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Title:  The Bell-Ringer of Angel's
CONTENTS
THE BELL-RINGER OF ANGEL'S
JOHNNYBOY
YOUNG ROBIN GRAY
THE SHERIFF OF SISKYOU
A ROSE OF GLENBOGIE
THE MYSTERY OF THE HACIENDA
CHU CHU
MY FIRST BOOK

Author:  Bret Harte

June, 2001  [Etext #2676]


Project Gutenberg Etext of The Bell-Ringer of Angel's, by Harte
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THE BELL-RINGER OF ANGEL'S

by Bret Harte




CONTENTS


THE BELL-RINGER OF ANGEL'S

JOHNNYBOY

YOUNG ROBIN GRAY

THE SHERIFF OF SISKYOU

A ROSE OF GLENBOGIE

THE MYSTERY OF THE HACIENDA

CHU CHU

MY FIRST BOOK




THE BELL-RINGER OF ANGEL'S

CHAPTER I.


Where the North Fork of the Stanislaus River begins to lose its
youthful grace, vigor, and agility, and broadens more maturely into
the plain, there is a little promontory which at certain high stages
of water lies like a small island in the stream.  To the strongly-
marked heroics of Sierran landscape it contrasts a singular,
pastoral calm.  White and gray mosses from the overhanging rocks and
feathery alders trail their filaments in its slow current, and
between the woodland openings there are glimpses of vivid velvet
sward, even at times when the wild oats and "wire-grasses" of the
plains are already yellowing.  The placid river, unstained at this
point by mining sluices or mill drift, runs clear under its
contemplative shadows.  Originally the camping-ground of a Digger
Chief, it passed from his tenancy with the American rifle bullet
that terminated his career.  The pioneer who thus succeeded to its
attractive calm gave way in turn to a well-directed shot from the
revolver of a quartz-prospector, equally impressed with the charm
of its restful tranquillity.  How long he might have enjoyed its
riparian seclusion is not known.  A sudden rise of the river one
March night quietly removed him, together with the overhanging post
oak beneath which he was profoundly but unconsciously meditating.
The demijohn of whiskey was picked up further down.  But no other
suggestion of these successive evictions was ever visible in the
reposeful serenity of the spot.

It was later occupied, and a cabin built upon the spot, by one
Alexander McGee, better known as "the Bell-ringer of Angel's."
This euphonious title, which might have suggested a consistently
peaceful occupation, however, referred to his accuracy of aim at
a mechanical target, where the piercing of the bull's eye was
celebrated by the stroke of a bell.  It is probable that this
singular proficiency kept his investment of that gentle seclusion
unchallenged.  At all events it was uninvaded.  He shared it only
with the birds.  Perhaps some suggestion of nest building may have
been in his mind, for one pleasant spring morning he brought hither
a wife.  It was his OWN; and in this way he may be said to have
introduced that morality which is supposed to be the accompaniment
and reflection of pastoral life.  Mrs. McGee's red petticoat was
sometimes seen through the trees--a cheerful bit of color.  Mrs.
McGee's red cheeks, plump little figure, beribboned hat and brown,
still-girlish braids were often seen at sunset on the river bank,
in company with her husband, who seemed to be pleased with the
discreet and distant admiration that followed them.  Strolling
under the bland shadows of the cotton-woods, by the fading gold of
the river, he doubtless felt that peace which the mere world cannot
give, and which fades not away before the clear, accurate eye of
the perfect marksman.

Their nearest neighbors were the two brothers Wayne, who took up a
claim, and built themselves a cabin on the river bank near the
promontory.  Quiet, simple men, suspected somewhat of psalm-
singing, and undue retirement on Sundays, they attracted but little
attention.  But when, through some original conception or
painstaking deliberation, they turned the current of the river so
as to restrict the overflow between the promontory and the river
bank, disclosing an auriferous "bar" of inconceivable richness, and
establishing their theory that it was really the former channel of
the river, choked and diverted though ages of alluvial drift, they
may be said to have changed, also, the fortunes of the little
settlement.  Popular feeling and the new prosperity which dawned
upon the miners recognized the two brothers by giving the name of
Wayne's Bar to the infant settlement and its post-office.  The
peaceful promontory, although made easier of access, still
preserved its calm seclusion, and pretty Mrs. McGee could
contemplate through the leaves of her bower the work going on at
its base, herself unseen.  Nevertheless, this Arcadian retreat was
being slowly and surely invested; more than that, the character of
its surroundings was altered, and the complexion of the river had
changed.  The Wayne engines on the point above had turned the drift
and debris into the current that now thickened and ran yellow
around the wooded shore.  The fringes of this Eden were already
tainted with the color of gold.

