
individual misery.  Later we meet the San Francisco packet, and
transfer a number of our passengers.  From them we learn how
inward-bound vessels report to have struck the well-defined channel
of the Sacramento, fifty miles beyond the bar.  There is a
voluntary contribution taken among the generous travelers for the
use of our afflicted, and we part company with a hearty "Godspeed"
on either side.  But our signal lights are not far distant before a
familiar sound comes back to us--an indomitable Yankee cheer--which
scatters the gloom.

Our course is altered, and we are steaming over the obliterated
banks far in the interior.  Once or twice black objects loom up
near us--the wrecks of houses floating by.  There is a slight rift
in the sky toward the north, and a few bearing stars to guide us
over the waste.  As we penetrate into shallower water, it is deemed
advisable to divide our party into smaller boats, and diverge over
the submerged prairie.  I borrow a peacoat of one of the crew, and
in that practical disguise am doubtfully permitted to pass into one
of the boats.  We give way northerly.  It is quite dark yet,
although the rift of cloud has widened.

It must have been about three o'clock, and we were lying upon our
oars in an eddy formed by a clump of cottonwood, and the light of
the steamer is a solitary, bright star in the distance, when the
silence is broken by the "bow oar":

"Light ahead."

All eyes are turned in that direction.  In a few seconds a
twinkling light appears, shines steadily, and again disappears as
if by the shifting position of some black object apparently
drifting close upon us.

"Stern, all; a steamer!"

"Hold hard there!  Steamer be damned!" is the reply of the
coxswain.  "It's a house, and a big one too."

It is a big one, looming in the starlight like a huge fragment of
the darkness.  The light comes from a single candle, which shines
through a window as the great shape swings by.  Some recollection
is drifting back to me with it as I listen with beating heart.

"There's someone in it, by heavens!  Give way, boys--lay her
alongside.  Handsomely, now!  The door's fastened; try the window;
no! here's another!"

In another moment we are trampling in the water which washes the
floor to the depth of several inches.  It is a large room, at the
farther end of which an old man is sitting wrapped in a blanket,
holding a candle in one hand, and apparently absorbed in the book
he holds with the other.  I spring toward him with an exclamation:

"Joseph Tryan!"

He does not move.  We gather closer to him, and I lay my hand
gently on his shoulder, and say:

"Look up, old man, look up!  Your wife and children, where are
they?  The boys--George!  Are they here? are they safe?"

He raises his head slowly, and turns his eyes to mine, and we
involuntarily recoil before his look.  It is a calm and quiet
glance, free from fear, anger, or pain; but it somehow sends the
blood curdling through our veins.  He bowed his head over his book
again, taking no further notice of us.  The men look at me
compassionately, and hold their peace.  I make one more effort:

"Joseph Tryan, don't you know me? the surveyor who surveyed your
ranch--the Espiritu Santo?  Look up, old man!"

He shuddered and wrapped himself closer in his blanket.  Presently
he repeated to himself "The surveyor who surveyed your ranch--
Espiritu Santo" over and over again, as though it were a lesson he
was trying to fix in his memory.

I was turning sadly to the boatmen when he suddenly caught me
fearfully by the hand and said:

"Hush!"

We were silent.

"Listen!"  He puts his arm around my neck and whispers in my ear,
"I'm a MOVING OFF!"

"Moving off?"

"Hush!  Don't speak so loud.  Moving off.  Ah! wot's that?  Don't
you hear?--there! listen!"

We listen, and hear the water gurgle and click beneath the floor.

"It's them wot he sent!--Old Altascar sent.  They've been here all
night.  I heard 'em first in the creek, when they came to tell the
old man to move farther off.  They came nearer and nearer.  They
whispered under the door, and I saw their eyes on the step--their
cruel, hard eyes.  Ah, why don't they quit?"

I tell the men to search the room and see if they can find any
further traces of the family, while Tryan resumes his old attitude.
It is so much like the figure I remember on the breezy night that a
superstitious feeling is fast overcoming me.  When they have
returned, I tell them briefly what I know of him, and the old man
murmurs again:

"Why don't they quit, then?  They have the stock--all gone--gone,
gone for the hides and hoofs," and he groans bitterly.

"There are other boats below us.  The shanty cannot have drifted
far, and perhaps the family are safe by this time," says the
coxswain, hopefully.

We lift the old man up, for he is quite helpless, and carry him to
the boat.  He is still grasping the Bible in his right hand, though
its strengthening grace is blank to his vacant eye, and he cowers
in the stern as we pull slowly to the steamer while a pale gleam in
the sky shows the coming day.

I was weary with excitement, and when we reached the steamer, and I
had seen Joseph Tryan comfortably bestowed, I wrapped myself in a
blanket near the boiler and presently fell asleep.  But even then
the figure of the old man often started before me, and a sense of
uneasiness about George made a strong undercurrent to my drifting
dreams.  I was awakened at about eight o'clock in the morning by
the engineer, who told me one of the old man's sons had been picked
up and was now on board.

"Is it George Tryan?" I ask quickly.

"Don't know; but he's a sweet one, whoever he is," adds the
engineer, with a smile at some luscious remembrance.  "You'll find
him for'ard."

I hurry to the bow of the boat, and find, not George, but the
irrepressible Wise, sitting on a coil of rope, a little dirtier and
rather more dilapidated than I can remember having seen him.

He is examining, with apparent admiration, some rough, dry clothes
that have been put out for his disposal.  I cannot help thinking
that circumstances have somewhat exalted his usual cheerfulness.
He puts me at my ease by at once addressing me:

"These are high old times, ain't they?  I say, what do you reckon's
become o' them thar bound'ry moniments you stuck?  Ah!"

The pause which succeeds this outburst is the effect of a spasm of
admiration at a pair of high boots, which, by great exertion, he
has at last pulled on his feet.

"So you've picked up the ole man in the shanty, clean crazy?  He
must have been soft to have stuck there instead o' leavin' with the
old woman.  Didn't know me from Adam; took me for George!"

At this affecting instance of paternal forgetfulness, Wise was
evidently divided between amusement and chagrin.  I took advantage
of the contending emotions to ask about George.

"Don't know whar he is!  If he'd tended stock instead of running
about the prairie, packin' off wimmin and children, he might have
saved suthin.  He lost every hoof and hide, I'll bet a cooky!  Say
you," to a passing boatman, "when are you goin' to give us some
grub?  I'm hungry 'nough to skin and eat a hoss.  Reckon I'll turn
butcher when things is dried up, and save hides, horns, and
taller."

I could not but admire this indomitable energy, which under softer
climatic influences might have borne such goodly fruit.

"Have you any idea what you'll do, Wise?" I ask.

"Thar ain't much to do now," says the practical young man.  "I'll
have to lay over a spell, I reckon, till things comes straight.
The land ain't worth much now, and won't be, I dessay, for some
time.  Wonder whar the ole man'll drive stakes next."

"I meant as to your father and George, Wise."

"Oh, the old man and I'll go on to 'Miles's,' whar Tom packed the
old woman and babies last week.  George'll turn up somewhar atween
this and Altascar's ef he ain't thar now."

I ask how the Altascars have suffered.

"Well, I reckon he ain't lost much in stock.  I shouldn't wonder if
George helped him drive 'em up the foothills.  And his casa's built
too high.  Oh, thar ain't any water thar, you bet.  Ah," says Wise,
with reflective admiration, "those greasers ain't the darned fools
people thinks 'em.  I'll bet thar ain't one swamped out in all 'er
Californy."  But the appearance of "grub" cut this rhapsody short.

"I shall keep on a little farther," I say, "and try to find
George."

Wise stared a moment at this eccentricity until a new light dawned
upon him.

"I don't think you'll save much.  What's the percentage--workin' on
shares, eh!"

I answer that I am only curious, which I feel lessens his opinion
of me, and with a sadder feeling than his assurance of George's
safety might warrant, I walked away.

From others whom we picked up from time to time we heard of
George's self-sacrificing devotion, with the praises of the many he
had helped and rescued.  But I did not feel disposed to return
until I had seen him, and soon prepared myself to take a boat to
the lower VALDA of the foothills, and visit Altascar.  I soon
perfected my arrangements, bade farewell to Wise, and took a last
look at the old man, who was sitting by the furnace fires quite
passive and composed.  Then our boat head swung round, pulled by
sturdy and willing hands.

It was again raining, and a disagreeable wind had risen.  Our
course lay nearly west, and we soon knew by the strong current that
we were in the creek of the Espiritu Santo.  From time to time the
wrecks of barns were seen, and we passed many half-submerged
willows hung with farming implements.

We emerge at last into a broad silent sea.  It is the "LLANO DE
ESPIRITU SANTO."  As the wind whistles by me, piling the shallower
fresh water into mimic waves, I go back, in fancy, to the long ride
of October over that boundless plain, and recall the sharp outlines
of the distant hills, which are now lost in the lowering clouds.
The men are rowing silently, and I find my mind, released from its
tension, growing benumbed and depressed as then.  The water, too,
is getting more shallow as we leave the banks of the creek, and
with my hand dipped listlessly over the thwarts, I detect the tops
of chimisal, which shows the tide to have somewhat fallen.  There
is a black mound, bearing to the north of the line of alder, making
an adverse current, which, as we sweep to the right to avoid, I
recognize.  We pull close alongside and I call to the men to stop.

There was a stake driven near its summit with the initials, "L. E.
S. I."  Tied halfway down was a curiously worked riata.  It was
George's.  It had been cut with some sharp instrument, and the
loose gravelly soil of the mound was deeply dented with horses'
hoofs.  The stake was covered with horsehairs.  It was a record,
but no clue.

The wind had grown more violent as we still fought our way forward,
resting and rowing by turns, and oftener "poling" the shallower
surface, but the old VALDA, or bench, is still distant.  My
recollection of the old survey enables me to guess the relative
position of the meanderings of the creek, and an occasional simple
professional experiment to determine the distance gives my crew the
fullest faith in my ability.  Night overtakes us in our impeded
progress.  Our condition looks more dangerous than it really is,
but I urge the men, many of whom are still new in this mode of
navigation, to greater exertion by assurance of perfect safety and
speedy relief ahead.  We go on in this way until about eight
o'clock, and ground by the willows.  We have a muddy walk for a few
hundred yards before we strike a dry trail, and simultaneously the
white walls of Altascar's appear like a snowbank before us.  Lights
are moving in the courtyard; but otherwise the old tomblike repose
characterizes the building.

One of the peons recognized me as I entered the court, and Altascar
met me on the corridor.

I was too weak to do more than beg his hospitality for the men who
had dragged wearily with me.  He looked at my hand, which still
unconsciously held the broken riata.  I began, wearily, to tell him
about George and my fears, but with a gentler courtesy than was
even his wont, he gravely laid his hand on my shoulder.

"POCO A POCO, senor--not now.  You are tired, you have hunger, you
have cold.  Necessary it is you should have peace."

He took us into a small room and poured out some French cognac,
which he gave to the men that had accompanied me.  They drank and
threw themselves before the fire in the larger room.  The repose of
the building was intensified that night, and I even fancied that
the footsteps on the corridor were lighter and softer.  The old
Spaniard's habitual gravity was deeper; we might have been shut out
from the world as well as the whistling storm, behind those ancient
walls with their time-worn inheritor.

Before I could repeat my inquiry he retired.  In a few minutes two
smoking dishes of CHUPA with coffee were placed before us, and my
men ate ravenously.  I drank the coffee, but my excitement and
weariness kept down the instincts of hunger.

I was sitting sadly by the fire when he reentered.

"You have eat?"

I said, "Yes," to please him.

"BUENO, eat when you can--food and appetite are not always."

He said this with that Sancho-like simplicity with which most of
his countrymen utter a proverb, as though it were an experience
rather than a legend, and, taking the riata from the floor, held it
almost tenderly before him.

"It was made by me, senor."

"I kept it as a clue to him, Don Altascar," I said.  "If I could
find him--"

"He is here."

"Here! and"--but I could not say "well!"  I understood the gravity
of the old man's face, the hushed footfalls, the tomblike repose of
the building, in an electric flash of consciousness; I held the
clue to the broken riata at last.  Altascar took my hand, and we
crossed the corridor to a somber apartment.  A few tall candles
were burning in sconces before the window.

In an alcove there was a deep bed with its counterpane, pillows,
and sheets heavily edged with lace, in all that splendid luxury
which the humblest of these strange people lavish upon this single
item of their household.  I stepped beside it and saw George lying,
as I had seen him once before, peacefully at rest.  But a greater
sacrifice than that he had known was here, and his generous heart
was stilled forever.

"He was honest and brave," said the old man, and turned away.
There was another figure in the room; a heavy shawl drawn over her
graceful outline, and her long black hair hiding the hands that
buried her downcast face.  I did not seem to notice her, and,
retiring presently, left the loving and loved together.

When we were again beside the crackling fire, in the shifting
shadows of the great chamber, Altascar told me how he had that
morning met the horse of George Tryan swimming on the prairie; how
that, farther on, he found him lying, quite cold and dead, with no
marks or bruises on his person; that he had probably become
exhausted in fording the creek, and that he had as probably reached
the mound only to die for want of that help he had so freely given
to others; that, as a last act, he had freed his horse.  These
incidents were corroborated by many who collected in the great
chamber that evening--women and children--most of them succored
through the devoted energies of him who lay cold and lifeless
above.

He was buried in the Indian mound--the single spot of strange
perennial greenness which the poor aborigines had raised above the
dusty plain.  A little slab of sandstone with the initials "G. T."
is his monument, and one of the bearings of the initial corner of
the new survey of the "Espiritu Santo Rancho."



AN EPISODE OF FIDDLETOWN


In 1858 Fiddletown considered her a very pretty woman.  She had a
quantity of light chestnut hair, a good figure, a dazzling
complexion, and a certain languid grace which passed easily for
gentle-womanliness.  She always dressed becomingly, and in what
Fiddletown accepted as the latest fashion.  She had only two
blemishes: one of her velvety eyes, when examined closely, had a
slight cast; and her left cheek bore a small scar left by a single
drop of vitriol-- happily the only drop of an entire phial--thrown
upon her by one of her own jealous sex, that reached the pretty
face it was intended to mar.  But when the observer had studied the
eyes sufficiently to notice this defect, he was generally
incapacitated for criticism; and even the scar on her cheek was
thought by some to add piquancy to her smile.  The youthful editor
of THE FIDDLETOWN AVALANCHE had said privately that it was "an
exaggerated dimple."  Colonel Starbottle was instantly "reminded of
the beautifying patches of the days of Queen Anne, but more
particularly, sir, of the blankest beautiful women that, blank you,
you ever laid your two blank eyes upon--a Creole woman, sir, in New
Orleans.  And this woman had a scar--a line extending, blank me,
from her eye to her blank chin.  And this woman, sir, thrilled you,
sir; maddened you, sir; absolutely sent your blank soul to
perdition with her blank fascination!  And one day I said to her,
'Celeste, how in blank did you come by that beautiful scar, blank
you?'  And she said to me, 'Star, there isn't another white man
that I'd confide in but you; but I made that scar myself,
purposely, I did, blank me.'  These were her very words, sir, and
perhaps you think it a blank lie, sir; but I'll put up any blank
sum you can name and prove it, blank me."

Indeed, most of the male population of Fiddletown were or had been
in love with her.  Of this number, about one-half believed that
their love was returned, with the exception, possibly, of her own
husband.  He alone had been known to express skepticism.

The name of the gentleman who enjoyed this infelicitous distinction
was Tretherick.  He had been divorced from an excellent wife to
marry this Fiddletown enchantress.  She, also, had been divorced;
but it was hinted that some previous experiences of hers in that
legal formality had made it perhaps less novel, and probably less
sacrificial.  I would not have it inferred from this that she was
deficient in sentiment, or devoid of its highest moral expression.
Her intimate friend had written (on the occasion of her second
divorce), "The cold world does not understand Clara yet"; and
Colonel Starbottle had remarked blankly that with the exception of
a single woman in Opelousas Parish, La., she had more soul than the
whole caboodle of them put together.  Few indeed could read those
lines entitled "Infelissimus," commencing "Why waves no cypress
o'er this brow?" originally published in the AVALANCHE, over the
signature of "The Lady Clare," without feeling the tear of
sensibility tremble on his eyelids, or the glow of virtuous
indignation mantle his cheek, at the low brutality and pitiable
jocularity of THE DUTCH FLAT INTELLIGENCER, which the next week had
suggested the exotic character of the cypress, and its entire
absence from Fiddletown, as a reasonable answer to the query.

Indeed, it was this tendency to elaborate her feelings in a
metrical manner, and deliver them to the cold world through the
medium of the newspapers, that first attracted the attention of
Tretherick.  Several poems descriptive of the effects of California
scenery upon a too-sensitive soul, and of the vague yearnings for
the infinite which an enforced study of the heartlessness of
California society produced in the poetic breast, impressed Mr.
Tretherick, who was then driving a six-mule freight wagon between
Knight's Ferry and Stockton, to seek out the unknown poetess.  Mr.
Tretherick was himself dimly conscious of a certain hidden
sentiment in his own nature; and it is possible that some
reflections on the vanity of his pursuit--he supplied several
mining camps with whisky and tobacco--in conjunction with the
dreariness of the dusty plain on which he habitually drove, may
have touched some chord in sympathy with this sensitive woman.
Howbeit, after a brief courtship--as brief as was consistent with
some previous legal formalities--they were married; and Mr.
Tretherick brought his blushing bride to Fiddletown, or
"Fideletown," as Mrs. Tretherick preferred to call it in her poems.

The union was not a felicitous one.  It was not long before Mr.
Tretherick discovered that the sentiment he had fostered while
freighting between Stockton and Knight's Ferry was different from
that which his wife had evolved from the contemplation of
California scenery and her own soul.  Being a man of imperfect
logic, this caused him to beat her; and she, being equally faulty
in deduction, was impelled to a certain degree of unfaithfulness on
the same premise.  Then Mr. Tretherick began to drink, and Mrs.
Tretherick to contribute regularly to the columns of the AVALANCHE.
It was at this time that Colonel Starbottle discovered a similarity
in Mrs. Tretherick's verse to the genius of Sappho, and pointed it
out to the citizens of Fiddletown in a two-columned criticism,
signed "A. S.," also published in the AVALANCHE, and supported by
extensive quotation.  As the AVALANCHE did not possess a font of
Greek type, the editor was obliged to reproduce the Leucadian
numbers in the ordinary Roman letter, to the intense disgust of
Colonel Starbottle, and the vast delight of Fiddletown, who saw fit
to accept the text as an excellent imitation of Choctaw--a language
with which the colonel, as a whilom resident of the Indian
Territories, was supposed to be familiar.  Indeed, the next week's
INTELLIGENCER contained some vile doggerel supposed to be an answer
to Mrs. Tretherick's poem, ostensibly written by the wife of a
Digger Indian chief, accompanied by a glowing eulogium signed "A.
S. S."

The result of this jocularity was briefly given in a later copy of
the AVALANCHE.  "An unfortunate rencounter took place on Monday
last, between the Hon. Jackson Flash of THE DUTCH FLAT
INTELLIGENCER and the well-known Col. Starbottle of this place, in
front of the Eureka Saloon.  Two shots were fired by the parties
without injury to either, although it is said that a passing
Chinaman received fifteen buckshot in the calves of his legs from
the colonel's double-barreled shotgun, which were not intended for
him.  John will learn to keep out of the way of Melican man's
firearms hereafter.  The cause of the affray is not known, although
it is hinted that there is a lady in the case.  The rumor that
points to a well-known and beautiful poetess whose lucubrations
have often graced our columns seems to gain credence from those
that are posted."

Meanwhile the passiveness displayed by Tretherick under these
trying circumstances was fully appreciated in the gulches.  "The
old man's head is level," said one long-booted philosopher.  "Ef
the colonel kills Flash, Mrs. Tretherick is avenged: if Flash drops
the colonel, Tretherick is all right.  Either way, he's got a sure
thing."  During this delicate condition of affairs, Mrs. Tretherick
one day left her husband's home and took refuge at the Fiddletown
Hotel, with only the clothes she had on her back.  Here she staid
for several weeks, during which period it is only justice to say
that she bore herself with the strictest propriety.

It was a clear morning in early spring that Mrs. Tretherick,
unattended, left the hotel, and walked down the narrow street
toward the fringe of dark pines which indicated the extreme limits
of Fiddletown.  The few loungers at that early hour were
preoccupied with the departure of the Wingdown coach at the other
extremity of the street; and Mrs. Tretherick reached the suburbs of
the settlement without discomposing observation.  Here she took a
cross street or road, running at right angles with the main
thoroughfare of Fiddletown and passing through a belt of woodland.
It was evidently the exclusive and aristocratic avenue of the town.
The dwellings were few, ambitious, and uninterrupted by shops.  And
here she was joined by Colonel Starbottle.

The gallant colonel, notwithstanding that he bore the swelling port
which usually distinguished him, that his coat was tightly buttoned
and his boots tightly fitting, and that his cane, hooked over his
arm, swung jauntily, was not entirely at his ease.  Mrs.
Tretherick, however, vouchsafed him a gracious smile and a glance
of her dangerous eyes; and the colonel, with an embarrassed cough
and a slight strut, took his place at her side.

"The coast is clear," said the colonel, "and Tretherick is over at
Dutch Flat on a spree.  There is no one in the house but a
Chinaman; and you need fear no trouble from him.  I," he continued,
with a slight inflation of the chest that imperiled the security of
his button, "I will see that you are protected in the removal of
your property."

"I'm sure it's very kind of you, and so disinterested!" simpered
the lady as they walked along.  "It's so pleasant to meet someone
who has soul--someone to sympathize with in a community so hardened
and heartless as this."  And Mrs. Tretherick cast down her eyes,
but not until they wrought their perfect and accepted work upon her
companion.

"Yes, certainly, of course," said the colonel, glancing nervously
up and down the street--"yes, certainly."  Perceiving, however,
that there was no one in sight or hearing, he proceeded at once to
inform Mrs. Tretherick that the great trouble of his life, in fact,
had been the possession of too much soul.  That many women--as a
gentleman she would excuse him, of course, from mentioning names--
but many beautiful women had often sought his society, but being
deficient, madam, absolutely deficient, in this quality, he could
not reciprocate.  But when two natures thoroughly in sympathy,
despising alike the sordid trammels of a low and vulgar community
and the conventional restraints of a hypocritical society--when two
souls in perfect accord met and mingled in poetical union, then--
but here the colonel's speech, which had been remarkable for a
certain whisky-and-watery fluency, grew husky, almost inaudible,
and decidedly incoherent.  Possibly Mrs. Tretherick may have heard
something like it before, and was enabled to fill the hiatus.
Nevertheless, the cheek that was on the side of the colonel was
quite virginal and bashfully conscious until they reached their
destination.

It was a pretty little cottage, quite fresh and warm with paint,
very pleasantly relieved against a platoon of pines, some of whose
foremost files had been displaced to give freedom to the fenced
enclosure in which it sat.  In the vivid sunlight and perfect
silence, it had a new, uninhabited look, as if the carpenters and
painters had just left it.  At the farther end of the lot, a
Chinaman was stolidly digging; but there was no other sign of
occupancy.  "The coast," as the colonel had said, was indeed
"clear."  Mrs. Tretherick paused at the gate.  The colonel would
have entered with her, but was stopped by a gesture.  "Come for me
in a couple of hours, and I shall have everything packed," she
said, as she smiled, and extended her hand.  The colonel seized and
pressed it with great fervor.  Perhaps the pressure was slightly
returned; for the gallant colonel was impelled to inflate his
chest, and trip away as smartly as his stubby-toed, high-heeled
boots would permit.  When he had gone, Mrs. Tretherick opened the
door, listened a moment in the deserted hall, and then ran quickly
upstairs to what had been her bedroom.

Everything there was unchanged as on the night she left it.  On the
dressing-table stood her bandbox, as she remembered to have left it
when she took out her bonnet.  On the mantle lay the other glove
she had forgotten in her flight.  The two lower drawers of the
bureau were half-open (she had forgotten to shut them); and on its
marble top lay her shawl pin and a soiled cuff.  What other
recollections came upon her I know not; but she suddenly grew quite
white, shivered, and listened with a beating heart, and her hand
upon the door.  Then she stepped to the mirror, and half-fearfully,
half-curiously, parted with her fingers the braids of her blond
hair above her little pink ear, until she came upon an ugly, half-
healed scar.  She gazed at this, moving her pretty head up and down
to get a better light upon it, until the slight cast in her velvety
eyes became very strongly marked indeed.  Then she turned away with
a light, reckless, foolish laugh, and ran to the closet where hung
her precious dresses.  These she inspected nervously, and missing
suddenly a favorite black silk from its accustomed peg, for a
moment, thought she should have fainted.  But discovering it the
next instant lying upon a trunk where she had thrown it, a feeling
of thankfulness to a superior Being who protects the friendless for
the first time sincerely thrilled her.  Then, albeit she was
hurried for time, she could not resist trying the effect of a
certain lavender neck ribbon upon the dress she was then wearing,
before the mirror.  And then suddenly she became aware of a child's
voice close beside her, and she stopped.  And then the child's
voice repeated, "Is it Mamma?"

Mrs. Tretherick faced quickly about.  Standing in the doorway was a
little girl of six or seven.  Her dress had been originally fine,
but was torn and dirty; and her hair, which was a very violent red,
was tumbled seriocomically about her forehead.  For all this, she
was a picturesque little thing, even through whose childish
timidity there was a certain self-sustained air which is apt to
come upon children who are left much to themselves.  She was
holding under her arm a rag doll, apparently of her own
workmanship, and nearly as large as herself--a doll with a
cylindrical head, and features roughly indicated with charcoal.  A
long shawl, evidently belonging to a grown person, dropped from her
shoulders and swept the floor.

The spectacle did not excite Mrs. Tretherick's delight.  Perhaps
she had but a small sense of humor.  Certainly, when the child,
still standing in the doorway, again asked, "Is it Mamma?" she
answered sharply, "No, it isn't," and turned a severe look upon the
intruder.

The child retreated a step, and then, gaining courage with the
distance, said in deliciously imperfect speech:

"Dow 'way then! why don't you dow away?"

But Mrs. Tretherick was eying the shawl.  Suddenly she whipped it
off the child's shoulders, and said angrily:

"How dared you take my things, you bad child?"

"Is it yours?  Then you are my mamma; ain't you?  You are Mamma!"
she continued gleefully; and before Mrs. Tretherick could avoid
her, she had dropped her doll, and, catching the woman's skirts
with both hands, was dancing up and down before her.

"What's your name, child?" said Mrs. Tretherick coldly, removing
the small and not very white hands from her garments.

"Tarry."

"Tarry?"

"Yeth.  Tarry.  Tarowline."

"Caroline?"

"Yeth.  Tarowline Tretherick."

"Whose child ARE you?" demanded Mrs. Tretherick still more coldly,
to keep down a rising fear.

"Why, yours," said the little creature with a laugh.  "I'm your
little durl.  You're my mamma, my new mamma.  Don't you know my ol'
mamma's dorn away, never to turn back any more?  I don't live wid
my ol' mamma now.  I live wid you and Papa."

"How long have you been here?" asked Mrs. Tretherick snappishly.

"I fink it's free days," said Carry reflectively.

"You think!  Don't you know?" sneered Mrs. Tretherick.  "Then,
where did you come from?"

Carry's lip began to work under this sharp cross-examination.  With
a great effort and a small gulp, she got the better of it, and
answered:

"Papa, Papa fetched me--from Miss Simmons--from Sacramento, last
week."

"Last week!  You said three days just now," returned Mrs.
Tretherick with severe deliberation.

"I mean a monf," said Carry, now utterly adrift in sheer
helplessness and confusion.

"Do you know what you are talking about?" demanded Mrs. Tretherick
shrilly, restraining an impulse to shake the little figure before
her and precipitate the truth by specific gravity.

But the flaming red head here suddenly disappeared in the folds of
Mrs. Tretherick's dress, as if it were trying to extinguish itself
forever.

"There now--stop that sniffling," said Mrs. Tretherick, extricating
her dress from the moist embraces of the child and feeling
exceedingly uncomfortable.  "Wipe your face now, and run away, and
don't bother.  Stop," she continued, as Carry moved away.  "Where's
your papa?"

"He's dorn away too.  He's sick.  He's been dorn"--she hesitated--
"two, free, days."

"Who takes care of you, child?" said Mrs. Tretherick, eying her
curiously.

"John, the Chinaman.  I tresses myselth.  John tooks and makes the
beds."

"Well, now, run away and behave yourself, and don't bother me any
more," said Mrs. Tretherick, remembering the object of her visit.
"Stop--where are you going?" she added as the child began to ascend
the stairs, dragging the long doll after her by one helpless leg.

"Doin' upstairs to play and be dood, and no bother Mamma."

"I ain't your mamma," shouted Mrs. Tretherick, and then she swiftly
re-entered her bedroom and slammed the door.

Once inside, she drew forth a large trunk from the closet and set
to work with querulous and fretful haste to pack her wardrobe.  She
tore her best dress in taking it from the hook on which it hung:
she scratched her soft hands twice with an ambushed pin.  All the
while, she kept up an indignant commentary on the events of the
past few moments.  She said to herself she saw it all.  Tretherick
had sent for this child of his first wife--this child of whose
existence he had never seemed to care--just to insult her, to fill
her place.  Doubtless the first wife herself would follow soon, or
perhaps there would be a third.  Red hair, not auburn, but RED--of
course the child, this Caroline, looked like its mother, and, if
so, she was anything but pretty.  Or the whole thing had been
prepared: this red-haired child, the image of its mother, had been
kept at a convenient distance at Sacramento, ready to be sent for
when needed.  She remembered his occasional visits there on--
business, as he said.  Perhaps the mother already was there; but
no, she had gone East.  Nevertheless, Mrs. Tretherick, in her then
state of mind, preferred to dwell upon the fact that she might be
there.  She was dimly conscious, also, of a certain satisfaction in
exaggerating her feelings.  Surely no woman had ever been so
shamefully abused.  In fancy, she sketched a picture of herself
sitting alone and deserted, at sunset, among the fallen columns of
a ruined temple, in a melancholy yet graceful attitude, while her
husband drove rapidly away in a luxurious coach-and-four, with a
red-haired woman at his side.  Sitting upon the trunk she had just
packed, she partly composed a lugubrious poem describing her
sufferings as, wandering alone and poorly clad, she came upon her
husband and "another" flaunting in silks and diamonds.  She
pictured herself dying of consumption, brought on by sorrow--a
beautiful wreck, yet still fascinating, gazed upon adoringly by the
editor of the AVALANCHE and Colonel Starbottle.  And where was
Colonel Starbottle all this while?  Why didn't he come?  He, at
least, understood her.  He--she laughed the reckless, light laugh
of a few moments before; and then her face suddenly grew grave, as
it had not a few moments before.

What was that little red-haired imp doing all this time?  Why was
she so quiet?  She opened the door noiselessly, and listened.  She
fancied that she heard, above the multitudinous small noises and
creakings and warpings of the vacant house, a smaller voice singing
on the floor above.  This, as she remembered, was only an open
attic that had been used as a storeroom.  With a half-guilty
consciousness, she crept softly upstairs and, pushing the door
partly open, looked within.

Athwart the long, low-studded attic, a slant sunbeam from a single
small window lay, filled with dancing motes, and only half
illuminating the barren, dreary apartment.  In the ray of this
sunbeam she saw the child's glowing hair, as if crowned by a red
aureole, as she sat upon the floor with her exaggerated doll
between her knees.  She appeared to be talking to it; and it was
not long before Mrs. Tretherick observed that she was rehearsing
the interview of a half-hour before.  She catechized the doll
severely, cross-examining it in regard to the duration of its stay
there, and generally on the measure of time.  The imitation of Mrs.
Tretherick's manner was exceedingly successful, and the
conversation almost a literal reproduction, with a single
exception.  After she had informed the doll that she was not her
mother, at the close of the interview she added pathetically, "that
if she was dood, very dood, she might be her mamma, and love her
very much."

I have already hinted that Mrs. Tretherick was deficient in a sense
of humor.  Perhaps it was for this reason that this whole scene
affected her most unpleasantly; and the conclusion sent the blood
tingling to her cheek.  There was something, too, inconceivably
lonely in the situation.  The unfurnished vacant room, the half-
lights, the monstrous doll, whose very size seemed to give a
pathetic significance to its speechlessness, the smallness of the
one animate, self-centered figure--all these touched more or less
deeply the half-poetic sensibilities of the woman.  She could not
help utilizing the impression as she stood there, and thought what
a fine poem might be constructed from this material if the room
were a little darker, the child lonelier--say, sitting beside a
dead mother's bier, and the wind wailing in the turrets.  And then
she suddenly heard footsteps at the door below, and recognized the
tread of the colonel's cane.

She flew swiftly down the stairs, and encountered the colonel in
the hall.  Here she poured into his astonished ear a voluble and
exaggerated statement of her discovery, and indignant recital of
her wrongs.  "Don't tell me the whole thing wasn't arranged
beforehand; for I know it was!" she almost screamed.  "And think,"
she added, "of the heartlessness of the wretch, leaving his own
child alone here in that way."

"It's a blank shame!" stammered the colonel, without the least idea
of what he was talking about.  In fact, utterly unable as he was to
comprehend a reason for the woman's excitement, with his estimate
of her character, I fear he showed it more plainly than he
intended.  He stammered, expanded his chest, looked stern, gallant,
tender, but all unintelligently.  Mrs. Tretherick, for an instant,
experienced a sickening doubt of the existence of natures in
perfect affinity.

"It's of no use," said Mrs. Tretherick with sudden vehemence, in
answer to some inaudible remark of the colonel's, and withdrawing
her hand from the fervent grasp of that ardent and sympathetic man.
"It's of no use: my mind is made up.  You can send for my trunk as
soon as you like; but I shall stay here, and confront that man with
the proof of his vileness.  I will put him face to face with his
infamy."

I do not know whether Colonel Starbottle thoroughly appreciated the
convincing proof of Tretherick's unfaithfulness and malignity
afforded by the damning evidence of the existence of Tretherick's
own child in his own house.  He was dimly aware, however, of some
unforeseen obstacle to the perfect expression of the infinite
longing of his own sentimental nature.  But, before he could say
anything, Carry appeared on the landing above them, looking
timidly, and yet half-critically, at the pair.

"That's her," said Mrs. Tretherick excitedly.  In her deepest
emotions, in either verse or prose, she rose above a consideration
of grammatical construction.

"Ah!" said the colonel, with a sudden assumption of parental
affection and jocularity that was glaringly unreal and affected.
"Ah! pretty little girl, pretty little girl!  How do you do?  How
are you?  You find yourself pretty well, do you, pretty little
girl?"  The colonel's impulse also was to expand his chest and
swing his cane, until it occurred to him that this action might be
ineffective with a child of six or seven.  Carry, however, took no
immediate notice of this advance, but further discomposed the
chivalrous colonel by running quickly to Mrs. Tretherick and hiding
herself, as if for protection, in the folds of her gown.
Nevertheless, the colonel was not vanquished.  Falling back into an
attitude of respectful admiration, he pointed out a marvelous
resemblance to the "Madonna and Child."  Mrs. Tretherick simpered,
but did not dislodge Carry as before.  There was an awkward pause
for a moment; and then Mrs. Tretherick, motioning significantly to
the child, said in a whisper: "Go now.  Don't come here again, but
meet me tonight at the hotel."  She extended her hand: the colonel
bent over it gallantly and, raising his hat, the next moment was
gone.

"Do you think," said Mrs. Tretherick with an embarrassed voice and
a prodigious blush, looking down, and addressing the fiery curls
just visible in the folds of her dress--"do you think you will be
'dood' if I let you stay in here and sit with me?"

"And let me tall you Mamma?" queried Carry, looking up.

"And let you call me Mamma!" assented Mrs. Tretherick with an
embarrassed laugh.

"Yeth," said Carry promptly.

They entered the bedroom together.  Carry's eye instantly caught
sight of the trunk.

"Are you dowin' away adain, Mamma?" she said with a quick nervous
look, and a clutch at the woman's dress.

"No-o," said Mrs. Tretherick, looking out of the window.

"Only playing your dowin' away," suggested Carry with a laugh.
"Let me play too."

Mrs. Tretherick assented.  Carry flew into the next room, and
presently reappeared dragging a small trunk, into which she gravely
proceeded to pack her clothes.  Mrs. Tretherick noticed that they
were not many.  A question or two regarding them brought out some
further replies from the child; and before many minutes had
elapsed, Mrs. Tretherick was in possession of all her earlier
history.  But, to do this, Mrs. Tretherick had been obliged to take
Carry upon her lap, pending the most confidential disclosures.
They sat thus a long time after Mrs. Tretherick had apparently
ceased to be interested in Carry's disclosures; and when lost in
thought, she allowed the child to rattle on unheeded, and ran her
fingers through the scarlet curls.

"You don't hold me right, Mamma," said Carry at last, after one or
two uneasy shiftings of position.

"How should I hold you?" asked Mrs. Tretherick with a half-amused,
half-embarrassed laugh.

"Dis way," said Carry, curling up into position, with one arm
around Mrs. Tretherick's neck and her cheek resting on her bosom--
"dis way--dere."  After a little preparatory nestling, not unlike
some small animal, she closed her eyes, and went to sleep.

For a few moments the woman sat silent, scarcely daring to breathe
in that artificial attitude.  And then, whether from some occult
sympathy in the touch, or God best knows what, a sudden fancy began
to thrill her.  She began by remembering an old pain that she had
forgotten, an old horror that she had resolutely put away all these
years.  She recalled days of sickness and distrust--days of an
overshadowing fear--days of preparation for something that was to
be prevented, that WAS prevented, with mortal agony and fear.  She
thought of a life that might have been--she dared not say HAD been-
-and wondered.  It was six years ago; if it had lived, it would
have been as old as Carry.  The arms which were folded loosely
around the sleeping child began to tremble, and tighten their
clasp.  And then the deep potential impulse came, and with a half-
sob, half-sigh, she threw her arms out and drew the body of the
sleeping child down, down, into her breast, down again and again as
if she would hide it in the grave dug there years before.  And the
gust that shook her passed, and then, ah me! the rain.

A drop or two fell upon the curls of Carry, and she moved uneasily
in her sleep.  But the woman soothed her again--it was SO easy to
do it now--and they sat there quiet and undisturbed, so quiet that
they might have seemed incorporate of the lonely silent house, the
slowly declining sunbeams, and the general air of desertion and
abandonment, yet a desertion that had in it nothing of age, decay,
or despair.


Colonel Starbottle waited at the Fiddletown Hotel all that night in
vain.  And the next morning, when Mr. Tretherick returned to his
husks, he found the house vacant and untenanted, except by motes
and sunbeams.

When it was fairly known that Mrs. Tretherick had run away, taking
Mr. Tretherick's own child with her, there was some excitement and
much diversity of opinion, in Fiddletown.  THE DUTCH FLAT
INTELLIGENCER openly alluded to the "forcible abduction" of the
child with the same freedom, and it is to be feared the same
prejudice, with which it had criticized the abductor's poetry.  All
of Mrs. Tretherick's own sex, and perhaps a few of the opposite
sex, whose distinctive quality was not, however, very strongly
indicated, fully coincided in the views of the INTELLIGENCER.  The
majority, however, evaded the moral issue; that Mrs. Tretherick had
shaken the red dust of Fiddletown from her dainty slippers was
enough for them to know.  They mourned the loss of the fair
abductor more than her offense.  They promptly rejected Tretherick
as an injured husband and disconsolate father, and even went so far
as to openly cast discredit on the sincerity of his grief.  They
reserved an ironical condolence for Colonel Starbottle, overbearing
that excellent man with untimely and demonstrative sympathy in
barrooms, saloons, and other localities not generally deemed
favorable to the display of sentiment.  "She was alliz a skittish
thing, Kernel," said one sympathizer, with a fine affectation of
gloomy concern and great readiness of illustration; "and it's
kinder nat'ril thet she'd get away someday, and stampede that theer
colt: but thet she should shake YOU, Kernel, diet she should jist
shake you--is what gits me.  And they do say thet you jist hung
around thet hotel all night, and payrolled them corriders, and
histed yourself up and down them stairs, and meandered in and out
o' thet piazzy, and all for nothing?"  It was another generous and
tenderly commiserating spirit that poured additional oil and wine
on the colonel's wounds.  "The boys yer let on thet Mrs. Tretherick
prevailed on ye to pack her trunk and a baby over from the house to
the stage offis, and that the chap ez did go off with her thanked
you, and offered you two short bits, and sed ez how he liked your
looks, and ud employ you agin--and now you say it ain't so?  Well,
I'll tell the boys it ain't so, and I'm glad I met you, for stories
DO get round."

Happily for Mrs. Tretherick's reputation, however, the Chinaman in
Tretherick's employment, who was the only eyewitness of her flight,
stated that she was unaccompanied, except by the child.  He further
deposed that, obeying her orders, he had stopped the Sacramento
coach, and secured a passage for herself and child to San
Francisco.  It was true that Ah Fe's testimony was of no legal
value.  But nobody doubted it.  Even those who were skeptical of
the pagan's ability to recognize the sacredness of the truth
admitted his passionless, unprejudiced unconcern.  But it would
appear, from a hitherto unrecorded passage of this veracious
chronicle, that herein they were mistaken.

It was about six months after the disappearance of Mrs. Tretherick
that Ah Fe, while working in Tretherick's lot, was hailed by two
passing Chinamen.  They were the ordinary mining coolies, equipped
with long poles and baskets for their usual pilgrimages.  An
animated conversation at once ensued between Ah Fe and his brother
Mongolians--a conversation characterized by that usual shrill
volubility and apparent animosity which was at once the delight and
scorn of the intelligent Caucasian who did not understand a word of
it.  Such, at least, was the feeling with which Mr. Tretherick on
his veranda and Colonel Starbottle, who was passing, regarded their
heathenish jargon.  The gallant colonel simply kicked them out of
his way; the irate Tretherick, with an oath, threw a stone at the
group, and dispersed them, but not before one or two slips of
yellow rice paper, marked with hieroglyphics, were exchanged, and a
small parcel put into Ah Fe's hands.  When Ah Fe opened this in the
dim solitude of his kitchen, he found a little girl's apron,
freshly washed, ironed, and folded.  On the corner of the hem were
the initials "C. T."  Ah Fe tucked it away in a corner of his
blouse, and proceeded to wash his dishes in the sink with a smile
of guileless satisfaction.

Two days after this, Ah Fe confronted his master.  "Me no likee
Fiddletown.  Me belly sick.  Me go now."  Mr. Tretherick violently
suggested a profane locality.  Ah Fe gazed at him placidly, and
withdrew.

