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Trent's Trust and Other Stories

by Bret Harte

January, 2001  [Etext #2459]


Project Gutenberg Etext Trent's Trust & Other Stories, by Harte
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TRENT'S TRUST AND OTHER STORIES

by Bret Harte




CONTENTS


TRENT'S TRUST

MR. MACGLOWRIE'S WIDOW

A WARD OF COLONEL STARBOTTLE

PROSPER'S "OLD MOTHER"

THE CONVALESCENCE OF JACK HAMLIN

A PUPIL OF CHESTNUT RIDGE

DICK BOYLE'S BUSINESS CARD



TRENT'S TRUST

I

Randolph Trent stepped from the Stockton boat on the San Francisco
wharf, penniless, friendless, and unknown.  Hunger might have been
added to his trials, for, having paid his last coin in passage
money, he had been a day and a half without food.  Yet he knew it
only by an occasional lapse into weakness as much mental as
physical.  Nevertheless, he was first on the gangplank to land, and
hurried feverishly ashore, in that vague desire for action and
change of scene common to such irritation; yet after mixing for a
few moments with the departing passengers, each selfishly hurrying
to some rendezvous of rest or business, he insensibly drew apart
from them, with the instinct of a vagabond and outcast.  Although
he was conscious that he was neither, but merely an unsuccessful
miner suddenly reduced to the point of soliciting work or alms of
any kind, he took advantage of the first crossing to plunge into a
side street, with a vague sense of hiding his shame.

A rising wind, which had rocked the boat for the last few hours,
had now developed into a strong sou'wester, with torrents of rain
which swept the roadway.  His well-worn working clothes, fitted to
the warmer Southern mines, gave him more concern from their
visible, absurd contrast to the climate than from any actual sense
of discomfort, and his feverishness defied the chill of his soaking
garments, as he hurriedly faced the blast through the dimly lighted
street.  At the next corner he paused; he had reached another, and,
from its dilapidated appearance, apparently an older wharf than
that where he had landed, but, like the first, it was still a
straggling avenue leading toward the higher and more animated part
of the city.  He again mechanically--for a part of his trouble was
a vague, undefined purpose--turned toward it.

In his feverish exaltation his powers of perception seemed to be
quickened: he was vividly alive to the incongruous, half-marine,
half-backwoods character of the warehouses and commercial
buildings; to the hull of a stranded ship already built into a
block of rude tenements; to the dark stockaded wall of a house
framed of corrugated iron, and its weird contiguity to a Swiss
chalet, whose galleries were used only to bear the signs of the
shops, and whose frame had been carried across seas in sections to
be set up at random here.

Moving past these, as in a nightmare dream, of which even the
turbulency of the weather seemed to be a part, he stumbled,
blinded, panting, and unexpectedly, with no consciousness of his
rapid pace beyond his breathlessness, upon the dazzling main
thoroughfare of the city.  In spite of the weather, the slippery
pavements were thronged by hurrying crowds of well-dressed people,
again all intent on their own purposes,--purposes that seemed so
trifling and unimportant beside his own.  The shops were
brilliantly lighted, exposing their brightest wares through plate-
glass windows; a jeweler's glittered with precious stones; a
fashionable apothecary's next to it almost outrivaled it with its
gorgeous globes, the gold and green precision of its shelves, and
the marble and silver soda fountain like a shrine before it.  All
this specious show of opulence came upon him with the shock of
contrast, and with it a bitter revulsion of feeling more hopeless
than his feverish anxiety,--the bitterness of disappointment.

For during his journey he had been buoyed up with the prospect of
finding work and sympathy in this youthful city,--a prospect
founded solely on his inexperienced hopes.  For this he had
exchanged the poverty of the mining district,--a poverty that had
nothing ignoble about it, that was a part of the economy of nature,
and shared with his fellow men and the birds and beasts in their
rude encampments.  He had given up the brotherhood of the miner,
and that practical help and sympathy which brought no degradation
with it, for this rude shock of self-interested, self-satisfied
civilization.  He, who would not have shrunk from asking rest,
food, or a night's lodging at the cabin of a brother miner or
woodsman, now recoiled suddenly from these well-dressed citizens.
What madness had sent him here, an intruder, or, even, as it seemed
to him in his dripping clothes, an impostor?  And yet these were
the people to whom he had confidently expected to tell his story,
and who would cheerfully assist him with work!  He could almost
anticipate the hard laugh or brutal hurried negative in their
faces.  In his foolish heart he thanked God he had not tried it.
Then the apathetic recoil which is apt to follow any keen emotion
overtook him.  He was dazedly conscious of being rudely shoved once
or twice, and even heard the epithet "drunken lout" from one who
had run against him.

He found himself presently staring vacantly in the apothecary's
window.  How long he stood there he could not tell, for he was
aroused only by the door opening in front of him, and a young girl
emerging with some purchase in her hand.  He could see that she was
handsomely dressed and quite pretty, and as she passed out she
lifted to his withdrawing figure a pair of calm, inquiring eyes,
which, however, changed to a look of half-wondering, half-amused
pity as she gazed.  Yet that look of pity stung his pride more
deeply than all.  With a deliberate effort he recovered his energy.
No, he would not beg, he would not ask assistance from these
people; he would go back--anywhere!  To the steamboat first; they
might let him sleep there, give him a meal, and allow him to work
his passage back to Stockton.  He might be refused.  Well, what
then?  Well, beyond, there was the bay!  He laughed bitterly--his
mind was sane enough for that--but he kept on repeating it vaguely
to himself, as he crossed the street again, and once more made his
way to the wharf.

The wind and rain had increased, but he no longer heeded them in
his feverish haste and his consciousness that motion could alone
keep away that dreadful apathy which threatened to overcloud his
judgment.  And he wished while he was able to reason logically to
make up his mind to end this unsupportable situation that night.
He was scarcely twenty, yet it seemed to him that it had already
been demonstrated that his life was a failure; he was an orphan,
and when he left college to seek his own fortune in California, he
believed he had staked his all upon that venture--and lost.

That bitterness which is the sudden recoil of boyish enthusiasm,
and is none the less terrible for being without experience to
justify it,--that melancholy we are too apt to look back upon with
cynical jeers and laughter in middle age,--is more potent than we
dare to think, and it was in no mere pose of youthful pessimism
that Randolph Trent now contemplated suicide.  Such scraps of
philosophy as his education had given him pointed to that one
conclusion.  And it was the only refuge that pride--real or false--
offered him from the one supreme terror of youth--shame.

The street was deserted, and the few lights he had previously noted
in warehouses and shops were extinguished.  It had grown darker
with the storm; the incongruous buildings on either side had become
misshapen shadows; the long perspective of the wharf was a strange
gloom from which the spars of a ship stood out like the cross he
remembered as a boy to have once seen in a picture of the tempest-
smitten Calvary.  It was his only fancy connected with the future--
it might have been his last, for suddenly one of the planks of the
rotten wharf gave way beneath his feet, and he felt himself
violently precipitated toward the gurgling and oozing tide below.
He threw out his arms desperately, caught at a strong girder, drew
himself up with the energy of desperation, and staggered to his
feet again, safe--and sane.  For with this terrible automatic
struggle to avoid that death he was courting came a flash of
reason.  If he had resolutely thrown himself from the pier head as
he intended, would he have undergone a hopeless revulsion like
this?  Was he sure that this might not be, after all, the terrible
penalty of self-destruction--this inevitable fierce protest of mind
and body when TOO LATE?  He was momentarily touched with a sense of
gratitude at his escape, but his reason told him it was not from
his ACCIDENT, but from his intention.

He was trying carefully to retrace his steps, but as he did so he
saw the figure of a man dimly lurching toward him out of the
darkness of the wharf and the crossed yards of the ship.  A gleam
of hope came over him, for the emotion of the last few minutes had
rudely displaced his pride and self-love.  He would appeal to this
stranger, whoever he was; there was more chance that in this rude
locality he would be a belated sailor or some humbler wayfarer, and
the darkness and solitude made him feel less ashamed.  By the last
flickering street lamp he could see that he was a man about his own
size, with something of the rolling gait of a sailor, which was
increased by the weight of a traveling portmanteau he was swinging
in his hand.  As he approached he evidently detected Randolph's
waiting figure, slackened his speed slightly, and changed his
portmanteau from his right hand to his left as a precaution for
defense.

Randolph felt the blood flush his cheek at this significant proof
of his disreputable appearance, but determined to accost him.  He
scarcely recognized the sound of his own voice now first breaking
the silence for hours, but he made his appeal.  The man listened,
made a slight gesture forward with his disengaged hand, and
impelled Randolph slowly up to the street lamp until it shone on
both their faces.  Randolph saw a man a few years his senior, with
a slightly trimmed beard on his dark, weather-beaten cheeks, well-
cut features, a quick, observant eye, and a sailor's upward glance
and bearing.  The stranger saw a thin, youthful, anxious, yet
refined and handsome face beneath straggling damp curls, and dark
eyes preternaturally bright with suffering.  Perhaps his
experienced ear, too, detected some harmony with all this in
Randolph's voice.

"And you want something to eat, a night's lodging, and a chance of
work afterward," the stranger repeated with good-humored
deliberation.

"Yes," said Randolph.

"You look it."

Randolph colored faintly.

"Do you ever drink?"

"Yes," said Randolph wonderingly.

"I thought I'd ask," said the stranger, "as it might play hell with
you just now if you were not accustomed to it.  Take that.  Just a
swallow, you know--that's as good as a jugful."

He handed him a heavy flask.  Randolph felt the burning liquor
scald his throat and fire his empty stomach.  The stranger turned
and looked down the vacant wharf to the darkness from which he
came.  Then he turned to Randolph again and said abruptly,--

"Strong enough to carry this bag?"

"Yes," said Randolph.  The whiskey--possibly the relief--had given
him new strength.  Besides, he might earn his alms.

"Take it up to room 74, Niantic Hotel--top of next street to this,
one block that way--and wait till I come."

"What name shall I say?" asked Randolph.

"Needn't say any.  I ordered the room a week ago.  Stop; there's
the key.  Go in; change your togs; you'll find something in that
bag that'll fit you.  Wait for me.  Stop--no; you'd better get some
grub there first."  He fumbled in his pockets, but fruitlessly.
"No matter.  You'll find a buckskin purse, with some scads in it,
in the bag.  So long."  And before Randolph could thank him, he
lurched away again into the semi-darkness of the wharf.

Overflowing with gratitude at a hospitality so like that of his
reckless brethren of the mines, Randolph picked up the portmanteau
and started for the hotel.  He walked warily now, with a new
interest in life, and then, suddenly thinking of his own miraculous
escape, he paused, wondering if he ought not to warn his benefactor
of the perils of the rotten wharf; but he had already disappeared.
The bag was not heavy, but he found that in his exhausted state
this new exertion was telling, and he was glad when he reached the
hotel.  Equally glad was he in his dripping clothes to slip by the
porter, and with the key in his pocket ascend unnoticed to 74.

Yet had his experience been larger he might have spared himself
that sensitiveness.  For the hotel was one of those great
caravansaries popular with the returning miner.  It received him
and his gold dust in his worn-out and bedraggled working clothes,
and returned him the next day as a well-dressed citizen on
Montgomery Street.  It was hard indeed to recognize the unshaven,
unwashed, and unkempt "arrival" one met on the principal staircase
at night in the scrupulously neat stranger one sat opposite to at
breakfast the next morning.  In this daily whirl of mutation all
identity was swamped, as Randolph learned to know.

At present, finding himself in a comfortable bedroom, his first act
was to change his wet clothes, which in the warmer temperature and
the decline of his feverishness now began to chill him.  He opened
the portmanteau and found a complete suit of clothing, evidently a
foreign make, well preserved, as if for "shore-going."  His pride
would have preferred a humbler suit as lessening his obligation,
but there was no other.  He discovered the purse, a chamois leather
bag such as miners and travelers carried, which contained a dozen
gold pieces and some paper notes.  Taking from it a single coin to
defray the expenses of a meal, he restrapped the bag, and leaving
the key in the door lock for the benefit of his returning host,
made his way to the dining room.

For a moment he was embarrassed when the waiter approached him
inquisitively, but it was only to learn the number of his room to
"charge" the meal.  He ate it quickly, but not voraciously, for his
appetite had not yet returned, and he was eager to get back to the
room and see the stranger again and return to him the coin which
was no longer necessary.

But the stranger had not yet arrived when he reached the room.
Over an hour had elapsed since their strange meeting.  A new fear
came upon him: was it possible he had mistaken the hotel, and his
benefactor was awaiting him elsewhere, perhaps even beginning to
suspect not only his gratitude but his honesty!  The thought made
him hot again, but he was helpless.  Not knowing the stranger's
name, he could not inquire without exposing his situation to the
landlord.  But again, there was the key, and it was scarcely
possible that it fitted another 74 in another hotel.  He did not
dare to leave the room, but sat by the window, peering through the
streaming panes into the storm-swept street below.  Gradually the
fatigue his excitement had hitherto kept away began to overcome
him; his eyes once or twice closed during his vigil, his head
nodded against the pane.  He rose and walked up and down the room
to shake off his drowsiness.  Another hour passed--nine o'clock,
blown in fitful, far-off strokes from some wind-rocked steeple.
Still no stranger.  How inviting the bed looked to his weary eyes!
The man had told him he wanted rest; he could lie down on the bed
in his clothes until he came.  He would waken quickly and be ready
for his benefactor's directions.  It was a great temptation.  He
yielded to it.  His head had scarcely sunk upon the pillow before
he slipped into a profound and dreamless sleep.

He awoke with a start, and for a few moments lay vaguely staring at
the sunbeams that stretched across his bed before he could recall
himself.  The room was exactly as before, the portmanteau strapped
and pushed under the table as he had left it.  There came a tap at
the door--the chambermaid to do up the room.  She had been there
once already, but seeing him asleep, she had forborne to wake him.
Apparently the spectacle of a gentleman lying on the bed fully
dressed, even to his boots, was not an unusual one at that hotel,
for she made no comment.  It was twelve o'clock, but she would come
again later.

He was bewildered.  He had slept the round of the clock--that was
natural after his fatigue--but where was his benefactor?  The
lateness of the time forbade the conclusion that he had merely
slept elsewhere; he would assuredly have returned by this time to
claim his portmanteau.  The portmanteau!  He unstrapped it and
examined the contents again.  They were undisturbed as he had left
them the night before.  There was a further change of linen, the
buckskin bag, which he could see now contained a couple of Bank of
England notes, with some foreign gold mixed with American half-
eagles, and a cheap, rough memorandum book clasped with elastic,
containing a letter in a boyish hand addressed "Dear Daddy" and
signed "Bobby," and a photograph of a boy taken by a foreign
photographer at Callao, as the printed back denoted, but nothing
giving any clue whatever to the name of the owner.

A strange idea seized him: did the portmanteau really belong to the
man who had given it to him?  Had he been the innocent receiver of
stolen goods from some one who wished to escape detection?  He
recalled now that he had heard stories of robbery of luggage by
thieves "Sydney ducks"--on the deserted wharves, and remembered,
too,--he could not tell why the thought had escaped him before,--
that the man had spoken with an English accent.  But the next
moment he recalled his frank and open manner, and his mind cleared
of all unworthy suspicion.  It was more than likely that his
benefactor had taken this delicate way of making a free, permanent
gift for that temporary service.  Yet he smiled faintly at the
return of that youthful optimism which had caused him so much
suffering.

Nevertheless, something must be done: he must try to find the man;
still more important, he must seek work before this dubious loan
was further encroached upon.  He restrapped the portmanteau and
replaced it under the table, locked the door, gave the key to the
office clerk, saying that any one who called upon him was to await
his return, and sallied forth.  A fresh wind and a blue sky of
scudding clouds were all that remained of last night's storm.  As
he made his way to the fateful wharf, still deserted except by an
occasional "wharf-rat,"--as the longshore vagrant or petty thief
was called,--he wondered at his own temerity of last night, and the
trustfulness of his friend in yielding up his portmanteau to a
stranger in such a place.  A low drinking saloon, feebly disguised
as a junk shop, stood at the corner, with slimy green steps leading
to the water.

The wharf was slowly decaying, and here and there were occasional
gaps in the planking, as dangerous as the one from which he had
escaped the night before.  He thought again of the warning he might
have given to the stranger; but he reflected that as a seafaring
man he must have been familiar with the locality where he had
landed.  But had he landed there?  To Randolph's astonishment,
there was no sign or trace of any late occupation of the wharf, and
the ship whose crossyards he had seen dimly through the darkness
the night before was no longer there.  She might have "warped out"
in the early morning, but there was no trace of her in the stream
or offing beyond.  A bark and brig quite dismantled at an adjacent
wharf seemed to accent the loneliness.  Beyond, the open channel
between him and Verba Buena Island was racing with white-maned seas
and sparkling in the shifting sunbeams.  The scudding clouds above
him drove down the steel-blue sky.  The lateen sails of the Italian
fishing boats were like shreds of cloud, too, blown over the blue
and distant bay.  His ears sang, his eyes blinked, his pulses
throbbed, with the untiring, fierce activity of a San Francisco day.

With something of its restlessness he hurried back to the hotel.
Still the stranger was not there, and no one had called for him.
The room had been put in order; the portmanteau, that sole
connecting link with his last night's experience, was under the
table.  He drew it out again, and again subjected it to a minute
examination.  A few toilet articles, not of the best quality, which
he had overlooked at first, the linen, the buckskin purse, the
memorandum book, and the suit of clothes he stood in, still
comprised all he knew of his benefactor.  He counted the money in
the purse; it amounted, with the Bank of England notes, to about
seventy dollars, as he could roughly guess.  There was a scrap of
paper, the torn-off margin of a newspaper, lying in the purse, with
an address hastily scribbled in pencil.  It gave, however, no name,
only a number: "85 California Street."  It might be a clue.  He put
it, with the purse, carefully in his pocket, and after hurriedly
partaking of his forgotten breakfast, again started out.

He presently found himself in the main thoroughfare of last night,
which he now knew to be Montgomery Street.  It was more thronged
than then, but he failed to be impressed, as then, with the selfish
activity of the crowd.  Yet he was half conscious that his own
brighter fortune, more decent attire, and satisfied hunger had
something to do with this change, and he glanced hurriedly at the
druggist's broad plate-glass windows, with a faint hope that the
young girl whose amused pity he had awakened might be there again.
He found California Street quickly, and in a few moments he stood
before No. 85.  He was a little disturbed to find it a rather large
building, and that it bore the inscription "Bank."  Then came the
usual shock to his mercurial temperament, and for the first time he
began to consider the absurd hopelessness of his clue.

He, however, entered desperately, and approaching the window of the
receiving teller, put the question he had formulated in his mind:
Could they give him any information concerning a customer or
correspondent who had just arrived in San Francisco and was putting
up at the Niantic Hotel, room 74?  He felt his face flushing, but,
to his astonishment, the clerk manifested no surprise.  "And you
don't know his name?" said the clerk quietly.  "Wait a moment."  He
moved away, and Randolph saw him speaking to one of the other
clerks, who consulted a large register.  In a few minutes he
returned.  "We don't have many customers," he began politely, "who
leave only their hotel-room addresses," when he was interrupted by
a mumbling protest from one of the other clerks.  "That's very
different," he replied to his fellow clerk, and then turned to
Randolph.  "I'm afraid we cannot help you; but I'll make other
inquiries if you'll come back in ten minutes."  Satisfied to be
relieved from the present perils of his questioning, and doubtful
of returning, Randolph turned away.  But as he left the building he
saw a written notice on the swinging door, "Wanted: a Night
Porter;" and this one chance of employment determined his return.

When he again presented himself at the window the clerk motioned
him to step inside through a lifted rail.  Here he found himself
confronted by the clerk and another man, distinguished by a certain
air of authority, a keen gray eye, and singularly compressed lips
set in a closely clipped beard.  The clerk indicated him
deferentially but briefly--everybody was astonishingly brief and
businesslike there--as the president.  The president absorbed and
possessed Randolph with eyes that never seemed to leave him.  Then
leaning back against the counter, which he lightly grasped with
both hands, he said: "We've sent to the Niantic Hotel to inquire
about your man.  He ordered his room by letter, giving no name.  He
arrived there on time last night, slept there, and has occupied the
room No. 74 ever since.  WE don't know him from Adam, but"--his
eyes never left Randolph's--"from the description the landlord gave
our clerk, you're the man himself."

For an instant Randolph flushed crimson.  The natural mistake of
the landlord flashed upon him, his own stupidity in seeking this
information, the suspicious predicament in which he was now placed,
and the necessity of telling the whole truth.  But the president's
eye was at once a threat and an invitation.  He felt himself
becoming suddenly cool, and, with a business brevity equal to their
own, said:--

"I was looking for work last night on the wharf.  He employed me to
carry his bag to the hotel, saying I was to wait for him.  I have
waited since nine o'clock last night in his room, and he has not
come."

"What are you in such a d----d hurry for?  He's trusted you; can't
you trust him?  You've got his bag?" returned the president.

Randolph was silent for a moment.  "I want to know what to do with
it," he said.

"Hang on to it.  What's in it?"

"Some clothes and a purse containing about seventy dollars."

"That ought to pay you for carrying it and storage afterward," said
the president decisively.  "What made you come here?"

"I found this address in the purse," said Randolph, producing it.

"Is that all?"

"Yes."

"And that's the only reason you came here, to find an owner for
that bag?"

"Yes."

The president disengaged himself from the counter.

"I'm sorry to have given you so much trouble," said Randolph
concludingly.  "Thank you and good-morning."

"Good-morning."

As Randolph turned away he remembered the advertisement for the
night watchman.  He hesitated and turned back.  He was a little
surprised to find that the president had not gone away, but was
looking after him.

"I beg your pardon, but I see you want a night watchman.  Could I
do?" said Randolph resolutely.

"No.  You're a stranger here, and we want some one who knows the
city,--  Dewslake," he returned to the receiving teller, "who's
taken Larkin's place?"

"No one yet," returned the teller, "but," he added parenthetically,
"Judge Boompointer, you know, was speaking to you about his son."

"Yes, I know that."  To Randolph: "Go round to my private room and
wait for me.  I won't be as long as your friend last night."  Then
he added to a negro porter, "Show him round there."

He moved away, stopping at one or two desks to give an order to the
clerks, and once before the railing to speak to a depositor.
Randolph followed the negro into the hall, through a "board room,"
and into a handsomely furnished office.  He had not to wait long.
In a few moments the president appeared with an older man whose
gray side whiskers, cut with a certain precision, and whose black
and white checked neckerchief, tied in a formal bow, proclaimed the
English respectability of the period.  At the president's dictation
he took down Randolph's name, nativity, length of residence, and
occupation in California.  This concluded, the president, glancing
at his companion, said briefly,--

"Well?"

"He had better come to-morrow morning at nine," was the answer.

"And ask for Mr. Dingwall, the deputy manager," added the
president, with a gesture that was at once an introduction and a
dismissal to both.

Randolph had heard before of this startling brevity of San
Francisco business detail, yet he lingered until the door closed on
Mr. Dingwall.  His heart was honestly full.

"You have been very kind, sir," he stammered.

"I haven't run half the risks of that chap last night," said the
president grimly, the least tremor of a smile on his set mouth.

"If you would only let me know what I can do to thank you,"
persisted Randolph.

"Trust the man that trusts you, and hang on to your trust," returned
the president curtly, with a parting nod.

Elated and filled with high hopes as Randolph was, he felt some
trepidation in returning to his hotel.  He had to face his landlord
with some explanation of the bank's inquiry.  The landlord might
consider him an impostor, and request him to leave, or, more
dreadful still, insist upon keeping the bag.  He thought of the
parting words of the president, and resolved upon "hanging on to
his trust," whatever happened.  But he was agreeably surprised to
find that he was received at the office with a certain respect not
usually shown to the casual visitor. "Your caller turned up to-
day"--Randolph started--"from the Eureka bank," continued the
clerk.  "Sorry we could not give your name, but you know you only
left a deposit in your letter and sent a messenger for your key
yesterday afternoon.  When you came you went straight to your room.
Perhaps you would like to register now."  Randolph no longer
hesitated, reflecting that he could explain it all later to his
unknown benefactor, and wrote his name boldly.  But he was still
more astonished when the clerk continued: "I reckon it was a case
of identifying you for a draft--it often happens here--and we'd
have been glad to do it for you.  But the bank clerk seemed
satisfied with out description of you--you're easily described, you
know (this in a parenthesis, complimentarily intended)--"so it's
all right.  We can give you a better room lower down, if you're
going to stay longer."  Not knowing whether to laugh or to be
embarrassed at this extraordinary conclusion of the blunder,
Randolph answered that he had just come from the bank, adding, with
a pardonable touch of youthful pride, that he was entering the
bank’s employment the next day.

Another equally agreeable surprise met him on his arrival there the
next morning.  Without any previous examination or trial he was
installed at once as a corresponding clerk in the place of one just
promoted to a sub-agency in the interior.  His handwriting, his
facility of composition, had all been taken for granted, or perhaps
predicated upon something the president had discerned in that one
quick, absorbing glance.  He ventured to express the thought to
his neighbor.

"The boss," said that gentleman, "can size a man in and out, and
all through, in about the time it would take you and me to tell the
color of his hair.  HE don’t make mistakes, you bet; but old Dingy--
the dep--you settled with your clothes."

"My clothes!" echoed Randolph, with a faint flush.

"Yes, English cut--that fetched him."

And so his work began.  His liberal salary, which seemed to him
munificent in comparison with his previous earnings in the mines,
enabled him to keep the contents of the buckskin purse intact, and
presently to return the borrowed suit of clothes to the
portmanteau.  The mysterious owner should find everything as when
he first placed it in his hands.  With the quick mobility of youth
and his own rather mercurial nature, he had begun to forget, or
perhaps to be a little ashamed of his keen emotions and sufferings
the night of his arrival, until that night was recalled to him in a
singular way.

One Sunday a vague sense of duty to his still missing benefactor
impelled him to spend part of his holiday upon the wharves.  He had
rambled away among the shipping at the newer pier slips, and had
gazed curiously upon decks where a few seamen or officers in their
Sunday apparel smoked, paced, or idled, trying vainly to recognize
the face and figure which had once briefly flashed out under the
flickering wharf lamp.  Was the stranger a shipmaster who had
suddenly transferred himself to another vessel on another voyage?
A crowd which had gathered around some landing steps nearer shore
presently attracted his attention.  He lounged toward it and looked
over the shoulders of the bystanders down upon the steps.  A boat
was lying there, which had just towed in the body of a man found
floating on the water.  Its features were already swollen and
defaced like a hideous mask; its body distended beyond all
proportion, even to the bursting of its sodden clothing.  A
tremulous fascination came over Randolph as he gazed.  The
bystanders made their brief comments, a few authoritatively and
with the air of nautical experts.

"Been in the water about a week, I reckon."

"'Bout that time; just rucked up and floated with the tide."

"Not much chance o' spottin' him by his looks, eh?"

"Nor anything else, you bet.  Reg'larly cleaned out.  Look at his
pockets."

"Wharf-rats or shanghai men?"

"Betwixt and between, I reckon.  Man who found him says he's got an
ugly cut just back of his head.  Ye can't see it for his floating
hair."

"Wonder if he got it before or after he got in the water."

"That's for the coroner to say."

"Much he knows or cares," said another cynically.  "It'll just be a
case of 'Found drowned' and the regular twenty-five dollars to HIM,
and five to the man who found the body.  That's enough for him to
know."

Thrilled with a vague anxiety, Randolph edged forward for a nearer
view of the wretched derelict still gently undulating on the
towline.  The closer he looked the more he was impressed by the
idea of some frightful mask that hid a face that refused to be
recognized.  But his attention became fixed on a man who was giving
some advice or orders and examining the body scrutinizingly.
Without knowing why, Randolph felt a sudden aversion to him, which
was deepened when the man, lifting his head, met Randolph's eyes
with a pair of shifting yet aggressive ones.  He bore,
nevertheless, an odd, weird likeness to the missing man Randolph
was seeking, which strangely troubled him.  As the stranger's eyes
followed him and lingered with a singular curiosity on Randolph's
dress, he remembered with a sudden alarm that he was wearing the
suit of the missing man.  A quick impulse to conceal himself came
upon him, but he as quickly conquered it, and returned the man's
cold stare with an anger he could not account for, but which made
the stranger avert his eyes.  Then the man got into the boat beside
the boatman, and the two again towed away the corpse.  The head
rose and fell with the swell, as if nodding a farewell.  But it was
still defiant, under its shapeless mask, that even wore a smile, as
if triumphant in its hideous secret.


II


The opinion of the cynical bystander on the wharf proved to be a
correct one.  The coroner's jury brought in the usual verdict of
"Found drowned," which was followed by the usual newspaper comment
upon the insecurity of the wharves and the inadequate protection of
the police.

Randolph Trent read it with conflicting emotions.  The possibility
he had conceived of the corpse being that of his benefactor was
dismissed when he had seen its face, although he was sometimes
tortured with doubt, and a wonder if he might not have learned more
by attending the inquest.  And there was still the suggestion that
the mysterious disappearance might have been accomplished by
violence like this.  He was satisfied that if he had attempted
publicly to identify the corpse as his missing friend he would have
laid himself open to suspicion with a story he could hardly
corroborate.

He had once thought of confiding his doubts to Mr. Revelstoke, the
bank president, but he had a dread of that gentleman's curt
conclusions and remembered his injunction to "hang on to his
trust."  Since his installation, Mr. Revelstoke had merely
acknowledged his presence by a good-humored nod now and then,
although Randolph had an instinctive feeling that he was perfectly
informed as to his progress.  It was wiser for Randolph to confine
himself strictly to his duty and keep his own counsel.

Yet he was young, and it was not strange that in his idle moments
his thoughts sometimes reverted to the pretty girl he had seen on
the night of his arrival, nor that he should wish to parade his
better fortune before her curious eyes.  Neither was it strange
that in this city, whose day-long sunshine brought every one into
the public streets, he should presently have that opportunity.  It
chanced that one afternoon, being in the residential quarter, he
noticed a well-dressed young girl walking before him in company
with a delicate looking boy of seven or eight years.  Something in
the carriage of her graceful figure, something in a certain
consciousness and ostentation of coquetry toward her youthful
escort, attracted his attention.  Yet it struck him that she was
neither related to the child nor accustomed to children's ways, and
that she somewhat unduly emphasized this to the passers-by,
particularly those of his own sex, who seemed to be greatly
attracted by her evident beauty.  Presently she ascended the steps
of a handsome dwelling, evidently their home, and as she turned he
saw her face.  It was the girl he remembered.  As her eye caught
his, he blushed with the consciousness of their former meeting;
yet, in the very embarrassment of the moment, he lifted his hat in
recognition.  But the salutation was met only by a cold, critical
stare.  Randolph bit his lip and passed on.  His reason told him
she was right, his instinct told him she was unfair; the
contradiction fascinated him.

Yet he was destined to see her again.  A month later, while seated
at his desk, which overlooked the teller's counter, he was startled
to see her enter the bank and approach the counter.  She was
already withdrawing a glove from her little hand, ready to affix
her signature to the receipted form to be proffered by the teller.
As she received the gold in exchange, he could see, by the
increased politeness of that official, his evident desire to
prolong the transaction, and the sidelong glances of his fellow
clerks, that she was apparently no stranger but a recognized object
of admiration.  Although her face was slightly flushed at the
moment, Randolph observed that she wore a certain proud reserve,
which he half hoped was intended as a check to these attentions.
Her eyes were fixed upon the counter, and this gave him a brief
opportunity to study her delicate beauty.  For in a few moments she
was gone; whether she had in her turn observed him he could not
say.  Presently he rose and sauntered, with what he believed was a
careless air, toward the paying teller's counter and the receipt,
which, being the last, was plainly exposed on the file of that
day's "taking."  He was startled by a titter of laughter from the
clerks and by the teller ironically lifting the file and placing it
before him.

"That's her name, sonny, but I didn't think that you'd tumble to it
quite as quick as the others.  Every new man manages to saunter
round here to get a sight of that receipt, and I've seen hoary old
depositors outside edge around inside, pretendin' they wanted to
see the dep, jest to feast their eyes on that girl's name.  Take a
good look at it and paste a copy in your hat, for that's all you'll
know of her, you bet.  Perhaps you think she's put her address and
her 'at home' days on the receipt.  Look hard and maybe you'll see
'em."

The instinct of youthful retaliation to say he knew her address
already stirred Randolph, but he shut his lips in time, and moved
away.  His desk neighbor informed him that the young lady came
there once a month and drew a hundred dollars from some deposit to
her credit, but that was all they knew.  Her name was Caroline
Avondale, yet there was no one of that name in the San Francisco
Directory.

But Randolph's romantic curiosity would not allow the incident to
rest there.  A favorable impression he had produced on Mr. Dingwall
enabled him to learn more, and precipitated what seemed to him a
singular discovery.  "You will find," said the deputy manager, "the
statement of the first deposit to Miss Avondale's credit in letters
in your own department.  The account was opened two years ago
through a South American banker.  But I am afraid it will not
satisfy your curiosity."  Nevertheless, Randolph remained after
office hours and spent some time in examining the correspondence of
two years ago.  He was rewarded at last by a banker's letter from
Callao advising the remittance of one thousand dollars to the
credit of Miss Avondale of San Francisco.  The letter was written
in Spanish, of which Randolph had a fair knowledge, but it was made
plainer by a space having been left in the formal letter for the
English name, which was written in another hand, together with a
copy of Miss Avondale's signature for identification--the usual
proceeding in those early days, when personal identification was
difficult to travelers, emigrants, and visitors in a land of
strangers.

But here he was struck by a singular resemblance which he at first
put down to mere coincidence of names.  The child's photograph
which he had found in the portmanteau was taken at Callao.  That
was a mere coincidence, but it suggested to his mind a more
singular one--that the handwriting of the address was, in some odd
fashion, familiar to him.  That night when he went home he opened
the portmanteau and took from the purse the scrap of paper with the
written address of the bank, and on comparing it with the banker's
letter the next day he was startled to find that the handwriting of
the bank's address and that in which the girl's name was introduced
in the banker's letter were apparently the same.  The letters in
the words "Caroline" and "California" appeared as if formed by the
same hand.  How this might have struck a chirographical expert he
did not know.  He could not consult the paying teller, who was
supposed to be familiar with signatures, without exposing his
secret and himself to ridicule.  And, after all, what did it prove?
Nothing.  Even if this girl were cognizant of the man who supplied
her address to the Callao banker two years ago, and he was really
the missing owner of the portmanteau, would she know where he was
now?  It might make an opening for conversation if he ever met her
familiarly, but nothing more.  Yet I am afraid another idea
occasionally took possession of Randolph's romantic fancy.  It was
pleasant to think that the patron of his own fortunes might be in
some mysterious way the custodian of hers.  The money was placed to
her credit--a liberal sum for a girl so young.  The large house in
which she lived was sufficient to prove to the optimistic Randolph
that this income was something personal and distinct from her
family.  That his unknown benefactor was in the habit of
mysteriously rewarding deserving merit after the fashion of a
marine fairy godmother, I fear did not strike him as being
ridiculous.

But an unfortunate query in that direction, addressed to a cynical
fellow clerk, who had the exhaustive experience with the immature
mustaches of twenty-three, elicited a reply which shocked him.  To
his indignant protest the young man continued:--

"Look here; a girl like that who draws money regularly from some
man who doesn't show up by name, who comes for it herself, and
hasn't any address, and calls herself 'Avondale'--only an innocent
from Dutch Flat, like you, would swallow."

"Impossible," said Randolph indignantly.  "Anybody could see she's
a lady by her dress and bearing."

"Dress and bearing!" echoed the clerk, with the derision of blase
youth.  "If that's your test, you ought to see Florry ----."

But here one may safely leave the young gentleman as abruptly as
Randolph did.  Yet a drop of this corrosive criticism irritated his
sensitiveness, and it was not until he recalled his last meeting
with her and her innocent escort that he was himself again.
Fortunately, he did not relate it to the critic, who would in all
probability have added a precocious motherhood to the young lady's
possible qualities.

He could now only look forward to her reappearance at the bank, and
here he was destined to a more serious disappointment.  For when
she made her customary appearance at the counter, he noticed a
certain businesslike gravity in the paying teller's reception of
her, and that he was consulting a small register before him instead
of handing her the usual receipt form.  "Perhaps you are unaware,
Miss Avondale, that your account is overdrawn," Randolph distinctly
heard him say, although in a politely lowered voice.

The young girl stopped in taking off her glove; her delicate face
expressed her wonder, and paled slightly; she cast a quick and
apparently involuntary glance in the direction of Randolph, but
said quietly,--

"I don't think I understand."

"I thought you did not--ladies so seldom do," continued the paying
teller suavely.  "But there are no funds to your credit.  Has not
your banker or correspondent advised you?"

The girl evidently did not comprehend.  "I have no correspondent or
banker," she said.  "I mean--I have heard nothing."

"The original credit was opened from Callao," continued the
official, "but since then it has been added to by drafts from
Melbourne.  There may be one nearly due now."

The young girl seemed scarcely to comprehend, yet her face remained
pale and thoughtful.  It was not until the paying teller resumed
with suggestive politeness that she roused herself: "If you would
like to see the president, he might oblige you until you hear from
your friends.  Of course, my duty is simply to"--

"I don't think I require you to exceed it," returned the young girl
quietly, "or that I wish to see the president."  Her delicate
little face was quite set with resolution and a mature dignity,
albeit it was still pale, as she drew away from the counter.

"If you would leave your address," continued the official with
persistent politeness, "we could advise you of any later deposit to
your credit."

"It is hardly necessary," returned the young lady.  "I should learn
it myself, and call again.  Thank you.  Good-morning."  And
settling her veil over her face, she quietly passed out.

The pain and indignation with which Randolph overheard this
colloquy he could with the greatest difficulty conceal.  For one
wild moment he had thought of calling her back while he made a
personal appeal to Revelstoke; but the conviction borne in upon him
by her resolute bearing that she would refuse it, and he would only
lay himself open to another rebuff, held him to his seat.  Yet he
could not entirely repress his youthful indignation.

"Where I come from," he said in an audible voice to his neighbor,
"a young lady like that would have been spared this public
disappointment.  A dozen men would have made up that sum and let
her go without knowing anything about her account being overdrawn."
And he really believed it.

"Nice, comf'able way of doing banking business in Dutch Flat,"
returned the cynic.  "And I suppose you'd have kept it up every
month?  Rather a tall price to pay for looking at a pretty girl
once a month!  But I suppose they're scarcer up there than here.
All the same, it ain't too late now.  Start up your subscription
right here, sonny, and we'll all ante up."

But Randolph, who seldom followed his heroics to their ultimate
prosaic conclusions, regretted he had spoken, although still
unconvinced.  Happily for his temper, he did not hear the comment
of the two tellers.

"Won't see HER again, old boy," said one.

"I reckon not," returned the other, "now that she's been chucked by
her fancy man--until she gets another.  But cheer up; a girl like
that won't want friends long."

It is not probable that either of these young gentlemen believed
what they said, or would have been personally disrespectful or
uncivil to any woman; they were fairly decent young fellows, but
the rigors of business demanded this appearance of worldly wisdom
between themselves.  Meantime, for a week after, Randolph indulged
in wild fancies of taking his benefactor's capital of seventy
dollars, adding thirty to it from his own hard-earned savings,
buying a draft with it from the bank for one hundred dollars, and
in some mysterious way getting it to Miss Avondale as the delayed
remittance.

The brief wet winter was nearly spent; the long dry season was due,
although there was still the rare beauty of cloud scenery in the
steel-blue sky, and the sudden return of quick but transient
showers.  It was on a Sunday of weather like this that the nature-
loving Randolph extended his usual holiday excursion as far as
Contra Costa by the steamer after his dutiful round of the wharves
and shipping.  It was with a gayety born equally of his youth and
the weather that he overcame his constitutional shyness, and not
only mingled without restraint among the pleasure-seekers that
thronged the crowded boat, but, in the consciousness of his good
looks and a new suit of clothes, even penetrated into the
aristocratic seclusion of the "ladies' cabin"--sacred to the fair
sex and their attendant swains or chaperones.

But he found every seat occupied, and was turning away, when he
suddenly recognized Miss Avondale sitting beside her little escort.
She appeared, however, in a somewhat constrained attitude,
sustaining with one hand the boy, who had clambered on the seat.
He was looking out of the cabin window, which she was also trying
to do, with greater difficulty on account of her position.  He
could see her profile presented with such marked persistency that
he was satisfied she had seen him and was avoiding him.  He turned
and left the cabin.

Yet, once on the deck again, he repented his haste.  Perhaps she
had not actually recognized him; perhaps she wished to avoid him
only because she was in plainer clothes--a circumstance that, with
his knowledge of her changed fortunes, struck him to the heart.  It
seemed to him that even as a humble employee of the bank he was in
some way responsible for it, and wondered if she associated him
with her humiliation.  He longed to speak with her and assure her
of his sympathy, and yet he was equally conscious that she would
reject it.

When the boat reached the Alameda wharf she slipped away with the
other passengers.  He wandered about the hotel garden and the main
street in the hope of meeting her again, although he was
instinctively conscious that she would not follow the lines of the
usual Sunday sight-seers, but had her own destination.  He
penetrated the depths of the Alameda, and lost himself among its
low, trailing oaks, to no purpose.  The hope of the morning had
died within him; the fire of adventure was quenched, and when the
clouds gathered with a rising wind he felt that the promise of that
day was gone.  He turned to go back to the ferry, but on consulting
his watch he found that he had already lost so much time in his
devious wanderings that he must run to catch the last boat.  The
few drops that spattered through the trees presently increased to a
shower; he put up his umbrella without lessening his speed, and
finally dashed into the main street as the last bell was ringing.
But at the same moment a slight, graceful figure slipped out of the
woods just ahead of him, with no other protection from the pelting
storm than a handkerchief tied over her hat, and ran as swiftly
toward the wharf.  It needed only one glance for Randolph to
recognize Miss Avondale.  The moment had come, the opportunity was
here, and the next instant he was panting at her side, with the
umbrella over her head.

The girl lifted her head quickly, gave a swift look of recognition,
a brief smile of gratitude, and continued her pace.  She had not
taken his arm, but had grasped the handle of the umbrella, which
linked them together.  Not a word was spoken.  Two people cannot be
conversational or sentimental flying at the top of their speed
beneath a single umbrella, with a crowd of impatient passengers
watching and waiting for them.  And I grieve to say that, being a
happy American crowd, there was some irreverent humor.  "Go it,
sis!  He's gainin' on you!"  "Keep it up!"  "Steady, sonny!  Don't
prance!"  "No fancy licks!  You were nearly over the traces that
time!"  "Keep up to the pole!" (i. e. the umbrella).  "Don't crowd
her off the track!  Just swing on together; you'll do it."

Randolph had glanced quickly at his companion.  She was laughing,
yet looking at him shyly as if wondering how HE was taking it.  The
paddle wheels were beginning to revolve.  Another rush, and they
were on board as the plank was drawn in.

But they were only on the edge of a packed and seething crowd.
Randolph managed, however, to force a way for her to an angle of
the paddle box, where they were comparatively alone although still
exposed to the rain.  She recognized their enforced companionship
by dropping her grasp of the umbrella, which she had hitherto been
holding over him with a singular kind of mature superiority very
like--as Randolph felt--her manner to the boy.

"You have left your little friend?" he said, grasping at the idea
for a conversational opening.

"My little cousin?  Yes," she said.  "I left him with friends.  I
could not bear to make him run any risk in this weather.  But," she
hesitated half apologetically, half mischievously, "perhaps I
hurried you."

"Oh, no," said Randolph quickly.  "This is the last boat, and I
must be at the bank to-morrow morning at nine."

"And I must be at the shop at eight," she said.  She did not speak
bitterly or pointedly, nor yet with the entire familiarity of
custom.  He noticed that her dress was indeed plainer, and yet she
seemed quite concerned over the water-soaked state of that cheap
thin silk pelerine and merino skirt.  A big lump was in his throat.

"Do you know," he said desperately, yet trying to laugh, "that this
is not the first time you have seen me dripping?"

"Yes," she returned, looking at him interestedly; "it was outside
of the druggist's in Montgomery Street, about four months ago.  You
were wetter then even than you are now."

"I was hungry, friendless, and penniless, Miss Avondale."  He had
spoken thus abruptly in the faint hope that the revelation might
equalize their present condition; but somehow his confession, now
that it was uttered, seemed exceedingly weak and impotent.  Then he
blundered in a different direction.  "Your eyes were the only kind
ones I had seen since I landed."  He flushed a little, feeling
himself on insecure ground, and ended desperately: "Why, when I
left you, I thought of committing suicide."

"Oh, dear, not so bad as that, I hope!" she said quickly, smiling
kindly, yet with a certain air of mature toleration, as if she were
addressing her little cousin.  "You only fancied it.  And it isn't
very complimentary to my eyes if their kindness drove you to such
horrid thoughts.  And then what happened?" she pursued smilingly.

"I had a job to carry a man's bag, and it got me a night's lodging
and a meal," said Randolph, almost brusquely, feeling the utter
collapse of his story.

"And then?" she said encouragingly.

"I got a situation at the bank."

"When?"

"The next day," faltered Randolph, expecting to hear her laugh.
But Miss Avondale heaved the faintest sigh.

"You are very lucky," she said.

"Not so very," returned Randolph quickly, "for the next time you
saw me you cut me dead."

"I believe I did," she said smilingly.

"Would you mind telling me why?"

"Are you sure you won't be angry?"

"I may be pained," said Randolph prudently.

"I apologize for that beforehand.  Well, that first night I saw a
young man looking very anxious, very uncomfortable, and very weak.
The second time--and not very long after--I saw him well dressed,
lounging like any other young man on a Sunday afternoon, and I
believed that he took the liberty of bowing to me then because I
had once looked at him under a misapprehension."

"Oh, Miss Avondale!"

"Then I took a more charitable view, and came to the conclusion
that the first night he had been drinking.  But," she added, with a
faint smile at Randolph's lugubrious face, "I apologize.  And you
have had your revenge; for if I cut you on account of your smart
clothes, you have tried to do me a kindness on account of my plain
ones."

"Oh, Miss Avondale," burst out Randolph, "if you only knew how
sorry and indignant I was at the bank--when--you know--the other
day"--he stammered.  "I wanted to go with you to Mr. Revelstoke,
you know, who had been so generous to me, and I know he would have
been proud to befriend you until you heard from your friends."

"And I am very glad you did nothing so foolish," said the young
lady seriously, "or"--with a smile--"I should have been still more
aggravating to you when we met.  The bank was quite right.  Nor
have I any pathetic story like yours.  Some years ago my little
half-cousin whom you saw lost his mother and was put in my charge
by his father, with a certain sum to my credit, to be expended for
myself and the child.  I lived with an uncle, with whom, for some
family reasons, the child's father was not on good terms, and this
money and the charge of the child were therefore intrusted entirely
to me; perhaps, also, because Bobby and I were fond of each other
and I was a friend of his mother.  The father was a shipmaster,
always away on long voyages, and has been home but once in the
three years I have had charge of his son.  I have not heard from
him since.  He is a good-hearted man, but of a restless, roving
disposition, with no domestic tastes.  Why he should suddenly cease
to provide for my little cousin--if he has done so--or if his
omission means only some temporary disaster to himself or his
fortunes, I do not know.  My anxiety was more for the poor boy's
sake than for myself, for as long as I live I can provide for him."
She said this without the least display of emotion, and with the
same mature air of also repressing any emotion on the part of
Randolph.  But for her size and girlish figure, but for the
dripping tangles of her hair and her soft eyes, he would have
believed he was talking to a hard, middle-aged matron.

"Then you--he--has no friends here?" asked Randolph.