It is doubtful, however, if Mrs. McGee was much affected by this
sentimental reflection, and her husband, in a manner, lent himself
to the desecration of his exclusive domain by accepting a claim
along the shore--tendered by the conscientious Waynes in
compensation for restricting the approach to the promontory--and
thus participated in the fortunes of the Bar.  Mrs. McGee amused
herself by watching from her eyrie, with a presumably childish
interest, the operations of the red-shirted brothers on the Bar;
her husband, however, always accompanying her when she crossed the
Bar to the bank.  Some two or three other women--wives of miners--
had joined the camp, but it was evident that McGee was as little
inclined to intrust his wife to their companionship as to that of
their husbands.  An opinion obtained that McGee, being an old
resident, with alleged high connections in Angel's, was inclined
to be aristocratic and exclusive.

Meantime, the two brothers who had founded the fortunes of the Bar
were accorded an equally high position, with an equal amount of
reserve.  Their ways were decidedly not those of the other miners,
and were as efficacious in keeping them from familiar advances as
the reputation of Mr. McGee was in isolating his wife.  Madison
Wayne, the elder, was tall, well-knit and spare, reticent in speech
and slow in deduction; his brother, Arthur, was of rounder outline,
but smaller and of a more delicate and perhaps a more impressible
nature.  It was believed by some that it was within the range of
possibility that Arthur would yet be seen "taking his cocktail like
a white man," or "dropping his scads" at draw poker.  At present,
however, they seemed content to spend their evenings in their own
cabin, and their Sundays at a grim Presbyterian tabernacle in the
next town, to which they walked ten miles, where, it was currently
believed, "hell fire was ladled out free," and "infants damned for
nothing."  When they did not go to meeting it was also believed
that the minister came to them, until it was ascertained that the
sound of sacred recitation overheard in their cabin was simply
Madison Wayne reading the Bible to his younger brother.  McGee is
said to have stopped on one of these occasions--unaccompanied by
his wife--before their cabin, moving away afterwards with more than
his usual placid contentment.

It was about eleven o'clock one morning, and Madison Wayne was at
work alone on the Bar.  Clad in a dark gray jersey and white duck
trousers rolled up over high india-rubber boots, he looked not
unlike a peaceful fisherman digging stakes for his nets, as he
labored in the ooze and gravel of the still half-reclaimed river
bed.  He was far out on the Bar, within a stone's throw of the
promontory.  Suddenly his quick ear caught an unfamiliar cry and
splash.  Looking up hastily, he saw Mrs. McGee's red petticoat in
the water under the singularly agitated boughs of an overhanging
tree.  Madison Wayne ran to the bank, threw off his heavy boots,
and sprang into the stream.  A few strokes brought him to Mrs.
McGee's petticoat, which, as he had wisely surmised, contained Mrs.
McGee, who was still clinging to a branch of the tree.  Grasping
her waist with one hand and the branch with the other, he obtained
a foothold on the bank, and dragged her ashore.  A moment later
they both stood erect and dripping at the foot of the tree.

"Well?" said the lady.

Wayne glanced around their seclusion with his habitual caution,
slightly knit his brows perplexedly, and said: "You fell in?"

"I didn't do nothin' of the sort.  I JUMPED in."

Wayne again looked around him, as if expecting her companion, and
squeezed the water out of his thick hair.  "Jumped in?" he repeated
slowly.  "What for?"

"To make you come over here, Mad Wayne," she said, with a quick
laugh, putting her arms akimbo.