Before leaving Fiddletown, however, he accidentally met Colonel
Starbottle, and dropped a few incoherent phrases which apparently
interested that gentleman.  When he concluded, the colonel handed
him a letter and a twenty-dollar gold piece.  "If you bring me an
answer, I'll double that--sabe, John?"  Ah Fe nodded.  An interview
equally accidental, with precisely the same result, took place
between Ah Fe and another gentleman, whom I suspect to have been
the youthful editor of the AVALANCHE.  Yet I regret to state that,
after proceeding some distance on his journey, Ah Fe calmly broke
the seals of both letters, and after trying to read them upside
down and sideways, finally divided them into accurate squares, and
in this condition disposed of them to a brother Celestial whom he
met on the road, for a trifling gratuity.  The agony of Colonel
Starbottle on finding his wash bill made out on the unwritten side
of one of these squares, and delivered to him with his weekly clean
clothes, and the subsequent discovery that the remaining portions
of his letter were circulated by the same method from the Chinese
laundry of one Fung Ti of Fiddletown, has been described to me as
peculiarly affecting.  Yet I am satisfied that a higher nature,
rising above the levity induced by the mere contemplation of the
insignificant details of this breach of trust, would find ample
retributive justice in the difficulties that subsequently attended
Ah Fe's pilgrimage.

On the road to Sacramento he was twice playfully thrown from the
top of the stagecoach by an intelligent but deeply intoxicated
Caucasian, whose moral nature was shocked at riding with one
addicted to opium-smoking.  At Hangtown he was beaten by a passing
stranger--purely an act of Christian supererogation.  At Dutch Flat
he was robbed by well-known hands from unknown motives.  At
Sacramento he was arrested on suspicion of being something or
other, and discharged with a severe reprimand--possibly for not
being it, and so delaying the course of justice.  At San Francisco
he was freely stoned by children of the public schools; but, by
carefully avoiding these monuments of enlightened progress, he at
last reached, in comparative safety, the Chinese quarters, where
his abuse was confined to the police and limited by the strong arm
of the law.

The next day he entered the washhouse of Chy Fook as an assistant,
and on the following Friday was sent with a basket of clean clothes
to Chy Fook's several clients.

It was the usual foggy afternoon as he climbed the long windswept
hill of California Street--one of those bleak, gray intervals that
made the summer a misnomer to any but the liveliest San Franciscan
fancy.  There was no warmth or color in earth or sky, no light nor
shade within or without, only one monotonous, universal neutral
tint over everything.  There was a fierce unrest in the wind-
whipped streets: there was a dreary vacant quiet in the gray
houses.  When Ah Fe reached the top of the hill, the Mission Ridge
was already hidden, and the chill sea breeze made him shiver.  As
he put down his basket to rest himself, it is possible that, to his
defective intelligence and heathen experience, this "God's own
climate," as was called, seemed to possess but scant tenderness,
softness, or mercy.  But it is possible that Ah Fe illogically
confounded this season with his old persecutors, the
schoolchildren, who, being released from studious confinement, at
this hour were generally most aggressive.  So he hastened on, and
turning a corner, at last stopped before a small house.

It was the usual San Franciscan urban cottage.  There was the
little strip of cold green shrubbery before it; the chilly, bare
veranda, and above this, again, the grim balcony, on which no one
sat.  Ah Fe rang the bell.  A servant appeared, glanced at his
basket, and reluctantly admitted him, as if he were some necessary
domestic animal.  Ah Fe silently mounted the stairs, and entering
the open door of the front chamber, put down the basket and stood
passively on the threshold.

A woman, who was sitting in the cold gray light of the window, with
a child in her lap, rose listlessly, and came toward him.  Ah Fe
instantly recognized Mrs. Tretherick; but not a muscle of his
immobile face changed, nor did his slant eyes lighten as he met her
own placidly.  She evidently did not recognize him as she began to
count the clothes.  But the child, curiously examining him,
suddenly uttered a short, glad cry.

"Why, it's John, Mamma!  It's our old John what we had in
Fiddletown."

For an instant Ah Fe's eyes and teeth electrically lightened.  The
child clapped her hands, and caught at his blouse.  Then he said
shortly: "Me John--Ah Fe--allee same.  Me know you.  How do?"

Mrs. Tretherick dropped the clothes nervously, and looked hard at
Ah Fe.  Wanting the quick-witted instinct of affection that
sharpened Carry's perception, she even then could not distinguish
him above his fellows.  With a recollection of past pain, and an
obscure suspicion of impending danger, she asked him when he had
left Fiddletown.

"Longee time.  No likee Fiddletown, no likee Tlevelick.  Likee San
Flisco.  Likee washee.  Likee Tally."

Ah Fe's laconics pleased Mrs. Tretherick.  She did not stop to
consider how much an imperfect knowledge of English added to his
curt directness and sincerity.  But she said, "Don't tell anybody
you have seen me," and took out her pocketbook.

Ah Fe, without looking at it, saw that it was nearly empty.  Ah Fe,
without examining the apartment, saw that it was scantily
furnished.  Ah Fe, without removing his eyes from blank vacancy,
saw that both Mrs. Tretherick and Carry were poorly dressed.  Yet
it is my duty to state that Ah Fe's long fingers closed promptly
and firmly over the half-dollar which Mrs. Tretherick extended to
him.

Then he began to fumble in his blouse with a series of
extraordinary contortions.  After a few moments, he extracted from
apparently no particular place a child's apron, which he laid upon
the basket with the remark:

"One piecee washman flagittee."

Then he began anew his fumblings and contortions.  At last his
efforts were rewarded by his producing, apparently from his right
ear, a many-folded piece of tissue paper.  Unwrapping this
carefully, he at last disclosed two twenty-dollar gold pieces,
which he handed to Mrs. Tretherick.

"You leavee money topside of blulow, Fiddletown.  Me findee money.
Me fetchee money to you.  All lightee."

"But I left no money on the top of the bureau, John," said Mrs.
Tretherick earnestly.  "There must be some mistake.  It belongs to
some other person.  Take it back, John."

Ah Fe's brow darkened.  He drew away from Mrs. Tretherick's
extended hand, and began hastily to gather up his basket.

"Me no takee it back.  No, no!  Bimeby pleesman he catchee me.  He
say, 'God damn thief!--catchee flowty dollar: come to jailee.'  Me
no takee back.  You leavee money topside blulow, Fiddletown.  Me
fetchee money you.  Me no takee back."

Mrs. Tretherick hesitated.  In the confusion of her flight, she
MIGHT have left the money in the manner he had said.  In any event,
she had no right to jeopardize this honest Chinaman's safety by
refusing it.  So she said: "Very well, John, I will keep it.  But
you must come again and see me--" here Mrs. Tretherick hesitated
with a new and sudden revelation of the fact that any man could
wish to see any other than herself--"and, and--Carry."

Ah Fe's face lightened.  He even uttered a short ventriloquistic
laugh without moving his mouth.  Then, shouldering his basket, he
shut the door carefully and slid quietly down stairs.  In the lower
hall he, however, found an unexpected difficulty in opening the
front door, and, after fumbling vainly at the lock for a moment,
looked around for some help or instruction.  But the Irish handmaid
who had let him in was contemptuously oblivious of his needs, and
did not appear.

There occurred a mysterious and painful incident, which I shall
simply record without attempting to explain.  On the hall table a
scarf, evidently the property of the servant before alluded to, was
lying.  As Ah Fe tried the lock with one hand, the other rested
lightly on the table.  Suddenly, and apparently of its own
volition, the scarf began to creep slowly toward Ah Fe's hand; from
Ah Fe's hand it began to creep up his sleeve slowly, and with an
insinuating, snakelike motion; and then disappeared somewhere in
the recesses of his blouse.  Without betraying the least interest
or concern in this phenomenon, Ah Fe still repeated his experiments
upon the lock.  A moment later the tablecloth of red damask, moved
by apparently the same mysterious impulse, slowly gathered itself
under Ah Fe's fingers, and sinuously disappeared by the same hidden
channel.  What further mystery might have followed, I cannot say;
for at this moment Ah Fe discovered the secret of the lock, and was
enabled to open the door coincident with the sound of footsteps
upon the kitchen stairs.  Ah Fe did not hasten his movements, but
patiently shouldering his basket, closed the door carefully behind
him again, and stepped forth into the thick encompassing fog that
now shrouded earth and sky.

From her high casement window, Mrs. Tretherick watched Ah Fe's
figure until it disappeared in the gray cloud.  In her present
loneliness, she felt a keen sense of gratitude toward him, and may
have ascribed to the higher emotions and the consciousness of a
good deed that certain expansiveness of the chest, and swelling of
the bosom, that was really due to the hidden presence of the scarf
and tablecloth under his blouse.  For Mrs. Tretherick was still
poetically sensitive.  As the gray fog deepened into night, she
drew Carry closer toward her, and, above the prattle of the child,
pursued a vein of sentimental and egotistic recollection at once
bitter and dangerous.  The sudden apparition of Ah Fe linked her
again with her past life at Fiddletown.  Over the dreary interval
between, she was now wandering--a journey so piteous, willful,
thorny, and useless that it was no wonder that at last Carry
stopped suddenly in the midst of her voluble confidences to throw
her small arms around the woman's neck, and bid her not to cry.

Heaven forefend that I should use a pen that should be ever
dedicated to an exposition of unalterable moral principle to
transcribe Mrs. Tretherick's own theory of this interval and
episode, with its feeble palliations, its illogical deductions, its
fond excuses, and weak apologies.  It would seem, however, that her
experience had been hard.  Her slender stock of money was soon
exhausted.  At Sacramento she found that the composition of verse,
although appealing to the highest emotions of the human heart, and
compelling the editorial breast to the noblest commendation in the
editorial pages, was singularly inadequate to defray the expenses
of herself and Carry.  Then she tried the stage, but failed
signally.  Possibly her conception of the passions was different
from that which obtained with a Sacramento audience; but it was
certain that her charming presence, so effective at short range,
was not sufficiently pronounced for the footlights.  She had
admirers enough in the greenroom, but awakened no abiding affection
among the audience.  In this strait, it occurred to her that she
had a voice--a contralto of no very great compass or cultivation,
but singularly sweet and touching; and she finally obtained
position in a church choir.  She held it for three months, greatly
to her pecuniary advantage, and, it is said, much to the
satisfaction of the gentlemen in the back pews, who faced toward
her during the singing of the last hymn.

I remember her quite distinctly at this time.  The light that
slanted through the oriel of St. Dives's choir was wont to fall
very tenderly on her beautiful head with its stacked masses of
deerskin-colored hair, on the low black arches of her brows, and to
deepen the pretty fringes that shaded her eyes of Genoa velvet.
Very pleasant it was to watch the opening and shutting of that
small straight mouth, with its quick revelation of little white
teeth, and to see the foolish blood faintly deepen her satin cheek
as you watched.  For Mrs. Tretherick was very sweetly conscious of
admiration and, like most pretty women, gathered herself under your
eye like a racer under the spur.

And then, of course, there came trouble.  I have it from the
soprano--a little lady who possessed even more than the usual
unprejudiced judgment of her sex--that Mrs. Tretherick's conduct
was simply shameful; that her conceit was unbearable; that, if she
considered the rest of the choir as slaves, she (the soprano) would
like to know it; that her conduct on Easter Sunday with the basso
had attracted the attention of the whole congregation; and that she
herself had noticed Dr. Cope twice look up during the service; that
her (the soprano's) friends had objected to her singing in the
choir with a person who had been on the stage, but she had waived
this.  Yet she had it from the best authority that Mrs. Tretherick
had run away from her husband, and that this red-haired child who
sometimes came in the choir was not her own.  The tenor confided to
me behind the organ that Mrs. Tretherick had a way of sustaining a
note at the end of a line in order that her voice might linger
longer with the congregation--an act that could be attributed only
to a defective moral nature; that as a man (he was a very popular
dry goods clerk on weekdays, and sang a good deal from apparently
behind his eyebrows on the Sabbath)--that as a man, sir, he would
put up with it no longer.  The basso alone--a short German with a
heavy voice, for which he seemed reluctantly responsible, and
rather grieved at its possession--stood up for Mrs. Tretherick, and
averred that they were jealous of her because she was "bretty."
The climax was at last reached in an open quarrel, wherein Mrs.
Tretherick used her tongue with such precision of statement and
epithet that the soprano burst into hysterical tears, and had to be
supported from the choir by her husband and the tenor.  This act
was marked intentionally to the congregation by the omission of the
usual soprano solo.  Mrs. Tretherick went home flushed with
triumph, but on reaching her room frantically told Carry that they
were beggars henceforward; that she--her mother--had just taken the
very bread out of her darling's mouth, and ended by bursting into a
flood of penitent tears.  They did not come so quickly as in her
old poetical days; but when they came they stung deeply.  She was
roused by a formal visit from a vestryman--one of the music
committee.  Mrs. Tretherick dried her long lashes, put on a new
neck ribbon, and went down to the parlor.  She staid there two
hours--a fact that might have occasioned some remark but that the
vestryman was married, and had a family of grownup daughters.  When
Mrs. Tretherick returned to her room, she sang to herself in the
glass and scolded Carry--but she retained her place in the choir.

It was not long, however.  In due course of time, her enemies
received a powerful addition to their forces in the committeeman's
wife.  That lady called upon several of the church members and on
Dr. Cope's family.  The result was that, at a later meeting of the
music committee, Mrs. Tretherick's voice was declared inadequate to
the size of the building and she was invited to resign.  She did
so.  She had been out of a situation for two months, and her scant
means were almost exhausted, when Ah Fe's unexpected treasure was
tossed into her lap.

The gray fog deepened into night, and the street lamps started into
shivering life as, absorbed in these unprofitable memories, Mrs.
Tretherick still sat drearily at her window.  Even Carry had
slipped away unnoticed; and her abrupt entrance with the damp
evening paper in her hand roused Mrs. Tretherick, and brought her
back to an active realization of the present.  For Mrs. Tretherick
was wont to scan the advertisements in the faint hope of finding
some avenue of employment--she knew not what--open to her needs;
and Carry had noted this habit.

Mrs. Tretherick mechanically closed the shutters, lit the lights,
and opened the paper.  Her eye fell instinctively on the following
paragraph in the telegraphic column:


FIDDLETOWN, 7th.--Mr. James Tretherick, an old resident of this
place, died last night of delirium tremens.  Mr. Tretherick was
addicted to intemperate habits, said to have been induced by
domestic trouble.


Mrs. Tretherick did not start.  She quietly turned over another
page of the paper, and glanced at Carry.  The child was absorbed in
a book.  Mrs. Tretherick uttered no word, but during the remainder
of the evening was unusually silent and cold.  When Carry was
undressed and in bed, Mrs. Tretherick suddenly dropped on her knees
beside the bed, and, taking Carry's flaming head between her hands,
said:

"Should you like to have another papa, Carry, darling?"

"No," said Carry, after a moment's thought.

"But a papa to help Mamma take care of you, to love you, to give
you nice clothes, to make a lady of you when you grow up?"

Carry turned her sleepy eyes toward the questioner.  "Should YOU,
Mamma?"

Mrs. Tretherick suddenly flushed to the roots of her hair.  "Go to
sleep," she said sharply, and turned away.

But at midnight the child felt two white arms close tightly around
her, and was drawn down into a bosom that heaved, fluttered, and at
last was broken up by sobs.

"Don't ky, Mamma," whispered Carry, with a vague retrospect of
their recent conversation.  "Don't ky.  I fink I SHOULD like a new
papa, if he loved you very much--very, very much!"

A month afterward, to everybody's astonishment, Mrs. Tretherick was
married.  The happy bridegroom was one Colonel Starbottle, recently
elected to represent Calaveras County in the legislative councils
of the State.  As I cannot record the event in finer language than
that used by the correspondent of THE SACRAMENTO GLOBE, I venture
to quote some of his graceful periods.  "The relentless shafts of
the sly god have been lately busy among our gallant Solons.  We
quote 'one more unfortunate.'  The latest victim is the Hon. C.
Starbottle of Calaveras.  The fair enchantress in the case is a
beautiful widow, a former votary of Thespis, and lately a
fascinating St. Cecilia of one of the most fashionable churches of
San Francisco, where she commanded a high salary."

THE DUTCH FLAT INTELLIGENCER saw fit, however, to comment upon the
fact with that humorous freedom characteristic of an unfettered
press.  "The new Democratic war horse from Calaveras has lately
advented in the legislature with a little bill to change the name
of Tretherick to Starbottle.  They call it a marriage certificate
down there.  Mr. Tretherick has been dead just one month; but we
presume the gallant colonel is not afraid of ghosts."  It is but
just to Mrs. Tretherick to state that the colonel's victory was by
no means an easy one.  To a natural degree of coyness on the part
of the lady was added the impediment of a rival--a prosperous
undertaker from Sacramento, who had first seen and loved Mrs.
Tretherick at the theater and church, his professional habits
debarring him from ordinary social intercourse, and indeed any
other than the most formal public contact with the sex.  As this
gentleman had made a snug fortune during the felicitous prevalence
of a severe epidemic, the colonel regarded him as a dangerous
rival.  Fortunately, however, the undertaker was called in
professionally to lay out a brother senator, who had unhappily
fallen by the colonel's pistol in an affair of honor; and either
deterred by physical consideration from rivalry, or wisely
concluding that the colonel was professionally valuable, he
withdrew from the field.

The honeymoon was brief, and brought to a close by an untoward
incident.  During their bridal trip, Carry had been placed in the
charge of Colonel Starbottle's sister.  On their return to the
city, immediately on reaching their lodgings, Mrs. Starbottle
announced her intention of at once proceeding to Mrs. Culpepper's
to bring the child home.  Colonel Starbottle, who had been
exhibiting for some time a certain uneasiness which he had
endeavored to overcome by repeated stimulation, finally buttoned
his coat tightly across his breast, and after walking unsteadily
once or twice up and down the room, suddenly faced his wife with
his most imposing manner.

"I have deferred," said the colonel with an exaggeration of port
that increased with his inward fear, and a growing thickness of
speech--"I have deferr--I may say poshponed statement o' fack thash
my duty ter dishclose ter ye.  I did no wish to mar sushine mushal
happ'ness, to bligh bud o' promise, to darken conjuglar sky by
unpleasht revelashun.  Musht be done--by God, m'm, musht do it now.
The chile is gone!"

"Gone!" echoed Mrs. Starbottle.

There was something in the tone of her voice, in the sudden
drawing-together of the pupils of her eyes, that for a moment
nearly sobered the colonel, and partly collapsed his chest.

"I'll splain all in a minit," he said with a deprecating wave of
the hand.  "Everything shall be splained.  The-the-the-melencholly
event wish preshipitate our happ'ness--the myster'us prov'nice wish
releash you--releash chile! hunerstan?--releash chile.  The mom't
Tretherick die--all claim you have in chile through him--die too.
Thash law.  Who's chile b'long to?  Tretherick?  Tretherick dead.
Chile can't b'long dead man.  Damn nonshense b'long dead man.  I'sh
your chile? no! whose chile then?  Chile b'long to 'ts mother.
Unnerstan?"

"Where is she?" said Mrs. Starbottle, with a very white face and a
very low voice.

"I'll splain all.  Chile b'long to 'ts mother.  Thash law.  I'm
lawyer, leshlator, and American sis'n.  Ish my duty as lawyer, as
leshlator, and 'merikan sis'n to reshtore chile to suff'rin mother
at any coss--any coss."

"Where is she?" repeated Mrs. Starbottle, with her eyes still fixed
on the colonel's face.

"Gone to 'ts m'o'r.  Gone East on shteamer, yesserday.  Waffed by
fav'rin gales to suff'rin p'rent.  Thash so!"

Mrs. Starbottle did not move.  The colonel felt his chest slowly
collapsing, but steadied himself against a chair, and endeavored to
beam with chivalrous gallantry not unmixed with magisterial
firmness upon her as she sat.

"Your feelin's, m'm, do honor to yer sex, but conshider situashun.
Conshider m'or's feelings--conshider MY feelin's."  The colonel
paused, and flourishing a white handkerchief, placed it negligently
in his breast, and then smiled tenderly above it, as over laces and
ruffles, on the woman before him.  "Why should dark shed-der cass
bligh on two sholes with single beat?  Chile's fine chile, good
chile, but summonelse chile!  Chile's gone, Clar'; but all ish'n't
gone, Clar'.  Conshider dearesht, you all's have me!"

Mrs. Starbottle started to her feet.  "YOU!" she cried, bringing
out a chest note that made the chandeliers ring--"You that I
married to give my darling food and clothes--YOU! a dog that I
whistled to my side to keep the men off me--YOU!"

She choked up, and then dashed past him into the inner room, which
had been Carry's; then she swept by him again into her own bedroom,
and then suddenly reappeared before him, erect, menacing, with a
burning fire over her cheekbones, a quick straightening of her
arched brows and mouth, a squaring of jaw, and ophidian flattening
of the head.

"Listen!" she said in a hoarse, half-grown boy's voice.  "Hear me!
If you ever expect to set eyes on me again, you must find the
child.  If you ever expect to speak to me again, to touch me, you
must bring her back.  For where she goes, I go; you hear me!  Where
she has gone, look for me."

She struck out past him again with a quick feminine throwing-out of
her arms from the elbows down, as if freeing herself from some
imaginary bonds, and dashing into her chamber, slammed and locked
the door.  Colonel Starbottle, although no coward, stood in
superstitious fear of an angry woman, and, recoiling as she swept
by, lost his unsteady foothold and rolled helplessly on the sofa.
Here, after one or two unsuccessful attempts to regain his
foothold, he remained, uttering from time to time profane but not
entirely coherent or intelligible protests, until at last he
succumbed to the exhausting quality of his emotions, and the
narcotic quantity of his potations.

Meantime, within, Mrs. Starbottle was excitedly gathering her
valuables and packing her trunk, even as she had done once before
in the course of this remarkable history.  Perhaps some
recollection of this was in her mind; for she stopped to lean her
burning cheeks upon her hand, as if she saw again the figure of the
child standing in the doorway, and heard once more a childish voice
asking, "Is it Mamma?"  But the epithet now stung her to the quick,
and with a quick, passionate gesture she dashed it away with a tear
that had gathered in her eye.  And then it chanced that, in turning
over some clothes, she came upon the child's slipper with a broken
sandal string.  She uttered a great cry here--the first she had
uttered--and caught it to her breast, kissing it passionately again
and again, and rocking from side to side with a motion peculiar to
her sex.  And then she took it to the window, the better to see it
through her now streaming eyes.  Here she was taken with a sudden
fit of coughing that she could not stifle with the handkerchief she
put to her feverish lips.  And then she suddenly grew very faint.
The window seemed to recede before her, the floor to sink beneath
her feet; and staggering to the bed, she fell prone upon it with
the sandal and handkerchief pressed to her breast.  Her face was
quite pale, the orbit of her eyes dark; and there was a spot upon
her lip, another on her handkerchief, and still another on the
white counterpane of the bed.

The wind had risen, rattling the window sashes and swaying the
white curtains in a ghostly way.  Later, a gray fog stole softly
over the roofs, soothing the wind-roughened surfaces, and in-
wrapping all things in an uncertain light and a measureless peace.
She lay there very quiet--for all her troubles, still a very pretty
bride.  And on the other side of the bolted door the gallant
bridegroom, from his temporary couch, snored peacefully.


A week before Christmas Day, 1870, the little town of Genoa, in the
State of New York, exhibited, perhaps more strongly than at any
other time, the bitter irony of its founders and sponsors.  A
driving snowstorm that had whitened every windward hedge, bush,
wall, and telegraph pole, played around this soft Italian Capital,
whirled in and out of the great staring wooden Doric columns of its
post office and hotel, beat upon the cold green shutters of its
best houses, and powdered the angular, stiff, dark figures in its
streets.  From the level of the street, the four principal churches
of the town stood out starkly, even while their misshapen spires
were kindly hidden in the low, driving storm.  Near the railroad
station, the new Methodist chapel, whose resemblance to an enormous
locomotive was further heightened by the addition of a pyramidal
row of front steps, like a cowcatcher, stood as if waiting for a
few more houses to be hitched on to proceed to a pleasanter
location.  But the pride of Genoa--the great Crammer Institute for
Young Ladies--stretched its bare brick length and reared its cupola
plainly from the bleak Parnassian hill above the principal avenue.
There was no evasion in the Crammer Institute of the fact that it
was a public institution.  A visitor upon its doorsteps, a pretty
face at its window, were clearly visible all over the township.

The shriek of the engine of the four-o'clock Northern express
brought but few of the usual loungers to the depot.  Only a single
passenger alighted, and was driven away in the solitary waiting
sleigh toward the Genoa Hotel.  And then the train sped away again,
with that passionless indifference to human sympathies or curiosity
peculiar to express trains; the one baggage truck was wheeled into
the station again; the station door was locked; and the
stationmaster went home.

The locomotive whistle, however, awakened the guilty consciousness
of three young ladies of the Crammer Institute, who were even then
surreptitiously regaling themselves in the bakeshop and
confectionery saloon of Mistress Phillips in a by-lane.  For even
the admirable regulations of the Institute failed to entirely
develop the physical and moral natures of its pupils.  They
conformed to the excellent dietary rules in public, and in private
drew upon the luxurious rations of their village caterer.  They
attended church with exemplary formality, and flirted informally
during service with the village beaux.  They received the best and
most judicious instruction during school hours, and devoured the
trashiest novels during recess.  The result of which was an
aggregation of quite healthy, quite human, and very charming young
creatures that reflected infinite credit on the Institute.  Even
Mistress Phillips, to whom they owed vast sums, exhilarated by the
exuberant spirits and youthful freshness of her guests, declared
that the sight of "them young things" did her good, and had even
been known to shield them by shameless equivocation.

"Four o'clock, girls! and, if we're not back to prayers by five,
we'll be missed," said the tallest of these foolish virgins, with
an aquiline nose, and certain quiet elan that bespoke the leader,
as she rose from her seat.  "Have you got the books, Addy?"  Addy
displayed three dissipated-looking novels under her waterproof.
"And the provisions, Carry?"  Carry showed a suspicious parcel
filling the pocket of her sack.  "All right, then.  Come, girls,
trudge--Charge it," she added, nodding to her host as they passed
toward the door.  "I'll pay you when my quarter's allowance comes."

"No, Kate," interposed Carry, producing her purse, "let me pay;
it's my turn."

"Never!" said Kate, arching her black brows loftily, "even if you
do have rich relatives, and regular remittances from California.
Never!  Come, girls, forward, march!"

As they opened the door, a gust of wind nearly took them off their
feet.  Kindhearted Mrs. Phillips was alarmed.  "Sakes alive, galls!
ye mussn't go out in sich weather.  Better let me send word to the
Institoot, and make ye up a nice bed tonight in my parlor."  But
the last sentence was lost in a chorus of half-suppressed shrieks
as the girls, hand in hand, ran down the steps into the storm, and
were at once whirled away.

The short December day, unlit by any sunset glow, was failing fast.
It was quite dark already, and the air was thick with driving snow.
For some distance their high spirits, youth, and even inexperience
kept them bravely up; but, in ambitiously attempting a short cut
from the highroad across an open field, their strength gave out,
the laugh grew less frequent, and tears began to stand in Carry's
brown eyes.  When they reached the road again, they were utterly
exhausted.  "Let us go back," said Carry.

"We'd never get across that field again," said Addy.

"Let's stop at the first house, then," said Carry.

"The first house," said Addy, peering through the gathering
darkness, "is Squire Robinson's."  She darted a mischievous glance
at Carry that, even in her discomfort and fear, brought the quick
blood to her cheek.

"Oh, yes!" said Kate with gloomy irony, "certainly; stop at the
squire's by all means, and be invited to tea, and be driven home
after by your dear friend Mr. Harry, with a formal apology from
Mrs. Robinson, and hopes that the young ladies may be excused this
time.  No!" continued Kate with sudden energy.  "That may suit YOU;
but I'm going back as I came--by the window, or not at all"  Then
she pounced suddenly, like a hawk, on Carry, who was betraying a
tendency to sit down on a snowbank and whimper, and shook her
briskly.  "You'll be going to sleep next.  Stay, hold your tongues,
all of you--what's that?"

It was the sound of sleigh bells.  Coming down toward them out of
the darkness was a sleigh with a single occupant.  "Hold down your
heads, girls: if it's anybody that knows us, we're lost."  But it
was not, for a voice strange to their ears, but withal very kindly
and pleasant, asked if its owner could be of any help to them.  As
they turned toward him, they saw it was a man wrapped in a handsome
sealskin cloak, wearing a sealskin cap; his face, half-concealed by
a muffler of the same material, disclosing only a pair of long
mustaches, and two keen dark eyes.  "It's a son of old Santa
Claus!" whispered Addy.  The girls tittered audibly as they tumbled
into the sleigh; they had regained their former spirits.  "Where
shall I take you?" said the stranger quietly.  There was a hurried
whispering; and then Kate said boldly, "To the Institute."  They
drove silently up the hill, until the long, ascetic building loomed
up before them.  The stranger reined up suddenly.  "You know the
way better than I," he said.  "Where do you go in?"  "Through the
back window," said Kate with sudden and appalling frankness.  "I
see!" responded their strange driver quietly and, alighting
quickly, removed the bells from the horses.  "We can drive as near
as you please now," he added by way of explanation.  "He certainly
is a son of Santa Claus," whispered Addy.  "Hadn't we better ask
after his father?"  "Hush!" said Kate decidedly.  "He is an angel,
I dare say."  She added with a delicious irrelevance, which was,
however, perfectly understood by her feminine auditors, "We are
looking like three frights."

Cautiously skirting the fences, they at last pulled up a few feet
from a dark wall.  The stranger proceeded to assist them to alight.
There was still some light from the reflected snow; and as he
handed his fair companions to the ground, each was conscious of
undergoing an intense though respectful scrutiny.  He assisted them
gravely to open the window, and then discreetly retired to the
sleigh until the difficult and somewhat discomposing ingress was
made.  He then walked to the window.  "Thank you and good night!"
whispered three voices.  A single figure still lingered.  The
stranger leaned over the window sill.  "Will you permit me to light
my cigar here?  It might attract attention if I struck a match
outside."  By the upspringing light he saw the figure of Kate very
charmingly framed in by the window.  The match burnt slowly out in
his fingers.  Kate smiled mischievously.  The astute young woman
had detected the pitiable subterfuge.  For what else did she stand
at the head of her class, and had doting parents paid three years'
tuition?

The storm had passed, and the sun was shining quite cheerily in the
eastern recitation room the next morning when Miss Kate, whose seat
was nearest the window, placing her hand pathetically upon her
heart, affected to fall in bashful and extreme agitation upon the
shoulder of Carry, her neighbor.  "HE has come," she gasped in a
thrilling whisper.  "Who?" asked Carry sympathetically, who never
clearly understood when Kate was in earnest.  "Who?--Why, the man
who rescued us last night!  I saw him drive to the door this
moment.  Don't speak; I shall be better in a moment--there!" she
said, and the shameless hypocrite passed her hand pathetically
across her forehead with a tragic air.

"What can he want?" asked Carry, whose curiosity was excited.  "I
don't know," said Kate, suddenly relapsing into gloomy cynicism.
"Possibly to put his five daughters to school; perhaps to finish
his young wife, and warn her against us."

"He didn't look old, and he didn't seem like a married man,"
rejoined Addy thoughtfully.

"That was his art, you poor creature!" returned Kate scornfully.
"You can never tell anything of these men, they are so deceitful.
Besides, it's just my fate!"

"Why, Kate," began Carry, in serious concern.

"Hush!  Miss Walker is saying something," said Kate, laughing.

"The young ladies will please give attention," said a slow,
perfunctory voice.  "Miss Carry Tretherick is wanted in the
parlor."

Meantime Mr. Jack Prince, the name given on the card, and various
letters and credentials submitted to the Rev. Mr. Crammer, paced
the somewhat severe apartment known publicly as the "reception
parlor" and privately to the pupils as "purgatory."  His keen eyes
had taken in the various rigid details, from the flat steam
"radiator," like an enormous japanned soda cracker, that heated one
end of the room to the monumental bust of Dr. Crammer that
hopelessly chilled the other; from the Lord's Prayer, executed by a
former writing master in such gratuitous variety of elegant
calligraphic trifling as to abate considerably the serious value of
the composition, to three views of Genoa from the Institute, which
nobody ever recognized, taken on the spot by the drawing teacher;
from two illuminated texts of Scripture in an English letter, so
gratuitously and hideously remote as to chill all human interest,
to a large photograph of the senior class, in which the prettiest
girls were Ethiopian in complexion, and sat, apparently, on each
other's heads and shoulders.  His fingers had turned listlessly the
leaves of school-catalogues, the SERMONS of Dr. Crammer, the POEMS
of Henry Kirke White, the LAYS OF THE SANCTUARY and LIVES OF
CELEBRATED WOMEN.  His fancy, and it was a nervously active one,
had gone over the partings and greetings that must have taken place
here, and wondered why the apartment had yet caught so little of
the flavor of humanity; indeed, I am afraid he had almost forgotten
the object of his visit when the door opened, and Carry Tretherick
stood before him.

It was one of those faces he had seen the night before, prettier
even than it had seemed then; and yet I think he was conscious of
some disappointment, without knowing exactly why.  Her abundant
waving hair was of a guinea-golden tint, her complexion of a
peculiar flowerlike delicacy, her brown eyes of the color of
seaweed in deep water.  It certainly was not her beauty that
disappointed him.

Without possessing his sensitiveness to impression, Carry was, on
her part, quite as vaguely ill at ease.  She saw before her one of
those men whom the sex would vaguely generalize as "nice," that is
to say, correct in all the superficial appointments of style,
dress, manners, and feature.  Yet there was a decidedly
unconventional quality about him: he was totally unlike anything or
anybody that she could remember; and as the attributes of
originality are often as apt to alarm as to attract people, she was
not entirely prepossessed in his favor.

"I can hardly hope," he began pleasantly, "that you remember me.
It is eleven years ago, and you were a very little girl.  I am
afraid I cannot even claim to have enjoyed that familiarity that
might exist between a child of six and a young man of twenty-one.
I don't think I was fond of children.  But I knew your mother very
well.  I was editor of the AVALANCHE in Fiddletown when she took
you to San Francisco."

"You mean my stepmother; she wasn't my mother, you know,"
interposed Carry hastily.

Mr. Prince looked at her curiously.  "I mean your stepmother," he
said gravely.  "I never had the pleasure of meeting your mother."

"No; MOTHER hasn't been in California these twelve years."

There was an intentional emphasizing of the title and of its
distinction that began to interest coldly Prince after his first
astonishment was past.

"As I come from your stepmother now," he went on with a slight
laugh, "I must ask you to go back for a few moments to that point.
After your father's death, your mother--I mean your stepmother--
recognized the fact that your mother, the first Mrs. Tretherick,
was legally and morally your guardian and, although much against
her inclination and affections, placed you again in her charge."

"My stepmother married again within a month after father died, and
sent me home," said Carry with great directness, and the faintest
toss of her head.

Mr. Prince smiled so sweetly, and apparently so sympathetically,
that Carry began to like him.  With no other notice of the
interruption he went on, "After your stepmother had performed this
act of simple justice, she entered into an agreement with your
mother to defray the expenses of your education until your
eighteenth year, when you were to elect and choose which of the two
should thereafter be your guardian, and with whom you would make
your home.  This agreement, I think, you are already aware of, and,
I believe, knew at the time."

"I was a mere child then," said Carry.

"Certainly," said Mr. Prince, with the same smile.  "Still the
conditions, I think, have never been oppressive to you nor your
mother; and the only time they are likely to give you the least
uneasiness will be when you come to make up your mind in the choice
of your guardian.  That will be on your eighteenth birthday--the
twentieth, I think, of the present month."

Carry was silent.

"Pray do not think that I am here to receive your decision, even if
it be already made.  I only came to inform you that your
stepmother, Mrs. Starbottle, will be in town tomorrow, and will
pass a few days at the hotel.  If it is your wish to see her before
you make up your mind, she will be glad to meet you.  She does not,
however, wish to do anything to influence your judgment.

"Does Mother know she is coming?" said Carry hastily.

"I do not know," said Prince gravely.  "I only know that if you
conclude to see Mrs. Starbottle, it will be with your mother's
permission.  Mrs. Starbottle will keep sacredly this part of the
agreement, made ten years ago.  But her health is very poor; and
the change and country quiet of a few days may benefit her."  Mr.
Prince bent his keen, bright eyes upon the young girl, and almost
held his breath until she spoke again.

"Mother's coming up today or tomorrow," she said, looking up.

"Ah!" said Mr. Prince with a sweet and languid smile.

"Is Colonel Starbottle here too?" asked Carry, after a pause.

"Colonel Starbottle is dead.  Your stepmother is again a widow."

"Dead!" repeated Carry.

"Yes," replied Mr. Prince.  "Your stepmother has been singularly
unfortunate in surviving her affections."

Carry did not know what he meant, and looked so.  Mr. Prince smiled
reassuringly.

Presently Carry began to whimper.

Mr. Prince softly stepped beside her chair.

"I am afraid," he said with a very peculiar light in his eye, and a
singular dropping of the corners of his mustache--"I am afraid you
are taking this too deeply.  It will be some days before you are
called upon to make a decision.  Let us talk of something else.  I
hope you caught no cold last evening."

Carry's face shone out again in dimples.

"You must have thought us so queer!  It was too bad to give you so
much trouble."

"None whatever, I assure you.  My sense of propriety," he added
demurely, "which might have been outraged had I been called upon to
help three young ladies out of a schoolroom window at night.  was
deeply gratified at being able to assist them in again."  The
doorbell rang loudly, and Mr. Prince rose.  "Take your own time,
and think well before you make your decision."  But Carry's ear and
attention were given to the sound of voices in the hall.  At the
same moment, the door was thrown open, and a servant announced,
"Mrs. Tretherick and Mr. Robinson."

The afternoon train had just shrieked out its usual indignant
protest at stopping at Genoa at all as Mr. Jack Prince entered the
outskirts of the town, and drove toward his hotel.  He was wearied
and cynical.  A drive of a dozen miles through unpicturesque
outlying villages, past small economic farmhouses, and hideous
villas that violated his fastidious taste, had, I fear, left that
gentleman in a captious state of mind.  He would have even avoided
his taciturn landlord as he drove up to the door; but that
functionary waylaid him on the steps.  "There's a lady in the
sittin'-room, waitin' for ye."  Mr. Prince hurried upstairs, and
entered the room as Mrs. Starbottle flew toward him.

She had changed sadly in the last ten years.  Her figure was wasted
to half its size.  The beautiful curves of her bust and shoulders
were broken or inverted.  The once full, rounded arm was shrunken
in its sleeve; and the golden hoops that encircled her wan wrists
almost slipped from her hands as her long, scant fingers closed
convulsively around Jack's.  Her cheekbones were painted that
afternoon with the hectic of fever: somewhere in the hollows of
those cheeks were buried the dimples of long ago, but their graves
were forgotten.  Her lustrous eyes were still beautiful, though the
orbits were deeper than before.  Her mouth was still sweet,
although the lips parted more easily over the little teeth, even in
breathing, and showed more of them than she was wont to do before.
The glory of her blond hair was still left: it was finer, more
silken and ethereal, yet it failed even in its plenitude to cover
the hollows of the blue-veined temples.

"Clara!" said Jack reproachfully.

"Oh, forgive me, Jack!" she said, falling into a chair, but still
clinging to his hand--"forgive me, dear; but I could not wait
longer.  I should have died, Jack--died before another night.  Bear
with me a little longer (it will not be long), but let me stay.  I
may not see her, I know; I shall not speak to her: but it's so
sweet to feel that I am at last near her, that I breathe the same
air with my darling.  I am better already, Jack, I am indeed.  And
you have seen her today?  How did she look?  What did she say?
Tell me all, everything, Jack.  Was she beautiful?  They say she
is.  Has she grown?  Would you have known her again?  Will she
come, Jack?  Perhaps she has been here already; perhaps"--she had
risen with tremulous excitement, and was glancing at the door--
"perhaps she is here now.  Why don't you speak, Jack?  Tell me
all."

The keen eyes that looked down into hers were glistening with an
infinite tenderness that none, perhaps, but she would have deemed
them capable of.  "Clara," he said gently and cheerily, "try and
compose yourself.  You are trembling now with the fatigue and
excitement of your journey.  I have seen Carry; she is well and
beautiful.  Let that suffice you now."

His gentle firmness composed and calmed her now, as it had often
done before.  Stroking her thin hand, he said, after a pause, "Did
Carry ever write to you?"

"Twice, thanking me for some presents.  They were only schoolgirl
letters," she added, nervously answering the interrogation of his
eyes.

"Did she ever know of your own troubles? of your poverty, of the
sacrifices you made to pay her bills, of your pawning your clothes
and jewels, of your--"

"No, no!" interrupted the woman quickly: "no! How could she?  I
have no enemy cruel enough to tell her that."

"But if she--or if Mrs. Tretherick--had heard of it?  If Carry
thought you were poor, and unable to support her properly, it might
influence her decision.  Young girls are fond of the position that
wealth can give.  She may have rich friends, maybe a lover."

Mrs. Starbottle winced at the last sentence.  "But," she said
eagerly, grasping Jack's hand, "when you found me sick and helpless
at Sacramento, when you--God bless you for it, Jack!--offered to
help me to the East, you said you knew of something, you had some
plan, that would make me and Carry independent."

"Yes," said Jack hastily; "but I want you to get strong and well
first.  And, now that you are calmer, you shall listen to my visit
to the school."

It was then that Mr. Jack Prince proceeded to describe the
interview already recorded, with a singular felicity and discretion
that shames my own account of that proceeding.  Without suppressing
a single fact, without omitting a word or detail, he yet managed to
throw a poetic veil over that prosaic episode, to invest the
heroine with a romantic roseate atmosphere, which, though not
perhaps entirely imaginary, still, I fear, exhibited that genius
which ten years ago had made the columns of THE FIDDLETOWN
AVALANCHE at once fascinating and instructive.  It was not until he
saw the heightening color, and heard the quick breathing, of his
eager listener, that he felt a pang of self-reproach.  "God help
her and forgive me!" he muttered between his clinched teeth; "but
how can I tell her ALL now!"