"No.  We are all from Callao, where Bobby was born.  My uncle was a
merchant there, who came here lately to establish an agency.  We
lived with him in Sutter Street--where you remember I was so
hateful to you," she interpolated, with a mischievous smile--"until
his enterprise failed and he was obliged to return; but I stayed
here with Bobby, that he might be educated in his father's own
tongue.  It was unfortunate, perhaps," she said, with a little
knitting of her pretty brows, "that the remittances ceased and
uncle left about the same time; but, like you, I was lucky, and I
managed to get a place in the Emporium."

"The Emporium!" repeated Randolph in surprise.  It was a popular
"magasin of fashion" in Montgomery Street.  To connect this refined
girl with its garish display and vulgar attendants seemed
impossible.

"The Emporium," reiterated Miss Avondale simply.  "You see, we used
to dress a good deal in Callao and had the Paris fashions, and that
experience was of great service to me.  I am now at the head of
what they call the 'mantle department,' if you please, and am
looked up to as an authority."  She made him a mischievous bow,
which had the effect of causing a trickle from the umbrella to fall
across his budding mustache, and another down her own straight
little nose--a diversion that made them laugh together, although
Randolph secretly felt that the young girl's quiet heroism was
making his own trials appear ridiculous.  But her allusion to
Callao and the boy's name had again excited his fancy and revived
his romantic dream of their common benefactor.  As soon as they
could get a more perfect shelter and furl the umbrella, he plunged
into the full story of the mysterious portmanteau and its missing
owner, with the strange discovery that he had made of the
similarity of the two handwritings.  The young lady listened
intently, eagerly, checking herself with what might have been a
half smile at his enthusiasm.

"I remember the banker's letter, certainly," she said, "and Captain
Dornton--that was the name of Bobby's father--asked me to sign my
name in the body of it where HE had also written it with my
address.  But the likeness of the handwriting to your slip of paper
may be only a fancied one.  Have you shown it to any one," she said
quickly--"I mean," she corrected herself as quickly, "any one who
is an expert?"

"Not the two together," said Randolph, explaining how he had shown
the paper to Mr. Revelstoke.

But Miss Avondale had recovered herself, and laughed.  "That that
bit of paper should have been the means of getting you a situation
seems to me the more wonderful occurrence.  Of course it is quite a
coincidence that there should be a child's photograph and a letter
signed 'Bobby' in the portmanteau.  But"--she stopped suddenly and
fixed her dark eyes on his--"you have seen Bobby.  Surely you can
say if it was his likeness?"

Randolph was embarrassed.  The fact was he had always been so
absorbed in HER that he had hardly glanced at the child.  He
ventured to say this, and added a little awkwardly, and coloring,
that he had seen Bobby only twice.

"And you still have this remarkable photograph and letter?" she
said, perhaps a little too carelessly.

"Yes.  Would you like to see them?"

"Very much," she returned quickly; and then added, with a laugh,
"you are making me quite curious."

"If you would allow me to see you home," said Randolph, "we have to
pass the street where my room is, and," he added timidly, "I could
show them to you."

"Certainly," she replied, with sublime unconsciousness of the cause
of his hesitation; "that will be very nice?"

Randolph was happy, albeit he could not help thinking that she was
treating him like the absent Bobby.

"It's only on Commercial Street, just above Montgomery," he went
on.  "We go straight up from the wharf"--he stopped short here, for
the bulk of a bystander, a roughly clad miner, was pressing him so
closely that he was obliged to resist indignantly--partly from
discomfort, and partly from a sense that the man was overhearing
him.  The stranger muttered a kind of apology, and moved away.

"He seems to be perpetually in your way," said Miss Avondale,
smiling.  "He was right behind you, and you nearly trod on his
toes, when you bolted out of the cabin this morning."

"Ah, then you DID see me!" said Randolph, forgetting all else in
his delight at the admission.

But Miss Avondale was not disconcerted.  "Thanks to your collision,
I saw you both."

It was still raining when they disembarked at the wharf, a little
behind the other Passengers, who had crowded on the bow of the
steamboat.  It was only a block or two beyond the place where
Randolph had landed that eventful night.  He had to pass it now;
but with Miss Avondale clinging to his arm, with what different
feelings!  The rain still fell, the day was fading, but he walked
in an enchanted dream, of which the prosaic umbrella was the mystic
tent and magic pavilion.  He must needs even stop at the corner of
the wharf, and show her the exact spot where his unknown benefactor
appeared.

"Coming out of the shadow like that man there," she added brightly,
pointing to a figure just emerging from the obscurity of an
overhanging warehouse.  "Why, it's your friend the miner!"

Randolph looked.  It was indeed the same man, who had probably
reached the wharf by a cross street.

"Let us go on, do!" said Miss Avondale, suddenly tightening her
hold of Randolph's arm in some instinctive feminine alarm.  "I
don't like this place."

But Randolph, with the young girl's arm clinging to his, felt
supremely daring.  Indeed, I fear he was somewhat disappointed when
the stranger peacefully turned into the junk shop at the corner and
left them to pursue their way.

They at last stopped before some business offices on a central
thoroughfare, where Randolph had a room on the third story.  When
they had climbed the flight of stairs he unlocked a door and
disclosed a good-sized apartment which had been intended for an
office, but which was now neatly furnished as a study and bedroom.
Miss Avondale smiled at the singular combination.

"I should fancy," she said, "you would never feel as if you had
quite left the bank behind you."  Yet, with her air of protection
and mature experience, she at once began to move one or two
articles of furniture into a more tasteful position, while
Randolph, nevertheless a little embarrassed at his audacity in
asking this goddess into his humble abode, hurriedly unlocked a
closet, brought out the portmanteau, and handed her the letter and
photograph.

Woman-like, Miss Avondale looked at the picture first.  If she
experienced any surprise, she repressed it.  "It is LIKE Bobby,"
she said meditatively, "but he was stouter then; and he's changed
sadly since he has been in this climate.  I don't wonder you didn't
recognize him.  His father may have had it taken some day when they
were alone together.  I didn't know of it, though I know the
photographer."  She then looked at the letter, knit her pretty
brows, and with an abstracted air sat down on the edge of
Randolph's bed, crossed her little feet, and looked puzzled.  But
he was unable to detect the least emotion.

"You see," she said, "the handwriting of most children who are
learning to write is very much alike, for this is the stage of
development when they 'print.'  And their composition is the same:
they talk only of things that interest all children--pets, toys,
and their games.  This is only ANY child's letter to ANY father.  I
couldn't really say it WAS Bobby's.  As to the photograph, they
have an odd way in South America of selling photographs of anybody,
principally of pretty women, by the packet, to any one who wants
them.  So that it does not follow that the owner of this photograph
had any personal interest in it.  Now, as to your mysterious patron
himself, can you describe him?"  She looked at Randolph with a
certain feline intensity.

He became embarrassed.  "You know I only saw him once, under a
street lamp"--he began.

"And I have only seen Captain Dornton--if it were he--twice in
three years," she said.  "But go on."

Again Randolph was unpleasantly impressed with her cold, dryly
practical manner.  He had never seen his benefactor but once, but
he could not speak of him in that way.

"I think," he went on hesitatingly, "that he had dark, pleasant
eyes, a thick beard, and the look of a sailor."

"And there were no other papers in the portmanteau?" she said, with
the same intense look.

"None."

"These are mere coincidences," said Miss Avondale, after a pause,
"and, after all, they are not as strange as the alternative.  For
we would have to believe that Captain Dornton arrived here--where
he knew his son and I were living--without a word of warning, came
ashore for the purpose of going to a hotel and the bank also, and
then unaccountably changed his mind and disappeared."

The thought of the rotten wharf, his own escape, and the dead body
were all in Randolph's mind; but his reasoning was already
staggered by the girl's conclusions, and he felt that it might only
pain, without convincing her.  And was he convinced himself?  She
smiled at his blank face and rose.  "Thank you all the same.  And
now I must go."

Randolph rose also.  "Would you like to take the photograph and
letter to show your cousin?"

"Yes.  But I should not place much reliance on his memory."
Nevertheless, she took up the photograph and letter, and Randolph,
putting the portmanteau back in the closet, locked it, and stood
ready to accompany her.

On their way to her house they talked of other things.  Randolph
learned something of her life in Callao: that she was an orphan
like himself, and had been brought from the Eastern States when a
child to live with a rich uncle in Callao who was childless; that
her aunt had died and her uncle had married again; that the second
wife had been at variance with his family, and that it was
consequently some relief to Miss Avondale to be independent as the
guardian of Bobby, whose mother was a sister of the first wife;
that her uncle had objected as strongly as a brother-in-law could
to his wife's sister's marriage with Captain Dornton on account of
his roving life and unsettled habits, and that consequently there
would be little sympathy for her or for Bobby in his mysterious
disappearance.  The wind blew and the rain fell upon these
confidences, yet Randolph, walking again under that umbrella of
felicity, parted with her at her own doorstep all too soon,
although consoled with the permission to come and see her when the
child returned.

He went back to his room a very hopeful, foolish, but happy youth.
As he entered he seemed to feel the charm of her presence again in
the humble apartment she had sanctified.  The furniture she had
moved with her own little hands, the bed on which she had sat for a
half moment, was glorified to his youthful fancy.  And even that
magic portmanteau which had brought him all this happiness, that,
too,--but he gave a sudden start.  The closet door, which he had
shut as he went out, was unlocked and open, the portmanteau--his
"trust"--gone!


III


Randolph Trent's consternation at the loss of the portmanteau was
partly superstitious.  For, although it was easy to make up the
small sum taken, and the papers were safe in Miss Avondale's
possession, yet this displacement of the only link between him and
his missing benefactor, and the mystery of its disappearance,
raised all his old doubts and suspicions.  A vague uneasiness, a
still more vague sense of some remissness on his own part,
possessed him.

That the portmanteau was taken from his room during his absence
with Miss Avondale that afternoon was evident.  The door had been
opened by a skeleton key, and as the building was deserted on
Sunday, there had been no chance of interference with the thief.
If mere booty had been his object, the purse would have satisfied
him without his burdening himself with a portmanteau which might be
identified.  Nothing else in the room had been disturbed.  The
thief must have had some cognizance of its location, and have kept
some espionage over Randolph's movements--a circumstance which
added to the mystery and his disquiet.  He placed a description of
his loss with the police authorities, but their only idea of
recovering it was by leaving that description with pawnbrokers and
second-hand dealers, a proceeding that Randolph instinctively felt
was in vain.

A singular but instinctive reluctance to inform Miss Avondale of
his loss kept him from calling upon her for the first few days.
When he did, she seemed concerned at the news, although far from
participating in his superstition or his suspicions.

"You still have the letter and photograph--whatever they may be
worth--for identification," she said dryly, "although Bobby cannot
remember about the letter.  He thinks he went once with his father
to a photographer and had a picture taken, but he cannot remember
seeing it afterward."  She was holding them in her hand, and
Randolph almost mechanically took them from her and put them in his
pocket.  He would not, perhaps, have noticed his own brusqueness
had she not looked a little surprised, and, he thought, annoyed.
"Are you quite sure you won't lose them?" she said gently.
"Perhaps I had better keep them for you."

"I shall seal them up and put them in the bank safe," he said
quickly.  He could not tell whether his sudden resolution was an
instinct or the obstinacy that often comes to an awkward man.
"But," he added, coloring, "I shall always regret the loss of the
portmanteau, for it was the means of bringing us together."

"I thought it was the umbrella," said Miss Avondale dryly.

She had once before halted him on the perilous edge of sentiment by
a similar cynicism, but this time it cut him deeply.  For he could
not be blind to the fact that she treated him like a mere boy, and
in dispelling the illusions of his instincts and beliefs seemed as
if intent upon dispelling his illusions of HER; and in her half-
smiling abstraction he read only the well-bred toleration of one
who is beginning to be bored.  He made his excuses early and went
home.  Nevertheless, although regretting he had not left her the
letter and photograph, he deposited them in the bank safe the next
day, and tried to feel that he had vindicated his character for
grown-up wisdom.

Then, in his conflicting emotions, he punished himself, after the
fashion of youth, by avoiding the beloved one's presence for
several days.  He did this in the belief that it would enable him
to make up his mind whether to reveal his real feelings to her, and
perhaps there was the more alluring hope that his absence might
provoke some manifestations of sentiment on her part.  But she made
no sign.  And then came a reaction in his feelings, with a
heightened sense of loyalty to his benefactor.  For, freed of any
illusion or youthful fancy now, a purely unselfish gratitude to the
unknown man filled his heart.  In the lapse of his sentiment he
clung the more closely to this one honest romance of his life.

One afternoon, at the close of business, he was a little astonished
to receive a message from Mr. Dingwall, the deputy manager, that he
wished to see him in his private office.  He was still more
astonished when Mr. Dingwall, after offering him a chair, stood up
with his hands under his coat tails before the fireplace, and, with
a hesitancy half reserved, half courteous, but wholly English,
said,--

"I--er--would be glad, Mr. Trent, if you would--er--give me the
pleasure of your company at dinner to-morrow."

Randolph, still amazed, stammered his acceptance.

"There will be--er--a young lady in whom you were--er--interested
some time ago.  Er--Miss Avondale."

Randolph, feeling he was coloring, and uncertain whether he should
speak of having met her since, contented himself with expressing
his delight.

"In fact," continued Mr. Dingwall, clearing his throat as if he
were also clearing his conscience of a tremendous secret, "she--er--
mentioned your name.  There is Sir William Dornton coming also.
Sir William has recently succeeded his elder brother, who--er--it
seems, was the gentleman you were inquiring about when you first
came here, and who, it is now ascertained, was drowned in the bay a
few months ago.  In fact--er--it is probable that you were the last
one who saw him alive.  I thought I would tell you," continued Mr.
Dingwall, settling his chin more comfortably in his checked cravat,
"in case Sir William should speak of him to you."

Randolph was staggered.  The abrupt revelation of his benefactor's
name and fate, casually coupled with an invitation to dinner,
shocked and confounded him.  Perhaps Mr. Dingwall noticed it and
misunderstood the cause, for he added in parenthetical explanation:
"Yes, the man whose portmanteau you took charge of is dead; but you
did your duty, Mr. Trent, in the matter, although the recovery of
the portmanteau was unessential to the case."

"Dead," repeated Randolph, scarcely heeding him.  "But is it true?
Are they sure?"

Mr. Dingwall elevated his eyebrows.  "The large property at stake
of course rendered the most satisfactory proofs of it necessary.
His father had died only a month previous, and of course they were
seeking the presumptive heir, the so-called 'Captain John Dornton'--
your man--when they made the discovery of his death."

Randolph thought of the strange body at the wharf, of the coroner's
vague verdict, and was unconvinced.  "But," he said impulsively,
"there was a child."  He checked himself as he remembered this was
one of Miss Avondale's confidences to him.

"Ah--Miss Avondale has spoken of a child?" said Mr. Dingwall dryly.

"I saw her with one which she said was Captain Dornton's, which had
been left in her care after the death of his wife," said Randolph
in hurried explanation.

"John Dornton had no WIFE," said Mr. Dingwall severely.  "The boy
is a natural son.  Captain John lived a wild, rough, and--er--an
eccentric life."

"I thought--I understood from Miss Avondale that he was married,"
stammered the young man.

"In your rather slight acquaintance with that young lady I should
imagine she would have had some delicacy in telling you otherwise,"
returned Mr. Dingwall primly.

Randolph felt the truth of this, and was momentarily embarrassed.
Yet he lingered.

"Has Miss Avondale known of this discovery long?" he asked.

"About two weeks, I should say," returned Mr. Dingwall.  "She was
of some service to Sir William in getting up certain proofs he
required."

It was three weeks since she had seen Randolph, yet it would have
been easy for her to communicate the news to him.  In these three
weeks his romance of their common interest in his benefactor--even
his own dream of ever seeing him again--had been utterly dispelled.

It was in no social humor that he reached Dingwall's house the next
evening.  Yet he knew the difficulty of taking an aggressive
attitude toward his previous idol or of inviting a full explanation
from her then.

The guests, with the exception of himself and Miss Avondale, were
all English.  She, self-possessed and charming in evening dress,
nodded to him with her usual mature patronage, but did not evince
the least desire to seek him for any confidential aside.  He
noticed the undoubted resemblance of Sir William Dornton to his
missing benefactor, and yet it produced a singular repulsion in
him, rather than any sympathetic predilection.  At table he found
that Miss Avondale was separated from him, being seated beside the
distinguished guest, while he was placed next to the young lady he
had taken down--a Miss Eversleigh, the cousin of Sir William.  She
was tall, and Randolph's first impression of her was that she was
stiff and constrained--an impression he quickly corrected at the
sound of her voice, her frank ingenuousness, and her unmistakable
youth.  In the habit of being crushed by Miss Avondale's
unrelenting superiority, he found himself apparently growing up
beside this tall English girl, who had the naivete of a child.
After a few commonplaces she suddenly turned her gray eyes on his,
and said,--

"Didn't you like Jack?  I hope you did.  Oh, say you did--do!"

"You mean Captain John Dornton?" said Randolph, a little confused.

"Yes, of course; HIS brother"--glancing toward Sir William.  "We
always called him Jack, though I was ever so little when he went
away.  No one thought of calling him anything else but Jack.  Say
you liked him!"

"I certainly did," returned Randolph impulsively.  Then checking
himself, he added, "I only saw him once, but I liked his face and
manner--and--he was very kind to me."

"Of course he was," said the young girl quickly.  "That was only
like him, and yet"--lowering her voice slightly--"would you believe
that they all say he was wild and wicked and dissipated?  And why?
Fancy!  Just because he didn't care to stay at home and shoot and
hunt and race and make debts, as heirs usually do.  No, he wanted
to see the world and do something for himself.  Why, when he was
quite young, he could manage a boat like any sailor.  Dornton Hall,
their place, is on the coast, you know, and they say that, just for
adventure's sake, after he went away, he shipped as first mate
somewhere over here on the Pacific, and made two or three voyages.
You know--don't you?--and how every one was shocked at such conduct
in the heir."

Her face was so girlishly animated, with such sparkle of eye and
responsive color, that he could hardly reconcile it with her first
restraint or with his accepted traditions of her unemotional race,
or, indeed, with her relationship to the principal guest.  His
latent feeling of gratitude to the dead man warmed under the young
girl's voice.

"It's so dreadful to think of him as drowned, you know, though even
that they put against him," she went on hurriedly, "for they say he
was probably drowned in some drunken fit--fell through the wharf or
something shocking and awful--worse than suicide.  But"--she turned
her frank young eyes upon him again--"YOU saw him on the wharf that
night, and you could tell how he looked."

"He was as sober as I was," returned Randolph indignantly, as he
recalled the incident of the flask and the dead man's caution.
From recalling it to repeating it followed naturally, and he
presently related the whole story of his meeting with Captain
Dornton to the brightly interested eyes beside him.  When he had
finished, she leaned toward him in girlish confidence, and said:--

"Yes; but EVEN THAT they tell to show how intoxicated be must have
been to have given up his portmanteau to an utter stranger like
you."  She stopped, colored, and yet, reflecting his own half
smile, she added: "You know what I mean.  For they all agree how
nice it was of you not to take any advantage of his condition, and
Dingwall said your honesty and faithfulness struck Revelstoke so
much that he made a place for you at the bank.  Now I think," she
continued, with delightful naivete, "it was a proof of poor Jack's
BEING PERFECTLY SOBER, that he knew whom he was trusting, and saw
just what you were, at once.  There!  But I suppose you must not
talk to me any longer, but must make yourself agreeable to some one
else.  But it was very nice of you to tell me all this.  I wish you
knew my guardian.  You'd like him.  Do you ever go to England?  Do
come and see us."

These confidences had not been observed by the others, and Miss
Avondale appeared to confine her attentions to Sir William, who
seemed to be equally absorbed, except that once he lifted his eyes
toward Randolph, as if in answer to some remark from her.  It
struck Randolph that he was the subject of their conversation, and
this did not tend to allay the irritation of a mind already wounded
by the contrast of HER lack of sympathy for the dead man who had
befriended and trusted her to the simple faith of the girl beside
him, who was still loyal to a mere childish recollection.

After the ladies had rustled away, Sir William moved his seat
beside Randolph.  His manner seemed to combine Mr. Dingwall's
restraint with a certain assumption of the man of the world, more
notable for its frankness than its tactfulness.

"Sad business this of my brother's, eh," he said, lighting a cigar;
"any way you take it, eh?  You saw him last, eh?"  The
interrogating word, however, seemed to be only an exclamation of
habit, for he seldom waited for an answer.

"I really don't know," said Randolph, "as I saw him only ONCE, and
he left me on the wharf.  I know no more where he went to then than
where he came from before.  Of course you must know all the rest,
and how he came to be drowned."

"Yes; it really did not matter much.  The whole question was
identification and proof of death, you know.  Beastly job, eh?"

"Was that his body YOU were helping to get ashore at the wharf one
Sunday?" asked Randolph bluntly, now fully recognizing the likeness
that had puzzled him in Sir William.  "I didn't see any
resemblance."

"Precious few would.  I didn't--though it's true I hadn't seen him
for eight years.  Poor old chap been knocked about so he hadn't a
feature left, eh?  But his shipmate knew him, and there were his
traps on the ship."

Then, for the first time, Randolph heard the grim and sordid
details of John Dornton's mysterious disappearance.  He had arrived
the morning before that eventful day on an Australian bark as the
principal passenger.  The vessel itself had an evil repute, and was
believed to have slipped from the hands of the police at Melbourne.
John Dornton had evidently amassed a considerable fortune in
Australia, although an examination of his papers and effects showed
it to be in drafts and letters of credit and shares, and that he
had no ready money--a fact borne out by the testimony of his
shipmates.  The night he arrived was spent in an orgy on board
ship, which he did not leave until the early evening of the next
day, although, after his erratic fashion, he had ordered a room at
a hotel.  That evening he took ashore a portmanteau, evidently
intending to pass the night at his hotel.  He was never seen again,
although some of the sailors declared that they had seen him on the
wharf WITHOUT THE PORTMANTEAU, and they had drunk together at a low
grog shop on the street corner.  He had evidently fallen through
some hole in the wharf.  As he was seen only with the sailors, who
also knew he had no ready money on his person, there was no
suspicion of foul play.

"For all that, don't you know," continued Sir William, with a
forced laugh, which struck Randolph as not only discordant, but as
having an insolent significance, "it might have been a deuced bad
business for YOU, eh?  Last man who was with him, eh?  In
possession of his portmanteau, eh?  Wearing his clothes, eh?
Awfully clever of you to go straight to the bank with it.  'Pon my
word, my legal man wanted to pounce down on you as 'accessory'
until I and Dingwall called him off.  But it's all right now."

Randolph's antagonism to the man increased.  "The investigation
seems to have been peculiar," he said dryly, "for, if I remember
rightly, at the coroner's inquest on the body I saw you with, the
verdict returned was of the death of an UNKNOWN man."

"Yes; we hadn't clear proof of identity then," he returned coolly,
"but we had a reexamination of the body before witnesses afterward,
and a verdict according to the facts.  That was kept out of the
papers in deference to the feelings of the family and friends.  I
fancy you wouldn't have liked to be cross-examined before a stupid
jury about what you were doing with Jack's portmanteau, even if WE
were satisfied with it."

"I should have been glad to testify to the kindness of your
brother, at any risk," returned Randolph stoutly.  "You have heard
that the portmanteau was stolen from me, but the amount of money it
contained has been placed in Mr. Dingwall's hands for disposal."

"Its contents were known, and all that's been settled," returned
Sir William, rising.  "But," he continued, with his forced laugh,
which to Randolph's fancy masked a certain threatening significance,
"I say, it would have been a beastly business, don't you know, if
you HAD been called upon to produce it again--ha, ha!--eh?"

Returning to the dining room, Randolph found Miss Avondale alone on
a corner of the sofa.  She swept her skirts aside as he approached,
as an invitation for him to sit beside her.  Still sore from his
experience, he accepted only in the hope that she was about to
confide to him her opinion of this strange story.  But, to his
chagrin, she looked at him over her fan with a mischievous
tolerance.  "You seemed more interested in the cousin than the
brother of your patron."

Once Randolph might have been flattered at this.  But her speech
seemed to him only an echo of the general heartlessness.  "I found
Miss Eversleigh very sympathetic over the fate of the unfortunate
man, whom nobody else here seems to care for," said Randolph
coldly.

"Yes," returned Miss Avondale composedly; "I believe she was a
great friend of Captain Dornton when she was quite a child, and I
don't think she can expect much from Sir William, who is very
different from his brother.  In fact, she was one of the relatives
who came over here in quest of the captain, when it was believed he
was living and the heir.  He was quite a patron of hers."

"But was he not also one of yours?" said Randolph bluntly.

"I think I told you I was the friend of the boy and of poor
Paquita, the boy's mother," said Miss Avondale quietly.  "I never
saw Captain Dornton but twice."

Randolph noticed that she had not said "wife," although in her
previous confidences she had so described the mother.  But, as
Dingwall had said, why should she have exposed the boy's
illegitimacy to a comparative stranger; and if she herself had been
deceived about it, why should he expect her to tell him?  And yet--
he was not satisfied.

He was startled by a little laugh.  "Well, I declare, you look as
if you resented the fact that your benefactor had turned out to be
a baronet--just as in some novel--and that you have rendered a
service to the English aristocracy.  If you are thinking of poor
Bobby," she continued, without the slightest show of self-
consciousness, "Sir William will provide for him, and thinks of
taking him to England to restore his health.  Now"--with her
smiling, tolerant superiority--"you must go and talk to Miss
Eversleigh.  I see her looking this way, and I don't think she half
likes me as it is."

Randolph, who, however, also saw that Sir William was lounging
toward them, here rose formally, as if permitting the latter to
take the vacated seat.  This partly imposed on him the necessity of
seeking Miss Eversleigh, who, having withdrawn to the other end of
the room, was turning over the leaves of an album.  As Randolph
joined her, she said, without looking up, "Is Miss Avondale a
friend of yours?"

The question was so pertinent to his reflections at the moment that
he answered impulsively, "I really don't know."

"Yes, that's the answer, I think, most of her acquaintances would
give, if they were asked the same question and replied honestly,"
said the young girl, as if musing.

"Even Sir William?" suggested Randolph, half smiling, yet wondering
at her unlooked-for serious shrewdness as he glanced toward the
sofa.

"Yes; but HE wouldn't care.  You see, there would be a pair of
them."  She stopped with a slight blush, as if she had gone too
far, but corrected herself in her former youthful frankness: "You
don't mind my saying what I did of her?  You're not such a
PARTICULAR friend?"

"We both owe a debt of gratitude to your cousin Jack," said
Randolph, in some embarrassment.

"Yes, but YOU feel it and she doesn't.  So that doesn't make you
friends."

"But she has taken good care of Captain Dornton's child," suggested
Randolph loyally.

He stopped, however, feeling that he was on dangerous ground.  But
Miss Eversleigh put her own construction on his reticence, and
said,--

"I don't think she cares for it much--or for ANY children."

Randolph remembered his own impression the only time he had ever
seen her with the child, and was struck with the young girl's
instinct again coinciding with his own.  But, possibly because he
knew he could never again feel toward Miss Avondale as he had, he
was the more anxious to be just, and he was about to utter a
protest against this general assumption, when the voice of Sir
William broke in upon them.  He was taking his leave--and the
opportunity of accompanying Miss Avondale to her lodgings on the
way to his hotel.  He lingered a moment over his handshaking with
Randolph.

"Awfully glad to have met you, and I fancy you're awfully glad to
get rid of what they call your 'trust.'  Must have given you a
beastly lot of bother, eh--might have given you more?"

He nodded familiarly to Miss Eversleigh, and turned away with Miss
Avondale, who waved her usual smiling patronage to Randolph, even
including his companion in that half-amused, half-superior
salutation.  Perhaps it was this that put a sudden hauteur into the
young girl's expression as she stared at Miss Avondale's departing
figure.

"If you ever come to England, Mr. Trent," she said, with a pretty
dignity in her youthful face, "I hope you will find some people not
quite so rude as my cousin and"--

"Miss Avondale, you would say," returned Randolph quietly.  "As to
HER, I am quite accustomed to her maturer superiority, which, I am
afraid, is the effect of my own youth and inexperience; and I
believe that, in course of time, your cousin's brusqueness might be
as easily understood by me.  I dare say," he added, with a laugh,
"that I must seem to them a very romantic visionary with my
'trust,' and the foolish importance I have put upon a very trivial
occurrence."

"I don't think so," said the girl quickly, "and I consider Bill
very rude, and," she added, with a return of her boyish frankness,
"I shall tell him so.  As for Miss Avondale, she's AT LEAST thirty,
I understand; perhaps she can't help showing it in that way, too."

But here Randolph, to evade further personal allusions, continued
laughingly: "And as I've LOST my 'trust,' I haven't even that to
show in defense.  Indeed, when you all are gone I shall have
nothing to remind me of my kind benefactor.  It will seem like a
dream."

Miss Eversleigh was silent for a moment, and then glanced quickly
around her.  The rest of the company were their elders, and,
engaged in conversation at the other end of the apartment, had
evidently left the young people to themselves.

"Wait a moment," she said, with a youthful air of mystery and
earnestness.  Randolph saw that she had slipped an Indian bracelet,
profusely hung with small trinkets, from her arm to her wrist, and
was evidently selecting one.  It proved to be a child's tiny ring
with a small pearl setting.  "This was given to me by Cousin Jack,"
said Miss Eversleigh in a low voice, "when I was a child, at some
frolic or festival, and I have kept it ever since.  I brought it
with me when we came here as a kind of memento to show him.  You
know that is impossible now.  You say you have nothing of his to
keep.  Will you accept this?  I know he would be glad to know you
had it.  You could wear it on your watch chain.  Don't say no, but
take it."

Protesting, yet filled with a strange joy and pride, Randolph took
it from the young girl's hand.  The little color which had deepened
on her cheek cleared away as he thanked her gratefully, and with a
quiet dignity she arose and moved toward the others.  Randolph did
not linger long after this, and presently took his leave of his
host and hostess.

It seemed to him that he walked home that night in the whirling
clouds of his dispelled dream.  The airy structure he had built up
for the last three months had collapsed.  The enchanted canopy
under which he had stood with Miss Avondale was folded forever.
The romance he had evolved from his strange fortune had come to an
end, not prosaically, as such romances are apt to do, but with a
dramatic termination which, however, was equally fatal to his
hopes.  At any other time he might have projected the wildest hopes
from the fancy that he and Miss Avondale were orphaned of a common
benefactor; but it was plain that her interests were apart from
his.  And there was an indefinable something he did not understand,
and did not want to understand, in the story she had told him.  How
much of it she had withheld, not so much from delicacy or contempt
for his understanding as a desire to mislead him, he did not know.
His faith in her had gone with his romance.  It was not strange
that the young English girl's unsophisticated frankness and simple
confidences lingered longest in his memory, and that when, a few
days later, Mr. Dingwall informed him that Miss Avondale had sailed
for England with the Dornton family, he was more conscious of a
loss in the stranger girl's departure.

"I suppose Miss Avondale takes charge of--of the boy, sir?" he said
quietly.

Mr. Dingwall gave him a quick glance.  "Possibly.  Sir William has
behaved with great--er--consideration," he replied briefly.


IV


Randolph's nature was too hopeful and recuperative to allow him to
linger idly in the past.  He threw himself into his work at the
bank with his old earnestness and a certain simple
conscientiousness which, while it often provoked the raillery of
his fellow clerks, did not escape the eyes of his employers.  He
was advanced step by step, and by the end of the year was put in
charge of the correspondence with banks and agencies.  He had saved
some money, and had made one or two profitable investments.  He was
enabled to take better apartments in the same building he had
occupied.  He had few of the temptations of youth.  His fear of
poverty and his natural taste kept him from the speculative and
material excesses of the period.  A distrust of his romantic
weakness kept him from society and meaner entanglements which might
have beset his good looks and good nature.  He worked in his rooms
at night and forbore his old evening rambles.

As the year wore on to the anniversary of his arrival, he thought
much of the dead man who had inspired his fortunes, and with it a
sense of his old doubts and suspicions revived.  His reason had
obliged him to accept the loss of the fateful portmanteau as an
ordinary theft; his instinct remained unconvinced.  There was no
superstition connected with his loss.  His own prosperity had not
been impaired by it.  On the contrary, he reflected bitterly that
the dead man had apparently died only to benefit others.  At such
times he recalled, with a pleasure that he knew might become
perilous, the tall English girl who had defended Dornton's memory
and echoed his own sympathy.  But that was all over now.

One stormy night, not unlike that eventful one of his past
experience, Randolph sought his rooms in the teeth of a southwest
gale.  As he buffeted his way along the rain-washed pavement of
Montgomery Street, it was not strange that his thoughts reverted to
that night and the memory of his dead protector.  But reaching his
apartment, he sternly banished them with the vanished romance they
revived, and lighting his lamp, laid out his papers in the prospect
of an evening of uninterrupted work.  He was surprised, however,
after a little interval, by the sound of uncertain and shuffling
steps on the half-lighted passage outside, the noise of some heavy
article set down on the floor, and then a tentative knock at his
door.  A little impatiently he called, "Come in."

The door opened slowly, and out of the half obscurity of the
passage a thickset figure lurched toward him into the full light of
the room.  Randolph half rose, and then sank back into his chair,
awed, spellbound, and motionless.  He saw the figure standing
plainly before him; he saw distinctly the familiar furniture of his
room, the storm-twinkling lights in the windows opposite, the flash
of passing carriage lamps in the street below.  But the figure
before him was none other than the dead man of whom he had just
been thinking.

The figure looked at him intently, and then burst into a fit of
unmistakable laughter.  It was neither loud nor unpleasant, and yet
it provoked a disagreeable recollection.  Nevertheless, it
dissipated Randolph's superstitious tremor, for he had never before
heard of a ghost who laughed heartily.

"You don't remember me," said the man.  "Belay there, and I'll
freshen your memory."  He stepped back to the door, opened it, put
his arm out into the hall, and brought in a portmanteau, closed the
door, and appeared before Randolph again with the portmanteau in
his hand.  It was the one that had been stolen.  "There!" he said.

"Captain Dornton," murmured Randolph.

The man laughed again and flung down the portmanteau.  "You've got
my name pat enough, lad, I see; but I reckoned you'd have spotted
ME without that portmanteau."

"I see you've got it back," stammered Randolph in his embarrassment.
"It was--stolen from me."

Captain Dornton laughed again, dropped into a chair, rubbed his
hands on his knees, and turned his face toward Randolph.  "Yes; I
stole it--or had it stolen--the same thing, for I'm responsible."

"But I would have given it up to YOU at once," said Randolph
reproachfully, clinging to the only idea he could understand in his
utter bewilderment.  "I have religiously and faithfully kept it for
you, with all its contents, ever since--you disappeared."

"I know it, lad," said Captain Dornton, rising, and extending a
brown, weather-beaten hand which closed heartily on the young
man's; "no need to say that.  And you've kept it even better than
you know.  Look here!"

He lifted the portmanteau to his lap and disclosed BEHIND the usual
small pouch or pocket in the lid a slit in the lining.  "Between
the lining and the outer leather," he went on grimly, "I had two or
three bank notes that came to about a thousand dollars, and some
papers, lad, that, reckoning by and large, might be worth to me a
million.  When I got that portmanteau back they were all there,
gummed in, just as I had left them.  I didn't show up and come for
them myself, for I was lying low at the time, and--no offense, lad--
I didn't know how you stood with a party who was no particular
friend of mine.  An old shipmate whom I set to watch that party
quite accidentally run across your bows in the ferry boat, and
heard enough to make him follow in your wake here, where he got the
portmanteau.  It's all right," he said, with a laugh, waving aside
with his brown hand Randolph's protesting gesture.  "The old bag's
only got back to its rightful owner.  It mayn't have been got in
shipshape 'Frisco style, but when a man's life is at stake, at
least, when it's a question of his being considered dead or alive,
he's got to take things as he finds 'em, and I found 'em d--- bad."

In a flash of recollection Randolph remembered the obtruding miner
on the ferry boat, the same figure on the wharf corner, and the
advantage taken of his absence with Miss Avondale.  And Miss
Avondale was the "party" this man's shipmate was watching!  He felt
his face crimsoning, yet he dared not question him further, nor yet
defend her.  Captain Dornton noticed it, and with a friendly tact,
which Randolph had not expected of him, rising again, laid his hand
gently on the young man's shoulder.

"Look here, lad," he said, with his pleasant smile; "don't you
worry your head about the ways or doings of the Dornton family, or
any of their friends.  They're a queer lot--including your humble
servant.  You've done the square thing accordin' to your lights.
You've ridden straight from start to finish, with no jockeying, and
I shan't forget it.  There are only two men who haven't failed me
when I trusted them.  One was you when I gave you my portmanteau;
the other was Jack Redhill when he stole it from you."

He dropped back in his chair again, and laughed silently.

"Then you did not fall overboard as they supposed," stammered
Randolph at last.

"Not much!  But the next thing to it.  It wasn't the water that I
took in that knocked me out, my lad, but something stronger.  I was
shanghaied."

"Shanghaied?" repeated Randolph vacantly.

"Yes, shanghaied!  Hocused!  Drugged at that gin mill on the wharf
by a lot of crimps, who, mistaking me for a better man, shoved me,
blind drunk and helpless, down the steps into a boat, and out to a
short-handed brig in the stream.  When I came to I was outside the
Heads, pointed for Guayaquil.  When they found they'd captured, not
a poor Jack, but a man who'd trod a quarterdeck, who knew, and was
known at every port on the trading line, and who could make it hot
for them, they were glad to compromise and set me ashore at
Acapulco, and six weeks later I landed in 'Frisco."

"Safe and sound, thank Heaven!" said Randolph joyously.

"Not exactly, lad," said Captain Dornton grimly, "but dead and sat
upon by the coroner, and my body comfortably boxed up and on its
way to England."

"But that was nine months ago.  What have you been doing since?
Why didn't you declare yourself then?" said Randolph impatiently, a
little irritated by the man's extreme indifference.  He really
talked like an amused spectator of his own misfortunes.

"Steady, lad.  I know what you're going to say.  I know all that
happened.  But the first thing I found when I got back was that the
shanghai business had saved my life; that but for that I would have
really been occupying that box on its way to England, instead of
the poor devil who was taken for me."

A cold tremor passed over Randolph.  Captain Dornton, however, was
tolerantly smiling.

"I don't understand," said Randolph breathlessly.

Captain Dornton rose and, walking to the door, looked out into the
passage; then he shut the door carefully and returned, glancing
about the room and at the storm-washed windows.  "I thought I heard
some one outside.  I'm lying low just now, and only go out at
night, for I don't want this thing blown before I'm ready.  Got
anything to drink here?"

Randolph replied by taking a decanter of whiskey and glasses from a
cupboard.  The captain filled his glass, and continued with the
same gentle but exasperating nonchalance, "Mind my smoking?"

"Not at all," said Randolph, pushing a cigar toward him.  But the
captain put it aside, drew from his pocket a short black clay pipe,
stuffed it with black "Cavendish plug," which he had first chipped
off in the palm of his hand with a large clasp knife, lighted it,
and took a few meditative whiffs.  Then, glancing at Randolph's
papers, he said, "I'm not keeping you from your work, lad?" and
receiving a reply in the negative, puffed at his pipe and once more
settled himself comfortably in his chair, with his dark, bearded
profile toward Randolph.

"You were saying just now you didn't understand," he went on
slowly, without looking up; "so you must take your own bearings
from what I'm telling you.  When I met you that night I had just
arrived from Melbourne.  I had been lucky in some trading
speculations I had out there, and I had some bills with me, but no
money except what I had tucked in the skin of that portmanteau and
a few papers connected with my family at home.  When a man lives
the roving kind of life I have, he learns to keep all that he cares
for under his own hat, and isn't apt to blab to friends.  But it
got out in some way on the voyage that I had money, and as there
was a mixed lot of 'Sydney ducks' and 'ticket of leave men' on
board, it seems they hatched a nice little plot to waylay me on the
wharf on landing, rob me, and drop me into deep water.  To make it
seem less suspicious, they associated themselves with a lot of
crimps who were on the lookout for our sailors, who were going
ashore that night too.  I'd my suspicions that a couple of those
men might be waiting for me at the end of the wharf.  I left the
ship just a minute or two before the sailors did.  Then I met you.
That meeting, my lad, was my first step toward salvation.  For the
two men let you pass with my portmanteau, which they didn't
recognize, as I knew they would ME, and supposed you were a
stranger, and lay low, waiting for me.  I, who went into the gin-
mill with the other sailors, was foolish enough to drink, and was
drugged and crimped as they were.  I hadn't thought of that.  A
poor devil of a ticket of leave man, about my size, was knocked
down for me, and," he added, suppressing a laugh, "will be buried,
deeply lamented, in the chancel of Dornton Church.  While the row
was going on, the skipper, fearing to lose other men, warped out
into the stream, and so knew nothing of what happened to me.  When
they found what they thought was my body, he was willing to
identify it in the hope that the crime might be charged to the
crimps, and so did the other sailor witnesses.  But my brother
Bill, who had just arrived here from Callao, where he had been
hunting for me, hushed it up to prevent a scandal.  All the same,
Bill might have known the body wasn't mine, even though he hadn't
seen me for years."

"But it was frightfully disfigured, so that even I, who saw you
only once, could not have sworn it was NOT you," said Randolph
quickly.

"Humph!" said Captain Dornton musingly.  "Bill may have acted on
the square--though he was in a d----d hurry."

"But," said Randolph eagerly, "you will put an end to all this now.
You will assert yourself.  You have witnesses to prove your
identity."

"Steady, lad," said the captain, waving his pipe gently.  "Of
course I have.  But"--he stopped, laid down his pipe, and put his
hands doggedly in his pockets--"IS IT WORTH IT?"  Seeing the look
of amazement in Randolph's face, he laughed his low laugh, and
settled himself back in his chair again.  "No," he said quietly,
"if it wasn't for my son, and what's due him as my heir, I suppose--
I reckon I'd just chuck the whole d----d thing."

"What!" said Randolph.  "Give up the property, the title, the
family honor, the wrong done to your reputation, the punishment"--
He hesitated, fearing he had gone too far.

Captain Dornton withdrew his pipe from his mouth with a gesture of
caution, and holding it up, said: "Steady, lad.  We'll come to THAT
by and by.  As to the property and title, I cut and run from THEM
ten years ago.  To me they meant only the old thing--the life of a
country gentleman, the hunting, the shooting, the whole beastly
business that the land, over there, hangs like a millstone round
your neck.  They meant all this to me, who loved adventure and the
sea from my cradle.  I cut the property, for I hated it, and I hate
it still.  If I went back I should hear the sea calling me day and
night; I should feel the breath of the southwest trades in every
wind that blew over that tight little island yonder; I should be
always scenting the old trail, lad, the trail that leads straight
out of the Gate to swoop down to the South Seas.  Do you think a
man who has felt his ship's bows heave and plunge under him in the
long Pacific swell--just ahead of him a reef breaking white into
the lagoon, and beyond a fence of feathery palms--cares to follow
hounds over gray hedges under a gray November sky?  And the
society?  A man who's got a speaking acquaintance in every port
from Acapulco to Melbourne, who knows every den and every
longshoreman in it from a South American tienda to a Samoan beach-
comber's hut,--what does he want with society?"  He paused as
Randolph's eyes were fixed wonderingly on the first sign of emotion
on his weather-beaten face, which seemed for a moment to glow with
the strength and freshness of the sea, and then said, with a laugh:
"You stare, lad.  Well, for all the Dorntons are rather proud of
their family, like as not there was some beastly old Danish pirate
among them long ago, and I've got a taste of his blood in me.  But
I'm not quite as bad as that yet."

He laughed, and carelessly went on: "As to the family honor, I
don't see that it will be helped by my ripping up the whole thing
and perhaps showing that Bill was a little too previous in
identifying me.  As to my reputation, that was gone after I left
home, and if I hadn't been the legal heir they wouldn't have
bothered their heads about me.  My father had given me up long ago,
and there isn't a man, woman, or child that wouldn't now welcome
Bill in my place."

"There is one who wouldn't," said Randolph impulsively.

"You mean Caroline Avondale?" said Captain Dornton dryly.

Randolph colored.  "No; I mean Miss Eversleigh, who was with your
brother."

Captain Dornton reflected.  "To be sure!  Sibyl Eversleigh!  I
haven't seen her since she was so high.  I used to call her my
little sweetheart.  So Sybby remembered Cousin Jack and came to
find him?  But when did you meet her?" he asked suddenly, as if
this was the only detail of the past which had escaped him, fixing
his frank eyes upon Randolph.

The young man recounted at some length the dinner party at
Dingwall's, his conversation with Miss Eversleigh, and his
interview with Sir William, but spoke little of Miss Avondale.  To
his surprise, the captain listened smilingly, and only said: "That
was like Billy to take a rise out of you by pretending you were
suspected.  That's his way--a little rough when you don't know him
and he's got a little grog amidships.  All the same, I'd have given
something to have heard him 'running' you, when all the while you
had the biggest bulge on him, only neither of you knew it."  He
laughed again, until Randolph, amazed at his levity and
indifference, lost his patience.

"Do you know," he said bluntly, "that they don't believe you were
legally married?"

But Captain Dornton only continued to laugh, until, seeing his
companion's horrified face, he became demure.  "I suppose Bill
didn't, for Bill had sense enough to know that otherwise he would
have to take a back seat to Bobby."

"But did Miss Avondale know you were legally married, and that your
son was the heir?" asked Randolph bluntly.

"She had no reason to suspect otherwise, although we were married
secretly.  She was an old friend of my wife, not particularly of
mine."

Randolph sat back amazed and horrified.  Those were HER own words.
Or was this man deceiving him as the others had?

But the captain, eying him curiously, but still amusedly, added: "I
even thought of bringing her as one of my witnesses, until"--

"Until what?" asked Randolph quickly, as he saw the captain had
hesitated.

"Until I found she wasn't to be trusted; until I found she was too
thick with Bill," said the captain bluntly.  "And now she's gone to
England with him and the boy, I suppose she'll make him come to
terms."

"Come to terms?" echoed Randolph.  "I don't understand."  Yet he
had an instinctive fear that he did.

"Well," said the captain slowly, "suppose she might prefer the
chance of being the wife of a grown-up baronet to being the
governess of one who was only a minor?  She's a cute girl," he
added dryly.

"But," said Randolph indignantly, "you have other witnesses, I
hope."

"Of course I have.  I've got the Spanish records now from the
Callao priest, and they're put in a safe place should anything
happen to me--if anything could happen to a dead man!" he added
grimly.  "These proofs were all I was waiting for before I made up
my mind whether I should blow the whole thing, or let it slide."

Randolph looked again with amazement at this strange man who seemed
so indifferent to the claims of wealth, position, and even to
revenge.  It seemed inconceivable, and yet he could not help being
impressed with his perfect sincerity.  He was relieved, however,
when Captain Dornton rose with apparent reluctance and put away his
pipe.

"Now look here, my lad, I'm right glad to have overhauled you
again, whatever happened or is going to happen, and there's my hand
upon it!  Now, to come to business.  I'm going over to England on
this job, and I want you to come and help me."

Randolph's heart leaped.  The appeal revived all his old boyish
enthusiasm, with his secret loyalty to the man before him.  But he
suddenly remembered his past illusions, and for an instant he
hesitated.

"But the bank," he stammered, scarce knowing what to say.

The captain smiled.  "I will pay you better than the bank; and at
the end of four months, in whatever way this job turns out, if you
still wish to return here, I will see that you are secured from any
loss.  Perhaps you may be able to get a leave of absence.  But your
real object must be kept a secret from every one.  Not a word of my
existence or my purpose must be blown before I am ready.  You and
Jack Redhill are all that know it now."

"But you have a lawyer?" said the surprised Randolph.

"Not yet.  I'm my own lawyer in this matter until I get fairly
under way.  I've studied the law enough to know that as soon as I
prove that I'm alive the case must go on on account of my heir,
whether I choose to cry quits or not.  And it's just THAT that
holds my hand."