That night, when Mrs. Starbottle laid her weary head upon her
pillow, she tried to picture to herself Carry at the same moment
sleeping peacefully in the great schoolhouse on the hill; and it
was a rare comfort to this yearning, foolish woman to know that she
was so near.  But at this moment Carry was sitting on the edge of
her bed, half-undressed, pouting her pretty lips and twisting her
long, leonine locks between her fingers as Miss Kate Van Corlear--
dramatically wrapped in a long white counterpane, her black eyes
sparkling, and her thoroughbred nose thrown high in air--stood over
her like a wrathful and indignant ghost; for Carry had that evening
imparted her woes and her history to Miss Kate, and that young lady
had "proved herself no friend" by falling into a state of fiery
indignation over Carry's "ingratitude," and openly and shamelessly
espousing the claims of Mrs. Starbottle.  "Why, if the half you
tell me is true, your mother and those Robinsons are making of you
not only a little coward, but a little snob, miss.  Respectability,
forsooth!  Look you, my family are centuries before the
Trethericks; but if my family had ever treated me in this way, and
then asked me to turn my back on my best friend, I'd whistle them
down the wind;" and here Kate snapped her fingers, bent her black
brows, and glared around the room as if in search of a recreant Van
Corlear.

"You just talk this way because you have taken a fancy to that Mr.
Prince," said Carry.

In the debasing slang of the period, that had even found its way
into the virgin cloisters of the Crammer Institute, Miss Kate, as
she afterward expressed it, instantly "went for her."

First, with a shake of her head, she threw her long black hair over
one shoulder, then, dropping one end of the counterpane from the
other like a vestal tunic, she stepped before Carry with a
purposely exaggerated classic stride.  "And what if I have, miss!
What if I happen to know a gentleman when I see him!  What if I
happen to know that among a thousand such traditional,
conventional, feeble editions of their grandfathers as Mr. Harry
Robinson, you cannot find one original, independent, individualized
gentleman like your Prince!  Go to bed, miss, and pray to Heaven
that he may be YOUR Prince indeed.  Ask to have a contrite and
grateful heart, and thank the Lord in particular for having sent
you such a friend as Kate Van Corlear."  Yet, after an imposing
dramatic exit, she reappeared the next moment as a straight white
flash, kissed Carry between the brows, and was gone.

The next day was a weary one to Jack Prince.  He was convinced in
his mind that Carry would not come; yet to keep this consciousness
from Mrs. Starbottle, to meet her simple hopefulness with an equal
degree of apparent faith, was a hard and difficult task.  He would
have tried to divert her mind by taking her on a long drive; but
she was fearful that Carry might come during her absence; and her
strength, he was obliged to admit, had failed greatly.  As he
looked into her large and awe-inspiring clear eyes, a something he
tried to keep from his mind--to put off day by day from
contemplation--kept asserting itself directly to his inner
consciousness.  He began to doubt the expediency and wisdom of his
management.  He recalled every incident of his interview with
Carry, and half-believed that its failure was due to himself.  Yet
Mrs. Starbottle was very patient and confident; her very confidence
shook his faith in his own judgment.  When her strength was equal
to the exertion, she was propped up in her chair by the window,
where she could see the school and the entrance to the hotel.  In
the intervals she would elaborate pleasant plans for the future,
and would sketch a country home.  She had taken a strange fancy, as
it seemed to Prince, to the present location; but it was notable
that the future, always thus outlined, was one of quiet and repose.
She believed she would get well soon; in fact, she thought she was
now much better than she had been, but it might be long before she
should be quite strong again.  She would whisper on in this way
until Jack would dash madly down into the barroom, order liquors
that he did not drink, light cigars that he did not smoke, talk
with men that he did not listen to, and behave generally as our
stronger sex is apt to do in periods of delicate trials and
perplexity.

The day closed with a clouded sky and a bitter, searching wind.
With the night fell a few wandering flakes of snow.  She was still
content and hopeful; and, as Jack wheeled her from the window to
the fire, she explained to him how that, as the school term was
drawing near its close, Carry was probably kept closely at her
lessons during the day, and could only leave the school at night.
So she sat up the greater part of the evening, and combed her
silken hair, and as far as her strength would allow, made an
undress toilet to receive her guest.  "We must not frighten the
child, Jack," she said apologetically, and with something of her
old coquetry.

It was with a feeling of relief that, at ten o'clock, Jack received
a message from the landlord, saying that the doctor would like to
see him for a moment downstairs.  As Jack entered the grim, dimly
lighted parlor, he observed the hooded figure of a woman near the
fire.  He was about to withdraw again when a voice that he
remembered very pleasantly said:

"Oh, it's all right!  I'm the doctor."

The hood was thrown back, and Prince saw the shining black hair and
black, audacious eyes of Kate Van Corlear.

"Don't ask any questions.  I'm the doctor, and there's my
prescription," and she pointed to the half-frightened, half-sobbing
Carry in the corner--"to be taken at once."

"Then Mrs. Tretherick has given her permission?"

"Not much, if I know the sentiments of that lady," replied Kate
saucily.

"Then how did you get away?" asked Prince gravely.

"BY THE WINDOW."

When Mr. Prince had left Carry in the arms of her stepmother, he
returned to the parlor.

"Well?" demanded Kate.

"She will stay--YOU will, I hope, also--tonight."

"As I shall not be eighteen, and my own mistress on the twentieth,
and as I haven't a sick stepmother, I won't."

"Then you will give me the pleasure of seeing you safely through
the window again?"

When Mr. Prince returned an hour later, he found Carry sitting on a
low stool at Mrs. Starbottle's feet.  Her head was in her
stepmother's lap, and she had sobbed herself to sleep.  Mrs.
Starbottle put her finger to her lip.  "I told you she would come.
God bless you, Jack! and good night."

The next morning Mrs. Tretherick, indignant, the Rev. Asa Crammer,
principal, injured, and Mr. Joel Robinson, Sr., complacently
respectable, called upon Mr. Prince.  There was a stormy meeting,
ending in a demand for Carry.  "We certainly cannot admit of this
interference," said Mrs. Tretherick, a fashionably dressed,
indistinctive-looking woman.  "It is several days before the
expiration of our agreement; and we do not feel, under the
circumstances, justified in releasing Mrs. Starbottle from its
conditions."  "Until the expiration of the school term, we must
consider Miss Tretherick as complying entirely with its rules and
discipline," imposed Dr. Crammer.  "The whole proceeding is
calculated to injure the prospects, and compromise the position, of
Miss Tretherick in society," suggested Mr. Robinson.

In vain Mr. Prince urged the failing condition of Mrs. Starbottle,
her absolute freedom from complicity with Carry's flight, the
pardonable and natural instincts of the girl, and his own assurance
that they were willing to abide by her decision.  And then, with a
rising color in his cheek, a dangerous look in his eye, but a
singular calmness in his speech, he added:

"One word more.  It becomes my duty to inform you of a circumstance
which would certainly justify me, as an executor of the late Mr.
Tretherick, in fully resisting your demands.  A few months after
Mr. Tretherick's death, through the agency of a Chinaman in his
employment, it was discovered that he had made a will, which was
subsequently found among his papers.  The insignificant value of
his bequest--mostly land, then quite valueless--prevented his
executors from carrying out his wishes, or from even proving the
will, or making it otherwise publicly known, until within the last
two or three years, when the property had enormously increased in
value.  The provisions of that bequest are simple, but
unmistakable.  The property is divided between Carry and her
stepmother, with the explicit condition that Mrs. Starbottle shall
become her legal guardian, provide for her education, and in all
details stand to her IN LOCO PARENTIS."

"What is the value of this bequest?" asked Mr. Robinson.  "I cannot
tell exactly, but not far from half a million, I should say,"
returned Prince.  "Certainly, with this knowledge, as a friend of
Miss Tretherick I must say that her conduct is as judicious as it
is honorable to her," responded Mr. Robinson.  "I shall not presume
to question the wishes, or throw any obstacles in the way of
carrying out the intentions, of my dead husband," added Mrs.
Tretherick; and the interview was closed.

When its result was made known to Mrs. Starbottle, she raised
Jack's hand to her feverish lips.  "It cannot add to MY happiness
now, Jack; but tell me, why did you keep it from her?"  Jack
smiled, but did not reply.

Within the next week the necessary legal formalities were
concluded, and Carry was restored to her stepmother.  At Mrs.
Starbottle's request, a small house in the outskirts of the town
was procured; and thither they removed to wait the spring, and Mrs.
Starbottle's convalescence.  Both came tardily that year.

Yet she was happy and patient.  She was fond of watching the
budding of the trees beyond her window--a novel sight to her
Californian experience--and of asking Carry their names and
seasons.  Even at this time she projected for that summer, which
seemed to her so mysteriously withheld, long walks with Carry
through the leafy woods, whose gray, misty ranks she could see
along the hilltop.  She even thought she could write poetry about
them, and recalled the fact as evidence of her gaining strength;
and there is, I believe, still treasured by one of the members of
this little household a little carol so joyous, so simple, and so
innocent that it might have been an echo of the robin that called
to her from the window, as perhaps it was.

And then, without warning, there dropped from Heaven a day so
tender, so mystically soft, so dreamily beautiful, so throbbing and
alive with the fluttering of invisible wings, so replete and
bounteously overflowing with an awakening and joyous resurrection
not taught by man or limited by creed, that they thought it fit to
bring her out and lay her in that glorious sunshine that sprinkled
like the droppings of a bridal torch the happy lintels and doors.
And there she lay beatified and calm.

Wearied by watching, Carry had fallen asleep by her side; and Mrs.
Starbottle's thin fingers lay like a benediction on her head.
Presently she called Jack to her side.

"Who was that," she whispered, "who just came in?"

"Miss Van Corlear," said Jack, answering the look in her great
hollow eyes.

"Jack," she said, after a moment's silence, "sit by me a moment;
dear Jack: I've something I must say.  If I ever seemed hard, or
cold, or coquettish to you in the old days, it was because I loved
you, Jack, too well to mar your future by linking it with my own.
I always loved you, dear Jack, even when I seemed least worthy of
you.  That is gone now.  But I had a dream lately, Jack, a foolish
woman's dream--that you might find what I lacked in HER," and she
glanced lovingly at the sleeping girl at her side; "that you might
love her as you have loved me.  But even that is not to be, Jack,
is it?" and she glanced wistfully in his face.  Jack pressed her
hand, but did not speak.  After a few moments' silence, she again
said: "Perhaps you are right in your choice.  She is a goodhearted
girl, Jack--but a little bold."

And with this last flicker of foolish, weak humanity in her
struggling spirit, she spoke no more.  When they came to her a
moment later, a tiny bird that had lit upon her breast flew away;
and the hand that they lifted from Carry's head fell lifeless at
her side.



BARKER'S LUCK


A bird twittered!  The morning sun shining through the open window
was apparently more potent than the cool mountain air, which had
only caused the sleeper to curl a little more tightly in his
blankets.  Barker's eyes opened instantly upon the light and the
bird on the window ledge.  Like all healthy young animals he would
have tried to sleep again, but with his momentary consciousness
came the recollection that it was his turn to cook the breakfast
that morning, and he regretfully rolled out of his bunk to the
floor.  Without stopping to dress, he opened the door and stepped
outside, secure in the knowledge that he was overlooked only by the
Sierras, and plunged his head and shoulders in the bucket of cold
water that stood by the door.  Then he began to clothe himself,
partly in the cabin and partly in the open air, with a lapse
between the putting on of his trousers and coat which he employed
in bringing in wood.  Raking together the few embers on the adobe
hearth, not without a prudent regard to the rattlesnake which had
once been detected in haunting the warm ashes, he began to prepare
breakfast.  By this time the other sleepers, his partners Stacy and
Demorest, young men of about his own age, were awake, alert, and
lazily critical of his progress.

"I don't care about my quail on toast being underdone for
breakfast," said Stacy, with a yawn; "and you needn't serve with
red wine.  I'm not feeling very peckish this morning."

"And I reckon you can knock off the fried oysters after the Spanish
mackerel for ME," said Demorest gravely.  "The fact is, that last
bottle of Veuve Clicquot we had for supper wasn't as dry as I am
this morning."

Accustomed to these regular Barmecide suggestions, Barker made no
direct reply.  Presently, looking up from the fire, he said,
"There's no more saleratus, so you mustn't blame me if the biscuit
is extra heavy.  I told you we had none when you went to the
grocery yesterday."

"And I told you we hadn't a red cent to buy any with," said Stacy,
who was also treasurer.  "Put these two negatives together and you
make the affirmative--saleratus.  Mix freely and bake in a hot
oven."

Nevertheless, after a toilet as primitive as Barker's they sat down
to what he had prepared with the keen appetite begotten of the
mountain air and the regretful fastidiousness born of the
recollection of better things.  Jerked beef, frizzled with salt
pork in a frying-pan, boiled potatoes, biscuit, and coffee composed
the repast.  The biscuits, however, proving remarkably heavy after
the first mouthful, were used as missiles, thrown through the open
door at an empty bottle which had previously served as a mark for
revolver practice, and a few moments later pipes were lit to
counteract the effects of the meal and take the taste out of their
mouths.  Suddenly they heard the sound of horses' hoofs, saw the
quick passage of a rider in the open space before the cabin, and
felt the smart impact upon the table of some small object thrown by
him.  It was the regular morning delivery of the county newspaper!

"He's getting to be a mighty sure shot," said Demorest approvingly,
looking at his upset can of coffee as he picked up the paper,
rolled into a cylindrical wad as tightly as a cartridge, and began
to straighten it out.  This was no easy matter, as the sheet had
evidently been rolled while yet damp from the press; but Demorest
eventually opened it and ensconced himself behind it.

"Nary news?" asked Stacy.

"No.  There never is any," said Demorest scornfully.  "We ought to
stop the paper."

"You mean the paper man ought to.  WE don't pay him," said Barker
gently.

"Well, that's the same thing, smarty.  No news, no pay.  Hallo!" he
continued, his eyes suddenly riveted on the paper.  Then, after the
fashion of ordinary humanity, he stopped short and read the
interesting item to himself.  When he had finished he brought his
fist and the paper, together, violently down upon the table.  "Now
look at this!  Talk of luck, will you?  Just think of it.  Here are
WE--hard-working men with lots of sabe, too--grubbin' away on this
hillside like niggers, glad to get enough at the end of the day to
pay for our soggy biscuits and horse-bean coffee, and just look
what falls into the lap of some lazy sneakin' greenhorn who never
did a stoke of work in his life!  Here are WE, with no foolishness,
no airs nor graces, and yet men who would do credit to twice that
amount of luck--and seem born to it, too--and we're set aside for
some long, lank, pen-wiping scrub who just knows enough to sit down
on his office stool and hold on to a bit of paper."

"What's up now?" asked Stacy, with the carelessness begotten of
familiarity with his partner's extravagance.

"Listen," said Demorest, reading.  "Another unprecedented rise has
taken place in the shares of the 'Yellow Hammer First Extension
Mine' since the sinking of the new shaft.  It was quoted yesterday
at ten thousand dollars a foot.  When it is remembered that
scarcely two years ago the original shares, issued at fifty dollars
per share, had dropped to only fifty cents a share, it will be seen
that those who were able to hold on have got a good thing."

"What mine did you say?" asked Barker.  looking up meditatively
from the dishes he was already washing.

"The Yellow Hammer First Extension," returned Demorest shortly.

"I used to have some shares in that, and I think I have them
still," said Barker musingly.

"Yes," said Demorest promptly; "the paper speaks of it here.  'We
understand,'" he continued, reading aloud, "'that our eminent
fellow citizen, George Barker, otherwise known as "Get Left Barker"
and "Chucklehead," is one of these fortunate individuals.'"

"No," said Barker, with a slight flush of innocent pleasure, "it
can't say that.  How could it know?"

Stacy laughed, but Demorest coolly continued: "You didn't hear all.
Listen!  'We say WAS one of them; but having already sold his
apparently useless certificates to our popular druggist, Jones, for
corn plasters, at a reduced rate, he is unable to realize.'"

"You may laugh, boys," said Barker, with simple seriousness; "but I
really believe I have got 'em yet.  Just wait.  I'll see!"  He rose
and began to drag out a well-worn valise from under his bunk.  "You
see," he continued, "they were given to me by an old chap in
return--"

"For saving his life by delaying the Stockton boat that afterward
blew up," returned Demorest briefly.  "We know it all!  His hair
was white, and his hand trembled slightly as he laid these shares
in yours, saying, and you never forgot the words, 'Take 'em, young
man--and'--"

"For lending him two thousand dollars, then," continued Barker with
a simple ignoring of the interruption, as he quietly brought out
the valise.

"TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS!" repeated Stacy.  "When did YOU have two
thousand dollars?"

"When I first left Sacramento--three years ago," said Barker,
unstrapping the valise.

"How long did you have it?" said Demorest incredulously.

"At least two days, I think," returned Barker quietly.  "Then I met
that man.  He was hard-up, and I lent him my pile and took those
shares.  He died afterward."

"Of course he did," said Demorest severely.  "They always do.
Nothing kills a man more quickly than an action of that kind."
Nevertheless the two partners regarded Barker rummaging among some
loose clothes and papers with a kind of paternal toleration.  "If
you can't find them, bring out your government bonds," suggested
Stacy.  But the next moment, flushed and triumphant, Barker rose
from his knees, and came toward them carrying some papers in his
hands.  Demorest seized them from him, opened them, spread them on
the table, examined hurriedly the date, signatures, and transfers,
glanced again quickly at the newspaper paragraph, looked wildly at
Stacy and then at Barker, and gasped:

"By the living hookey! it is SO!"

"B'gosh! he HAS got 'em!" echoed Stacy.

"Twenty shares," continued Demorest breathlessly, "at ten thousand
dollars a share--even if it's only a foot--is two hundred thousand
dollars!  Jerusalem!"

"Tell me, fair sir," said Stacy, with sparkling eyes, "hast still
left in yonder casket any rare jewels, rubies, sarcenet, or links
of fine gold?  Peradventure a pearl or two may have been
overlooked!"

"No--that's all," returned Barker simply.

"You hear him!  Rothschild says 'that's all.'  Prince Esterhazy
says he hasn't another red cent--only two hundred thousand
dollars."

"What ought I to do, boys?" asked Barker, timidly glancing from one
to the other.  Yet he remembered with delight all that day, and for
many a year afterward, that he saw in their faces only unselfish
joy and affection at that supreme moment.

"Do?" said Demorest promptly.  "Stand on your head and yell!  No!
stop!  Come here!"  He seized both Barker and Stacy by the hand,
and ran out into the open air.  Here they danced violently with
clasped hands around a small buckeye, in perfect silence, and then
returned to the cabin, grave but perspiring.

"Of course," said Barker, wiping his forehead, "we'll just get some
money on these certificates and buy up that next claim which
belongs to old Carter--where you know we thought we saw the
indication."

"We'll do nothing of the kind," said Demorest decidedly.  "WE ain't
in it.  That money is yours, old chap--every cent of it--property
acquired before marriage, you know; and the only thing we'll do is
to be damned before we'll see you drop a dime of it into this
Godforsaken hole.  No!"

"But we're partners," gasped Barker.

"Not in THIS!  The utmost we can do for you, opulent sir--though it
ill becomes us horny-handed sons of toil to rub shoulders with
Dives--is perchance to dine with you, to take a pasty and a glass
of Malvoisie, at some restaurant in Sacramento--when you've got
things fixed, in honor of your return to affluence.  But more would
ill become us!"

"But what are YOU going to do?" said Barker, with a half-hysteric,
half-frightened smile.

"We have not yet looked through our luggage," said Demorest with
invincible gravity, "and there's a secret recess--a double FOND--to
my portmanteau, known only to a trusty page, which has not been
disturbed since I left my ancestral home in Faginia.  There may be
a few First Debentures of Erie or what not still there."

"I felt some strange, disklike protuberances in my dress suit the
other day, but belike they are but poker chips," said Stacy
thoughtfully.

An uneasy feeling crept over Barker.  The color which had left his
fresh cheek returned to it quickly, and he turned his eyes away.
Yet he had seen nothing in his companions' eyes but affection--with
even a certain kind of tender commiseration that deepened his
uneasiness.  "I suppose," he said desperately, after a pause, "I
ought to go over to Boomville and make some inquiries."

"At the bank, old chap; at the bank!" said Demorest emphatically.
"Take my advice and don't go ANYWHERE ELSE.  Don't breathe a word
of your luck to anybody.  And don't, whatever you do, be tempted to
sell just now; you don't know how high that stock's going to jump
yet."

"I thought," stammered Barker, "that you boys might like to go over
with me."

"We can't afford to take another holiday on grub wages, and we're
only two to work today," said Demorest, with a slight increase of
color and the faintest tremor in his voice.  "And it won't do, old
chap, for us to be seen bumming round with you on the heels of your
good fortune.  For everybody knows we're poor, and sooner or later
everybody'll know you WERE rich even when you first came to us."

"Nonsense!" said Barker indignantly.

"Gospel, my boy!" said Demorest shortly.

"The frozen truth, old man!" said Stacy.

Barker took up his hat with some stiffness and moved toward the
door.  Here he stopped irresolutely, an irresolution that seemed to
communicate itself to his partners.  There was a moment's awkward
silence.  Then Demorest suddenly seized him by the shoulders with a
grip that was half a caress, and walked him rapidly to the door.
"And now don't stand foolin' with us, Barker boy; but just trot off
like a little man, and get your grip on that fortune; and when
you've got your hooks in it hang on like grim death.  You'll"--he
hesitated for an instant only, possibly to find the laugh that
should have accompanied his speech--"you're sure to find US here
when you get back."

Hurt to the quick, but restraining his feelings, Barker clapped his
hat on his head and walked quickly away.  The two partners stood
watching him in silence until his figure was lost in the
underbrush.  Then they spoke.

"Like him--wasn't it?" said Demorest.

"Just him all over," said Stacy.

"Think of him having that stock stowed away all these years and
never even bothering his dear old head about it!"

'And think of his wanting to put the whole thing into this rotten
hillside with us!"

"And he'd have done it, by gosh! and never thought of it again.
That's Barker."

"Dear old man!"

"Good old chap!"

"I've been wondering if one of us oughtn't to have gone with him?
He's just as likely to pour his money into the first lap that opens
for it," said Stacy.

"The more reason why we shouldn't prevent him, or seem to prevent
him," said Demorest almost fiercely.  "There will be knaves and
fools enough who will try and put the idea of our using him into
his simple heart without that.  No!  Let him do as he likes with
it--but let him be himself.  I'd rather have him come back to us
even after he's lost the money--his old self and empty-handed--than
try to change the stuff God put into him and make him more like
others."

The tone and manner were so different from Demorest's usual levity
that Stacy was silent.  After a pause he said: "Well! we shall miss
him on the hillside--won't we?"

Demorest did not reply.  Reaching out his hand abstractedly, he
wrenched off a small slip from a sapling near him, and began slowly
to pull the leaves off, one by one, until they were all gone.  Then
he switched it in the air, struck his bootleg smartly with it, said
roughly: "Come, let's get to work!" and strode away.

Meantime Barker on his way to Boomville was no less singular in his
manner.  He kept up his slightly affected attitude until he had
lost sight of the cabin.  But, being of a simple nature, his
emotions were less complex.  If he had not seen the undoubted look
of affection in the eyes of his partners he would have imagined
that they were jealous of his good fortune.  Yet why had they
refused his offer to share it with him?  Why had they so strangely
assumed that their partnership with him had closed?  Why had they
declined to go with him?  Why had this money--of which he had
thought so little, and for which he had cared so little--changed
them toward him?  It had not changed HIM--HE was the same!  He
remembered how they had often talked and laughed over a prospective
"strike" in mining and speculated what THEY would do together with
the money!  And now that "luck" had occurred to one of them,
individually, the effect was only to alienate them!  He could not
make it out.  He was hurt, wounded--yet oddly enough he was
conscious now of a certain power within him to hurt and wound in
retribution.  He was rich: he would let them see HE could do
without them.  He was quite free now to think only of himself and
Kitty.

For it must be recorded that with all this young gentleman's
simplicity and unselfishness, with all his loyal attitude to his
partners, his FIRST thought at the moment he grasped the fact of
his wealth was of a young lady.  It was Kitty Carter, the daughter
of the hotelkeeper at Boomville, who owned the claim that the
partners had mutually coveted.  That a pretty girl's face should
flash upon him with his conviction that he was now a rich man meant
perhaps no disloyalty to his partners, whom he would still have
helped.  But it occurred to him now, in his half-hurt, half-
vengeful state, that they had often joked him about Kitty, and
perhaps further confidence with them was debarred.  And it was only
due to his dignity that he should now see Kitty at once.

This was easy enough, for in the naive simplicity of Boomville and
the economic arrangements of her father, she occasionally waited
upon the hotel table.  Half the town was always actively in love
with her; the other half HAD BEEN, and was silent, cynical, but
hopeless in defeat.  For Kitty was one of those singularly pretty
girls occasionally met with in Southwestern frontier civilization
whose distinct and original refinement of face and figure were so
remarkable and original as to cast a doubt on the sagacity and
prescience of one parent and the morality of the other, yet no
doubt with equal injustice.  But the fact remained that she was
slight, graceful, and self-contained, and moved beside her stumpy,
commonplace father, and her faded, commonplace mother in the
dining-room of the Boomville Hotel like some distinguished alien.
The three partners, by virtue, perhaps, of their college education
and refined manners, had been exceptionally noticed by Kitty.  And
for some occult reason--the more serious, perhaps, because it had
no obvious or logical presumption to the world generally--Barker
was particularly favored.

He quickened his pace, and as the flagstaff of the Boomville Hotel
rose before him in the little hollow, he seriously debated whether
he had not better go to the bank first, deposit his shares, and get
a small advance on them to buy a new necktie or a "boiled shirt" in
which to present himself to Miss Kitty; but, remembering that he
had partly given his word to Demorest that he would keep his shares
intact for the present, he abandoned this project, probably from
the fact that his projected confidence with Kitty was already a
violation of Demorest's injunctions of secrecy, and his conscience
was sufficiently burdened with that breach of faith.

But when he reached the hotel, a strange trepidation overcame him.
The dining-room was at its slack water, between the ebb of
breakfast and before the flow of the preparation for the midday
meal.  He could not have his interview with Kitty in that dreary
waste of reversed chairs and bare trestlelike tables, and she was
possibly engaged in her household duties.  But Miss Kitty had
already seen him cross the road, and had lounged into the dining-
room with an artfully simulated air of casually examining it.  At
the unexpected vision of his hopes, arrayed in the sweetest and
freshest of rosebud-sprigged print, his heart faltered.  Then,
partly with the desperation of a timid man, and partly through the
working of a half-formed resolution, he met her bright smile with a
simple inquiry for her father.  Miss Kitty bit her pretty lip,
smiled slightly, and preceded him with great formality to the
office.  Opening the door, without raising her lashes to either her
father or the visitor, she said, with a mischievous accenting of
the professional manner, "Mr. Barker to see you on business," and
tripped sweetly away.

And this slight incident precipitated the crisis.  For Barker
instantly made up his mind that he must purchase the next claim for
his partners of this man Carter, and that he would be obliged to
confide to him the details of his good fortune, and as a proof of
his sincerity and his ability to pay for it, he did so bluntly.
Carter was a shrewd business man, and the well-known simplicity of
Barker was a proof of his truthfulness, to say nothing of the
shares that were shown to him.  His selling price for his claim had
been two hundred dollars, but here was a rich customer who, from a
mere foolish sentiment, would be no doubt willing to pay more.  He
hesitated with a bland but superior smile.  "Ah, that was my price
at my last offer, Mr. Barker," he said suavely; "but, you see,
things are going up since then."

The keenest duplicity is apt to fail before absolute simplicity.
Barker, thoroughly believing him, and already a little frightened
at his own presumption--not for the amount of the money involved,
but from the possibility of his partners refusing his gift utterly--
quickly took advantage of this LOCUS PENITENTIAE.  "No matter,
then," he said hurriedly; "perhaps I had better consult my partners
first; in fact," he added, with a gratuitous truthfulness all his
own, "I hardly know whether they will take it of me, so I think
I'll wait."

Carter was staggered; this would clearly not do!  He recovered
himself with an insinuating smile.  "You pulled me up too short,
Mr. Barker; I'm a business man, but hang it all! what's that among
friends?  If you reckoned I GAVE MY WORD at two hundred--why, I'm
there!  Say no more about it--the claim's yours.  I'll make you out
a bill of sale at once."

"But," hesitated Barker, "you see I haven't got the money yet, and--"

"Money!" echoed Carter bluntly, "what's that among friends?  Gimme
your note at thirty days--that's good enough for ME.  An' we'll
settle the whole thing now--nothing like finishing a job while
you're about it."  And before the bewildered and doubtful visitor
could protest, he had filled up a promissory note for Barker's
signature and himself signed a bill of sale for the property.  "And
I reckon, Mr. Barker, you'd like to take your partners by surprise
about this little gift of yours," he added smilingly.  "Well, my
messenger is starting for the Gulch in five minutes; he's going by
your cabin, and he can just drop this bill o' sale, as a kind o'
settled fact, on 'em afore they can say anything, see!  There's
nothing like actin' on the spot in these sort of things.  And don't
you hurry 'bout them either!  You see, you sorter owe us a friendly
call--havin' always dropped inter the hotel only as a customer--so
ye'll stop here over luncheon, and I reckon, as the old woman is
busy, why Kitty will try to make the time pass till then by playin'
for you on her new pianner."

Delighted, yet bewildered by the unexpected invitation and
opportunity, Barker mechanically signed the promissory note, and as
mechanically addressed the envelope of the bill of sale to
Demorest, which Carter gave to the messenger.  Then he followed his
host across the hall to the apartment known as "Miss Kitty's
parlor."  He had often heard of it as a sanctum impervious to the
ordinary guest.  Whatever functions the young girl assumed at the
hotel and among her father's boarders, it was vaguely understood
that she dropped them on crossing that sacred threshold, and became
"MISS Carter."  The county judge had been entertained there, and
the wife of the bank manager.  Barker's admission there was
consequently an unprecedented honor.

He cast his eyes timidly round the room, redolent and suggestive in
various charming little ways of the young girl's presence.  There
was the cottage piano which had been brought up in sections on the
backs of mules from the foot of the mountain; there was a crayon
head of Minerva done by the fair occupant at the age of twelve;
there was a profile of herself done by a traveling artist; there
were pretty little china ornaments and many flowers, notably a
faded but still scented woodland shrub which Barker had presented
to her two weeks ago, and over which Miss Kitty had discreetly
thrown her white handkerchief as he entered.  A wave of hope passed
over him at the act, but it was quickly spent as Mr. Carter's
roughly playful voice introduced him:

"Ye kin give Mr. Barker a tune or two to pass time afore lunch,
Kitty.  You kin let him see what you're doing in that line.  But
you'll have to sit up now, for this young man's come inter some
property, and will be sasheying round in 'Frisco afore long with a
biled shirt and a stovepipe, and be givin' the go-by to Boomville.
Well! you young folks will excuse me for a while, as I reckon I'll
just toddle over and get the recorder to put that bill o' sale on
record.  Nothin' like squaring things to onct, Mr. Barker."

As he slipped away, Barker felt his heart sink.  Carter had not
only bluntly forestalled him with the news and taken away his
excuse for a confidential interview, but had put an ostentatious
construction on his visit.  What could she think of him now?  He
stood ashamed and embarrassed before her.

But Miss Kitty, far from noticing his embarrassment in a sudden
concern regarding the "horrid" untidiness of the room, which made
her cheeks quite pink in one spot and obliged her to take up and
set down in exactly the same place several articles, was
exceedingly delighted.  In fact, she did not remember ever having
been so pleased before in her life!  These things were always so
unexpected!  Just like the weather, for instance.  It was quite
cool last night--and now it was just stifling.  And so dusty!  Had
Mr. Barker noticed the heat coming from the Gulch?  Or perhaps,
being a rich man, he--with a dazzling smile--was above walking now.
It was so kind of him to come here first and tell her father.

"I really wanted to tell only--YOU, Miss Carter," stammered Barker.
"You see--" he hesitated.  But Miss Kitty saw perfectly.  He wanted
to tell HER, and, seeing her, he asked for HER FATHER!  Not that it
made the slightest difference to her, for her father would have
been sure to have told her.  It was also kind of her father to
invite him to luncheon.  Otherwise she might not have seen him
before he left Boomville.

But this was more than Barker could stand.  With the same desperate
directness and simplicity with which he had approached her father,
he now blurted out his whole heart to her.  He told her how he had
loved her hopelessly from the first time that they had spoken
together at the church picnic.  Did she remember it?  How he had
sat and worshiped her, and nothing else, at church!  How her voice
in the church choir had sounded like an angel's; how his poverty
and his uncertain future had kept him from seeing her often, lest
he should be tempted to betray his hopeless passion.  How as soon
as he realized that he had a position, that his love for her need
not make her ridiculous to the world's eyes, he came to tell her
ALL.  He did not even dare to hope!  But she would HEAR him at
least, would she not?

Indeed, there was no getting away from his boyish, simple,
outspoken declaration.  In vain Kitty smiled, frowned, glanced at
her pink cheeks in the glass, and stopped to look out of the
window.  The room was filled with his love--it was encompassing
her--and, despite his shy attitude, seemed to be almost embracing
her.  But she managed at last to turn upon him a face that was now
as white and grave as his own was eager and glowing.

"Sit down," she said gently.

He did so obediently, but wonderingly.  She then opened the piano
and took a seat upon the music stool before it, placed some loose
sheets of music in the rack, and ran her fingers lightly over the
keys.  Thus intrenched, she let her hands fall idly in her lap, and
for the first time raised her eyes to his.

"Now listen to me--be good and don't interrupt!  There!--not so
near; you can hear what I have to say well enough where you are.
That will do."

Barker had halted with the chair he was dragging toward her and sat
down.

"Now," said Miss Kitty, withdrawing her eyes and looking straight
before her, "I believe everything you say; perhaps I oughtn't to--
or at least SAY it--but I do.  There!  But because I do believe
you--it seems to me all wrong!  For the very reasons that you give
for not having spoken to me BEFORE, if you really felt as you say
you did, are the same reasons why you should not speak to me now.
You see, all this time you have let nobody but yourself know how
you felt toward me.  In everybody's eyes YOU and your partners have
been only the three stuck-up, exclusive, college-bred men who mined
a poor claim in the Gulch, and occasionally came here to this hotel
as customers.  In everybody's eyes I have been only the rich hotel-
keeper's popular daughter who sometimes waited upon you--but
nothing more.  But at least we were then pretty much alike, and as
good as each other.  And now, as soon as you have become suddenly
rich, and, of course, the SUPERIOR, you rush down here to ask me to
acknowledge it by accepting you!"

"You know I never meant that, Miss Kitty," burst out Barker
vehemently, but his protest was drowned in a rapid roulade from the
young lady's fingers on the keys.  He sank back in his chair.

"Of course you never MEANT it," she said with an odd laugh; "but
everybody will take it in that way, and you cannot go round to
everybody in Boomville and make the pretty declaration you have
just made to me.  Everybody will say I accepted you for your money;
everybody will say it was a put-up job of my father's.  Everybody
will say that you threw yourself away on me.  And I don't know but
that they would be right.  Sit down, please! or I shall play again.

"You see," she went on, without looking at him, "just now you like
to remember that you fell in love with me first as a pretty waiter
girl, but if I became your wife it's just what you would like to
FORGET.  And I shouldn't, for I should always like to think of the
time when you came here, whenever you could afford it and sometimes
when you couldn't, just to see me; and how we used to make excuses
to speak with each other over the dishes.  You don't know what
these things mean to a woman who"--she hesitated a moment, and then
added abruptly, "but what does that matter?  You would not care to
be reminded of it.  So," she said, rising up with a grave smile and
grasping her hands tightly behind her, "it's a good deal better
that you should begin to forget it now.  Be a good boy and take my
advice.  Go to San Francisco.  You will meet some girl there in a
way you will not afterward regret.  You are young, and your riches,
to say nothing," she added in a faltering voice that was somewhat
inconsistent with the mischievous smile that played upon her lips,
"of your kind and simple heart, will secure that which the world
would call unselfish affection from one more equal to you, but
would always believe was only BOUGHT if it came from me."

"I suppose you are right," he said simply.

She glanced quickly at him, and her eyebrows straightened.  He had
risen, his face white and his gray eyes widely opened.  "I suppose
you are right," he went on, "because you are saying to me what my
partners said to me this morning, when I offered to share my wealth
with them, God knows as honestly as I offered to share my heart
with you.  I suppose that you are both right; that there must be
some curse of pride or selfishness upon the money that I have got;
but I have not felt it yet, and the fault does not lie with me."

She gave her shoulders a slight shrug, and turned impatiently
toward the window.  When she turned back again he was gone.  The
room around her was empty; this room, which a moment before had
seemed to be pulsating with his boyish passion, was now empty, and
empty of HIM.  She bit her lips, rose, and ran eagerly to the
window.  She saw his straw hat and brown curls as he crossed the
road.  She drew her handkerchief sharply away from the withered
shrub over which she had thrown it, and cast the once treasured
remains in the hearth.  Then, possibly because she had it ready in
her hand, she clapped the handkerchief to her eyes, and sinking
sideways upon the chair he had risen from, put her elbows on its
back, and buried her face in her hands.

It is the characteristic and perhaps cruelty of a simple nature to
make no allowance for complex motives, or to even understand them!
So it seemed to Barker that his simplicity had been met with equal
directness.  It was the possession of this wealth that had in some
way hopelessly changed his relations with the world.  He did not
love Kitty any the less; he did not even think she had wronged him;
they, his partners and his sweetheart, were cleverer than he; there
must be some occult quality in this wealth that he would understand
when he possessed it, and perhaps it might even make him ashamed of
his generosity; not in the way they had said, but in his tempting
them so audaciously to assume a wrong position.  It behoved him to
take possession of it at once, and to take also upon himself alone
the knowledge, the trials, and responsibilities it would incur.
His cheeks flushed again as he thought he had tried to tempt an
innocent girl with it, and he was keenly hurt that he had not seen
in Kitty's eyes the tenderness that had softened his partners'
refusal.  He resolved to wait no longer, but sell his dreadful
stock at once.  He walked directly to the bank.

The manager, a shrewd but kindly man, to whom Barker was known
already, received him graciously in recognition of his well-known
simple honesty, and respectfully as a representative of the equally
well-known poor but "superior" partnership of the Gulch.  He
listened with marked attention to Barker's hesitating but brief
story, only remarking at its close:

"You mean, of course, the 'SECOND Extension' when you say 'First'?"

"No," said Barker; "I mean the 'First'--and it said First in the
Boomville paper."

"Yes, yes!--I saw it--it was a printer's error.  The stock of the
'First' was called in two years ago.  No!  You mean the 'Second,'
for, of course, you've followed the quotations, and are likely to
know what stock you're holding shares of.  When you go back, take a
look at them, and you'll see I am right."

"But I brought them with me," said Barker, with a slight flushing
as he felt in his pocket, "and I am quite sure they are the
'First.'  He brought them out and laid them on the desk before the
manager.

The words "First Extension" were plainly visible.  The manager
glanced curiously at Barker, and his brow darkened.

"Did anybody put this up on you?" he said sternly.  "Did your
partners send you here with this stuff?"

"No! no!" said Barker eagerly.  "No one!  It's all MY mistake.  I
see it now.  I trusted to the newspaper."

"And you mean to say you never examined the stock or the
quotations, nor followed it in any way, since you had it?"

"Never!" said Barker.  "Never thought about IT AT ALL till I saw
the newspaper.  So it's not worth anything?"  And, to the infinite
surprise of the manager, there was a slight smile on his boyish
face.

"I am afraid it is not worth the paper it's written on," said the
manager gently.

The smile on Barker's face increased to a little laugh, in which
his wondering companion could not help joining.  "Thank you," said
Barker suddenly, and rushed away.

"He beats everything!" said the manager, gazing after him.  "Damned
if he didn't seem even PLEASED."

He WAS pleased.  The burden of wealth had fallen from his
shoulders; the dreadful incubus that had weighed him down and
parted his friends from him was gone!  And he had not got rid of it
by spending it foolishly.  It had not ruined anybody yet; it had
not altered anybody in HIS eyes.  It was gone; and he was a free
and happy man once more.  He would go directly back to his
partners; they would laugh at him, of course, but they could not
look at him now with the same sad, commiserating eyes.  Perhaps
even Kitty--but here a sudden chill struck him.  He had forgotten
the bill of sale!  He had forgotten the dreadful promissory note
given to her father in the rash presumption of his wealth!  How
could it ever be paid?  And more than that, it had been given in a
fraud.  He had no money when he gave it, and no prospect of any but
what he was to get from those worthless shares.  Would anybody
believe him that it was only a stupid blunder of his own?  Yes, his
partners might believe him; but, horrible thought, he had already
implicated THEM in his fraud!  Even now, while he was standing
there hesitatingly in the road, they were entering upon the new
claim he had NOT PAID FOR--COULD NOT PAY FOR--and in the guise of a
benefactor he was dishonoring them.  Yet it was Carter he must meet
first; he must confess all to him.  He must go back to the hotel--
that hotel where he had indignantly left her, and tell the father
he was a fraud.  It was terrible to think of; perhaps it was part
of that money curse that he could not get rid of, and was now
realizing; but it MUST be done.  He was simple, but his very
simplicity had that unhesitating directness of conclusion which is
the main factor of what men call "pluck."

He turned back to the hotel and entered the office.  But Mr. Carter
had not yet returned.  What was to be done?  He could not wait
there; there was no time to be lost; there was only one other
person who knew his expectations, and to whom he could confide his
failure--it was Kitty.  It was to taste the dregs of his
humiliation, but it must be done.  He ran up the staircase and
knocked timidly at the sitting-room door.  There was a momentary
pause, and a weak voice said "Come in."  Barker opened the door;
saw the vision of a handkerchief thrown away, of a pair of tearful
eyes that suddenly changed to stony indifference, and a graceful
but stiffening figure.  But he was past all insult now.

"I would not intrude," he said simply, "but I came only to see your
father.  I have made an awful blunder--more than a blunder, I
think--a FRAUD.  Believing that I was rich, I purchased your
father's claim for my partners, and gave him my promissory note.  I
came here to give him back his claim--for that note can NEVER be
paid!  I have just been to the bank; I find I have made a stupid
mistake in the name of the shares upon which I based my belief in
my wealth.  The ones I own are worthless--am as poor as ever--I am
even poorer, for I owe your father money I can never pay!"

To his amazement he saw a look of pain and scorn come into her
troubled eyes which he had never seen before.  "This is a feeble
trick," she said bitterly; "it is unlike you--it is unworthy of
you!"

"Good God!  You must believe me.  Listen! it was all a mistake--a
printer's error.  I read in the paper that the stock for the First
Extension mine had gone up, when it should have been the Second.  I
had some old stock of the First, which I had kept for years, and
only thought of when I read the announcement in the paper this
morning.  I swear to you--"

But it was unnecessary.  There was no doubting the truth of that
voice--that manner.  The scorn fled from Miss Kitty's eyes to give
place to a stare, and then suddenly changed to two bubbling blue
wells of laughter.  She went to the window and laughed.  She sat
down to the piano and laughed.  She caught up the handkerchief, and
hiding half her rosy face in it, laughed.  She finally collapsed
into an easy chair, and, burying her brown head in its cushions,
laughed long and confidentially until she brought up suddenly
against a sob.  And then was still.