Randolph stared at the extraordinary man before him.  For a moment,
as the strange story of his miraculous escape and his still more
wonderful indifference to it all recurred to his mind, he felt a
doubt of the narrator's truthfulness or his sanity.  But another
glance at the sailor's frank eyes dispelled that momentary
suspicion.  He held out his hand as frankly, and grasping Captain
Dornton's, said, "I will go."


V


Randolph's request for a four months' leave of absence was granted
with little objection and no curiosity.  He had acquired the
confidence of his employers, and beyond Mr. Revelstoke's curt
surprise that a young fellow on the road to fortune should
sacrifice so much time to irrelevant travel, and the remark, "But
you know your own business best," there was no comment.  It struck
the young man, however, that Mr. Dingwall's slight coolness on
receiving the news might be attributed to a suspicion that he was
following Miss Avondale, whom he had fancied Dingwall disliked, and
he quickly made certain inquiries in regard to Miss Eversleigh and
the possibility of his meeting her.  As, without intending it, and
to his own surprise, he achieved a blush in so doing, which
Dingwall noted, he received a gracious reply, and the suggestion
that it was "quite proper" for him, on arriving, to send the young
lady his card.

Captain Dornton, under the alias of "Captain Johns," was ready to
catch the next steamer to the Isthmus, and in two days they sailed.
The voyage was uneventful, and if Randolph had expected any
enthusiasm on the part of the captain in the mission on which he
was now fairly launched, he would have been disappointed.  Although
his frankness was unchanged, he volunteered no confidences.  It was
evident he was fully acquainted with the legal strength of his
claim, yet he, as evidently, deferred making any plan of redress
until he reached England.  Of Miss Eversleigh he was more
communicative.  "You would have liked her better, my lad, it you
hadn't been bewitched by the Avondale woman, for she is the whitest
of the Dorntons."  In vain Randolph protested truthfully, yet with
an even more convincing color, that it had made no difference, and
he HAD liked her.  The captain laughed.  "Ay, lad!  But she's a
poor orphan, with scarcely a hundred pounds a year, who lives with
her guardian, an old clergyman.  And yet," he added grimly, "there
are only three lives between her and the property--mine, Bobby's,
and Bill's--unless HE should marry and have an heir."

"The more reason why you should assert yourself and do what you can
for her now," said Randolph eagerly.

"Ay," returned the captain, with his usual laugh, "when she was a
child I used to call her my little sweetheart, and gave her a ring,
and I reckon I promised to marry her, too, when she grew up."

The truthful Randolph would have told him of Miss Evereleigh's
gift, but unfortunately he felt himself again blushing, and fearful
lest the captain would misconstrue his confusion, he said nothing.

Except on this occasion, the captain talked with Randolph chiefly
of his later past,--of voyages he had made, of places they were
passing, and ports they visited.  He spent much of the time with
the officers, and even the crew, over whom he seemed to exercise a
singular power, and with whom he exhibited an odd freemasonry.  To
Randolph's eyes he appeared to grow in strength and stature in the
salt breath of the sea, and although he was uniformly kind, even
affectionate, to him, he was brusque to the other passengers, and
at times even with his friends the sailors.  Randolph sometimes
wondered how he would treat a crew of his own.  He found some
answer to that question in the captain's manner to Jack Redhill,
the abstractor of the portmanteau, and his old shipmate, who was
accompanying the captain in some dependent capacity, but who
received his master's confidences and orders with respectful
devotion.

It was a cold, foggy morning, nearly two months later, that they
landed at Plymouth.  The English coast had been a vague blank all
night, only pierced, long hours apart, by dim star-points or weird
yellow beacon flashes against the horizon.  And this vagueness and
unreality increased on landing, until it seemed to Randolph that
they had slipped into a land of dreams.  The illusion was kept up
as they walked in the weird shadows through half-lit streets into a
murky railway station throbbing with steam and sudden angry flashes
in the darkness, and then drew away into what ought to have been
the open country, but was only gray plains of mist against a lost
horizon.  Sometimes even the vague outlook was obliterated by
passing trains coming from nowhere and slipping into nothingness.
As they crept along with the day, without, however, any lightening
of the opaque vault overhead to mark its meridian, there came at
times a thinning of the gray wall on either side of the track,
showing the vague bulk of a distant hill, the battlemented sky line
of an old-time hall, or the spires of a cathedral, but always
melting back into the mist again as in a dream.  Then vague
stretches of gloom again, foggy stations obscured by nebulous light
and blurred and moving figures, and the black relief of a tunnel.
Only once the captain, catching sight of Randolph's awed face under
the lamp of the smoking carriage, gave way to his long, low laugh.
"Jolly place, England--so very 'Merrie.'"  And then they came to a
comparatively lighter, broader, and more brilliantly signaled
tunnel filled with people, and as they remained in it, Randolph was
told it was London.  With the sensation of being only half awake,
he was guided and put into a cab by his companion, and seemed to be
completely roused only at the hotel.


It had been arranged that Randolph should first go down to
Chillingworth rectory and call on Miss Eversleigh, and, without
disclosing his secret, gather the latest news from Dornton Hall,
only a few miles from Chillingworth.  For this purpose he had
telegraphed to her that evening, and had received a cordial
response.  The next morning he arose early, and, in spite of the
gloom, in the glow of his youthful optimism entered the bedroom of
the sleeping Captain Dornton, and shook him by the shoulder in lieu
of the accolade, saying: "Rise, Sir John Dornton!"

The captain, a light sleeper, awoke quickly.  "Thank you, my lad,
all the same, though I don't know that I'm quite ready yet to
tumble up to that kind of piping.  There's a rotten old saying in
the family that only once in a hundred years the eldest son
succeeds.  That's why Bill was so cocksure, I reckon.  Well?"

"In an hour I'm off to Chillingworth to begin the campaign," said
Randolph cheerily.

"Luck to you, my boy, whatever happens.  Clap a stopper on your
jaws, though, now and then.  I'm glad you like Sybby, but I don't
want you to like her so much as to forget yourself and give me
away."

Half an hour out of London the fog grew thinner, breaking into
lace-like shreds in the woods as the train sped by, or expanding
into lustrous tenuity above him.  Although the trees were leafless,
there was some recompense in the glimpses their bare boughs
afforded of clustering chimneys and gables nestling in ivy.  An
infinite repose had been laid upon the landscape with the
withdrawal of the fog, as of a veil lifted from the face of a
sleeper.  All his boyish dreams of the mother country came back to
him in the books he had read, and re-peopled the vast silence.
Even the rotting leaves that lay thick in the crypt-like woods
seemed to him the dead laurels of its past heroes and sages.
Quaint old-time villages, thatched roofs, the ever-recurring square
towers of church or hall, the trim, ordered parks, tiny streams
crossed by heavy stone bridges much too large for them--all these
were only pages of those books whose leaves he seemed to be turning
over.  Two hours of this fancy, and then the train stopped at a
station within a mile or two of a bleak headland, a beacon, and the
gray wash of a pewter-colored sea, where a hilly village street
climbed to a Norman church tower and the ivied gables of a rectory.

Miss Eversleigh, dignifiedly tall, but youthfully frank, as he
remembered her, was waiting to drive him in a pony trap to the
rectory.  A little pink, with suppressed consciousness and the
responsibilities of presenting a stranger guest to her guardian,
she seemed to Randolph more charming than ever.

But her first word of news shocked and held him breathless.  Bobby,
the little orphan, a frail exotic, had succumbed to the Northern
winter.  A cold caught in New York had developed into pneumonia,
and he died on the passage.  Miss Avondale, although she had
received marked attention from Sir William, returned to America in
the same ship.

"I really don't think she was quite as devoted to the poor child as
all that, you know," she continued with innocent frankness, "and
Cousin Bill was certainly most kind to them both, yet there really
seemed to be some coolness between them after the child's death.
But," she added suddenly, for the first time observing her
companion's evident distress, and coloring in confusion, "I beg
your pardon--I've been horribly rude and heartless.  I dare say the
poor boy was very dear to you, and of course Miss Avondale was your
friend.  Please forgive me!"

Randolph, intent only on that catastrophe which seemed to wreck all
Captain Dornton's hopes and blunt his only purpose for declaring
himself, hurriedly reassured her, yet was not sorry his agitation
had been misunderstood.  And what was to be done?  There was no
train back to London for four hours.  He dare not telegraph, and if
he did, could he trust to his strange patron's wise conduct under
the first shock of this news to his present vacillating purpose?
He could only wait.

Luckily for his ungallant abstraction, they were speedily at the
rectory, where a warm welcome from Mr. Brunton, Sibyl's guardian,
and his family forced him to recover himself, and showed him that
the story of his devotion to John Dornton had suffered nothing from
Miss Eversleigh's recital.  Distraught and anxious as he was, he
could not resist the young girl's offer after luncheon to show him
the church with the vault of the Dorntons and the tablet erected to
John Dornton, and, later, the Hall, only two miles distant.  But
here Randolph hesitated.

"I would rather not call on Sir William to-day," he said.

"You need not.  He is over at the horse show at Fern Dyke, and
won't be back till late.  And if he has been forgathering with his
boon companions he won't be very pleasant company."

"Sibyl!" said the rector in good-humored protest.

"Oh, Mr. Trent has had a little of Cousin Bill's convivial manners
before now," said the young girl vivaciously, "and isn't shocked.
But we can see the Hall from the park on our way to the station."

Even in his anxious preoccupation he could see that the church
itself was a quaint and wonderful preservation of the past.  For
four centuries it had been sacred to the tombs of the Dorntons and
their effigies in brass and marble, yet, as Randolph glanced at the
stately sarcophagus of the unknown ticket of leave man, its
complacent absurdity, combined with his nervousness, made him
almost hysterical.  Yet again, it seemed to him that something of
the mystery and inviolability of the past now invested that
degraded dust, and it would be an equal impiety to disturb it.
Miss Eversleigh, again believing his agitation caused by the memory
of his old patron, tactfully hurried him away.  Yet it was a more
bitter thought, I fear, that not only were his lips sealed to his
charming companion on the subject in which they could sympathize,
but his anxiety prevented him from availing himself of that
interview to exchange the lighter confidences he had eagerly looked
forward to.  It seemed cruel that he was debarred this chance of
knitting their friendship closer by another of those accidents that
had brought them together.  And he was aware that his gloomy
abstraction was noticed by her.  At first she drew herself up in a
certain proud reserve, and then, perhaps, his own nervousness
infecting her in turn, he was at last terrified to observe that, as
she stood before the tomb, her clear gray eyes filled with tears.

"Oh, please don't do that--THERE, Miss Eversleigh," he burst out
impulsively.

"I was thinking of Cousin Jack," she said, a little startled at his
abruptness.  "Sometimes it seems so strange that he is dead--I
scarcely can believe it."

"I meant," stammered Randolph, "that he is much happier--you know"--
he grew almost hysterical again as he thought of the captain lying
cheerfully in his bed at the hotel--"much happier than you or I,"
he added bitterly; "that is--I mean, it grieves me so to see YOU
grieve, you know."

Miss Eversleigh did NOT know, but there was enough sincerity and
real feeling in the young fellow's voice and eyes to make her color
slightly and hurry him away to a locality less fraught with
emotions.  In a few moments they entered the park, and the old Hall
rose before them.  It was a great Tudor house of mullioned windows,
traceries, and battlements; of stately towers, moss-grown
balustrades, and statues darkening with the fog that was already
hiding the angles and wings of its huge bulk.  A peacock spread its
ostentatious tail on the broad stone steps before the portal; a
flight of rooks from the leafless elms rose above its stacked and
twisted chimneys.  After all, how little had this stately
incarnation of the vested rights and sacred tenures of the past in
common with the laughing rover he had left in London that morning!
And thinking of the destinies that the captain held so lightly in
his hand, and perhaps not a little of the absurdity of his own
position to the confiding young girl beside him, for a moment he
half hated him.

The fog deepened as they reached the station, and, as it seemed to
Randolph, made their parting still more vague and indefinite, and
it was with difficulty that he could respond to the young girl's
frank hope that he would soon return to them.  Yet he half resolved
that he would not until he could tell her all.

Nevertheless, as the train crept more and more slowly, with halting
signals, toward London, he buoyed himself up with the hope that
Captain Dornton would still try conclusions for his patrimony, or
at least come to some compromise by which he might be restored to
his rank and name.  But upon these hopes the vision of that great
house settled firmly upon its lands, held there in perpetuity by
the dead and stretched-out hands of those that lay beneath its
soil, always obtruded itself.  Then the fog deepened, and the
crawling train came to a dead stop at the next station.  The whole
line was blocked.  Four precious hours were hopelessly lost.

Yet despite his impatience, he reentered London with the same dazed
semi-consciousness of feeling as on the night he had first arrived.
There seemed to have been no interim; his visit to the rectory and
Hall, and even his fateful news, were only a dream.  He drove
through the same shadow to the hotel, was received by the same
halo-encircled lights that had never been put out.  After glancing
through the halls and reading room he hurriedly made his way to his
companion's room.  The captain was not there.  He quickly summoned
the waiter.  The gentleman?  Yes; Captain Dornton had left with his
servant, Redhill, a few hours after Mr. Trent went away.  He had
left no message.

Again condemned to wait in inactivity, Randolph tried to resist a
certain uneasiness that was creeping over him, by attributing the
captain's absence to some unexpected legal consultation or the
gathering of evidence, his prolonged detention being due to the
same fog that had delayed his own train.  But he was somewhat
surprised to find that the captain had ordered his luggage into the
porter's care in the hall below before leaving, and that nothing
remained in his room but a few toilet articles and the fateful
portmanteau.  The hours passed slowly.  Owing to that perpetual
twilight in which he had passed the day, there seemed no
perceptible flight of time, and at eleven o'clock, the captain not
arriving, he determined to wait in the latter's room so as to be
sure not to miss him.  Twelve o'clock boomed from an adjacent
invisible steeple, but still he came not.  Overcome by the fatigue
and excitement of the day, Randolph concluded to lie down in his
clothes on the captain's bed, not without a superstitious and
uncomfortable recollection of that night, about a year before, when
he had awaited him vainly at the San Francisco hotel.  Even the
fateful portmanteau was there to assist his gloomy fancy.
Nevertheless, with the boom of one o'clock in his drowsy ears as
his last coherent recollection, he sank into a dreamless sleep.

He was awakened by a tapping at his door, and jumped up to realize
by his watch and the still burning gaslight that it was nine
o'clock.  But the intruder was only a waiter with a letter which he
had brought to Randolph's room in obedience to the instructions the
latter had given overnight.  Not doubting it was from the captain,
although the handwriting of the address was unfamiliar, he eagerly
broke the seal.  But he was surprised to read as follows:--


DEAR MR. TRENT,--We had such sad news from the Hall after you left.
Sir William was seized with a kind of fit.  It appears that he had
just returned from the horse show, and had given his mare to the
groom while he walked to the garden entrance.  The groom saw him
turn at the yew hedge, and was driving to the stables when he heard
a queer kind of cry, and turning back to the garden front, found
poor Sir William lying on the ground in convulsions.  The doctor
was sent for, and Mr. Brunton and I went over to the Hall.  The
doctor thinks it was something like a stroke, but he is not
certain, and Sir William is quite delirious, and doesn't recognize
anybody.  I gathered from the groom that he had been DRINKING
HEAVILY.  Perhaps it was well that you did not see him, but I
thought you ought to know what had happened in case you came down
again.  It's all very dreadful, and I wonder if that is why I was
so nervous all the afternoon.  It may have been a kind of
presentiment.  Don't you think so?

Yours faithfully,

SIBYL EVERSLEIGH.


I am afraid Randolph thought more of the simple-minded girl who, in
the midst of her excitement, turned to him half unconsciously, than
he did of Sir William.  Had it not been for the necessity of seeing
the captain, he would probably have taken the next train to the
rectory.  Perhaps he might later.  He thought little of Sir
William's illness, and was inclined to accept the young girl's
naive suggestion of its cause.  He read and reread the letter,
staring at the large, grave, childlike handwriting--so like
herself--and obeying a sudden impulse, raised the signature, as
gravely as if it had been her hand, to his lips.

Still the day advanced and the captain came not.  Randolph found
the inactivity insupportable.  He knew not where to seek him; he
had no more clue to his resorts or his friends--if, indeed, he had
any in London--than he had after their memorable first meeting in
San Francisco.  He might, indeed, be the dupe of an impostor, who,
at the eleventh hour, had turned craven and fled.  He might be, in
the captain's indifference, a mere instrument set aside at his
pleasure.  Yet he could take advantage of Miss Eversleigh's letter
and seek her, and confess everything, and ask her advice.  It was a
great and at the moment it seemed to him an overwhelming
temptation.  But only for the moment.  He had given his word to the
captain--more, he had given his youthful FAITH.  And, to his
credit, he never swerved again.  It seemed to him, too, in his
youthful superstition, as he looked at the abandoned portmanteau,
that he had again to take up his burden--his "trust."

It was nearly four o'clock when the spell was broken.  A large
packet, bearing the printed address of a London and American bank,
was brought to him by a special messenger; but the written
direction was in the captain's hand.  Randolph tore it open.  It
contained one or two inclosures, which he hastily put aside for the
letter, two pages of foolscap, which he read breathlessly:--


DEAR TRENT,--Don't worry your head if I have slipped my cable
without telling you.  I'm all right, only I got the news you are
bringing me, JUST AFTER YOU LEFT, by Jack Redhill, whom I had sent
to Dornton Hall to see how the land lay the night before.  It was
not that I didn't trust YOU, but HE had ways of getting news that
you wouldn't stoop to.  You can guess, from what I have told you
already, that, now Bobby is gone, there's nothing to keep me here,
and I'm following my own idea of letting the whole blasted thing
slide.  I only worked this racket for the sake of him.  I'm sorry
for him, but I suppose the poor little beggar couldn't stand these
sunless, God-forsaken longitudes any more than I could.  Besides
that, as I didn't want to trust any lawyer with my secret, I myself
had hunted up some books on the matter, and found that, by the law
of entail, I'd have to rip up the whole blessed thing, and Bill
would have had to pay back every blessed cent of what rents he had
collected since he took hold--not to ME, but the ESTATE--with
interest, and that no arrangement I could make with HIM would be
legal on account of the boy.  At least, that's the way the thing
seemed to pan out to me.  So that when I heard of Bobby's death I
was glad to jump the rest, and that's what I made up my mind to do.

But, like a blasted lubber, now that I COULD do it and cut right
away, I must needs think that I'd like first to see Bill on the
sly, without letting on to any one else, and tell him what I was
going to do.  I'd no fear that he'd object, or that he'd hesitate a
minute to fall in with my plan of dropping my name and my game, and
giving him full swing, while I stood out to sea and the South
Pacific, and dropped out of his mess for the rest of my life.
Perhaps I wanted to set his mind at rest, if he'd ever had any
doubts; perhaps I wanted to have a little fun out of him for his
d----d previousness; perhaps, lad, I had a hankering to see the old
place for the last time.  At any rate, I allowed to go to Dornton
Hall.  I timed myself to get there about the hour you left, to keep
out of sight until I knew he was returning from the horse show, and
to waylay him ALONE and have our little talk without witnesses.  I
daren't go to the Hall, for some of the old servants might
recognize me.

I went down there with Jack Redhill, and we separated at the
station.  I hung around in the fog.  I even saw you pass with Sibyl
in the dogcart, but you didn't see me.  I knew the place, and just
where to hide where I could have the chance of seeing him alone.
But it was a beastly job waiting there.  I felt like a d----d thief
instead of a man who was simply visiting his own.  Yet, you mayn't
believe me, lad, but I hated the place and all it meant more than
ever.  Then, by and by, I heard him coming.  I had arranged it all
with myself to get into the yew hedge, and step out as he came to
the garden entrance, and as soon as he recognized me to get him
round the terrace into the summer house, where we could speak
without danger.

I heard the groom drive away to the stable with the cart, and, sure
enough, in a minute he came lurching along toward the garden door.
He was mighty unsteady on his pins, and I reckon he was more than
half full, which was a bad lookout for our confab.  But I
calculated that the sight of me, when I slipped out, would sober
him.  And, by ---, it did!  For his eyes bulged out of his head and
got fixed there; his jaw dropped; he tried to strike at me with a
hunting crop he was carrying, and then he uttered an ungodly yell
you might have heard at the station, and dropped down in his
tracks.  I had just time to slip back into the hedge again before
the groom came driving back, and then all hands were piped, and
they took him into the house.

And of course the game was up, and I lost my only chance.  I was
thankful enough to get clean away without discovering myself, and I
have to trust now to the fact of Bill's being drunk, and thinking
it was my ghost that he saw, in a touch of the jimjams!  And I'm
not sorry to have given him that start, for there was that in his
eye, and that in the stroke he made, my lad, that showed a guilty
conscience I hadn't reckoned on.  And it cured me of my wish to set
his mind at ease.  He's welcome to all the rest.

And that's why I'm going away--never to return.  I'm sorry I
couldn't take you with me, but it's better that I shouldn't see you
again, and that you didn't even know WHERE I was gone.  When you
get this I shall be on blue water and heading for the sunshine.
You'll find two letters inclosed.  One you need not open unless you
hear that my secret was blown, and you are ever called upon to
explain your relations with me.  The other is my thanks, my lad, in
a letter of credit on the bank, for the way you have kept your
trust, and I believe will continue to keep it, to

JOHN DORNTON.

P.S.  I hope you dropped a tear over my swell tomb at Dornton
Church.  All the same, I don't begrudge it to the poor devil who
lost his life instead of me.

J. D.


As Randolph read, he seemed to hear the captain's voice throughout
the letter, and even his low, characteristic laugh in the
postscript.  Then he suddenly remembered the luggage which the
porter had said the captain had ordered to be taken below; but on
asking that functionary he was told a conveyance for the Victoria
Docks had called with an order, and taken it away at daybreak.  It
was evident that the captain had intended the letter should be his
only farewell.  Depressed and a little hurt at his patron's
abruptness, Randolph returned to his room.  Opening the letter of
credit, he found it was for a thousand pounds--a munificent
beneficence, as it seemed to Randolph, for his dubious services,
and a proof of his patron's frequent declarations that he had money
enough without touching the Dornton estates.

For a long time he sat with these sole evidences of the reality of
his experience in his hands, a prey to a thousand surmises and
conflicting thoughts.  Was he the self-deceived disciple of a
visionary, a generous, unselfish, but weak man, whose eccentricity
passed even the bounds of reason?  Who would believe the captain's
story or the captain's motives?  Who comprehend his strange quest
and its stranger and almost ridiculous termination?  Even if the
seal of secrecy were removed in after years, what had he, Randolph,
to show in corroboration of his patron's claim?

Then it occurred to him that there was no reason why he should not
go down to the rectory and see Miss Eversleigh again under pretense
of inquiring after the luckless baronet, whose title and fortune
had, nevertheless, been so strangely preserved.  He began at once
his preparations for the journey, and was nearly ready when a
servant entered with a telegram.  Randolph's heart leaped.  The
captain had sent him news--perhaps had changed his mind!  He tore
off the yellow cover, and read,--


Sir William died at twelve o'clock without recovering
consciousness.

S. EVERSLEIGH.


VI


For a moment Randolph gazed at the dispatch with a half-hysterical
laugh, and then became as suddenly sane and cool.  One thought
alone was uppermost in his mind: the captain could not have heard
this news yet, and if he was still within reach, or accessible by
any means whatever, however determined his purpose, he must know it
at once.  The only clue to his whereabouts was the Victoria Docks.
But that was something.  In another moment Randolph was in the
lower hall, had learned the quickest way of reaching the docks, and
plunged into the street.

The fog here swooped down, and to the embarrassment of his mind was
added the obscurity of light and distance, which halted him after a
few hurried steps, in utter perplexity.  Indistinct figures were
here and there approaching him out of nothingness and melting away
again into the greenish gray chaos.  He was in a busy thoroughfare;
he could hear the slow trample of hoofs, the dull crawling of
vehicles, and the warning outcries of a traffic he could not see.
Trusting rather to his own speed than that of a halting conveyance,
he blundered on until he reached the railway station.  A short but
exasperating journey of impulses and hesitations, of detonating
signals and warning whistles, and he at last stood on the docks,
beyond him a vague bulk or two, and a soft, opaque flowing wall--
the river!

But one steamer had left that day--the Dom Pedro, for the River
Plate--two hours before, but until the fog thickened, a quarter of
an hour ago, she could be seen, so his informant said, still lying,
with steam up, in midstream.  Yes, it was still possible to board
her.  But even as the boatman spoke, and was leading the way toward
the landing steps, the fog suddenly lightened; a soft salt breath
stole in from the distant sea, and a veil seemed to be lifted from
the face of the gray waters.  The outlines of the two shores came
back; the spars of nearer vessels showed distinctly, but the space
where the huge hulk had rested was empty and void.  There was a
trail of something darker and more opaque than fog itself lying
near the surface of the water, but the Dom Pedro was a mere speck
in the broadening distance.


A bright sun and a keen easterly wind were revealing the curling
ridges of the sea beyond the headland when Randolph again passed
the gates of Dornton Hall on his way to the rectory.  Now, for the
first time, he was able to see clearly the outlines of that spot
which had seemed to him only a misty dream, and even in his
preoccupation he was struck by its grave beauty.  The leafless
limes and elms in the park grouped themselves as part of the
picturesque details of the Hall they encompassed, and the evergreen
slope of firs and larches rose as a background to the gray
battlements, covered with dark green ivy, whose rich shadows were
brought out by the unwonted sunshine.  With a half-repugnant
curiosity he had tried to identify the garden entrance and the
fateful yew hedge the captain had spoken of as he passed.  But as
quickly he fell back upon the resolution he had taken in coming
there--to dissociate his secret, his experience, and his
responsibility to his patron from his relations to Sibyl
Eversleigh; to enjoy her companionship without an obtruding thought
of the strange circumstances that had brought them together at
first, or the stranger fortune that had later renewed their
acquaintance.  He had resolved to think of her as if she had merely
passed into his life in the casual ways of society, with only her
personal charms to set her apart from others.  Why should his
exclusive possession of a secret--which, even if confided to her,
would only give her needless and hopeless anxiety--debar them from
an exchange of those other confidences of youth and sympathy?  Why
could he not love her and yet withhold from her the knowledge of
her cousin's existence?  So he had determined to make the most of
his opportunity during his brief holiday; to avail himself of her
naive invitation, and even of what he dared sometimes to think was
her predilection for his companionship.  And if, before he left, he
had acquired a right to look forward to a time when her future and
his should be one--but here his glowing fancy was abruptly checked
by his arrival at the rectory door.

Mr. Brunton received him cordially, yet with a slight business
preoccupation and a certain air of importance that struck him as
peculiar.  Sibyl, he informed him, was engaged at that moment with
some friends who had come over from the Hall.  Mr. Trent would
understand that there was a great deal for her to do--in her
present position.  Wondering why SHE should be selected to do it
instead of older and more experienced persons, Randolph, however,
contented himself with inquiries regarding the details of Sir
William's seizure and death.  He learned, as he expected, that
nothing whatever was known of the captain's visit, nor was there
the least suspicion that the baronet's attack was the result of any
predisposing emotion.  Indeed, it seemed more possible that his
medical attendants, knowing something of his late excesses and
their effect upon his constitution, preferred, for the sake of
avoiding scandal, to attribute the attack to long-standing organic
disease.

Randolph, who had already determined, as a forlorn hope, to write a
cautious letter to the captain (informing him briefly of the news
without betraying his secret, and directed to the care of the
consignees of the Dom Pedro in Brazil, by the next post), was glad
to be able to add this medical opinion to relieve his patron's mind
of any fear of having hastened his brother's death by his innocent
appearance.  But here the entrance of Sibyl Eversleigh with her
friends drove all else from his mind.

She looked so tall and graceful in her black dress, which set off
her dazzling skin, and, with her youthful gravity, gave to her
figure the charming maturity of a young widow, that he was for a
moment awed and embarrassed.  But he experienced a relief when she
came eagerly toward him in all her old girlish frankness, and with
even something of yearning expectation in her gray eyes.

"It was so good of you to come," she said.  "I thought you would
imagine how I was feeling"--  She stopped, as if she were
conscious, as Randolph was, of a certain chill of unresponsiveness
in the company, and said in an undertone, "Wait until we are
alone."  Then, turning with a slight color and a pretty dignity
toward her friends, she continued: "Lady Ashbrook, this is Mr.
Trent, an old friend of both my cousins when they were in America."

In spite of the gracious response of the ladies, Randolph was aware
of their critical scrutiny of both himself and Miss Eversleigh, of
the exchange of significant glances, and a certain stiffness in her
guardian's manner.  It was quite enough to affect Randolph's
sensitiveness and bring out his own reserve.

Fancying, however, that his reticence disturbed Miss Eversleigh, he
forced himself to converse with Lady Ashbrook--avoiding many of her
pointed queries as to himself, his acquaintance with Sibyl, and the
length of time he expected to stay in England--and even accompanied
her to her carriage.  And here he was rewarded by Sibyl running out
with a crape veil twisted round her throat and head, and the usual
femininely forgotten final message to her visitor.  As the carriage
drove away, she turned to Randolph, and said quickly,--

"Let us go in by way of the garden."

It was a slight detour, but it gave them a few moments alone.

"It was so awful and sudden," she said, looking gravely at
Randolph, "and to think that only an hour before I had been saying
unkind things of him!  Of course," she added naively, "they were
true, and the groom admitted to me that the mare was overdriven and
Sir William could hardly stand.  And only to think of it! he never
recovered complete consciousness, but muttered incoherently all the
time.  I was with him to the last, and he never said a word I could
understand--only once."

"What did he say?" asked Randolph uneasily.

"I don't like to say--it was TOO dreadful!"

Randolph did not press her.  Yet, after a pause, she said in a low
voice, with a naivete impossible to describe, "It was, 'Jack, damn
you!'"

He did not dare to look at her, even with this grim mingling of
farce and tragedy which seemed to invest every scene of that sordid
drama.  Miss Eversleigh continued gravely: "The groom's name was
Robert, but Jack might have been the name of one of his boon
companions."

Convinced that she suspected nothing, yet in the hope of changing
the subject, Randolph said quietly: "I thought your guardian
perhaps a little less frank and communicative to-day."

"Yes," said the young girl suddenly, with a certain impatience, and
yet in half apology to her companion, "of course.  He--THEY--all
and everybody--are much more concerned and anxious about my new
position than I am.  It's perfectly dreadful--this thinking of it
all the time, arranging everything, criticising everything in
reference to it, and the poor man who is the cause of it all not
yet at rest in his grave!  The whole thing is inhuman and
unchristian!"

"I don't understand," stammered Randolph vaguely.  "What IS your
new position?  What do you mean?"

The girl looked up in his face with surprise.  "Why, didn't you
know?  I'm the next of kin--I'm the heiress--and will succeed to
the property in six months, when I am of age."

In a flash of recollection Randolph suddenly recalled the captain's
words, "There are only three lives between her and the property."
Their meaning had barely touched his comprehension before.  She was
the heiress.  Yes, save for the captain!

She saw the change, the wonder, even the dismay, in his face, and
her own brightened frankly.  "It's so good to find one who never
thought of it, who hadn't it before him as the chief end for which
I was born!  Yes, I was the next of kin after dear Jack died and
Bill succeeded, but there was every chance that he would marry and
have an heir.  And yet the moment he was taken ill that idea was
uppermost in my guardian's mind, good man as he is, and even forced
upon me.  If this--this property had come from poor Cousin Jack,
whom I loved, there would have been something dear in it as a
memory or a gift, but from HIM, whom I couldn't bear--I know it's
wicked to talk that way, but it's simply dreadful!"

"And yet," said Randolph, with a sudden seriousness he could not
control, "I honestly believe that Captain Dornton would be
perfectly happy--yes, rejoiced!--if he knew the property had come
to YOU."

There was such an air of conviction, and, it seemed to the simple
girl, even of spiritual insight, in his manner that her clear,
handsome eyes rested wonderingly on his.

"Do you really think so?" she said thoughtfully.  "And yet HE knows
that I am like him.  Yes," she continued, answering Randolph's look
of surprise, "I am just like HIM in that.  I loathe and despise the
life that this thing would condemn me to; I hate all that it means,
and all that it binds me to, as he used to; and if I could, I would
cut and run from it as HE did."

She spoke with a determined earnestness and warmth, so unlike her
usual grave naivete that he was astonished.  There was a flush on
her cheek and a frank fire in her eye that reminded him strangely
of the captain; and yet she had emphasized her words with a little
stamp of her narrow foot and a gesture of her hand that was so
untrained and girlish that he smiled, and said, with perhaps the
least touch of bitterness in his tone, "But you will get over that
when you come into the property."

"I suppose I shall," she returned, with an odd lapse to her former
gravity and submissiveness.  "That's what they all tell me."

"You will be independent and your own mistress," he added.

"Independent," she repeated impatiently, "with Dornton Hall and
twenty thousand a year!  Independent, with every duty marked out
for me!  Independent, with every one to criticise my smallest
actions--every one who would never have given a thought to the
orphan who was contented and made her own friends on a hundred a
year!  Of course you, who are a stranger, don't understand; yet I
thought that you"--she hesitated,--"would have thought differently."

"Why?"

"Why, with your belief that one should make one's own fortune," she
said.

"That would do for a man, and in that I respected Captain Dornton's
convictions, as you told them to me.  But for a girl, how could she
be independent, except with money?"

She shook her head as if unconvinced, but did not reply.  They were
nearing the garden porch, when she looked up, and said: "And as
YOU'RE a man, you will be making your way in the world.  Mr.
Dingwall said you would."

There was something so childishly trustful and confident in her
assurance that he smiled.  "Mr. Dingwall is too sanguine, but it
gives me hope to hear YOU say so."

She colored slightly, and said gravely: "We must go in now."  Yet
she lingered for a moment before the door.  For a long time
afterward he had a very vivid recollection of her charming face, in
its childlike gravity and its quaint frame of black crape, standing
out against the sunset-warmed wall of the rectory.  "Promise me you
will not mind what these people say or do," she said suddenly.

"I promise," he returned, with a smile, "to mind only what YOU say
or do."

"But I might not be always quite right, you know," she said naively.

"I'll risk that."

"Then, when we go in now, don't talk much to me, but make yourself
agreeable to all the others, and then go straight home to the inn,
and don't come here until after the funeral."

The faintest evasive glint of mischievousness in her withdrawn eyes
at this moment mitigated the austerity of her command as they both
passed in.

Randolph had intended not to return to London until after the
funeral, two days later, and spent the interesting day at the
neighboring town, whence he dispatched his exploring and perhaps
hopeless letter to the captain.  The funeral was a large and
imposing one, and impressed Randolph for the first time with the
local importance and solid standing of the Dorntons.  All the
magnates and old county families were represented.  The inn yard
and the streets of the little village were filled with their quaint
liveries, crested paneled carriages, and silver-cipher caparisoned
horses, with a sprinkling of fashion from London.  He could not
close his ears to the gossip of the villagers regarding the
suddenness of the late baronet's death, the extinction of the
title, the accession of the orphaned girl to the property, and
even, to his greater exasperation, speculations upon her future and
probable marriage.  "Some o' they gay chaps from Lunnon will be
lordin' it over the Hall afore long," was the comment of the
hostler.

It was with some little bitterness that Randolph took his seat in
the crowded church.  But this feeling, and even his attempts to
discover Miss Eversleigh's face in the stately family pew fenced
off from the chancel, presently passed away.  And then his mind
began to be filled with strange and weird fancies.  What grim and
ghostly revelations might pass between this dead scion of the
Dorntons lying on the trestles before them and the obscure,
nameless ticket of leave man awaiting his entrance in the vault
below!  The incongruity of this thought, with the smug complacency
of the worldly minded congregation sitting around him, and the
probable smiling carelessness of the reckless rover--the cause of
all--even now idly pacing the deck on the distant sea, touched him
with horror.  And when added to this was the consciousness that
Sibyl Eversleigh was forced to become an innocent actor in this
hideous comedy, it seemed as much as he could bear.  Again he
questioned himself, Was he right to withhold his secret from her?
In vain he tried to satisfy his conscience that she was happier in
her ignorance.  The resolve he had made to keep his relations with
her apart from his secret, he knew now, was impossible.  But one
thing was left to him.  Until he could disclose his whole story--
until his lips were unsealed by Captain Dornton--he must never see
her again.  And the grim sanctity of the edifice seemed to make
that resolution a vow.

He did not dare to raise his eyes again toward her pew, lest a
sight of her sweet, grave face might shake his resolution, and he
slipped away first among the departing congregation.  He sent her a
brief note from the inn saying that he was recalled to London by an
earlier train, and that he would be obliged to return to California
at once, but hoping that if he could be of any further assistance
to her she would write to him to the care of the bank.  It was a
formal letter, and yet he had never written otherwise than formally
to her.  That night he reached London.  On the following night he
sailed from Liverpool for America.


Six months had passed.  It was difficult, at first, for Randolph to
pick up his old life again; but his habitual earnestness and
singleness of purpose stood him in good stead, and a vague rumor
that he had made some powerful friends abroad, with the nearer fact
that he had a letter of credit for a thousand pounds, did not
lessen his reputation.  He was reinstalled and advanced at the
bank.  Mr. Dingwall was exceptionally gracious, and minute in his
inquiries regarding Miss Eversleigh's succession to the Dornton
property, with an occasional shrewdness of eye in his
interrogations which recalled to Randolph the questioning of Miss
Eversleigh's friends, and which he responded to as cautiously.  For
the young fellow remained faithful to his vow even in thinking of
her, and seemed to be absorbed entirely in his business.  Yet there
was a vague ambition of purpose in this absorption that would
probably have startled the more conservative Englishman had he
known it.

He had not heard from Miss Eversleigh since he left, nor had he
received any response from the captain.  Indeed, he had indulged in
little hopes of either.  But he kept stolidly at work, perhaps with
a larger trust than he knew.  And then, one day, he received a
letter addressed in a handwriting that made his heart leap, though
he had seen it but once, when it conveyed the news of Sir William
Dornton's sudden illness.  It was from Miss Eversleigh, but the
postmark was Callao!  He tore open the envelope, and for the next
few moments forgot everything--his business devotion, his lofty
purpose, even his solemn vow.

It read as follows:--


DEAR MR. TRENT,--I should not be writing to you now if I did not
believe that I NOW understand why you left us so abruptly on the
day of the funeral, and why you were at times so strange.  You
might have been a little less hard and cold even if you knew all
that you did know.  But I must write now, for I shall be in San
Francisco a few days after this reaches you, and I MUST see you and
have YOUR help, for I can have no other, as you know.  You are
wondering what this means, and why I am here.  I know ALL and
EVERYTHING.  I know HE is alive and never was dead.  I know I have
no right to what I have, and never had, and I have come here to
seek him and make him take it back.  I could do no other.  I could
not live and do anything but that, and YOU might have known it.
But I have not found him here as I hoped I should, though perhaps
it was a foolish hope of mine, and I am coming to you to help me
seek him, for he MUST BE FOUND.  You know I want to keep his and
your secret, and therefore the only one I can turn to for
assistance and counsel is YOU.

You are wondering how I know what I do.  Two months ago I GOT A
LETTER FROM HIM--the strangest, quaintest, and yet THE KINDEST
LETTER--exactly like himself and the way he used to talk!  He had
just heard of his brother's death, and congratulated me on coming
into the property, and said he was now perfectly happy, and should
KEEP DEAD, and never, never come to life again; that he never
thought things would turn out as splendidly as they had--for Sir
William MIGHT have had an heir--and that now he should REALLY DIE
HAPPY.  He said something about everything being legally right, and
that I could do what I liked with the property.  As if THAT would
satisfy me!  Yet it was all so sweet and kind, and so like dear old
Jack, that I cried all night.  And then I resolved to come here,
where his letter was dated from.  Luckily I was of age now, and
could do as I liked, and I said I wanted to travel in South America
and California; and I suppose they didn't think it very strange
that I should use my liberty in that way.  Some said it was quite
like a Dornton!  I knew something of Callao from your friend Miss
Avondale, and could talk about it, which impressed them.  So I
started off with only a maid--my old nurse.  I was a little
frightened at first, when I came to think what I was doing, but
everybody was very kind, and I really feel quite independent now.
So, you see, a girl may be INDEPENDENT, after all!  Of course I
shall see Mr. Dingwall in San Francisco, but he need not know
anything more than that I am traveling for pleasure.  And I may go
to the Sandwich Islands or Sydney, if I think HE is there.  Of
course I have had to use some money--some of HIS rents--but it
shall be paid back.  I will tell you everything about my plans when
I see you.

Yours faithfully,

SIBYL EVERSLEIGH.

P. S.  Why did you let me cry over that man's tomb in the church?


Randolph looked again at the date, and then hurriedly consulted the
shipping list.  She was due in ten days.  Yet, delighted as he was
with that prospect, and touched as he had been with her courage and
naive determination, after his first joy he laid the letter down
with a sigh.  For whatever was his ultimate ambition, he was still
a mere salaried clerk; whatever was her self-sacrificing purpose,
she was still the rich heiress.  The seal of secrecy had been
broken, yet the situation remained unchanged; their association
must still be dominated by it.  And he shrank from the thought of
making her girlish appeal to him for help an opportunity for
revealing his real feelings.

This instinct was strengthened by the somewhat formal manner in
which Mr. Dingwall announced her approaching visit.  "Miss
Eversleigh will stay with Mrs. Dingwall while she is here, on
account of her--er--position, and the fact that she is without a
chaperon.  Mrs. Dingwall will, of course, be glad to receive any
friends Miss Eversleigh would like to see."

Randolph frankly returned that Miss Eversleigh had written to him,
and that he would be glad to present himself.  Nothing more was
said, but as the days passed he could not help noticing that, in
proportion as Mr. Dingwall's manner became more stiff and
ceremonious, Mr. Revelstoke's usually crisp, good-humored
suggestions grew more deliberate, and Randolph found himself once
or twice the subject of the president's penetrating but smiling
scrutiny.  And the day before Miss Eversleigh's arrival his natural
excitement was a little heightened by a summons to Mr. Revelstoke's
private office.

As he entered, the president laid aside his pen and closed the
door.

"I have never made it my business, Trent," he said, with good-
humored brusqueness, "to interfere in my employees' private
affairs, unless they affect their relations to the bank, and I
haven't had the least occasion to do so with you.  Neither has Mr.
Dingwall, although it is on HIS behalf that I am now speaking."  As
Randolph listened with a contracted brow, he went on with a grim
smile: "But he is an Englishman, you know, and has certain ideas of
the importance of 'position,' particularly among his own people.
He wishes me, therefore, to warn you of what HE calls the
'disparity' of your position and that of a young English lady--Miss
Eversleigh--with whom you have some acquaintance, and in whom," he
added with a still grimmer satisfaction, "he fears you are too
deeply interested."

Randolph blazed.  "If Mr. Dingwall had asked ME, sir," he said
hotly, "I would have told him that I have never yet had to be
reminded that Miss Eversleigh is a rich heiress and I only a poor
clerk, but as to his using her name in such a connection, or
dictating to me the manner of"--

"Hold hard," said Revelstoke, lifting his hand deprecatingly, yet
with his unchanged smile.  "I don't agree with Mr. Dingwall, and I
have every reason to know the value of YOUR services, yet I admit
something is due to HIS prejudices.  And in this matter, Trent, the
Bank of Eureka, while I am its president, doesn't take a back seat.
I have concluded to make you manager of the branch bank at
Marysville, an independent position with its salary and
commissions.  And if that doesn't suit Dingwall, why," he added,
rising from his desk with a short laugh, "he has a bigger idea of
the value of property than the bank has."

"One moment, sir, I implore you," burst out Randolph breathlessly.
"if your kind offer is based upon the mistaken belief that I have
the least claim upon Miss Eversleigh's consideration more than that
of simple friendship--if anybody has dared to give you the idea
that I have aspired by word or deed to more, or that the young lady
has ever countenanced or even suspected such aspirations, it is
utterly false, and grateful as I am for your kindness, I could not
accept it."

"Look here, Trent," returned Revelstoke curtly, yet laying his hand
on the young man's shoulder not unkindly.  "All that is YOUR
private affair, which, as I told you, I don't interfere with.  The
other is a question between Mr. Dingwall and myself of your
comparative value.  It won't hurt you with ANYBODY to know how high
we've assessed it.  Don't spoil a good thing!"

Grateful even in his uncertainty, Randolph could only thank him and
withdraw.  Yet this fateful forcing of his hand in a delicate
question gave him a new courage.  It was with a certain confidence
now in his capacity as HER friend and qualified to advise HER that
he called at Mr. Dingwall's the evening she arrived.  It struck him
that in the Dingwalls' reception of him there was mingled with
their formality a certain respect.

Thanks to this, perhaps, he found her alone.  She seemed to him
more beautiful than his recollection had painted her, in the
development that maturity, freedom from restraint, and time had
given her.  For a moment his new, fresh courage was staggered.  But
she had retained her youthful simplicity, and came toward him with
the same naive and innocent yearning in her clear eyes that he
remembered at their last meeting.  Their first words were,
naturally, of their great secret, and Randolph told her the whole
story of his unexpected and startling meeting with the captain, and
the captain's strange narrative, of his undertaking the journey
with him to recover his claim, establish his identity, and, as
Randolph had hoped, restore to her that member of the family whom
she had most cared for.  He recounted the captain's hesitation on
arriving; his own journey to the rectory; the news she had given
him; the reason of his singular behavior; his return to London; and
the second disappearance of the captain.  He read to her the letter
he had received from him, and told her of his hopeless chase to the
docks only to find him gone.  She listened to him breathlessly,
with varying color, with an occasional outburst of pity, or a
strange shining of the eyes, that sometimes became clouded and
misty, and at the conclusion with a calm and grave paleness.

"But," she said, "you should have told me all."

"It was not my secret," he pleaded.

"You should have trusted me."

"But the captain had trusted ME."

She looked at him with grave wonder, and then said with her old
directness: "But if I had been told such a secret affecting you, I
should have told you."  She stopped suddenly, seeing his eyes fixed
on her, and dropped her own lids with a slight color.  "I mean,"
she said hesitatingly, "of course you have acted nobly, generously,
kindly, wisely--but I hate secrets!  Oh, why cannot one be always
frank?"

A wild idea seized Randolph.  "But I have another secret--you have
not guessed--and I have not dared to tell you.  Do you wish me to
be frank now?"

"Why not?" she said simply, but she did not look up.

Then he told her!  But, strangest of all, in spite of his fears and
convictions, it flowed easily and naturally as a part of his other
secret, with an eloquence he had not dreamed of before.  But when
he told her of his late position and his prospects, she raised her
eyes to his for the first time, yet without withdrawing her hand
from his, and said reproachfully,--

"Yet but for THAT you would never have told me."

"How could I?" he returned eagerly.  "For but for THAT how could I
help you to carry out YOUR trust?  How could I devote myself to
your plans, and enable you to carry them out without touching a
dollar of that inheritance which you believe to be wrongfully
yours?"

Then, with his old boyish enthusiasm, he sketched a glowing picture
of their future: how they would keep the Dornton property intact
until the captain was found and communicated with; and how they
would cautiously collect all the information accessible to find him
until such time as Randolph's fortunes would enable them both to go
on a voyage of discovery after him.  And in the midst of this
prophetic forecast, which brought them so closely together that she
was enabled to examine his watch chain, she said,--

"I see you have kept Cousin Jack's ring.  Did he ever see it?"

"He told me he had given it to you as his little sweetheart, and
that he"--

There was a singular pause here.

"He never did THAT--at least, not in that way!" said Sybil
Eversleigh.


And, strangely enough, the optimistic Randolph's prophecies came
true.  He was married a month later to Sibyl Eversleigh, Mr.
Dingwall giving away the bride.  He and his wife were able to keep
their trust in regard to the property, for, without investing a
dollar of it in the bank, the mere reputation of his wife's wealth
brought him a flood of other investors and a confidence which at
once secured his success.  In two years he was able to take his
wife on a six months' holiday to Europe via Australia, but of the
details of that holiday no one knew.  It is, however, on record
that ten or twelve years ago Dornton Hall, which had been leased or
unoccupied for a long time, was refitted for the heiress, her
husband, and their children during a brief occupancy, and that in
that period extensive repairs were made to the interior of the old
Norman church, and much attention given to the redecoration and
restoration of its ancient tombs.