Barker was dreadfully alarmed.  He had heard of hysterics before.
He felt he ought to do something.  He moved toward her timidly, and
gently drew away her handkerchief.  Alas! the blue wells were
running over now.  He took her cold hands in his; he knelt beside
her and passed his arm around her waist.  He drew her head upon his
shoulder.  He was not sure that any of these things were effective
until she suddenly lifted her eyes to his with the last ray of
mirth in them vanishing in a big teardrop, put her arms round his
neck, and sobbed:

"Oh, George!  You blessed innocent!"

An eloquent silence was broken by a remorseful start from Barker.

"But I must go and warn my poor partners, dearest; there yet may be
time; perhaps they have not yet taken possession of your father's
claim."

"Yes, George dear," said the young girl, with sparkling eyes; "and
tell them to do so AT ONCE!"

"What?" gasped Barker.

"At once--do you hear?--or it may be too late!  Go quick."

"But your father--Oh, I see, dearest, you will tell him all
yourself, and spare me."

"I shall do nothing so foolish, Georgey.  Nor shall you!  Don't you
see the note isn't due for a month?  Stop!  Have you told anybody
but Paw and me?"

"Only the bank manager."

She ran out of the room and returned in a minute tying the most
enchanting of hats by a ribbon under her oval chin.  "I'll run over
and fix him," she said.

"Fix him?" returned Barker, aghast.

"Yes, I'll say your wicked partners have been playing a practical
joke on you, and he mustn't give you away.  He'll do anything for
me."

"But my partners didn't!  On the contrary--"

"Don't tell me, George," said Miss Kitty severely.  "THEY ought
never to have let you come here with that stuff.  But come!  You
must go at once.  You must not meet Paw; you'll blurt out
everything to him; I know you!  I'll tell him you could not stay to
luncheon.  Quick, now; go.  What?  Well--there!"

Whatever it represented, the exclamation was apparently so
protracted that Miss Kitty was obliged to push her lover to the
front landing before she could disappear by the back stairs.  But
once in the street, Barker no longer lingered.  It was a good three
miles back to the Gulch; he might still reach it by the time his
partners were taking their noonday rest, and he resolved that
although the messenger had preceded him, they would not enter upon
the new claim until the afternoon.  For Barker, in spite of his
mistress's injunction, had no idea of taking what he couldn't pay
for; he would keep the claim intact until something could be
settled.  For the rest, he walked on air!  Kitty loved him!  The
accursed wealth no longer stood between them.  They were both poor
now--everything was possible.

The sun was beginning to send dwarf shadows toward the east when he
reached the Gulch.  Here a new trepidation seized him.  How would
his partners receive the news of his utter failure?  HE was happy,
for he had gained Kitty through it.  But they?  For a moment it
seemed to him that he had purchased his happiness through their
loss.  He stopped, took off his hat, and ran his fingers
remorsefully through his damp curls.

Another thing troubled him.  He had reached the crest of the Gulch,
where their old working ground was spread before him like a map.
They were not there; neither were they lying under the four pines
on the ridge where they were wont to rest at midday.  He turned
with some alarm to the new claim adjoining theirs, but there was no
sign of them there either.  A sudden fear that they had, after
parting from him, given up the claim in a fit of disgust and
depression, and departed, now overcame him.  He clapped his hand on
his head and ran in the direction of the cabin.

He had nearly reached it when the rough challenge of "Who's there?"
from the bushes halted him, and Demorest suddenly swung into the
trail.  But the singular look of sternness and impatience which he
was wearing vanished as he saw Barker, and with a loud shout of
"All right, it's only Barker!  Hooray!" he ran toward him.  In an
instant he was joined by Stacy from the cabin, and the two men,
catching hold of their returning partner, waltzed him joyfully and
breathlessly into the cabin.  But the quick-eyed Demorest suddenly
let go his hold and stared at Barker's face.  "Why, Barker, old
boy, what's up?"

"Everything's up," gasped the breathless Barker.  "It's all up
about these stocks.  It's all a mistake; all an infernal lie of
that newspaper.  I never had the right kind of shares.  The ones I
have are worthless rags"; and the next instant he had blurted out
his whole interview with the bank manager.

The two partners looked at each other, and then, to Barker's
infinite perplexity, the same extraordinary convulsion that had
seized Miss Kitty fell upon them.  They laughed, holding on each
other's shoulders; they laughed, clinging to Barker's struggling
figure; they went out and laughed with their backs against a tree.
They laughed separately and in different corners.  And then they
came up to Barker with tears in their eyes, dropped their heads on
his shoulder, and murmured exhaustedly:

"You blessed ass!"

"But," said Stacy suddenly, "how did you manage to buy the claim?"

"Ah! that's the most awful thing, boys.  I've NEVER PAID FOR IT,"
groaned Barker.

"But Carter sent us the bill of sale," persisted Demorest, "or we
shouldn't have taken it."

"I gave my promissory note at thirty days," said Barker
desperately, "and where's the money to come from now?  But," he
added wildly, as the men glanced at each other--"you said 'taken
it.'  Good heavens! you don't mean to say that I'm TOO late--that
you've--you've touched it?"

"I reckon that's pretty much what we HAVE been doing," drawled
Demorest.

"It looks uncommonly like it," drawled Stacy.

Barker glanced blankly from the one to the other.  "Shall we pass
our young friend in to see the show?" said Demorest to Stacy.

"Yes, if he'll be perfectly quiet and not breathe on the glasses,"
returned Stacy.

They each gravely took one of Barker's hands and led him to the
corner of the cabin.  There, on an old flour barrel, stood a large
tin prospecting pan, in which the partners also occasionally used
to knead their bread.  A dirty towel covered it.  Demorest whisked
it dexterously aside, and disclosed three large fragments of
decomposed gold and quartz.  Barker started back.

"Heft it!" said Demorest grimly.

Barker could scarcely lift the pan!

"Four thousand dollars' weight if a penny!" said Stacy, in short
staccato sentences.  "In a pocket!  Brought it out the second
stroke of the pick!  We'd been awfully blue after you left.
Awfully blue, too, when that bill of sale came, for we thought
you'd been wasting your money on US.  Reckoned we oughtn't to take
it, but send it straight back to you.  Messenger gone!  Then
Demorest reckoned as it was done it couldn't be undone, and we
ought to make just one 'prospect' on the claim, and strike a single
stroke for you.  And there it is.  And there's more on the
hillside."

"But it isn't MINE!  It isn't YOURS!  It's Carter's.  I never had
the money to pay for it--and I haven't got it now."

"But you gave the note--and it is not due for thirty days."

A recollection flashed upon Barker.  "Yes," he said with thoughtful
simplicity, "that's what Kitty said."

"Oh, Kitty said so," said both partners, gravely.

"Yes," stammered Barker, turning away with a heightened color, and,
as I didn't stay there to luncheon, I think I'd better be getting
it ready."  He picked up the coffeepot and turned to the hearth as
his two partners stepped beyond the door.

"Wasn't it exactly like him?" said Demorest.

"Him all over," said Stacy.

"And his worry over that note?" said Demorest.

"And 'what Kitty said,'" said Stacy.

"Look here!  I reckon that wasn't ALL that Kitty said."

"Of course not."

"What luck!"



A YELLOW DOG


I never knew why in the Western States of America a yellow dog
should be proverbially considered the acme of canine degradation
and incompetency, nor why the possession of one should seriously
affect the social standing of its possessor.  But the fact being
established, I think we accepted it at Rattlers Ridge without
question.  The matter of ownership was more difficult to settle;
and although the dog I have in my mind at the present writing
attached himself impartially and equally to everyone in camp, no
one ventured to exclusively claim him; while, after the
perpetration of any canine atrocity, everybody repudiated him with
indecent haste.

"Well, I can swear he hasn't been near our shanty for weeks," or
the retort, "He was last seen comin' out of YOUR cabin," expressed
the eagerness with which Rattlers Ridge washed its hands of any
responsibility.  Yet he was by no means a common dog, nor even an
unhandsome dog; and it was a singular fact that his severest
critics vied with each other in narrating instances of his
sagacity, insight, and agility which they themselves had witnessed.

He had been seen crossing the "flume" that spanned Grizzly Canyon
at a height of nine hundred feet, on a plank six inches wide.  He
had tumbled down the "shoot" to the South Fork, a thousand feet
below, and was found sitting on the riverbank "without a scratch,
'cept that he was lazily givin' himself with his off hind paw."  He
had been forgotten in a snowdrift on a Sierran shelf, and had come
home in the early spring with the conceited complacency of an
Alpine traveler and a plumpness alleged to have been the result of
an exclusive diet of buried mail bags and their contents.  He was
generally believed to read the advance election posters, and
disappear a day or two before the candidates and the brass band--
which he hated--came to the Ridge.  He was suspected of having
overlooked Colonel Johnson's hand at poker, and of having conveyed
to the Colonel's adversary, by a succession of barks, the danger of
betting against four kings.

While these statements were supplied by wholly unsupported
witnesses, it was a very human weakness of Rattlers Ridge that the
responsibility of corroboration was passed to the dog himself, and
HE was looked upon as a consummate liar.

"Snoopin' round yere, and CALLIN' yourself a poker sharp, are ye!
Scoot, you yaller pizin!" was a common adjuration whenever the
unfortunate animal intruded upon a card party.  "Ef thar was a
spark, an ATOM of truth in THAT DOG, I'd believe my own eyes that I
saw him sittin' up and trying to magnetize a jay bird off a tree.
But wot are ye goin' to do with a yaller equivocator like that?"

I have said that he was yellow--or, to use the ordinary expression,
"yaller."  Indeed, I am inclined to believe that much of the
ignominy attached to the epithet lay in this favorite
pronunciation.  Men who habitually spoke of a "YELLOW bird," a
"YELLOW-hammer," a "YELLOW leaf," always alluded to him as a
"YALLER dog."

He certainly WAS yellow.  After a bath--usually compulsory--he
presented a decided gamboge streak down his back, from the top of
his forehead to the stump of his tail, fading in his sides and
flank to a delicate straw color.  His breast, legs, and feet--when
not reddened by "slumgullion," in which he was fond of wading--were
white.  A few attempts at ornamental decoration from the India-ink
pot of the storekeeper failed, partly through the yellow dog's
excessive agility, which would never give the paint time to dry on
him, and partly through his success in transferring his markings to
the trousers and blankets of the camp.

The size and shape of his tail--which had been cut off before his
introduction to Rattlers Ridge--were favorite sources of
speculation to the miners, as determining both his breed and his
moral responsibility in coming into camp in that defective
condition.  There was a general opinion that he couldn't have
looked worse with a tail, and its removal was therefore a
gratuitous effrontery.

His best feature was his eyes, which were a lustrous Vandyke brown,
and sparkling with intelligence; but here again he suffered from
evolution through environment, and their original trustful openness
was marred by the experience of watching for flying stones, sods,
and passing kicks from the rear, so that the pupils were
continually reverting to the outer angle of the eyelid.

Nevertheless, none of these characteristics decided the vexed
question of his BREED.  His speed and scent pointed to a "hound,"
and it is related that on one occasion he was laid on the trail of
a wildcat with such success that he followed it apparently out of
the State, returning at the end of two weeks footsore, but blandly
contented.

Attaching himself to a prospecting party, he was sent under the
same belief, "into the brush" to drive off a bear, who was supposed
to be haunting the campfire.  He returned in a few minutes WITH the
bear, DRIVING IT INTO the unarmed circle and scattering the whole
party.  After this the theory of his being a hunting dog was
abandoned.  Yet it was said--on the usual uncorroborated evidence--
that he had "put up" a quail; and his qualities as a retriever were
for a long time accepted, until, during a shooting expedition for
wild ducks, it was discovered that the one he had brought back had
never been shot, and the party were obliged to compound damages
with an adjacent settler.

His fondness for paddling in the ditches and "slumgullion" at one
time suggested a water spaniel.  He could swim, and would
occasionally bring out of the river sticks and pieces of bark that
had been thrown in; but as HE always had to be thrown in with them,
and was a good-sized dog, his aquatic reputation faded also.  He
remained simply "a yaller dog."  What more could be said?  His
actual name was "Bones"--given to him, no doubt, through the
provincial custom of confounding the occupation of the individual
with his quality, for which it was pointed out precedent could be
found in some old English family names.

But if Bones generally exhibited no preference for any particular
individual in camp, he always made an exception in favor of
drunkards.  Even an ordinary roistering bacchanalian party brought
him out from under a tree or a shed in the keenest satisfaction.
He would accompany them through the long straggling street of the
settlement, barking his delight at every step or misstep of the
revelers, and exhibiting none of that mistrust of eye which marked
his attendance upon the sane and the respectable.  He accepted even
their uncouth play without a snarl or a yelp, hypocritically
pretending even to like it; and I conscientiously believe would
have allowed a tin can to be attached to his tail if the hand that
tied it on were only unsteady, and the voice that bade him "lie
still" were husky with liquor.  He would "see" the party cheerfully
into a saloon, wait outside the door--his tongue fairly lolling
from his mouth in enjoyment--until they reappeared, permit them
even to tumble over him with pleasure, and then gambol away before
them, heedless of awkwardly projected stones and epithets.  He
would afterward accompany them separately home, or lie with them at
crossroads until they were assisted to their cabins.  Then he would
trot rakishly to his own haunt by the saloon stove, with the
slightly conscious air of having been a bad dog, yet of having had
a good time.

We never could satisfy ourselves whether his enjoyment arose from
some merely selfish conviction that he was more SECURE with the
physically and mentally incompetent, from some active sympathy with
active wickedness, or from a grim sense of his own mental
superiority at such moments.  But the general belief leant toward
his kindred sympathy as a "yaller dog" with all that was
disreputable.  And this was supported by another very singular
canine manifestation--the "sincere flattery" of simulation or
imitation.

"Uncle Billy" Riley for a short time enjoyed the position of being
the camp drunkard, and at once became an object of Bones' greatest
solicitude.  He not only accompanied him everywhere, curled at his
feet or head according to Uncle Billy's attitude at the moment,
but, it was noticed, began presently to undergo a singular
alteration in his own habits and appearance.  From being an active,
tireless scout and forager, a bold and unovertakable marauder, he
became lazy and apathetic; allowed gophers to burrow under him
without endeavoring to undermine the settlement in his frantic
endeavors to dig them out, permitted squirrels to flash their tails
at him a hundred yards away, forgot his usual caches, and left his
favorite bones unburied and bleaching in the sun.  His eyes grew
dull, his coat lusterless, in proportion as his companion became
blear-eyed and ragged; in running, his usual arrowlike directness
began to deviate, and it was not unusual to meet the pair together,
zigzagging up the hill.  Indeed, Uncle Billy's condition could be
predetermined by Bones' appearance at times when his temporary
master was invisible.  "The old man must have an awful jag on
today," was casually remarked when an extra fluffiness and
imbecility was noticeable in the passing Bones.  At first it was
believed that he drank also, but when careful investigation proved
this hypothesis untenable, he was freely called a "derned time-
servin', yaller hypocrite."  Not a few advanced the opinion that if
Bones did not actually lead Uncle Billy astray, he at least
"slavered him over and coddled him until the old man got conceited
in his wickedness."  This undoubtedly led to a compulsory divorce
between them, and Uncle Billy was happily dispatched to a
neighboring town and a doctor.

Bones seemed to miss him greatly, ran away for two days, and was
supposed to have visited him, to have been shocked at his
convalescence, and to have been "cut" by Uncle Billy in his
reformed character; and he returned to his old active life again,
and buried his past with his forgotten bones.  It was said that he
was afterward detected in trying to lead an intoxicated tramp into
camp after the methods employed by a blind man's dog, but was
discovered in time by the--of course--uncorroborated narrator.

I should be tempted to leave him thus in his original and
picturesque sin, but the same veracity which compelled me to
transcribe his faults and iniquities obliges me to describe his
ultimate and somewhat monotonous reformation, which came from no
fault of his own.

It was a joyous day at Rattlers Ridge that was equally the advent
of his change of heart and the first stagecoach that had been
induced to diverge from the highroad and stop regularly at our
settlement.  Flags were flying from the post office and Polka
saloon, and Bones was flying before the brass band that he
detested, when the sweetest girl in the county--Pinkey Preston--
daughter of the county judge and hopelessly beloved by all Rattlers
Ridge, stepped from the coach which she had glorified by occupying
as an invited guest.

"What makes him run away?" she asked quickly, opening her lovely
eyes in a possibly innocent wonder that anything could be found to
run away from her.

"He don't like the brass band," we explained eagerly.

"How funny," murmured the girl; "is it as out of tune as all that?"

This irresistible witticism alone would have been enough to satisfy
us--we did nothing but repeat it to each other all the next day--
but we were positively transported when we saw her suddenly gather
her dainty skirts in one hand and trip off through the red dust
toward Bones, who, with his eyes over his yellow shoulder, had
halted in the road, and half-turned in mingled disgust and rage at
the spectacle of the descending trombone.  We held our breath as
she approached him.  Would Bones evade her as he did us at such
moments, or would he save our reputation, and consent, for the
moment, to accept her as a new kind of inebriate?  She came nearer;
he saw her; he began to slowly quiver with excitement--his stump of
a tail vibrating with such rapidity that the loss of the missing
portion was scarcely noticeable.  Suddenly she stopped before him,
took his yellow head between her little hands, lifted it, and
looked down in his handsome brown eyes with her two lovely blue
ones.  What passed between them in that magnetic glance no one ever
knew.  She returned with him; said to him casually: "We're not
afraid of brass bands, are we?" to which he apparently acquiesced,
at least stifling his disgust of them while he was near her--which
was nearly all the time.

During the speechmaking her gloved hand and his yellow head were
always near together, and at the crowning ceremony--her public
checking of Yuba Bill's "waybill" on behalf of the township, with a
gold pencil presented to her by the Stage Company--Bones' joy, far
from knowing no bounds, seemed to know nothing but them, and he
witnessed it apparently in the air.  No one dared to interfere.
For the first time a local pride in Bones sprang up in our hearts--
and we lied to each other in his praises openly and shamelessly.

Then the time came for parting.  We were standing by the door of
the coach, hats in hand, as Miss Pinkey was about to step into it;
Bones was waiting by her side, confidently looking into the
interior, and apparently selecting his own seat on the lap of Judge
Preston in the corner, when Miss Pinkey held up the sweetest of
admonitory fingers.  Then, taking his head between her two hands,
she again looked into his brimming eyes, and said, simply, "GOOD
dog," with the gentlest of emphasis on the adjective, and popped
into the coach.

The six bay horses started as one, the gorgeous green and gold
vehicle bounded forward, the red dust rose behind, and the yellow
dog danced in and out of it to the very outskirts of the
settlement.  And then he soberly returned.

A day or two later he was missed--but the fact was afterward known
that he was at Spring Valley, the county town where Miss Preston
lived, and he was forgiven.  A week afterward he was missed again,
but this time for a longer period, and then a pathetic letter
arrived from Sacramento for the storekeeper's wife.

"Would you mind," wrote Miss Pinkey Preston, "asking some of your
boys to come over here to Sacramento and bring back Bones?  I don't
mind having the dear dog walk out with me at Spring Valley, where
everyone knows me; but here he DOES make one so noticeable, on
account of HIS COLOR.  I've got scarcely a frock that he agrees
with.  He don't go with my pink muslin, and that lovely buff tint
he makes three shades lighter.  You know yellow is SO trying."

A consultation was quickly held by the whole settlement, and a
deputation sent to Sacramento to relieve the unfortunate girl.  We
were all quite indignant with Bones--but, oddly enough, I think it
was greatly tempered with our new pride in him.  While he was with
us alone, his peculiarities had been scarcely appreciated, but the
recurrent phrase "that yellow dog that they keep at the Rattlers"
gave us a mysterious importance along the countryside, as if we had
secured a "mascot" in some zoological curiosity.

This was further indicated by a singular occurrence.  A new church
had been built at the crossroads, and an eminent divine had come
from San Francisco to preach the opening sermon.  After a careful
examination of the camp's wardrobe, and some felicitous exchange of
apparel, a few of us were deputed to represent "Rattlers" at the
Sunday service.  In our white ducks, straw hats, and flannel
blouses, we were sufficiently picturesque and distinctive as
"honest miners" to be shown off in one of the front pews.

Seated near the prettiest girls, who offered us their hymn books--
in the cleanly odor of fresh pine shavings, and ironed muslin, and
blown over by the spices of our own woods through the open windows,
a deep sense of the abiding peace of Christian communion settled
upon us.  At this supreme moment someone murmured in an awe-
stricken whisper:

"WILL you look at Bones?"

We looked.  Bones had entered the church and gone up in the gallery
through a pardonable ignorance and modesty; but, perceiving his
mistake, was now calmly walking along the gallery rail before the
astounded worshipers.  Reaching the end, he paused for a moment,
and carelessly looked down.  It was about fifteen feet to the floor
below--the simplest jump in the world for the mountain-bred Bones.
Daintily, gingerly, lazily, and yet with a conceited airiness of
manner, as if, humanly speaking, he had one leg in his pocket and
were doing it on three, he cleared the distance, dropping just in
front of the chancel, without a sound, turned himself around three
times, and then lay comfortably down.

Three deacons were instantly in the aisle, coming up before the
eminent divine, who, we fancied, wore a restrained smile.  We heard
the hurried whispers: "Belongs to them."  "Quite a local
institution here, you know."  "Don't like to offend sensibilities;"
and the minister's prompt "By no means," as he went on with his
service.

A short month ago we would have repudiated Bones; today we sat
there in slightly supercilious attitudes, as if to indicate that
any affront offered to Bones would be an insult to ourselves, and
followed by our instantaneous withdrawal in a body.

All went well, however, until the minister, lifting the large Bible
from the communion table and holding it in both hands before him,
walked toward a reading stand by the altar rails.  Bones uttered a
distinct growl.  The minister stopped.

We, and we alone, comprehended in a flash the whole situation.  The
Bible was nearly the size and shape of one of those soft clods of
sod which we were in the playful habit of launching at Bones when
he lay half-asleep in the sun, in order to see him cleverly evade
it.

We held our breath.  What was to be done?  But the opportunity
belonged to our leader, Jeff Briggs--a confoundedly good-looking
fellow, with the golden mustache of a northern viking and the curls
of an Apollo.  Secure in his beauty and bland in his self-conceit,
he rose from the pew, and stepped before the chancel rails.

"I would wait a moment, if I were you, sir," he said, respectfully,
"and you will see that he will go out quietly."

"What is wrong?" whispered the minister in some concern.

"He thinks you are going to heave that book at him, sir, without
giving him a fair show, as we do."

The minister looked perplexed, but remained motionless, with the
book in his hands.  Bones arose, walked halfway down the aisle, and
vanished like a yellow flash!

With this justification of his reputation, Bones disappeared for a
week.  At the end of that time we received a polite note from Judge
Preston, saying that the dog had become quite domiciled in their
house, and begged that the camp, without yielding up their valuable
PROPERTY in him, would allow him to remain at Spring Valley for an
indefinite time; that both the judge and his daughter--with whom
Bones was already an old friend--would be glad if the members of
the camp would visit their old favorite whenever they desired, to
assure themselves that he was well cared for.

I am afraid that the bait thus ingenuously thrown out had a good
deal to do with our ultimate yielding.  However, the reports of
those who visited Bones were wonderful and marvelous.  He was
residing there in state, lying on rugs in the drawing-room, coiled
up under the judicial desk in the judge's study, sleeping regularly
on the mat outside Miss Pinkey's bedroom door, or lazily snapping
at flies on the judge's lawn.

"He's as yaller as ever," said one of our informants, "but it don't
somehow seem to be the same back that we used to break clods over
in the old time, just to see him scoot out of the dust."

And now I must record a fact which I am aware all lovers of dogs
will indignantly deny, and which will be furiously bayed at by
every faithful hound since the days of Ulysses.  Bones not only
FORGOT, but absolutely CUT US!  Those who called upon the judge in
"store clothes" he would perhaps casually notice, but he would
sniff at them as if detecting and resenting them under their
superficial exterior.  The rest he simply paid no attention to.
The more familiar term of "Bonesy"--formerly applied to him, as in
our rare moments of endearment--produced no response.  This pained,
I think, some of the more youthful of us; but, through some strange
human weakness, it also increased the camp's respect for him.
Nevertheless, we spoke of him familiarly to strangers at the very
moment he ignored us.  I am afraid that we also took some pains to
point out that he was getting fat and unwieldy, and losing his
elasticity, implying covertly that his choice was a mistake and his
life a failure.

A year after, he died, in the odor of sanctity and respectability,
being found one morning coiled up and stiff on the mat outside Miss
Pinkey's door.  When the news was conveyed to us, we asked
permission, the camp being in a prosperous condition, to erect a
stone over his grave.  But when it came to the inscription we could
only think of the two words murmured to him by Miss Pinkey, which
we always believe effected his conversion:

"GOOD Dog!"



A MOTHER OF FIVE


She was a mother--and a rather exemplary one--of five children,
although her own age was barely nine.  Two of these children were
twins, and she generally alluded to them as "Mr. Amplach's
children," referring to an exceedingly respectable gentleman in the
next settlement who, I have reason to believe, had never set eyes
on her or them.  The twins were quite naturally alike--having been
in a previous state of existence two ninepins--and were still
somewhat vague and inchoate below their low shoulders in their long
clothes, but were also firm and globular about the head, and there
were not wanting those who professed to see in this an unmistakable
resemblance to their reputed father.  The other children were dolls
of different ages, sex, and condition, but the twins may be said to
have been distinctly her own conception.  Yet such was her
admirable and impartial maternity that she never made any
difference between them.  "The Amplach's children" was a
description rather than a distinction.

She was herself the motherless child of Robert Foulkes, a
hardworking but somewhat improvident teamster on the Express Route
between Big Bend and Reno.  His daily avocation, when she was not
actually with him in the wagon, led to an occasional dispersion of
herself and her progeny along the road and at wayside stations
between those places.  But the family was generally collected
together by rough but kindly hands already familiar with the
handling of her children.  I have a very vivid recollection of Jim
Carter trampling into a saloon, after a five-mile walk through a
snowdrift, with an Amplach twin in his pocket.  "Suthin' ought to
be done," he growled, "to make Meary a little more careful o' them
Amplach children; I picked up one outer the snow a mile beyond Big
Bend."  "God bless my soul!" said a casual passenger, looking up
hastily; "I didn't know Mr. Amplach was married."  Jim winked
diabolically at us over his glass.  "No more did I," he responded
gloomily, "but you can't tell anything about the ways o' them
respectable, psalm-singing jay birds."  Having thus disposed of
Amplach's character, later on, when he was alone with Mary, or
"Meary," as she chose to pronounce it, the rascal worked upon her
feelings with an account of the infant Amplach's sufferings in the
snowdrift and its agonized whisperings for "Meary! Meary!" until
real tears stood in Mary's blue eyes.  "Let this be a lesson to
you," he concluded, drawing the ninepin dexterously from his
pocket, "for it took nigh a quart of the best forty-rod whisky to
bring that child to."  Not only did Mary firmly believe him, but
for weeks afterwards "Julian Amplach"--this unhappy twin--was kept
in a somnolent attitude in the cart, and was believed to have
contracted dissipated habits from the effects of his heroic
treatment.

Her numerous family was achieved in only two years, and succeeded
her first child, which was brought from Sacramento at considerable
expense by a Mr. William Dodd, also a teamster, on her seventh
birthday.  This, by one of those rare inventions known only to a
child's vocabulary, she at once called "Misery"--probably a
combination of "Missy," as she herself was formerly termed by
strangers, and "Missouri," her native State.  It was an excessively
large doll at first--Mr. Dodd wishing to get the worth of his
money--but time, and perhaps an excess of maternal care, remedied
the defect, and it lost flesh and certain unemployed parts of its
limbs very rapidly.  It was further reduced in bulk by falling
under the wagon and having the whole train pass over it, but
singularly enough its greatest attenuation was in the head and
shoulders--the complexion peeling off as a solid layer, followed by
the disappearance of distinct strata of its extraordinary
composition.  This continued until the head and shoulders were much
too small for even its reduced frame, and all the devices of
childish millinery--a shawl secured with tacks and well hammered
in, and a hat which tilted backward and forward and never appeared
at the same angle--failed to restore symmetry.  Until one dreadful
morning, after an imprudent bath, the whole upper structure
disappeared, leaving two hideous iron prongs standing erect from
the spinal column.  Even an imaginative child like Mary could not
accept this sort of thing as a head.  Later in the day Jack Roper,
the blacksmith at the "Crossing," was concerned at the plaintive
appearance before his forge of a little girl clad in a bright-blue
pinafore of the same color as her eyes, carrying her monstrous
offspring in her arms.  Jack recognized her and instantly divined
the situation.  "You haven't," he suggested kindly, "got another
head at home--suthin' left over," Mary shook her head sadly; even
her prolific maternity was not equal to the creation of children in
detail.  "Nor anythin' like a head?" he persisted sympathetically.
Mary's loving eyes filled with tears.  "No, nuffen!"  "You
couldn't," he continued thoughtfully, "use her the other side up?--
we might get a fine pair o' legs outer them irons," he added,
touching the two prongs with artistic suggestion.  "Now look here"--
he was about to tilt the doll over when a small cry of feminine
distress and a swift movement of a matronly little arm arrested the
evident indiscretion.  "I see," he said gravely.  "Well, you come
here tomorrow, and we'll fix up suthin' to work her."  Jack was
thoughtful the rest of the day, more than usually impatient with
certain stubborn mules to be shod, and even knocked off work an
hour earlier to walk to Big Bend and a rival shop.  But the next
morning when the trustful and anxious mother appeared at the forge
she uttered a scream of delight.  Jack had neatly joined a hollow
iron globe, taken from the newel post of some old iron staircase
railing, to the two prongs, and covered it with a coat of red
fireproof paint.  It was true that its complexion was rather high,
that it was inclined to be top-heavy, and that in the long run the
other dolls suffered considerably by enforced association with this
unyielding and implacable head and shoulders, but this did not
diminish Mary's joy over her restored first-born.  Even its utter
absence of features was no defect in a family where features were
as evanescent as in hers, and the most ordinary student of
evolution could see that the "Amplach" ninepins were in legitimate
succession to the globular-headed "Misery."  For a time I think
that Mary even preferred her to the others.  Howbeit it was a
pretty sight to see her on a summer afternoon sitting upon a
wayside stump, her other children dutifully ranged around her, and
the hard, unfeeling head of Misery pressed deep down into her
loving little heart as she swayed from side to side, crooning her
plaintive lullaby.  Small wonder that the bees took up the song and
droned a slumberous accompaniment, or that high above her head the
enormous pines, stirred through their depths by the soft Sierran
air--or Heaven knows what--let slip flickering lights and shadows
to play over that cast-iron face, until the child, looking down
upon it with the quick, transforming power of love, thought that it
smiled.

The two remaining members of the family were less distinctive.
"Gloriana"--pronounced as two words: "Glory Anna"--being the work
of her father, who also named it, was simply a cylindrical roll of
canvas wagon-covering, girt so as to define a neck and waist, with
a rudely inked face--altogether a weak, pitiable, manlike
invention; and "Johnny Dear," alleged to be the representative of
John Doremus, a young storekeeper who occasionally supplied Mary
with gratuitous sweets.  Mary never admitted this, and as we were
all gentlemen along that road, we were blind to the suggestion.
"Johnny Dear" was originally a small plaster phrenological cast of
a head and bust, begged from some shop window in the county town,
with a body clearly constructed by Mary herself.  It was an ominous
fact that it was always dressed as a BOY, and was distinctly the
most HUMAN-looking of all her progeny.  Indeed, in spite of the
faculties that were legibly printed all over its smooth, white,
hairless head, it was appallingly lifelike.  Left sometimes by Mary
astride of the branch of a wayside tree, horsemen had been known to
dismount hurriedly and examine it, returning with a mystified
smile, and it was on record that Yuba Bill had once pulled up the
Pioneer Coach at the request of curious and imploring passengers,
and then grimly installed "Johnny Dear" beside him on the box seat,
publicly delivering him to Mary at Big Bend, to her wide-eyed
confusion and the first blush we had ever seen on her round,
chubby, sunburnt cheeks.  It may seem strange that with her great
popularity and her well-known maternal instincts, she had not been
kept fully supplied with proper and more conventional dolls; but it
was soon recognized that she did not care for them--left their
waxen faces, rolling eyes, and abundant hair in ditches, or
stripped them to help clothe the more extravagant creatures of her
fancy.  So it came that "Johnny Dear's" strictly classical profile
looked out from under a girl's fashionable straw sailor hat, to the
utter obliteration of his prominent intellectual faculties; the
Amplach twins wore bonnets on their ninepins heads, and even an
attempt was made to fit a flaxen scalp on the iron-headed Misery.
But her dolls were always a creation of her own--her affection for
them increasing with the demand upon her imagination.  This may
seem somewhat inconsistent with her habit of occasionally
abandoning them in the woods or in the ditches.  But she had an
unbounded confidence in the kindly maternity of Nature, and trusted
her children to the breast of the Great Mother as freely as she did
herself in her own motherlessness.  And this confidence was rarely
betrayed.  Rats, mice, snails, wildcats, panther, and bear never
touched her lost waifs.  Even the elements were kindly; an Amplach
twin buried under a snowdrift in high altitudes reappeared
smilingly in the spring in all its wooden and painted integrity.
We were all Pantheists then--and believed this implicitly.  It was
only when exposed to the milder forces of civilization that Mary
had anything to fear.  Yet even then, when Patsy O'Connor's
domestic goat had once tried to "sample" the lost Misery, he had
retreated with the loss of three front teeth, and Thompson's mule
came out of an encounter with that iron-headed prodigy with a
sprained hind leg and a cut and swollen pastern.

But these were the simple Arcadian days of the road between Big
Bend and Reno, and progress and prosperity, alas! brought changes
in their wake.  It was already whispered that Mary ought to be
going to school, and Mr. Amplach--still happily oblivious of the
liberties taken with his name--as trustee of the public school at
Duckville, had intimated that Mary's bohemian wanderings were a
scandal to the county.  She was growing up in ignorance, a dreadful
ignorance of everything but the chivalry, the deep tenderness, the
delicacy and unselfishness of the rude men around her, and
obliviousness of faith in anything but the immeasurable bounty of
Nature toward her and her children.  Of course there was a fierce
discussion between "the boys" of the road and the few married
families of the settlement on this point, but, of course, progress
and "snivelization"--as the boys chose to call it--triumphed.  The
projection of a railroad settled it; Robert Foulkes, promoted to a
foremanship of a division of the line, was made to understand that
his daughter must be educated.  But the terrible question of Mary's
family remained.  No school would open its doors to that
heterogeneous collection, and Mary's little heart would have broken
over the rude dispersal or heroic burning of her children.  The
ingenuity of Jack Roper suggested a compromise.  She was allowed to
select one to take to school with her; the others were ADOPTED by
certain of her friends, and she was to be permitted to visit them
every Saturday afternoon.  The selection was a cruel trial, so
cruel that, knowing her undoubted preference for her firstborn,
Misery, we would not have interfered for worlds, but in her
unexpected choice of "Johnny Dear" the most unworldly of us knew
that it was the first glimmering of feminine tact--her first
submission to the world of propriety that she was now entering.
"Johnny Dear" was undoubtedly the most presentable; even more,
there was an educational suggestion in its prominent, mapped-out
phrenological organs.  The adopted fathers were loyal to their
trust.  Indeed, for years afterward the blacksmith kept the iron-
headed Misery on a rude shelf, like a shrine, near his bunk; nobody
but himself and Mary ever knew the secret, stolen, and thrilling
interviews that took place during the first days of their
separation.  Certain facts, however, transpired concerning Mary's
equal faithfulness to another of her children.  It is said that one
Saturday afternoon, when the road manager of the new line was
seated in his office at Reno in private business discussion with
two directors, a gentle tap was heard at the door.  It was opened
to an eager little face, a pair of blue eyes, and a blue pinafore.
To the astonishment of the directors, a change came over the face
of the manager.  Taking the child gently by the hand, he walked to
his desk, on which the papers of the new line were scattered, and
drew open a drawer from which he took a large ninepin
extraordinarily dressed as a doll.  The astonishment of the two
gentlemen was increased at the following quaint colloquy between
the manager and the child.

"She's doing remarkably well in spite of the trying weather, but I
have had to keep her very quiet," said the manager, regarding the
ninepin critically.

"Ess," said Mary quickly, "It's just the same with Johnny Dear; his
cough is f'ightful at nights.  But Misery's all right.  I've just
been to see her."

"There's a good deal of scarlet fever around," continued the
manager with quiet concern, "and we can't be too careful.  But I
shall take her for a little run down the line tomorrow."

The eyes of Mary sparkled and overflowed like blue water.  Then
there was a kiss, a little laugh, a shy glance at the two curious
strangers, the blue pinafore fluttered away, and the colloquy
ended.  She was equally attentive in her care of the others, but
the rag baby "Gloriana," who had found a home in Jim Carter's cabin
at the Ridge, living too far for daily visits, was brought down
regularly on Saturday afternoon to Mary's house by Jim, tucked in
asleep in his saddle bags or riding gallantly before him on the
horn of his saddle.  On Sunday there was a dress parade of all the
dolls, which kept Mary in heart for the next week's desolation.

But there came one Saturday and Sunday when Mary did not appear,
and it was known along the road that she had been called to San
Francisco to meet an aunt who had just arrived from "the States."
It was a vacant Sunday to "the boys," a very hollow, unsanctified
Sunday, somehow, without that little figure.  But the next, Sunday,
and the next, were still worse, and then it was known that the
dreadful aunt was making much of Mary, and was sending her to a
grand school--a convent at Santa Clara--where it was rumored girls
were turned out so accomplished that their own parents did not know
them.  But WE knew that was impossible to our Mary; and a letter
which came from her at the end of the month, and before the convent
had closed upon the blue pinafore, satisfied us, and was balm to
our anxious hearts.  It was characteristic of Mary; it was
addressed to nobody in particular, and would--but for the prudence
of the aunt--have been entrusted to the post office open and
undirected.  It was a single sheet, handed to us without a word by
her father; but as we passed it from hand to hand, we understood it
as if we had heard our lost playfellow's voice.

"Ther's more houses in 'Frisco than you kin shake a stick at and
wimmens till you kant rest, but mules and jakasses ain't got no
sho, nor blacksmiffs shops, wich is not to be seen no wear.  Rapits
and Skwirls also bares and panfers is on-noun and unforgotten on
account of the streets and Sunday skoles.  Jim Roper you orter be
very good to Mizzery on a kount of my not bein' here, and not
harten your hart to her bekos she is top heavy--which is ontroo and
simply an imptient lie--like you allus make.  I have a kinary bird
wot sings deliteful--but isn't a yellerhamer sutch as I know, as
you'd think.  Dear Mister Montgommery, don't keep Gulan Amplak to
mutch shet up in office drors; it isn't good for his lungs and
chest.  And don't you ink his head--nother! youre as bad as the
rest.  Johnny Dear, you must be very kind to your attopted father,
and you, Glory Anna, must lov your kind Jimmy Carter verry mutch
for taking you hossback so offen.  I has been buggy ridin' with an
orficer who has killed injuns real!  I am comin' back soon with
grate affeckshun, so luke out and mind."

But it was three years before she returned, and this was her last
and only letter.  The "adopted fathers" of her children were
faithful, however, and when the new line was opened, and it was
understood that she was to be present with her father at the
ceremony, they came, with a common understanding, to the station to
meet their old playmate.  They were ranged along the platform--poor
Jack Roper a little overweighted with a bundle he was carrying on
his left arm.  And then a young girl in the freshness of her teens
and the spotless purity of a muslin frock that although brief in
skirt was perfect in fit, faultlessly booted and gloved, tripped
from the train, and offered a delicate hand in turn to each of her
old friends.  Nothing could be prettier than the smile on the
cheeks that were no longer sunburnt; nothing could be clearer than
the blue eyes lifted frankly to theirs.  And yet, as she gracefully
turned away with her father, the faces of the four adopted parents
were found to be as red and embarrassed as her own on the day that
Yuba Bill drove up publicly with "Johnny Dear" on the box seat.

"You weren't such a fool," said Jack Montgomery to Roper, "as to
bring Misery here with you?"

"I was," said Roper with a constrained laugh--"and you?"  He had
just caught sight of the head of a ninepin peeping from the
manager's pocket.  The man laughed, and then the four turned
silently away.

"Mary" had indeed come back to them; but not "The Mother of Five!"



BULGER'S REPUTATION


We all remembered very distinctly Bulger's advent in Rattlesnake
Camp.  It was during the rainy season--a season singularly inducive
to settled reflective impressions as we sat and smoked around the
stove in Mosby's grocery.  Like older and more civilized
communities, we had our periodic waves of sentiment and opinion,
with the exception that they were more evanescent with us, and as
we had just passed through a fortnight of dissipation and
extravagance, owing to a visit from some gamblers and speculators,
we were now undergoing a severe moral revulsion, partly induced by
reduced finances and partly by the arrival of two families with
grownup daughters on the hill.  It was raining, with occasional
warm breaths, through the open window, of the southwest trades,
redolent of the saturated spices of the woods and springing
grasses, which perhaps were slightly inconsistent with the hot
stove around which we had congregated.  But the stove was only an
excuse for our listless, gregarious gathering; warmth and idleness
went well together, and it was currently accepted that we had
caught from the particular reptile which gave its name to our camp
much of its pathetic, lifelong search for warmth, and its habit of
indolently basking in it.

A few of us still went through the affectation of attempting to dry
our damp clothes by the stove, and sizzling our wet boots against
it; but as the same individuals calmly permitted the rain to drive
in upon them through the open window without moving, and seemed to
take infinite delight in the amount of steam they generated, even
that pretense dropped.  Crotalus himself, with his tail in a muddy
ditch, and the sun striking cold fire from his slit eyes as he
basked his head on a warm stone beside it, could not have typified
us better.

Percy Briggs took his pipe from his mouth at last and said, with
reflective severity:

"Well, gentlemen, if we can't get the wagon road over here, and if
we're going to be left out by the stagecoach company, we can at
least straighten up the camp, and not have it look like a cross
between a tenement alley and a broken-down circus.  I declare, I
was just sick when these two Baker girls started to make a short
cut through the camp.  Darned if they didn't turn round and take to
the woods and the rattlers again afore they got halfway.  And that
benighted idiot, Tom Rollins, standin' there in the ditch,
spattered all over with slumgullion 'til he looked like a spotted
tarrypin, wavin' his fins and sashaying backwards and forrards and
sayin', 'This way, ladies; this way!'"