MR. MACGLOWRIE'S WIDOW


Very little was known of her late husband, yet that little was of a
sufficiently awe-inspiring character to satisfy the curiosity of
Laurel Spring.  A man of unswerving animosity and candid
belligerency, untempered by any human weakness, he had been
actively engaged as survivor in two or three blood feuds in
Kentucky, and some desultory dueling, only to succumb, through the
irony of fate, to an attack of fever and ague in San Francisco.
Gifted with a fine sense of humor, he is said, in his last moments,
to have called the simple-minded clergyman to his bedside to assist
him in putting on his boots.  The kindly divine, although pointing
out to him that he was too weak to rise, much less walk, could not
resist the request of a dying man.  When it was fulfilled, Mr.
MacGlowrie crawled back into bed with the remark that his race had
always "died with their boots on," and so passed smilingly and
tranquilly away.

It is probable that this story was invented to soften the ignominy
of MacGlowrie's peaceful end.  The widow herself was also reported
to be endowed with relations of equally homicidal eccentricities.
Her two brothers, Stephen and Hector Boompointer, had Western
reputations that were quite as lurid and remote.  Her own
experiences of a frontier life had been rude and startling, and her
scalp--a singularly beautiful one of blond hair--had been in peril
from Indians on several occasions.  A pair of scissors, with which
she had once pinned the intruding hand of a marauder to her cabin
doorpost, was to be seen in her sitting room at Laurel Spring.  A
fair-faced woman with eyes the color of pale sherry, a complexion
sallowed by innutritious food, slight and tall figure, she gave
little suggestion of this Amazonian feat.  But that it exercised a
wholesome restraint over the many who would like to have induced
her to reenter the married state, there is little reason to doubt.
Laurel Spring was a peaceful agricultural settlement.  Few of its
citizens dared to aspire to the dangerous eminence of succeeding
the defunct MacGlowrie; few could hope that the sister of living
Boompointers would accept an obvious mesalliance with them.
However sincere their affection, life was still sweet to the rude
inhabitants of Laurel Spring, and the preservation of the usual
quantity of limbs necessary to them in their avocations.  With
their devotion thus chastened by caution, it would seem as if the
charming mistress of Laurel Spring House was secure from disturbing
attentions.

It was a pleasant summer afternoon, and the sun was beginning to
strike under the laurels around the hotel into the little office
where the widow sat with the housekeeper--a stout spinster of a
coarser Western type.  Mrs. MacGlowrie was looking wearily over
some accounts on the desk before her, and absently putting back
some tumbled sheaves from the stack of her heavy hair.  For the
widow had a certain indolent Southern negligence, which in a less
pretty woman would have been untidiness, and a characteristic hook
and eyeless freedom of attire which on less graceful limbs would
have been slovenly.  One sleeve cuff was unbuttoned, but it showed
the blue veins of her delicate wrist; the neck of her dress had
lost a hook, but the glimpse of a bit of edging round the white
throat made amends.  Of all which, however, it should be said that
the widow, in her limp abstraction, was really unconscious.

"I reckon we kin put the new preacher in Kernel Starbottle's room,"
said Miss Morvin, the housekeeper.  "The kernel's going to-night."

"Oh," said the widow in a tone of relief, but whether at the early
departure of the gallant colonel or at the successful solution of
the problem of lodging the preacher, Miss Morvin could not
determine.  But she went on tentatively:--

"The kernel was talkin' in the bar room, and kind o' wonderin' why
you hadn't got married agin.  Said you'd make a stir in Sacramento--
but you was jest berried HERE."

"I suppose he's heard of my husband?" said the widow indifferently.

"Yes--but he said he couldn't PLACE YOU," returned Miss Morvin.

The widow looked up.  "Couldn't place ME?" she repeated.

"Yes--hadn't heard o' MacGlowrie's wife and disremembered your
brothers."

"The colonel doesn't know everybody, even if he is a fighting man,"
said Mrs. MacGlowrie with languid scorn.

"That's just what Dick Blair said," returned Miss Morvin.  "And
though he's only a doctor, he jest stuck up agin' the kernel, and
told that story about your jabbin' that man with your scissors--
beautiful; and how you once fought off a bear with a red-hot iron,
so that you'd have admired to hear him.  He's awfully gone on you!"

The widow took that opportunity to button her cuff.

"And how long does the preacher calculate to stay?" she added,
returning to business details.

"Only a day.  They'll have his house fixed up and ready for him
to-morrow.  They're spendin' a heap o' money on it.  He ought to be
the pow'ful preacher they say he is--to be worth it."

But here Mrs. MacGlowrie's interest in the conversation ceased, and
it dropped.

In her anxiety to further the suit of Dick Blair, Miss Morvin had
scarcely reported the colonel with fairness.

That gentleman, leaning against the bar in the hotel saloon with a
cocktail in his hand, had expatiated with his usual gallantry upon
Mrs. MacGlowrie's charms, and on his own "personal" responsibility
had expressed the opinion that they were thrown away on Laurel
Spring.  That--blank it all--she reminded him of the blankest
beautiful woman he had seen even in Washington--old Major
Beveridge's daughter from Kentucky.  Were they sure she wasn't from
Kentucky?  Wasn't her name Beveridge--and not Boompointer?
Becoming more reminiscent over his second drink, the colonel could
vaguely recall only one Boompointer--a blank skulking hound, sir--a
mean white shyster--but, of course, he couldn't have been of the
same breed as such a blank fine woman as the widow!  It was here
that Dick Blair interrupted with a heightened color and a glowing
eulogy of the widow's relations and herself, which, however, only
increased the chivalry of the colonel--who would be the last man,
sir, to detract from--or suffer any detraction of--a lady's
reputation.  It was needless to say that all this was intensely
diverting to the bystanders, and proportionally discomposing to
Blair, who already experienced some slight jealousy of the colonel
as a man whose fighting reputation might possibly attract the
affections of the widow of the belligerent MacGlowrie.  He had
cursed his folly and relapsed into gloomy silence until the colonel
left.

For Dick Blair loved the widow with the unselfishness of a generous
nature and a first passion.  He had admired her from the first day
his lot was cast in Laurel Spring, where coming from a rude
frontier practice he had succeeded the district doctor in a more
peaceful and domestic ministration.  A skillful and gentle surgeon
rather than a general household practitioner, he was at first
coldly welcomed by the gloomy dyspeptics and ague-haunted settlers
from riparian lowlands.  The few bucolic idlers who had relieved
the monotony of their lives by the stimulus of patent medicines and
the exaltation of stomach bitters, also looked askance at him.  A
common-sense way of dealing with their ailments did not naturally
commend itself to the shopkeepers who vended these nostrums, and he
was made to feel the opposition of trade.  But he was gentle to
women and children and animals, and, oddly enough, it was to this
latter dilection that he owed the widow's interest in him--an
interest that eventually made him popular elsewhere.

The widow had a pet dog--a beautiful spaniel, who, however, had
assimilated her graceful languor to his own native love of ease to
such an extent that he failed in a short leap between a balcony and
a window, and fell to the ground with a fractured thigh.  The dog
was supposed to be crippled for life even if that life were worth
preserving--when Dr. Blair came to the rescue, set the fractured
limb, put it in splints and plaster after an ingenious design of
his own, visited him daily, and eventually restored him to his
mistress's lap sound in wind and limb.  How far this daily
ministration and the necessary exchange of sympathy between the
widow and himself heightened his zeal was not known.  There were
those who believed that the whole thing was an unmanly trick to get
the better of his rivals in the widow's good graces; there were
others who averred that his treatment of a brute beast like a human
being was sinful and unchristian.  "He couldn't have done more for
a regularly baptized child," said the postmistress.  "And what mo'
would a regularly baptized child have wanted?" returned Mrs.
MacGlowrie, with the drawling Southern intonation she fell back
upon when most contemptuous.

But Dr. Blair's increasing practice and the widow's preoccupation
presently ended their brief intimacy.  It was well known that she
encouraged no suitors at the hotel, and his shyness and
sensitiveness shrank from ostentatious advances.  There seemed to
be no chance of her becoming, herself, his patient; her sane mind,
indolent nerves, and calm circulation kept her from feminine
"vapors" of feminine excesses.  She retained the teeth and
digestion of a child in her thirty odd years, and abused neither.
Riding and the cultivation of her little garden gave her sufficient
exercise.  And yet the unexpected occurred!  The day after
Starbottle left, Dr. Blair was summoned hastily to the hotel.  Mrs.
MacGlowrie had been found lying senseless in a dead faint in the
passage outside the dining room.  In his hurried flight thither
with the messenger he could learn only that she had seemed to be in
her usual health that morning, and that no one could assign any
cause for her fainting.

He could find out little more when he arrived and examined her as
she lay pale and unconscious on the sofa of her sitting room.  It
had not been thought necessary to loosen her already loose dress,
and indeed he could find no organic disturbance.  The case was one
of sudden nervous shock--but this, with his knowledge of her
indolent temperament, seemed almost absurd.  They could tell him
nothing but that she was evidently on the point of entering the
dining room when she fell unconscious.  Had she been frightened by
anything?  A snake or a rat?  Miss Morvin was indignant!  The widow
of MacGlowrie--the repeller of grizzlies--frightened at "sich"!
Had she been upset by any previous excitement, passion, or the
receipt of bad news?  No!--she "wasn't that kind," as the doctor
knew.  And even as they were speaking he felt the widow's healthy
life returning to the pulse he was holding, and giving a faint
tinge to her lips.  Her blue-veined eyelids quivered slightly and
then opened with languid wonder on the doctor and her surroundings.
Suddenly a quick, startled look contracted the yellow brown pupils
of her eyes, she lifted herself to a sitting posture with a hurried
glance around the room and at the door beyond.  Catching the quick,
observant eyes of Dr. Blair, she collected herself with an effort,
which Dr. Blair felt in her pulse, and drew away her wrist.

"What is it?  What happened?" she said weakly.

"You had a slight attack of faintness," said the doctor cheerily,
"and they called me in as I was passing, but you're all right now."

"How pow'ful foolish," she said, with returning color, but her eyes
still glancing at the door, "slumping off like a green gyrl at
nothin'."

"Perhaps you were startled?" said the doctor.

Mrs. MacGlowrie glanced up quickly and looked away.  "No!--Let me
see!  I was just passing through the hall, going into the dining
room, when--everything seemed to waltz round me--and I was off!
Where did they find me?" she said, turning to Miss Morvin.

"I picked you up just outside the door," replied the housekeeper.

"Then they did not see me?" said Mrs. MacGlowrie.

"Who's they?" responded the housekeeper with more directness than
grammatical accuracy.

"The people in the dining room.  I was just opening the door--and I
felt this coming on--and--I reckon I had just sense enough to shut
the door again before I went off."

"Then that accounts for what Jim Slocum said," uttered Miss Morvin
triumphantly.  "He was in the dining room talkin' with the new
preacher, when he allowed he heard the door open and shut behind
him.  Then he heard a kind of slump outside and opened the door
again just to find you lyin' there, and to rush off and get me.
And that's why he was so mad at the preacher!--for he says he just
skurried away without offerin' to help.  He allows the preacher may
be a pow'ful exhorter--but he ain't worth much at 'works.'"

"Some men can't bear to be around when a woman's up to that sort of
foolishness," said the widow, with a faint attempt at a smile, but
a return of her paleness.

"Hadn't you better lie down again?" said the doctor solicitously.

"I'm all right now," returned Mrs. MacGlowrie, struggling to her
feet; "Morvin will look after me till the shakiness goes.  But it
was mighty touching and neighborly to come in, Doctor," she
continued, succeeding at last in bringing up a faint but adorable
smile, which stirred Blair's pulses.  "If I were my own dog--you
couldn't have treated me better!"

With no further excuse for staying longer, Blair was obliged to
depart--yet reluctantly, both as lover and physician.  He was by no
means satisfied with her condition.  He called to inquire the next
day--but she was engaged and sent word to say she was "better."

In the excitement attending the advent of the new preacher the
slight illness of the charming widow was forgotten.  He had taken
the settlement by storm.  His first sermon at Laurel Spring
exceeded even the extravagant reputation that had preceded him.
Known as the "Inspired Cowboy," a common unlettered frontiersman,
he was said to have developed wonderful powers of exhortatory
eloquence among the Indians, and scarcely less savage border
communities where he had lived, half outcast, half missionary.  He
had just come up from the Southern agricultural districts, where he
had been, despite his rude antecedents, singularly effective with
women and young people.  The moody dyspeptics and lazy rustics of
Laurel Spring were stirred as with a new patent medicine.  Dr.
Blair went to the first "revival" meeting.  Without undervaluing
the man's influence, he was instinctively repelled by his
appearance and methods.  The young physician's trained powers of
observation not only saw an overwrought emotionalism in the
speaker's eloquence, but detected the ring of insincerity in his
more lucid speech and acts.  Nevertheless, the hysteria of the
preacher was communicated to the congregation, who wept and shouted
with him.  Tired and discontented housewives found their vague
sorrows and vaguer longings were only the result of their
"unregenerate" state; the lazy country youths felt that the
frustration of their small ambitions lay in their not being
"convicted of sin."  The mourners' bench was crowded with wildly
emulating sinners.  Dr. Blair turned away with mingled feelings of
amusement and contempt.  At the door Jim Slocum tapped him on the
shoulder: "Fetches the wimmin folk every time, don't he, Doctor?"
said Jim.

"So it seems," said Blair dryly.

"You're one o' them scientific fellers that look inter things--what
do YOU allow it is?"

The young doctor restrained the crushing answer that rose to his
lips.  He had learned caution in that neighborhood.  "I couldn't
say," he said indifferently.

"'Tain't no religion," said Slocum emphatically; "it's jest pure
fas'nation.  Did ye look at his eye?  It's like a rattlesnake's,
and them wimmin are like birds.  They're frightened of him--but
they hev to do jest what he 'wills' 'em.  That's how he skeert the
widder the other day."

The doctor was alert and on fire at once.  "Scared the widow?" he
repeated indignantly.

"Yes.  You know how she swooned away.  Well, sir, me and that
preacher, Brown, was the only one in that dinin' room at the time.
The widder opened the door behind me and sorter peeked in, and that
thar preacher give a start and looked up; and then, that sort of
queer light come in his eyes, and she shut the door, and kinder
fluttered and flopped down in the passage outside, like a bird!
And he crawled away like a snake, and never said a word!  My belief
is that either he hadn't time to turn on the hull influence, or
else she, bein' smart, got the door shut betwixt her and it in
time!  Otherwise, sure as you're born, she'd hev been floppin' and
crawlin' and sobbin' arter him--jist like them critters we've left."

"Better not let the brethren hear you talk like that, or they'll
lynch you," said the doctor, with a laugh.  "Mrs. MacGlowrie simply
had an attack of faintness from some overexertion, that's all."

Nevertheless, he was uneasy as he walked away.  Mrs. MacGlowrie had
evidently received a shock which was still unexplained, and, in
spite of Slocum's exaggerated fancy, there might be some foundation
in his story.  He did not share the man's superstition, although he
was not a skeptic regarding magnetism.  Yet even then, the widow's
action was one of repulsion, and as long as she was strong enough
not to come to these meetings, she was not in danger.  A day or two
later, as he was passing the garden of the hotel on horseback, he
saw her lithe, graceful, languid figure bending over one of her
favorite flower beds.  The high fence partially concealed him from
view, and she evidently believed herself alone.  Perhaps that was
why she suddenly raised herself from her task, put back her
straying hair with a weary, abstracted look, remained for a moment
quite still staring at the vacant sky, and then, with a little
catching of her breath, resumed her occupation in a dull,
mechanical way.  In that brief glimpse of her charming face, Blair
was shocked at the change; she was pale, the corners of her pretty
mouth were drawn, there were deeper shades in the orbits of her
eyes, and in spite of her broad garden hat with its blue ribbon,
her light flowered frock and frilled apron, she looked as he
fancied she might have looked in the first crushing grief of her
widowhood.  Yet he would have passed on, respecting her privacy of
sorrow, had not her little spaniel detected him with her keener
senses.  And Fluffy being truthful--as dogs are--and recognizing a
dear friend in the intruder, barked joyously.

The widow looked up, her eyes met Blair's, and she reddened.  But
he was too acute a lover to misinterpret what he knew, alas! was
only confusion at her abstraction being discovered.  Nevertheless,
there was something else in her brown eyes he had never seen
before.  A momentary lighting up of RELIEF--of even hopefulness--in
his presence.  It was enough for Blair; he shook off his old
shyness like the dust of his ride, and galloped around to the front
door.

But she met him in the hall with only her usual languid good humor.
Nevertheless, Blair was not abashed.

"I can't put you in splints and plaster like Fluffy, Mrs.
MacGlowrie," he said, "but I can forbid you to go into the garden
unless you're looking better.  It's a positive reflection on my
professional skill, and Laurel Spring will be shocked, and hold me
responsible."

Mrs. MacGlowrie had recovered enough of her old spirit to reply
that she thought Laurel Spring could be in better business than
looking at her over her garden fence.

"But your dog, who knows you're not well, and doesn't think me
quite a fool, had the good sense to call me.  You heard him."

But the widow protested that she was as strong as a horse, and that
Fluffy was like all puppies, conceited to the last degree.

"Well," said Blair cheerfully, "suppose I admit you are all right,
physically, you'll confess you have some trouble on your mind,
won't you?  If I can't make you SHOW me your tongue, you'll let me
hear you USE it to tell me what worries you.  If," he added more
earnestly, "you won't confide in your physician--you will perhaps--
to--to--a--FRIEND."

But Mrs. MacGlowrie, evading his earnest eyes as well as his
appeal, was wondering what good it would do either a doctor, or--
a--a--she herself seemed to hesitate over the word--"a FRIEND, to
hear the worriments of a silly, nervous old thing--who had only
stuck a little too closely to her business."

"You are neither nervous nor old, Mrs. MacGlowrie," said the doctor
promptly, "though I begin to think you HAVE been too closely
confined here.  You want more diversion, or--excitement.  You might
even go to hear this preacher"--he stopped, for the word had
slipped from his mouth unawares.

But a swift look of scorn swept her pale face.  "And you'd like me
to follow those skinny old frumps and leggy, limp chits, that
slobber and cry over that man!" she said contemptuously.  "No!  I
reckon I only want a change--and I'll go away, or get out of this
for a while."

The poor doctor had not thought of this possible alternative.  His
heart sank, but he was brave.  "Yes, perhaps you are right," he
said sadly, "though it would be a dreadful loss--to Laurel Spring--
to us all--if you went."

"Do I look so VERY bad, doctor?" she said, with a half-mischievous,
half-pathetic smile.

The doctor thought her upturned face very adorable, but restrained
his feelings heroically, and contented himself with replying to the
pathetic half of her smile.  "You look as if you had been
suffering," he said gravely, "and I never saw you look so before.
You seem as if you had experienced some great shock.  Do you know,"
he went on, in a lower tone and with a half-embarrassed smile,
"that when I saw you just now in the garden, you looked as I
imagined you might have looked in the first days of your widowhood--
when your husband's death was fresh in your heart."

A strange expression crossed her face.  Her eyelids dropped
instantly, and with both hands she caught up her frilled apron as
if to meet them and covered her face.  A little shudder seemed to
pass over her shoulders, and then a cry that ended in an
uncontrollable and half-hysterical laugh followed from the depths
of that apron, until shaking her sides, and with her head still
enveloped in its covering, she fairly ran into the inner room and
closed the door behind her.

Amazed, shocked, and at first indignant, Dr. Blair remained fixed
to the spot.  Then his indignation gave way to a burning
mortification as he recalled his speech.  He had made a frightful
faux pas!  He had been fool enough to try to recall the most sacred
memories of that dead husband he was trying to succeed--and her
quick woman's wit had detected his ridiculous stupidity.  Her laugh
was hysterical--but that was only natural in her mixed emotions.
He mounted his horse in confusion and rode away.

For a few days he avoided the house.  But when he next saw her she
had a charming smile of greeting and an air of entire obliviousness
of his past blunder.  She said she was better.  She had taken his
advice and was giving herself some relaxation from business.  She
had been riding again--oh, so far!  Alone?--of course; she was
always alone--else what would Laurel Spring say?

"True," said Blair smilingly; "besides, I forgot that you are quite
able to take care of yourself in an emergency.  And yet," he added,
admiringly looking at her lithe figure and indolent grace, "do you
know I never can associate you with the dreadful scenes they say
you have gone through."

"Then please don't!" she said quickly; "really, I'd rather you
wouldn't.  I'm sick and tired of hearing of it!"  She was half
laughing and yet half in earnest, with a slight color on her cheek.

Blair was a little embarrassed.  "Of course, I don't mean your
heroism--like that story of the intruder and the scissors," he
stammered.

"Oh, THAT'S the worst of all!  It's too foolish--it's sickening!"
she went on almost angrily.  "I don't know who started that stuff."
She paused, and then added shyly, "I really am an awful coward and
horribly nervous--as you know."

He would have combated this--but she looked really disturbed, and
he had no desire to commit another imprudence.  And he thought,
too, that he again had seen in her eyes the same hopeful, wistful
light he had once seen before, and was happy.

This led him, I fear, to indulge in wilder dreams.  His practice,
although increasing, barely supported him, and the widow was rich.
Her business had been profitable, and she had repaid the advances
made her when she first took the hotel.  But this disparity in
their fortunes which had frightened him before now had no fears for
him.  He felt that if he succeeded in winning her affections she
could afford to wait for him, despite other suitors, until his
talents had won an equal position.  His rivals had always felt as
secure in his poverty as they had in his peaceful profession.  How
could a poor, simple doctor aspire to the hand of the rich widow of
the redoubtable MacGlowrie?

It was late one afternoon, and the low sun was beginning to strike
athwart the stark columns and down the long aisles of the redwoods
on the High Ridge.  The doctor, returning from a patient at the
loggers' camp in its depths, had just sighted the smaller groves of
Laurel Springs, two miles away.  He was riding fast, with his
thoughts filled with the widow, when he heard a joyous bark in the
underbrush, and Fluffy came bounding towards him.  Blair dismounted
to caress him, as was his wont, and then, wisely conceiving that
his mistress was not far away, sauntered forward exploringly,
leading his horse, the dog hounding before him and barking, as if
bent upon both leading and announcing him.  But the latter he
effected first, for as Blair turned from the trail into the deeper
woods, he saw the figures of a man and woman walking together
suddenly separate at the dog's warning.  The woman was Mrs.
MacGlowrie--the man was the revival preacher!

Amazed, mystified, and indignant, Blair nevertheless obeyed his
first instinct, which was that of a gentleman.  He turned leisurely
aside as if not recognizing them, led his horse a few paces
further, mounted him, and galloped away without turning his head.
But his heart was filled with bitterness and disgust.  This woman--
who but a few days before had voluntarily declared her scorn and
contempt for that man and his admirers--had just been giving him a
clandestine meeting like one of the most infatuated of his
devotees!  The story of the widow's fainting, the coarse surmises
and comments of Slocum, came back to him with overwhelming
significance.  But even then his reason forbade him to believe that
she had fallen under the preacher's influence--she, with her sane
mind and indolent temperament.  Yet, whatever her excuse or purpose
was, she had deceived him wantonly and cruelly!  His abrupt
avoidance of her had prevented him from knowing if she, on her
part, had recognized him as he rode away.  If she HAD, she would
understand why he had avoided her, and any explanation must come
from her.

Then followed a few days of uncertainty, when his thoughts again
reverted to the preacher with returning jealousy.  Was she, after
all, like other women, and had her gratuitous outburst of scorn of
THEIR infatuation been prompted by unsuccessful rivalry?  He was
too proud to question Slocum again or breathe a word of his fears.
Yet he was not strong enough to keep from again seeking the High
Ridge, to discover any repetition of that rendezvous.  But he saw
her neither there, nor elsewhere, during his daily rounds.  And one
night his feverish anxiety getting the better of him, he entered
the great "Gospel Tent" of the revival preacher.

It chanced to be an extraordinary meeting, and the usual
enthusiastic audience was reinforced by some sight-seers from the
neighboring county town--the district judge and officials from the
court in session, among them Colonel Starbottle.  The impassioned
revivalist--his eyes ablaze with fever, his lank hair wet with
perspiration, hanging beside his heavy but weak jaws--was
concluding a fervent exhortation to his auditors to confess their
sins, "accept conviction," and regenerate then and there, without
delay.  They must put off "the old Adam," and put on the flesh of
righteousness at once!  They were to let no false shame or worldly
pride keep them from avowing their guilty past before their
brethren.  Sobs and groans followed the preacher's appeals; his own
agitation and convulsive efforts seemed to spread in surging waves
through the congregation, until a dozen men and women arose,
staggering like drunkards blindly, or led or dragged forward by
sobbing sympathizers towards the mourners' bench.  And prominent
among them, but stepping jauntily and airily forward, was the
redoubtable and worldly Colonel Starbottle!

At this proof of the orator's power the crowd shouted--but stopped
suddenly, as the colonel halted before the preacher, and ascended
the rostrum beside him.  Then taking a slight pose with his gold-
headed cane in one hand and the other thrust in the breast of his
buttoned coat, he said in his blandest, forensic voice:--

"If I mistake not, sir, you are advising these ladies and gentlemen
to a free and public confession of their sins and a--er--
denunciation of their past life--previous to their conversion.  If
I am mistaken I--er--ask your pardon, and theirs and--er--hold
myself responsible--er--personally responsible!"

The preacher glanced uneasily at the colonel, but replied, still in
the hysterical intonation of his exordium:--

"Yes! a complete searching of hearts--a casting out of the seven
Devils of Pride, Vain Glory"--

"Thank you--that is sufficient," said the colonel blandly.  "But
might I--er--be permitted to suggest that you--er--er--SET THEM THE
EXAMPLE!  The statement of the circumstances attending your own
past life and conversion would be singularly interesting and
exemplary."

The preacher turned suddenly and glanced at the colonel with
furious eyes set in an ashy face.

"If this is the flouting and jeering of the Ungodly and Dissolute,"
he screamed, "woe to you!  I say--woe to you!  What have such as
YOU to do with my previous state of unregeneracy?"

"Nothing," said the colonel blandly, "unless that state were also
the STATE OF ARKANSAS!  Then, sir, as a former member of the
Arkansas BAR--I might be able to assist your memory--and--er--even
corroborate your confession."

But here the enthusiastic adherents of the preacher, vaguely
conscious of some danger to their idol, gathered threateningly
round the platform from which he had promptly leaped into their
midst, leaving the colonel alone, to face the sea of angry upturned
faces.  But that gallant warrior never altered his characteristic
pose.  Behind him loomed the reputation of the dozen duels he had
fought, the gold-headed stick on which he leaned was believed to
contain eighteen inches of shining steel--and the people of Laurel
Spring had discretion.

He smiled suavely, stepped jauntily down, and made his way to the
entrance without molestation.

But here he was met by Blair and Slocum, and a dozen eager
questions:--

"What was it?"  "What had he done?"  "WHO was he?"

"A blank shyster, who had swindled the widows and orphans in
Arkansas and escaped from jail."

"And his name isn't Brown?"

"No," said the colonel curtly.

"What is it?"

"That is a matter which concerns only myself and him, sir," said
the colonel loftily; "but for which I am--er--personally
responsible."

A wild idea took possession of Blair.

"And you say he was a noted desperado?" he said with nervous
hesitation.

The colonel glared.

"Desperado, sir!  Never!  Blank it all!--a mean, psalm-singing,
crawling, sneak thief!"

And Blair felt relieved without knowing exactly why.

The next day it was known that the preacher, Gabriel Brown, had
left Laurel Spring on an urgent "Gospel call" elsewhere.

Colonel Starbottle returned that night with his friends to the
county town.  Strange to say, a majority of the audience had not
grasped the full significance of the colonel's unseemly
interruption, and those who had, as partisans, kept it quiet.
Blair, tortured by doubt, had a new delicacy added to his
hesitation, which left him helpless until the widow should take the
initiative in explanation.

A sudden summons from his patient at the loggers' camp the next day
brought him again to the fateful redwoods.  But he was vexed and
mystified to find, on arriving at the camp, that he had been made
the victim of some stupid blunder, and that no message had been
sent from there.  He was returning abstractedly through the woods
when he was amazed at seeing at a little distance before him the
flutter of Mrs. MacGlowrie's well-known dark green riding habit and
the figure of the lady herself.  Her dog was not with her, neither
was the revival preacher--or he might have thought the whole vision
a trick of his memory.  But she slackened her pace, and he was
obliged to rein up abreast of her in some confusion.

"I hope I won't shock you again by riding alone through the woods
with a man," she said with a light laugh.

Nevertheless, she was quite pale as he answered, somewhat coldly,
that he had no right to be shocked at anything she might choose to
do.

"But you WERE shocked, for you rode away the last time without
speaking," she said; "and yet"--she looked up suddenly into his
eyes with a smileless face--"that man you saw me with once had a
better right to ride alone with me than any other man.  He was"--

"Your lover?" said Blair with brutal brevity.

"My husband!" returned Mrs. MacGlowrie slowly.

"Then you are NOT a widow," gasped Blair.

"No.  I am only a divorced woman.  That is why I have had to live a
lie here.  That man--that hypocrite--whose secret was only half
exposed the other night, was my husband--divorced from me by the
law, when, an escaped convict, he fled with another woman from the
State three years ago."  Her face flushed and whitened again; she
put up her hand blindly to her straying hair, and for an instant
seemed to sway in the saddle.

But Blair as quickly leaped from his horse, and was beside her.
"Let me help you down," he said quickly, "and rest yourself until
you are better."  Before she could reply, he lifted her tenderly to
the ground and placed her on a mossy stump a little distance from
the trail.  Her color and a faint smile returned to her troubled
face.

"Had we not better go on?" she said, looking around.  "I never went
so far as to sit down in the woods with HIM that day."

"Forgive me," he said pleadingly, "but, of course, I knew nothing.
I disliked the man from instinct--I thought he had some power over
you."

"He has none--except the secret that would also have exposed
himself."

"But others knew it.  Colonel Starbottle must have known his name?
And yet"--as he remembered he stammered--"he refused to tell me."

"Yes, but not because he knew he was my husband, but because he
knew he bore the same name.  He thinks, as every one does, that my
husband died in San Francisco.  The man who died there was my
husband's cousin--a desperate man and a noted duelist."

"And YOU assumed to be HIS widow?" said the astounded Blair.

"Yes, but don't blame me too much," she said pathetically.  "It was
a wild, a silly deceit, but it was partly forced upon me.  For when
I first arrived across the plains, at the frontier, I was still
bearing my husband's name, and although I was alone and helpless, I
found myself strangely welcomed and respected by those rude
frontiersmen.  It was not long before I saw it was because I was
presumed to be the widow of ALLEN MacGlowrie--who had just died in
San Francisco.  I let them think so, for I knew--what they did not--
that Allen's wife had separated from him and married again, and
that my taking his name could do no harm.  I accepted their
kindness; they gave me my first start in business, which brought me
here.  It was not much of a deceit," she continued, with a slight
tremble of her pretty lip, "to prefer to pass as the widow of a
dead desperado than to be known as the divorced wife of a living
convict.  It has hurt no one, and it has saved me just now."

"You were right!  No one could blame you," said Blair eagerly,
seizing her hand.

But she disengaged it gently, and went on:--

"And now you wonder why I gave him a meeting here?"

"I wonder at nothing but your courage and patience in all this
suffering!" said Blair fervently; "and at your forgiving me for so
cruelly misunderstanding you."

"But you must learn all.  When I first saw MacGlowrie under his
assumed name, I fainted, for I was terrified and believed he knew I
was here and had come to expose me even at his own risk.  That was
why I hesitated between going away or openly defying him.  But it
appears he was more frightened than I at finding me here--he had
supposed I had changed my name after the divorce, and that Mrs.
MacGlowrie, Laurel Spring, was his cousin's widow.  When he found
out who I was he was eager to see me and agree upon a mutual
silence while he was here.  He thought only of himself," she added
scornfully, "and Colonel Starbottle's recognition of him that night
as the convicted swindler was enough to put him to flight."

"And the colonel never suspected that you were his wife?" said
Blair.

"Never!  He supposed from the name that he was some relation of my
husband, and that was why he refused to tell it--for my sake.  The
colonel is an old fogy--and pompous--but a gentleman--as good as
they make them!"

A slightly jealous uneasiness and a greater sense of shame came
over Blair.

"I seem to have been the only one who suspected and did not aid
you," he said sadly, "and yet God knows"--

The widow had put up her slim hand in half-smiling, half-pathetic
interruption.

"Wait!  I have not told you everything.  When I took over the
responsibility of being Allen MacGlowrie's widow, I had to take
over HER relations and HER history as I gathered it from the
frontiersmen.  I never frightened any grizzly--I never jabbed
anybody with the scissors; it was SHE who did it.  I never was
among the Injins--I never had any fighting relations; my paw was a
plain farmer.  I was only a peaceful Blue Grass girl--there!  I
never thought there was any harm in it; it seemed to keep the men
off, and leave me free--until I knew you!  And you know I didn't
want you to believe it--don't you?"

She hid her flushed face and dimples in her handkerchief.

"But did you never think there might be another way to keep the men
off, and sink the name of MacGlowrie forever?" said Blair in a
lower voice.

"I think we must be going back now," said the widow timidly,
withdrawing her hand, which Blair had again mysteriously got
possession of in her confusion.

"But wait just a few minutes longer to keep me company," said Blair
pleadingly.  "I came here to see a patient, and as there must have
been some mistake in the message--I must try to discover it."

"Oh!  Is that all?" said the widow quickly.  "Why?"--she flushed
again and laughed faintly--  "Well!  I am that patient!  I wanted
to see you alone to explain everything, and I could think of no
other way.  I'm afraid I've got into the habit of thinking nothing
of being somebody else."

"I wish you would let me select who you should be," said the doctor
boldly.

"We really must go back--to the horses," said the widow.

"Agreed--if we will ride home together."

They did.  And before the year was over, although they both
remained, the name of MacGlowrie had passed out of Laurel Spring.



A WARD OF COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S


"The kernel seems a little off color to-day," said the barkeeper as
he replaced the whiskey decanter, and gazed reflectively after the
departing figure of Colonel Starbottle.

"I didn't notice anything," said a bystander; "he passed the time
o' day civil enough to me."

"Oh, he's allus polite enough to strangers and wimmin folk even
when he is that way; it's only his old chums, or them ez like to be
thought so, that he's peppery with.  Why, ez to that, after he'd
had that quo'll with his old partner, Judge Pratt, in one o' them
spells, I saw him the next minit go half a block out of his way to
direct an entire stranger; and ez for wimmin!--well, I reckon if
he'd just got a head drawn on a man, and a woman spoke to him, he'd
drop his battery and take off his hat to her.  No--ye can't judge
by that!"

And perhaps in his larger experience the barkeeper was right.  He
might have added, too, that the colonel, in his general outward
bearing and jauntiness, gave no indication of his internal
irritation.  Yet he was undoubtedly in one of his "spells,"
suffering from a moody cynicism which made him as susceptible of
affront as he was dangerous in resentment.

Luckily, on this particular morning he reached his office and
entered his private room without any serious rencontre.  Here he
opened his desk, and arranging his papers, he at once set to work
with grim persistency.  He had not been occupied for many minutes
before the door opened to Mr. Pyecroft--one of a firm of attorneys
who undertook the colonel's office work.

"I see you are early to work, Colonel," said Mr. Pyecroft
cheerfully.

"You see, sir," said the colonel, correcting him with a slow
deliberation that boded no good--"you see a Southern gentleman--
blank it!--who has stood at the head of his profession for thirty-
five years, obliged to work like a blank nigger, sir, in the dirty
squabbles of psalm-singing Yankee traders, instead of--er--
attending to the affairs of--er--legislation!"

"But you manage to get pretty good fees out of it--Colonel?"
continued Pyecroft, with a laugh.

"Fees, sir!  Filthy shekels! and barely enough to satisfy a debt of
honor with one hand, and wipe out a tavern score for the
entertainment of--er--a few lady friends with the other!"

This allusion to his losses at poker, as well as an oyster supper
given to the two principal actresses of the "North Star Troupe,"
then performing in the town, convinced Mr. Pyecroft that the
colonel was in one of his "moods," and he changed the subject.

"That reminds me of a little joke that happened in Sacramento last
week.  You remember Dick Stannard, who died a year ago--one of your
friends?"

"I have yet to learn," interrupted the colonel, with the same
deadly deliberation, "what right HE--or ANYBODY--had to intimate
that he held such a relationship with me.  Am I to understand, sir,
that he--er--publicly boasted of it?"

"Don't know!" resumed Pyecroft hastily; "but it don't matter, for
if he wasn't a friend it only makes the joke bigger.  Well, his
widow didn't survive him long, but died in the States t'other day,
leavin' the property in Sacramento--worth about three thousand
dollars--to her little girl, who is at school at Santa Clara.  The
question of guardianship came up, and it appears that the widow--
who only knew you through her husband--had, some time before her
death, mentioned YOUR name in that connection!  He! he!"

"What!" said Colonel Starbottle, starting up.

"Hold on!" said Pyecroft hilariously.  "That isn't all!  Neither
the executors nor the probate judge knew you from Adam, and the
Sacramento bar, scenting a good joke, lay low and said nothing.
Then the old fool judge said that 'as you appeared to be a lawyer,
a man of mature years, and a friend of the family, you were an
eminently fit person, and ought to be communicated with'--you know
his hifalutin' style.  Nobody says anything.  So that the next
thing you'll know you'll get a letter from that executor asking you
to look after that kid.  Ha! ha!  The boys said they could fancy
they saw you trotting around with a ten year old girl holding on to
your hand, and the Senorita Dolores or Miss Bellamont looking on!
Or your being called away from a poker deal some night by the
infant, singing, 'Gardy, dear gardy, come home with me now, the
clock in the steeple strikes one!'  And think of that old fool
judge not knowing you!  Ha! ha!"

A study of Colonel Starbottle's face during this speech would have
puzzled a better physiognomist than Mr. Pyecroft.  His first look
of astonishment gave way to an empurpled confusion, from which a
single short Silenus-like chuckle escaped, but this quickly changed
again into a dull coppery indignation, and, as Pyecroft's laugh
continued, faded out into a sallow rigidity in which his murky eyes
alone seemed to keep what was left of his previous high color.  But
what was more singular, in spite of his enforced calm, something of
his habitual old-fashioned loftiness and oratorical exaltation
appeared to be returning to him as he placed his hand on his
inflated breast and faced Pyceroft.

"The ignorance of the executor of Mrs. Stannard and the--er--
probate judge," he began slowly, "may be pardonable, Mr. Pyecroft,
since his Honor would imply that, although unknown to HIM
personally, I am at least amicus curiae in this question of--er--
guardianship.  But I am grieved--indeed I may say shocked--Mr.
Pyecroft, that the--er--last sacred trust of a dying widow--perhaps
the holiest trust that can be conceived by man--the care and
welfare of her helpless orphaned girl--should be made the subject
of mirth, sir, by yourself and the members of the Sacramento bar!
I shall not allude, sir, to my own feelings in regard to Dick
Stannard, one of my most cherished friends," continued the colonel,
in a voice charged with emotion, "but I can conceive of no nobler
trust laid upon the altar of friendship than the care and guidance
of his orphaned girl!  And if, as you tell me, the utterly
inadequate sum of three thousand dollars is all that is left for
her maintenance through life, the selection of a guardian
sufficiently devoted to the family to be willing to augment that
pittance out of his own means from time to time would seem to be
most important."

Before the astounded Pyecroft could recover himself, Colonel
Starbottle leaned back in his chair, half closing his eyes, and
abandoned himself, quite after his old manner, to one of his dreamy
reminiscences.

"Poor Dick Stannard!  I have a vivid recollection, sir, of driving
out with him on the Shell Road at New Orleans in '54, and of his
saying, 'Star'--the only man, sir, who ever abbreviated my name--
'Star, if anything happens to me or her, look after our child!  It
was during that very drive, sir, that, through his incautious
neglect to fortify himself against the swampy malaria by a glass of
straight Bourbon with a pinch of bark in it, he caught that fever
which undermined his constitution.  Thank you, Mr. Pyecroft, for--
er--recalling the circumstance.  I shall," continued the colonel,
suddenly abandoning reminiscence, sitting up, and arranging his
papers, "look forward with great interest to--er--letter from the
executor."

The next day it was universally understood that Colonel Starbottle
had been appointed guardian of Pansy Stannard by the probate judge
of Sacramento.


There are of record two distinct accounts of Colonel Starbottle's
first meeting with his ward after his appointment as her guardian.
One, given by himself, varying slightly at times, but always
bearing unvarying compliment to the grace, beauty, and singular
accomplishments of this apparently gifted child, was nevertheless
characterized more by vague, dreamy reminiscences of the departed
parents than by any personal experience of the daughter.

"I found the young lady, sir," he remarked to Mr. Pyecroft,
"recalling my cherished friend Stannard in--er--form and features,
and--although--er--personally unacquainted with her deceased
mother--who belonged, sir, to one of the first families of
Virginia--I am told that she is--er--remarkably like her.  Miss
Stannard is at present a pupil in one of the best educational
establishments in Santa Clara, where she is receiving tuition in--
er--the English classics, foreign belles lettres, embroidery, the
harp, and--er--the use of the--er--globes, and--er--blackboard--
under the most fastidious care, and my own personal supervision.
The principal of the school, Miss Eudoxia Tish--associated with--
er--er--Miss Prinkwell--is--er--remarkably gifted woman; and as I
was present at one of the school exercises, I had the opportunity
of testifying to her excellence in--er--short address I made to the
young ladies."  From such glittering but unsatisfying generalities
as these I prefer to turn to the real interview, gathered from
contemporary witnesses.

It was the usual cloudless, dazzling, Californian summer day,
tempered with the asperity of the northwest trades that Miss Tish,
looking through her window towards the rose-embowered gateway of
the seminary, saw an extraordinary figure advancing up the avenue.
It was that of a man slightly past middle age, yet erect and
jaunty, whose costume recalled the early water-color portraits of
her own youthful days.  His tightly buttoned blue frock coat with
gilt buttons was opened far enough across the chest to allow the
expanding of a frilled shirt, black stock, and nankeen waistcoat,
and his immaculate white trousers were smartly strapped over his
smart varnished boots.  A white bell-crowned hat, carried in his
hand to permit the wiping of his forehead with a silk handkerchief,
and a gold-headed walking stick hooked over his arm, completed this
singular equipment.  He was followed, a few paces in the rear, by a
negro carrying an enormous bouquet, and a number of small boxes and
parcels tied up with ribbons.  As the figure paused before the
door, Miss Tish gasped, and cast a quick restraining glance around
the classroom.  But it was too late; a dozen pairs of blue, black,
round, inquiring, or mischievous eyes were already dancing and
gloating over the bizarre stranger through the window.

"A cirkiss--or nigger minstrels--sure as you're born!" said Mary
Frost, aged nine, in a fierce whisper.

"No!--a agent from 'The Emporium,' with samples," returned Miss
Briggs, aged fourteen.

"Young ladies, attend to your studies," said Miss Tish, as the
servant brought in a card.  Miss Tish glanced at it with some
nervousness, and read to herself, "Colonel Culpeper Starbottle,"
engraved in script, and below it in pencil, "To see Miss Pansy
Stannard, under favor of Miss Tish."  Rising with some
perturbation, Miss Tish hurriedly intrusted the class to an
assistant, and descended to the reception room.  She had never seen
Pansy's guardian before (the executor had brought the child); and
this extraordinary creature, whose visit she could not deny, might
be ruinous to school discipline.  It was therefore with an extra
degree of frigidity of demeanor that she threw open the door of the
reception room, and entered majestically.  But to her utter
astonishment, the colonel met her with a bow so stately, so
ceremonious, and so commanding that she stopped, disarmed and
speechless.

"I need not ask if I am addressing Miss Tish," said the colonel
loftily, "for without having the pleasure of--er--previous
acquaintance, I can at once recognize the--er--Lady Superior and--
er--chatelaine of this--er--establishment."  Miss Tish here gave
way to a slight cough and an embarrassed curtsy, as the colonel,
with a wave of his white hand towards the burden carried by his
follower, resumed more lightly: "I have brought--er--few trifles
and gewgaws for my ward--subject, of course, to your rules and
discretion.  They include some--er--dainties, free from any
deleterious substance, as I am informed--a sash--a ribbon or two
for the hair, gloves, mittens, and a nosegay--from which, I trust,
it will be HER pleasure, as it is my own, to invite you to cull
such blossoms as may suit your taste.  Boy, you may set them down
and retire!"

"At the present moment," stammered Miss Tish, "Miss Stannard is
engaged on her lessons.  But"--  She stopped again, hopelessly.

"I see," said the colonel, with an air of playful, poetical
reminiscence--"her lessons!  Certainly!


    'We will--er--go to our places,
     With smiles on our faces,
     And say all our lessons distinctly and slow.'


Certainly!  Not for worlds would I interrupt them; until they are
done, we will--er--walk through the classrooms and inspect"--

"No! no!" interrupted the horrified, principal, with a dreadful
presentiment of the appalling effect of the colonel's entry upon
the class.  "No!--that is--I mean--our rules exclude--except on
days of public examination"--

"Say no more, my dear madam," said the colonel politely.  "Until
she is free I will stroll outside, through--er--the groves of the
Academus"--

But Miss Tish, equally alarmed at the diversion this would create
at the classroom windows, recalled herself with an effort.  "Please
wait here a moment," she said hurriedly; "I will bring her down;"
and before the colonel could politely open the door for her, she
had fled.

Happily unconscious of the sensation he had caused, Colonel
Starbottle seated himself on the sofa, his white hands resting
easily on the gold-headed cane.  Once or twice the door behind him
opened and closed quietly, scarcely disturbing him; or again opened
more ostentatiously to the words, "Oh, excuse, please," and the
brief glimpse of a flaxen braid, or a black curly head--to all of
which the colonel nodded politely--even rising later to the
apparition of a taller, demure young lady--and her more affected
"Really, I beg your pardon!"  The only result of this evident
curiosity was slightly to change the colonel's attitude, so as to
enable him to put his other hand in his breast in his favorite
pose.  But presently he was conscious of a more active movement in
the hall, of the sounds of scuffling, of a high youthful voice
saying "I won't" and "I shan't!" of the door opening to a momentary
apparition of Miss Tish dragging a small hand and half of a small
black-ribboned arm into the room, and her rapid disappearance
again, apparently pulled back by the little hand and arm; of
another and longer pause, of a whispered conference outside, and
then the reappearance of Miss Tish majestically, reinforced and
supported by the grim presence of her partner, Miss Prinkwell.

"This--er--unexpected visit," began Miss Tish--"not previously
arranged by letter"--

"Which is an invariable rule of our establishment," supplemented
Miss Prinkwell--

"And the fact that you are personally unknown to us," continued
Miss Tish--

"An ignorance shared by the child, who exhibits a distaste for an
interview," interpolated Miss Prinkwell, in a kind of antiphonal
response--

"For which we have had no time to prepare her," continued Miss
Tish--

"Compels us most reluctantly"--  But here she stopped short.
Colonel Starbottle, who had risen with a deep bow at their entrance
and remained standing, here walked quietly towards them.  His
usually high color had faded except from his eyes, but his exalted
manner was still more pronounced, with a dreadful deliberation
superadded.

"I believe--er--I had--the honah--to send up my kyard!"  (In his
supreme moments the colonel's Southern accent was always in
evidence.)  "I may--er--be mistaken--but--er--that is my
impression."  The colonel paused, and placed his right hand
statuesquely on his heart.

The two women trembled--Miss Tish fancied the very shirt frill of
the colonel was majestically erecting itself--as they stammered in
one voice,--

"Ye-e-es!"

"That kyard contained my full name--with a request to see my ward--
Miss Stannard," continued the colonel slowly.  "I believe that is
the fact."

"Certainly! certainly!" gasped the women feebly.

"Then may I--er--point out to you that I AM--er--WAITING?"

Although nothing could exceed the laborious simplicity and husky
sweetness of the colonel's utterance, it appeared to demoralize
utterly his two hearers--Miss Prinkwell seemed to fade into the
pattern of the wall paper, Miss Tish to droop submissively forward
like a pink wax candle in the rays of the burning sun.

"We will bring her instantly.  A thousand pardons, sir," they
uttered in the same breath, backing towards the door.

But here the unexpected intervened.  Unnoticed by the three during
the colloquy, a little figure in a black dress had peeped through
the door, and then glided into the room.  It was a girl of about
ten, who, in all candor, could scarcely be called pretty, although
the awkward change of adolescence had not destroyed the delicate
proportions of her hands and feet nor the beauty of her brown eyes.
These were, just then, round and wondering, and fixed alternately
on the colonel and the two women.  But like many other round and
wondering eyes, they had taken in the full meaning of the
situation, with a quickness the adult mind is not apt to give them
credit for.  They saw the complete and utter subjugation of the two
supreme autocrats of the school, and, I grieve to say, they were
filled with a secret and "fearful joy."  But the casual spectator
saw none of this; the round and wondering eyes, still rimmed with
recent and recalcitrant tears, only looked big and innocently
shining.

The relief of the two women was sudden and unaffected.

"Oh, here you are, dearest, at last!" said Miss Tish eagerly.
"This is your guardian, Colonel Starbottle.  Come to him, dear!"

She took the hand of the child, who hung back with an odd mingling
of shamefacedness and resentment of the interference, when the
voice of Colonel Starbottle, in the same deadly calm deliberation,
said,--

"I--er--will speak with her--alone."

The round eyes again saw the complete collapse of authority, as the
two women shrank back from the voice, and said hurriedly,--

"Certainly, Colonel Starbottle; perhaps it would be better," and
ingloriously quitted the room.

But the colonel's triumph left him helpless.  He was alone with a
simple child, an unprecedented, unheard-of situation, which left
him embarrassed and--speechless.  Even his vanity was conscious
that his oratorical periods, his methods, his very attitude, were
powerless here.  The perspiration stood out on his forehead; he
looked at her vaguely, and essayed a feeble smile.  The child saw
his embarrassment, even as she had seen and understood his triumph,
and the small woman within her exulted.  She put her little hands
on her waist, and with the fingers turned downwards and outwards
pressed them down her hips to her bended knees until they had
forced her skirts into an egregious fullness before and behind, as
if she were making a curtsy, and then jumped up and laughed.

"You did it!  Hooray!"

"Did what?" said the colonel, pleased yet mystified.

"Frightened 'em!--the two old cats!  Frightened 'em outen their
slippers!  Oh, jiminy!  Never, never, NEVER before was they so
skeert!  Never since school kept did they have to crawl like that!
They was skeert enough FIRST when you come, but just now!--  Lordy!
They wasn't a-goin' to let you see me--but they had to! had to! HAD
TO!" and she emphasized each repetition with a skip.

"I believe--er," said the colonel blandly, "that I--er--intimated
with some firmness"--

"That's it--just it!" interrupted the child delightedly.  "You--
you--overdid 'em"

"What?"

"OVERDID 'EM!  Don't you know?  They're always so high and mighty!
Kinder 'Don't tech me.  My mother's an angel; my father's a king'--
all that sort of thing.  They did THIS"--she drew herself up in a
presumable imitation of the two women's majestic entrance--"and
then," she continued, "you--YOU jest did this"--here she lifted her
chin, and puffing out her small chest, strode towards the colonel
in evident simulation of his grandest manner.

A short, deep chuckle escaped him--although the next moment his
face became serious again.  But Pansy in the mean time had taken
possession of his coat sleeve and was rubbing her cheek against it
like a young colt.  At which the colonel succumbed feebly and sat
down on the sofa, the child standing beside him, leaning over and
transferring her little hands to the lapels of his frock coat,
which she essayed to button over his chest as she looked into his
murky eyes.

"The other girls said," she began, tugging at the button, "that you
was a 'cirkiss'"--another tug--"'a nigger minstrel'"--and a third
tug--"'a agent with samples'--but that showed all they knew!"

"Ah," said the colonel with exaggerated blandness, "and--er--what
did YOU--er--say?"

The child smiled.  "I said you was a Stuffed Donkey--but that was
BEFORE I knew you.  I was a little skeert too; but NOW"--she
succeeded in buttoning the coat and making the colonel quite
apoplectic,--"NOW I ain't frightened one bit--no, not one TINY bit!
But," she added, after a pause, unbuttoning the coat again and
smoothing down the lapels between her fingers, "you're to keep on
frightening the old cats--mind!  Never mind about the GIRLS.  I'll
tell them."

The colonel would have given worlds to he able to struggle up into
an upright position with suitable oral expression.  Not that his
vanity was at all wounded by these irresponsible epithets, which
only excited an amused wonder, but he was conscious of an
embarrassed pleasure in the child's caressing familiarity, and her
perfect trustfulness in him touched his extravagant chivalry.  He
ought to protect her, and yet correct her.  In the consciousness of
these duties he laid his white hand upon her head.  Alas! she
lifted her arm and instantly transferred his hand and part of his
arm around her neck and shoulders, and comfortably snuggled against
him.  The colonel gasped.  Nevertheless, something must be said,
and he began, albeit somewhat crippled in delivery:--

"The--er--use of elegant and precise language by--er--young ladies
cannot be too sedulously cultivated"--

But here the child laughed, and snuggling still closer, gurgled:
"That's right!  Give it to her when she comes down!  That's the
style!" and the colonel stopped, discomfited.  Nevertheless, there
was a certain wholesome glow in the contact of this nestling little
figure.

Presently he resumed tentativery: "I have--er--brought you a few
dainties."

"Yes," said Pansy, "I see; but they're from the wrong shop, you
dear old silly!  They're from Tomkins's, and we girls just
abominate his things.  You oughter have gone to Emmons's.  Never
mind.  I'll show you when we go out.  We're going out, aren't we?"
she said suddenly, lifting her head anxiously.  "You know it's
allowed, and it's RIGHTS 'to parents and guardians'!"

"Certainly, certainly," said the colonel.  He knew he would feel a
little less constrained in the open air.

"Then we'll go now," said Pansy, jumping up.  "I'll just run
upstairs and put on my things.  I'll say it's 'orders' from you.
And I'll wear my new frock--it's longer."  (The colonel was
slightly relieved at this; it had seemed to him, as a guardian,
that there was perhaps an abnormal display of Pansy's black
stockings.)  "You wait; I won't be long."

She darted to the door, but reaching it, suddenly stopped, returned
to the sofa, where the colonel still sat, imprinted a swift kiss on
his mottled cheek, and fled, leaving him invested with a mingled
flavor of freshly ironed muslin, wintergreen lozenges, and recent
bread and butter.  He sat still for some time, staring out of the
window.  It was very quiet in the room; a bumblebee blundered from
the jasmine outside into the open window, and snored loudly at the
panes.  But the colonel heeded it not, and remained abstracted and
silent until the door opened to Miss Tish and Pansy--in her best
frock and sash, at which the colonel started and became erect again
and courtly.

"I am about to take my ward out," he said deliberately, "to--er--
taste the air in the Alameda, and--er--view the shops.  We may--er--
also--indulge in--er--slight suitable refreshment;--er--seed cake--
or--bread and butter--and--a dish of tea."

Miss Tish, now thoroughly subdued, was delighted to grant Miss
Stannard the half holiday permitted on such occasions.  She begged
the colonel to suit his own pleasure, and intrusted "the dear
child" to her guardian "with the greatest confidence."

The colonel made a low bow, and Pansy, demurely slipping her hand
into his, passed with him into the hall; there was a slight rustle
of vanishing skirts, and Pansy pressed his hand significantly.
When they were well outside, she said, in a lower voice:--

"Don't look up until we're under the gymnasium windows."  The
colonel, mystified but obedient, strutted on.  "Now!" said Pansy.
He looked up, beheld the windows aglow with bright young faces, and
bewildering with many handkerchiefs and clapping hands, stopped,
and then taking off his hat, acknowledged the salute with a
sweeping bow.  Pansy was delighted.  "I knew they'd be there; I'd
already fixed 'em.  They're just dyin' to know you."

The colonel felt a certain glow of pleasure, "I--er--had already
intimated a--er--willingness to--er--inspect the classes; but--I--
er--understood that the rules"--

"They're sick old rules," interrupted the child.  "Tish and
Prinkwell are the rules!  You say just right out that you WILL!
Just overdo her!"

The colonel had a vague sense that he ought to correct both the
spirit and language of this insurrectionary speech, but Pansy
pulled him along, and then swept him quite away with a torrent of
prattle of the school, of her friends, of the teachers, of her life
and its infinitely small miseries and pleasures.  Pansy was
voluble; never before had the colonel found himself relegated to
the place of a passive listener.  Nevertheless, he liked it, and as
they passed on, under the shade of the Alameda, with Pansy
alternately swinging from his hand and skipping beside him, there
was a vague smile of satisfaction on his face.  Passers-by turned
to look after the strangely assorted pair, or smiled, accepting
them, as the colonel fancied, as father and daughter.  An odd
feeling, half of pain and half of pleasure, gripped at the heart of
the empty and childless man.

And now, as they approached the more crowded thoroughfares, the
instinct of chivalrous protection was keen in his breast.  He
piloted her skillfully; he jauntily suited his own to her skipping
step; he lifted her with scrupulous politeness over obstacles;
strutting beside her on crowded pavements, he made way for her with
his swinging stick.  All the while, too, he had taken note of the
easy carriage of her head and shoulders, and most of all of her
small, slim feet and hands, that, to his fastidious taste,
betokened her race.  "Ged, sir," he muttered to himself, "she's
'Blue Grass' stock, all through."  To admiration succeeded pride,
with a slight touch of ownership.  When they went into a shop,
which, thanks to the ingenuous Pansy, they did pretty often, he
would introduce her with a wave of the hand and the remark, "I am--
er--seeking nothing to-day, but if you will kindly--er--serve my
WARD--Miss Stannard!"  Later, when they went into the
confectioner's for refreshment, and Pansy frankly declared for "ice
cream and cream cakes," instead of the "dish of tea and bread and
butter" he had ordered in pursuance of his promise, he heroically
took it himself--to satisfy his honor.  Indeed, I know of no more
sublime figure than Colonel Starbottle--rising superior to a long-
withstood craving for a "cocktail," morbidly conscious also of the
ridiculousness of his appearance to any of his old associates who
might see him--drinking luke-warm tea and pecking feebly at his
bread and butter at a small table, beside his little tyrant.

And this domination of the helpless continued on their way home.
Although Miss Pansy no longer talked of herself, she was equally
voluble in inquiry as to the colonel's habits, ways of life,
friends and acquaintances, happily restricting her interrogations,
in regard to those of her own sex, to "any LITTLE girls that he
knew."  Saved by this exonerating adjective, the colonel saw here a
chance to indulge his postponed monitorial duty, as well as his
vivid imagination.  He accordingly drew elaborate pictures of
impossible children he had known--creatures precise in language and
dress, abstinent of play and confectionery, devoted to lessons and
duties, and otherwise, in Pansy's own words, "loathsome to the last
degree!"  As "daughters of oldest and most cherished friends," they
might perhaps have excited Pansy's childish jealousy but for the
singular fact that they had all long ago been rewarded by marriage
with senators, judges, and generals--also associates of the
colonel.  This remoteness of presence somewhat marred their effect
as an example, and the colonel was mortified, though not entirely
displeased, to observe that their surprising virtues did not
destroy Pansy's voracity for sweets, the recklessness of her
skipping, nor the freedom of her language.  The colonel was
remorseful--but happy.

When they reached the seminary again, Pansy retired with her
various purchases, but reappeared after an interval with Miss Tish.

"I remember," hesitated that lady, trembling under the fascination
of the colonel's profound bow, "that you were anxious to look over
the school, and although it was not possible then, I shall be glad
to show you now through one of the classrooms."

The colonel, glancing at Pansy, was momentarily shocked by a
distortion of one side of her face, which seemed, however, to end
in a wink of her innocent brown eyes, but recovering himself,
gallantly expressed his gratitude.  The next moment he was
ascending the stairs, side by side with Miss Tish, and had a
distinct impression that he had been pinched in the calf by Pansy,
who was following close behind.

It was recess, but the large classroom was quite filled with
pupils, many of them older and prettier girls, inveigled there, as
it afterwards appeared, by Pansy, in some precocious presentiment
of her guardian's taste.  The colonel's apologetic yet gallant bow
on entering, and his erect, old-fashioned elegance, instantly took
their delighted attention.  Indeed, all would have gone well had
not Miss Prinkwell, with the view of impressing the colonel as well
as her pupils, majestically introduced him as "a distinguished
jurist deeply interested in the cause of education, as well as
guardian of their fellow pupil."  That opportunity was not thrown
away on Colonel Starbottle.

Stepping up to the desk of the astounded principal, he laid the
points of his fingers delicately upon it, and, with a preparatory
inclination of his head towards her, placed his other hand in his
breast, and with an invocatory glance at the ceiling, began.

It was the colonel's habit at such moments to state at first, with
great care and precision, the things that he "would not say," that
he "NEED not say," and apparently that it was absolutely
unnecessary even to allude to.  It was therefore, not strange that
the colonel informed them that he need not say that he counted his
present privilege among the highest that had been granted him; for
besides the privilege of beholding the galaxy of youthful talent
and excellence before him, besides the privilege of being
surrounded by a garland of the blossoms of the school in all their
freshness and beauty, it was well understood that he had the
greater privilege of--er--standing in loco parentis to one of these
blossoms.  It was not for him to allude to the high trust imposed
upon him by--er--deceased and cherished friend, and daughter of one
of the first families of Virginia, by the side of one who must feel
that she was the recipient of trusts equally supreme (here the
colonel paused, and statuesquely regarded the alarmed Miss
Prinkwell as if he were in doubt of it), but he would say that it
should be HIS devoted mission to champion the rights of the
orphaned and innocent whenever and wherever the occasion arose,
against all odds, and even in the face of misguided authority.
(Having left the impression that Miss Prinkwell contemplated an
invasion of those rights, the colonel became more lenient and
genial.)  He fully recognized her high and noble office; he saw in
her the worthy successor of those two famous instructresses of
Athens--those Greek ladies--er--whose names had escaped his memory,
but which--er--no doubt Miss Prinkwell would be glad to recall to
her pupils, with some account of their lives.  (Miss Prinkwell
colored; she had never heard of them before, and even the delight
of the class in the colonel's triumph was a little dampened by this
prospect of hearing more about them.)  But the colonel was only too
content with seeing before him these bright and beautiful faces,
destined, as he firmly believed, in after years to lend their charm
and effulgence to the highest places as the happy helpmeets of the
greatest in the land.  He was--er--leaving a--er--slight
testimonial of his regard in the form of some--er--innocent
refreshments in the hands of his ward, who would--er--act as--er--
his proxy in their distribution; and the colonel sat down to the
flutter of handkerchiefs, an applause only half restrained, and the
utter demoralization of Miss Prinkwell.

But the time of his departure had come by this time, and he was too
experienced a public man to risk the possibility of an anticlimax
by protracting his leave-taking.  And in an ominous shining of
Pansy's big eyes as the time approached he felt an embarrassment as
perplexing as the odd presentiment of loneliness that was creeping
over him.  But with an elaborate caution as to the dangers of self-
indulgence, and the private bestowal of a large gold piece slipped
into her hand, a promise to come again soon, and an exaction that
she would write to him often, the colonel received in return a wet
kiss, a great deal of wet cheek pressed against his own, and a
momentary tender clinging, like that which attends the pulling up
of some small flower, as he passed out into the porch.  In the
hall, on the landing above him, there was a close packing of brief
skirts against the railing, and a voice, apparently proceeding from
a pair of very small mottled legs protruding through the balusters,
said distinctly, "Free cheers for Ternel Tarbottle!"  And to this
benediction the colonel, hat in hand, passed out of this Eden into
the world again.


The colonel's next visit to the seminary did not produce the same
sensation as the first, although it was accompanied with equal
disturbance to the fair principals.  Had he been a less conceited
man he might have noticed that their antagonism, although held in
restraint by their wholesome fear of him, was in danger of becoming
more a conviction than a mere suspicion.  He was made aware of it
through Pansy's resentment towards them, and her revelation of a
certain inquisition that she had been subjected to in regard to his
occupation, habits, and acquaintances.  Naturally of these things
Pansy knew very little, but this had not prevented her from saying
a great deal.  There had been enough in her questioners' manner to
make her suspect that her guardian was being attacked, and to his
defense she brought the mendacity and imagination of a clever
child.  What she had really said did not transpire except through
her own comments to the colonel: "And of course you've killed
people--for you're a kernel, you know?"  (Here the colonel
admitted, as a point of fact, that he had served in the Mexican
war.)  "And you kin PREACH, for they heard you do it when you was
here before," she added confidently; "and of course you own
niggers--for there's 'Jim.'"  (The colonel here attempted to
explain that Jim, being in a free State, was now a free man, but
Pansy swept away such fine distinctions.)  "And you're rich, you
know, for you gave me that ten-dollar gold piece all for myself.
So I jest gave 'em as good as they sent--the old spies and
curiosity shops!"  The colonel, more pleased at Pansy's devotion
than concerned over the incident itself, accepted this
interpretation of his character as a munificent, militant priest
with a smiling protest.  But a later incident caused him to
remember it more seriously.

They had taken their usual stroll through the Alameda, and had made
the round of the shops, where the colonel had exhibited his usual
liberality of purchase and his exalted parental protection, and so
had passed on to their usual refreshment at the confectioner's, the
usual ices and cakes for Pansy, but this time--a concession also to
the tyrant Pansy--a glass of lemon soda and a biscuit for the
colonel.  He was coughing over his unaccustomed beverage, and
Pansy, her equanimity and volubility restored by sweets, was
chirruping at his side; the large saloon was filling up with
customers--mainly ladies and children, embarrassing to him as the
only man present, when suddenly Pansy's attention was diverted by
another arrival.  It was a good-looking young woman, overdressed,
striking, and self-conscious, who, with an air of one who was in
the habit of challenging attention, affectedly seated herself with
a male companion at an empty table, and began to pull off an
overtight glove.

"My!" said Pansy in admiring wonder, "ain't she fine?"

Colonel Starbottle looked up abstractedly, but at the first glance
his face flushed redly, deepened to a purple, and then became gray
and stern.  He had recognized in the garish fair one Miss Flora
Montague, the "Western Star of Terpsichore and Song," with whom he
had supped a few days before at Sacramento.  The lady was "on tour"
with her "Combination troupe."

The colonel leaned over and fixed his murky eyes on Pansy.  "The
room is filling up; the place is stifling; I must--er--request you
to--er--hurry."

There was a change in the colonel's manner, which the quick-witted
child heeded.  But she had not associated it with the entrance of
the strangers, and as she obediently gulped down her ice, she went
on innocently,--

"That fine lady's smilin' and lookin' over here.  Seems to know
you; so does the man with her."

"I--er--must request you," said the colonel, with husky precision,
"NOT to look that way, but finish your--er--repast."

His tone was so decided that the child's lips pouted, but before
she could speak a shadow leaned over their table.  It was the
companion of the "fine lady."

"Don't seem to see us, Colonel," he said with coarse familiarity,
laying his hand on the colonel's shoulder.  "Florry wants to know
what's up."

The colonel rose at the touch.  "Tell her, sir," he said huskily,
but with slow deliberation, "that I 'am up' and leaving this place
with my ward, Miss Stannard.  Good-morning."  He lifted Pansy with
infinite courtesy from her chair, took her hand, strolled to the
counter, threw down a gold piece, and passing the table of the
astonished fair one with an inflated breast, swept with Pansy out
of the shop.  In the street he paused, bidding the child go on; and
then, finding he was not followed by the woman's escort, rejoined
his little companion.

For a few moments they walked silently side by side.  Then Pansy's
curiosity, getting the better of her pout, demanded information.
She had applied a child's swift logic to the scene.  The colonel
was angry, and had punished the woman for something.  She drew
closer to his side, and looking up with her big eyes, said
confidentially.

"What had she been a-doing?"

The colonel was amazed, embarrassed, and speechless.  He was
totally unprepared for the question, and as unable to answer it.
His abrupt departure from the shop had been to evade the very truth
now demanded of him.  Only a supreme effort of mendacity was left
him.  He wiped his brow with his handkerchief, coughed, and began
deliberately:--

"The--er--lady in question is in the habit of using a scent called--
er--patchouli, a--er--perfume exceedingly distressing to me.  I
detected it instantly on her entrance.  I wished to avoid it--
without further contact.  It is--er--singular but accepted fact
that some people are--er--peculiarly affected by odors.  I had--er--
old cherished friend who always--er--fainted at the odor of
jasmine; and I was intimately acquainted with General Bludyer, who--
er--dropped like a shot on the presentation of a simple violet.
The--er--habit of using such perfumes excessively in public,"
continued the colonel, looking down upon the innocent Pansy, and
speaking in tones of deadly deliberation, "cannot be too greatly
condemned, as well as the habit of--er--frequenting places of
public resort in extravagant costumes, with--er--individuals who--
er--intrude upon domestic privacy.  I trust you will eschew such
perfumes, places, costumes, and--er--companions FOREVER and--ON ALL
OCCASIONS!"  The colonel had raised his voice to his forensic
emphasis, and Pansy, somewhat alarmed, assented.  Whether she
entirely accepted the colonel's explanation was another matter.

The incident, although not again alluded to, seemed to shadow the
rest of their brief afternoon holiday, and the colonel's manner was
unmistakably graver.  But it seemed to the child more affectionate
and thoughtful.  He had previously at parting submitted to be
kissed by Pansy with stately tolerance and an immediate resumption
of his loftiest manner.  On this present leave-taking he laid his
straight closely shaven lips on the crown of her dark head, and as
her small arms clipped his neck, drew her closely to his side.  The
child uttered a slight cry; the colonel hurriedly put his hand to
his breast.  Her round cheek had come in contact with his
derringer--a small weapon of beauty and precision--which invariably
nestled also at his side, in his waistcoat pocket.  The child
laughed; so did the colonel, but his cheek flushed mightily.


It was four months later, and a turbulent night.  The early rains,
driven by a strong southwester against the upper windows of the
Magnolia Restaurant, sometimes blurred the radiance of the bright
lights within, and the roar of the encompassing pines at times
drowned the sounds of song and laughter that rose from a private
supper room.  Even the clattering arrival and departure of the
Sacramento stage coach, which disturbed the depths below, did not
affect these upper revelers.  For Colonel Starbottle, Jack Hamlin,
Judge Beeswinger, and Jo Wynyard, assisted by Mesdames Montague,
Montmorency, Bellefield, and "Tinky" Clifford, of the "Western Star
Combination Troupe," then performing "on tour," were holding "high
jinks" in the supper room.  The colonel had been of late moody,
irritable, and easily upset.  In the words of a friend and admirer,
"he was kam only at twelve paces."

In a lull in the general tumult a Chinese waiter was seen at the
door vainly endeavoring to attract the attention of the colonel by
signs and interjections.  Mr. Hamlin's quick eye first caught sight
of the intruder.  "Come in, Confucius," said Jack pleasantly;
"you're a trifle late for a regular turn, but any little thing in
the way of knife swallowing"--

"Lill missee to see connle!  Waitee waitee, bottom side housee,"
interrupted the Chinaman, dividing his speech between Jack and the
colonel.

"What!  ANOTHER lady?  This is no place for me!" said Jack, rising
with finely simulated decorum.

"Ask her up," chirped "Tinky" Clifford.

But at this moment the door opened against the Chinaman, and a
small figure in a cloak and hat, dripping with raindrops, glided
swiftly in.  After a moment's half-frightened, half-admiring glance
at the party, she darted forward with a little cry and threw her
wet arms round the colonel.  The rest of the company, arrested in
their festivity, gasped with vague and smiling wonder; the colonel
became purple and gasped.  But only for a moment.  The next instant
he was on his legs, holding the child with one hand, while with the
other he described a stately sweep of the table.

"My ward--Miss Pansy Stannard," he said with husky brevity.  But
drawing the child aside, he whispered quickly, "What has happened?
Why are you here?"

But Pansy, child-like, already diverted by the lights, the table
piled with delicacies, the gayly dressed women, and the air of
festivity, answered half abstractedly, and as much, perhaps, to the
curious eyes about her as to the colonel's voice,--

"I runned away!"

"Hush!" whispered the colonel, aghast.

But Pansy, responding again to the company rather than her
guardian's counsel, and as if appealing to them, went on half
poutingly: "Yes!  I runned away because they teased me!  Because
they didn't like you and said horrid things.  Because they told
awful, dreadful lies!  Because they said I wasn't no orphan!--that
my name wasn't Stannard, and that you'd made it all up.  Because
they said I was a liar--and YOU WAS MY FATHER!"

A sudden outbreak of laughter here shook the room, and even drowned
the storm outside; again and again it rose, as the colonel
staggered gaspingly to his feet.  For an instant it seemed as if
his struggles to restrain himself would end in an apoplectic fit.
Perhaps it was for this reason that Jack Hamlin checked his own
light laugh and became alert and grave.  Yet the next moment
Colonel Starbottle went as suddenly dead white, as leaning over the
table he said huskily, but deliberately, "I must request the ladies
present to withdraw."

"Don't mind US, Colonel," said Judge Beeswinger, "it's all in the
family here, you know!  And now I look at the girl--hang it all!
she DOES favor you, old man.  Ha! ha!"

"And as for the ladies," said Wynyard with a weak, vinous laugh,
"unless any of 'em is inclined to take the matter as PERSONAL--eh?"

"Stop!" roared the colonel.

There was no mistaking his voice nor his intent now.  The two men,
insulted and instantly sobered, were silent.  Mr. Hamlin rose,
playfully but determinedly tapped his fair companions on the
shoulders, saying, "Run away and play, girls," actually bundled
them, giggling and protesting, from the room, closed the door, and
stood with his back against it.  Then it was seen that the colonel,
still very white, was holding the child by the hand, as she shrank
back wonderingly and a little frightened against him.

"I thank YOU, Mr. Hamlin," said the colonel in a lower voice--yet
with a slight touch of his habitual stateliness in it, "for being
here to bear witness, in the presence of this child, to my
unqualified statement that a more foul, vile, and iniquitous
falsehood never was uttered than that which has been poured into
her innocent ears!"  He paused, walked to the door, still holding
her hand, and, as Mr. Hamlin stepped aside, opened it, told her to
await him in the public parlor, closed the door again, and once
more faced the two men.  "And," he continued more deliberately,
"for the infamous jests that you, Judge Beeswinger, and you, Mr.
Wynyard, have dared to pass in her presence and mine, I shall
expect from each of you the fullest satisfaction--personal
satisfaction.  My seconds will wait on you in the morning!"

The two men stood up sobered--yet belligerent.

"As you like, sir," said Beeswinger, flashing.

"The sooner the better for me," added Wynyard curtly.

They passed the unruffled Jack Hamlin with a smile and a vaguely
significant air, as if calling him as a witness to the colonel's
madness, and strode out of the room.

As the door closed behind them, Mr. Hamlin lightly settled his
white waistcoat, and, with his hands on his hips, lounged towards
the colonel.  "And THEN?" he said quietly.

"Eh?" said the colonel.

"After you've shot one or both of these men, or one of 'em has
knocked you out, what's to become of that child?"

"If--I am--er--spared, sir," said the colonel huskily, "I shall
continue to defend her--against calumny and sneers"--

"In this style, eh?  After her life has been made a hell by her
association with a man of your reputation, you propose to whitewash
it by a quarrel with a couple of drunken scallawags like Beeswinger
and Wynyard, in the presence of three painted trollops and a d----d
scamp like myself!  Do you suppose this won't be blown all over
California before she can be sent back to school?  Do you suppose
those cackling hussies in the next room won't give the whole story
away to the next man who stands treat?"  (A fine contempt for the
sex in general was one of Mr. Hamlin's most subtle attractions for
them.)

"Nevertheless, sir," stammered the colonel, "the prompt punishment
of the man who has dared"--

"Punishment!" interrupted Hamlin, "who's to punish the man who has
dared most?  The one man who is responsible for the whole thing?
Who's to punish YOU?"

"Mr. Hamlin--sir!" gasped the colonel, falling back, as his hand
involuntarily rose to the level of his waistcoat pocket and his
derringer.

But Mr. Hamlin only put down the wine glass he had lifted from the
table and was delicately twirling between his fingers, and looked
fixedly at the colonel.

"Look here," he said slowly.  "When the boys said that you accepted
the guardianship of that child NOT on account of Dick Stannard, but
only as a bluff against the joke they'd set up at you, I didn't
believe them!  When these men and women to-night tumbled to that
story of the child being YOURS, I didn't believe that!  When it was
said by others that you were serious about making her your ward,
and giving her your property, because you doted on her like a
father, I didn't believe that."

"And--why not THAT?" said the colonel quickly, yet with an odd
tremor in his voice.

"Because," said Hamlin, becoming suddenly as grave as the colonel,
"I could not believe that any one who cared a picayune for the
child could undertake a trust that might bring her into contact
with a life and company as rotten as ours.  I could not believe
that even the most God-forsaken, conceited fool would, for the sake
of a little sentimental parade and splurge among people outside his
regular walk, allow the prospects of that child to be blasted.  I
couldn't believe it, even if he thought he was acting like a
father.  I didn't believe it--but I'm beginning to believe it now!"

There was little to choose between the attitudes and expressions of
the two set stern faces now regarding each other, silently, a foot
apart.  But the colonel was the first to speak:--

"Mr. Hamlin--sir!  You said a moment ago that I was--er--ahem--
responsible for this evening's affair--but you expressed a doubt as
to who could--er--punish me for it.  I accept the responsibility
you have indicated, sir, and offer you that chance.  But as this
matter between us must have precedence over--my engagements with
that canaille, I shall expect you with your seconds at sunrise on
Burnt Ridge.  Good-evening, sir."

With head erect the colonel left the room.  Mr. Hamlin slightly
shrugged his shoulders, turned to the door of the room whither he
had just banished the ladies, and in a few minutes his voice was
heard melodiously among the gayest.

For all that he managed to get them away early.  When he had
bundled them into a large carryall, and watched them drive away
through the storm, he returned for a minute to the waiting room for
his overcoat.  He was surprised to hear the sound of the child's
voice in the supper room, and the door being ajar, he could see
quite distinctly that she was seated at the table, with a plate
full of sweets before her, while Colonel Starbottle, with his back
to the door, was sitting opposite to her, his shoulders slightly
bowed as he eagerly watched her.  It seemed to Mr. Hamlin that it
was the close of an emotional interview, for Pansy's voice was
broken, partly by sobs, and partly, I grieve to say, by the hurried
swallowing of the delicacies before her.  Yet, above the beating of
the storm outside, he could hear her saying,--

"Yes!  I promise to be good--(sob)--and to go with Mrs. Pyecroft--
(sob)--and to try to like another guardian--(sob)--and not to cry
any more--(sob)--and--oh, please, DON'T YOU DO IT EITHER!"

But here Mr. Hamlin slipped out of the room and out of the house,
with a rather grave face.  An hour later, when the colonel drove up
to the Pyecrofts' door with Pansy, he found that Mr. Pyecroft was
slightly embarrassed, and a figure, which, in the darkness, seemed
to resemble Mr. Hamlin's, had just emerged from the door as he
entered.

Yet the sun was not up on Burnt Ridge earlier than Mr. Hamlin.  The
storm of the night before had blown itself out; a few shreds of
mist hung in the valleys from the Ridge, that lay above coldly
reddening.  Then a breeze swept over it, and out of the dissipating
mist fringe Mr. Hamlin saw two black figures, closely buttoned up
like himself, emerge, which he recognized as Beeswinger and
Wynyard, followed by their seconds.  But the colonel came not,
Hamlin joined the others in an animated confidential conversation,
attended by a watchful outlook for the missing adversary.  Five,
ten minutes elapsed, and yet the usually prompt colonel was not
there.  Mr. Hamlin looked grave; Wynyard and Beeswinger exchanged
interrogatory glances.  Then a buggy was seen driving furiously up
the grade, and from it leaped Colonel Starbottle, accompanied by
Dick MacKinstry, his second, carrying his pistol case.  And then--
strangely enough for men who were waiting the coming of an
antagonist who was a dead shot--they drew a breath of relief!

MacKinstry slightly preceded his principal, and the others could
see that Starbottle, though erect, was walking slowly.  They were
surprised also to observe that he was haggard and hollow eyed, and
seemed, in the few hours that had elapsed since they last saw him,
to have aged ten years.  MacKinstry, a tall Kentuckian, saluted,
and was the first one to speak.

"Colonel Starbottle," he said formally, "desires to express his
regrets at this delay, which was unavoidable, as he was obliged to
attend his ward, who was leaving by the down coach for Sacramento
with Mrs. Pyecroft, this morning."  Hamlin, Wynyard, and Beeswinger
exchanged glances.  "Colonel Starbottle," continued MacKinstry,
turning to his principal, "desires to say a word to Mr. Hamlin."

As Mr. Hamlin would have advanced from the group, Colonel
Starbottle lifted his hand deprecatingly.  "What I have to say must
be said before these gentlemen," he began slowly.  "Mr. Hamlin--
sir! when I solicited the honor of this meeting I was under a
grievous misapprehension of the intent and purpose of your comments
on my action last evening.  I think," he added, slightly inflating
his buttoned-up figure, "that the reputation I have always borne
in--er--meetings of this kind will prevent any--er--misunderstanding
of my present action--which is to--er--ask permission to withdraw
my challenge--and to humbly beg your pardon."

The astonishment produced by this unexpected apology, and Mr.
Hamlin's prompt grasp of the colonel's hand, had scarcely passed
before the colonel drew himself up again, and turning to his second
said, "And now I am at the service of Judge Beeswinger and Mr.
Wynyard--whichever may elect to honor me first."

But the two men thus addressed looked for a moment strangely
foolish and embarrassed.  Yet the awkwardness was at last broken by
Judge Beeswinger frankly advancing towards the colonel with an
outstretched hand.  "We came here only to apologize, Colonel
Starbottle.  Without possessing your reputation and experience in
these matters, we still think we can claim, as you have, an equal
exemption from any misunderstanding when we say that we deeply
regret our foolish and discourteous conduct last evening."

A quick flush mounted to the colonel's haggard cheek as he drew
back with a suspicious glance at Hamlin.

"Mr. Hamlin!--gentlemen!--if this is--er--!"

But before he could finish his sentence Hamlin had clapped his hand
on the colonel's shoulder.  "You'll take my word, colonel, that
these gentlemen honestly intended to apologize, and came here for
that purpose;--and--SO DID I--only you anticipated me!"

In the laughter that followed Mr. Hamlin's frankness the colonel's
features relaxed grimly, and he shook the hands of his late
possible antagonists.

"And now," said Mr. Hamlin gayly, "you'll all adjourn to breakfast
with me--and try to make up for the supper we left unfinished last
night."

It was the only allusion to that interruption and its consequences,
for during the breakfast the colonel said nothing in regard to his
ward, and the other guests were discreetly reticent.  But Mr.
Hamlin was not satisfied.  He managed to get the colonel's servant,
Jim, aside, and extracted from the negro that Colonel Starbottle
had taken the child that night to Pyecroft's; that he had had a
long interview with Pyecroft; had written letters and 'walked de
flo'" all night; that he (Jim) was glad the child was gone!

"Why?" asked Hamlin, with affected carelessness.

"She was just makin' de kernel like any o' de low-down No'th'n
folks--keerful, and stingy, and mighty 'fraid o' de opinions o' de
biggety people.  And fo' what?  Jess to strut round wid dat child
like he was her 'spectable go to meeting fader!"

"And was the child sorry to leave him?" asked Hamlin.

"Wull--no, sah.  De mighty curos thing, Marse Jack, about the gals--
big and little--is dey just USE de kernel--dat's all!  Dey just
use de ole man like a pole to bring down deir persimmons--see?"

But Mr. Hamlin did not smile.

Later it was known that Colonel Starbottle had resigned his
guardianship with the consent of the court.  Whether he ever again
saw his late ward was not known, nor if he remained loyal to his
memories of her.

Readers of these chronicles may, however, remember that years
after, when the colonel married the widow of a certain Mr.
Tretherick, both in his courtship and his short married life he was
singularly indifferent to the childish graces of Carrie Tretherick,
her beloved little daughter, and that his obtuseness in that
respect provoked the widow's ire.



PROSPER'S "OLD MOTHER"


"It's all very well," said Joe Wynbrook, "for us to be sittin'
here, slingin' lies easy and comfortable, with the wind whistlin'
in the pines outside, and the rain just liftin' the ditches to fill
our sluice boxes with gold ez we're smokin' and waitin', but I tell
you what, boys--it ain't home!  No, sir, it ain't HOME!"

The speaker paused, glanced around the bright, comfortable barroom,
the shining array of glasses beyond, and the circle of complacent
faces fronting the stove, on which his own boots were cheerfully
steaming, lifted a glass of whiskey from the floor under his chair,
and in spite of his deprecating remark, took a long draught of the
spirits with every symptom of satisfaction.

"If ye mean," returned Cyrus Brewster, "that it ain't the old
farmhouse of our boyhood, 'way back in the woods, I'll agree with
you; but ye'll just remember that there wasn't any gold placers
lying round on the medder on that farm.  Not much!  Ef thar had
been, we wouldn't have left it."

"I don't mean that," said Joe Wynbrook, settling himself
comfortably back in his chair; "it's the family hearth I'm talkin'
of.  The soothin' influence, ye know--the tidiness of the women
folks."

"Ez to the soothin' influence," remarked the barkeeper, leaning his
elbows meditatively on his counter, 'afore I struck these diggin's
I had a grocery and bar, 'way back in Mizzoori, where there was
five old-fashioned farms jined.  Blame my skin ef the men folks
weren't a darned sight oftener over in my grocery, sittin' on
barrils and histin' in their reg'lar corn-juice, than ever any of
you be here--with all these modern improvements."

"Ye don't catch on, any of you," returned Wynbrook impatiently.
"Ef it was a mere matter o' buildin' houses and becomin' family
men, I reckon that this yer camp is about prosperous enough to do
it, and able to get gals enough to marry us, but that would be only
borryin' trouble and lettin' loose a lot of jabberin' women to
gossip agin' each other and spile all our friendships.  No,
gentlemen!  What we want here--each of us--is a good old mother!
Nothin' new-fangled or fancy, but the reg'lar old-fashioned mother
we was used to when we was boys!"

The speaker struck a well-worn chord--rather the worse for wear,
and one that had jangled falsely ere now, but which still produced
its effect.  The men were silent.  Thus encouraged, Wynbrook
proceeded:--

"Think o' comin' home from the gulch a night like this and findin'
yer old mother a-waitin' ye!  No fumblin' around for the matches
ye'd left in the gulch; no high old cussin' because the wood was
wet or you forgot to bring it in; no bustlin' around for your dry
things and findin' you forgot to dry 'em that mornin'--but
everything waitin' for ye and ready.  And then, mebbe, she brings
ye in some doughnuts she's just cooked for ye--cooked ez only SHE
kin cook 'em!  Take Prossy Riggs--alongside of me here--for
instance!  HE'S made the biggest strike yet, and is puttin' up a
high-toned house on the hill.  Well! he'll hev it finished off and
furnished slap-up style, you bet! with a Chinese cook, and a Biddy,
and a Mexican vaquero to look after his horse--but he won't have no
mother to housekeep!  That is," he corrected himself perfunctorily,
turning to his companion, "you've never spoke o' your mother, so I
reckon you're about fixed up like us."

The young man thus addressed flushed slightly, and then nodded his
head with a sheepish smile.  He had, however, listened to the
conversation with an interest almost childish, and a reverent
admiration of his comrades--qualities which, combined with an
intellect not particularly brilliant, made him alternately the butt
and the favorite of the camp.  Indeed, he was supposed to possess
that proportion of stupidity and inexperience which, in mining
superstition, gives "luck" to its possessor.  And this had been
singularly proven in the fact that he had made the biggest "strike"
of the season.

Joe Wynbrook's sentimentalism, albeit only argumentative and half
serious, had unwittingly touched a chord of simple history, and the
flush which had risen to his cheek was not entirely bashfulness.
The home and relationship of which they spoke so glibly, HE had
never known; he was a foundling!  As he lay awake that night he
remembered the charitable institution which had protected his
infancy, the master to whom he had later been apprenticed; that was
all he knew of his childhood.  In his simple way he had been
greatly impressed by the strange value placed by his companions
upon the family influence, and he had received their extravagance
with perfect credulity.  In his absolute ignorance and his lack of
humor he had detected no false quality in their sentiment.  And a
vague sense of his responsibility, as one who had been the
luckiest, and who was building the first "house" in the camp,
troubled him.  He lay staringly wide awake, hearing the mountain
wind, and feeling warm puffs of it on his face through the crevices
of the log cabin, as he thought of the new house on the hill that
was to be lathed and plastered and clapboarded, and yet void and
vacant of that mysterious "mother"!  And then, out of the solitude
and darkness, a tremendous idea struck him that made him sit up in
his bunk!

A day or two later "Prossy" Riggs stood on a sand-blown, wind-swept
suburb of San Francisco, before a large building whom forbidding
exterior proclaimed that it was an institution of formal charity.
It was, in fact, a refuge for the various waifs and strays of ill-
advised or hopeless immigration.  As Prosper paused before the
door, certain told recollections of a similar refuge were creeping
over him, and, oddly enough, he felt as embarrassed as if he had
been seeking relief for himself.  The perspiration stood out on his
forehead as he entered the room of the manager.

It chanced, however, that this official, besides being a man of
shrewd experience of human weakness, was also kindly hearted, and
having, after his first official scrutiny of his visitor and his
resplendent watch chain, assured himself that he was not seeking
personal relief, courteously assisted him in his stammering
request.

"If I understand you, you want some one to act as your housekeeper?"

"That's it!  Somebody to kinder look arter things--and me--
ginrally," returned Prosper, greatly relieved.

"Of what age?" continued the manager, with a cautious glance at the
robust youth and good-looking, simple face of Prosper.

"I ain't nowise partickler--ez long ez she's old--ye know.  Ye
follow me?  Old--ez of--betwixt you an' me, she might be my own
mother."

The manager smiled inwardly.  A certain degree of discretion was
noticeable in this rustic youth!  "You are quite right," he
answered gravely, "as yours is a mining camp where there are no
other women, Still, you don't want any one TOO old or decrepit.
There is an elderly maiden lady"--  But a change was transparently
visible on Prosper's simple face, and the manager paused.

"She oughter be kinder married, you know--ter be like a mother,"
stammered Prosper.

"Oh, ay.  I see," returned the manager, again illuminated by
Prosper's unexpected wisdom.

He mused for a moment.  "There is," he began tentatively, "a lady
in reduced circumstances--not an inmate of this house, but who has
received some relief from us.  She was the wife of a whaling
captain who died some years ago, and broke up her home.  She was
not brought up to work, and this, with her delicate health, has
prevented her from seeking active employment.  As you don't seem to
require that of her, but rather want an overseer, and as your
purpose, I gather, is somewhat philanthropical, you might induce
her to accept a 'home' with you.  Having seen better days, she is
rather particular," he added, with a shrewd smile.

Simple Prosper's face was radiant.  "She'll have a Chinaman and a
Biddy to help her," he said quickly.  Then recollecting the tastes
of his comrades, he added, half apologetically, half cautiously,
"Ef she could, now and then, throw herself into a lemming pie or a
pot of doughnuts, jest in a motherly kind o' way, it would please
the boys."

"Perhaps you can arrange that, too," returned the manager, "but I
shall have to broach the whole subject to her, and you had better
call again to-morrow, when I will give you her answer."

"Ye kin say," said Prosper, lightly fingering his massive gold
chain and somewhat vaguely recalling the language of advertisement,
"that she kin have the comforts of a home and no questions asked,
and fifty dollars a month."

Rejoiced at the easy progress of his plan, and half inclined to
believe himself a miracle of cautious diplomacy, Prosper, two days
later, accompanied the manager to the cottage on Telegraph Hill
where the relict of the late Captain Pottinger lamented the loss of
her spouse, in full view of the sea he had so often tempted.  On
their way thither the manager imparted to Prosper how, according to
hearsay, that lamented seaman had carried into the domestic circle
those severe habits of discipline which had earned for him the
prefix of "Bully" and "Belaying-pin" Pottinger during his strenuous
life.  "They say that though she is very quiet and resigned, she
once or twice stood up to the captain; but that's not a bad quality
to have, in a rough community, as I presume yours is, and would
insure her respect."

Ushered at last into a small tank-like sitting room, whose chief
decorations consisted of large abelone shells, dried marine algae,
coral, and a swordfish's broken weapon, Prosper's disturbed fancy
discovered the widow, sitting, apparently, as if among her
husband's remains at the bottom of the sea.  She had a dejected yet
somewhat ruddy face; her hair was streaked with white, but primly
disposed over her ears like lappets, and her garb was cleanly but
sombre.  There was no doubt but that she was a lugubrious figure,
even to Prosper's optimistic and inexperienced mind.  He could not
imagine her as beaming on his hearth!  It was with some alarm that,
after the introduction had been completed, he beheld the manager
take his leave.  As the door closed, the bashful Prosper felt the
murky eyes of the widow fixed upon him.  A gentle cough,
accompanied with the resigned laying of a black mittened hand upon
her chest, suggested a genteel prelude to conversation, with
possible pulmonary complications.

"I am induced to accept your proposal temporarily," she said, in a
voice of querulous precision, "on account of pressing pecuniary
circumstances which would not have happened had my claim against
the shipowners for my dear husband's loss been properly raised.  I
hope you fully understand that I am unfitted both by ill health and
early education from doing any menial or manual work in your
household.  I shall simply oversee and direct.  I shall expect that
the stipend you offer shall be paid monthly in advance.  And as my
medical man prescribes a certain amount of stimulation for my
system, I shall expect to be furnished with such viands--or even"--
she coughed slightly--"such beverages as may be necessary.  I am
far from strong--yet my wants are few."

"Ez far ez I am ketchin' on and followin' ye, ma'am," returned
Prosper timidly, "ye'll hev everything ye want--jest like it was
yer own home.  In fact," he went on, suddenly growing desperate as
the difficulties of adjusting this unexpectedly fastidious and
superior woman to his plan seemed to increase, "ye'll jest consider
me ez yer"--  But here her murky eyes were fixed on his and he
faltered.  Yet he had gone too far to retreat.  "Ye see," he
stammered, with a hysterical grimness that was intended to be
playful--"ye see, this is jest a little secret betwixt and between
you and me; there'll be only you and me in the house, and it would
kinder seem to the boys more homelike--ef--ef--you and me had--you
bein' a widder, you know--a kind of--of"--here his smile became
ghastly--"close relationship."

The widow of Captain Pottinger here sat up so suddenly that she
seemed to slip through her sombre and precise enwrappings with an
exposure of the real Mrs. Pottinger that was almost improper.  Her
high color deepened; the pupils of her black eyes contracted in the
light the innocent Prosper had poured into them.  Leaning forward,
with her fingers clasped on her bosom, she said: "Did you tell this
to the manager?"

"Of course not," said Prosper; "ye see, it's only a matter 'twixt
you and me."

Mrs. Pottinger looked at Prosper, drew a deep breath, and then
gazed at the abelone shells for moral support.  A smile, half
querulous, half superior, crossed her face as she said: "This is
very abrupt and unusual.  There is, of course, a disparity in our
ages!  You have never seen me before--at least to my knowledge--
although you may have heard of me.  The Spraggs of Marblehead are
well known--perhaps better than the Pottingers.  And yet, Mr.
Griggs"--

"Riggs," suggested Prosper hurriedly.