"I didn't," returned Tom Rollins, quite casually, without looking
up from his steaming boots; "I didn't start in night afore last to
dance 'The Green Corn Dance' outer 'Hiawatha,' with feathers in my
hair and a red blanket on my shoulders, round that family's new
potato patch, in order that it might 'increase and multiply.'  I
didn't sing 'Sabbath Morning Bells' with an anvil accompaniment
until twelve o'clock at night over at the Crossing, so that they
might dream of their Happy Childhood's Home.  It seems to me that
it wasn't me did it.  I might be mistaken--it was late--but I have
the impression that it wasn't me."

From the silence that followed, this would seem to have been
clearly a recent performance of the previous speaker, who, however,
responded quite cheerfully:

"An evenin' o' simple, childish gaiety don't count.  We've got to
start in again FAIR.  What we want here is to clear up and
encourage decent immigration, and get rid o' gamblers and
blatherskites that are makin' this yer camp their happy hunting-
ground.  We don't want any more permiskus shootin'.  We don't want
any more paintin' the town red.  We don't want any more swaggerin'
galoots ridin' up to this grocery and emptyin' their six-shooters
in the air afore they 'light.  We want to put a stop to it
peacefully and without a row--and we kin.  We ain't got no bullies
of our own to fight back, and they know it, so they know they won't
get no credit bullyin' us; they'll leave, if we're only firm.  It's
all along of our cussed fool good-nature; they see it amuses us,
and they'll keep it up as long as the whisky's free.  What we want
to do is, when the next man comes waltzin' along--"

A distant clatter from the rocky hillside here mingled with the
puff of damp air through the window.

"Looks as ef we might hev a show even now," said Tom Rollins,
removing his feet from the stove as we all instinctively faced
toward the window.

"I reckon you're in with us in this, Mosby?" said Briggs, turning
toward the proprietor of the grocery, who had been leaning
listlessly against the wall behind his bar.

"Arter the man's had a fair show," said Mosby, cautiously.  He
deprecated the prevailing condition of things, but it was still an
open question whether the families would prove as valuable
customers as his present clients.  "Everything in moderation,
gentlemen."

The sound of galloping hoofs came nearer, now swishing in the soft
mud of the highway, until the unseen rider pulled up before the
door.  There was no shouting, however, nor did he announce himself
with the usual salvo of firearms.  But when, after a singularly
heavy tread and the jingle of spurs on the platform, the door flew
open to the newcomer, he seemed a realization of our worst
expectations.  Tall, broad, and muscular, he carried in one hand a
shotgun, while from his hip dangled a heavy navy revolver.  His
long hair, unkempt but oiled, swept a greasy circle around his
shoulders; his enormous mustache, dripping with wet, completely
concealed his mouth.  His costume of fringed buckskin was wild and
outre even for our frontier camp.  But what was more confirmative
of our suspicions was that he was evidently in the habit of making
an impression, and after a distinct pause at the doorway, with only
a side glance at us, he strode toward the bar.

"As there don't seem to be no hotel hereabouts, I reckon I kin put
up my mustang here and have a shakedown somewhere behind that
counter," he said.  His voice seemed to have added to its natural
depth the hoarseness of frequent overstraining.

"Ye ain't got no bunk to spare, you boys, hev ye?" asked Mosby,
evasively, glancing at Percy Briggs without looking at the
stranger.  We all looked at Briggs also; it was HIS affair after
all--HE had originated this opposition.  To our surprise he said
nothing.

The stranger leaned heavily on the counter.

"I was speaking to YOU," he said, with his eyes on Mosby, and
slightly accenting the pronoun with a tap of his revolver butt on
the bar.  "Ye don't seem to catch on."

Mosby smiled feebly, and again cast an imploring glance at Briggs.
To our greater astonishment, Briggs said, quietly: "Why don't you
answer the stranger, Mosby?"

"Yes, yes," said Mosby, suavely, to the newcomer, while an angry
flush crossed his check as he recognized the position in which
Briggs had placed him.  "Of course, you're welcome to what doings I
hev here, but I reckoned these gentlemen over there," with a
vicious glance at Briggs, "might fix ye up suthin' better; they're
so pow'ful kind to your sort."

The stranger threw down a gold piece on the counter and said: "Fork
out your whisky, then," waited until his glass was filled, took it
in his hand, and then, drawing an empty chair to the stove, sat
down beside Briggs.  "Seein' as you're that kind," he said, placing
his heavy hand on Briggs's knee, "mebbe ye kin tell me ef thar's a
shanty or a cabin at Rattlesnake that I kin get for a couple o'
weeks.  I saw an empty one at the head o' the hill.  You see,
gennelmen," he added confidentially as he swept the drops of whisky
from his long mustache with his fingers and glanced around our
group, "I've got some business over at Bigwood," our nearest town,
"but ez a place to stay AT it ain't my style."

"What's the matter with Bigwood?" said Briggs, abruptly.

"It's too howlin', too festive, too rough; thar's too much yellin'
and shootin' goin' day and night.  Thar's too many card sharps and
gay gamboliers cavortin' about the town to please me.  Too much
permiskus soakin' at the bar and free jimjams.  What I want is a
quiet place what a man kin give his mind and elbow a rest from
betwixt grippin' his shootin' irons and crookin' in his whisky.  A
sort o' slow, quiet, easy place LIKE THIS."

We all stared at him, Percy Briggs as fixedly as any.  But there
was not the slightest trace of irony, sarcasm, or peculiar
significance in his manner.  He went on slowly:

"When I struck this yer camp a minit ago; when I seed that thar
ditch meanderin' peaceful like through the street, without a hotel
or free saloon or express office on either side; with the smoke
just a curlin' over the chimbley of that log shanty, and the bresh
just set fire to and a smolderin' in that potato patch with a kind
o' old-time stingin' in your eyes and nose, and a few women's duds
just a flutterin' on a line by the fence, I says to myself:
'Bulger--this is peace!  This is wot you're lookin' for, Bulger--
this is wot you're wantin'--this is wot YOU'LL HEV!'"

"You say you've business over at Bigwood.  What business?" said
Briggs.

"It's a peculiar business, young fellow," returned the stranger,
gravely.  "Thar's different men ez has different opinions about it.
Some allows it's an easy business, some allows it's a rough
business; some says it's a sad business, others says it's gay and
festive.  Some wonders ez how I've got into it, and others wonder
how I'll ever get out of it.  It's a payin' business--it's a
peaceful sort o' business when left to itself.  It's a peculiar
business--a business that sort o' b'longs to me, though I ain't got
no patent from Washington for it.  It's MY OWN business."  He
paused, rose, and saying, "Let's meander over and take a look at
that empty cabin, and ef she suits me, why, I'll plank down a slug
for her on the spot, and move in tomorrow," walked towards the
door.  "I'll pick up suthin' in the way o' boxes and blankets from
the grocery," he added, looking at Mosby, "and ef thar's a corner
whar I kin stand my gun and a nail to hang up my revolver--why, I'm
all thar!"

By this time we were no longer astonished when Briggs rose also,
and not only accompanied the sinister-looking stranger to the empty
cabin, but assisted him in negotiating with its owner for a
fortnight's occupancy.  Nevertheless, we eagerly assailed Briggs on
his return for some explanation of this singular change in his
attitude toward the stranger.  He coolly reminded us, however, that
while his intention of excluding ruffianly adventurers from the
camp remained the same, he had no right to go back on the
stranger's sentiments, which were evidently in accord with our own,
and although Mr. Bulger's appearance was inconsistent with them,
that was only an additional reason why we should substitute a mild
firmness for that violence which we all deprecated, but which might
attend his abrupt dismissal.  We were all satisfied except Mosby,
who had not yet recovered from Briggs's change of front, which he
was pleased to call "craw-fishing."  "Seemed to me his account of
his business was extraordinary satisfactory!  Sorter filled the
bill all round--no mistake thar," he suggested, with a malicious
irony.  "I like a man that's outspoken."

"I understood him very well," said Briggs, quietly.

"In course you did.  Only when you've settled in your MIND whether
he was describing horse-stealing or tract-distributing, mebbe
you'll let ME know."

It would seem, however, that Briggs did not interrogate the
stranger again regarding it, nor did we, who were quite content to
leave matters in Briggs's hands.  Enough that Mr. Bulger moved into
the empty cabin the next day, and, with the aid of a few old boxes
from the grocery, which he quickly extemporized into tables and
chairs, and the purchase of some necessary cooking utensils, soon
made himself at home.  The rest of the camp, now thoroughly
aroused, made a point of leaving their work in the ditches,
whenever they could, to stroll carelessly around Bulger's tenement
in the vague hope of satisfying a curiosity that had become
tormenting.  But they could not find that he was doing anything of
a suspicious character--except, perhaps, from the fact that it was
not OUTWARDLY suspicious, which I grieve to say did not lull them
to security.  He seemed to be either fixing up his cabin or smoking
in his doorway.  On the second day he checked this itinerant
curiosity by taking the initiative himself, and quietly walking
from claim to claim and from cabin to cabin with a pacific but by
no means a satisfying interest.  The shadow of his tall figure
carrying his inseparable gun, which had not yet apparently "stood
in the corner," falling upon an excavated bank beside the delving
miners, gave them a sense of uneasiness they could not explain; a
few characteristic yells of boisterous hilarity from their noontide
gathering under a cottonwood somehow ceased when Mr. Bulger was
seen gravely approaching, and his casual stopping before a poker
party in the gulch actually caused one of the most reckless
gamblers to weakly recede from "a bluff" and allow his adversary to
sweep the board.  After this it was felt that matters were becoming
serious.  There was no subsequent patrolling of the camp before the
stranger's cabin.  Their curiosity was singularly abated.  A
general feeling of repulsion, kept within bounds partly by the
absence of any overt act from Bulger, and partly by an inconsistent
over-consciousness of his shotgun, took its place.  But an
unexpected occurrence revived it.

One evening, as the usual social circle were drawn around Mosby's
stove, the lazy silence was broken by the familiar sounds of pistol
shots and a series of more familiar shrieks and yells from the
rocky hill road.  The circle quickly recognized the voices of their
old friends the roisterers and gamblers from Sawyer's Dam; they as
quickly recognized the returning shouts here and there from a few
companions who were welcoming them.  I grieve to say that in spite
of their previous attitude of reformation a smile of gratified
expectancy lit up the faces of the younger members, and even the
older ones glanced dubiously at Briggs.  Mosby made no attempt to
conceal a sigh of relief as he carefully laid out an extra supply
of glasses in his bar.  Suddenly the oncoming yells ceased, the
wild gallop of hoofs slackened into a trot, and finally halted, and
even the responsive shouts of the camp stopped also.  We all looked
vacantly at each other; Mosby leaped over his counter and went to
the door; Briggs followed with the rest of us.  The night was dark,
and it was a few minutes before we could distinguish a straggling,
vague, but silent procession moving through the moist, heavy air on
the hill.  But, to our surprise, it was moving away from us--
absolutely LEAVING the camp!  We were still staring in expectancy
when out of the darkness slowly emerged a figure which we
recognized at once as Captain Jim, one of the most reckless members
of our camp.  Pushing us back into the grocery he entered without a
word, closed the door behind him, and threw himself vacantly into a
chair.  We at once pressed around him.  He looked up at us dazedly,
drew a long breath, and said slowly:

"It's no use, gentlemen! Suthin's GOT to be done with that Bulger;
and mighty quick."

"What's the matter?" we asked eagerly.

"Matter!" he repeated, passing his hand across his forehead.
"Matter!  Look yere!  Ye all of you heard them boys from Sawyer's
Dam coming over the hill?  Ye heard their music--mebbe ye heard US
join in the chorus?  Well, on they came waltzing down the hill,
like old times, and we waitin' for 'em.  Then, jest as they passed
the old cabin, who do you think they ran right into--shooting iron,
long hair and mustache, and all that--standing there plump in the
road? why, Bulger!"

"Well?"

"Well!--Whatever it was--don't ask ME--but, dern my skin, ef after
a word or two from HIM--them boys just stopped yellin', turned
round like lambs, and rode away, peaceful-like, along with him.  We
ran after them a spell, still yellin', when that thar Bulger faced
around, said to us that he'd 'come down here for quiet,' and ef he
couldn't hev it he'd have to leave with those gentlemen WHO WANTED
IT too! And I'm gosh darned ef those GENTLEMEN--you know 'em all--
Patsey Carpenter, Snapshot Harry, and the others--ever said a
darned word, but kinder nodded 'So long' and went away!"

Our astonishment and mystification were complete; and I regret to
say, the indignation of Captain Jim and Mosby equally so.  "If
we're going to be bossed by the first newcomer," said the former,
gloomily, "I reckon we might as well take our chances with the
Sawyer's Dam boys, whom we know."

"Ef we are going to hev the legitimate trade of Rattlesnake
interfered with by the cranks of some hidin' horse thief or retired
road agent," said Mosby, "we might as well invite the hull of
Joaquin Murietta's gang here at once!  But I suppose this is part
o' Bulger's particular 'business,'" he added, with a withering
glance at Briggs.

"I understand it all," said Briggs, quietly.  "You know I told you
that bullies couldn't live in the same camp together.  That's human
nature--and that's how plain men like you and me manage to scud
along without getting plugged.  You see, Bulger wasn't going to hev
any of his own kind jumpin' his claim here.  And I reckon he was
pow'ful enough to back down Sawyer's Dam.  Anyhow, the bluff told--
and here we are in peace and quietness."

"Until he lets us know what is his little game," sneered Mosby.

Nevertheless, such is the force of mysterious power that although
it was exercised against what we firmly believed was the
independence of the camp, it extorted a certain respect from us.  A
few thought it was not a bad thing to have a professional bully,
and even took care to relate the discomfiture of the wicked youth
of Sawyer's Dam for the benefit of a certain adjacent and powerful
camp who had looked down upon us.  He himself, returning the same
evening from his self-imposed escort, vouchsafed no other reason
than the one he had already given.  Preposterous as it seemed, we
were obliged to accept it, and the still more preposterous
inference that he had sought Rattlesnake Camp solely for the
purpose of acquiring and securing its peace and quietness.
Certainly he had no other occupation; the little work he did upon
the tailings of the abandoned claim which went with his little
cabin was scarcely a pretense.  He rode over on certain days to
Bigwood on account of his business, but no one had ever seen him
there, nor could the description of his manner and appearance evoke
any information from the Bigwoodians.  It remained a mystery.

It had also been feared that the advent of Bulger would intensify
that fear and dislike of riotous Rattlesnake which the two families
had shown, and which was the origin of Briggs's futile attempt at
reformation.  But it was discovered that since his arrival the
young girls had shown less timidity in entering the camp, and had
even exchanged some polite conversation and good-humoured badinage
with its younger and more impressible members.  Perhaps this tended
to make these youths more observant, for a few days later, when the
vexed question of Bulger's business was again under discussion, one
of them remarked, gloomily:

"I reckon there ain't no doubt WHAT he's here for!"

The youthful prophet was instantly sat upon after the fashion of
all elderly critics since Job's.  Nevertheless, after a pause he
was permitted to explain.

"Only this morning, when Lance Forester and me were chirping with
them gals out on the hill, who should we see hanging around in the
bush but that cussed Bulger!  We allowed at first that it might be
only a new style of his interferin', so we took no notice, except
to pass a few remarks about listeners and that sort o' thing, and
perhaps to bedevil the girls a little more than we'd hev done if
we'd been alone.  Well, they laughed, and we laughed--and that was
the end of it.  But this afternoon, as Lance and me were meandering
down by their cabin, we sorter turned into the woods to wait till
they'd come out.  Then all of a suddent Lance stopped as rigid as a
pointer that's flushed somethin', and says, 'B'gosh!'  And thar,
under a big redwood, sat that slimy hypocrite Bulger, twisting his
long mustaches and smiling like clockwork alongside o' little Meely
Baker--you know her, the pootiest of the two sisters--and she
smilin' back on him.  Think of it! that unknown, unwashed,
longhaired tramp and bully, who must be forty if a day, and that
innocent gal of sixteen.  It was simply disgustin'!"

I need not say that the older cynics and critics already alluded to
at once improved the occasion.  'What more could be expected?
Women, the world over, were noted for this sort of thing!  This
long-haired, swaggering bully, with his air of mystery, had
captivated them, as he always had done since the days of Homer.
Simple merit, which sat lowly in barrooms, and conceived projects
for the public good around the humble, unostentatious stove, was
nowhere!  Youth could not too soon learn this bitter lesson.  And
in this case youth too, perhaps, was right in its conjectures, for
this WAS, no doubt, the little game of the perfidious Bulger.  We
recalled the fact that his unhallowed appearance in camp was almost
coincident with the arrival of the two families.  We glanced at
Briggs; to our amazement, for the first time he looked seriously
concerned.  But Mosby in the meantime leaned his elbows lazily over
the counter and, in a slow voice, added fuel to the flame.

"I wouldn't hev spoken of it before," he said, with a sidelong
glance at Briggs, "for it might be all in the line o' Bulger's
'business,' but suthin' happened the other night that, for a minit,
got me!  I was passin' the Bakers' shanty, and I heard one of them
gals a singing a camp-meeting hymn.  I don't calkilate to run agin
you young fellers in any sparkin' or canoodlin' that's goin' on,
but her voice sounded so pow'ful soothin' and pretty thet I jest
stood there and listened.  Then the old woman--old Mother Baker--
SHE joined in, and I listened too.  And then--dern my skin!--but a
man's voice joined in--jest belching outer that cabin!--and I
sorter lifted myself up and kem away.

"That voice, gentlemen," said Mosby, lingering artistically as he
took up a glass and professionally eyed it before wiping it with
his towel, "that voice, cumf'bly fixed thar in thet cabin among
them wimen folks, was Bulger's!"

Briggs got up, with his eyes looking the darker for his flushed
face.  "Gentlemen," he said huskily, "thar's only one thing to be
done.  A lot of us have got to ride over to Sawyer's Dam tomorrow
morning and pick up as many square men as we can muster; there's a
big camp meeting goin' on there, and there won't be no difficulty
in that.  When we've got a big enough crowd to show we mean
business, we must march back here and ride Bulger out of this camp!
I don't hanker arter Vigilance Committees, as a rule--it's a rough
remedy--it's like drinkin' a quart o' whisky agin rattlesnake
poison but it's got to be done!  We don't mind being sold ourselves
but when it comes to our standin' by and seein' the only innocent
people in Rattlesnake given away--we kick!  Bulger's got to be
fired outer this camp!  And he will be!"

But he was not.

For when, the next morning, a determined and thoughtful procession
of the best and most characteristic citizens of Rattlesnake Camp
filed into Sawyer's Dam, they found that their mysterious friends
had disappeared, although they met with a fraternal but subdued
welcome from the general camp.  But any approach to the subject of
their visit, however, was received with a chilling dissapproval.
Did they not know that lawlessness of any kind, even under the rude
mantle of frontier justice, was to be deprecated and scouted when a
"means of salvation, a power of regeneration," such as was now
sweeping over Sawyer's Dam, was at hand?  Could they not induce
this man who was to be violently deported to accompany them
willingly to Sawyer's Dam and subject himself to the powerful
influence of the "revival" then in full swing?

The Rattlesnake boys laughed bitterly, and described the man of
whom they talked so lightly; but in vain.  "It's no use,
gentlemen," said a more worldly bystander, in a lower voice, "the
camp meetin's got a strong grip here, and betwixt you and me there
ain't no wonder.  For the man that runs it--the big preacher--has
got new ways and methods that fetches the boys every time.  He
don't preach no cut-and-dried gospel; he don't carry around no
slop-shop robes and clap 'em on you whether they fit or not; but he
samples and measures the camp afore he wades into it.  He scouts
and examines; he ain't no mere Sunday preacher with a comfortable
house and once-a-week church, but he gives up his days and nights
to it, and makes his family work with him, and even sends 'em
forward to explore the field.  And he ain't no white-choker
shadbelly either, but fits himself, like his gospel, to the men he
works among.  Ye ought to hear him afore you go.  His tent is just
out your way.  I'll go with you."

Too dejected to offer any opposition, and perhaps a little curious
to see this man who had unwittingly frustrated their design of
lynching Bulger, they halted at the outer fringe of worshipers who
packed the huge inclosure.  They had not time to indulge their
cynicisms over this swaying mass of emotional, half-thinking, and
almost irresponsible beings, nor to detect any similarity between
THEIR extreme methods and the scheme of redemption they themselves
were seeking, for in a few moments, apparently lifted to his feet
on a wave of religious exultation, the famous preacher arose.  The
men of Rattlesnake gasped for breath.

It was Bulger!

But Briggs quickly recovered himself.  "By what name," said he,
turning passionately towards his guide, "does this man--this
impostor--call himself here?"

"Baker."

"Baker?" echoed the Rattlesnake contingent.

"Baker?" repeated Lance Forester, with a ghastly smile.

"Yes," returned their guide.  "You oughter know it too!  For he
sent his wife and daughters over, after his usual style, to sample
your camp, a week ago!  Come, now, what are you givin' us?"



IN THE TULES


He had never seen a steamboat in his life.  Born and reared in one
of the Western Territories, far from a navigable river, he had only
known the "dugout" or canoe as a means of conveyance across the
scant streams whose fordable waters made even those scarcely a
necessity.  The long, narrow, hooded wagon, drawn by swaying oxen,
known familiarly as a "prairie schooner," in which he journeyed
across the plains to California in '53, did not help his conception
by that nautical figure.  And when at last he dropped upon the land
of promise through one of the Southern mountain passes he halted
all unconsciously upon the low banks of a great yellow river amidst
a tangled brake of strange, reed-like grasses that were unknown to
him.  The river, broadening as it debouched through many channels
into a lordly bay, seemed to him the ULTIMA THULE of his
journeyings.  Unyoking his oxen on the edge of the luxuriant
meadows which blended with scarcely any line of demarcation into
the great stream itself, he found the prospect "good" according to
his lights and prairial experiences, and, converting his halted
wagon into a temporary cabin, he resolved to rest here and
"settle."

There was little difficulty in so doing.  The cultivated clearings
he had passed were few and far between; the land would be his by
discovery and occupation; his habits of loneliness and self-
reliance made him independent of neighbors.  He took his first meal
in his new solitude under a spreading willow, but so near his
natural boundary that the waters gurgled and oozed in the reeds but
a few feet from him.  The sun sank, deepening the gold of the river
until it might have been the stream of Pactolus itself.  But Martin
Morse had no imagination; he was not even a gold-seeker; he had
simply obeyed the roving instincts of the frontiersman in coming
hither.  The land was virgin and unoccupied; it was his; he was
alone.  These questions settled, he smoked his pipe with less
concern over his three thousand miles' transference of habitation
than the man of cities who had moved into a next street.  When the
sun sank, he rolled himself in his blankets in the wagon bed and
went quietly to sleep.

But he was presently awakened by something which at first he could
not determine to be a noise or an intangible sensation.  It was a
deep throbbing through the silence of the night--a pulsation that
seemed even to be communicated to the rude bed whereon he lay.  As
it came nearer it separated itself into a labored, monotonous
panting, continuous, but distinct from an equally monotonous but
fainter beating of the waters, as if the whole track of the river
were being coursed and trodden by a multitude of swiftly trampling
feet.  A strange feeling took possession of him--half of fear, half
of curious expectation.  It was coming nearer.  He rose, leaped
hurriedly from the wagon, and ran to the bank.  The night was dark;
at first he saw nothing before him but the steel-black sky pierced
with far-spaced, irregularly scattered stars.  Then there seemed to
be approaching him, from the left, another and more symmetrical
constellation--a few red and blue stars high above the river, with
three compact lines of larger planetary lights flashing towards him
and apparently on his own level.  It was almost upon him; he
involuntarily drew back as the strange phenomenon swept abreast of
where he stood, and resolved itself into a dark yet airy bulk,
whose vagueness, topped by enormous towers, was yet illuminated by
those open squares of light that he had taken for stars, but which
he saw now were brilliantly lit windows.

Their vivid rays shot through the reeds and sent broad bands across
the meadow, the stationary wagon, and the slumbering oxen.  But all
this was nothing to the inner life they disclosed through lifted
curtains and open blinds, which was the crowning revelation of this
strange and wonderful spectacle.  Elegantly dressed men and women
moved through brilliantly lit and elaborately gilt saloons; in one
a banquet seemed to be spread, served by white-jacketed servants;
in another were men playing cards around marble-topped tables; in
another the light flashed back again from the mirrors and
glistening glasses and decanters of a gorgeous refreshment saloon;
in smaller openings there was the shy disclosure of dainty white
curtains and velvet lounges of more intimate apartments.

Martin Morse stood enthralled and mystified.  It was as if some
invisible Asmodeus had revealed to this simple frontiersman a world
of which he had never dreamed.  It was THE world--a world of which
he knew nothing in his simple, rustic habits and profound Western
isolation--sweeping by him with the rush of an unknown planet.  In
another moment it was gone; a shower of sparks shot up from one of
the towers and fell all around him, and then vanished, even as he
remembered the set piece of "Fourth of July" fireworks had vanished
in his own rural town when he was a boy.  The darkness fell with it
too.  But such was his utter absorption and breathless
preoccupation that only a cold chill recalled him to himself, and
he found he was standing mid-leg deep in the surge cast over the
low banks by this passage of the first steamboat he had ever seen!

He waited for it the next night, when it appeared a little later
from the opposite direction on its return trip.  He watched it the
next night and the next.  Hereafter he never missed it, coming or
going--whatever the hard and weary preoccupations of his new and
lonely life.  He felt he could not have slept without seeing it go
by.  Oddly enough, his interest and desire did not go further.
Even had he the time and money to spend in a passage on the boat,
and thus actively realize the great world of which he had only
these rare glimpses, a certain proud, rustic shyness kept him from
it.  It was not HIS world; he could not affront the snubs that his
ignorance and inexperience would have provoked, and he was dimly
conscious, as so many of us are in our ignorance, that in mingling
with it he would simply lose the easy privileges of alien
criticism.  For there was much that he did not understand, and some
things that grated upon his lonely independence.

One night, a lighter one than those previous, he lingered a little
longer in the moonlight to watch the phosphorescent wake of the
retreating boat.  Suddenly it struck him that there was a certain
irregular splashing in the water, quite different from the regular,
diagonally crossing surges that the boat swept upon the bank.
Looking at it more intently, he saw a black object turning in the
water like a porpoise, and then the unmistakable uplifting of a
black arm in an unskillful swimmer's overhand stroke.  It was a
struggling man.  But it was quickly evident that the current was
too strong and the turbulence of the shallow water too great for
his efforts.  Without a moment's hesitation, clad as he was in only
his shirt and trousers, Morse strode into the reeds, and the next
moment, with a call of warning, was swimming toward the now wildly
struggling figure.  But, from some unknown reason, as Morse
approached him nearer the man uttered some incoherent protest and
desperately turned away, throwing off Morse's extended arm.

Attributing this only to the vague convulsions of a drowning man,
Morse, a skilled swimmer, managed to clutch his shoulder, and
propelled him at arm's length, still struggling, apparently with as
much reluctance as incapacity, toward the bank.  As their feet
touched the reeds and slimy bottom the man's resistance ceased, and
he lapsed quite listlessly in Morse's arms.  Half lifting, half
dragging his burden, he succeeded at last in gaining the strip of
meadow, and deposited the unconscious man beneath the willow tree.
Then he ran to his wagon for whisky.

But, to his surprise, on his return the man was already sitting up
and wringing the water from his clothes.  He then saw for the first
time, by the clear moonlight, that the stranger was elegantly
dressed and of striking appearance, and was clearly a part of that
bright and fascinating world which Morse had been contemplating in
his solitude.  He eagerly took the proffered tin cup and drank the
whisky.  Then he rose to his feet, staggered a few steps forward,
and glanced curiously around him at the still motionless wagon, the
few felled trees and evidence of "clearing," and even at the rude
cabin of logs and canvas just beginning to rise from the ground a
few paces distant, and said, impatiently:

"Where the devil am I?"

Morse hesitated.  He was unable to name the locality of his
dwelling-place.  He answered briefly:

"On the right bank of the Sacramento."

The stranger turned upon him a look of suspicion not unmingled with
resentment.  "Oh! " he said, with ironical gravity, "and I suppose
that this water you picked me out of was the Sacramento River.
Thank you!"

Morse, with slow Western patience, explained that he had only
settled there three weeks ago, and the place had no name.

"What's your nearest town, then?"

"Thar ain't any.  Thar's a blacksmith's shop and grocery at the
crossroads, twenty miles further on, but it's got no name as I've
heard on."

The stranger's look of suspicion passed.  "Well he said, in an
imperative fashion, which, however, seemed as much the result of
habit as the occasion, "I want a horse, and mighty quick, too."

"H'ain't got any."

"No horse?  How did you get to this place?"

Morse pointed to the slumbering oxen.

The stranger again stared curiously at him.  After a pause he said,
with a half-pitying, half-humorous smile: "Pike--aren't you?"

Whether Morse did or did not know that this current California
slang for a denizen of the bucolic West implied a certain contempt,
he replied simply:

"I'm from Pike County, Mizzouri."

"Well," said the stranger, resuming his impatient manner, "you must
beg or steal a horse from your neighbors."

"Thar ain't any neighbor nearer than fifteen miles."

"Then send fifteen miles!  Stop."  He opened his still clinging
shirt and drew out a belt pouch, which he threw to Morse.  "There!
there's two hundred and fifty dollars in that.  Now, I want a
horse.  Sabe?"

"Thar ain't anyone to send," said Morse, quietly.

"Do you mean to say you are all alone here?"

"Yes.

"And you fished me out--all by yourself?"

"Yes.

The stranger again examined him curiously.  Then he suddenly
stretched out his hand and grasped his companion's.

"All right; if you can't send, I reckon I can manage to walk over
there tomorrow."

"I was goin' on to say," said Morse, simply, "that if you'll lie by
tonight, I'll start over sunup, after puttin' out the cattle, and
fetch you back a horse afore noon."

"That's enough."  He, however, remained looking curiously at Morse.
"Did you never hear," he said, with a singular smile, "that it was
about the meanest kind of luck that could happen to you to save a
drowning man?"

"No," said Morse, simply.  "I reckon it orter be the meanest if you
DIDN'T."

"That depends upon the man you save," said the stranger, with the
same ambiguous smile, "and whether the SAVING him is only putting
things off.  Look here," he added, with an abrupt return to his
imperative style, "can't you give me some dry clothes?"

Morse brought him a pair of overalls and a "hickory shirt," well
worn, but smelling strongly of a recent wash with coarse soap.  The
stranger put them on while his companion busied himself in
collecting a pile of sticks and dry leaves.

"What's that for?" said the stranger, suddenly.

"A fire to dry your clothes."

The stranger calmly kicked the pile aside.

"Not any fire tonight if I know it," he said, brusquely.  Before
Morse could resent his quickly changing moods he continued, in
another tone, dropping to an easy reclining position beneath the
tree, "Now, tell me all about yourself, and what you are doing
here."

Thus commanded, Morse patiently repeated his story from the time he
had left his backwoods cabin to his selection of the river bank for
a "location."  He pointed out the rich quality of this alluvial
bottom and its adaptability for the raising of stock, which he
hoped soon to acquire.  The stranger smiled grimly, raised himself
to a sitting position, and, taking a penknife from his damp
clothes, began to clean his nails in the bright moonlight--an
occupation which made the simple Morse wander vaguely in his
narration.

"And you don't know that this hole will give you chills and fever
till you'll shake yourself out of your boots?"

Morse had lived before in aguish districts, and had no fear.

"And you never heard that some night the whole river will rise up
and walk over you and your cabin and your stock?"

"No.  For I reckon to move my shanty farther back."

The man shut up his penknife with a click and rose.

"If you've got to get up at sunrise, we'd better be turning in.  I
suppose you can give me a pair of blankets?"

Morse pointed to the wagon.  "Thar's a shakedown in the wagon bed;
you kin lie there."  Nevertheless he hesitated, and, with the
inconsequence and abruptness of a shy man, continued the previous
conversation.

"I shouldn't like to move far away, for them steamboats is pow'ful
kempany o' nights.  I never seed one afore I kem here," and then,
with the inconsistency of a reserved man, and without a word of
further preliminary, he launched into a confidential disclosure of
his late experiences.  The stranger listened with a singular
interest and a quietly searching eye.

"Then you were watching the boat very closely just now when you saw
me.  What else did you see?  Anything before that--before you saw
me in the water?"

"No--the boat had got well off before I saw you at all."

"Ah," said the stranger.  "Well, I'm going to turn in."  He walked
to the wagon, mounted it, and by the time that Morse had reached it
with his wet clothes he was already wrapped in the blankets.  A
moment later he seemed to be in a profound slumber.

It was only then, when his guest was lying helplessly at his mercy,
that he began to realize his strange experiences.  The domination
of this man had been so complete that Morse, although by nature
independent and self-reliant, had not permitted himself to question
his right or to resent his rudeness.  He had accepted his guest's
careless or premeditated silence regarding the particulars of his
accident as a matter of course, and had never dreamed of
questioning him.  That it was a natural accident of that great
world so apart from his own experiences he did not doubt, and
thought no more about it.  The advent of the man himself was
greater to him than the causes which brought him there.  He was as
yet quite unconscious of the complete fascination this mysterious
stranger held over him, but he found himself shyly pleased with
even the slight interest he had displayed in his affairs, and his
hand felt yet warm and tingling from his sudden soft but expressive
grasp, as if it had been a woman's.  There is a simple intuition of
friendship in some lonely, self-abstracted natures that is nearly
akin to love at first sight.  Even the audacities and insolence of
this stranger affected Morse as he might have been touched and
captivated by the coquetries or imperiousness of some bucolic
virgin.  And this reserved and shy frontiersman found himself that
night sleepless, and hovering with an abashed timidity and
consciousness around the wagon that sheltered his guest, as if he
had been a very Corydon watching the moonlit couch of some
slumbering Amaryllis.

He was off by daylight--after having placed a rude breakfast by the
side of the still sleeping guest--and before midday he had returned
with a horse.  When he handed the stranger his pouch, less the
amount he had paid for the horse, the man said curtly:

"What's that for?"

"Your change.  I paid only fifty dollars for the horse."

The stranger regarded him with his peculiar smile.  Then, replacing
the pouch in his belt, he shook Morse's hand again and mounted the
horse.

"So your name's Martin Morse!  Well--goodby, Morsey!"

Morse hesitated.  A blush rose to his dark check.  "You didn't tell
me your name," he said.  "In case--"

"In case I'm WANTED?  Well, you can call me Captain Jack."  He
smiled, and, nodding his head, put spurs to his mustang and
cantered away.

Morse did not do much work that day, falling into abstracted moods
and living over his experiences of the previous night, until he
fancied he could almost see his strange guest again.  The narrow
strip of meadow was haunted by him.  There was the tree under which
he had first placed him, and that was where he had seen him sitting
up in his dripping but well-fitting clothes.  In the rough garments
he had worn and returned lingered a new scent of some delicate
soap, overpowering the strong alkali flavor of his own.  He was
early by the river side, having a vague hope, he knew not why, that
he should again see him and recognize him among the passengers.  He
was wading out among the reeds, in the faint light of the rising
moon, recalling the exact spot where he had first seen the
stranger, when he was suddenly startled by the rolling over in the
water of some black object that had caught against the bank, but
had been dislodged by his movements.  To his horror it bore a faint
resemblance to his first vision of the preceding night.  But a
second glance at the helplessly floating hair and bloated outline
showed him that it was a DEAD man, and of a type and build far
different from his former companion.  There was a bruise upon his
matted forehead and an enormous wound in his throat already washed
bloodless, white, and waxen.  An inexplicable fear came upon him,
not at the sight of the corpse, for he had been in Indian massacres
and had rescued bodies mutilated beyond recognition; but from some
moral dread that, strangely enough, quickened and deepened with the
far-off pant of the advancing steamboat.  Scarcely knowing why, he
dragged the body hurriedly ashore, concealing it in the reeds, as
if he were disposing of the evidence of his own crime.  Then, to
his preposterous terror, he noticed that the panting of the
steamboat and the beat of its paddles were "slowing" as the vague
bulk came in sight, until a huge wave from the suddenly arrested
wheels sent a surge like an enormous heartbeat pulsating through
the sedge that half submerged him.  The flashing of three or four
lanterns on deck and the motionless line of lights abreast of him
dazzled his eyes, but he knew that the low fringe of willows hid
his house and wagon completely from view.  A vague murmur of voices
from the deck was suddenly overridden by a sharp order, and to his
relief the slowly revolving wheels again sent a pulsation through
the water, and the great fabric moved solemnly away.  A sense of
relief came over him, he knew not why, and he was conscious that
for the first time he had not cared to look at the boat.

When the moon arose he again examined the body, and took from its
clothing a few articles of identification and some papers of
formality and precision, which he vaguely conjectured to be some
law papers from their resemblance to the phrasing of sheriffs' and
electors' notices which he had seen in the papers.  He then buried
the corpse in a shallow trench, which he dug by the light of the
moon.  He had no question of responsibility; his pioneer training
had not included coroners' inquests in its experience; in giving
the body a speedy and secure burial from predatory animals he did
what one frontiersman would do for another--what he hoped might be
done for him.  If his previous unaccountable feelings returned
occasionally, it was not from that; but rather from some uneasiness
in regard to his late guest's possible feelings, and a regret that
he had not been here at the finding of the body.  That it would in
some way have explained his own accident he did not doubt.

The boat did not "slow up" the next night, but passed as usual; yet
three or four days elapsed before he could look forward to its
coming with his old extravagant and half-exalted curiosity--which
was his nearest approach to imagination.  He was then able to
examine it more closely, for the appearance of the stranger whom he
now began to call "his friend" in his verbal communings with
himself--but whom he did not seem destined to again discover; until
one day, to his astonishment, a couple of fine horses were brought
to his clearing by a stock-drover.  They had been "ordered" to be
left there.  in vain Morse expostulated and questioned.

"Your name's Martin Morse, ain't it?" said the drover, with
business brusqueness; "and I reckon there ain't no other man o'
that name around here?"

"No," said Morse.

"Well, then, they're YOURS."

"But who sent them?" insisted Morse.  "What was his name, and where
does he live?"

"I didn't know ez I was called upon to give the pedigree o'
buyers," said the drover dryly; "but the horses is 'Morgan,' you
can bet your life."  He grinned as he rode away.

That Captain Jack sent them, and that it was a natural prelude to
his again visiting him, Morse did not doubt, and for a few days he
lived in that dream.  But Captain Jack did not come.  The animals
were of great service to him in "rounding up" the stock he now
easily took in for pasturage, and saved him the necessity of having
a partner or a hired man.  The idea that this superior gentleman in
fine clothes might ever appear to him in the former capacity had
even flitted through his brain, but he had rejected it with a sigh.
But the thought that, with luck and industry, he himself might, in
course of time, approximate to Captain Jack's evident station, DID
occur to him, and was an incentive to energy.  Yet it was quite
distinct from the ordinary working man's ambition of wealth and
state.  It was only that it might make him more worthy of his
friend.  The great world was still as it had appeared to him in the
passing boat--a thing to wonder at--to be above--and to criticize.

For all that, he prospered in his occupation.  But one day he woke
with listless limbs and feet that scarcely carried him through his
daily labors.  At night his listlessness changed to active pain and
a feverishness that seemed to impel him toward the fateful river,
as if his one aim in life was to drink up its waters and bathe in
its yellow stream.  But whenever he seemed to attempt it, strange
dreams assailed him of dead bodies arising with swollen and
distorted lips to touch his own as he strove to drink, or of his
mysterious guest battling with him in its current, and driving him
ashore.  Again, when he essayed to bathe his parched and crackling
limbs in its flood, he would be confronted with the dazzling lights
of the motionless steamboat and the glare of stony eyes--until he
fled in aimless terror.  How long this lasted he knew not, until
one morning he awoke in his new cabin with a strange man sitting by
his bed and a Negress in the doorway.

"You've had a sharp attack of 'tule fever,'" said the stranger,
dropping Morse's listless wrist and answering his questioning eyes,
"but you're all right now, and will pull through."

"Who are you?" stammered Morse feebly.

"Dr. Duchesne, of Sacramento."

"How did you come here?"

"I was ordered to come to you and bring a nurse, as you were alone.
There she is."  He pointed to the smiling Negress.

"WHO ordered you?"

The doctor smiled with professional tolerance.  "One of your
friends, of course."

"But what was his name?"

"Really, I don't remember.  But don't distress yourself.  He has
settled for everything right royally.  You have only to get strong
now.  My duty is ended, and I can safely leave you with the nurse.
Only when you are strong again, I say--and HE says--keep back
farther from the river."

And that was all he knew.  For even the nurse who attended him
through the first days of his brief convalescence would tell him
nothing more.  He quickly got rid of her and resumed his work, for
a new and strange phase of his simple, childish affection for his
benefactor, partly superinduced by his illness, was affecting him.
He was beginning to feel the pain of an unequal friendship; he was
dimly conscious that his mysterious guest was only coldly returning
his hospitality and benefits, while holding aloof from any
association with him--and indicating the immeasurable distance that
separated their future intercourse.  He had withheld any kind
message or sympathetic greeting; he had kept back even his NAME.
The shy, proud, ignorant heart of the frontiersman swelled beneath
the fancied slight, which left him helpless alike of reproach or
resentment.  He could not return the horses, although in a fit of
childish indignation he had resolved not to use them; he could not
reimburse him for the doctor's bill, although he had sent away the
nurse.

He took a foolish satisfaction in not moving back from the river,
with a faint hope that his ignoring of Captain Jack's advice might
mysteriously be conveyed to him.  He even thought of selling out
his location and abandoning it, that he might escape the cold
surveillance of his heartless friend.  All this was undoubtedly
childish--but there is an irrepressible simplicity of youth in all
deep feeling, and the worldly inexperience of the frontiersman left
him as innocent as a child.  In this phase of his unrequited
affection he even went so far as to seek some news of Captain Jack
at Sacramento, and, following out his foolish quest, even to take
the steamboat from thence to Stockton.

What happened to him then was perhaps the common experience of such
natures.  Once upon the boat the illusion of the great world it
contained for him utterly vanished.  He found it noisy, formal,
insincere, and--had he ever understood or used the word in his
limited vocabulary--VULGAR.  Rather, perhaps, it seemed to him that
the prevailing sentiment and action of those who frequented it--and
for whom it was built--were of a lower grade than his own.  And,
strangely enough, this gave him none of his former sense of
critical superiority, but only of his own utter and complete
isolation.  He wandered in his rough frontiersman's clothes from
deck to cabin, from airy galleries to long saloons, alone,
unchallenged, unrecognized, as if he were again haunting it only in
spirit, as he had so often done in his dreams.

His presence on the fringe of some voluble crowd caused no
interruption; to him their speech was almost foreign in its
allusions to things he did not understand, or, worse, seemed
inconsistent with their eagerness and excitement.  How different
from all this were his old recollections of slowly oncoming teams,
uplifted above the level horizon of the plains in his former
wanderings; the few sauntering figures that met him as man to man,
and exchanged the chronicle of the road; the record of Indian
tracks; the finding of a spring; the discovery of pasturage, with
the lazy, restful hospitality of the night!  And how fierce here
this continual struggle for dominance and existence, even in this
lull of passage.  For above all and through all he was conscious of
the feverish haste of speed and exertion.

The boat trembled, vibrated, and shook with every stroke of the
ponderous piston.  The laughter of the crowd, the exchange of
gossip and news, the banquet at the long table, the newspapers and
books in the reading-room, even the luxurious couches in the
staterooms, were all dominated, thrilled, and pulsating with the
perpetual throb of the demon of hurry and unrest.  And when at last
a horrible fascination dragged him into the engine room, and he saw
the cruel relentless machinery at work, he seemed to recognize and
understand some intelligent but pitiless Moloch, who was dragging
this feverish world at its heels.

Later he was seated in a corner of the hurricane deck, whence he
could view the monotonous banks of the river; yet, perhaps by
certain signs unobservable to others, he knew he was approaching
his own locality.  He knew that his cabin and clearing would be
undiscernible behind the fringe of willows on the bank, but he
already distinguished the points where a few cottonwoods struggled
into a promontory of lighter foliage beyond them.  Here voices fell
upon his ear, and he was suddenly aware that two men had lazily
crossed over from the other side of the boat, and were standing
before him looking upon the bank.

"It was about here, I reckon," said one, listlessly, as if
continuing a previous lagging conversation, "that it must have
happened.  For it was after we were making for the bend we've just
passed that the deputy, goin' to the stateroom below us, found the
door locked and the window open.  But both men--Jack Despard and
Seth Hall, the sheriff--weren't to be found.  Not a trace of 'em.
The boat was searched, but all for nothing.  The idea is that the
sheriff, arter getting his prisoner comf'ble in the stateroom, took
off Jack's handcuffs and locked the door; that Jack, who was mighty
desp'rate, bolted through the window into the river, and the
sheriff, who was no slouch, arter him.  Others allow--for the
chairs and things was all tossed about in the stateroom--that the
two men clinched THAR, and Jack choked Hall and chucked him out,
and then slipped cl'ar into the water himself, for the stateroom
window was just ahead of the paddle box, and the cap'n allows that
no man or men could fall afore the paddles and live.  Anyhow, that
was all they ever knew of it."

"And there wasn't no trace of them found?" said the second man,
after a long pause.

"No.  Cap'n says them paddles would hev' just snatched 'em and
slung 'em round and round and buried 'em way down in the ooze of
the river bed, with all the silt of the current atop of 'em, and
they mightn't come up for ages; or else the wheels might have
waltzed 'em way up to Sacramento until there wasn't enough left of
'em to float, and dropped 'em when the boat stopped."

"It was a mighty fool risk for a man like Despard to take," resumed
the second speaker as he turned away with a slight yawn.

"Bet your life! but he was desp'rate, and the sheriff had got him
sure!  And they DO say that he was superstitious, like all them
gamblers, and allowed that a man who was fixed to die by a rope or
a pistol wasn't to be washed out of life by water."

The two figures drifted lazily away, but Morse sat rigid and
motionless.  Yet, strange to say, only one idea came to him clearly
out of this awful revelation--the thought that his friend was still
true to him--and that his strange absence and mysterious silence
were fully accounted for and explained.  And with it came the more
thrilling fancy that this man was alive now to HIM alone.

HE was the sole custodian of his secret.  The morality of the
question, while it profoundly disturbed him, was rather in
reference to its effect upon the chances of Captain Jack and the
power it gave his enemies than his own conscience.  He would rather
that his friend should have proven the proscribed outlaw who
retained an unselfish interest in him than the superior gentleman
who was coldly wiping out his gratitude.  He thought he understood
now the reason of his visitor's strange and varying moods--even his
bitter superstitious warning in regard to the probable curse
entailed upon one who should save a drowning man.  Of this he
recked little; enough that he fancied that Captain Jack's concern
in his illness was heightened by that fear, and this assurance of
his protecting friendship thrilled him with pleasure.

There was no reason now why he should not at once go back to his
farm, where, at least, Captain Jack would always find him; and he
did so, returning on the same boat.  He was now fully recovered
from his illness, and calmer in mind; he redoubled his labors to
put himself in a position to help the mysterious fugitive when the
time should come.  The remote farm should always be a haven of
refuge for him, and in this hope he forbore to take any outside
help, remaining solitary and alone, that Captain Jack's retreat
should be inviolate.  And so the long, dry season passed, the hay
was gathered, the pasturing herds sent home, and the first rains,
dimpling like shot the broadening surface of the river, were all
that broke his unending solitude.  In this enforced attitude of
waiting and expectancy he was exalted and strengthened by a new
idea.  He was not a religious man, but, dimly remembering the
exhortations of some camp meeting of his boyhood, he conceived the
idea that he might have been selected to work out the regeneration
of Captain Jack.  What might not come of this meeting and communing
together in this lonely spot?  That anything was due to the memory
of the murdered sheriff, whose bones were rotting in the trench
that he daily but unconcernedly passed, did not occur to him.
Perhaps his mind was not large enough for the double consideration.
Friendship and love--and, for the matter of that, religion--are
eminently one-ideaed.

But one night he awakened with a start.  His hand, which was
hanging out of his bunk, was dabbling idly in water.  He had barely
time to spring to his middle in what seemed to be a slowly filling
tank before the door fell out as from that inward pressure, and his
whole shanty collapsed like a pack of cards.  But it fell outwards,
the roof sliding from over his head like a withdrawn canopy; and he
was swept from his feet against it, and thence out into what might
have been another world!  For the rain had ceased, and the full
moon revealed only one vast, illimitable expanse of water!  It was
not an overflow, but the whole rushing river magnified and repeated
a thousand times, which, even as he gasped for breath and clung to
the roof, was bearing him away he knew not whither.  But it was
bearing him away upon its center, for as he cast one swift glance
toward his meadows he saw they were covered by the same sweeping
torrent, dotted with his sailing hayricks and reaching to the
wooded foothills.  It was the great flood of '54.  In its awe-
inspiring completeness it might have seemed to him the primeval
Deluge.

As his frail raft swept under a cottonwood he caught at one of the
overhanging limbs, and, working his way desperately along the
bough, at last reached a secure position in the fork of the tree.
Here he was for the moment safe.  But the devastation viewed from
this height was only the more appalling.  Every sign of his
clearing, all evidence of his past year's industry, had
disappeared.  He was now conscious for the first time of the lowing
of the few cattle he had kept as, huddled together on a slight
eminence, they one by one slipped over struggling into the flood.
The shining bodies of his dead horses rolled by him as he gazed.
The lower-lying limbs of the sycamore near him were bending with
the burden of the lighter articles from his overturned wagon and
cabin which they had caught and retained, and a rake was securely
lodged in a bough.  The habitual solitude of his locality was now
strangely invaded by drifting sheds, agricultural implements, and
fence rails from unknown and remote neighbors, and he could faintly
hear the far-off calling of some unhappy farmer adrift upon a spar
of his wrecked and shattered house.  When day broke he was cold and
hungry.

Hours passed in hopeless monotony, with no slackening or diminution
of the waters.  Even the drifts became less, and a vacant sea at
last spread before him on which nothing moved.  An awful silence
impressed him.  In the afternoon rain again began to fall on this
gray, nebulous expanse, until the whole world seemed made of
aqueous vapor.  He had but one idea now--the coming of the evening
boat, and he would reserve his strength to swim to it.  He did not
know until later that it could no longer follow the old channel of
the river, and passed far beyond his sight and hearing.  With his
disappointment and exposure that night came a return of his old
fever.  His limbs were alternately racked with pain or benumbed and
lifeless.  He could scarcely retain his position--at times he
scarcely cared to--and speculated upon ending his sufferings by a
quick plunge downward.  In other moments of lucid misery he was
conscious of having wandered in his mind; of having seen the dead
face of the murdered sheriff, washed out of his shallow grave by
the flood, staring at him from the water; to this was added the
hallucination of noises.  He heard voices, his own name called by a
voice he knew--Captain Jack's!

Suddenly he started, but in that fatal movement lost his balance
and plunged downward.  But before the water closed above his head
he had had a cruel glimpse of help near him; of a flashing light--
of the black hull of a tug not many yards away--of moving figures--
the sensation of a sudden plunge following his own, the grip of a
strong hand upon his collar, and--unconsciousness!

When he came to he was being lifted in a boat from the tug and
rowed through the deserted streets of a large city, until he was
taken in through the second-story window of a half-submerged hotel
and cared for.  But all his questions yielded only the information
that the tug--a privately procured one, not belonging to the Public
Relief Association--had been dispatched for him with special
directions, by a man who acted as one of the crew, and who was the
one who had plunged in for him at the last moment.  The man had
left the boat at Stockton.  There was nothing more?  Yes!--he had
left a letter.  Morse seized it feverishly.  It contained only a
few lines:


We are quits now.  You are all right.  I have saved YOU from
drowning, and shifted the curse to my own shoulders.  Good-by.

CAPTAIN JACK.


The astounded man attempted to rise--to utter an exclamation--but
fell back, unconscious.

Weeks passed before he was able to leave his bed--and then only as
an impoverished and physically shattered man.  He had no means to
restock the farm left bare by the subsiding water.  A kindly train-
packer offered him a situation as muleteer in a pack train going to
the mountains--for he knew tracks and passes and could ride.  The
mountains gave him back a little of the vigor he had lost in the
river valley, but none of its dreams and ambitions.  One day, while
tracking a lost mule, he stopped to slake his thirst in a
waterhole--all that the summer had left of a lonely mountain
torrent.  Enlarging the hole to give drink to his beast also, he
was obliged to dislodge and throw out with the red soil some bits
of honeycomb rock, which were so queer-looking and so heavy as to
attract his attention.  Two of the largest he took back to camp
with him.  They were gold!  From the locality he took out a
fortune.  Nobody wondered.  To the Californian's superstition it
was perfectly natural.  It was "nigger luck"--the luck of the
stupid, the ignorant, the inexperienced, the nonseeker--the irony
of the gods!

But the simple, bucolic nature that had sustained itself against
temptation with patient industry and lonely self-concentration
succumbed to rapidly acquired wealth.  So it chanced that one day,
with a crowd of excitement-loving spendthrifts and companions, he
found himself on the outskirts of a lawless mountain town.  An
eager, frantic crowd had already assembled there--a desperado was
to be lynched!  Pushing his way through the crowd for a nearer view
of the exciting spectacle, the changed and reckless Morse was
stopped by armed men only at the foot of a cart, which upheld a
quiet, determined man, who, with a rope around his neck, was
scornfully surveying the mob, that held the other end of the rope
drawn across the limb of a tree above him.  The eyes of the doomed
man caught those of Morse--his expression changed--a kindly smile
lit his face--he bowed his proud head for the first time, with an
easy gesture of farewell.

And then, with a cry, Morse threw himself upon the nearest armed
guard, and a fierce struggle began.  He had overpowered one
adversary and seized another in his hopeless fight toward the cart
when the half-astonished crowd felt that something must be done.
It was done with a sharp report, the upward curl of smoke and the
falling back of the guard as Morse staggered forward FREE--with a
bullet in his heart.  Yet even then he did not fall until he
reached the cart, when he lapsed forward, dead, with his arms
outstretched and his head at the doomed man's feet.

There was something so supreme and all-powerful in this hopeless
act of devotion that the heart of the multitude thrilled and then
recoiled aghast at its work, and a single word or a gesture from
the doomed man himself would have set him free.  But they say--and
it is credibly recorded--that as Captain Jack Despard looked down
upon the hopeless sacrifice at his feet his eyes blazed, and he
flung upon the crowd a curse so awful and sweeping that, hardened
as they were, their blood ran cold, and then leaped furiously to
their cheeks.

"And now," he said, coolly tightening the rope around his neck with
a jerk of his head--"Go on, and be damned to you!  I'm ready."

They did not hesitate this time.  And Martin Morse and Captain Jack
Despard were buried in the same grave.



A CONVERT OF THE MISSION


The largest tent of the Tasajara camp meeting was crowded to its
utmost extent.  The excitement of that dense mass was at its
highest pitch.  The Reverend Stephen Masterton, the single erect,
passionate figure of that confused medley of kneeling worshipers,
had reached the culminating pitch of his irresistible exhortatory
power.  Sighs and groans were beginning to respond to his appeals,
when the reverend brother was seen to lurch heavily forward and
fall to the ground.

At first the effect was that of a part of his performance; the
groans redoubled, and twenty or thirty brethren threw themselves
prostrate in humble imitation of the preacher.  But Sister Deborah
Stokes, perhaps through some special revelation of feminine
intuition, grasped the fallen man, tore loose his black silk
necktie, and dragged him free of the struggling, frantic crowd
whose paroxysms he had just evoked.  Howbeit he was pale and
unconscious, and unable to continue the service.  Even the next
day, when he had slightly recovered, it was found that any attempt
to renew his fervid exhortations produced the same disastrous
result.

A council was hurriedly held by the elders.  In spite of the
energetic protests of Sister Stokes, it was held that the Lord "was
wrestlin' with his sperrit," and he was subjected to the same
extraordinary treatment from the whole congregation that he himself
had applied to THEM.  Propped up pale and trembling in the
"Mourners' Bench" by two brethren, he was "striven with," exhorted,
prayed over, and admonished, until insensibility mercifully
succeeded convulsions.  Spiritual therapeutics having failed, he
was turned over to the weak and carnal nursing of "womenfolk."  But
after a month of incapacity he was obliged to yield to "the flesh,"
and, in the local dialect, "to use a doctor."

It so chanced that the medical practitioner of the district was a
man of large experience, of military training, and plain speech.
When, therefore, he one day found in his surgery a man of rude
Western type, strong-limbed and sunburned, but trembling,
hesitating and neurotic in movement, after listening to his
symptoms gravely, he asked, abruptly: "And how much are you
drinking now?"

"I am a lifelong abstainer," stammered his patient in quivering
indignation.  But this was followed by another question so frankly
appalling to the hearer that he staggered to his feet.

"I'm Stephen Masterton--known of men as a circuit preacher, of the
Northern California district," he thundered--"and an enemy of the
flesh in all its forms."

"I beg your pardon," responded Dr. Duchesne, grimly, "but as you
are suffering from excessive and repeated excitation of the nervous
system, and the depression following prolonged artificial
exaltation--it makes little difference whether the cause be
spiritual, as long as there is a certain physical effect upon your
BODY--which I believe you have brought to me to cure.  Now--as to
diet? you look all wrong there.

"My food is of the simplest--I have no hankering for fleshpots,"
responded the patient.

"I suppose you call saleratus bread and salt pork and flapjacks
SIMPLE?" said the doctor, coolly; "they are COMMON enough, and if
you were working with your muscles instead of your nerves in that
frame of yours they might not hurt you; but you are suffering as
much from eating more than you can digest as the veriest gourmand.
You must stop all that.  Go down to a quiet watering-place for two
months." . . .

"I go to a watering-place?" interrupted Masterton; "to the haunt of
the idle, the frivolous and wanton--never!"

"Well, I'm not particular about a 'watering-place,'" said the
doctor, with a shrug, "although a little idleness and frivolity
with different food wouldn't hurt you--but you must go somewhere
and change your habits and mode of life COMPLETELY.  I will find
you some sleepy old Spanish town in the southern country where you
can rest and diet.  If this is distasteful to you," he continued,
grimly, "you can always call it 'a trial.'"

Stephen Masterton may have thought it so when, a week later, he
found himself issuing from a rocky gorge into a rough, badly paved,
hilly street, which seemed to be only a continuation of the
mountain road itself.  It broadened suddenly into a square or
plaza, flanked on each side by an irregular row of yellowing adobe
houses, with the inevitable verandaed tienda in each corner, and
the solitary, galleried fonda, with a half-Moorish archway leading
into an inner patio or courtyard in the center.

The whole street stopped as usual at the very door of the Mission
church, a few hundred yards farther on, and under the shadow of the
two belfry towers at each angle of the facade, as if this were the
ultima thule of every traveler.  But all that the eye rested on was
ruined, worn, and crumbling.  The adobe houses were cracked by the
incessant sunshine of the half-year-long summer, or the more
intermittent earthquake shock; the paved courtyard of the fonda was
so uneven and sunken in the center that the lumbering wagon and
faded diligencia stood on an incline, and the mules with difficulty
kept their footing while being unladen; the whitened plaster had
fallen from the feet of the two pillars that flanked the Mission
doorway, like bandages from a gouty limb, leaving the reddish core
of adobe visible; there were apparently as many broken tiles in the
streets and alleys as there were on the heavy red roofs that
everywhere asserted themselves--and even seemed to slide down the
crumbling walls to the ground.  There were hopeless gaps in grille
and grating of doorways and windows, where the iron bars had
dropped helplessly out, or were bent at different angles.  The
walls of the peaceful Mission garden and the warlike presidio were
alike lost in the escalading vines or leveled by the pushing boughs
of gnarled pear and olive trees that now surmounted them.  The dust
lay thick and impalpable in hollow and gutter, and rose in little
vapory clouds with a soft detonation at every stroke of his horse's
hoofs.  Over all this dust and ruin, idleness seemed to reign
supreme.  From the velvet-jacketed figures lounging motionless in
the shadows of the open doorways--so motionless that only the lazy
drift of cigarette smoke betokened their breathing--to the
reclining peons in the shade of a catalpa, or the squatting Indians
in the arroyo--all was sloth and dirt.

The Rev. Stephen Masterton felt his throat swell with his old
exhortative indignation.  A gaudy yellow fan waved languidly in
front of a black rose-crested head at a white-curtained window.  He
knew he was stifling with righteous wrath, and clapped his spurs to
his horse.

Nevertheless, in a few days, by the aid of a letter to the
innkeeper, he was installed in a dilapidated adobe house, not
unlike those he had seen, but situated in the outskirts and
overlooking the garden and part of the refectory of the old
Mission.  It had even a small garden of its own--if a strip of hot
wall, overburdened with yellow and white roses, a dozen straggling
callas, a bank of heliotrope, and an almond tree could be called a
garden.  It had an open doorway, but so heavily recessed in the
thick walls that it preserved seclusion, a sitting-room, and an
alcoved bedroom with deep embrasured windows that however excluded
the unwinking sunlight and kept an even monotone of shade.

Strange to say, he found it cool, restful, and, in spite of the
dust, absolutely clean, and, but for the scent of heliotrope,
entirely inodorous.  The dry air seemed to dissipate all noxious
emanations and decay--the very dust itself in its fine
impalpability was volatile with a spicelike piquancy, and left no
stain.

A wrinkled Indian woman, brown and veined like a tobacco leaf,
ministered to his simple wants.  But these wants had also been
regulated by Dr. Duchesne.  He found himself, with some grave
doubts of his effeminacy, breakfasting on a single cup of chocolate
instead of his usual bowl of molasses-sweetened coffee; crumbling a
crisp tortilla instead of the heavy saleratus bread, greasy
flapjack, or the lard-fried steak, and, more wonderful still,
completing his repast with purple grapes from the Mission wall.  He
could not deny that it was simple--that it was even refreshing and
consistent with the climate and his surroundings.  On the other
hand, it was the frugal diet of the commonest peasant--and were not
those peons slothful idolaters?

At the end of the week--his correspondence being also restricted by
his doctor to a few lines to himself regarding his progress--he
wrote to that adviser:

"The trembling and unquiet has almost ceased; I have less nightly
turmoil and visions; my carnal appetite seems to be amply mollified
and soothed by these viands, whatever may be their ultimate effect
upon the weakness of our common sinful nature.  But I should not be
truthful to you if I did not warn you that I am viewing with the
deepest spiritual concern a decided tendency toward sloth, and a
folding of the hands over matters that often, I fear, are spiritual
as well as temporal.  I would ask you to consider, in a spirit of
love, if it be not wise to rouse my apathetic flesh, so as to
strive, even with the feeblest exhortations, against this sloth in
others--if only to keep one's self from falling into the pit of
easy indulgence."

What answer he received is not known, but it is to be presumed that
he kept loyal faith with his physician, and gave himself up to
simple walks and rides and occasional meditation.  His solitude was
not broken in upon; curiosity was too active a vice, and induced
too much exertion for his indolent neighbors, and the Americano's
basking seclusion, though unlike the habits of his countrymen, did
not affect them.  The shopkeeper and innkeeper saluted him always
with a profound courtesy which awakened his slight resentment,
partly because he was conscious that it was grateful to him, and
partly that he felt he ought to have provoked in them a less
satisfied condition.

Once, when he had unwittingly passed the confines of his own
garden, through a gap in the Mission orchard, a lissome, black-
coated shadow slipped past him with an obeisance so profound and
gentle that he was startled at first into an awkward imitation of
it himself, and then into an angry self-examination.  He knew that
he loathed that long-skirted, womanlike garment, that dangling,
ostentatious symbol, that air of secrecy and mystery, and he
inflated his chest above his loosely tied cravat and unbuttoned
waistcoat with a contrasted sense of freedom.  But he was conscious
the next day of weakly avoiding a recurrence of this meeting, and
in his self-examination put it down to his self-disciplined
observance of his doctor's orders.  But when he was strong again,
and fitted for his Master's work, how strenuously he should improve
the occasion this gave him of attacking the Scarlet Woman among her
slaves and worshipers!

His afternoon meditations and the perusal of his only book--the
Bible--were regularly broken in upon at about sunset by two or
three strokes from the cracked bell that hung in the open belfry
which reared itself beyond the gnarled pear tees.  He could not say
that it was aggressive or persistent, like his own church bells,
nor that it even expressed to him any religious sentiment.
Moreover, it was not a Sabbath" bell, but a DAILY one, and even
then seemed to be only a signal to ears easily responsive, rather
than a stern reminder.  And the hour was always a singularly
witching one.

It was when the sun had slipped from the glaring red roofs, and the
yellowing adobe of the Mission walls and the tall ranks of wild
oats on the hillside were all of the one color of old gold.  It was
when the quivering heat of the arroyo and dusty expanse of plaza
was blending with the soft breath of the sea fog that crept through
the clefts of the coast range, until a refreshing balm seemed to
fall like a benediction on all nature.  It was when the trade-wind-
swept and irritated surfaces of the rocky gorge beyond were soothed
with clinging vapors; when the pines above no longer rocked
monotonously, and the great undulating sea of the wild-oat plains
had gone down and was at rest.  It was at this hour, one afternoon,
that, with the released scents of the garden, there came to him a
strange and subtle perfume that was new to his senses.  He laid
aside his book, went into the garden, and, half-unconscious of his
trespass, passed through the Mission orchard and thence into the
little churchyard beside the church.

Looking at the strange inscriptions in an unfamiliar tongue, he was
singularly touched with the few cheap memorials lying upon the
graves--like childish toys--and for the moment overlooked the
papistic emblems that accompanied them.  It struck him vaguely that
Death, the common leveler, had made even the symbols of a faith
eternal inferior to those simple records of undying memory and
affection, and he was for a moment startled into doubt.

He walked to the door of the church; to his surprise it was open.
Standing upon the threshold, he glanced inside, and stood for a
moment utterly bewildered.  In a man of refined taste and education
that bizarre and highly colored interior would have only provoked a
smile or shrug; to Stephen Masterton's highly emotional nature, but
artistic inexperience, strangely enough it was profoundly
impressive.  The heavily timbered, roughly hewn roof, barred with
alternate bands of blue and Indian red, the crimson hangings, the
gold and black draperies, affected this religious backwoodsman
exactly as they were designed to affect the heathen and acolytes
for whose conversion the temple had been reared.  He could scarcely
take his eyes from the tinsel-crowned Mother of Heaven, resplendent
in white and gold and glittering with jewels; the radiant shield
before the Host, illuminated by tall spectral candles in the
mysterious obscurity of the altar, dazzled him like the rayed disk
of the setting sun.

A gentle murmur, as of the distant sea, came from the altar.  In
his naive bewilderment he had not seen the few kneeling figures in
the shadow of column and aisle; it was not until a man, whom he
recognized as a muleteer he had seen that afternoon gambling and
drinking in the fonda, slipped by him like a shadow and sank upon
his knees in the center of the aisle that he realized the
overpowering truth.

HE, Stephen Masterton, was looking upon some rite of Popish
idolatry!  He was turning quickly away when the keeper of the
tienda--a man of sloth and sin--gently approached him from the
shadow of a column with a mute gesture, which he took to be one of
invitation.  A fierce protest of scorn and indignation swelled to
his throat, but died upon his lips.  Yet he had strength enough to
erect his gaunt emaciated figure, throwing out his long arms and
extended palms in the attitude of defiant exorcism, and then rush
swiftly from the church.  As he did so he thought he saw a faint
smile cross the shopkeeper's face, and a whispered exchange of
words with a neighboring worshiper of more exalted appearance came
to his ears.  But it was not intelligible to his comprehension.

The next day he wrote to his doctor in that quaint grandiloquence
of written speech with which the half-educated man balances the
slips of his colloquial phrasing:


Do not let the purgation of my flesh be unduly protracted.  What
with the sloth and idolatries of Baal and Ashteroth, which I see
daily around me, I feel that without a protest not only the flesh
but the spirit is mortified.  But my bodily strength is mercifully
returning, and I found myself yesterday able to take a long ride at
that hour which they here keep sacred for an idolatrous rite, under
the beautiful name of "The Angelus."  Thus do they bear false
witness to Him!  Can you tell me the meaning of the Spanish words
"Don Keyhotter"?  I am ignorant of these sensuous Southern
languages, and am aware that this is not the correct spelling, but
I have striven to give the phonetic equivalent.  It was used, I am
inclined to think, in reference to MYSELF, by an idolater.

P.S.--You need not trouble yourself.  I have just ascertained that
the words in question were simply the title of an idle novel, and,
of course, could not possibly refer to ME.


Howbeit it was as "Don Quixote"--that is, the common Spaniard's
conception of the Knight of La Mancha, merely the simple fanatic
and madman--that Mr. Stephen Masterton ever after rode all
unconsciously through the streets of the Mission, amid the half-
pitying, half-smiling glances of the people.

In spite of his meditations, his single volume, and his habit of
retiring early, he found his evenings were growing lonely and
tedious.  He missed the prayer meeting, and, above all, the hymns.
He had a fine baritone voice, sympathetic, as may be imagined, but
not cultivated.  One night, in the seclusion of his garden, and
secure in his distance from other dwellings, he raised his voice in
a familiar camp-meeting hymn with a strong Covenanter's ring in the
chorus.  Growing bolder as he went on, he at last filled the quiet
night with the strenuous sweep of his chant.  Surprised at his own
fervor, he paused for a moment, listening, half frightened, half
ashamed of his outbreak.  But there was only the trilling of the
night wind in the leaves, or the far-off yelp of a coyote.

For a moment he thought he heard the metallic twang of a stringed
instrument in the Mission garden beyond his own, and remembered his
contiguity to the church with a stir of defiance.  But he was
relieved, nevertheless.  His pent-up emotion had found vent, and
without the nervous excitement that had followed his old
exaltation.  That night he slept better.  He had found the Lord
again--with Psalmody!

The next evening he chanced upon a softer hymn of the same
simplicity, but with a vein of human tenderness in its aspirations,
which his more hopeful mood gently rendered.  At the conclusion of
the first verse he was, however, distinctly conscious of being
followed by the same twanging sound he had heard on the previous
night, and which even his untutored ear could recognize as an
attempt to accompany him.  But before he had finished the second
verse the unknown player, after an ingenious but ineffectual essay
to grasp the right chord, abandoned it with an impatient and almost
pettish flourish, and a loud bang upon the sounding-board of the
unseen instrument.  Masterton finished it alone.

With his curiosity excited, however, he tried to discover the
locality of the hidden player.  The sound evidently came from the
Mission garden; but in his ignorance of the language he could not
even interrogate his Indian housekeeper.  On the third night,
however, his hymn was uninterrupted by any sound from the former
musician.  A sense of disappointment, he knew not why, came over
him.  The kindly overture of the unseen player had been a relief to
his loneliness.  Yet he had barely concluded the hymn when the
familiar sound again struck his ears.  But this time the musician
played boldly, confidently, and with a singular skill on the
instrument.

The brilliant prelude over, to his entire surprise and some
confusion, a soprano voice, high, childish, but infinitely quaint
and fascinating, was mischievously uplifted.  But alas! even to his
ears, ignorant of the language, it was very clearly a song of
levity and wantonness, of freedom and license, of coquetry and
incitement!  Yet such was its fascination that he fancied it was
reclaimed by the delightful childlike and innocent expression of
the singer.

Enough that this tall, gaunt, broad-shouldered man arose and,
overcome by a curiosity almost as childlike, slipped into the
garden and glided with an Indian softness of tread toward the
voice.  The moon shone full upon the ruined Mission wall tipped
with clusters of dark foliage.  Half hiding, half mingling with one
of them--an indistinct bulk of light-colored huddled fleeces like
an extravagant bird's nest--hung the unknown musician.  So intent
was the performer's preoccupation that Masterton actually reached
the base of the wall immediately below the figure without
attracting its attention.  But his foot slipped on the crumbling
debris with a snapping of dry twigs.  There was a quick little cry
from above.  He had barely time to recover his position before the
singer, impulsively leaning over the parapet, had lost hers, and
fell outward.  But Masterton was tall, alert, and self-possessed,
and threw out his long arms.  The next moment they were full of
soft flounces, a struggling figure was against his breast, and a
woman's frightened little hands around his neck.  But he had broken
her fall, and almost instantly, yet with infinite gentleness, he
released her unharmed, with hardly her crisp flounces crumpled, in
an upright position against the wall.  Even her guitar, still
hanging from her shoulder by a yellow ribbon, had bounded elastic
and resounding against the wall, but lay intact at her satin-
slippered feet.  She caught it up with another quick little cry,
but this time more of sauciness than fear, and drew her little hand
across its strings, half defiantly.

"I hope you are not hurt?" said the circuit preacher, gravely.

She broke into a laugh so silvery that he thought it no
extravagance to liken it to the moonbeams that played over her made
audible.  She was lithe, yet plump; barred with black and yellow
and small-waisted like a pretty wasp.  Her complexion in that light
was a sheen of pearl satin that made her eyes blacker and her
little mouth redder than any other color could.  She was small,
but, remembering the fourteen-year-old wife of the shopkeeper, he
felt that, for all her childish voice and features, she was a grown
woman, and a sudden shyness took hold of him.

But she looked pertly in his face, stood her guitar upright before
her, and put her hands behind her back as she leaned saucily
against the wall and shrugged her shoulders.

"It was the fault of you," she said, in a broken English that
seemed as much infantine as foreign.  "What for you not remain to
yourself in your own CASA?  So it come.  You creep so--in the dark-
-and shake my wall, and I fall.  And she," pointing to the guitar,
"is a'most broke!  And for all thees I have only make to you a
serenade.  Ingrate!"

"I beg your pardon," said Masterton quickly, "but I was curious.  I
thought I might help you, and--"

"Make yourself another cat on the wall, eh?  No; one is enough,
thank you!"

A frown lowered on Masterton's brow.  "You don't understand me," he
said, bluntly.  "I did not know WHO was here."

"Ah, BUENO!  Then it is Pepita Ramirez, you see," she said, tapping
her bodice with one little finger, "all the same; the niece from
Manuel Garcia, who keeps the Mission garden and lif there.  And
you?"

"My name is Masterton."

"How mooch?"

"Masterton," he repeated.

She tried to pronounce it once or twice desperately, and then shook
her little head so violently that a yellow rose fastened over her
ear fell to the ground.  But she did not heed it, nor the fact that
Masterton had picked it up.

"Ah, I cannot!" she said, poutingly.  "It is as deefeecult to make
go as my guitar with your serenade."

"Can you not say 'Stephen Masterton'?" he asked, more gently, with
a returning and forgiving sense of her childishness.

"Es-stefen?  Ah, ESTEBAN!  Yes; Don Esteban!  BUENO!  Then, Don
Esteban, what for you sink so melank-olly one night, and one night
so fierce?  The melank-olly, he ees not so bad; but the fierce--ah!
he is weeked!  Ess it how the Americano make always his serenade?"

Masterton's brow again darkened.  And his hymn of exultation had
been mistaken by these people--by this--this wanton child!

"It was no serenade," he replied, curtly; "it was in the praise of
the Lord!"

"Of how mooch?"

"Of the Lord of Hosts--of the Almighty in Heaven."  He lifted his
long arms reverently on high.

"Oh!" she said, with a frightened look, slightly edging away from
the wall.  At a secure distance she stopped.  "Then you are a
soldier, Don Esteban?"

"No!"

"Then what for you sink 'I am a soldier of the Lord,' and you will
make die 'in His army'?  Oh, yes; you have said."  She gathered up
her guitar tightly under her arm, shook her small finger at him
gravely, and said, "You are a hoombog, Don Esteban; good a' night,"
and began to glide away.

"One moment, Miss--Miss Ramirez," called Masterton.  "I--that is
you--you have--forgotten your rose," he added, feebly, holding up
the flower.  She halted.

"Ah, yes; he have drop, you have pick him up, he is yours.  I have
drop, you have pick ME up, but I am NOT yours.  Good a' night,
COMANDANTE Don Esteban!"

With a light laugh she ran along beside the wall for a little
distance, suddenly leaped up and disappeared in one of the largest
gaps in its ruined and helpless structure.  Stephen Masterton gazed
after her stupidly, still holding the rose in his hand.  Then he
threw it away and re-entered his home.

Lighting his candle, he undressed himself, prayed fervently--so
fervently that all remembrance of the idle, foolish incident was
wiped from his mind, and went to bed.  He slept well and
dreamlessly.  The next morning, when his thoughts recurred to the
previous night, this seemed to him a token that he had not deviated
from his spiritual integrity; it did not occur to him that the
thought itself was a tacit suspicion.

So his feet quite easily sought the garden again in the early
sunshine, even to the wall where she had stood.  But he had not
taken into account the vivifying freshness of the morning, the
renewed promise of life and resurrection in the pulsing air and
potent sunlight, and as he stood there he seemed to see the figure
of the young girl again leaning against the wall in all the charm
of her irrepressible and innocent youth.  More than that, he found
the whole scene re-enacting itself before him; the nebulous drapery
half hidden in the foliage, the cry and the fall; the momentary
soft contact of the girl's figure against his own, the clinging
arms around his neck, the brush and fragrance of her flounces--all
this came back to him with a strength he had NOT felt when it
occurred.

He was turning hurriedly away when his eyes fell upon the yellow
rose still lying in the debris where he had thrown it--but still
pure, fresh, and unfaded.  He picked it up again, with a singular
fancy that it was the girl herself, and carried it into the house.

As he placed it half shyly in a glass on his table a wonderful
thought occurred to him.  Was not the episode of last night a
special providence?  Was not that young girl, wayward and
childlike, a mere neophyte in her idolatrous religion, as yet
unsteeped in sloth and ignorance, presented to him as a brand to be
snatched from the burning?  Was not this the opportunity of
conversion he had longed for--this the chance of exercising his
gifts of exhortation that he had been hiding in the napkin of
solitude and seclusion?  Nay, was not all this PREDESTINED?  His
illness, his consequent exile to this land of false gods--this
contiguity to the Mission--was not all this part of a supremely
ordered plan for the girl's salvation--and was HE not elected and
ordained for that service?  Nay, more, was not the girl herself a
mere unconscious instrument in the hands of a higher power; was not
her voluntary attempt to accompany him in his devotional exercise a
vague stirring of that predestined force within her?  Was not even
that wantonness and frivolity contrasted with her childishness--
which he had at first misunderstood--the stirrings of the flesh and
the spirit, and was he to abandon her in that struggle of good and
evil?

He lifted his bowed head, that had been resting on his arm before
the little flower on the table--as if it were a shrine--with a
flash of resolve in his blue eyes.  The wrinkled Concepcion coming
to her duties in the morning scarcely recognized her gloomily
abstracted master in this transfigured man.  He looked ten years
younger.

She met his greeting, and the few direct inquiries that his new
resolve enabled him to make more freely, with some information--
which a later talk with the shopkeeper, who had a fuller English
vocabulary, confirmed in detail.

"YES! truly this was a niece of the Mission gardener, who lived
with her uncle in the ruined wing of the presidio.  She had taken
her first communion four years ago.  Ah, yes, she was a great
musician, and could play on the organ.  And the guitar, ah, yes--of
a certainty.  She was gay, and flirted with the caballeros, young
and old, but she cared not for any."

Whatever satisfaction this latter statement gave Masterton, he
believed it was because the absence of any disturbing worldly
affection would make her an easier convert.

But how continue this chance acquaintance and effect her
conversion?  For the first time Masterton realized the value of
expediency; while his whole nature impelled him to seek her society
frankly and publicly and exhort her openly, he knew that this was
impossible; still more, he remembered her unmistakable fright at
his first expression of faith; he must "be wise as the serpent and
harmless as the dove."  He must work upon her soul alone, and
secretly.  He, who would have shrunk from any clandestine
association with a girl from mere human affection, saw no wrong in
a covert intimacy for the purpose of religious salvation.  Ignorant
as he was of the ways of the world, and inexperienced in the usages
of society, he began to plan methods of secretly meeting her with
all the intrigue of a gallant.  The perspicacity as well as the
intuition of a true lover had descended upon him in this effort of
mere spiritual conquest.

Armed with his information and a few Spanish words, he took the
yellow Concepcion aside and gravely suborned her to carry a note to
be delivered secretly to Miss Ramirez.  To his great relief and
some surprise the old woman grinned with intelligence, and her
withered hand closed with a certain familiar dexterity over the
epistle and the accompanying gratuity.  To a man less naively one-
ideaed it might have awakened some suspicion; but to the more
sanguine hopefulness of Masterton it only suggested the fancy that
Concepcion herself might prove to be open to conversion, and that
he should in due season attempt HER salvation also.  But that would
be later.  For Concepcion was always with him and accessible; the
girl was not.

The note, which had cost him some labor of composition, simple and
almost businesslike as was the result, ran as follows:

"I wish to see you upon some matter of grave concern to yourself.
Will you oblige me by coming again to the wall of the Mission
tonight at early candlelight?  It would avert worldly suspicion if
you brought also your guitar."

The afternoon dragged slowly on; Concepcion returned; she had, with
great difficulty, managed to see the senorita, but not alone; she
had, however, slipped the note into her hand, not daring to wait
for an answer.

In his first hopefulness Masterton did not doubt what the answer
would be, but as evening approached he grew concerned as to the
girl's opportunities of coming, and regretted that he had not given
her a choice of time.

Before his evening meal was finished he began to fear for her
willingness, and doubt the potency of his note.  He was accustomed
to exhort ORALLY--perhaps he ought to have waited for the chance of
SPEAKING to her directly without writing.

When the moon rose he was already in the garden.  Lingering at
first in the shadow of an olive tree, he waited until the moonbeams
fell on the wall and its crests of foliage.  But nothing moved
among that ebony tracery; his ear was strained for the familiar
tinkle of the guitar--all was silent.  As the moon rose higher he
at last boldly walked to the wall, and listened for any movement on
the other side of it.  But nothing stirred.  She was evidently NOT
coming--his note had failed.

He was turning away sadly, but as he faced his home again he heard
a light laugh beside him.  He stopped.  A black shadow stepped out
from beneath his own almond tree.  He started when, with a gesture
that seemed familiar to him, the upper part of the shadow seemed to
fall away with a long black mantilla and the face of the young girl
was revealed.

He could see now that she was clad in black lace from head to foot.
She looked taller, older, and he fancied even prettier than before.
A sudden doubt of his ability to impress her, a swift realization
of all the difficulties of the attempt, and, for the first time
perhaps, a dim perception of the incongruity of the situation came
over him.

"I was looking for you on the wall," he stammered.

"MADRE DE DIOS!" she retorted, with a laugh and her old audacity,
"you would that I shall ALWAYS hang there, and drop upon you like a
pear when you shake the tree?  No!"

"You haven't brought your guitar," he continued, still more
awkwardly, as he noticed that she held only a long black fan in her
hand.

"For why?  You would that I PLAY it, and when my uncle say 'Where
go Pepita?  She is loss,' someone shall say, 'Oh! I have hear her
tink-a-tink in the garden of the Americano, who lif alone.'  And
then--it ess finish!"

Masterton began to feel exceedingly uncomfortable.  There was
something in this situation that he had not dreamed of.  But with
the persistency of an awkward man he went on.

"But you played on the wall the other night, and tried to accompany
me."

"But that was lass night and on the wall.  I had not speak to you,
you had not speak to me.  You had not sent me the leetle note by
your peon."  She stopped, and suddenly opening her fan before her
face, so that only her mischievous eyes were visible, added: "You
had not asked me then to come to hear you make lof to me, Don
Esteban.  That is the difference."

The circuit preacher felt the blood rush to his face.  Anger,
shame, mortification, remorse, and fear alternately strove with
him, but above all and through all he was conscious of a sharp,
exquisite pleasure--that frightened him still more.  Yet he managed
to exclaim:

"No! no! You cannot think me capable of such a cowardly trick?"

The girl started, more at the unmistakable sincerity of his
utterance than at the words, whose full meaning she may have only
imperfectly caught.

"A treek?  A treek?" she slowly and wonderingly repeated.  Then
suddenly, as if comprehending him, she turned her round black eyes
full upon him and dropped her fan from her face.

"And WHAT for you ask me to come here then?"

"I wanted to talk with you," he began, "on far more serious
matters.  I wished to--" but he stopped.  He could not address this
quaint child-woman staring at him in black-eyed wonder, in either
the measured or the impetuous terms with which he would have
exhorted a maturer responsible being.  He made a step toward her;
she drew back, striking at his extended hand half impatiently, half
mischievously with her fan.

He flushed--and then burst out bluntly, "I want to talk with you
about your soul."

"My what?"

"Your immortal soul, unhappy girl."

"What have you to make with that?  Are you a devil?"  Her eyes grew
rounder, though she faced him boldly.

"I am a Minister of the Gospel," he said, in hurried entreaty.
"You must hear me for a moment.  I would save your soul."

"My immortal soul lif with the Padre at the Mission--you moost seek
her there!  My mortal BODY," she added, with a mischievous smile,
"say to you, 'good a' night, Don Esteban.'"  She dropped him a
little curtsy and--ran away.

"One moment, Miss Ramirez," said Masterton, eagerly; but she had
already slipped beyond his reach.  He saw her little black figure
passing swiftly beside the moonlit wall, saw it suddenly slide into
a shadowy fissure, and vanish.