"Riggs.  Excuse me!  I was thinking of young Lieutenant Griggs of
the Navy, whom I knew in the days now past.  Mr. Riggs, I should
say.  Then you want me to"--

"To be my old mother, ma'am," said Prosper tremblingly.  "That is,
to pretend and look ez ef you was!  You see, I haven't any, but I
thought it would he nice for the boys, and make it more like home
in my new house, ef I allowed that my old mother would be comin' to
live with me.  They don't know I never had a mother to speak of.
They'll never find it out!  Say ye will, Mrs. Pottinger!  Do!"

And here the unexpected occurred.  Against all conventional rules
and all accepted traditions of fiction, I am obliged to state that
Mrs. Pottinger did NOT rise up and order the trembling Prosper to
leave the house!  She only gripped the arm of her chair a little
tighter, leaned forward, and disdaining her usual precision and
refinement of speech, said quietly: "It's a bargain.  If THAT'S
what you're wanting, my son, you can count upon me as becoming your
old mother, Cecilia Jane Pottinger Riggs, every time!"

A few days later the sentimentalist Joe Wynbrook walked into the
Wild Cat saloon, where his comrades were drinking, and laid a
letter down on the bar with every expression of astonishment and
disgust.  "Look," he said, "if that don't beat all!  Ye wouldn't
believe it, but here's Prossy Riggs writin' that he came across his
mother--his MOTHER, gentlemen--in 'Frisco; she hevin', unbeknownst
to him, joined a party visiting the coast!  And what does this
blamed fool do?  Why, he's goin' to bring her--that old woman--
HERE!  Here--gentlemen--to take charge of that new house--and spoil
our fun.  And the God-forsaken idiot thinks that we'll LIKE it!"

It was one of those rare mornings in the rainy season when there
was a suspicion of spring in the air, and after a night of rainfall
the sun broke through fleecy clouds with little islets of blue sky--
when Prosper Riggs and his mother drove into Wild Cat camp.  An
expression of cheerfulness was on the faces of his old comrades.
For it had been recognized that, after all, "Prossy" had a perfect
right to bring his old mother there--his well-known youth and
inexperience preventing this baleful performance from being
established as a precedent.  For these reasons hats were cheerfully
doffed, and some jackets put on, as the buggy swept up the hill to
the pretty new cottage, with its green blinds and white veranda, on
the crest.

Yet I am afraid that Prosper was not perfectly happy, even in the
triumphant consummation of his plans.  Mrs. Pottinger's sudden and
business-like acquiescence in it, and her singular lapse from her
genteel precision, were gratifying but startling to his
ingenuousness.  And although from the moment she accepted the
situation she was fertile in resources and full of precaution
against any possibility of detection, he saw, with some uneasiness,
that its control had passed out of his hands.

"You say your comrades know nothing of your family history?" she
had said to him on the journey thither.  "What are you going to
tell them?"

"Nothin', 'cept your bein' my old mother," said Prosper hopelessly.

"That's not enough, my son."  (Another embarrassment to Prosper was
her easy grasp of the maternal epithets.)  "Now listen!  You were
born just six months after your father, Captain Riggs (formerly
Pottinger) sailed on his first voyage.  You remember very little of
him, of course, as he was away so much."

"Hadn't I better know suthin about his looks?" said Prosper
submissively.

"A tall dark man, that's enough," responded Mrs. Pottinger sharply.

"Hadn't he better favor me?" said Prosper, with his small cunning
recognizing the fact that he himself was a decided blond.

"Ain't at all necessary," said the widow firmly.  "You were always
wild and ungovernable," she continued," and ran away from school to
join some Western emigration.  That accounts for the difference of
our styles."

"But," continued Prosper, "I oughter remember suthin about our old
times--runnin' arrants for you, and bringin' in the wood o' frosty
mornin's, and you givin' me hot doughnuts," suggested Prosper
dubiously.

"Nothing of the sort," said Mrs. Pottinger promptly.  "We lived in
the city, with plenty of servants.  Just remember, Prosper dear,
your mother wasn't THAT low-down country style."

Glad to be relieved from further invention, Prosper was,
nevertheless, somewhat concerned at this shattering of the ideal
mother in the very camp that had sung her praises.  But he could
only trust to her recognizing the situation with her usual
sagacity, of which he stood in respectful awe.

Joe Wynbrook and Cyrus Brewster had, as older members of the camp,
purposely lingered near the new house to offer any assistance to
"Prossy and his mother," and had received a brief and passing
introduction to the latter.  So deep and unexpected was the
impression she made upon them that these two oracles of the camp
retired down the hill in awkward silence for some time, neither
daring to risk his reputation by comment or oversurprise.

But when they approached the curious crowd below awaiting them,
Cyrus Brewster ventured to say, "Struck me ez ef that old gal was
rather high-toned for Prossy's mother."

Joe Wynbrook instantly seized the fatal admission to show the
advantage of superior insight:--

"Struck YOU!  Why, it was no more than I expected all along!  What
did we know of Prossy?  Nothin'!  What did he ever tell us'?
Nothin'!  And why'?  'Cos it was his secret.  Lord! a blind mule
could see that.  All this foolishness and simplicity o' his come o'
his bein' cuddled and pampered as a baby.  Then, like ez not, he
was either kidnapped or led away by some feller--and nearly broke
his mother's heart.  I'll bet my bottom dollar he has been
advertised for afore this--only we didn't see the paper.  Like as
not they had agents out seekin' him, and he jest ran into their
hands in 'Frisco!  I had a kind o' presentiment o' this when he
left, though I never let on anything."

"I reckon, too, that she's kinder afraid he'll bolt agin.  Did ye
notice how she kept watchin' him all the time, and how she did the
bossin' o' everything?  And there's ONE thing sure!  He's changed--
yes!  He don't look as keerless and free and foolish ez he uster."

Here there was an unmistakable chorus of assent from the crowd that
had joined them.  Every one--even those who had not been introduced
to the mother--had noticed his strange restraint and reticence.  In
the impulsive logic of the camp, conduct such as this, in the face
of that superior woman--his mother--could only imply that her
presence was distasteful to him; that he was either ashamed of
their noticing his inferiority to her, or ashamed of THEM!  Wild
and hasty as was their deduction, it was, nevertheless, voiced by
Joe Wynbrook in a tone of impartial and even reluctant conviction.
"Well, gentlemen, some of ye may remember that when I heard that
Prossy was bringin' his mother here I kicked--kicked because it
only stood to reason that, being HIS mother, she'd be that foolish
she'd upset the camp.  There wasn't room enough for two such
chuckle-heads--and one of 'em being a woman, she couldn't be shut
up or sat upon ez we did to HIM.  But now, gentlemen, ez we see she
ain't that kind, but high-toned and level-headed, and that she's
got the grip on Prossy--whether he likes it or not--we ain't goin'
to let him go back on her!  No, sir! we ain't goin' to let him
break her heart the second time!  He may think we ain't good enough
for her, but ez long ez she's civil to us, we'll stand by her."

In this conscientious way were the shackles of that unhallowed
relationship slowly riveted on the unfortunate Prossy.  In his
intercourse with his comrades during the next two or three days
their attitude was shown in frequent and ostentatious praise of his
mother, and suggestive advice, such as: "I wouldn't stop at the
saloon, Prossy; your old mother is wantin' ye;" or, "Chuck that
'ere tarpolin over your shoulders, Pross, and don't take your wet
duds into the house that yer old mother's bin makin' tidy."  Oddly
enough, much of this advice was quite sincere, and represented--for
at least twenty minutes--the honest sentiments of the speaker.
Prosper was touched at what seemed a revival of the sentiment under
which he had acted, forgot his uneasiness, and became quite himself
again--a fact also noticed by his critics.  "Ye've only to keep him
up to his work and he'll be the widder's joy agin," said Cyrus
Brewster.  Certainly he was so far encouraged that he had a long
conversation with Mrs. Pottinger that night, with the result that
the next morning Joe Wynbrook, Cyrus Brewster, Hank Mann, and
Kentucky Ike were invited to spend the evening at the new house.
As the men, clean shirted and decently jacketed, filed into the
neat sitting room with its bright carpet, its cheerful fire, its
side table with a snowy cloth on which shining tea and coffee pots
were standing, their hearts thrilled with satisfaction.  In a large
stuffed rocking chair, Prossy's old mother, wrapped up in a shawl
and some mysterious ill health which seemed to forbid any exertion,
received them with genteel languor and an extended black mitten.

"I cannot," said Mrs. Pottinger, with sad pensiveness, "offer you
the hospitality of my own home, gentlemen--you remember, Prosper,
dear, the large salon and our staff of servants at Lexington
Avenue!--but since my son has persuaded me to take charge of his
humble cot, I hope you will make all allowances for its
deficiencies--even," she added, casting a look of mild reproach on
the astonished Prosper--"even if HE cannot."

"I'm sure he oughter to be thankful to ye, ma'am," said Joe
Wynbrook quickly, "for makin' a break to come here to live, jest ez
we're thankful--speakin' for the rest of this camp--for yer
lightin' us up ez you're doin'!  I reckon I'm speakin' for the
crowd," he added, looking round him.

Murmurs of "That's so" and "You bet" passed through the company,
and one or two cast a half-indignant glance at Prosper.

"It's only natural," continued Mrs. Pottinger resignedly, "that
having lived so long alone, my dear Prosper may at first be a
little impatient of his old mother's control, and perhaps regret
his invitation."

"Oh no, ma'am," said the embarrassed Prosper.

But here the mercurial Wynbrook interposed on behalf of amity and
the camp's esprit de corps.  "Why, Lord! ma'am, he's jest bin
longin' for ye!  Times and times agin he's talked about ye; sayin'
how ef he could only get ye out of yer Fifth Avenue saloon to share
his humble lot with him here, he'd die happy!  YOU'VE heard him
talk, Brewster?"

"Frequent," replied the accommodating Brewster.

"Part of the simple refreshment I have to offer you," continued
Mrs. Pottinger, ignoring further comment, "is a viand the exact
quality of which I am not familiar with, but which my son informs
me is a great favorite with you.  It has been prepared by Li Sing,
under my direction.  Prosper, dear, see that the--er--doughnuts--
are brought in with the coffee."

Satisfaction beamed on the faces of the company, with perhaps the
sole exception of Prosper.  As a dish containing a number of brown
glistening spheres of baked dough was brought in, the men's eyes
shone in sympathetic appreciation.  Yet that epicurean light was
for a moment dulled as each man grasped a sphere, and then sat
motionless with it in his hand, as if it was a ball and they were
waiting the signal for playing.

"I am told," said Mrs. Pottinger, with a glance of Christian
tolerance at Prosper, "that lightness is considered desirable by
some--perhaps you gentlemen may find them heavy."

"Thar is two kinds," said the diplomatic Joe cheerfully, as he
began to nibble his, sideways, like a squirrel, "light and heavy;
some likes 'em one way, and some another."

They were hard and heavy, but the men, assisted by the steaming
coffee, finished them with heroic politeness.  "And now,
gentlemen," said Mrs. Pottinger, leaning back in her chair and
calmly surveying the party, "you have my permission to light your
pipes while you partake of some whiskey and water."

The guests looked up--gratified but astonished.  "Are ye sure,
ma'am, you don't mind it?" said Joe politely.

"Not at all," responded Mrs. Pottinger briefly.  "In fact, as my
physician advises the inhalation of tobacco smoke for my asthmatic
difficulties, I will join you."  After a moment's fumbling in a
beaded bag that hung from her waist, she produced a small black
clay pipe, filled it from the same receptacle, and lit it.

A thrill of surprise went round the company, and it was noticed
that Prosper seemed equally confounded.  Nevertheless, this
awkwardness was quickly overcome by the privilege and example given
them, and with, a glass of whiskey and water before them, the men
were speedily at their ease.  Nor did Mrs. Pottinger disdain to
mingle in their desultory talk.  Sitting there with her black pipe
in her mouth, but still precise and superior, she told a thrilling
whaling adventure of Prosper's father (drawn evidently from the
experience of the lamented Pottinger), which not only deeply
interested her hearers, but momentarily exalted Prosper in their
minds as the son of that hero.  "Now you speak o' that, ma'am,"
said the ingenuous Wynbrook, "there's a good deal o' Prossy in that
yarn o' his father's; same kind o' keerless grit!  You remember,
boys, that day the dam broke and he stood thar, the water up to his
neck, heavin' logs in the break till he stopped it."  Briefly, the
evening, in spite of its initial culinary failure and its
surprises, was a decided social success, and even the bewildered
and doubting Prosper went to bed relieved.  It was followed by many
and more informal gatherings at the house, and Mrs Pottinger so far
unbent--if that term could be used of one who never altered her
primness of manner--as to join in a game of poker--and even
permitted herself to win.

But by the end of six weeks another change in their feelings
towards Prosper seemed to creep insidiously over the camp.  He had
been received into his former fellowship, and even the presence of
his mother had become familiar, but he began to be an object of
secret commiseration.  They still frequented the house, but among
themselves afterwards they talked in whispers.  There was no doubt
to them that Prosper's old mother drank not only what her son had
provided, but what she surreptitiously obtained from the saloon.
There was the testimony of the barkeeper, himself concerned equally
with the camp in the integrity of the Riggs household.  And there
was an even darker suspicion.  But this must be given in Joe
Wynbrook's own words:--

"I didn't mind the old woman winnin' and winnin' reg'lar--for
poker's an unsartin game;--it ain't the money that we're losin'--
for it's all in the camp.  But when she's developing a habit o'
holdin' FOUR aces when somebody else hez TWO, who don't like to let
on because it's Prosper's old mother--it's gettin' rough!  And
dangerous too, gentlemen, if there happened to be an outsider in,
or one of the boys should kick.  Why, I saw Bilson grind his teeth--
he holdin' a sequence flush--ace high--when the dear old critter
laid down her reg'lar four aces and raked in the pile.  We had to
nearly kick his legs off under the table afore he'd understand--not
havin' an old mother himself."

"Some un will hev to tackle her without Prossy knowin' it.  For it
would jest break his heart, arter all he's gone through to get her
here!" said Brewster significantly.

"Onless he DID know it and it was that what made him so sorrowful
when they first came.  B'gosh! I never thought o' that," said
Wynbrook, with one of his characteristic sudden illuminations.

"Well, gentlemen, whether he did or not," said the barkeeper
stoutly, "he must never know that WE know it.  No, not if the old
gal cleans out my bar and takes the last scad in the camp."

And to this noble sentiment they responded as one man.

How far they would have been able to carry out that heroic resolve
was never known, for an event occurred which eclipsed its
importance.  One morning at breakfast Mrs. Pottinger fixed a
clouded eye upon Prosper.

"Prosper," she said, with fell deliberation "you ought to know you
have a sister."

"Yes, ma'am," returned Prosper, with that meekness with which he
usually received these family disclosures.

"A sister," continued the lady, "whom you haven't seen since you
were a child; a sister who for family reasons has been living with
other relatives; a girl of nineteen."

"Yea, ma'am," said Prosper humbly.  "But ef you wouldn't mind
writin' all that down on a bit o' paper--ye know my short memory!
I would get it by heart to-day in the gulch.  I'd have it all pat
enough by night, ef," he added, with a short sigh, "ye was
kalkilatin' to make any illusions to it when the boys are here."

"Your sister Augusta," continued Mrs. Pottinger, calmly ignoring
these details, "will be here to-morrow to make me a visit."

But here the worm Prosper not only turned, but stood up, nearly
upsetting the table.  "It can't be did, ma'am it MUSTN'T be did!"
he said wildly.  "It's enough for me to have played this camp with
YOU--but now to run in"--

"Can't be did!" repeated Mrs. Pottinger, rising in her turn and
fixing upon the unfortunate Prosper a pair of murky piratical eyes
that had once quelled the sea-roving Pottinger.  "Do you, my
adopted son, dare to tell me that I can't have my own flesh and
blood beneath my roof?"

"Yes!  I'd rather tell the whole story--I'd rather tell the boys I
fooled them--than go on again!" burst out the excited Prosper.

But Mrs. Pottinger only set her lips implacably together.  "Very
well, tell them then," she said rigidly; "tell them how you lured
me from my humble dependence in San Francisco with the prospect of
a home with you; tell them how you compelled me to deceive their
trusting hearts with your wicked falsehoods; tell them how you--a
foundling--borrowed me for your mother, my poor dead husband for
your father, and made me invent falsehood upon falsehood to tell
them while you sat still and listened!"

Prosper gasped.

"Tell them," she went on deliberately, "that when I wanted to bring
my helpless child to her only home--THEN, only then--you determined
to break your word to me, either because you meanly begrudged her
that share of your house, or to keep your misdeeds from her
knowledge!  Tell them that, Prossy, dear, and see what they'll
say!"

Prosper sank back in his chair aghast.  In his sudden instinct of
revolt he had forgotten the camp!  He knew, alas, too well what
they would say!  He knew that, added to their indignation at having
been duped, their chivalry and absurd sentiment would rise in arms
against the abandonment of two helpless women!

"P'r'aps ye're right, ma'am," he stammered.  "I was only thinkin',"
he added feebly, "how SHE'D take it."

"She'll take it as I wish her to take it," said Mrs. Pottinger
firmly.

"Supposin', ez the camp don't know her, and I ain't bin talkin' o'
havin' any SISTER, you ran her in here as my COUSIN?  See?  You
bein' her aunt?"

Mrs. Pottinger regarded him with compressed lips for some time.
Then she said, slowly and half meditatively: "Yes, it might be
done!  She will probably be willing to sacrifice her nearer
relationship to save herself from passing as your sister.  It would
be less galling to her pride, and she wouldn't have to treat you so
familiarly."

"Yes, ma'am," said Prosper, too relieved to notice the
uncomplimentary nature of the suggestion.  "And ye see I could
call her 'Miss Pottinger,' which would come easier to me."

In its high resolve to bear with the weaknesses of Prosper's
mother, the camp received the news of the advent of Prosper's
cousin solely with reference to its possible effect upon the aunt's
habits, and very little other curiosity.  Prosper's own reticence,
they felt, was probably due to the tender age at which he had
separated from his relations.  But when it was known that Prosper's
mother had driven to the house with a very pretty girl of eighteen,
there was a flutter of excitement in that impressionable community.
Prosper, with his usual shyness, had evaded an early meeting with
her, and was even loitering irresolutely on his way home from work,
when, as he approached the house, to his discomfiture the door
suddenly opened, the young lady appeared and advanced directly
towards him.

She was slim, graceful, and prettily dressed, and at any other
moment Prosper might have been impressed by her good looks.  But
her brows were knit, her dark eyes--in which there was an
unmistakable reminiscence of Mrs. Pottinger--were glittering, and
although she was apparently anticipating their meeting, it was
evidently with no cousinly interest.  When within a few feet of him
she stopped.  Prosper with a feeble smile offered his hand.  She
sprang back.

"Don't touch me!  Don't come a step nearer or I'll scream!"

Prosper, still with smiling inanity, stammered that he was only
"goin' to shake hands," and moved sideways towards the house.

"Stop!" she said, with a stamp of her slim foot.  "Stay where you
are!  We must have our talk out HERE.  I'm not going to waste words
with you in there, before HER."

Prosper stopped.

"What did you do this for?" she said angrily.  "How dared you?  How
could you?  Are you a man, or the fool she takes you for?"

"Wot did I do WOT for?" said Prosper sullenly.

"This!  Making my mother pretend you were her son!  Bringing her
here among these men to live a lie!"

"She was willin'," said Prosper gloomily.  "I told her what she had
to do, and she seemed to like it."

"But couldn't you see she was old and weak, and wasn't responsible
for her actions?  Or were you only thinking of yourself?"

This last taunt stung him.  He looked up.  He was not facing a
helpless, dependent old woman as he had been the day before, but a
handsome, clever girl, in every way his superior--and in the right!
In his vague sense of honor it seemed more creditable for him to
fight it out with HER.  He burst out: "I never thought of myself!
I never had an old mother; I never knew what it was to want one--
but the men did!  And as I couldn't get one for them, I got one for
myself--to share and share alike--I thought they'd be happier ef
there was one in the camp!"

There was the unmistakable accent of truth in his voice.  There
came a faint twitching of the young girl's lips and the dawning of
a smile.  But it only acted as a goad to the unfortunate Prosper.
"Ye kin laugh, Miss Pottinger, but it's God's truth!  But one thing
I didn't do.  No!  When your mother wanted to bring you in here as
my sister, I kicked!  I did!  And you kin thank me, for all your
laughin', that you're standing in this camp in your own name--and
ain't nothin' but my cousin."

"I suppose you thought your precious friends didn't want a SISTER
too?" said the girl ironically.

"It don't make no matter wot they want now," he said gloomily.
"For," he added, with sudden desperation, "it's come to an end!
Yes!  You and your mother will stay here a spell so that the boys
don't suspicion nothin' of either of ye.  Then I'll give it out
that you're takin' your aunt away on a visit.  Then I'll make over
to her a thousand dollars for all the trouble I've given her, and
you'll take her away.  I've bin a fool, Miss Pottinger, mebbe I am
one now, but what I'm doin' is on the square, and it's got to be
done!"

He looked so simple and so good--so like an honest schoolboy
confessing a fault and abiding by his punishment, for all his six
feet of altitude and silky mustache--that Miss Pottinger lowered
her eyes.  But she recovered herself and said sharply:--

"It's all very well to talk of her going away!  But she WON'T.  You
have made her like you--yes! like you better than me--than any of
us!  She says you're the only one who ever treated her like a
mother--as a mother should be treated.  She says she never knew
what peace and comfort were until she came to you.  There!  Don't
stare like that!  Don't you understand?  Don't you see?  Must I
tell you again that she is strange--that--that she was ALWAYS queer
and strange--and queerer on account of her unfortunate habits--
surely you knew THEM, Mr. Riggs!  She quarreled with us all.  I
went to live with my aunt, and she took herself off to San
Francisco with a silly claim against my father's shipowners.
Heaven only knows how she managed to live there; but she always
impressed people with her manners, and some one always helped her!
At last I begged my aunt to let me seek her, and I tracked her
here.  There!  If you've confessed everything to me, you have made
me confess everything to you, and about my own mother, too!  Now,
what is to be done?"

"Whatever is agreeable to you is the same to me, Miss Pottinger,"
he said formally.

"But you mustn't call me 'Miss Pottinger' so loud.  Somebody might
hear you," she returned mischievously.

"All right--'cousin,' then," he said, with a prodigious blush.
"Supposin' we go in."

In spite of the camp's curiosity, for the next few days they
delicately withheld their usual evening visits to Prossy's mother.
"They'll be wantin' to talk o' old times, and we don't wanter be
too previous," suggested Wynbrook.  But their verdict, when they at
last met the new cousin, was unanimous, and their praises
extravagant.  To their inexperienced eyes she seemed to possess all
her aunt's gentility and precision of language, with a vivacity and
playfulness all her own.  In a few days the whole camp was in love
with her.  Yet she dispensed her favors with such tactful
impartiality and with such innocent enjoyment--free from any
suspicion of coquetry--that there were no heartburnings, and the
unlucky man who nourished a fancied slight would have been laughed
at by his fellows.  She had a town-bred girl's curiosity and
interest in camp life, which she declared was like a "perpetual
picnic," and her slim, graceful figure halting beside a ditch where
the men were working seemed to them as grateful as the new spring
sunshine.  The whole camp became tidier; a coat was considered de
rigueur at "Prossy's mother" evenings; there was less horseplay in
the trails, and less shouting.  "It's all very well to talk about
'old mothers,'" said the cynical barkeeper, "but that gal, single
handed, has done more in a week to make the camp decent than old
Ma'am Riggs has in a month o' Sundays."

Since Prosper's brief conversation with Miss Pottinger before the
house, the question "What is to be done?" had singularly lapsed,
nor had it been referred to again by either.  The young lady had
apparently thrown herself into the diversions of the camp with the
thoughtless gayety of a brief holiday maker, and it was not for him
to remind her--even had he wished to--that her important question
had never been answered.  He had enjoyed her happiness with the
relief of a secret shared by her.  Three weeks had passed; the last
of the winter's rains had gone.  Spring was stirring in underbrush
and wildwood, in the pulse of the waters, in the sap of the great
pines, in the uplifting of flowers.  Small wonder if Prosper's
boyish heart had stirred a little too.

In fact, he had been possessed by another luminous idea--a wild
idea that to him seemed almost as absurd as the one which had
brought him all this trouble.  It had come to him like that one--
out of a starlit night--and he had risen one morning with a
feverish intent to put it into action!  It brought him later to
take an unprecedented walk alone with Miss Pottinger, to linger
under green leaves in unfrequented woods, and at last seemed about
to desert him as he stood in a little hollow with her hand in his--
their only listener an inquisitive squirrel.  Yet this was all the
disappointed animal heard him stammer,--

"So you see, dear, it would THEN be no lie--for--don't you see?--
she'd be really MY mother as well as YOURS."


The marriage of Prosper Riggs and Miss Pottinger was quietly
celebrated at Sacramento, but Prossy's "old mother" did not return
with the happy pair.

Of Mrs. Pottinger's later career some idea may be gathered from a
letter which Prosper received a year after his marriage.
"Circumstances," wrote Mrs. Pottinger, "which had induced me to
accept the offer of a widower to take care of his motherless
household, have since developed into a more enduring matrimonial
position, so that I can always offer my dear Prosper a home with
his mother, should he choose to visit this locality, and a second
father in Hiram W. Watergates, Esq., her husband."



THE CONVALESCENCE OF JACK HAMLIN


The habitually quiet, ascetic face of Seth Rivers was somewhat
disturbed and his brows were knitted as he climbed the long ascent
of Windy Hill to its summit and his own rancho.  Perhaps it was the
effect of the characteristic wind, which that afternoon seemed to
assault him from all points at once and did not cease its battery
even at his front door, but hustled him into the passage, blew him
into the sitting room, and then celebrated its own exit from the
long, rambling house by the banging of doors throughout the halls
and the slamming of windows in the remote distance.

Mrs. Rivers looked up from her work at this abrupt onset of her
husband, but without changing her own expression of slightly
fatigued self-righteousness.  Accustomed to these elemental
eruptions, she laid her hands from force of habit upon the lifting
tablecloth, and then rose submissively to brush together the
scattered embers and ashes from the large hearthstone, as she had
often done before.

"You're in early, Seth," she said.

"Yes.  I stopped at the Cross Roads Post Office.  Lucky I did, or
you'd hev had kempany on your hands afore you knowed it--this very
night!  I found this letter from Dr. Duchesne," and he produced a
letter from his pocket.

Mrs. Rivers looked up with an expression of worldly interest.  Dr.
Duchesne had brought her two children into the world with some
difficulty, and had skillfully attended her through a long illness
consequent upon the inefficient maternity of soulful but fragile
American women of her type.  The doctor had more than a mere local
reputation as a surgeon, and Mrs. Rivers looked up to him as her
sole connecting link with a world of thought beyond Windy Hill.

"He's comin' up yer to-night, bringin' a friend of his--a patient
that he wants us to board and keep for three weeks until he's well
agin," continued Mr. Rivers.  "Ye know how the doctor used to rave
about the pure air on our hill."

Mrs. Rivers shivered slightly, and drew her shawl over her
shoulders, but nodded a patient assent.

"Well, he says it's just what that patient oughter have to cure
him.  He's had lung fever and other things, and this yer air and
gin'ral quiet is bound to set him up.  We're to board and keep him
without any fuss or feathers, and the doctor sez he'll pay liberal
for it.  This yer's what he sez," concluded Mr. Rivers, reading
from the letter: "'He is now fully convalescent, though weak, and
really requires no other medicine than the--ozone'--yes, that's
what the doctor calls it--'of Windy Hill, and in fact as little
attendance as possible.  I will not let him keep even his negro
servant with him.  He'll give you no trouble, if he can be
prevailed upon to stay the whole time of his cure.'"

"There's our spare room--it hasn't been used since Parson Greenwood
was here," said Mrs. Rivers reflectively.  "Melinda could put it to
rights in an hour.  At what time will he come?"

"He'd come about nine.  They drive over from Hightown depot.  But,"
he added grimly, "here ye are orderin' rooms to be done up and ye
don't know who for."

"You said a friend of Dr. Duchesne," returned Mrs. Rivers simply.

"Dr. Duchesne has many friends that you and me mightn't cotton to,"
said her husband.  "This man is Jack Hamlin."  As his wife's remote
and introspective black eyes returned only vacancy, he added
quickly.  "The noted gambler!"

"Gambler?" echoed his wife, still vaguely.

"Yes--reg'lar; it's his business."

"Goodness, Seth!  He can't expect to do it here."

"No," said Seth quickly, with that sense of fairness to his fellow
man which most women find it so difficult to understand.  "No--and
he probably won't mention the word 'card' while he's here."

"Well?" said Mrs. Rivers interrogatively.

"And," continued Seth, seeing that the objection was not pressed,
he's one of them desprit men!  A reg'lar fighter!  Killed two or
three men in dools!"

Mrs. Rivers stared.  "What could Dr. Duchesne have been thinking
of?  Why, we wouldn't be safe in the house with him!"

Again Seth's sense of equity triumphed.  "I never heard of his
fightin' anybody but his own kind, and when he was bullyragged.
And ez to women he's quite t'other way in fact, and that's why I
think ye oughter know it afore you let him come.  He don't go round
with decent women.  In fact"--But here Mr. Rivers, in the sanctity
of conjugal confidences and the fullness of Bible reading, used a
few strong scriptural substantives happily unnecessary to repeat
here.

"Seth!" said Mrs. Rivers suddenly, "you seem to know this man."

The unexpectedness and irrelevancy of this for a moment startled
Seth.  But that chaste and God-fearing man had no secrets.  "Only
by hearsay, Jane," he returned quietly; "but if ye say the word
I'll stop his comin' now."

"It's too late," said Mrs. Rivers decidedly.

"I reckon not," returned her husband, "and that's why I came
straight here.  I've only got to meet them at the depot and say
this thing can't be done--and that's the end of it.  They'll go off
quiet to the hotel."

"I don't like to disappoint the doctor, Seth," said Mrs. Rivers.
"We might," she added, with a troubled look of inquiry at her
husband, "we might take that Mr. Hamlin on trial.  Like as not he
won't stay, anyway, when he sees what we're like, Seth.  What do
you think?  It would be only our Christian duty, too."

"I was thinkin' o' that as a professin' Christian, Jane," said her
husband.  "But supposin' that other Christians don't look at it in
that light.  Thar's Deacon Stubbs and his wife and the parson.  Ye
remember what he said about 'no covenant with sin'?"

"The Stubbses have no right to dictate who I'll have in my house,"
said Mrs. Rivers quickly, with a faint flush in her rather sallow
cheeks.

"It's your say and nobody else's," assented her husband with grim
submissiveness.  "You do what you like."

Mrs. Rivers mused.  "There's only myself and Melinda here," she
said with sublime naivete; "and the children ain't old enough to be
corrupted.  I am satisfied if you are, Seth," and she again looked
at him inquiringly.

"Go ahead, then, and get ready for 'em," said Seth, hurrying away
with unaffected relief.  "If you have everything fixed by nine
o'clock, that'll do."

Mrs. Rivers had everything "fixed" by that hour, including herself
presumably, for she had put on a gray dress which she usually wore
when shopping in the county town, adding a prim collar and cuffs.
A pearl-encircled brooch, the wedding gift of Seth, and a solitaire
ring next to her wedding ring, with a locket containing her
children's hair, accented her position as a proper wife and mother.
At a quarter to nine she had finished tidying the parlor, opening
the harmonium so that the light might play upon its polished
keyboard, and bringing from the forgotten seclusion of her closet
two beautifully bound volumes of Tupper's "Poems" and Pollok's
"Course of Time," to impart a literary grace to the centre table.
She then drew a chair to the table and sat down before it with a
religious magazine in her lap.  The wind roared over the deep-
throated chimney, the clock ticked monotonously, and then there
came the sound of wheels and voices.

But Mrs. Rivers was not destined to see her guest that night.  Dr.
Duchesne, under the safe lee of the door, explained that Mr. Hamlin
had been exhausted by the journey, and, assisted by a mild opiate,
was asleep in the carriage; that if Mrs. Rivers did not object,
they would carry him at once to his room.  In the flaring and
guttering of candles, the flashing of lanterns, the flapping of
coats and shawls, and the bewildering rush of wind, Mrs. Rivers was
only vaguely conscious of a slight figure muffled tightly in a
cloak carried past her in the arms of a grizzled negro up the
staircase, followed by Dr. Duchesne.  With the closing of the front
door on the tumultuous world without, a silence fell again on the
little parlor.

When the doctor made his reappearance it was to say that his
patient was being undressed and put to bed by his negro servant,
who, however, would return with the doctor to-night, but that the
patient would be left with everything that was necessary, and that
he would require no attention from the family until the next day.
Indeed, it was better that he should remain undisturbed.  As the
doctor confined his confidences and instructions entirely to the
physical condition of their guest, Mrs. Rivers found it awkward to
press other inquiries.

"Of course," she said at last hesitatingly, but with a certain
primness of expression, "Mr. Hamlin must expect to find everything
here very different from what he is accustomed to--at least from
what my husband says are his habits."

"Nobody knows that better than he, Mrs. Rivers," returned the
doctor with an equally marked precision of manner, "and you could
not have a guest who would be less likely to make you remind him of
it."

A little annoyed, yet not exactly knowing why, Mrs. Rivers
abandoned the subject, and as the doctor shortly afterwards busied
himself in the care of his patient, with whom he remained until the
hour of his departure, she had no chance of renewing it.  But as he
finally shook hands with his host and hostess, it seemed to her
that he slightly recurred to it.  "I have the greatest hope of the
curative effect of this wonderful locality on my patient, but even
still more of the beneficial effect of the complete change of his
habits, his surroundings, and their influences."  Then the door
closed on the man of science and the grizzled negro servant, the
noise of the carriage wheels was shut out with the song of the wind
in the pine tops, and the rancho of Windy Hill possessed Mr. Jack
Hamlin in peace.  Indeed, the wind was now falling, as was its
custom at that hour, and the moon presently arose over a hushed and
sleeping landscape.

For the rest of the evening the silent presence in the room above
affected the household; the half-curious servants and ranch hands
spoke in whispers in the passages, and at evening prayers, in the
dining room, Seth Rivers, kneeling before and bowed over a rush-
bottomed chair whose legs were clutched by his strong hands,
included "the stranger within our gates" in his regular
supplications.  When the hour for retiring came, Seth, with a
candle in his hand, preceded his wife up the staircase, but stopped
before the door of their guest's room.  "I reckon," he said
interrogatively to Mrs. Rivers, "I oughter see ef he's wantin'
anythin'?"

"You heard what the doctor said," returned Mrs. Rivers cautiously.
At the same time she did not speak decidedly, and the
frontiersman's instinct of hospitality prevailed.  He knocked
lightly; there was no response.  He turned the door handle softly.
The door opened.  A faint clean perfume--an odor of some general
personality rather than any particular thing--stole out upon them.
The light of Seth's candle struck a few glints from some cut-glass
and silver, the contents of the guest's dressing case, which had
been carefully laid out upon a small table by his negro servant.
There was also a refined neatness in the disposition of his clothes
and effects which struck the feminine eye of even the tidy Mrs.
Rivers as something new to her experience.  Seth drew nearer the
bed with his shaded candle, and then, turning, beckoned his wife to
approach.  Mrs. Rivers hesitated--but for the necessity of silence
she would have openly protested--but that protest was shut up in
her compressed lips as she came forward.

For an instant that awe with which absolute helplessness invests
the sleeping and dead was felt by both husband and wife.  Only the
upper part of the sleeper's face was visible above the bedclothes,
held in position by a thin white nervous hand that was encircled at
the wrist by a ruffle.  Seth stared.  Short brown curls were
tumbled over a forehead damp with the dews of sleep and exhaustion.
But what appeared more singular, the closed eyes of this vessel of
wrath and recklessness were fringed with lashes as long and silky
as a woman's.  Then Mrs. Rivers gently pulled her husband's sleeve,
and they both crept back with a greater sense of intrusion and even
more cautiously than they had entered.  Nor did they speak until
the door was closed softly and they were alone on the landing.
Seth looked grimly at his wife.

"Don't look much ez ef he could hurt anybody."

"He looks like a sick man," returned Mrs. Rivers calmly.


The unconscious object of this criticism and attention slept until
late; slept through the stir of awakened life within and without,
through the challenge of early cocks in the lean-to shed, through
the creaking of departing ox teams and the lazy, long-drawn
commands of teamsters, through the regular strokes of the morning
pump and the splash of water on stones, through the far-off barking
of dogs and the half-intelligible shouts of ranchmen; slept through
the sunlight on his ceiling, through its slow descent of his wall,
and awoke with it in his eyes!  He woke, too, with a delicious
sense of freedom from pain, and of even drawing a long breath
without difficulty--two facts so marvelous and dreamlike that he
naturally closed his eyes again lest he should waken to a world of
suffering and dyspnoea.  Satisfied at last that this relief was
real, he again opened his eyes, but upon surroundings so strange,
so wildly absurd and improbable, that he again doubted their
reality.  He was lying in a moderately large room, primly and
severely furnished, but his attention was for the moment riveted to
a gilt frame upon the wall beside him bearing the text, "God Bless
Our Home," and then on another frame on the opposite wall which
admonished him to "Watch and Pray."  Beside them hung an engraving
of the "Raising of Lazarus," and a Hogarthian lithograph of "The
Drunkard's Progress."  Mr. Hamlin closed his eyes; he was dreaming
certainly--not one of those wild, fantastic visions that had so
miserably filled the past long nights of pain and suffering, but
still a dream!  At last, opening one eye stealthily, he caught the
flash of the sunlight upon the crystal and silver articles of his
dressing case, and that flash at once illuminated his memory.  He
remembered his long weeks of illness and the devotion of Dr.
Duchesne.  He remembered how, when the crisis was past, the doctor
had urged a complete change and absolute rest, and had told him of
a secluded rancho in some remote locality kept by an honest Western
pioneer whose family he had attended.  He remembered his own
reluctant assent, impelled by gratitude to the doctor and the
helplessness of a sick man.  He now recalled the weary journey
thither, his exhaustion and the semi-consciousness of his arrival
in a bewildering wind on a shadowy hilltop.  And this was the
place!

He shivered slightly, and ducked his head under the cover again.
But the brightness of the sun and some exhilarating quality in the
air tempted him to have another outlook, avoiding as far as
possible the grimly decorated walls.  If they had only left him his
faithful servant he could have relieved himself of that mischievous
badinage which always alternately horrified and delighted that
devoted negro.  But he was alone--absolutely alone--in this
conventicle!

Presently he saw the door open slowly.  It gave admission to the
small round face and yellow ringlets of a little girl, and finally
to her whole figure, clasping a doll nearly as large as herself.
For a moment she stood there, arrested by the display of Mr.
Hamlin's dressing case on the table.  Then her glances moved around
the room and rested upon the bed.  Her blue eyes and Mr. Hamlin's
brown ones met and mingled.  Without a moment's hesitation she
moved to the bedside.  Taking her doll's hands in her own, she
displayed it before him.

"Isn't it pitty?"

Mr. Hamlin was instantly his old self again.  Thrusting his hand
comfortably under the pillow, he lay on his side and gazed at it
long and affectionately.  "I never," he said in a faint voice, but
with immovable features, "saw anything so perfectly beautiful.  Is
it alive?"

"It's a dolly," she returned gravely, smoothing down its frock and
straightening its helpless feet.  Then seized with a spontaneous
idea, like a young animal she suddenly presented it to him with
both hands and said,--

"Kiss it."

Mr. Hamlin implanted a chaste salute on its vermilion cheek.
"Would you mind letting me hold it for a little?" he said with
extreme diffidence.

The child was delighted, as he expected.  Mr. Hamlin placed it in a
sitting posture on the edge of his bed, and put an ostentatious
paternal arm around it.

"But you're alive, ain't you?" he said to the child.

This subtle witticism convulsed her.  "I'm a little girl," she
gurgled.

"I see; her mother?"

"Ess."

"And who's your mother?"

"Mammy."

"Mrs. Rivers?"

The child nodded until her ringlets were shaken on her cheek.
After a moment she began to laugh bashfully and with repression,
yet as Mr. Hamlin thought a little mischievously.  Then as he
looked at her interrogatively she suddenly caught hold of the
ruffle of his sleeve.

"Oo's got on mammy's nighty."

Mr. Hamlin started.  He saw the child's obvious mistake and
actually felt himself blushing.  It was unprecedented--it was the
sheerest weakness--it must have something to do with the confounded
air.

"I grieve to say you are deeply mistaken--it is my very own," he
returned with great gravity.  Nevertheless, he drew the coverlet
close over his shoulder.  But here he was again attracted by
another face at the half-opened door--a freckled one, belonging to
a boy apparently a year or two older than the girl.  He was
violently telegraphing to her to come away, although it was evident
that he was at the same time deeply interested in the guest's
toilet articles.  Yet as his bright gray eyes and Mr. Hamlin's
brown ones met, he succumbed, as the girl had, and walked directly
to the bedside.  But he did it bashfully--as the girl had not.  He
even attempted a defensive explanation.

"She hadn't oughter come in here, and mar wouldn't let her, and she
knows it," he said with superior virtue.

"But I asked her to come as I'm asking you," said Mr. Hamlin
promptly, "and don't you go back on your sister or you'll never be
president of the United States."  With this he laid his hand on the
boy's tow head, and then, lifting himself on his pillow to a half-
sitting posture, put an arm around each of the children, drawing
them together, with the doll occupying the central post of honor.
"Now," continued Mr. Hamlin, albeit in a voice a little faint from
the exertion, "now that we're comfortable together I'll tell you
the story of the good little boy who became a pirate in order to
save his grandmother and little sister from being eaten by a wolf
at the door."

But, alas! that interesting record of self-sacrifice never was
told.  For it chanced that Melinda Bird, Mrs. Rivers's help,
following the trail of the missing children, came upon the open
door and glanced in.  There, to her astonishment, she saw the
domestic group already described, and to her eyes dominated by the
"most beautiful and perfectly elegant" young man she had ever seen.
But let not the incautious reader suppose that she succumbed as
weakly as her artless charges to these fascinations.  The character
and antecedents of that young man had been already delivered to her
in the kitchen by the other help.  With that single glance she
halted; her eyes sought the ceiling in chaste exaltation.  Falling
back a step, she called in ladylike hauteur and precision, "Mary
Emmeline and John Wesley."

Mr. Hamlin glanced at the children.  "It's Melindy looking for us,"
said John Wesley.  But they did not move.  At which Mr. Hamlin
called out faintly but cheerfully, "They're here, all right."

Again the voice arose with still more marked and lofty
distinctness, "John Wesley and Mary Em-me-line."  It seemed to Mr.
Hamlin that human accents could not convey a more significant and
elevated ignoring of some implied impropriety in his invitation.
He was for a moment crushed.

But he only said to his little friends with a smile, "You'd better
go now and we'll have that story later."

"Affer beckus?" suggested Mary Emmeline.

"In the woods," added John Wesley.

Mr. Hamlin nodded blandly.  The children trotted to the door.  It
closed upon them and Miss Bird's parting admonition, loud enough
for Mr. Hamlin to hear, "No more freedoms, no more intrudings, you
hear."

The older culprit, Hamlin, retreated luxuriously under his
blankets, but presently another new sensation came over him--
absolutely, hunger.  Perhaps it was the child's allusion to
"beckus," but he found himself wondering when it would be ready.
This anxiety was soon relieved by the appearance of his host
himself bearing a tray, possibly in deference to Miss Bird's sense
of propriety.  It appeared also that Dr. Duchesne had previously
given suitable directions for his diet, and Mr. Hamlin found his
repast simple but enjoyable.  Always playfully or ironically polite
to strangers, he thanked his host and said he had slept splendidly.

"It's this yer 'ozone' in the air that Dr. Duchesne talks about,"
said Seth complacently.

"I am inclined to think it is also those texts," said Mr. Hamlin
gravely, as he indicated them on the wall.  "You see they reminded
me of church and my boyhood's slumbers there.  I have never slept
so peacefully since."  Seth's face brightened so interestedly at
what he believed to be a suggestion of his guest's conversion that
Mr. Hamlin was fain to change the subject.  When his host had
withdrawn he proceeded to dress himself, but here became conscious
of his weakness and was obliged to sit down.  In one of those
enforced rests he chanced to be near the window, and for the first
time looked on the environs of his place of exile.  For a moment he
was staggered.  Everything seemed to pitch downward from the rocky
outcrop on which the rambling house and farm sheds stood.  Even the
great pines around it swept downward like a green wave, to rise
again in enormous billows as far as the eye could reach.  He could
count a dozen of their tumbled crests following each other on their
way to the distant plain.  In some vague point of that shimmering
horizon of heat and dust was the spot he came from the preceding
night.  Yet the recollection of it and his feverish past seemed to
confuse him, and he turned his eyes gladly away.

Pale, a little tremulous, but immaculate and jaunty in his white
flannels and straw hat, he at last made his way downstairs.  To his
great relief he found the sitting room empty, as he would have
willingly deferred his formal acknowledgments to his hostess later.
A single glance at the interior determined him not to linger, and
he slipped quietly into the open air and sunshine.  The day was
warm and still, as the wind only came up with the going down of the
sun, and the atmosphere was still redolent with the morning spicing
of pine and hay and a stronger balm that seemed to fill his breast
with sunshine.  He walked toward the nearest shade--a cluster of
young buckeyes--and having with a certain civic fastidiousness
flicked the dust from a stump with his handkerchief he sat down.
It was very quiet and calm.  The life and animation of early
morning had already vanished from the hill, or seemed to be
suspended with the sun in the sky.  He could see the ranchmen and
oxen toiling on the green terraced slopes below, but no sound
reached his ears.  Even the house he had just quitted seemed empty
of life throughout its rambling length.  His seclusion was
complete.  Could he stand it for three weeks?  Perhaps it need not
be for so long; he was already stronger!  He foresaw that the
ascetic Seth might become wearisome.  He had an intuition that Mrs.
Rivers would be equally so; he should certainly quarrel with
Melinda, and this would probably debar him from the company of the
children--his only hope.

But his seclusion was by no means so complete as he expected.  He
presently was aware of a camp-meeting hymn hummed somewhat
ostentatiously by a deep contralto voice, which he at once
recognized as Melinda's, and saw that severe virgin proceeding from
the kitchen along the ridge until within a few paces of the
buckeyes, when she stopped and, with her hand shading her eyes,
apparently began to examine the distant fields.  She was a tall,
robust girl, not without certain rustic attractions, of which she
seemed fully conscious.  This latter weakness gave Mr. Hamlin a new
idea.  He put up the penknife with which he had been paring his
nails while wondering why his hands had become so thin, and awaited
events.  She presently turned, approached the buckeyes, plucked a
spike of the blossoms with great girlish lightness, and then
apparently discovering Mr. Hamlin, started in deep concern and said
with somewhat stentorian politeness: "I BEG your pardon--didn't
know I was intruding!"

"Don't mention it," returned Jack promptly, but without moving.  "I
saw you coming and was prepared; but generally--as I have something
the matter with my heart--a sudden joy like this is dangerous."

Somewhat mystified, but struggling between an expression of
rigorous decorum and gratified vanity, Miss Melinda stammered, "I
was only"--

"I knew it--I saw what you were doing," interrupted Jack gravely,
"only I wouldn't do it if I were you.  You were looking at one of
those young men down the hill.  You forgot that if you could see
him he could see you looking too, and that would only make him
conceited.  And a girl with YOUR attractions don't require that."

"Ez if," said Melinda, with lofty but somewhat reddening scorn,
"there was a man on this hull rancho that I'd take a second look
at."

"It's the first look that does the business," returned Jack simply.
"But maybe I was wrong.  Would you mind--as you're going straight
back to the house" (Miss Melinda had certainly expressed no such
intention)--"turning those two little kids loose out here?  I've a
sort of engagement with them."

"I will speak to their mar," said Melinda primly, yet with a
certain sign of relenting, as she turned away.