In his blank disappointment he could not bear to re-enter the house
he had left so sanguinely a few moments before, but walked moodily
in the garden.  His discomfiture was the more complete since he
felt that his defeat was owing to some mistake in his methods, and
not the incorrigibility of his subject.

Was it not a spiritual weakness in him to have resented so sharply
the girl's imputation that he wished to make love to her?  He
should have borne it as Christians had even before now borne
slander and false testimony for their faith!  He might even have
ACCEPTED it, and let the triumph of her conversion in the end prove
his innocence.  Or was his purpose incompatible with that sisterly
affection he had so often preached to the women of his flock?  He
might have taken her hand, and called her "Sister Pepita," even as
he had called Deborah "Sister."  He recalled the fact that he had
for an instant held her struggling in his arms: he remembered the
thrill that the recollection had caused him, and somehow it now
sent a burning blush across his face.  He hurried back into the
house.

The next day a thousand wild ideas took the place of his former
settled resolution.  He would seek the Padre, this custodian of the
young girl's soul; he would convince HIM of his error, or beseech
him to give him an equal access to her spirit!  He would seek the
uncle of the girl, and work upon his feelings.

Then for three or four days he resolved to put the young girl from
his mind, trusting after the fashion of his kind for some special
revelation from a supreme source as an indication for his conduct.
This revelation presently occurred, as it is apt to occur when
wanted.

One evening his heart leaped at the familiar sound of Pepita's
guitar in the distance.  Whatever his ultimate intention now, he
hurriedly ran into the garden.  The sound came from the former
direction, but as he unhesitatingly approached the Mission wall, he
could see that she was not upon it, and as the notes of her guitar
were struck again, he knew that they came from the other side.  But
the chords were a prelude to one of his own hymns, and he stood
entranced as her sweet, childlike voice rose with the very words
that he had sung.  The few defects were those of purely oral
imitation, the accents, even the slight reiteration of the "s,"
were Pepita's own:


     Cheeldren oof the Heavenly King,
     As ye journey essweetly ssing;
     Essing your great Redeemer's praise,
     Glorioos in Hees works and ways.


He was astounded.  Her recollection of the air and words was the
more wonderful, for he remembered now that he had only sung that
particular hymn once.  But to his still greater delight and
surprise, her voice rose again in the second verse, with a touch of
plaintiveness that swelled his throat:


     We are traveling home to God,
     In the way our farzers trod,
     They are happy now, and we
     Soon their happiness shall see.


The simple, almost childish words--so childish that they might have
been the fitting creation of her own childish lips--here died away
with a sweep and crash of the whole strings.  Breathless silence
followed, in which Stephen Masterton could feel the beatings of his
own heart.

"Miss Ramirez," he called, in a voice that scarcely seemed his own.
There was no reply.  "Pepita!" he repeated; it was strangely like
the accent of a lover, but he no longer cared.  Still the singer's
voice was silent.

Then he ran swiftly beside the wall, as he had seen her run, until
he came to the fissure.  It was overgrown with vines and brambles
almost as impenetrable as an abatis, but if she had pierced it in
her delicate crape dress, so could he!  He brushed roughly through,
and found himself in a glimmering aisle of pear trees close by the
white wall of the Mission church.

For a moment in that intricate tracing of ebony and ivory made by
the rising moon, he was dazzled, but evidently his irruption into
the orchard had not been as lithe and silent as her own, for a
figure in a parti-colored dress suddenly started into activity, and
running from the wall, began to course through the trees until it
became apparently a part of that involved pattern.  Nothing
daunted, however, Stephen Masterton pursued, his speed increased as
he recognized the flounces of Pepita's barred dress, but the young
girl had the advantage of knowing the locality, and could evade her
pursuer by unsuspected turns and doubles.

For some moments this fanciful sylvan chase was kept up in perfect
silence; it might have been a woodland nymph pursued by a wandering
shepherd.  Masterton presently saw that she was making toward a
tiled roof that was now visible as projecting over the presidio
wall, and was evidently her goal of refuge.  He redoubled his
speed; with skillful audacity and sheer strength of his broad
shoulders he broke through a dense ceanothus hedge which Pepita was
swiftly skirting, and suddenly appeared between her and her house.

With her first cry, the young girl turned and tried to bury herself
in the hedge; but in another stride the circuit preacher was at her
side, and caught her panting figure in his arms.

While he had been running he had swiftly formulated what he should
do and what he should say to her.  To his simple appeal for her
companionship and willing ear he would add a brotherly tenderness,
that should invite her trustfulness in him; he would confess his
wrong and ask her forgiveness of his abrupt solicitations; he would
propose to teach her more hymns, they would practice psalmody
together; even this priest, the custodian of her soul, could not
object to that; but chiefly he would thank her: he would tell her
how she had pleased him, and this would lead to more serious and
thoughtful converse.  All this was in his mind while he ran, was
upon his lips as he caught her and for an instant she lapsed,
exhausted, in his arms.  But, alas! even in that moment he suddenly
drew her toward him, and kissed her as only a lover could!


The wire grass was already yellowing on the Tasajara plains with
the dusty decay of the long, dry summer when Dr. Duchesne returned
to Tasajara.  He came to see the wife of Deacon Sanderson, who,
having for the twelfth time added to the population of the
settlement, was not "doing as well" as everybody--except, possibly,
Dr. Duchesne--expected.  After he had made this hollow-eyed, over-
burdened, undernourished woman as comfortable as he could in her
rude, neglected surroundings, to change the dreary chronicle of
suffering, he turned to the husband, and said, "And what has become
of Mr. Masterton, who used to be in your--vocation?"  A long groan
came from the deacon.

"Hallo!  I hope he has not had a relapse," said the doctor,
earnestly.  "I thought I'd knocked all that nonsense out of him--I
beg your pardon--I mean," he added, hurriedly, "he wrote to me only
a few weeks ago that he was picking up his strength again and doing
well!"

"In his weak, gross, sinful flesh--yes, no doubt," returned the
Deacon, scornfully, "and, perhaps, even in a worldly sense, for
those who value the vanities of life; but he is lost to us, for all
time, and lost to eternal life forever.  Not," he continued in
sanctimonious vindictiveness, "but that I often had my doubts of
Brother Masterton's steadfastness.  He was too much given to
imagery and song."

"But what has he done?" persisted Dr. Duchesne.

"Done!  He has embraced the Scarlet Woman!"

"Dear me!" said the doctor, "so soon?  Is it anybody you knew
here?--not anybody's wife?  Eh?"

"He has entered the Church of Rome," said the Deacon, indignantly,
"he has forsaken the God of his fathers for the tents of the
idolaters; he is the consort of Papists and the slave of the Pope!"

"But are you SURE?" said Dr. Duchesne, with perhaps less concern
than before.

"Sure," returned the Deacon angrily, "didn't Brother Bulkley, on
account of warning reports made by a God-fearing and soul-seeking
teamster, make a special pilgrimage to this land of Sodom to
inquire and spy out its wickedness?  Didn't he find Stephen
Masterton steeped in the iniquity of practicing on an organ--he
that scorned even a violin or harmonium in the tents of the Lord--
in an idolatrous chapel, with a foreign female Papist for a
teacher?  Didn't he find him a guest at the board of a Jesuit
priest, visiting the schools of the Mission where this young
Jezebel of a singer teaches the children to chant in unknown
tongues?  Didn't he find him living with a wrinkled Indian witch
who called him 'Padrone'--and speaking her gibberish?  Didn't he
find him, who left here a man mortified in flesh and spirit and
pale with striving with sinners, fat and rosy from native wines and
fleshpots, and even vain and gaudy in colored apparel?  And last of
all, didn't Brother Bulkley hear that a rumor was spread far and
wide that this miserable backslider was to take to himself a wife--
in one of these strange women--that very Jezebel who seduced him?
What do you call that?"

"It looks a good deal like human nature," said the doctor,
musingly, "but I call it a cure!"



THE INDISCRETION OF ELSBETH


The American paused.  He had evidently lost his way.  For the last
half hour he had been wandering in a medieval town, in a profound
medieval dream.  Only a few days had elapsed since he had left the
steamship that carried him hither; and the accents of his own
tongue, the idioms of his own people, and the sympathetic community
of New World tastes and expressions still filled his mind until he
woke up, or rather, as it seemed to him, was falling asleep in the
past of this Old World town which had once held his ancestors.
Although a republican, he had liked to think of them in quaint
distinctive garb, representing state and importance--perhaps even
aristocratic pre-eminence--content to let the responsibility of
such "bad eminence" rest with them entirely, but a habit of
conscientiousness and love for historic truth eventually led him
also to regard an honest BAUER standing beside his cattle in the
quaint market place, or a kindly-faced black-eyed DIENSTMADCHEN in
a doorway, with a timid, respectful interest, as a possible type of
his progenitors.  For, unlike some of his traveling countrymen in
Europe, he was not a snob, and it struck him--as an American--that
it was, perhaps, better to think of his race as having improved
than as having degenerated.  In these ingenuous meditations he had
passed the long rows of quaint, high houses, whose sagging roofs
and unpatched dilapidations were yet far removed from squalor,
until he had reached the road bordered by poplars, all so unlike
his own country's waysides--and knew that he had wandered far from
his hotel.

He did not care, however, to retrace his steps and return by the
way he had come.  There was, he reasoned, some other street or
turning that would eventually bring him to the market place and his
hotel, and yet extend his experience of the town.  He turned at
right angles into a narrow grass lane, which was, however, as
neatly kept and apparently as public as the highway.  A few
moments' walking convinced him that it was not a thoroughfare and
that it led to the open gates of a park.  This had something of a
public look, which suggested that his intrusion might be at least a
pardonable trespass, and he relied, like most strangers, on the
exonerating quality of a stranger's ignorance.  The park lay in the
direction he wished to go, and yet it struck him as singular that a
park of such extent should be still allowed to occupy such valuable
urban space.  Indeed, its length seemed to be illimitable as he
wandered on, until he became conscious that he must have again lost
his way, and he diverged toward the only boundary, a high, thickset
hedge to the right, whose line he had been following.

As he neared it he heard the sound of voices on the other side,
speaking in German, with which he was unfamiliar.  Having, as yet,
met no one, and being now impressed with the fact that for a public
place the park was singularly deserted, he was conscious that his
position was getting serious, and he determined to take this only
chance of inquiring his way.  The hedge was thinner in some places
than in others, and at times he could see not only the light
through it but even the moving figures of the speakers, and the
occasional white flash of a summer gown.  At last he determined to
penetrate it, and with little difficulty emerged on the other side.
But here he paused motionless.  He found himself behind a somewhat
formal and symmetrical group of figures with their backs toward
him, but all stiffened into attitudes as motionless as his own, and
all gazing with a monotonous intensity in the direction of a
handsome building, which had been invisible above the hedge but
which now seemed to arise suddenly before him.  Some of the figures
were in uniform.  Immediately before him, but so slightly separated
from the others that he was enabled to see the house between her
and her companions, he was confronted by the pretty back,
shoulders, and blond braids of a young girl of twenty.  Convinced
that he had unwittingly intruded upon some august ceremonial, he
instantly slipped back into the hedge, but so silently that his
momentary presence was evidently undetected.  When he regained the
park side he glanced back through the interstices; there was no
movement of the figures nor break in the silence to indicate that
his intrusion had been observed.  With a long breath of relief he
hurried from the park.

It was late when he finally got back to his hotel.  But his little
modern adventure had, I fear, quite outrun his previous medieval
reflections, and almost his first inquiry of the silver-chained
porter in the courtyard was in regard to the park.  There was no
public park in Alstadt!  The Herr possibly alluded to the Hof
Gardens--the Schloss, which was in the direction he indicated.  The
Schloss was the residency of the hereditary Grand Duke.  JA WOHL!
He was stopping there with several Hoheiten.  There was naturally a
party there--a family reunion.  But it was a private enclosure.  At
times, when the Grand Duke was not in residence," it was open to
the public.  In point of fact, at such times tickets of admission
were to be had at the hotel for fifty pfennige each.  There was
not, of truth, much to see except a model farm and dairy--the
pretty toy of a previous Grand Duchess.

But he seemed destined to come into closer collision with the
modern life of Alstadt.  On entering the hotel, wearied by his long
walk, he passed the landlord and a man in half-military uniform on
the landing near his room.  As he entered his apartment he had a
vague impression, without exactly knowing why, that the landlord
and the military stranger had just left it.  This feeling was
deepened by the evident disarrangement of certain articles in his
unlocked portmanteau and the disorganization of his writing case.
A wave of indignation passed over him.  It was followed by a knock
at the door, and the landlord blandly appeared with the stranger.

"A thousand pardons," said the former, smilingly, "but Herr
Sanderman, the Ober-Inspector of Police, wishes to speak with you.
I hope we are not intruding?"

"Not NOW," said the American, dryly.

The two exchanged a vacant and deprecating smile.

"I have to ask only a few formal questions," said the Ober-
Inspector in excellent but somewhat precise English, "to supplement
the report which, as a stranger, you may not know is required by
the police from the landlord in regard to the names and quality of
his guests who are foreign to the town.  You have a passport?"

"I have," said the American still more dryly.  "But I do not keep
it in an unlocked portmanteau or an open writing case."

"An admirable precaution," said Sanderman, with unmoved politeness.
"May I see it?  Thanks," he added, glancing over the document which
the American produced from his pocket.  "I see that you are a born
American citizen--and an earlier knowledge of that fact would have
prevented this little contretemps.  You are aware, Mr. Hoffman,
that your name is German?"

"It was borne by my ancestors, who came from this country two
centuries ago," said Hoffman, curtly.

"We are indeed honored by your return to it," returned Sanderman
suavely, "but it was the circumstance of your name being a local
one, and the possibility of your still being a German citizen
liable to unperformed military duty, which has caused the trouble."
His manner was clearly civil and courteous, but Hoffman felt that
all the time his own face and features were undergoing a profound
scrutiny from the speaker.

"And you are making sure that you will know me again?" said
Hoffman, with a smile.

"I trust, indeed, both," returned Sanderman, with a bow, "although
you will permit me to say that your description here," pointing to
the passport, "scarcely does you justice.  ACH GOTT! it is the same
in all countries; the official eye is not that of the young DAMEN."

Hoffman, though not conceited, had not lived twenty years without
knowing that he was very good-looking, yet there was something in
the remark that caused him to color with a new uneasiness.

The Ober-Inspector rose with another bow, and moved toward the
door.  "I hope you will let me make amends for this intrusion by
doing anything I can to render your visit here a pleasant one.
Perhaps," he added, "it is not for long."

But Hoffman evaded the evident question, as he resented what he
imagined was a possible sneer.

"I have not yet determined my movements," he said.

The Ober-Inspector brought his heels together in a somewhat stiffer
military salute and departed.

Nothing, however, could have exceeded the later almost servile
urbanity of the landlord, who seemed to have been proud of the
official visit to his guest.  He was profuse in his attentions, and
even introduced him to a singularly artistic-looking man of middle
age, wearing an order in his buttonhole, whom he met casually in
the hall.

"Our Court photographer," explained the landlord with some fervor,
"at whose studio, only a few houses distant, most of the Hoheiten
and Prinzessinen of Germany have sat for their likenesses."

"I should feel honored if the distinguished American Herr would
give me a visit," said the stranger gravely, as he gazed at Hoffman
with an intensity which recalled the previous scrutiny of the
Police Inspector, "and I would be charmed if he would avail himself
of my poor skill to transmit his picturesque features to my unique
collection."

Hoffman returned a polite evasion to this invitation, although he
was conscious of being struck with this second examination of his
face, and the allusion to his personality.

The next morning the porter met him with a mysterious air.  The
Herr would still like to see the Schloss?  Hoffman, who had quite
forgotten his adventure in the park, looked vacant.  JA WOHL--the
Hof authorities had no doubt heard of his visit and had intimated
to the hotel proprietor that he might have permission to visit the
model farm and dairy.  As the American still looked indifferent the
porter pointed out with some importance that it was a Ducal
courtesy not to be lightly treated; that few, indeed, of the
burghers themselves had ever been admitted to this eccentric whim
of the late Grand Duchess.  He would, of course, be silent about
it; the Court would not like it known that they had made an
exception to their rules in favor of a foreigner; he would enter
quickly and boldly alone.  There would be a housekeeper or a
dairymaid to show him over the place.

More amused at this important mystery over what he, as an American,
was inclined to classify as a "free pass" to a somewhat heavy "side
show," he gravely accepted the permission, and the next morning
after breakfast set out to visit the model farm and dairy.
Dismissing his driver, as he had been instructed, Hoffman entered
the gateway with a mingling of expectancy and a certain amusement
over the "boldness" which the porter had suggested should
characterize his entrance.  Before him was a beautifully kept lane
bordered by arbored and trellised roses, which seemed to sink into
the distance.  He was instinctively following it when he became
aware that he was mysteriously accompanied by a man in the livery
of a chasseur, who was walking among the trees almost abreast of
him, keeping pace with his step, and after the first introductory
military salute preserving a ceremonious silence.  There was
something so ludicrous in this solemn procession toward a peaceful,
rural industry that by the time they had reached the bottom of the
lane the American had quite recovered his good humor.  But here a
new astonishment awaited him.  Nestling before him in a green
amphitheater lay a little wooden farm-yard and outbuildings, which
irresistibly suggested that it had been recently unpacked and set
up from a box of Nuremberg toys.  The symmetrical trees, the
galleried houses with preternaturally glazed windows, even the
spotty, disproportionately sized cows in the white-fenced barnyards
were all unreal, wooden and toylike.

Crossing a miniature bridge over a little stream, from which he was
quite prepared to hook metallic fish with a magnet their own size,
he looked about him for some real being to dispel the illusion.
The mysterious chasseur had disappeared.  But under the arch of an
arbor, which seemed to be composed of silk ribbons, green glass,
and pink tissue paper, stood a quaint but delightful figure.

At first it seemed as if he had only dispelled one illusion for
another.  For the figure before him might have been made of Dresden
china--so daintily delicate and unique it was in color and
arrangement.  It was that of a young girl dressed in some forgotten
medieval peasant garb of velvet braids, silver-staylaced corsage,
lace sleeves, and helmeted metallic comb.  But, after the Dresden
method, the pale yellow of her hair was repeated in her bodice, the
pink of her cheeks was in the roses of her chintz overskirt.  The
blue of her eyes was the blue of her petticoat; the dazzling
whiteness of her neck shone again in the sleeves and stockings.
Nevertheless she was real and human, for the pink deepened in her
cheeks as Hoffman's hat flew from his head, and she recognized the
civility with a grave little curtsy.

"You have come to see the dairy," she said in quaintly accurate
English; "I will show you the way."

"If you please," said Hoffman, gaily, "but--"

"But what?" she said, facing him suddenly with absolutely
astonished eyes.

Hoffman looked into them so long that their frank wonder presently
contracted into an ominous mingling of restraint and resentment.
Nothing daunted, however, he went on:

"Couldn't we shake all that?"

The look of wonder returned.  "Shake all that?" she repeated.  "I
do not understand."

"Well! I'm not positively aching to see cows, and you must be sick
of showing them.  I think, too, I've about sized the whole show.
Wouldn't it be better if we sat down in that arbor--supposing it
won't fall down--and you told me all about the lot?  It would save
you a heap of trouble and keep your pretty frock cleaner than
trapesing round.  Of course," he said, with a quick transition to
the gentlest courtesy, "if you're conscientious about this thing
we'll go on and not spare a cow.  Consider me in it with you for
the whole morning."

She looked at him again, and then suddenly broke into a charming
laugh.  It revealed a set of strong white teeth, as well as a
certain barbaric trace in its cadence which civilized restraint had
not entirely overlaid.

"I suppose she really is a peasant, in spite of that pretty frock,"
he said to himself as he laughed too.

But her face presently took a shade of reserve, and with a gentle
but singular significance she said:

"I think you must see the dairy."

Hoffman's hat was in his hand with a vivacity that tumbled the
brown curls on his forehead.  "By all means," he said instantly,
and began walking by her side in modest but easy silence.  Now that
he thought her a conscientious peasant he was quiet and respectful.

Presently she lifted her eyes, which, despite her gravity, had not
entirely lost their previous mirthfulness, and said:

"But you Americans--in your rich and prosperous country, with your
large lands and your great harvests--you must know all about
farming."

"Never was in a dairy in my life," said Hoffman gravely.  "I'm from
the city of New York, where the cows give swill milk, and are kept
in cellars."

Her eyebrows contracted prettily in an effort to understand.  Then
she apparently gave it up, and said with a slanting glint of
mischief in her eyes:

"Then you come here like the other Americans in hope to see the
Grand Duke and Duchess and the Princesses?"

"No.  The fact is I almost tumbled into a lot of 'em--standing like
wax figures--the other side of the park lodge, the other day--and
got away as soon as I could.  I think I prefer the cows."

Her head was slightly turned away.  He had to content himself with
looking down upon the strong feet in their serviceable but smartly
buckled shoes that uplifted her upright figure as she moved beside
him.

"Of course," he added with boyish but unmistakable courtesy, "if
it's part of your show to trot out the family, why I'm in that,
too.  I dare say you could make them interesting."

"But why," she said with her head still slightly turned away toward
a figure--a sturdy-looking woman, which, for the first time,
Hoffman perceived was walking in a line with them as the chasseur
had done--"why did you come here at all?"

"The first time was a fool accident," he returned frankly.  "I was
making a short cut through what I thought was a public park.  The
second time was because I had been rude to a Police Inspector whom
I found going through my things, but who apologized--as I suppose--
by getting me an invitation from the Grand Duke to come here, and I
thought it only the square thing to both of 'em to accept it.  But
I'm mighty glad I came; I wouldn't have missed YOU for a thousand
dollars.  You see I haven't struck anyone I cared to talk to
since."  Here he suddenly remarked that she hadn't looked at him,
and that the delicate whiteness of her neck was quite suffused with
pink, and stopped instantly.  Presently he said quite easily:

"Who's the chorus?"

"The lady?"

"Yes.  She's watching us as if she didn't quite approve, you know--
just as if she didn't catch on."

"She's the head housekeeper of the farm.  Perhaps you would prefer
to have her show you the dairy; shall I call her?"

The figure in question was very short and stout, with voluminous
petticoats.

"Please don't; I'll stay without your setting that paperweight on
me.  But here's the dairy.  Don't let her come inside among those
pans of fresh milk with that smile, or there'll be trouble."

The young girl paused too, made a slight gesture with her hand, and
the figure passed on as they entered the dairy.  It was beautifully
clean and fresh.  With a persistence that he quickly recognized as
mischievous and ironical, and with his characteristic adaptability
accepted with even greater gravity and assumption of interest, she
showed him all the details.  From thence they passed to the
farmyard, where he hung with breathless attention over the names of
the cows and made her repeat them.  Although she was evidently
familiar with the subject, he could see that her zeal was fitful
and impatient.

"Suppose we sit down," he said, pointing to an ostentatious rustic
seat in the center of the green.

"Sir down?" she repeated wonderingly.  "What for?"

"To talk.  We'll knock off and call it half a day."

"But if you are not looking at the farm you are, of course, going,"
she said quickly.

"Am I?  I don't think these particulars were in my invitation."

She again broke into a fit of laughter, and at the same time cast a
bright eye around the field.

"Come," he said gently, "there are no other sightseers waiting, and
your conscience is clear," and he moved toward the rustic seat.

"Certainly not--there," she added in a low voice.

They moved on slowly together to a copse of willows which overhung
the miniature stream.

"You are not staying long in Alstadt?" she said.

"No; I only came to see the old town that my ancestors came from."

They were walking so close together that her skirt brushed his
trousers, but she suddenly drew away from him, and looking him
fixedly in the eye said:

"Ah, you have relations here?"

"Yes, but they are dead two hundred years."

She laughed again with a slight expression of relief.  They had
entered the copse and were walking in dense shadow when she
suddenly stopped and sat down upon a rustic bench.  To his surprise
he found that they were quite alone.

"Tell me about these relatives," she said, slightly drawing aside
her skirt to make room for him on the seat.

He did not require a second invitation.  He not only told her all
about his ancestral progenitors, but, I fear, even about those more
recent and more nearly related to him; about his own life, his
vocation--he was a clever newspaper correspondent with a roving
commission--his ambitions, his beliefs and his romance.

"And then, perhaps, of this visit--you will also make 'copy'?"

He smiled at her quick adaptation of his professional slang, but
shook his head.

"No," he said gravely.  "No--this is YOU.  The CHICAGO INTERVIEWER
is big pay and is rich, but it hasn't capital enough to buy you
from me.

He gently slid his hand toward hers and slipped his fingers softly
around it.  She made a slight movement of withdrawal, but even
then--as if in forgetfulness or indifference--permitted her hand to
rest unresponsively in his.  It was scarcely an encouragement to
gallantry, neither was it a rejection of an unconscious
familiarity.

"But you haven't told me about yourself," he said.

"Oh, I"--she returned, with her first approach to coquetry in a
laugh and a sidelong glance, "of what importance is that to you?
It is the Grand Duchess and Her Highness the Princess that you
Americans seek to know.  I am--what I am--as you see."

"You bet," said Hoffman with charming decision.

"I WHAT?"

"You ARE, you know, and that's good enough for me, but I don't even
know your name."

She laughed again, and after a pause, said: "Elsbeth."

"But I couldn't call you by your first name on our first meeting,
you know."

"Then you Americans are really so very formal--eh?" she said slyly,
looking at her imprisoned hand.

"Well, yes," returned Hoffman, disengaging it.  "I suppose we are
respectful, or mean to be.  But whom am I to inquire for?  To write
to?"

"You are neither to write nor inquire."

"What?"  She had moved in her seat so as to half-face him with eyes
in which curiosity, mischief, and a certain seriousness alternated,
but for the first time seemed conscious of his hand, and accented
her words with a slight pressure.

"You are to return to your hotel presently, and say to your
landlord: 'Pack up my luggage.  I have finished with this old town
and my ancestors, and the Grand Duke, whom I do not care to see,
and I shall leave Alstadt tomorrow!'"

"Thank you!  I don't catch on."

"Of what necessity should you?  I have said it.  That should be
enough for a chivalrous American like you."  She again
significantly looked down at her hand.

"If you mean that you know the extent of the favor you ask of me, I
can say no more," he said seriously; "but give me some reason for
it."

"Ah so!" she said, with a slight shrug of her shoulders.  "Then 1
must tell you.  You say you do not know the Grand Duke and Duchess.
Well! THEY KNOW YOU.  The day before yesterday you were wandering
in the park, as you admit.  You say, also, you got through the
hedge and interrupted some ceremony.  That ceremony was not a Court
function, Mr. Hoffman, but something equally sacred--the
photographing of the Ducal family before the Schloss.  You say that
you instantly withdrew.  But after the photograph was taken the
plate revealed a stranger standing actually by the side of the
Princess Alexandrine, and even taking the PAS of the Grand Duke
himself.  That stranger was you!"

"And the picture was spoiled," said the American, with a quiet
laugh.

"I should not say that," returned the lady, with a demure glance at
her companion's handsome face, "and I do not believe that the
Princess--who first saw the photograph--thought so either.  But she
is very young and willful, and has the reputation of being very
indiscreet, and unfortunately she begged the photographer not to
destroy the plate, but to give it to her, and to say nothing about
it, except that the plate was defective, and to take another.
Still it would have ended there if her curiosity had not led her to
confide a description of the stranger to the Police Inspector, with
the result you know."

"Then I am expected to leave town because I accidentally stumbled
into a family group that was being photographed?"

"Because a certain Princess was indiscreet enough to show her
curiosity about you," corrected the fair stranger.

"But look here!  I'll apologize to the Princess, and offer to pay
for the plate."

"Then you do want to see the Princess?" said the young girl
smiling; "you are like the others."

"Bother the Princess!  I want to see YOU.  And I don't see how they
can prevent it if I choose to remain."

"Very easily.  You will find that there is something wrong with
your passport, and you will be sent on to Pumpernickel for
examination.  You will unwittingly transgress some of the laws of
the town and be ordered to leave it.  You will be shadowed by the
police until you quarrel with them--like a free American--and you
are conducted to the frontier.  Perhaps you will strike an officer
who has insulted you, and then you are finished on the spot."

The American's crest rose palpably until it cocked his straw hat
over his curls.

"Suppose I am content to risk it--having first laid the whole
matter and its trivial cause before the American Minister, so that
he could make it hot for this whole caboodle of a country if they
happened to 'down me.'  By Jove!  I shouldn't mind being the martyr
of an international episode if they'd spare me long enough to let
me get the first 'copy' over to the other side."  His eyes
sparkled.

"You could expose them, but they would then deny the whole story,
and you have no evidence.  They would demand to know your
informant, and I should be disgraced, and the Princess, who is
already talked about, made a subject of scandal.  But no matter!
It is right that an American's independence shall not be interfered
with."

She raised the hem of her handkerchief to her blue eyes and
slightly turned her head aside.  Hoffman gently drew the
handkerchief away, and in so doing possessed himself of her other
hand.

"Look here, Miss--Miss--Elsbeth.  You know I wouldn't give you
away, whatever happened.  But couldn't I get hold of that
photographer--I saw him, he wanted me to sit to him--and make him
tell me?"

"He wanted you to sit to him," she said hurriedly, "and did you?"

"No," he replied.  "He was a little too fresh and previous, though
I thought he fancied some resemblance in me to somebody else."

"Ah!"  She said something to herself in German which he did not
understand, and then added aloud:

"You did well; he is a bad man, this photographer.  Promise me you
shall not sit for him."

"How can I if I'm fired out of the place like this?"  He added
ruefully, "But I'd like to make him give himself away to me
somehow."

"He will not, and if he did he would deny it afterward.  Do not go
near him nor see him.  Be careful that he does not photograph you
with his instantaneous instrument when you are passing.  Now you
must go.  I must see the Princess."

"Let me go, too.  I will explain it to her," said Hoffman.

She stopped, looked at him keenly, and attempted to withdraw her
hands.  "Ah, then it IS so.  It is the Princess you wish to see.
You are curious--you, too; you wish to see this lady who is
interested in you.  I ought to have known it.  You are all alike."

He met her gaze with laughing frankness, accepting her outburst as
a charming feminine weakness, half jealousy, half coquetry--but
retained her hands.

"Nonsense," he said.  "I wish to see her that I may have the right
to see you--that you shall not lose your place here through me;
that I may come again."

"You must never come here again."

"Then you must come where I am.  We will meet somewhere when you
have an afternoon off.  You shall show me the town--the houses of
my ancestors--their tombs; possibly--if the Grand Duke rampages--
the probable site of my own."

She looked into his laughing eyes with her clear, stedfast, gravely
questioning blue ones.  "Do not you Americans know that it is not
the fashion here, in Germany, for the young men and the young women
to walk together--unless they are VERLOBT?"

"VER--which?"

"Engaged."  She nodded her head thrice: viciously, decidedly,
mischievously.

"So much the better."

"ACH GOTT!"  She made a gesture of hopelessness at his
incorrigibility, and again attempted to withdraw her hands.

"I must go now."

"Well then, good-by."

It was easy to draw her closer by simply lowering her still captive
hands.  Then he suddenly kissed her coldly startled lips, and
instantly released her.  She as instantly vanished.

"Elsbeth," he called quickly.  "Elsbeth!"

Her now really frightened face reappeared with a heightened color
from the dense foliage--quite to his astonishment.

"Hush," she said, with her finger on her lips.  "Are you mad?"

"I only wanted to remind you to square me with the Princess," he
laughed as her head disappeared.

He strolled back toward the gate.  Scarcely had he quitted the
shrubbery before the same chasseur made his appearance with
precisely the same salute; and, keeping exactly the same distance,
accompanied him to the gate.  At the corner of the street he hailed
a droshky and was driven to his hotel.

The landlord came up smiling.  He trusted that the Herr had greatly
enjoyed himself at the Schloss.  It was a distinguished honor--in
fact, quite unprecedented.  Hoffman, while he determined not to
commit himself, nor his late fair companion, was nevertheless
anxious to learn something more of her relations to the Schloss.
So pretty, so characteristic, and marked a figure must be well
known to sightseers.  Indeed, once or twice the idea had crossed
his mind with a slightly jealous twinge that left him more
conscious of the impression she had made on him than he had deemed
possible.  He asked if the model farm and dairy were always shown
by the same attendants.

"ACH GOTT! no doubt, yes; His Royal Highness had quite a retinue
when he was in residence."

"And were these attendants in costume?"

"There was undoubtedly a livery for the servants."

Hoffman felt a slight republican irritation at the epithet--he knew
not why.  But this costume was rather a historical one; surely it
was not entrusted to everyday menials--and he briefly described it.

His host's blank curiosity suddenly changed to a look of mysterious
and arch intelligence.

"ACH GOTT! yes!"  He remembered now (with his finger on his nose)
that when there was a fest at the Schloss the farm and dairy were
filled with shepherdesses, in quaint costume worn by the ladies of
the Grand Duke's own theatrical company, who assumed the characters
with great vivacity.  Surely it was the same, and the Grand Duke
had treated the Herr to this special courtesy.  Yes--there was one
pretty, blonde young lady--the Fraulein Wimpfenbuttel, a most
popular soubrette, who would play it to the life!  And the
description fitted her to a hair!  Ah, there was no doubt of it;
many persons, indeed, had been so deceived.

But happily, now that he had given him the wink, the Herr could
corroborate it himself by going to the theater tonight.  Ah, it
would be a great joke--quite colossal! if he took a front seat
where she could see him.  And the good man rubbed his hands in
gleeful anticipation.

Hoffman had listened to him with a slow repugnance that was only
equal to his gradual conviction that the explanation was a true
one, and that he himself had been ridiculously deceived.  The
mystery of his fair companion's costume, which he had accepted as
part of the "show"; the inconsistency of her manner and her evident
occupation; her undeniable wish to terminate the whole episode with
that single interview; her mingling of worldly aplomb and rustic
innocence; her perfect self-control and experienced acceptance of
his gallantry under the simulated attitude of simplicity--all now
struck him as perfectly comprehensible.  He recalled the actress's
inimitable touch in certain picturesque realistic details in the
dairy--which she had not spared him; he recognized it now even in
their bowered confidences (how like a pretty ballet scene their
whole interview on the rustic bench was!), and it breathed through
their entire conversation--to their theatrical parting at the
close!  And the whole story of the photograph was, no doubt, as
pure a dramatic invention as the rest!  The Princess's romantic
interest in him--that Princess who had never appeared (why had he
not detected the old, well-worn, sentimental situation here?)--was
all a part of it.  The dark, mysterious hint of his persecution by
the police was a necessary culmination to the little farce.  Thank
Heaven! he had not "risen" at the Princess, even if he had given
himself away to the clever actress in her own humble role.  Then
the humor of the whole situation predominated and he laughed until
the tears came to his eyes, and his forgotten ancestors might have
turned over in their graves without his heeding them.  And with
this humanizing influence upon him he went to the theater.

It was capacious even for the town, and although the performance
was a special one he had no difficulty in getting a whole box to
himself.  He tried to avoid this public isolation by sitting close
to the next box, where there was a solitary occupant--an officer--
apparently as lonely as himself.  He had made up his mind that when
his fair deceiver appeared he would let her see by his significant
applause that he recognized her, but bore no malice for the trick
she had played on him.  After all, he had kissed her--he had no
right to complain.  If she should recognize him, and this
recognition led to a withdrawal of her prohibition, and their
better acquaintance, he would be a fool to cavil at her pleasant
artifice.  Her vocation was certainly a more independent and
original one than that he had supposed; for its social quality and
inequality he cared nothing.  He found himself longing for the
glance of her calm blue eyes, for the pleasant smile that broke the
seriousness of her sweetly restrained lips.  There was no doubt
that he should know her even as the heroine of DER CZAR UND DER
ZIMMERMANN on the bill before him.  He was becoming impatient.  And
the performance evidently was waiting.  A stir in the outer
gallery, the clatter of sabers, the filing of uniforms into the
royal box, and a triumphant burst from the orchestra showed the
cause.  As a few ladies and gentlemen in full evening dress emerged
from the background of uniforms and took their places in the front
of the box, Hoffman looked with some interest for the romantic
Princess.  Suddenly he saw a face and shoulders in a glitter of
diamonds that startled him, and then a glance that transfixed him.

He leaned over to his neighbor.  "Who is the young lady in the
box?"

"The Princess Alexandrine."

"I mean the young lady in blue with blond hair and blue eyes."

"It is the Princess Alexandrine Elsbeth Marie Stephanie, the
daughter of the Grand Duke--there is none other there."

"Thank you."

He sat silently looking at the rising curtain and the stage.  Then
be rose quietly, gathered his hat and coat, and left the box.  When
he reached the gallery he turned instinctively and looked back at
the royal box.  Her eyes had followed him, and as he remained a
moment motionless in the doorway her lips parted in a grateful
smile, and she waved her fan with a faint but unmistakable gesture
of farewell.

The next morning he left Alstadt.  There was some little delay at
the Zoll on the frontier, and when Hoffman received back his trunk
it was accompanied by a little sealed packet which was handed to
him by the Customhouse Inspector.  Hoffman did not open it until he
was alone.


There hangs upon the wall of his modest apartment in New York a
narrow, irregular photograph ingeniously framed, of himself
standing side by side with a young German girl, who, in the
estimation of his compatriots, is by no means stylish and only
passably good-looking.  When he is joked by his friends about the
post of honor given to this production, and questioned as to the
lady, he remains silent.  The Princess Alexandrine Elsbeth Marie
Stephanie von Westphalen-Alstadt, among her other royal qualities,
knew whom to trust.



THE DEVOTION OF ENRIQUEZ


In another chronicle which dealt with the exploits of "Chu Chu," a
Californian mustang, I gave some space to the accomplishments of
Enriquez Saltillo, who assisted me in training her, and who was
also brother to Consuelo Saitillo, the young lady to whom I had
freely given both the mustang and my youthful affections.  I
consider it a proof of the superiority of masculine friendship that
neither the subsequent desertion of the mustang nor that of the
young lady ever made the slightest difference to Enriquez or me in
our exalted amity.  To a wondering doubt as to what I ever could
possibly have seen in his sister to admire he joined a tolerant
skepticism of the whole sex.  This he was wont to express in that
marvelous combination of Spanish precision and California slang for
which he was justly famous.  "As to thees women and their little
game," he would say, "believe me, my friend, your old Oncle 'Enry
is not in it.  No; he will ever take a back seat when lofe is
around.  For why?  Regard me here!  If she is a horse, you shall
say, 'She will buck-jump,' 'She will ess-shy,' 'She will not
arrive,' or 'She will arrive too quick.'  But if it is thees women,
where are you?  For when you shall say, 'She will ess-shy,' look
you, she will walk straight; or she will remain tranquil when you
think she buck-jump; or else she will arrive and, look you, you
will not.  You shall get left.  It is ever so.  My father and the
brother of my father have both make court to my mother when she was
but a senorita.  My father think she have lofe his brother more.
So he say to her: 'It is enofe; tranquillize yourself.  I will go.
I will efface myself.  Adios!  Shake hands!  Ta-ta!  So long!  See
you again in the fall.'  And what make my mother?  Regard me!  She
marry my father--on the instant!  Of thees women, believe me,
Pancho, you shall know nothing.  Not even if they shall make you
the son of your father or his nephew."

I have recalled this characteristic speech to show the general
tendency of Enriquez' convictions at the opening of this little
story.  It is only fair to say, however, that his usual attitude
toward the sex he so cheerfully maligned exhibited little
apprehension or caution in dealing with them.  Among the frivolous
and light-minded intermixture of his race he moved with great
freedom and popularity.  He danced well; when we went to fandangos
together his agility and the audacity of his figures always
procured him the prettiest partners, his professed sentiments, I
presume, shielding him from subsequent jealousies, heartburnings,
or envy.  I have a vivid recollection of him in the mysteries of
the SEMICUACUA, a somewhat corybantic dance which left much to the
invention of the performers, and very little to the imagination of
the spectator.  In one of the figures a gaudy handkerchief, waved
more or less gracefully by dancer and danseuse before the dazzled
eyes of each other, acted as love's signal, and was used to express
alternate admiration and indifference, shyness and audacity, fear
and transport, coyness and coquetry, as the dance proceeded.  I
need not say that Enriquez' pantomimic illustration of these
emotions was peculiarly extravagant; but it was always performed
and accepted with a gravity that was an essential feature of the
dance.  At such times sighs would escape him which were supposed to
portray the incipient stages of passion; snorts of jealousy burst
from him at the suggestion of a rival; he was overtaken by a sort
of St. Vitus's dance that expressed his timidity in making the
first advances of affection; the scorn of his ladylove struck him
with something like a dumb ague; and a single gesture of invitation
from her produced marked delirium.  All this was very like
Enriquez; but on the particular occasion to which I refer, I think
no one was prepared to see him begin the figure with the waving of
FOUR handkerchiefs!  Yet this he did, pirouetting, capering,
brandishing his silken signals like a ballerina's scarf in the
languishment or fire of passion, until, in a final figure, where
the conquered and submitting fair one usually sinks into the arms
of her partner, need it be said that the ingenious Enriquez was
found in the center of the floor supporting four of the dancers!
Yet he was by no means unduly excited either by the plaudits of the
crowd or by his evident success with the fair.  "Ah, believe me, it
is nothing," he said quietly, rolling a fresh cigarette as he
leaned against the doorway.  "Possibly, I shall have to offer the
chocolate or the wine to thees girls, or make to them a promenade
in the moonlight on the veranda.  It is ever so.  Unless, my
friend," he said, suddenly turning toward me in an excess of
chivalrous self-abnegation, "unless you shall yourself take my
place.  Behold, I gif them to you!  I vamos!  I vanish!  I make
track!  I skedaddle!"  I think he would have carried his
extravagance to the point of summoning his four gypsy witches of
partners, and committing them to my care, if the crowd had not at
that moment parted before the remaining dancers, and left one of
the onlookers, a tall, slender girl, calmly surveying them through
gold-rimmed eyeglasses in complete critical absorption.  I stared
in amazement and consternation; for I recognized in the fair
stranger Miss Urania Mannersley, the Congregational minister's
niece!

Everybody knew Rainie Mannersley throughout the length and breadth
of the Encinal.  She was at once the envy and the goad of the
daughters of those Southwestern and Eastern immigrants who had
settled in the valley.  She was correct, she was critical, she was
faultless and observant.  She was proper, yet independent; she was
highly educated; she was suspected of knowing Latin and Greek; she
even spelled correctly!  She could wither the plainest field
nosegay in the hands of other girls by giving the flowers their
botanical names.  She never said "Ain't you?" but "Aren't you?"
She looked upon "Did I which?" as an incomplete and imperfect form
of "What did I do?"  She quoted from Browning and Tennyson, and was
believed to have read them.  She was from Boston.  What could she
possibly be doing at a free-and-easy fandango?