"You can say to her that I regretted not finding her in the sitting
room when I came down," continued Jack tactfully.

Apparently the tact was successful, for he was delighted a few
moments later by the joyous onset of John Wesley and Mary Emmeline
upon the buckeyes, which he at once converted into a game of hide
and seek, permitting himself at last to be shamelessly caught in
the open.  But here he wisely resolved upon guarding against
further grown-up interruption, and consulting with his companions
found that on one of the lower terraces there was a large reservoir
fed by a mountain rivulet, but they were not allowed to play there.
Thither, however, the reckless Jack hied with his playmates and was
presently ensconced under a willow tree, where he dexterously
fashioned tiny willow canoes with his penknife and sent them
sailing over a submerged expanse of nearly an acre.  But half an
hour of this ingenious amusement was brought to an abrupt
termination.  While cutting bark, with his back momentarily turned
on his companions, he heard a scream, and turned quickly to see
John Wesley struggling in the water, grasping a tree root, and Mary
Emmeline--nowhere!  In another minute he saw the strings of her
pinafore appear on the surface a few yards beyond, and in yet
another minute, with a swift rueful glance at his white flannels,
he had plunged after her.  A disagreeable shock of finding himself
out of his depths was, however, followed by contact with the
child's clothing, and clutching her firmly, a stroke or two brought
him panting to the bank.  Here a gasp, a gurgle, and then a roar
from Mary Emmeline, followed by a sympathetic howl from John
Wesley, satisfied him that the danger was over.  Rescuing the boy
from the tree root, he laid them both on the grass and contemplated
them exercising their lungs with miserable satisfaction.  But here
he found his own breathing impeded in addition to a slight
faintness, and was suddenly obliged to sit down beside them, at
which, by some sympathetic intuition, they both stopped crying.

Encouraged by this, Mr. Hamlin got them to laughing again, and then
proposed a race home in their wet clothes, which they accepted, Mr.
Hamlin, for respiratory reasons, lagging in their rear until he had
the satisfaction of seeing them captured by the horrified Melinda
in front of the kitchen, while he slipped past her and regained his
own room.  Here he changed his saturated clothes, tried to rub away
a certain chilliness that was creeping over him, and lay down in
his dressing gown to miserable reflections.  He had nearly drowned
the children and overexcited himself, in spite of his promise to
the doctor!  He would never again be intrusted with the care of the
former nor be believed by the latter!

But events are not always logical in sequence.  Mr. Hamlin went
comfortably to sleep and into a profuse perspiration.  He was
awakened by a rapping at his door, and opening it, was surprised to
find Mrs. Rivers with anxious inquiries as to his condition.
"Indeed," she said, with an emotion which even her prim reserve
could not conceal, "I did not know until now how serious the
accident was, and how but for you and Divine Providence my little
girl might have been drowned.  It seems Melinda saw it all."

Inwardly objurgating the spying Melinda, but relieved that his
playmates hadn't broken their promise of secrecy, Mr. Hamlin
laughed.

"I'm afraid that your little girl wouldn't have got into the water
at all but for me--and you must give all the credit of getting her
out to the other fellow."  He stopped at the severe change in Mrs.
Rivers's expression, and added quite boyishly and with a sudden
drop from his usual levity, "But please don't keep the children
away from me for all that, Mrs. Rivers."

Mrs. Rivers did not, and the next day Jack and his companions
sought fresh playing fields and some new story-telling pastures.
Indeed, it was a fine sight to see this pale, handsome, elegantly
dressed young fellow lounging along between a blue-checkered
pinafored girl on one side and a barefooted boy on the other.  The
ranchmen turned and looked after him curiously.  One, a rustic
prodigal, reduced by dissipation to the swine-husks of ranching,
saw fit to accost him familiarly.

"The last time I saw you dealing poker in Sacramento, Mr. Hamlin, I
did not reckon to find you up here playing with a couple of kids."

"No!" responded Mr. Hamlin suavely, "and yet I remember I was
playing with some country idiots down there, and you were one of
them.  Well! understand that up here I prefer the kids.  Don't let
me have to remind you of it."

Nevertheless, Mr. Hamlin could not help noticing that for the next
two or three days there were many callers at the ranch and that he
was obliged in his walks to avoid the highroad on account of the
impertinent curiosity of wayfarers.  Some of them were of that sex
which he would not have contented himself with simply calling
"curious."

"To think," said Melinda confidently to her mistress, "that that
thar Mrs. Stubbs, who wouldn't go to the Hightown Hotel because
there was a play actress thar, has been snoopin' round here twice
since that young feller came."

Of this fact, however, Mr. Hamlin was blissfully unconscious.

Nevertheless, his temper was growing uncertain; the angle of his
smart straw hat was becoming aggressive to strangers; his
politeness sardonic.  And now Sunday morning had come with an
atmosphere of starched piety and well-soaped respectability at the
rancho, and the children were to be taken with the rest of the
family to the day-long service at Hightown.  As these Sabbath
pilgrimages filled the main road, he was fain to take himself and
his loneliness to the trails and byways, and even to invade the
haunts of some other elegant outcasts like himself--to wit, a
crested hawk, a graceful wild cat beautifully marked, and an
eloquently reticent rattlesnake.  Mr. Hamlin eyed them without
fear, and certainly without reproach.  They were not out of their
element.

Suddenly he heard his name called in a stentorian contralto.  An
impatient ejaculation rose to his lips, but died upon them as he
turned.  It was certainly Melinda, but in his present sensitive
loneliness it struck him for the first time that he had never
actually seen her before as she really was.  Like most men in his
profession he was a quick reader of thoughts and faces when he was
interested, and although this was the same robust, long-limbed,
sunburnt girl he had met, he now seemed to see through her triple
incrustation of human vanity, conventional piety, and outrageous
Sabbath finery an honest, sympathetic simplicity that commanded his
respect.

"You are back early from church," he said.

"Yes.  One service is good enough for me when thar ain't no special
preacher," she returned, "so I jest sez to Silas, 'as I ain't here
to listen to the sisters cackle ye kin put to the buckboard and
drive me home ez soon ez you please.'"

"And so his name is Silas," suggested Mr. Hamlin cheerfully.

"Go 'long with you, Mr. Hamlin, and don't pester," she returned,
with heifer-like playfulness.  "Well, Silas put to, and when we
rose the hill here I saw your straw hat passin' in the gulch, and
sez to Silas, sez I, 'Ye kin pull up here, for over yar is our new
boarder, Jack Hamlin, and I'm goin' to talk with him.'  'All
right,' sez he, 'I'd sooner trust ye with that gay young gambolier
every day of the week than with them saints down thar on Sunday.
He deals ez straight ez he shoots, and is about as nigh onto a
gentleman as they make 'em.'"

For one moment or two Miss Bird only saw Jack's long lashes.  When
his eyes once more lifted they were shining.  "And what did you
say?" he said, with a short laugh.

"I told him he needn't be Christopher Columbus to have discovered
that."  She turned with a laugh toward Jack, to be met by the word
"shake," and an outstretched thin white hand which grasped her
large red one with a frank, fraternal pressure.

"I didn't come to tell ye that," remarked Miss Bird as she sat down
on a boulder, took off her yellow hat, and restacked her tawny mane
under it, "but this: I reckoned I went to Sunday meetin' as I ought
ter.  I kalkilated to hear considerable about 'Faith' and 'Works,'
and sich, but I didn't reckon to hear all about you from the Lord's
Prayer to the Doxology.  You were in the special prayers ez a
warnin', in the sermon ez a text; they picked out hymns to fit ye!
And always a drefful example and a visitation.  And the rest o' the
tune it was all gabble, gabble by the brothers and sisters about
you.  I reckon, Mr. Hamlin, that they know everything you ever did
since you were knee-high to a grasshopper, and a good deal more
than you ever thought of doin'.  The women is all dead set on
convertin' ye and savin' ye by their own precious selves, and the
men is ekally dead set on gettin' rid o' ye on that account."

"And what did Seth and Mrs. Rivers say?" asked Hamlin composedly,
but with kindling eyes.

"They stuck up for ye ez far ez they could.  But ye see the parson
hez got a holt upon Seth, havin' caught him kissin' a convert at
camp meeting; and Deacon Turner knows suthin about Mrs. Rivers's
sister, who kicked over the pail and jumped the fence years ago,
and she's afeard a' him.  But what I wanted to tell ye was that
they're all comin' up here to take a look at ye--some on 'em to-
night.  You ain't afeard, are ye?" she added, with a loud laugh.

"Well, it looks rather desperate, doesn't it?" returned Jack, with
dancing eyes.

"I'll trust ye for all that," said Melinda.  "And now I reckon I'll
trot along to the rancho.  Ye needn't offer ter see me home," she
added, as Jack made a movement to accompany her.  "Everybody up
here ain't as fair-minded ez Silas and you, and Melinda Bird hez a
character to lose!  So long!"  With this she cantered away, a
little heavily, perhaps, adjusting her yellow hat with both hands
as she clattered down the steep hill.

That afternoon Mr. Hamlin drew largely on his convalescence to
mount a half-broken mustang, and in spite of the rising afternoon
wind to gallop along the highroad in quite as mischievous and
breezy a fashion.  He was wont to allow his mustang's nose to hang
over the hind rails of wagons and buggies containing young couples,
and to dash ahead of sober carryalls that held elderly "members in
good standing."

An accomplished rider, he picked up and brought back the flying
parasol of Mrs. Deacon Stubbs without dismounting.  He finally came
home a little blown, but dangerously composed.

There was the usual Sunday evening gathering at Windy Hill Rancho--
neighbors and their wives, deacons and the pastor--but their
curiosity was not satisfied by the sight of Mr. Hamlin, who kept
his own room and his own counsel.  There was some desultory
conversation, chiefly on church topics, for it was vaguely felt
that a discussion of the advisability or getting rid of the guest
of their host was somewhat difficult under this host's roof, with
the guest impending at any moment.  Then a diversion was created by
some of the church choir practicing the harmonium with the singing
of certain more or less lugubrious anthems.  Mrs. Rivers presently
joined in, and in a somewhat faded soprano, which, however, still
retained considerable musical taste and expression, sang, "Come, ye
disconsolate."  The wind moaned over the deep-throated chimney in a
weird harmony with the melancholy of that human appeal as Mrs.
Rivers sang the first verse:--


   "Come, ye disconsolate, where'er ye languish,
      Come to the Mercy Seat, fervently kneel;
    Here bring your wounded hearts--here tell your anguish,
      Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal!"


A pause followed, and the long-drawn, half-human sigh of the
mountain wind over the chimney seemed to mingle with the wail of
the harmonium.  And then, to their thrilled astonishment, a tenor
voice, high, clear, but tenderly passionate, broke like a skylark
over their heads in the lines of the second verse:--


   "Joy of the desolate, Light of the straying,
      Hope of the penitent--fadeless and pure;
    Here speaks the Comforter, tenderly saying,
      Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot cure!"


The hymn was old and familiar enough, Heaven knows.  It had been
quite popular at funerals, and some who sat there had had its
strange melancholy borne upon them in time of loss and
tribulations, but never had they felt its full power before.
Accustomed as they were to emotional appeal and to respond to it,
as the singer's voice died away above them, their very tears flowed
and fell with that voice.  A few sobbed aloud, and then a voice
asked tremulously,--

"Who is it?"

"It's Mr. Hamlin," said Seth quietly.  "I've heard him often
hummin' things before."

There was another silence, and the voice of Deacon Stubbs broke in
harshly,--

"It's rank blasphemy."

"If it's rank blasphemy to sing the praise o' God, not only better
than some folks in the choir, but like an angel o' light, I wish
you'd do a little o' that blaspheming on Sundays, Mr. Stubbs."

The speaker was Mrs. Stubbs, and as Deacon Stubbs was a notoriously
bad singer the shot told.

"If he's sincere, why does he stand aloof?  Why does he not join
us?" asked the parson.

"He hasn't been asked," said Seth quietly.  "If I ain't mistaken
this yer gathering this evening was specially to see how to get rid
of him."

There was a quick murmur of protest at this.  The parson exchanged
glances with the deacon and saw that they were hopelessly in the
minority.

"I will ask him myself," said Mrs. Rivers suddenly.

"So do, Sister Rivers; so do," was the unmistakable response.

Mrs. Rivers left the room and returned in a few moments with a
handsome young man, pale, elegant, composed, even to a grave
indifference.  What his eyes might have said was another thing; the
long lashes were scarcely raised.

"I don't mind playing a little," he said quietly to Mrs. Rivers, as
if continuing a conversation, "but you'll have to let me trust my
memory."

"Then you--er--play the harmonium?" said the parson, with an
attempt at formal courtesy.

"I was for a year or two the organist in the choir of Dr. Todd's
church at Sacramento," returned Mr. Hamlin quietly.

The blank amazement on the faces of Deacons Stubbs and Turner and
the parson was followed by wreathed smiles from the other auditors
and especially from the ladies.  Mr. Hamlin sat down to the
instrument, and in another moment took possession of it as it had
never been held before.  He played from memory as he had implied,
but it was the memory of a musician.  He began with one or two
familiar anthems, in which they all joined.  A fragment of a mass
and a Latin chant followed.  An "Ave Maria" from an opera was his
first secular departure, but his delighted audience did not detect
it.  Then he hurried them along in unfamiliar language to "O mio
Fernando" and "Spiritu gentil," which they fondly imagined were
hymns, until, with crowning audacity, after a few preliminary
chords of the "Miserere," he landed them broken-hearted in the
Trovatore's donjon tower with "Non te scordar de mi."

Amidst the applause he heard the preacher suavely explain that
those Popish masses were always in the Latin language, and rose
from the instrument satisfied with his experiment.  Excusing
himself as an invalid from joining them in a light collation in the
dining room, and begging his hostess's permission to retire, he
nevertheless lingered a few moments by the door as the ladies filed
out of the room, followed by the gentlemen, until Deacon Turner,
who was bringing up the rear, was abreast of him.  Here Mr. Hamlin
became suddenly deeply interested in a framed pencil drawing which
hung on the wall.  It was evidently a schoolgirl's amateur
portrait, done by Mrs. Rivers.  Deacon Turner halted quickly by his
side as the others passed out--which was exactly what Mr. Hamlin
expected.

"Do you know the face?" said the deacon eagerly.

Thanks to the faithful Melinda, Mr. Hamlin did know it perfectly.
It was a pencil sketch of Mrs. Rivers's youthfully erring sister.
But he only said he thought he recognized a likeness to some one he
had seen in Sacramento.

The deacon's eye brightened.  "Perhaps the same one--perhaps," he
added in a submissive and significant tone "a--er--painful story."

"Rather--to him," observed Hamlin quietly.

"How?--I--er--don't understand," said Deacon Turner.

"Well, the portrait looks like a lady I knew in Sacramento who had
been in some trouble when she was a silly girl, but had got over it
quietly.  She was, however, troubled a good deal by some mean hound
who was every now and then raking up the story wherever she went.
Well, one of her friends--I might have been among them, I don't
exactly remember just now--challenged him, but although he had no
conscientious convictions about slandering a woman, he had some
about being shot for it, and declined.  The consequence was he was
cowhided once in the street, and the second time tarred and
feathered and ridden on a rail out of town.  That, I suppose, was
what you meant by your 'painful story.'  But is this the woman?"

"No, no," said the deacon hurriedly, with a white face, "you have
quite misunderstood."

"But whose is this portrait?" persisted Jack.

"I believe that--I don't know exactly--but I think it is a sister
of Mrs. Rivers's," stammered the deacon.

"Then, of course, it isn't the same woman," said Jack in simulated
indignation.

"Certainly--of course not," returned the deacon.

"Phew!" said Jack.  "That was a mighty close call.  Lucky we were
alone, wasn't it?"

"Yes," said the deacon, with a feeble smile.

"Seth," continued Jack, with a thoughtful air, "looks like a quiet
man, but I shouldn't like to have made that mistake about his
sister-in-law before him.  These quiet men are apt to shoot
straight.  Better keep this to ourselves."

Deacon Turner not only kept the revelation to himself but
apparently his own sacred person also, as he did not call again at
Windy Hill Rancho during Mr. Hamlin's stay.  But he was exceedingly
polite in his references to Jack, and alluded patronizingly to a
"little chat" they had had together.  And when the usual reaction
took place in Mr. Hamlin's favor and Jack was actually induced to
perform on the organ at Hightown Church next Sunday, the deacon's
voice was loudest in his praise.  Even Parson Greenwood allowed
himself to be non-committal as to the truth of the rumor, largely
circulated, that one of the most desperate gamblers in the State
had been converted through his exhortations.

So, with breezy walks and games with the children, occasional
confidences with Melinda and Silas, and the Sabbath "singing of
anthems," Mr. Hamlin's three weeks of convalescence drew to a
close.  He had lately relaxed his habit of seclusion so far as to
mingle with the company gathered for more social purposes at the
rancho, and once or twice unbent so far as to satisfy their
curiosity in regard to certain details of his profession.

"I have no personal knowledge of games of cards," said Parson
Greenwood patronizingly, "and think I am right in saying that our
brothers and sisters are equally inexperienced.  I am--ahem--far
from believing, however, that entire ignorance of evil is the best
preparation for combating it, and I should be glad if you'd explain
to the company the intricacies of various games.  There is one that
you mentioned, with a--er--scriptural name."

"Faro," said Hamlin, with an unmoved face.

"Pharaoh," repeated the parson gravely; "and one which you call
'poker,' which seems to require great self-control."

"I couldn't make you understand poker without your playing it,"
said Jack decidedly.

"As long as we don't gamble--that is, play for money--I see no
objection," returned the parson.

"And," said Jack musingly, "you could use beans."

It was agreed finally that there would be no falling from grace in
their playing among themselves, in an inquiring Christian spirit,
under Jack's guidance, he having decided to abstain from card
playing during his convalescence, and Jack permitted himself to be
persuaded to show them the following evening.

It so chanced, however, that Dr. Duchesne, finding the end of
Jack's "cure" approaching, and not hearing from that interesting
invalid, resolved to visit him at about this time.  Having no
chance to apprise Jack of his intention, on coming to Hightown at
night he procured a conveyance at the depot to carry him to Windy
Hill Rancho.  The wind blew with its usual nocturnal rollicking
persistency, and at the end of his turbulent drive it seemed almost
impossible to make himself heard amongst the roaring of the pines
and some astounding preoccupation of the inmates.  After vainly
knocking, the doctor pushed open the front door and entered.  He
rapped at the closed sitting room door, but receiving no reply,
pushed it open upon the most unexpected and astounding scene he had
ever witnessed.  Around the centre table several respectable
members of the Hightown Church, including the parson, were gathered
with intense and eager faces playing poker, and behind the parson,
with his hands in his pockets, carelessly lounged the doctor's
patient, the picture of health and vigor.  A disused pack of cards
was scattered on the floor, and before the gentle and precise Mrs.
Rivers was heaped a pile of beans that would have filled a quart
measure.

When Dr. Duchesne had tactfully retreated before the hurried and
stammering apologies of his host and hostess, and was alone with
Jack in his rooms, he turned to him with a gravity that was more
than half affected and said, "How long, sir, did it take you to
effect this corruption?"

"Upon my honor," said Jack simply, "they played last night for the
first time.  And they forced me to show them.  But," added Jack
after a significant pause, "I thought it would make the game
livelier and be more of a moral lesson if I gave them nearly all
good pat hands.  So I ran in a cold deck on them--the first time I
ever did such a thing in my life.  I fixed up a pack of cards so
that one had three tens, another three jacks, and another three
queens, and so on up to three aces.  In a minute they had all
tumbled to the game, and you never saw such betting.  Every man and
woman there believed he or she had struck a sure thing, and staked
accordingly.  A new panful of beans was brought on, and Seth, your
friend, banked for them.  And at last the parson raked in the whole
pile."

"I suppose you gave him the three aces," said Dr. Duchesne
gloomily.

"The parson," said Jack slowly, "HADN'T A SINGLE PAIR IN HIS HAND.
It was the stoniest, deadest, neatest BLUFF I ever saw.  And when
he'd frightened off the last man who held out and laid that measly
hand of his face down on that pile of kings, queens, and aces, and
looked around the table as he raked in the pile, there was a smile
of humble self-righteousness on his face that was worth double the
money."



A PUPIL OF CHESTNUT RIDGE


The schoolmaster of Chestnut Ridge was interrupted in his after-
school solitude by the click of hoof and sound of voices on the
little bridle path that led to the scant clearing in which his
schoolhouse stood.  He laid down his pen as the figures of a man
and woman on horseback passed the windows and dismounted before the
porch.  He recognized the complacent, good-humored faces of Mr. and
Mrs. Hoover, who owned a neighboring ranch of some importance and
who were accounted well to do people by the community.  Being a
childless couple, however, while they generously contributed to the
support of the little school, they had not added to its flock, and
it was with some curiosity that the young schoolmaster greeted them
and awaited the purport of their visit.  This was protracted in
delivery through a certain polite dalliance with the real subject
characteristic of the Southwestern pioneer.

"Well, Almiry," said Mr. Hoover, turning to his wife after the
first greeting with the schoolmaster was over, "this makes me feel
like old times, you bet!  Why, I ain't bin inside a schoolhouse
since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.  Thar's the benches, and
the desks, and the books and all them 'a b, abs,' jest like the old
days.  Dear! Dear!  But the teacher in those days was ez old and
grizzled ez I be--and some o' the scholars--no offense to you, Mr.
Brooks--was older and bigger nor you.  But times is changed: yet
look, Almiry, if thar ain't a hunk o' stale gingerbread in that
desk jest as it uster be!  Lord! how it all comes back!  Ez I was
sayin' only t'other day, we can't be too grateful to our parents
for givin' us an eddication in our youth;" and Mr. Hoover, with the
air of recalling an alma mater of sequestered gloom and cloistered
erudition, gazed reverently around the new pine walls.

But Mrs. Hoover here intervened with a gracious appreciation of the
schoolmaster's youth after her usual kindly fashion.  "And don't
you forget it, Hiram Hoover, that these young folks of to-day kin
teach the old schoolmasters of 'way back more'n you and I dream of.
We've heard of your book larnin', Mr. Brooks, afore this, and we're
proud to hev you here, even if the Lord has not pleased to give us
the children to send to ye.  But we've always paid our share in
keeping up the school for others that was more favored, and now it
looks as if He had not forgotten us, and ez if"--with a significant,
half-shy glance at her husband and a corroborating nod from that
gentleman--"ez if, reelly, we might be reckonin' to send you a
scholar ourselves."

The young schoolmaster, sympathetic and sensitive, felt somewhat
embarrassed.  The allusion to his extreme youth, mollified though
it was by the salve of praise from the tactful Mrs. Hoover, had
annoyed him, and perhaps added to his slight confusion over the
information she vouchsafed.  He had not heard of any late addition
to the Hoover family, he would not have been likely to, in his
secluded habits; and although he was accustomed to the naive and
direct simplicity of the pioneer, he could scarcely believe that
this good lady was announcing a maternal expectation.  He smiled
vaguely and begged them to be seated.

"Ye see," said Mr. Hoover, dropping upon a low bench, "the way the
thing pans out is this.  Almiry's brother is a pow'ful preacher
down the coast at San Antonio and hez settled down thar with a big
Free Will Baptist Church congregation and a heap o' land got from
them Mexicans.  Thar's a lot o' poor Spanish and Injin trash that
belong to the land, and Almiry's brother hez set about convertin'
'em, givin' 'em convickshion and religion, though the most of 'em
is Papists and followers of the Scarlet Woman.  Thar was an orphan,
a little girl that he got outer the hands o' them priests, kinder
snatched as a brand from the burnin', and he sent her to us to be
brought up in the ways o' the Lord, knowin' that we had no children
of our own.  But we thought she oughter get the benefit o'
schoolin' too, besides our own care, and we reckoned to bring her
here reg'lar to school."

Relieved and pleased to help the good-natured couple in the care of
the homeless waif, albeit somewhat doubtful of their religious
methods, the schoolmaster said he would be delighted to number her
among his little flock.  Had she already received any tuition?

"Only from them padres, ye know, things about saints, Virgin Marys,
visions, and miracles," put in Mrs. Hoover; "and we kinder thought
ez you know Spanish you might be able to get rid o' them in
exchange for 'conviction o' sins' and 'justification by faith,' ye
know."

"I'm afraid," said Mr. Brooks, smiling at the thought of displacing
the Church's "mysteries" for certain corybantic displays and
thaumaturgical exhibitions he had witnessed at the Dissenters' camp
meeting, "that I must leave all that to you, and I must caution you
to be careful what you do lest you also shake her faith in the
alphabet and the multiplication table."

"Mebbee you're right," said Mrs. Hoover, mystified but good-
natured; "but thar's one thing more we oughter tell ye.  She's--
she's a trifle dark complected."

The schoolmaster smiled.  "Well?" he said patiently.

"She isn't a nigger nor an Injin, ye know, but she's kinder a half-
Spanish, half-Mexican Injin, what they call 'mes--mes'"--

"Mestiza," suggested Mr. Brooks; "a half-breed or mongrel."

"I reckon.  Now thar wouldn't be any objection to that, eh?" said
Mr. Hoover a little uneasily.

"Not by me," returned the schoolmaster cheerfully.  "And although
this school is state-aided it's not a 'public school' in the eye of
the law, so you have only the foolish prejudices of your neighbors
to deal with."  He had recognized the reason of their hesitation
and knew the strong racial antagonism held towards the negro and
Indian by Mr. Hoover's Southwestern compatriots, and he could not
refrain from "rubbing it in."

"They kin see," interposed Mrs. Hoover, "that she's not a nigger,
for her hair don't 'kink,' and a furrin Injin, of course, is
different from one o' our own."

"If they hear her speak Spanish, and you simply say she is a
foreigner, as she is, it will be all right," said the schoolmaster
smilingly.  "Let her come, I'll look after her."

Much relieved, after a few more words the couple took their
departure, the schoolmaster promising to call the next afternoon at
the Hoovers' ranch and meet his new scholar.  "Ye might give us a
hint or two how she oughter be fixed up afore she joins the school."

The ranch was about four miles from the schoolhouse, and as Mr.
Brooks drew rein before the Hoovers' gate he appreciated the
devotion of the couple who were willing to send the child that
distance twice a day.  The house, with its outbuildings, was on a
more liberal scale than its neighbors, and showed few of the
makeshifts and half-hearted advances towards permanent occupation
common to the Southwestern pioneers, who were more or less nomads
in instinct and circumstance.  He was ushered into a well-furnished
sitting room, whose glaring freshness was subdued and repressed by
black-framed engravings of scriptural subjects.  As Mr. Brooks
glanced at them and recalled the schoolrooms of the old missions,
with their monastic shadows which half hid the gaudy, tinseled
saints and flaming or ensanguined hearts upon the walls, he feared
that the little waif of Mother Church had not gained any
cheerfulness in the exchange.

As she entered the room with Mrs. Hoover, her large dark eyes--the
most notable feature in her small face--seemed to sustain the
schoolmaster's fanciful fear in their half-frightened wonder.  She
was clinging closely to Mrs. Hoover's side, as if recognizing the
good woman's maternal kindness even while doubtful of her purpose;
but on the schoolmaster addressing her in Spanish, a singular
change took place in their relative positions.  A quick look of
intelligence came into her melancholy eyes, and with it a slight
consciousness of superiority to her protectors that was
embarrassing to him.  For the rest he observed merely that she was
small and slightly built, although her figure was hidden in a long
"check apron" or calico pinafore with sleeves--a local garment--
which was utterly incongruous with her originality.  Her skin was
olive, inclining to yellow, or rather to that exquisite shade of
buff to be seen in the new bark of the madrono.  Her face was oval,
and her mouth small and childlike, with little to suggest the
aboriginal type in her other features.

The master's questions elicited from the child the fact that she
could read and write, that she knew her "Hail Mary" and creed
(happily the Protestant Mrs. Hoover was unable to follow this
questioning), but he also elicited the more disturbing fact that
her replies and confidences suggested a certain familiarity and
equality of condition which he could only set down to his own
youthfulness of appearance.  He was apprehensive that she might
even make some remark regarding Mrs. Hoover, and was not sorry that
the latter did not understand Spanish.  But before he left he
managed to speak with Mrs. Hoover alone and suggested a change in
the costume of the pupil when she came to school.  "The better she
is dressed," suggested the wily young diplomat, "the less likely is
she to awaken any suspicion of her race."

"Now that's jest what's botherin' me, Mr. Brooks," returned Mrs.
Hoover, with a troubled face, "for you see she is a growin' girl,"
and she concluded, with some embarrassment, "I can't quite make up
my mind how to dress her."

"How old is she?" asked the master abruptly.

"Goin' on twelve, but,"--and Mrs. Hoover again hesitated.

"Why, two of my scholars, the Bromly girls, are over fourteen,"
said the master, "and you know how they are dressed;" but here he
hesitated in his turn.  It had just occurred to him that the little
waif was from the extreme South, and the precocious maturity of the
mixed races there was well known.  He even remembered, to his
alarm, to have seen brides of twelve and mothers of fourteen among
the native villagers.  This might also account for the suggestion
of equality in her manner, and even for a slight coquettishness
which he thought he had noticed in her when he had addressed her
playfully as a muchacha.  "I should dress her in something
Spanish," he said hurriedly, "something white, you know, with
plenty of flounces and a little black lace, or a black silk skirt
and a lace scarf, you know.  She'll be all right if you don't make
her look like a servant or a dependent," he added, with a show of
confidence he was far from feeling.  "But you haven't told me her
name," he concluded.

"As we're reckonin' to adopt her," said Mrs. Hoover gravely,
"you'll give her ours."

"But I can't call her 'Miss Hoover,'" suggested the master; "what's
her first name?"

"We was thinkin' o' 'Serafina Ann,'" said Mrs. Hoover with more
gravity.

"But what is her name?" persisted the master.

"Well," returned Mrs. Hoover, with a troubled look, "me and Hiram
consider it's a heathenish sort of name for a young gal, but you'll
find it in my brother's letter."  She took a letter from under the
lid of a large Bible on the table and pointed to a passage in it.

"The child was christened 'Concepcion,'" read the master.  "Why,
that's one of the Marys!"

"The which?" asked Mrs. Hoover severely.

"One of the titles of the Virgin Mary; 'Maria de la Concepcion,'"
said Mr. Brooks glibly.

"It don't sound much like anythin' so Christian and decent as
'Maria' or 'Mary,'" returned Mrs. Hoover suspiciously.

"But the abbreviation, 'Concha,' is very pretty.  In fact it's just
the thing, it's so very Spanish," returned the master decisively.
"And you know that the squaw who hangs about the mining camp is
called 'Reservation Ann,' and old Mrs. Parkins's negro cook is
called 'Aunt Serafina,' so 'Serafina Ann' is too suggestive.
'Concha Hoover' 's the name."

"P'r'aps you're right," said Mrs. Hoover meditatively.

"And dress her so she'll look like her name and you'll be all
right," said the master gayly as he took his departure.

Nevertheless, it was with some anxiety the next morning he heard
the sound of hoofs on the rocky bridle path leading to the
schoolhouse.  He had already informed his little flock of the
probable addition to their numbers and their breathless curiosity
now accented the appearance of Mr. Hoover riding past the window,
followed by a little figure on horseback, half hidden in the
graceful folds of a serape.  The next moment they dismounted at the
porch, the serape was cast aside, and the new scholar entered.

A little alarmed even in his admiration, the master nevertheless
thought he had never seen a more dainty figure.  Her heavily
flounced white skirt stopped short just above her white-stockinged
ankles and little feet, hidden in white satin, low-quartered
slippers.  Her black silk, shell-like jacket half clasped her
stayless bust clad in an under-bodice of soft muslin that faintly
outlined a contour which struck him as already womanly.  A black
lace veil which had protected her head, she had on entering slipped
down to her shoulders with a graceful gesture, leaving one end of
it pinned to her hair by a rose above her little yellow ear.  The
whole figure was so inconsistent with its present setting that the
master inwardly resolved to suggest a modification of it to Mrs.
Hoover as he, with great gravity, however, led the girl to the seat
he had prepared for her.  Mr. Hoover, who had been assisting
discipline as he conscientiously believed by gazing with hushed,
reverent reminiscence on the walls, here whispered behind his large
hand that he would call for her at "four o'clock" and tiptoed out
of the schoolroom.  The master, who felt that everything would
depend upon his repressing the children's exuberant curiosity and
maintaining the discipline of the school for the next few minutes,
with supernatural gravity addressed the young girl in Spanish and
placed before her a few slight elementary tasks.  Perhaps the
strangeness of the language, perhaps the unwonted seriousness of
the master, perhaps also the impassibility of the young stranger
herself, all contributed to arrest the expanding smiles on little
faces, to check their wandering eyes, and hush their eager
whispers.  By degrees heads were again lowered over their tasks,
the scratching of pencils on slates, and the far-off rapping of
Woodpeckers again indicated the normal quiet of the schoolroom, and
the master knew he had triumphed, and the ordeal was past.

But not as regarded himself, for although the new pupil had
accepted his instructions with childlike submissiveness, and even
as it seemed to him with childlike comprehension, he could not help
noticing that she occasionally glanced at him with a demure
suggestion of some understanding between them, or as if they were
playing at master and pupil.  This naturally annoyed him and
perhaps added a severer dignity to his manner, which did not appear
to be effective, however, and which he fancied secretly amused her.
Was she covertly laughing at him?  Yet against this, once or twice,
as her big eyes wandered from her task over the room, they
encountered the curious gaze of the other children, and he fancied
he saw an exchange of that freemasonry of intelligence common to
children in the presence of their elders even when strangers to
each other.  He looked forward to recess to see how she would get
on with her companions; he knew that this would settle her status
in the school, and perhaps elsewhere.  Even her limited English
vocabulary would not in any way affect that instinctive, childlike
test of superiority, but he was surprised when the hour of recess
came and he had explained to her in Spanish and English its
purpose, to see her quietly put her arm around the waist of Matilda
Bromly, the tallest girl in the school, as the two whisked
themselves off to the playground.  She was a mere child after all!

Other things seemed to confirm this opinion.  Later, when the
children returned from recess, the young stranger had instantly
become a popular idol, and had evidently dispensed her favors and
patronage generously.  The elder Bromly girl was wearing her lace
veil, another had possession of her handkerchief, and a third
displayed the rose which had adorned her left ear, things of which
the master was obliged to take note with a view of returning them
to the prodigal little barbarian at the close of school.  Later he
was, however, much perplexed by the mysterious passage under the
desks of some unknown object which apparently was making the
circuit of the school.  With the annoyed consciousness that he was
perhaps unwittingly participating in some game, he finally "nailed
it" in the possession of Demosthenes Walker, aged six, to the
spontaneous outcry of "Cotched!" from the whole school.  When
produced from Master Walker's desk in company with a horned toad
and a piece of gingerbread, it was found to be Concha's white satin
slipper, the young girl herself, meanwhile, bending demurely over
her task with the bereft foot tucked up like a bird's under her
skirt.  The master, reserving reproof of this and other enormities
until later, contented himself with commanding the slipper to be
brought to him, when he took it to her with the satirical remark in
Spanish that the schoolroom was not a dressing room--Camara para
vestirse.  To his surprise, however, she smilingly held out the
tiny stockinged foot with a singular combination of the spoiled
child and the coquettish senorita, and remained with it extended as
if waiting for him to kneel and replace the slipper.  But he laid
it carefully on her desk.

"Put it on at once," he said in English.

There was no mistaking the tone of his voice, whatever his
language.  Concha darted a quick look at him like the momentary
resentment of an animal, but almost as quickly her eyes became
suffused, and with a hurried movement she put on the slipper.

"Please, sir, it dropped off and Jimmy Snyder passed it on," said a
small explanatory voice among the benches.

"Silence!" said the master.

Nevertheless, he was glad to see that the school had not noticed
the girl's familiarity even though they thought him "hard."  He was
not sure upon reflection but that he had magnified her offense and
had been unnecessarily severe, and this feeling was augmented by
his occasionally finding her looking at him with the melancholy,
wondering eyes of a chidden animal.  Later, as he was moving among
the desks' overlooking the tasks of the individual pupils, he
observed from a distance that her head was bent over her desk while
her lips were moving as if repeating to herself her lesson, and
that afterwards, with a swift look around the room to assure
herself that she was unobserved, she made a hurried sign of the
cross.  It occurred to him that this might have followed some
penitential prayer of the child, and remembering her tuition by the
padres it gave him an idea.  He dismissed school a few moments
earlier in order that he might speak to her alone before Mr. Hoover
arrived.

Referring to the slipper incident and receiving her assurances that
"she" (the slipper) was much too large and fell often "so," a fact
really established by demonstration, he seized his opportunity.
"But tell me, when you were with the padre and your slipper fell
off, you did not expect him to put it on for you?"

Concha looked at him coyly and then said triumphantly, "Ah, no! but
he was a priest, and you are a young caballero."

Yet even after this audacity Mr. Brooks found he could only
recommend to Mr. Hoover a change in the young girl's slippers, the
absence of the rose-pinned veil, and the substitution of a
sunbonnet.  For the rest he must trust to circumstances.  As Mr.
Hoover--who with large paternal optimism had professed to see
already an improvement in her--helped her into the saddle, the
schoolmaster could not help noticing that she had evidently
expected him to perform that act of courtesy, and that she looked
correspondingly reproachful.

"The holy fathers used sometimes to let me ride with them on their
mules," said Concha, leaning over her saddle towards the
schoolmaster.

"Eh, what, missy?" said the Protestant Mr. Hoover, pricking up his
ears.  "Now you just listen to Mr. Brooks's doctrines, and never
mind them Papists," he added as he rode away, with the firm
conviction that the master had already commenced the task of her
spiritual conversion.

The next day the master awoke to find his little school famous.
Whatever were the exaggerations or whatever the fancies carried
home to their parents by the children, the result was an
overwhelming interest in the proceedings and personnel of the
school by the whole district.  People had already called at the
Hoover ranch to see Mrs. Hoover's pretty adopted daughter.  The
master, on his way to the schoolroom that morning, had found a few
woodmen and charcoal burners lounging on the bridle path that led
from the main road.  Two or three parents accompanied their
children to school, asserting they had just dropped in to see how
"Aramanta" or "Tommy" were "gettin' on."  As the school began to
assemble several unfamiliar faces passed the windows or were boldly
flattened against the glass.  The little schoolhouse had not seen
such a gathering since it had been borrowed for a political meeting
in the previous autumn.  And the master noticed with some concern
that many of the faces were the same which he had seen uplifted to
the glittering periods of Colonel Starbottle, "the war horse of the
Democracy."

For he could not shut his eyes to the fact that they came from no
mere curiosity to see the novel and bizarre; no appreciation of
mere picturesqueness or beauty; and alas! from no enthusiasm for
the progression of education.  He knew the people among whom he had
lived, and he realized the fatal question of "color" had been
raised in some mysterious way by those Southwestern emigrants who
had carried into this "free state" their inherited prejudices.  A
few words convinced him that the unhappy children had variously
described the complexion of their new fellow pupil, and it was
believed that the "No'th'n" schoolmaster, aided and abetted by
"capital" in the person of Hiram Hoover, had introduced either a
"nigger wench," a "Chinese girl," or an "Injin baby" to the same
educational privileges as the "pure whites," and so contaminated
the sons of freemen in their very nests.  He was able to reassure
many that the child was of Spanish origin, but a majority preferred
the evidence of their own senses, and lingered for that purpose.
As the hour for her appearance drew near and passed, he was seized
with a sudden fear that she might not come, that Mr. Hoover had
been prevailed upon by his compatriots, in view of the excitement,
to withdraw her from the school.  But a faint cheer from the bridle
path satisfied him, and the next moment a little retinue swept by
the window, and he understood.  The Hoovers had evidently
determined to accent the Spanish character of their little charge.
Concha, with a black riding skirt over her flounces, was now
mounted on a handsome pinto mustang glittering with silver
trappings, accompanied by a vaquero in a velvet jacket, Mr. Hoover
bringing up the rear.  He, as he informed the master, had merely
come to show the way to the vaquero, who hereafter would always
accompany the child to and from school.  Whether or not he had been
induced to this display by the excitement did not transpire.
Enough that the effect was a success.  The riding skirt and her
mustang's fripperies had added to Concha's piquancy, and if her
origin was still doubted by some, the child herself was accepted
with enthusiasm.  The parents who were spectators were proud of
this distinguished accession to their children's playmates, and
when she dismounted amid the acclaim of her little companions, it
was with the aplomb of a queen.

The master alone foresaw trouble in this encouragement of her
precocious manner.  He received her quietly, and when she had
removed her riding skirt, glancing at her feet, said approvingly,
"I am glad to see you have changed your slippers; I hope they fit
you more firmly than the others."

The child shrugged her shoulders.  "Quien sabe.  But Pedro (the
vaquero) will help me now on my horse when he comes for me."

The master understood the characteristic non sequitur as an
allusion to his want of gallantry on the previous day, but took no
notice of it.  Nevertheless, he was pleased to see during the day
that she was paying more attention to her studies, although they
were generally rehearsed with the languid indifference to all
mental accomplishment which belonged to her race.  Once he thought
to stimulate her activity through her personal vanity.

"Why can you not learn as quickly as Matilda Bromly?  She is only
two years older than you," he suggested.

"Ah!  Mother of God!--why does she then try to wear roses like me?
And with that hair.  It becomes her not."

The master became thus aware for the first time that the elder
Bromly girl, in "the sincerest form of flattery" to her idol, was
wearing a yellow rose in her tawny locks, and, further, that Master
Bromly with exquisite humor had burlesqued his sister's imitation
with a very small carrot stuck above his left ear.  This the master
promptly removed, adding an additional sum to the humorist's
already overflowing slate by way of penance, and returned to
Concha.  "But wouldn't you like to be as clever as she?--you can if
you will only learn."

"What for should I?  Look you; she has a devotion for the tall one--
the boy Brown!  Ah! I want him not."

Yet, notwithstanding this lack of noble ambition, Concha seemed to
have absorbed the "devotion" of the boys, big and little, and as
the master presently discovered even that of many of the adult
population.  There were always loungers on the bridle path at the
opening and closing of school, and the vaquero, who now always
accompanied her, became an object of envy.  Possibly this caused
the master to observe him closely.  He was tall and thin, with a
smooth complexionless face, but to the master's astonishment he had
the blue gray eye of the higher or Castilian type of native
Californian.  Further inquiry proved that he was a son of one of
the old impoverished Spanish grant holders whose leagues and cattle
had been mortgaged to the Hoovers, who now retained the son to
control the live stock "on shares."  "It looks kinder ez ef he
might hev an eye on that poorty little gal when she's an age to
marry," suggested a jealous swain.  For several days the girl
submitted to her school tasks with her usual languid indifference
and did not again transgress the ordinary rules.  Nor did Mr.
Brooks again refer to their hopeless conversation.  But one
afternoon he noticed that in the silence and preoccupation of the
class she had substituted another volume for her text-book and was
perusing it with the articulating lips of the unpracticed reader.
He demanded it from her.  With blazing eyes and both hands thrust
into her desk she refused and defied him.  Mr. Brooks slipped his
arms around her waist, quietly lifted her from the bench--feeling
her little teeth pierce the back of his hand as he did so, but
secured the book.  Two of the elder boys and girls had risen with
excited faces.

"Sit down!" said the master sternly.

They resumed their places with awed looks.  The master examined the
book.  It was a little Spanish prayer book.  "You were reading
this?" he said in her own tongue.

"Yes.  You shall not prevent me!" she burst out.  "Mother of God!
THEY will not let me read it at the ranch.  They would take it from
me.  And now YOU!"

"You may read it when and where you like, except when you should be
studying your lessons," returned the master quietly.  "You may keep
it here in your desk and peruse it at recess.  Come to me for it
then.  You are not fit to read it now."

The girl looked up with astounded eyes, which in the capriciousness
of her passionate nature the next moment filled with tears.  Then
dropping on her knees she caught the master's bitten hand and
covered it with tears and kisses.  But he quietly disengaged it and
lifted her to her seat.  There was a sniffling sound among the
benches, which, however, quickly subsided as he glanced around the
room, and the incident ended.

Regularly thereafter she took her prayer book back at recess and
disappeared with the children, finding, as he afterwards learned, a
seat under a secluded buckeye tree, where she was not disturbed by
them until her orisons were concluded.  The children must have
remained loyal to some command of hers, for the incident and this
custom were never told out of school, and the master did not
consider it his duty to inform Mr. or Mrs. Hoover.  If the child
could recognize some check--even if it were deemed by some a
superstitious one--over her capricious and precocious nature, why
should he interfere?

One day at recess he presently became conscious of the ceasing of
those small voices in the woods around the schoolhouse, which were
always as familiar and pleasant to him in his seclusion as the song
of their playfellows--the birds themselves.  The continued silence
at last awakened his concern and curiosity.  He had seldom intruded
upon or participated in their games or amusements, remembering when
a boy himself the heavy incompatibility of the best intentioned
adult intruder to even the most hypocritically polite child at such
a moment.  A sense of duty, however, impelled him to step beyond
the schoolhouse, where to his astonishment he found the adjacent
woods empty and soundless.  He was relieved, however, after
penetrating its recesses, to hear the distant sound of small
applause and the unmistakable choking gasps of Johnny Stidger's
pocket accordion.  Following the sound he came at last upon a
little hollow among the sycamores, where the children were disposed
in a ring, in the centre of which, with a handkerchief in each
hand, Concha the melancholy!--Concha the devout!--was dancing that
most extravagant feat of the fandango--the audacious sembicuaca!

Yet, in spite of her rude and uncertain accompaniment, she was
dancing it with a grace, precision, and lightness that was
wonderful; in spite of its doubtful poses and seductive languors
she was dancing it with the artless gayety and innocence--perhaps
from the suggestion of her tiny figure--of a mere child among an
audience of children.  Dancing it alone she assumed the parts of
the man and woman; advancing, retreating, coquetting, rejecting,
coyly bewitching, and at last yielding as lightly and as
immaterially as the flickering shadows that fell upon them from the
waving trees overhead.  The master was fascinated yet troubled.
What if there had been older spectators?  Would the parents take
the performance as innocently as the performer and her little
audience?  He thought it necessary later to suggest this delicately
to the child.  Her temper rose, her eyes flashed.

"Ah, the slipper, she is forbidden.  The prayer book--she must not.
The dance, it is not good.  Truly, there is nothing."

For several days she sulked.  One morning she did not come to
school, nor the next.  At the close of the third day the master
called at the Hoovers' ranch.

Mrs. Hoover met him embarrassedly in the hall.  "I was sayin' to
Hiram he ought to tell ye, but he didn't like to till it was
certain.  Concha's gone."

"Gone?" echoed the master.

"Yes.  Run off with Pedro.  Married to him yesterday by the Popish
priest at the mission."

"Married!  That child?"

"She wasn't no child, Mr. Brooks.  We were deceived.  My brother
was a fool, and men don't understand these things.  She was a grown
woman--accordin' to these folks' ways and ages--when she kem here.
And that's what bothered me."

There was a week's excitement at Chestnut Ridge, but it pleased the
master to know that while the children grieved for the loss of
Concha they never seemed to understand why she had gone.



DICK BOYLE'S BUSINESS CARD


The Sage Wood and Dead Flat stage coach was waiting before the
station.  The Pine Barrens mail wagon that connected with it was
long overdue, with its transfer passengers, and the station had
relapsed into listless expectation.  Even the humors of Dick Boyle,
the Chicago "drummer,"--and, so far, the solitary passenger--which
had diverted the waiting loungers, began to fail in effect, though
the cheerfulness of the humorist was unabated.  The ostlers had
slunk back into the stables, the station keeper and stage driver
had reduced their conversation to impatient monosyllables, as if
each thought the other responsible for the delay.  A solitary
Indian, wrapped in a commissary blanket and covered by a cast-off
tall hat, crouched against the wall of the station looking stolidly
at nothing.  The station itself, a long, rambling building
containing its entire accommodation for man and beast under one
monotonous, shed-like roof, offered nothing to attract the eye.
Still less the prospect, on the one side two miles of arid waste to
the stunted, far-spaced pines in the distance, known as the
"Barrens;" on the other an apparently limitless level with darker
patches of sage brush, like the scars of burnt-out fires.