Even if these facts were not already familiar to everyone there,
her outward appearance would have attracted attention.  Contrasted
with the gorgeous red, black, and yellow skirts of the dancers, her
plain, tightly fitting gown and hat, all of one delicate gray, were
sufficiently notable in themselves, even had they not seemed, like
the girl herself, a kind of quiet protest to the glaring flounces
before her.  Her small, straight waist and flat back brought into
greater relief the corsetless, waistless, swaying figures of the
Mexican girls, and her long, slim, well-booted feet, peeping from
the stiff, white edges of her short skirt, made their broad, low-
quartered slippers, held on by the big toe, appear more
preposterous than ever.  Suddenly she seemed to realize that she
was standing there alone, but without fear or embarrassment.  She
drew back a little, glancing carelessly behind her as if missing
some previous companion, and then her eyes fell upon mine.  She
smiled an easy recognition; then a moment later, her glance rested
more curiously upon Enriquez, who was still by my side.  I
disengaged myself and instantly joined her, particularly as I
noticed that a few of the other bystanders were beginning to stare
at her with little reserve.

"Isn't it the most extraordinary thing you ever saw?" she said
quietly.  Then, presently noticing the look of embarrassment on my
face, she went on, more by way of conversation than of explanation:

"I just left uncle making a call on a parishioner next door, and
was going home with Jocasta (a peon servant of her uncle's), when I
heard the music, and dropped in.  I don't know what has become of
her," she added, glancing round the room again; "she seemed
perfectly wild when she saw that creature over there bounding about
with his handkerchiefs.  You were speaking to him just now.  Do
tell me--is he real?"

"I should think there was little doubt of that," I said with a
vague laugh.

"You know what I mean," she said simply.  "Is he quite sane?  Does
he do that because he likes it, or is he paid for it?"

This was too much.  I pointed out somewhat hurriedly that he was a
scion of one of the oldest Castilian families, that the performance
was a national gypsy dance which he had joined in as a patriot and
a patron, and that he was my dearest friend.  At the same time I
was conscious that I wished she hadn't seen his last performance.

"You don't mean to say that all that he did was in the dance?" she
said.  "I don't believe it.  It was only like him."  As I hesitated
over this palpable truth, she went on: "I do wish he'd do it again.
Don't you think you could make him?"

"Perhaps he might if YOU asked him," I said a little maliciously.

"Of course I shouldn't do that," she returned quietly.  "All the
same, I do believe he is really going to do it--or something else.
Do look!"

I looked, and to my horror saw that Enriquez, possibly incited by
the delicate gold eyeglasses of Miss Mannersley, had divested
himself of his coat, and was winding the four handkerchiefs, tied
together, picturesquely around his waist, preparatory to some new
performance.  I tried furtively to give him a warning look, but in
vain.

"Isn't he really too absurd for anything?" said Miss Mannersley,
yet with a certain comfortable anticipation in her voice.  "You
know, I never saw anything like this before.  I wouldn't have
believed such a creature could have existed."

Even had I succeeded in warning him, I doubt if it would have been
of any avail.  For, seizing a guitar from one of the musicians, he
struck a few chords, and suddenly began to zigzag into the center
of the floor, swaying his body languishingly from side to side in
time with the music and the pitch of a thin Spanish tenor.  It was
a gypsy love song.  Possibly Miss Mannersley's lingual
accomplishments did not include a knowledge of Castilian, but she
could not fail to see that the gestures and illustrative pantomime
were addressed to her.  Passionately assuring her that she was the
most favored daughter of the Virgin, that her eyes were like votive
tapers, and yet in the same breath accusing her of being a
"brigand" and "assassin" in her attitude toward "his heart," he
balanced with quivering timidity toward her, threw an imaginary
cloak in front of her neat boots as a carpet for her to tread on,
and with a final astonishing pirouette and a languishing twang of
his guitar, sank on one knee, and blew, with a rose, a kiss at her
feet.

If I had been seriously angry with him before for his grotesque
extravagance, I could have pitied him now for the young girl's
absolute unconsciousness of anything but his utter ludicrousness.
The applause of dancers and bystanders was instantaneous and
hearty; her only contribution to it was a slight parting of her
thin red lips in a half-incredulous smile.  In the silence that
followed the applause, as Enriquez walked pantingly away, I heard
her saying, half to herself, "Certainly a most extraordinary
creature!"  In my indignation I could not help turning suddenly
upon her and looking straight into her eyes.  They were brown, with
that peculiar velvet opacity common to the pupils of nearsighted
persons, and seemed to defy internal scrutiny.  She only repeated
carelessly, "Isn't he?" and added: "Please see if you can find
Jocasta.  I suppose we ought to be going now; and I dare say he
won't be doing it again.  Ah! there she is.  Good gracious, child!
what have you got there?"

It was Enriquez' rose which Jocasta had picked up, and was timidly
holding out toward her mistress.

"Heavens! I don't want it.  Keep it yourself."

I walked with them to the door, as I did not fancy a certain
glitter in the black eyes of the Senoritas Manuela and Pepita, who
were watching her curiously.  But I think she was as oblivious of
this as she was of Enriquez' particular attentions.  As we reached
the street I felt that I ought to say something more.

"You know," I began casually, "that although those poor people meet
here in this public way, their gathering is really quite a homely
pastoral and a national custom; and these girls are all honest,
hardworking peons or servants enjoying themselves in quite the old
idyllic fashion."

"Certainly," said the young girl, half-abstractedly.  "Of course
it's a Moorish dance, originally brought over, I suppose, by those
old Andalusian immigrants two hundred years ago.  It's quite Arabic
in its suggestions.  I have got something like it in an old
CANCIONERO I picked up at a bookstall in Boston.  But," she added,
with a gasp of reminiscent satisfaction, "that's not like HIM!  Oh,
no! HE is decidedly original.  Heavens! yes."

I turned away in some discomfiture to join Enriquez, who was calmly
awaiting me, with a cigarette in his mouth, outside the sala.  Yet
he looked so unconscious of any previous absurdity that I hesitated
in what I thought was a necessary warning.  He, however, quickly
precipitated it.  Glancing after the retreating figures of the two
women, he said: "Thees mees from Boston is return to her house.
You do not accompany her?  I shall.  Behold me--I am there."  But I
linked my arm firmly in his.  Then I pointed out, first, that she
was already accompanied by a servant; secondly, that if I, who knew
her, had hesitated to offer myself as an escort, it was hardly
proper for him, a perfect stranger, to take that liberty; that Miss
Mannersley was very punctilious of etiquette, which he, as a
Castilian gentleman, ought to appreciate.

"But will she not regard lofe--the admiration excessif?" he said,
twirling his thin little mustache meditatively.

"No; she will not," I returned sharply; "and you ought to
understand that she is on a different level from your Manuelas and
Carmens."

"Pardon, my friend," he said gravely; "thees women are ever the
same.  There is a proverb in my language.  Listen: 'Whether the
sharp blade of the Toledo pierce the satin or the goatskin, it
shall find behind it ever the same heart to wound.'  I am that
Toledo blade--possibly it is you, my friend.  Wherefore, let us
together pursue this girl of Boston on the instant."

But I kept my grasp on Enriquez' arm, and succeeded in restraining
his mercurial impulses for the moment.  He halted, and puffed
vigorously at his cigarette; but the next instant he started
forward again.  "Let us, however, follow with discretion in the
rear; we shall pass her house; we shall gaze at it; it shall touch
her heart."

Ridiculous as was this following of the young girl we had only just
parted from, I nevertheless knew that Enriquez was quite capable of
attempting it alone, and I thought it better to humor him by
consenting to walk with him in that direction; but I felt it
necessary to say:

"I ought to warn you that Miss Mannersley already looks upon your
performances at the sala as something outre and peculiar, and if I
were you I shouldn't do anything to deepen that impression."

"You are saying she ees shock?" said Enriquez, gravely.

I felt I could not conscientiously say that she was shocked, and he
saw my hesitation.  "Then she have jealousy of the senoritas," he
observed, with insufferable complacency.  "You observe!  I have
already said.  It is ever so."

I could stand it no longer.  "Look here, Harry," I said, "if you
must know it, she looks upon you as an acrobat--a paid performer."

"Ah!"--his black eyes sparkled--"the torero, the man who fights the
bull, he is also an acrobat."

"Yes; but she thinks you a clown!--a GRACIOSO DE TEATRO--there!"

"Then I have make her laugh?" he said coolly.

I don't think he had; but I shrugged my shoulders.

"BUENO!" he said cheerfully.  "Lofe, he begin with a laugh, he make
feenish with a sigh."

I turned to look at him in the moonlight.  His face presented its
habitual Spanish gravity--a gravity that was almost ironical.  His
small black eyes had their characteristic irresponsible audacity--
the irresponsibility of the vivacious young animal.  It could not
be possible that he was really touched with the placid frigidities
of Miss Mannersley.  I remembered his equally elastic gallantries
with Miss Pinkey Smith, a blonde Western belle, from which both had
harmlessly rebounded.  As we walked on slowly I continued more
persuasively: "Of course this is only your nonsense; but don't you
see, Miss Mannersley thinks it all in earnest and really your
nature?"  I hesitated, for it suddenly struck me that it WAS really
his nature.  "And--hang it all!--you don't want her to believe you
a common buffoon., or some intoxicated muchacho."

"Intoxicated?" repeated Enriquez, with exasperating languishment.
"Yes; that is the word that shall express itself.  My friend, you
have made a shot in the center--you have ring the bell every time!
It is intoxication--but not of aguardiente.  Look!  I have long
time an ancestor of whom is a pretty story.  One day in church he
have seen a young girl--a mere peasant girl--pass to the
confessional.  He look her in her eye, he stagger"--here Enriquez
wobbled pantomimically into the road--"he fall!"--he would have
suited the action to the word if I had not firmly held him up.
"They have taken him home, where he have remain without his
clothes, and have dance and sing.  But it was the drunkenness of
lofe.  And, look you, thees village girl was a nothing, not even
pretty.  The name of my ancestor was--"

"Don Quixote de La Mancha," I suggested maliciously.  "I suspected
as much.  Come along.  That will do."

"My ancestor's name," continued Enriquez, gravely, "was Antonio
Hermenegildo de Salvatierra, which is not the same.  Thees Don
Quixote of whom you speak exist not at all."

"Never mind.  Only, for heaven's sake, as we are nearing the house,
don't make a fool of yourself again."

It was a wonderful moonlight night.  The deep redwood porch of the
Mannersley parsonage, under the shadow of a great oak--the largest
in the Encinal--was diapered in black and silver.  As the women
stepped upon the porch their shadows were silhouetted against the
door.  Miss Mannersley paused for an instant, and turned to give a
last look at the beauty of the night as Jocasta entered.  Her
glance fell upon us as we passed.  She nodded carelessly and
unaffectedly to me, but as she recognized Enriquez she looked a
little longer at him with her previous cold and invincible
curiosity.  To my horror Enriquez began instantly to affect a
slight tremulousness of gait and a difficulty of breathing; but I
gripped his arm savagely, and managed to get him past the house as
the door closed finally on the young lady.

"You do not comprehend, friend Pancho," he said gravely, "but those
eyes in their glass are as the ESPEJO USTORIO, the burning mirror.
They burn, they consume me here like paper.  Let us affix to
ourselves thees tree.  She will, without doubt, appear at her
window.  We shall salute her for good night."

"We will do nothing of the kind," I said sharply.  Finding that I
was determined, he permitted me to lead him away.  I was delighted
to notice, however, that he had indicated the window which I knew
was the minister's study, and that as the bedrooms were in the rear
of the house, this later incident was probably not overseen by the
young lady or the servant.  But I did not part from Enriquez until
I saw him safely back to the sala, where I left him sipping
chocolate, his arm alternating around the waists of his two
previous partners in a delightful Arcadian and childlike
simplicity, and an apparent utter forgetfulness of Miss Mannersley.

The fandangos were usually held on Saturday night, and the next
day, being Sunday, 1 missed Enriquez; but as he was a devout
Catholic I remembered that he was at mass in the morning, and
possibly at the bullfight at San Antonio in the afternoon.  But I
was somewhat surprised on the Monday morning following, as I was
crossing the plaza, to have my arm taken by the Rev. Mr. Mannersley
in the nearest approach to familiarity that was consistent with the
reserve of this eminent divine.  I looked at him inquiringly.
Although scrupulously correct in attire, his features always had a
singular resemblance to the national caricature known as "Uncle
Sam," but with the humorous expression left out.  Softly stroking
his goatee with three fingers, he began condescendingly: "You are,
I think, more or less familiar with the characteristics and customs
of the Spanish as exhibited by the settlers here."  A thrill of
apprehension went through me.  Had he heard of Enriquez'
proceedings?  Had Miss Mannersley cruelly betrayed him to her
uncle?  "I have not given that attention myself to their language
and social peculiarities," he continued, with a large wave of the
hand, "being much occupied with a study of their religious beliefs
and superstitions"--it struck me that this was apt to be a common
fault of people of the Mannersley type--"but I have refrained from
a personal discussion of them; on the contrary, I have held
somewhat broad views on the subject of their remarkable missionary
work, and have suggested a scheme of co-operation with them, quite
independent of doctrinal teaching, to my brethren of other
Protestant Christian sects.  These views I first incorporated in a
sermon last Sunday week, which I am told has created considerable
attention."  He stopped and coughed slightly.  "I have not yet
heard from any of the Roman clergy, but I am led to believe that my
remarks were not ungrateful to Catholics generally."

I was relieved, although still in some wonder why he should address
me on this topic.  I had a vague remembrance of having heard that
he had said something on Sunday which had offended some Puritans of
his flock, but nothing more.  He continued: "I have just said that
I was unacquainted with the characteristics of the Spanish-American
race.  I presume, however, they have the impulsiveness of their
Latin origin.  They gesticulate--eh?  They express their gratitude,
their joy, their affection, their emotions generally, by spasmodic
movements?  They naturally dance--sing--eh?"  A horrible suspicion
crossed my mind; I could only stare helplessly at him.  "I see," he
said graciously; "perhaps it is a somewhat general question.  I
will explain myself.  A rather singular occurrence happened to me
the other night.  I had returned from visiting a parishioner, and
was alone in my study reviewing my sermon for the next day.  It
must have been quite late before I concluded, for I distinctly
remember my niece had returned with her servant fully an hour
before.  Presently I heard the sounds of a musical instrument in
the road, with the accents of someone singing or rehearsing some
metrical composition in words that, although couched in a language
foreign to me, in expression and modulation gave me the impression
of being distinctly adulatory.  For some little time, in the
greater preoccupation of my task, I paid little attention to the
performance; but its persistency at length drew me in no mere idle
curiosity to the window.  From thence, standing in my dressing-
gown, and believing myself unperceived, I noticed under the large
oak in the roadside the figure of a young man who, by the imperfect
light, appeared to be of Spanish extraction.  But I evidently
miscalculated my own invisibility; for he moved rapidly forward as
I came to the window, and in a series of the most extraordinary
pantomimic gestures saluted me.  Beyond my experience of a few
Greek plays in earlier days, I confess I am not an adept in the
understanding of gesticulation; but it struck me that the various
phases of gratitude, fervor, reverence, and exaltation were
successively portrayed.  He placed his hands upon his head, his
heart, and even clasped them together in this manner."  To my
consternation the reverend gentleman here imitated Enriquez' most
extravagant pantomime.  "I am willing to confess," he continued,
"that I was singularly moved by them, as well as by the highly
creditable and Christian interest that evidently produced them.  At
last I opened the window.  Leaning out, I told him that I regretted
that the lateness of the hour prevented any further response from
me than a grateful though hurried acknowledgment of his
praiseworthy emotion, but that I should be glad to see him for a
few moments in the vestry before service the next day, or at early
candlelight, before the meeting of the Bible class.  I told him
that as my sole purpose had been the creation of an evangelical
brotherhood and the exclusion of merely doctrinal views, nothing
could be more gratifying to me than his spontaneous and unsolicited
testimony to my motives.  He appeared for an instant to be deeply
affected, and, indeed, quite overcome with emotion, and then
gracefully retired, with some agility and a slight saltatory
movement."

He paused.  A sudden and overwhelming idea took possession of me,
and I looked impulsively into his face.  Was it possible that for
once Enriquez' ironical extravagance had been understood, met, and
vanquished by a master hand?  But the Rev. Mr. Mannersley's self-
satisfied face betrayed no ambiguity or lurking humor.  He was
evidently in earnest; he had complacently accepted for himself the
abandoned Enriquez' serenade to his niece.  I felt a hysterical
desire to laugh, but it was checked by my companion's next words.

"I informed my niece of the occurrence in the morning at breakfast.
She had not heard anything of the strange performance, but she
agreed with me as to its undoubted origin in a grateful recognition
of my liberal efforts toward his coreligionists.  It was she, in
fact, who suggested that your knowledge of these people might
corroborate my impressions."

I was dumfounded.  Had Miss Mannersley, who must have recognized
Enriquez' hand in this, concealed the fact in a desire to shield
him?  But this was so inconsistent with her utter indifference to
him, except as a grotesque study, that she would have been more
likely to tell her uncle all about his previous performance.  Nor
could it be that she wished to conceal her visit to the fandango.
She was far too independent for that, and it was even possible that
the reverend gentleman, in his desire to know more of Enriquez'
compatriots, would not have objected.  In my confusion I meekly
added my conviction to hers, congratulated him upon his evident
success, and slipped away.  But I was burning with a desire to see
Enriquez and know all.  He was imaginative but not untruthful.
Unfortunately, I learned that he was just then following one of his
erratic impulses, and had gone to a rodeo at his cousin's, in the
foothills, where he was alternately exercising his horsemanship in
catching and breaking wild cattle and delighting his relatives with
his incomparable grasp of the American language and customs, and of
the airs of a young man of fashion.  Then my thoughts recurred to
Miss Mannersley.  Had she really been oblivious that night to
Enriquez' serenade?  I resolved to find out, if I could, without
betraying Enriquez.  Indeed, it was possible, after all, that it
might not have been he.

Chance favored me.  The next evening I was at a party where Miss
Mannersley, by reason of her position and quality, was a
distinguished--I had almost written a popular--guest.  But, as I
have formerly stated, although the youthful fair of the Encinal
were flattered by her casual attentions, and secretly admired her
superior style and aristocratic calm, they were more or less uneasy
under the dominance of her intelligence and education, and were
afraid to attempt either confidence or familiarity.  They were also
singularly jealous of her, for although the average young man was
equally afraid of her cleverness and her candor, he was not above
paying a tremulous and timid court to her for its effect upon her
humbler sisters.  This evening she was surrounded by her usual
satellites, including, of course, the local notables and special
guests of distinction.  She had been discussing, I think, the
existence of glaciers on Mount Shasta with a spectacled geologist,
and had participated with charming frankness in a conversation on
anatomy with the local doctor and a learned professor, when she was
asked to take a seat at the piano.  She played with remarkable
skill and wonderful precision, but coldly and brilliantly.  As she
sat there in her subdued but perfectly fitting evening dress, her
regular profile and short but slender neck firmly set upon her high
shoulders, exhaling an atmosphere of refined puritanism and
provocative intelligence, the utter incongruity of Enriquez'
extravagant attentions if ironical, and their equal hopelessness if
not, seemed to me plainer than ever.  What had this well-poised,
coldly observant spinster to do with that quaintly ironic ruffler,
that romantic cynic, that rowdy Don Quixote, that impossible
Enriquez?  Presently she ceased playing.  Her slim, narrow slipper,
revealing her thin ankle, remained upon the pedal; her delicate
fingers were resting idly on the keys; her head was slightly thrown
back, and her narrow eyebrows prettily knit toward the ceiling in
an effort of memory.

"Something of Chopin's," suggested the geologist, ardently.

"That exquisite sonata!" pleaded the doctor.

 "Suthin' of Rubinstein.  Heard him once," said a gentleman of
Siskiyou.  "He just made that pianner get up and howl.  Play Rube."

She shook her head with parted lips and a slight touch of girlish
coquetry in her manner.  Then her fingers suddenly dropped upon the
keys with a glassy tinkle; there were a few quick pizzicato chords,
down went the low pedal with a monotonous strumming, and she
presently began to hum to herself.  I started--as well I might--for
I recognized one of Enriquez' favorite and most extravagant guitar
solos.  It was audacious; it was barbaric; it was, I fear, vulgar.
As I remembered it--as he sang it--it recounted the adventures of
one Don Francisco, a provincial gallant and roisterer of the most
objectionable type.  It had one hundred and four verses, which
Enriquez never spared me.  I shuddered as in a pleasant, quiet
voice the correct Miss Mannersley warbled in musical praise of the
PELLEJO, or wineskin, and a eulogy of the dicebox came caressingly
from her thin red lips.  But the company was far differently
affected: the strange, wild air and wilder accompaniment were
evidently catching; people moved toward the piano; somebody
whistled the air from a distant corner; even the faces of the
geologist and doctor brightened.

"A tarantella, I presume?" blandly suggested the doctor.

Miss Mannersley stopped, and rose carelessly from the piano.  "It
is a Moorish gypsy song of the fifteenth century," she said dryly.

"It seemed sorter familiar, too," hesitated one of the young men,
timidly, "like as if--don't you know?--you had without knowing it,
don't you know?"--he blushed slightly--"sorter picked it up
somewhere."

"I 'picked it up,' as you call it, in the collection of medieval
manuscripts of the Harvard Library, and copied it," returned Miss
Mannersley coldly as she turned away.

But I was not inclined to let her off so easily.  I presently made
my way to her side.  "Your uncle was complimentary enough to
consult me as to the meaning of the appearance of a certain
exuberant Spanish visitor at his house the other night."  I looked
into her brown eyes, but my own slipped off her velvety pupils
without retaining anything.  Then she reinforced her gaze with a
pince-nez, and said carelessly:

"Oh, it's you?  How are you?  Well, could you give him any
information?"

"Only generally," I returned, still looking into her eyes.  "These
people are impulsive.  The Spanish blood is a mixture of gold and
quicksilver."

She smiled slightly.  "That reminds me of your volatile friend.  He
was mercurial enough, certainly.  Is he still dancing?"

"And singing sometimes," I responded pointedly.  But she only added
casually, "A singular creature," without exhibiting the least
consciousness, and drifted away, leaving me none the wiser.  I felt
that Enriquez alone could enlighten me.  I must see him.

I did, but not in the way I expected.  There was a bullfight at San
Antonio the next Saturday afternoon, the usual Sunday performance
being changed in deference to the Sabbatical habits of the
Americans.  An additional attraction was offered in the shape of a
bull-and-bear fight, also a concession to American taste, which had
voted the bullfight "slow," and had averred that the bull "did not
get a fair show."  I am glad that I am able to spare the reader the
usual realistic horrors, for in the Californian performances there
was very little of the brutality that distinguished this function
in the mother country.  The horses were not miserable, worn-out
hacks, but young and alert mustangs; and the display of
horsemanship by the picadors was not only wonderful, but secured an
almost absolute safety to horse and rider.  I never saw a horse
gored; although unskillful riders were sometimes thrown in wheeling
quickly to avoid the bull's charge, they generally regained their
animals without injury.

The Plaza de Toros was reached through the decayed and tile-strewn
outskirts of an old Spanish village.  It was a rudely built oval
amphitheater, with crumbling, whitewashed adobe walls, and roofed
only over portions of the gallery reserved for the provincial
"notables," but now occupied by a few shopkeepers and their wives,
with a sprinkling of American travelers and ranchmen.  The
impalpable adobe dust of the arena was being whirled into the air
by the strong onset of the afternoon trade winds, which happily,
however, helped also to dissipate a reek of garlic, and the acrid
fumes of cheap tobacco rolled in cornhusk cigarettes.  I was
leaning over the second barrier, waiting for the meager and
circuslike procession to enter with the keys of the bull pen, when
my attention was attracted to a movement in the reserved gallery.
A lady and gentleman of a quality that was evidently unfamiliar to
the rest of the audience were picking their way along the rickety
benches to a front seat.  I recognized the geologist with some
surprise, and the lady he was leading with still greater
astonishment.  For it was Miss Mannersley, in her precise, well-
fitting walking-costume--a monotone of sober color among the parti-
colored audience.

However, I was perhaps less surprised than the audience, for I was
not only becoming as accustomed to the young girl's vagaries as I
had been to Enriquez' extravagance, but I was also satisfied that
her uncle might have given her permission to come, as a recognition
of the Sunday concession of the management, as well as to
conciliate his supposed Catholic friends.  I watched her sitting
there until the first bull had entered, and, after a rather brief
play with the picadors and banderilleros, was dispatched.  At the
moment when the matador approached the bull with his lethal weapon
I was not sorry for an excuse to glance at Miss Mannersley.  Her
hands were in her lap, her head slightly bent forward over her
knees.  I fancied that she, too, had dropped her eyes before the
brutal situation; to my horror, I saw that she had a drawing-book
in her hand and was actually sketching it.  I turned my eyes in
preference to the dying bull.

The second animal led out for this ingenious slaughter was,
however, more sullen, uncertain, and discomposing to his butchers.
He accepted the irony of a trial with gloomy, suspicious eyes, and
he declined the challenge of whirling and insulting picadors.  He
bristled with banderillas like a hedgehog, but remained with his
haunches backed against the barrier, at times almost hidden in the
fine dust raised by the monotonous stroke of his sullenly pawing
hoof--his one dull, heavy protest.  A vague uneasiness had infected
his adversaries; the picadors held aloof, the banderilleros
skirmished at a safe distance.  The audience resented only the
indecision of the bull.  Galling epithets were flung at him,
followed by cries of "ESPADA!" and, curving his elbow under his
short cloak, the matador, with his flashing blade in hand, advanced
and--stopped.  The bull remained motionless.

For at that moment a heavier gust of wind than usual swept down
upon the arena, lifted a suffocating cloud of dust, and whirled it
around the tiers of benches and the balcony, and for a moment
seemed to stop the performance.  I heard an exclamation from the
geologist, who had risen to his feet.  I fancied I heard even a
faint cry from Miss Mannersley; but the next moment, as the dust
was slowly settling, we saw a sheet of paper in the air, that had
been caught up in this brief cyclone, dropping, dipping from side
to side on uncertain wings, until it slowly descended in the very
middle of the arena.  It was a leaf from Miss Mannersley's
sketchbook, the one on which she had been sketching.

In the pause that followed it seemed to be the one object that at
last excited the bull's growing but tardy ire.  He glanced at it
with murky, distended eyes; he snorted at it with vague yet
troubled fury.  Whether he detected his own presentment in Miss
Mannersley's sketch, or whether he recognized it as an unknown and
unfamiliar treachery in his surroundings, I could not conjecture;
for the next moment the matador, taking advantage of the bull's
concentration, with a complacent leer at the audience, advanced
toward the paper.  But at that instant a young man cleared the
barrier into the arena with a single bound, shoved the matador to
one side, caught up the paper, turned toward the balcony and Miss
Mannersley with a gesture of apology, dropped gaily before the
bull, knelt down before him with an exaggerated humility, and held
up the drawing as if for his inspection.  A roar of applause broke
from the audience, a cry of warning and exasperation from the
attendants, as the goaded bull suddenly charged the stranger.  But
he sprang to one side with great dexterity, made a courteous
gesture to the matador as if passing the bull over to him, and
still holding the paper in his hand, re-leaped the barrier, and
rejoined the audience in safety.  I did not wait to see the deadly,
dominant thrust with which the matador received the charging bull;
my eyes were following the figure now bounding up the steps to the
balcony, where with an exaggerated salutation he laid the drawing
in Miss Mannersley's lap and vanished.  There was no mistaking that
thin lithe form, the narrow black mustache, and gravely dancing
eyes.  The audacity of conception, the extravagance of execution,
the quaint irony of the sequel, could belong to no one but
Enriquez.

I hurried up to her as the six yoked mules dragged the carcass of
the bull away.  She was placidly putting up her book, the unmoved
focus of a hundred eager and curious eyes.  She smiled slightly as
she saw me.  "I was just telling Mr. Briggs what an extraordinary
creature it was, and how you knew him.  He must have had great
experience to do that sort of thing so cleverly and safely.  Does
he do it often?  Of course, not just that.  But does he pick up
cigars and things that I see they throw to the matador?  Does he
belong to the management?  Mr. Briggs thinks the whole thing was a
feint to distract the bull," she added, with a wicked glance at the
geologist, who, I fancied, looked disturbed.

"I am afraid," I said dryly, "that his act was as unpremeditated
and genuine as it was unusual."

"Why afraid?"

It was a matter-of-fact question, but I instantly saw my mistake.
What right had I to assume that Enriquez' attentions were any more
genuine than her own easy indifference; and if I suspected that
they were, was it fair in me to give my friend away to this
heartless coquette?  "You are not very gallant," she said, with a
slight laugh, as I was hesitating, and turned away with her escort
before I could frame a reply.  But at least Enriquez was now
accessible, and I should gain some information from him.  I knew
where to find him, unless he were still lounging about the
building, intent upon more extravagance; but I waited until I saw
Miss Mannersley and Briggs depart without further interruption.

The hacienda of Ramon Saltillo, Enriquez' cousin, was on the
outskirts of the village.  When I arrived there I found Enriquez'
pinto mustang steaming in the corral, and although I was
momentarily delayed by the servants at the gateway, I was surprised
to find Enriquez himself lying languidly on his back in a hammock
in the patio.  His arms were hanging down listlessly on each side
as if in the greatest prostration, yet I could not resist the
impression that the rascal had only just got into the hammock when
he heard of my arrival.

"You have arrived, friend Pancho, in time," he said, in accents of
exaggerated weakness.  "I am absolutely exhaust.  I am bursted,
caved in, kerflummoxed.  I have behold you, my friend, at the
barrier.  I speak not, I make no sign at the first, because I was
on fire; I speak not at the feenish--for I am exhaust."

"I see; the bull made it lively for you."

He instantly bounded up in the hammock.  "The bull!  Caramba!  Not
a thousand bulls!  And thees one, look you, was a craven.  I snap
my fingers over his horn; I roll my cigarette under his nose."

"Well, then--what was it?"

He instantly lay down again, pulling up the sides of the hammock.
Presently his voice came from its depths, appealing in hollow tones
to the sky.  "He asks me--thees friend of my soul, thees brother of
my life, thees Pancho that I lofe--what it was?  He would that I
should tell him why I am game in the legs, why I shake in the hand,
crack in the voice, and am generally wipe out!  And yet he, my
pardner--thees Francisco--know that I have seen the mees from
Boston!  That I have gaze into the eye, touch the hand, and for the
instant possess the picture that hand have drawn!  It was a sublime
picture, Pancho," he said, sitting up again suddenly, "and have
kill the bull before our friend Pepe's sword have touch even the
bone of hees back and make feenish of him."

"Look here, Enriquez," I said bluntly, "have you been serenading
that girl?"

He shrugged his shoulders without the least embarrassment, and
said: "Ah, yes.  What would you?  It is of a necessity."

"Well," I retored, "then you ought to know that her uncle took it
all to himself--thought you some grateful Catholic pleased with his
religious tolerance."

He did not even smile.  "BUENO," he said gravely.  "That make
something, too.  In thees affair it is well to begin with the
duenna.  He is the duenna."

"And," I went on relentlessly, "her escort told her just now that
your exploit in the bull ring was only a trick to divert the bull,
suggested by the management."

"Bah! her escort is a geologian.  Naturally, she is to him as a
stone."

I would have continued, but a peon interrupted us at this moment
with a sign to Enriquez, who leaped briskly from the hammock,
bidding me wait his return from a messenger in the gateway.

Still unsatisfied of mind, I waited, and sat down in the hammock
that Enriquez had quitted.  A scrap of paper was lying in its
meshes, which at first appeared to be of the kind from which
Enriquez rolled his cigarettes; but as I picked it up to throw it
away, I found it was of much firmer and stouter material.  Looking
at it more closely, I was surprised to recognize it as a piece of
the tinted drawing-paper torn off the "block" that Miss Mannersley
had used.  It had been deeply creased at right angles as if it had
been folded; it looked as if it might have been the outer half of a
sheet used for a note.

It might have been a trifling circumstance, but it greatly excited
my curiosity.  I knew that he had returned the sketch to Miss
Mannersley, for I had seen it in her hand.  Had she given him
another?  And if so, why had it been folded to the destruction of
the drawing?  Or was it part of a note which he had destroyed?  In
the first impulse of discovery I walked quickly with it toward the
gateway where Enriquez had disappeared, intending to restore it to
him.  He was just outside talking with a young girl.  I started,
for it was Jocasta--Miss Mannersley's maid.

With this added discovery came that sense of uneasiness and
indignation with which we illogically are apt to resent the
withholding of a friend's confidence, even in matters concerning
only himself.  It was no use for me to reason that it was no
business of mine, that he was right in keeping a secret that
concerned another--and a lady; but I was afraid I was even more
meanly resentful because the discovery quite upset my theory of his
conduct and of Miss Mannersley's attitude toward him.  I continued
to walk on to the gateway, where I bade Enriquez a hurried good-by,
alleging the sudden remembrance of another engagement, but without
appearing to recognize the girl, who was moving away when, to my
further discomfiture, the rascal stopped me with an appealing wink,
threw his arms around my neck, whispered hoarsely in my ear, "Ah!
you see--you comprehend--but you are the mirror of discretion!" and
returned to Jocasta.  But whether this meant that he had received a
message from Miss Mannersley, or that he was trying to suborn her
maid to carry one, was still uncertain.  He was capable of either.
During the next two or three weeks I saw him frequently; but as I
had resolved to try the effect of ignoring Miss Mannersley in our
conversation, I gathered little further of their relations, and, to
my surprise, after one or two characteristic extravagances of
allusion, Enriquez dropped the subject, too.  Only one afternoon,
as we were parting, he said carelessly: "My friend, you are going
to the casa of Mannersley tonight.  I too have the honor of the
invitation.  But you will be my Mercury--my Leporello--you will
take of me a message to thees Mees Boston, that I am crushed,
desolated, prostrate, and flabbergasted--that I cannot arrive, for
I have of that night to sit up with the grand-aunt of my brother-
in-law, who has a quinsy to the death.  It is sad."

This was the first indication I had received of Miss Mannersley's
advances.  I was equally surprised at Enriquez' refusal.

"Nonsense!" I said bluntly. "Nothing keeps you from going."

"My friend," returned Enriquez, with a sudden lapse into languish-
ment that seemed to make him absolutely infirm, "it is everything
that shall restrain me.  I am not strong.  I shall become weak of
the knee and tremble under the eye of Mees Boston.  I shall
precipitate myself to the geologian by the throat.  Ask me another
conundrum that shall be easy."

He seemed idiotically inflexible, and did not go.  But I did.  I
found Miss Mannersley exquisitely dressed and looking singularly
animated and pretty.  The lambent glow of her inscrutable eye as
she turned toward me might have been flattering but for my
uneasiness in regard to Enriquez.  I delivered his excuses as
naturally as I could.  She stiffened for an instant, and seemed an
inch higher.  "I am so sorry," she said at last in a level voice.
"I thought he would have been so amusing.  Indeed, I had hoped we
might try an old Moorish dance together which I have found and was
practicing."

"He would have been delighted, I know.  It's a great pity he didn't
come with me," I said quickly; "but," I could not help adding, with
emphasis on her words, "he is such an 'extraordinary creature,' you
know."

"I see nothing extraordinary in his devotion to an aged relative,"
returned Miss Mannersley quietly as she turned away, "except that
it justifies my respect for his character."

I do not know why I did not relate this to him.  Possibly I had
given up trying to understand them; perhaps I was beginning to have
an idea that he could take care of himself.  But I was somewhat
surprised a few days later when, after asking me to go with him to
a rodeo at his uncle's he added composedly, "You will meet Mees
Boston."

I stared, and but for his manner would have thought it part of his
extravagance.  For the rodeo--a yearly chase of wild cattle for the
purpose of lassoing and branding them--was a rather brutal affair,
and purely a man's function; it was also a family affair--a
property stock-taking of the great Spanish cattle-owners--and
strangers, particularly Americans, found it difficult to gain
access to its mysteries and the fiesta that followed.

"But how did she get an invitation?" I asked.  "You did not dare to
ask--" I began.

"My friend," said Enriquez, with a singular deliberation, "the
great and respectable Boston herself, and her serene, venerable
oncle, and other Boston magnificos, have of a truth done me the
inexpressible honor to solicit of my degraded, papistical oncle
that she shall come--that she shall of her own superior eye behold
the barbaric customs of our race."

His tone and manner were so peculiar that I stepped quickly before
him, laid my hands on his shoulders, and looked down into his face.
But the actual devil which I now for the first time saw in his eyes
went out of them suddenly, and he relapsed again in affected
languishment in his chair.  "I shall be there, friend Pancho," he
said, with a preposterous gasp.  "I shall nerve my arm to lasso the
bull, and tumble him before her at her feet.  I shall throw the
'buck-jump' mustang at the same sacred spot.  I shall pluck for her
the buried chicken at full speed from the ground, and present it to
her.  You shall see it, friend Pancho.  I shall be there."

He was as good as his word.  When Don Pedro Amador, his uncle,
installed Miss Mannersley, with Spanish courtesy, on a raised
platform in the long valley where the rodeo took place, the gallant
Enriquez selected a bull from the frightened and galloping herd,
and, cleverly isolating him from the band, lassoed his hind legs,
and threw him exactly before the platform where Miss Mannersley was
seated.  It was Enriquez who caught the unbroken mustang, sprang
from his own saddle to the bare back of his captive, and with the
lasso for a bridle, halted him on rigid haunches at Miss
Mannersley's feet.  It was Enriquez who, in the sports that
followed, leaned from his saddle at full speed, caught up the
chicken buried to its head in the sand, without wringing its neck,
and tossed it unharmed and fluttering toward his mistress.  As for
her, she wore the same look of animation that I had seen in her
face at our previous meeting.  Although she did not bring her
sketchbook with her, as at the bullfight, she did not shrink from
the branding of the cattle, which took place under her very eyes.

Yet I had never seen her and Enriquez together; they had never, to
my actual knowledge, even exchanged words.  And now, although she
was the guest of his uncle, his duties seemed to keep him in the
field, and apart from her.  Nor, as far as I could detect, did
either apparently make any effort to have it otherwise.  The
peculiar circumstance seemed to attract no attention from anyone
else.  But for what I alone knew--or thought I knew--of their
actual relations, I should have thought them strangers.

But I felt certain that the fiesta which took place in the broad
patio of Don Pedro's casa would bring them together.  And later in
the evening, as we were all sitting on the veranda watching the
dancing of the Mexican women, whose white-flounced sayas were
monotonously rising and falling to the strains of two melancholy
harps, Miss Mannersley rejoined us from the house.  She seemed to
be utterly absorbed and abstracted in the barbaric dances, and
scarcely moved as she leaned over the railing with her cheek
resting on her hand.  Suddenly she arose with a little cry.

"What is it?" asked two or three.

"Nothing--only I have lost my fan."  She had risen, and ,was
looking abstractedly on the floor.

Half a dozen men jumped to their feet.  "Let me fetch it," they
said.

"No, thank you.  I think I know where it is, and will go for it
myself."  She was moving away.

But Don Pedro interposed with Spanish gravity.  Such a thing was
not to be heard of in his casa.  If the senorita would not permit
HIM--an old man--to go for it, it must be brought by Enriquez, her
cavalier of the day.

But Enriquez was not to be found.  I glanced at Miss Mannersley's
somewhat disturbed face, and begged her to let me fetch it.  I
thought I saw a flush of relief come into her pale cheek as she
said, in a lower voice, "On the stone seat in the garden."

I hurried away, leaving Don Pedro still protesting.  I knew the
gardens, and the stone seat at an angle of the wall, not a dozen
yards from the casa.  The moon shone full upon it.  There, indeed,
lay the little gray-feathered fan.  But beside it, also, lay the
crumpled black gold-embroidered riding-gauntlet that Enriquez had
worn at the rodeo.

I thrust it hurriedly into my pocket, and ran back.  As I passed
through the gateway I asked a peon to send Enriquez to me.  The man
stared.  Did I not know that Don Enriquez had ridden away two
minutes ago?

When I reached the veranda, I handed the fan to Miss Mannersley
without a word.  "BUENO," said Don Pedro, gravely; "it is as well.
There shall be no bones broken over the getting of it, for
Enriquez, I hear, has had to return to the Encinal this very
evening."

Miss Mannersley retired early.  I did not inform her of my
discovery, nor did I seek in any way to penetrate her secret.
There was no doubt that she and Enriquez had been together, perhaps
not for the first time; but what was the result of their interview?
From the young girl's demeanor and Enriquez' hurried departure, I
could only fear the worst for him.  Had he been tempted into some
further extravagance and been angrily rebuked, or had he avowed a
real passion concealed under his exaggerated mask and been
deliberately rejected?  I tossed uneasily half the night, following
in my dreams my poor friend's hurrying hoofbeats, and ever starting
from my sleep at what I thought was the sound of galloping hoofs.

I rose early, and lounged into the patio; but others were there
before me, and a small group of Don Pedro's family were excitedly
discussing something, and I fancied they turned away awkwardly and
consciously as I approached.  There was an air of indefinite
uneasiness everywhere.  A strange fear came over me with the chill
of the early morning air.  Had anything happened to Enriquez?  I
had always looked upon his extravagance as part of his playful
humor.  Could it be possible that under the sting of rejection he
had made his grotesque threat of languishing effacement real?
Surely Miss Mannersley would know or suspect something, if it were
the case.

I approached one of the Mexican women and asked if the senorita had
risen.  The woman started, and looked covertly round before she
replied.  Did not Don Pancho know that Miss Mannersley and her maid
had not slept in their beds that night, but had gone, none knew
where?

For an instant I felt an appalling sense of my own responsibility
in this suddenly serious situation, and hurried after the
retreating family group.  But as I entered the corridor a vaquero
touched me on the shoulder.  He had evidently just dismounted, and
was covered with the dust of the road.  He handed me a note written
in pencil on a leaf from Miss Mannersley's sketchbook.  It was in
Enriquez' hand, and his signature was followed by his most
extravagant rubric.


Friend Pancho: When you read this line you shall of a possibility
think I am no more.  That is where you shall slip up, my little
brother!  I am much more--I am two times as much, for I have marry
Miss Boston.  At the Mission Church, at five of the morning, sharp!
No cards shall be left!  I kiss the hand of my venerable uncle-in-
law.  You shall say to him that we fly to the South wilderness as
the combined evangelical missionary to the heathen!  Miss Boston
herself say this.  Ta-ta!  How are you now?

Your own Enriquez.