Dick Boyle approached the motionless Indian as a possible relief.
"YOU don't seem to care much if school keeps or not, do you, Lo?"

The Indian, who had been half crouching on his upturned soles, here
straightened himself with a lithe, animal-like movement, and stood
up.  Boyle took hold of a corner of his blanket and examined it
critically.

"Gov'ment ain't pampering you with A1 goods, Lo!  I reckon the
agent charged 'em four dollars for that.  Our firm could have
delivered them to you for 2 dols. 37 cents, and thrown in a box of
beads in the bargain.  Suthin like this!"  He took from his pocket
a small box containing a gaudy bead necklace and held it up before
the Indian.

The savage, who had regarded him--or rather looked beyond him--with
the tolerating indifference of one interrupted by a frisking
inferior animal, here suddenly changed his expression.  A look of
childish eagerness came into his gloomy face; he reached out his
hand for the trinket.

"Hol' on!" said Boyle, hesitating for a moment; then he suddenly
ejaculated, "Well! take it, and one o' these," and drew a business
card from his pocket, which he stuck in the band of the battered
tall hat of the aborigine.  "There! show that to your friends, and
when you're wantin' anything in our line"--

The interrupting roar of laughter, coming from the box seat of the
coach, was probably what Boyle was expecting, for he turned away
demurely and walked towards the coach.  "All right, boys! I've
squared the noble red man, and the star of empire is taking its
westward way.  And I reckon our firm will do the 'Great Father'
business for him at about half the price that it is done in
Washington."

But at this point the ostlers came hurrying out of the stables.
"She's comin'," said one.  "That's her dust just behind the Lone
Pine--and by the way she's racin' I reckon she's comin' in mighty
light."

"That's so," said the mail agent, standing up on the box seat for a
better view, "but darned ef I kin see any outside passengers.  I
reckon we haven't waited for much."

Indeed, as the galloping horses of the incoming vehicle pulled out
of the hanging dust in the distance, the solitary driver could be
seen urging on his team.  In a few moments more they had halted at
the lower end of the station.

"Wonder what's up!" said the mail agent.

"Nothin'!  Only a big Injin scare at Pine Barrens," said one of the
ostlers.  "Injins doin' ghost dancin'--or suthin like that--and the
passengers just skunked out and went on by the other line.  Thar's
only one ez dar come--and she's a lady."

"A lady?" echoed Boyle.

"Yes," answered the driver, taking a deliberate survey of a tall,
graceful girl who, waiving the gallant assistance of the station
keeper, had leaped unaided from the vehicle.  "A lady--and the fort
commandant's darter at that!  She's clar grit, you bet--a chip o'
the old block.  And all this means, sonny, that you're to give up
that box seat to HER.  Miss Julia Cantire don't take anythin' less
when I'm around."

The young lady was already walking, directly and composedly,
towards the waiting coach--erect, self-contained, well gloved and
booted, and clothed, even in her dust cloak and cape of plain ashen
merino, with the unmistakable panoply of taste and superiority.  A
good-sized aquiline nose, which made her handsome mouth look
smaller; gray eyes, with an occasional humid yellow sparkle in
their depths; brown penciled eyebrows, and brown tendrils of hair,
all seemed to Boyle to be charmingly framed in by the silver gray
veil twisted around her neck and under her oval chin.  In her sober
tints she appeared to him to have evoked a harmony even out of the
dreadful dust around them.  What HE appeared to her was not so
plain; she looked him over--he was rather short; through him--he
was easily penetrable; and then her eyes rested with a frank
recognition on the driver.

"Good-morning, Mr. Foster," she said, with a smile.

"Mornin', miss.  I hear they're havin' an Injin scare over at the
Barrens.  I reckon them men must feel mighty mean at bein' stumped
by a lady!"

"I don't think they believed I would go, and some of them had their
wives with them," returned the young lady indifferently; "besides,
they are Eastern people, who don't know Indians as well as WE do,
Mr. Foster."

The driver blushed with pleasure at the association.  "Yes, ma'am,"
he laughed, "I reckon the sight of even old 'Fleas in the Blanket'
over there," pointing to the Indian, who was walking stolidly away
from the station, "would frighten 'em out o' their boots.  And yet
he's got inside his hat the business card o' this gentleman--Mr.
Dick Boyle, traveling for the big firm o' Fletcher & Co. of
Chicago"--he interpolated, rising suddenly to the formal heights of
polite introduction; "so it sorter looks ez ef any SKELPIN' was to
be done it might be the other way round, ha! ha!"

Miss Cantire accepted the introduction and the joke with polite but
cool abstraction, and climbed lightly into the box seat as the mail
bags and a quantity of luggage--evidently belonging to the evading
passengers--were quickly transferred to the coach.  But for his
fair companion, the driver would probably have given profane voice
to his conviction that his vehicle was used as a "d----d baggage
truck," but he only smiled grimly, gathered up his reins, and
flicked his whip.  The coach plunged forward into the dust, which
instantly rose around it, and made it thereafter a mere cloud in
the distance.  Some of that dust for a moment overtook and hid the
Indian, walking stolidly in its track, but he emerged from it at an
angle, with a quickened pace and a peculiar halting trot.  Yet that
trot was so well sustained that in an hour he had reached a fringe
of rocks and low bushes hitherto invisible through the
irregularities of the apparently level plain, into which he plunged
and disappeared.  The dust cloud which indicated the coach--
probably owing to these same irregularities--had long since been
lost on the visible horizon.

The fringe which received him was really the rim of a depression
quite concealed from the surface of the plain,--which it followed
for some miles through a tangled trough-like bottom of low trees
and underbrush,--and was a natural cover for wolves, coyotes, and
occasionally bears, whose half-human footprint might have deceived
a stranger.  This did not, however, divert the Indian, who,
trotting still doggedly on, paused only to examine another
footprint--much more frequent--the smooth, inward-toed track of
moccasins.  The thicket grew more dense and difficult as he went
on, yet he seemed to glide through its density and darkness--an
obscurity that now seemed to be stirred by other moving objects,
dimly seen, and as uncertain and intangible as sunlit leaves
thrilled by the wind, yet bearing a strange resemblance to human
figures!  Pressing a few yards further, he himself presently became
a part of this shadowy procession, which on closer scrutiny
revealed itself as a single file of Indians, following each other
in the same tireless trot.  The woods and underbrush were full of
them; all moving on, as he had moved, in a line parallel with the
vanishing coach.  Sometimes through the openings a bared painted
limb, a crest of feathers, or a strip of gaudy blanket was visible,
but nothing more.  And yet only a few hundred yards away stretched
the dusky, silent plain--vacant of sound or motion!


Meanwhile the Sage Wood and Pine Barren stage coach, profoundly
oblivious--after the manner of all human invention--of everything
but its regular function, toiled dustily out of the higher plain
and began the grateful descent of a wooded canyon, which was, in
fact, the culminating point of the depression, just described,
along which the shadowy procession was slowly advancing, hardly a
mile in the rear and flank of the vehicle.  Miss Julia Cantire, who
had faced the dust volleys of the plain unflinchingly, as became a
soldier's daughter, here stood upright and shook herself--her
pretty head and figure emerging like a goddess from the enveloping
silver cloud.  At least Mr. Boyle, relegated to the back seat,
thought so--although her conversation and attentions had been
chiefly directed to the driver and mail agent.  Once, when he had
light-heartedly addressed a remark to her, it had been received
with a distinct but unpromising politeness that had made him desist
from further attempts, yet without abatement of his cheerfulness,
or resentment of the evident amusement his two male companions got
out of his "snub."  Indeed, it is to be feared that Miss Julia had
certain prejudices of position, and may have thought that a
"drummer"--or commercial traveler--was no more fitting company for
the daughter of a major than an ordinary peddler.  But it was more
probable that Mr. Boyle's reputation as a humorist--a teller of
funny stories and a boon companion of men--was inconsistent with
the feminine ideal of high and exalted manhood.  The man who "sets
the table in a roar" is apt to be secretly detested by the sex, to
say nothing of the other obvious reasons why Juliets do not like
Mercutios!

For some such cause as this Dick Boyle was obliged to amuse himself
silently, alone on the back seat, with those liberal powers of
observation which nature had given him.  On entering the canyon he
had noticed the devious route the coach had taken to reach it, and
had already invented an improved route which should enter the
depression at the point where the Indians had already (unknown to
him) plunged into it, and had conceived a road through the tangled
brush that would shorten the distance by some miles.  He had
figured it out, and believed that it "would pay."  But by this time
they were beginning the somewhat steep and difficult ascent of the
canyon on the other side.  The vehicle had not crawled many yards
before it stopped.  Dick Boyle glanced around.  Miss Cantire was
getting down.  She had expressed a wish to walk the rest of the
ascent, and the coach was to wait for her at the top.  Foster had
effusively begged her to take her own time--"there was no hurry!"
Boyle glanced a little longingly after her graceful figure,
released from her cramped position on the box, as it flitted
youthfully in and out of the wayside trees; he would like to have
joined her in the woodland ramble, but even his good nature was not
proof against her indifference.  At a turn in the road they lost
sight of her, and, as the driver and mail agent were deep in a
discussion about the indistinct track, Boyle lapsed into his silent
study of the country.  Suddenly he uttered a slight exclamation,
and quietly slipped from the back of the toiling coach to the
ground.  The action was, however, quickly noted by the driver, who
promptly put his foot on the brake and pulled up.  "Wot's up now?"
he growled.

Boyle did not reply, but ran back a few steps and began searching
eagerly on the ground.

"Lost suthin?" asked Foster.

"Found something," said Boyle, picking up a small object.  "Look at
that!  D----d if it isn't the card I gave that Indian four hours
ago at the station!"  He held up the card.

"Look yer, sonny," retorted Foster gravely, "ef yer wantin' to get
out and hang round Miss Cantire, why don't yer say so at oncet?
That story won't wash!"

"Fact!" continued Boyle eagerly.  "It's the same card I stuck in
his hat--there's the greasy mark in the corner.  How the devil did
it--how did HE get here?"

"Better ax him," said Foster grimly, "ef he's anywhere round."

"But I say, Foster, I don't like the look of this at all!  Miss
Cantire is alone, and"--

But a burst of laughter from Foster and the mail agent interrupted
him.  "That's so," said Foster.  "That's your best holt!  Keep it
up!  You jest tell her that!  Say thar's another Injin skeer on;
that that thar bloodthirsty ole 'Fleas in His Blanket' is on the
warpath, and you're goin' to shed the last drop o' your blood
defendin' her!  That'll fetch her, and she ain't bin treatin' you
well!  G'lang!"

The horses started forward under Foster's whip, leaving Boyle
standing there, half inclined to join in the laugh against himself,
and yet impelled by some strange instinct to take a more serious
view of his discovery.  There was no doubt it was the same card he
had given to the Indian.  True, that Indian might have given it to
another--yet by what agency had it been brought there faster than
the coach traveled on the same road, and yet invisibly to them?
For an instant the humorous idea of literally accepting Foster's
challenge, and communicating his discovery to Miss Cantire,
occurred to him; he could have made a funny story out of it, and
could have amused any other girl with it, but he would not force
himself upon her, and again doubted if the discovery were a matter
of amusement.  If it were really serious, why should he alarm her?
He resolved, however, to remain on the road, and within convenient
distance of her, until she returned to the coach; she could not be
far away.  With this purpose he walked slowly on, halting
occasionally to look behind.

Meantime the coach continued its difficult ascent, a difficulty
made greater by the singular nervousness of the horses, that only
with great trouble and some objurgation from the driver could be
prevented from shying from the regular track.

"Now, wot's gone o' them critters?" said the irate Foster,
straining at the reins until he seemed to lift the leader back into
the track again.

"Looks as ef they smelt suthin--b'ar or Injin ponies," suggested
the mail agent.

"Injin ponies?" repeated Foster scornfully.

"Fac'!  Injin ponies set a hoss crazy--jest as wild hosses would!"

"Whar's yer Injin ponies?" demanded Foster incredulously.

"Dunno," said the mail agent simply.

But here the horses again swerved so madly from some point of the
thicket beside them that the coach completely left the track on the
right.  Luckily it was a disused trail and the ground fairly good,
and Foster gave them their heads, satisfied of his ability to
regain the regular road when necessary.  It took some moments for
him to recover complete control of the frightened animals, and then
their nervousness having abated with their distance from the
thicket, and the trail being less steep though more winding than
the regular road, he concluded to keep it until he got to the
summit, when he would regain the highway once more and await his
passengers.  Having done this, the two men stood up on the box, and
with an anxiety they tried to conceal from each other looked down
the canyon for the lagging pedestrians.

"I hope Miss Cantire hasn't been stampeded from the track by any
skeer like that," said the mail agent dubiously.

"Not she!  She's got too much grit and sabe for that, unless that
drummer hez caught up with her and unloaded his yarn about that
kyard."

They were the last words the men spoke.  For two rifle shots
cracked from the thicket beside the road; two shots aimed with such
deliberateness and precision that the two men, mortally stricken,
collapsed where they stood, hanging for a brief moment over the
dashboard before they rolled over on the horses' backs.  Nor did
they remain there long, for the next moment they were seized by
half a dozen shadowy figures and with the horses and their cut
traces dragged into the thicket.  A half dozen and then a dozen
other shadows flitted and swarmed over, in, and through the coach,
reinforced by still more, until the whole vehicle seemed to be
possessed, covered, and hidden by them, swaying and moving with
their weight, like helpless carrion beneath a pack of ravenous
wolves.  Yet even while this seething congregation was at its
greatest, at some unknown signal it as suddenly dispersed,
vanished, and disappeared, leaving the coach empty--vacant and void
of all that had given it life, weight, animation, and purpose--a
mere skeleton on the roadside.  The afternoon wind blew through its
open doors and ravaged rack and box as if it had been the wreck of
weeks instead of minutes, and the level rays of the setting sun
flashed and blazed into its windows as though fire had been added
to the ruin.  But even this presently faded, leaving the abandoned
coach a rigid, lifeless spectre on the twilight plain.

An hour later there was the sound of hurrying hoofs and jingling
accoutrements, and out of the plain swept a squad of cavalrymen
bearing down upon the deserted vehicle.  For a few moments they,
too, seemed to surround and possess it, even as the other shadows
had done, penetrating the woods and thicket beside it.  And then as
suddenly at some signal they swept forward furiously in the track
of the destroying shadows.


Miss Cantire took full advantage of the suggestion "not to hurry"
in her walk, with certain feminine ideas of its latitude.  She
gathered a few wild flowers and some berries in the underwood,
inspected some birds' nests with a healthy youthful curiosity, and
even took the opportunity of arranging some moist tendrils of her
silky hair with something she took from the small reticule that
hung coquettishly from her girdle.  It was, indeed, some twenty
minutes before she emerged into the road again; the vehicle had
evidently disappeared in a turn of the long, winding ascent, but
just ahead of her was that dreadful man, the "Chicago drummer."
She was not vain, but she made no doubt that he was waiting there
for her.  There was no avoiding him, but his companionship could be
made a brief one.  She began to walk with ostentatious swiftness.

Boyle, whose concern for her safety was secretly relieved at this,
began to walk forward briskly too without looking around.  Miss
Cantire was not prepared for this; it looked so ridiculously as if
she were chasing him!  She hesitated slightly, but now as she was
nearly abreast of him she was obliged to keep on.

"I think you do well to hurry, Miss Cantire," he said as she
passed.  "I've lost sight of the coach for some time, and I dare
say they're already waiting for us at the summit."

Miss Cantire did not like this any better.  To go on beside this
dreadful man, scrambling breathlessly after the stage--for all the
world like an absorbed and sentimentally belated pair of
picnickers--was really TOO much.  "Perhaps if YOU ran on and told
them I was coming as fast as I could," she suggested tentatively.

"It would be as much as my life is worth to appear before Foster
without you," he said laughingly.  "You've only got to hurry on a
little faster."

But the young lady resented this being driven by a "drummer."  She
began to lag, depressing her pretty brows ominously.

"Let me carry your flowers," said Boyle.  He had noticed that she
was finding some difficulty in holding up her skirt and the nosegay
at the same time.

"No! No!" she said in hurried horror at this new suggestion of
their companionship.  "Thank you very much--but they're really not
worth keeping--I am going to throw them away.  There!" she added,
tossing them impatiently in the dust.

But she had not reckoned on Boyle's perfect good-humor.  That
gentle idiot stooped down, actually gathered them up again, and was
following!  She hurried on; if she could only get to the coach
first, ignoring him!  But a vulgar man like that would be sure to
hand them to her with some joke!  Then she lagged again--she was
getting tired, and she could see no sign of the coach.  The
drummer, too, was also lagging behind--at a respectful distance,
like a groom or one of her father's troopers.  Nevertheless this
did not put her in a much better humor, and halting until he came
abreast of her, she said impatiently: "I don't see why Mr. Foster
should think it necessary to send any one to look after me."

"He didn't," returned Boyle simply.  "I got down to pick up
something."

"To pick up something?" she returned incredulously.

"Yes.  THAT."  He held out the card.  "It's the card of our firm."

Miss Cantire smiled ironically.  "You are certainly devoted to your
business."

"Well, yes," returned Boyle good-humoredly.  "You see I reckon it
don't pay to do anything halfway.  And whatever I do, I mean to
keep my eyes about me."  In spite of her prejudice, Miss Cantire
could see that these necessary organs, if rather flippant, were
honest.  "Yes, I suppose there isn't much on that I don't take in.
Why now, Miss Cantire, there's that fancy dust cloak you're
wearing--it isn't in our line of goods--nor in anybody's line west
of Chicago; it came from Boston or New York, and was made for home
consumption!  But your hat--and mighty pretty it is too, as YOU'VE
fixed it up--is only regular Dunstable stock, which we could put
down at Pine Barrens for four and a half cents a piece, net.  Yet I
suppose you paid nearly twenty-five cents for it at the Agency!"

Oddly enough this cool appraisement of her costume did not incense
the young lady as it ought to have done.  On the contrary, for some
occult feminine reason, it amused and interested her.  It would be
such a good story to tell her friends of a "drummer's" idea of
gallantry; and to tease the flirtatious young West Pointer who had
just joined.  And the appraisement was truthful--Major Cantire had
only his pay--and Miss Cantire had been obliged to select that hat
from the government stores.

"Are you in the habit of giving this information to ladies you meet
in traveling?" she asked.

"Well, no!" answered Boyle--"for that's just where you have to keep
your eyes open.  Most of 'em wouldn't like it, and it's no use
aggravating a possible customer.  But you are not that kind."

Miss Cantire was silent.  She knew she was not of that kind, but
she did not require his vulgar indorsement.  She pushed on for some
moments alone, when suddenly he hailed her.  She turned
impatiently.  He was carefully examining the road on both sides.

"We have either lost our way," he said, rejoining her, "or the
coach has turned off somewhere.  These tracks are not fresh, and as
they are all going the same way, they were made by the up coach
last night.  They're not OUR tracks; I thought it strange we hadn't
sighted the coach by this time."

"And then"--said Miss Cantire impatiently.

"We must turn back until we find them again."

The young lady frowned.  "Why not keep on until we get to the top?"
she said pettishly.  "I'm sure I shall."  She stopped suddenly as
she caught sight of his grave face and keen, observant eyes.  "Why
can't we go on as we are?"

"Because we are expected to come back to the COACH--and not to the
summit merely.  These are the 'orders,' and you know you are a
soldier's daughter!"  He laughed as he spoke, but there was a
certain quiet deliberation in his manner that impressed her.  When
he added, after a pause, "We must go back and find where the tracks
turned off," she obeyed without a word.

They walked for some time, eagerly searching for signs of the
missing vehicle.  A curious interest and a new reliance in Boyle's
judgment obliterated her previous annoyance, and made her more
natural.  She ran ahead of him with youthful eagerness, examining
the ground, following a false clue with great animation, and
confessing her defeat with a charming laugh.  And it was she who,
after retracing their steps for ten minutes, found the diverging
track with a girlish cry of triumph.  Boyle, who had followed her
movements quite as interestedly as her discovery, looked a little
grave as he noticed the deep indentations made by the struggling
horses.  Miss Cantire detected the change in his face; ten minutes
before she would never have observed it.  "I suppose we had better
follow the new track," she said inquiringly, as he seemed to
hesitate.

"Certainly," he said quickly, as if coming to a prompt decision.
"That is safest."

"What do you think has happened?  The ground looks very much cut
up," she said in a confidential tone, as new to her as her previous
observation of him.

"A horse has probably stumbled and they've taken the old trail as
less difficult," said Boyle promptly.  In his heart he did not
believe it, yet he knew that if anything serious had threatened
them the coach would have waited in the road.  "It's an easier
trail for us, though I suppose it's a little longer," he added
presently.

"You take everything so good-humoredly, Mr. Boyle," she said after
a pause.

"It's the way to do business, Miss Cantire," he said.  "A man in my
line has to cultivate it."

She wished he hadn't said that, but, nevertheless, she returned a
little archly: "But you haven't any business with the stage company
nor with ME, although I admit I intend to get my Dunstable
hereafter from your firm at the wholesale prices."

Before he could reply, the detonation of two gunshots, softened by
distance, floated down from the ridge above them.  "There!" said
Miss Cantire eagerly.  "Do you hear that?"

His face was turned towards the distant ridge, but really that she
might not question his eyes.  She continued with animation: "That's
from the coach--to guide us--don't you see?"

"Yes," he returned, with a quick laugh, "and it says hurry up--
mighty quick--we're tired waiting--so we'd better push on."

"Why don't you answer back with your revolver?" she asked.

"Haven't got one," he said.

"Haven't got one?" she repeated in genuine surprise.  "I thought
you gentlemen who are traveling always carried one.  Perhaps it's
inconsistent with your gospel of good-humor."

"That's just it, Miss Cantire," he said with a laugh.  "You've hit
it."

"Why," she said hesitatingly, "even I have a derringer--a very
little one, you know, which I carry in my reticule.  Captain
Richards gave it to me."  She opened her reticule and showed a
pretty ivory-handled pistol.  The look of joyful surprise which
came into his face changed quickly as she cocked it and lifted it
into the air.  He seized her arm quickly.

"No, please don't, you might want it--I mean the report won't carry
far enough.  It's a very useful little thing, for all that, but
it's only effective at close quarters."  He kept the pistol in his
hand as they walked on.  But Miss Cantire noticed this, also his
evident satisfaction when she had at first produced it, and his
concern when she was about to discharge it uselessly.  She was a
clever girl, and a frank one to those she was inclined to trust.
And she began to trust this stranger.  A smile stole along her oval
cheek.

"I really believe you're afraid of something, Mr. Boyle," she said,
without looking up.  "What is it?  You haven't got that Indian
scare too?"

Boyle had no false shame.  "I think I have," he returned, with
equal frankness.  "You see, I don't understand Indians as well as
you--and Foster."

"Well, you take my word and Foster's that there is not the least
danger from them.  About here they are merely grown-up children,
cruel and destructive as most children are; but they know their
masters by this time, and the old days of promiscuous scalping are
over.  The only other childish propensity they keep is thieving.
Even then they only steal what they actually want,--horses, guns,
and powder.  A coach can go where an ammunition or an emigrant
wagon can't.  So your trunk of samples is quite safe with Foster."

Boyle did not think it necessary to protest.  Perhaps he was
thinking of something else.

"I've a mind," she went on slyly, "to tell you something more.
Confidence for confidence: as you've told me YOUR trade secrets,
I'll tell you one of OURS.  Before we left Pine Barrens, my father
ordered a small escort of cavalrymen to be in readiness to join
that coach if the scouts, who were watching, thought it necessary.
So, you see, I'm something of a fraud as regards my reputation for
courage."

"That doesn't follow," said Boyle admiringly, "for your father must
have thought there was some danger, or he wouldn't have taken that
precaution."

"Oh, it wasn't for me," said the young girl quickly.

"Not for you?" repeated Boyle.

Miss Cantire stopped short, with a pretty flush of color and an
adorable laugh.  "There! I've done it, so I might as well tell the
whole story.  But I can trust you, Mr. Boyle."  (She faced him with
clear, penetrating eyes.)  "Well," she laughed again, "you might
have noticed that we had a quantity of baggage of passengers who
didn't go?  Well, those passengers never intended to go, and hadn't
any baggage!  Do you understand?  Those innocent-looking heavy
trunks contained carbines and cartridges from our post for Fort
Taylor"--she made him a mischievous curtsy--"under MY charge!
And," she added, enjoying his astonishment, "as you saw, I brought
them through safe to the station, and had them transferred to this
coach with less fuss and trouble than a commissary transport and
escort would have made."

"And they were in THIS coach?" repeated Boyle abstractedly.

"Were?  They ARE!" said Miss Cantire.

"Then the sooner I get you back to your treasure again the better,"
said Boyle with a laugh.  "Does Foster know it?"

"Of course not!  Do you suppose I'd tell it to anybody but a
stranger to the place?  Perhaps, like you, I know when and to whom
to impart information," she said mischievously.

Whatever was in Boyle's mind he had space for profound and admiring
astonishment of the young lady before him.  The girlish simplicity
and trustfulness of her revelation seemed as inconsistent with his
previous impression of her reserve and independence as her girlish
reasoning and manner was now delightfully at variance with her
tallness, her aquiline nose, and her erect figure.  Mr. Boyle, like
most short men, was apt to overestimate the qualities of size.

They walked on for some moments in silence.  The ascent was
comparatively easy but devious, and Boyle could see that this new
detour would take them still some time to reach the summit.  Miss
Cantire at last voiced the thought in his own mind.  "I wonder what
induced them to turn off here? and if you hadn't been so clever as
to discover their tracks, how could we have found them?  But," she
added, with feminine logic, "that, of course, is why they fired
those shots."

Boyle remembered, however, that the shots came from another
direction, but did not correct her conclusion.  Nevertheless he
said lightly: "Perhaps even Foster might have had an Indian scare."

"He ought to know 'friendlies' or 'government reservation men'
better by this time," said Miss Cantire; "however, there is
something in that.  Do you know," she added with a laugh, "though I
haven't your keen eyes I'm gifted with a keen scent, and once or
twice I've thought I SMELT Indians--that peculiar odor of their
camps, which is unlike anything else, and which one detects even in
their ponies.  I used to notice it when I rode one; no amount of
grooming could take it away."

"I don't suppose that the intensity or degree of this odor would
give you any idea of the hostile or friendly feelings of the
Indians towards you?" asked Boyle grimly.

Although the remark was consistent with Boyle's objectionable
reputation as a humorist, Miss Cantire deigned to receive it with a
smile, at which Boyle, who was a little relieved by their security
so far, and their nearness to their journey's end, developed
further ingenious trifling until, at the end of an hour, they stood
upon the plain again.

There was no sign of the coach, but its fresh track was visible
leading along the bank of the ravine towards the intersection of
the road they should have come by, and to which the coach had
indubitably returned.  Mr. Boyle drew a long breath.  They were
comparatively safe from any invisible attack now.  At the end of
ten minutes Miss Cantire, from her superior height, detected the
top of the missing vehicle appearing above the stunted bushes at
the junction of the highway.

"Would you mind throwing those old flowers away now?" she said,
glancing at the spoils which Boyle still carried.

"Why?" he asked.

"Oh, they're too ridiculous.  Please do."

"May I keep one?" he asked, with the first intonation of masculine
weakness in his voice.

"If you like," she said, a little coldly.

Boyle selected a small spray of myrtle and cast the other flowers
obediently aside.

"Dear me, how ridiculous!" she said.

"What is ridiculous?" he asked, lifting his eyes to hers with a
slight color.  But he saw that she was straining her eyes in the
distance.

"Why, there don't seem to be any horses to the coach!"

He looked.  Through a gap in the furze he could see the vehicle now
quite distinctly, standing empty, horseless and alone.  He glanced
hurriedly around them; on the one side a few rocks protected them
from the tangled rim of the ridge; on the other stretched the
plain.  "Sit down, don't move until I return," he said quickly.
"Take that."  He handed back her pistol, and ran quickly to the
coach.  It was no illusion; there it stood vacant, abandoned, its
dropped pole and cut traces showing too plainly the fearful haste
of its desertion!  A light step behind him made him turn.  It was
Miss Cantire, pink and breathless, carrying the cocked derringer in
her hand.  "How foolish of you--without a weapon," she gasped in
explanation.

Then they both stared at the coach, the empty plain, and at each
other!  After their tedious ascent, their long detour, their
protracted expectancy and their eager curiosity, there was such a
suggestion of hideous mockery in this vacant, useless vehicle--
apparently left to them in what seemed their utter abandonment--
that it instinctively affected them alike.  And as I am writing of
human nature I am compelled to say that they both burst into a fit
of laughter that for the moment stopped all other expression!

"It was so kind of them to leave the coach," said Miss Cantire
faintly, as she took her handkerchief from her wet and mirthful
eyes.  "But what made them run away?"

Boyle did not reply; he was eagerly examining the coach.  In that
brief hour and a half the dust of the plain had blown thick upon
it, and covered any foul stain or blot that might have suggested
the awful truth.  Even the soft imprint of the Indians' moccasined
feet had been trampled out by the later horse hoofs of the
cavalrymen.  It was these that first attracted Boyle's attention,
but he thought them the marks made by the plunging of the released
coach horses.

Not so his companion!  She was examining them more closely, and
suddenly lifted her bright, animated face.  "Look!" she said; "our
men have been here, and have had a hand in this--whatever it is."

"Our men?" repeated Boyle blankly.

"Yes!--troopers from the post--the escort I told you of.  These are
the prints of the regulation cavalry horseshoe--not of Foster's
team, nor of Indian ponies, who never have any!  Don't you see?"
she went on eagerly; "our men have got wind of something and have
galloped down here--along the ridge--see!" she went on, pointing to
the hoof prints coming from the plain.  "They've anticipated some
Indian attack and secured everything."

"But if they were the same escort you spoke of, they must have
known you were here, and have"--he was about to say "abandoned
you," but checked himself, remembering they were her father's
soldiers.

"They knew I could take care of myself, and wouldn't stand in the
way of their duty," said the young girl, anticipating him with
quick professional pride that seemed to fit her aquiline nose and
tall figure.  "And if they knew that," she added, softening with a
mischievous smile, "they also knew, of course, that I was protected
by a gallant stranger vouched for by Mr. Foster!  No!" she added,
with a certain blind, devoted confidence, which Boyle noticed with
a slight wince that she had never shown before, "it's all right!
and 'by orders,' Mr. Boyle, and when they've done their work
they'll be back."

But Boyle's masculine common sense was, perhaps, safer than Miss
Cantire's feminine faith and inherited discipline, for in an
instant he suddenly comprehended the actual truth!  The Indians had
been there FIRST; THEY had despoiled the coach and got off safely
with their booty and prisoners on the approach of the escort, who
were now naturally pursuing them with a fury aroused by the belief
that their commander's daughter was one of their prisoners.  This
conviction was a dreadful one, yet a relief as far as the young
girl was concerned.  But should he tell her?  No!  Better that she
should keep her calm faith in the triumphant promptness of the
soldiers--and their speedy return.

"I dare say you are right," he said cheerfully, "and let us be
thankful that in the empty coach you'll have at least a half-
civilized shelter until they return.  Meantime I'll go and
reconnoitre a little."

"I will go with you," she said.

But Boyle pointed out to her so strongly the necessity of her
remaining to wait for the return of the soldiers that, being also
fagged out by her long climb, she obediently consented, while he,
even with his inspiration of the truth, did not believe in the
return of the despoilers, and knew she would be safe.

He made his way to the nearest thicket, where he rightly believed
the ambush had been prepared, and to which undoubtedly they first
retreated with their booty.  He expected to find some signs or
traces of their spoil which in their haste they had to abandon.  He
was more successful than he anticipated.  A few steps into the
thicket brought him full upon a realization of more than his worst
convictions--the dead body of Foster!  Near it lay the body of the
mail agent.  Both had been evidently dragged into the thicket from
where they fell, scalped and half stripped.  There was no evidence
of any later struggle; they must have been dead when they were
brought there.

Boyle was neither a hard-hearted nor an unduly sensitive man.  His
vocation had brought him peril enough by land and water; he had
often rendered valuable assistance to others, his sympathy never
confusing his directness and common sense.  He was sorry for these
two men, and would have fought to save them.  But he had no
imaginative ideas of death.  And his keen perception of the truth
was consequently sensitively alive only to that grotesqueness of
aspect which too often the hapless victims of violence are apt to
assume.  He saw no agony in the vacant eyes of the two men lying on
their backs in apparently the complacent abandonment of
drunkenness, which was further simulated by their tumbled and
disordered hair matted by coagulated blood, which, however, had
lost its sanguine color.  He thought only of the unsuspecting girl
sitting in the lonely coach, and hurriedly dragged them further
into the bushes.  In doing this he discovered a loaded revolver and
a flask of spirits which had been lying under them, and promptly
secured them.  A few paces away lay the coveted trunks of arms and
ammunition, their lids wrenched off and their contents gone.  He
noticed with a grim smile that his own trunks of samples had shared
a like fate, but was delighted to find that while the brighter
trifles had attracted the Indians' childish cupidity they had
overlooked a heavy black merino shawl of a cheap but serviceable
quality.  It would help to protect Miss Cantire from the evening
wind, which was already rising over the chill and stark plain.  It
also occurred to him that she would need water after her parched
journey, and he resolved to look for a spring, being rewarded at
last by a trickling rill near the ambush camp.  But he had no
utensil except the spirit flask, which he finally emptied of its
contents and replaced with the pure water--a heroic sacrifice to a
traveler who knew the comfort of a stimulant.  He retraced his
steps, and was just emerging from the thicket when his quick eye
caught sight of a moving shadow before him close to the ground,
which set the hot blood coursing through his veins.

It was the figure of an Indian crawling on his hands and knees
towards the coach, scarcely forty yards away.  For the first time
that afternoon Boyle's calm good-humor was overswept by a blind and
furious rage.  Yet even then he was sane enough to remember that a
pistol shot would alarm the girl, and to keep that weapon as a last
resource.  For an instant he crept forward as silently and
stealthily as the savage, and then, with a sudden bound, leaped
upon him, driving his head and shoulders down against the rocks
before he could utter a cry, and sending the scalping knife he was
carrying between his teeth flying with the shock from his battered
jaw.  Boyle seized it--his knee still in the man's back--but the
prostrate body never moved beyond a slight contraction of the lower
limbs.  The shock had broken the Indian's neck.  He turned the
inert man on his back--the head hung loosely on the side.  But in
that brief instant Boyle had recognized the "friendly" Indian of
the station to whom he had given the card.

He rose dizzily to his feet.  The whole action had passed in a few
seconds of time, and had not even been noticed by the sole occupant
of the coach.  He mechanically cocked his revolver, but the man
beneath him never moved again.  Neither was there any sign of
flight or reinforcement from the thicket around him.  Again the
whole truth flashed upon him.  This spy and traitor had been left
behind by the marauders to return to the station and avert
suspicion; he had been lurking around, but being without firearms,
had not dared to attack the pair together.

It was a moment or two before Boyle regained his usual elastic
good-humor.  Then he coolly returned to the spring, "washed himself
of the Indian," as he grimly expressed it to himself, brushed his
clothes, picked up the shawl and flask, and returned to the coach.
It was getting dark now, but the glow of the western sky shone
unimpeded through the windows, and the silence gave him a great
fear.  He was relieved, however, on opening the door, to find Miss
Cantire sitting stiffly in a corner.  "I am sorry I was so long,"
he said, apologetically to her attitude, "but"--

"I suppose you took your own time," she interrupted in a voice of
injured tolerance.  "I don't blame you; anything's better than
being cooped up in this tiresome stage for goodness knows how
long!"

"I was hunting for water," he said humbly, "and have brought you
some."  He handed her the flask.

"And I see you have had a wash," she said a little enviously.  "How
spick and span you look!  But what's the matter with your necktie?"

He put his hand to his neck hurriedly.  His necktie was loose, and
had twisted to one side in the struggle.  He colored quite as much
from the sensitiveness of a studiously neat man as from the fear of
discovery.  "And what's that?" she added, pointing to the shawl.

"One of my samples that I suppose was turned out of the coach and
forgotten in the transfer," he said glibly.  "I thought it might
keep you warm."

She looked at it dubiously and laid it gingerly aside.  "You don't
mean to say you go about with such things OPENLY?" she said
querulously.

"Yes; one mustn't lose a chance of trade, you know," he resumed
with a smile.

"And you haven't found this journey very profitable," she said
dryly.  "You certainly are devoted to your business!"  After a
pause, discontentedly: "It's quite night already--we can't sit here
in the dark."

"We can take one of the coach lamps inside; they're still there.
I've been thinking the matter over, and I reckon if we leave one
lighted outside the coach it may guide your friends back."  He HAD
considered it, and believed that the audacity of the act, coupled
with the knowledge the Indians must have of the presence of the
soldiers in the vicinity, would deter rather than invite their
approach.

She brightened considerably with the coach lamp which he lit and
brought inside.  By its light she watched him curiously.  His face
was slightly flushed and his eyes very bright and keen looking.
Man killing, except with old professional hands, has the
disadvantage of affecting the circulation.

But Miss Cantire had noticed that the flask smelt of whiskey.  The
poor man had probably fortified himself from the fatigues of the
day.

"I suppose you are getting bored by this delay," she said
tentatively.

"Not at all," he replied.  "Would you like to play cards?  I've got
a pack in my pocket.  We can use the middle seat as a table, and
hang the lantern by the window strap."

She assented languidly from the back seat; he was on the front
seat, with the middle seat for a table between them.  First Mr.
Boyle showed her some tricks with the cards and kindled her
momentary and flashing interest in a mysteriously evoked but
evanescent knave.  Then they played euchre, at which Miss Cantire
cheated adorably, and Mr. Boyle lost game after game shamelessly.
Then once or twice Miss Cantire was fain to put her cards to her
mouth to conceal an apologetic yawn, and her blue-veined eyelids
grew heavy.  Whereupon Mr. Boyle suggested that she should make
herself comfortable in the corner of the coach with as many
cushions as she liked and the despised shawl, while he took the
night air in a prowl around the coach and a lookout for the
returning party.  Doing so, he was delighted, after a turn or two,
to find her asleep, and so returned contentedly to his sentry
round.

He was some distance from the coach when a low moaning sound in the
thicket presently increased until it rose and fell in a prolonged
howl that was repeated from the darkened plains beyond.  He
recognized the voice of wolves; he instinctively felt the sickening
cause of it.  They had scented the dead bodies, and he now
regretted that he had left his own victim so near the coach.  He
was hastening thither when a cry, this time human and more
terrifying, came from the coach.  He turned towards it as its door
flew open and Miss Cantire came rushing toward him.  Her face was
colorless, her eyes wild with fear, and her tall, slim figure
trembled convulsively as she frantically caught at the lapels of
his coat, as if to hide herself within its folds, and gasped
breathlessly,--

"What is it?  Oh! Mr. Boyle, save me!"

"They are wolves," he said hurriedly.  "But there is no danger;
they would never attack you; you were safe where you were; let me
lead you back."

But she remained rooted to the spot, still clinging desperately to
his coat.  "No, no!" she said, "I dare not!  I heard that awful cry
in my sleep.  I looked out and saw it--a dreadful creature with
yellow eyes and tongue, and a sickening breath as it passed between
the wheels just below me.  Ah!  What's that?" and she again lapsed
in nervous terror against him.

Boyle passed his arm around her promptly, firmly, masterfully.  She
seemed to feel the implied protection, and yielded to it
gratefully, with the further breakdown of a sob.  "There is no
danger," he repeated cheerfully.  "Wolves are not good to look at,
I know, but they wouldn't have attacked you.  The beast only scents
some carrion on the plain, and you probably frightened him more
than he did you.  Lean on me," he continued as her step tottered;
"you will be better in the coach."

"And you won't leave me alone again?" she said in hesitating terror.

"No!"

He supported her to the coach gravely, gently--her master and still
more his own for all that her beautiful loosened hair was against
his cheek and shoulder, its perfume in his nostrils, and the
contour of her lithe and perfect figure against his own.  He helped
her back into the coach, with the aid of the cushions and shawl
arranged a reclining couch for her on the back seat, and then
resumed his old place patiently.  By degrees the color came back to
her face--as much of it as was not hidden by her handkerchief.

Then a tremulous voice behind it began a half-smothered apology.
"I am SO ashamed, Mr. Boyle--I really could not help it!  But it
was so sudden--and so horrible--I shouldn't have been afraid of it
had it been really an Indian with a scalping knife--instead of that
beast!  I don't know why I did it--but I was alone--and seemed to
be dead--and you were dead too and they were coming to eat me!
They do, you know--you said so just now!  Perhaps I was dreaming.
I don't know what you must think of me--I had no idea I was such a
coward!"

But Boyle protested indignantly.  He was sure if HE had been asleep
and had not known what wolves were before, he would have been
equally frightened.  She must try to go to sleep again--he was sure
she could--and he would not stir from the coach until she waked, or
her friends came.

She grew quieter presently, and took away the handkerchief from a
mouth that smiled though it still quivered; then reaction began,
and her tired nerves brought her languor and finally repose.  Boyle
watched the shadows thicken around her long lashes until they lay
softly on the faint flush that sleep was bringing to her cheek; her
delicate lips parted, and her quick breath at last came with the
regularity of slumber.

So she slept, and he, sitting silently opposite her, dreamed--the
old dream that comes to most good men and true once in their lives.
He scarcely moved until the dawn lightened with opal the dreary
plain, bringing back the horizon and day, when he woke from his
dream with a sigh, and then a laugh.  Then he listened for the
sound of distant hoofs, and hearing them, crept noiselessly from
the coach.  A compact body of horsemen were bearing down upon it.
He rose quickly to meet them, and throwing up his hand, brought
them to a halt at some distance from the coach.  They spread out,
resolving themselves into a dozen troopers and a smart young cadet-
like officer.

"If you are seeking Miss Cantire," he said in a quiet, businesslike
tone, "she is quite safe in the coach and asleep.  She knows
nothing yet of what has happened, and believes it is you who have
taken everything away for security against an Indian attack.  She
has had a pretty rough night--what with her fatigue and her alarm
at the wolves--and I thought it best to keep the truth from her as
long as possible, and I would advise you to break it to her
gently."  He then briefly told the story of their experiences,
omitting only his own personal encounter with the Indian.  A new
pride, which was perhaps the result of his vigil, prevented him.

The young officer glanced at him with as much courtesy as might be
afforded to a civilian intruding upon active military operations.
"I am sure Major Cantire will be greatly obliged to you when he
knows it," he said politely, "and as we intend to harness up and
take the coach back to Sage Wood Station immediately, you will have
an opportunity of telling him."

"I am not going back by the coach to Sage Wood," said Boyle
quietly.  "I have already lost twelve hours of my time--as well as
my trunk--on this picnic, and I reckon the least Major Cantire can
do is to let me take one of your horses to the next station in time
to catch the down coach.  I can do it, if I set out at once."

Boyle heard his name, with the familiar prefix of "Dicky," given to
the officer by a commissary sergeant, whom he recognized as having
met at the Agency, and the words "Chicago drummer " added, while a
perceptible smile went throughout the group.  "Very well, sir,"
said the officer, with a familiarity a shade less respectful than
his previous formal manner.  "You can take the horse, as I believe
the Indians have already made free with your samples.  Give him a
mount, sergeant."

The two men walked towards the coach.  Boyle lingered a moment at
the window to show him the figure of Miss Cantire still peacefully
slumbering among her pile of cushions, and then turned quietly
away.  A moment later he was galloping on one of the troopers'
horses across the empty plain.


Miss Cantire awoke presently to the sound of a familiar voice and
the sight of figures that she knew.  But the young officer's first
words of explanation--a guarded account of the pursuit of the
Indians and the recapture of the arms, suppressing the killing of
Foster and the mail agent--brought a change to her brightened face
and a wrinkle to her pretty brow.

"But Mr. Boyle said nothing of this to me," she said, sitting up.
"Where is he?"

"Already on his way to the next station on one of our horses!
Wanted to catch the down stage and get a new box of samples, I
fancy, as the braves had rigged themselves out with his laces and
ribbons.  Said he'd lost time enough on this picnic," returned the
young officer, with a laugh.  "Smart business chap; but I hope he
didn't bore you?"

Miss Cantire felt her cheek flush, and bit her lip.  "I found him
most kind and considerate, Mr. Ashford," she said coldly.  "He may
have thought the escort could have joined the coach a little
earlier, and saved all this; but he was too much of a gentleman to
say anything about it to ME," she added dryly, with a slight
elevation of her aquiline nose.

Nevertheless Boyle's last words stung her deeply.  To hurry off,
too, without saying "good-by," or even asking how she slept!  No
doubt he HAD lost time, and was tired of her company, and thought
more of his precious samples than of her!  After all, it was like
him to rush off for an order!

She was half inclined to call the young officer back and tell him
how Boyle had criticised her costume on the road.  But Mr. Ashford
was at that time entirely preoccupied with his men around a ledge
of rock and bushes some yards from the coach, yet not so far away
but that she could hear what they said.  "I'll swear there was no
dead Injin here when we came yesterday!  We searched the whole
place--by daylight, too--for any sign.  The Injin was killed in his
tracks by some one last night.  It's like Dick Boyle, lieutenant,
to have done it, and like him to have said nothin' to frighten the
young lady.  He knows when to keep his mouth shut--and when to open
it."

Miss Cantire sank back in her corner as the officer turned and
approached the coach.  The incident of the past night flashed back
upon her--Mr. Boyle's long absence, his flushed face, twisted
necktie, and enforced cheerfulness.  She was shocked, amazed,
discomfited--and admiring!  And this hero had been sitting opposite
to her, silent all the rest of the night!

"Did Mr. Boyle say anything of an Indian attack last night?" asked
Ashford.  "Did you hear anything?"

"Only the wolves howling," said Miss Cantire.  "Mr. Boyle was away
twice."  She was strangely reticent--in complimentary imitation of
her missing hero.

"There's a dead Indian here who has been killed," began Ashford.

"Oh, please don't say anything more, Mr. Ashford," interrupted the
young lady, "but let us get away from this horrid place at once.
Do get the horses in.  I can't stand it."

But the horses were already harnessed and mounted, postilion-wise,
by the troopers.  The vehicle was ready to start when Miss Cantire
called "Stop!"

When Ashford presented himself at the door, the young lady was upon
her hands and knees, searching the bottom of the coach.  "Oh, dear!
I've lost something.  I must have dropped it on the road," she said
breathlessly, with pink cheeks.  "You must positively wait and let
me go back and find it.  I won't be long.  You know there's 'no
hurry.'"

Mr. Ashford stared as Miss Cantire skipped like a schoolgirl from
the coach and ran down the trail by which she and Boyle had
approached the coach the night before.  She had not gone far before
she came upon the withered flowers he had thrown away at her
command.  "It must be about here," she murmured.  Suddenly she
uttered a cry of delight, and picked up the business card that
Boyle had shown her.  Then she looked furtively around her, and,
selecting a sprig of myrtle among the cast-off flowers, concealed
it in her mantle and ran back, glowing, to the coach.  "Thank you!
All right, I've found it," she called to Ashford, with a dazzling
smile, and leaped inside.

The coach drove on, and Miss Cantire, alone in its recesses, drew
the myrtle from her mantle and folding it carefully in her
handkerchief, placed it in her reticule.  Then she drew out the
card, read its dryly practical information over and over again,
examined the soiled edges, brushed them daintily, and held it for a
moment, with eyes that saw not, motionless in her hand.  Then she
raised it slowly to her lips, rolled it into a spiral, and,
loosening a hook and eye, thrust it gently into her bosom.

And Dick Boyle, galloping away to the distant station, did not know
that the first step towards a realization of his foolish dream had
been taken!





End of Project Gutenberg Etext Trent's Trust & Other Stories, by Harte