They stood looking at each other, dripping like two river gods.
Like them, also, Wayne had apparently ignored the fact that his
trousers were rolled up above his bare knees, and Mrs. McGee that
her red petticoat clung closely to her rather pretty figure.  But
he quickly recovered himself.  "You had better go in and change
your clothes," he said, with grave concern.  "You'll take cold."

She only shook herself disdainfully.  "I'm all right," she said;
"but YOU, Mad Wayne, what do you mean by not speaking to me--not
knowing me?  You can't say that I've changed like that."  She
passed her hand down her long dripping braids as if to press the
water from them, and yet with a half-coquettish suggestion in the
act.

Something struggled up into the man's face which was not there
before.  There was a new light in his grave eyes.  "You look the
same," he said slowly; "but you are married--you have a husband."

"You think that changes a girl?" she said, with a laugh "That's
where all you men slip up!  You're afraid of his rifle--THAT'S the
change that bothers you, Mad."

"You know I care little for carnal weapons," he said quietly.  She
DID know it; but it is the privilege of the sex to invent its facts
and then to graciously abandon them as if they were only arguments.
"Then why do you keep off from me?  Why do you look the other way
when I pass?" she said quickly.

"Because you are married," he said slowly.

She again shook the water from her like a Newfoundland dog.
"That's it.  You're mad because I got married.  You're mad because
I wouldn't marry you and your church over on the cross roads, and
sing hymns with you and become SISTER Wayne.  You wanted me to give
up dancing and buggy ridin' Sundays--and you're just mad because I
didn't.  Yes, mad--just mean, baby mad, Mr. Maddy Wayne, for all
your CHRISTIAN resignation!  That's what's the matter with you."
Yet she looked very pretty and piquant in her small spitefulness,
which was still so general and superficial that she seemed to shake
it out of her wet petticoats in a vicious flap that disclosed her
neat ankles.

"You preferred McGee to me," he said grimly.  "I didn't blame you."

"Who said I PREFERRED him?" she retorted quickly.  "Much you know!"
Then, with swift feminine abandonment of her position, she added,
with a little laugh, "It's all the same whether you're guarded with
a rifle or a Church Presbytery, only"--

"Only what?" said Madison earnestly.

"There's men who'd risk being SHOT for a girl, that couldn't stand
psalm-singin' palaver."

The quick expression of pain that passed over his hard, dark face
seemed only to heighten her pretty mischievousness.  But he simply
glanced again around the solitude, passed his hand over his wet
sleeve, and said, "I must go now; your husband wouldn't like me
being here."

"He's workin' in the claim,--the claim YOU gave him," said Mrs.
McGee, with cheerful malice.  "Wonder what he'd say if he knew it
was given to him by the man who used to spark his wife only two
years ago?  How does that suit your Christian conscience, Mad?"

"I should have told him, had I not believed that everything was
over between us, or that it was possible that you and me should
ever meet again," he returned, in a tone so measured that the girl
seemed to hear the ring of the conventicle in it.

"Should you, BROTHER Wayne?" she said, imitating him.  "Well, let
me tell you that you are the one man on the Bar that Sandy has
taken a fancy to."

Madison's sallow cheek colored a little, but he did not speak.

"Well!" continued Mrs. McGee impatiently.  "I don't believe he'd
object to your comin' here to see me--if you cared."

"But I wouldn't care to come, unless he first knew that I had been
once engaged to you," said Madison gravely.

"Perhaps he might not think as much of that as you do," retorted
the woman pertly.  "Every one isn't as straitlaced as you, and
every girl has had one or two engagements.  But do as you like--
stay at home if you want to, and sing psalms and read the
Scriptures to that younger brother of yours!  All the same, I'm
thinkin' he'd rather be out with the boys."

"My brother is God-fearing and conscientious," said Madison
quickly.  "You do not know him.  You have never seen him."

"No," said Mrs. McGee shortly.  She then gave a little shiver (that
was, however, half simulated) in her wet garments, and added: "ONE
saint was enough for me; I couldn't stand the whole church, Mad."

"You are catching cold," he said quickly, his whole face
brightening with a sudden tenderness that seemed to transfigure the
dark features.  "I am keeping you here when you should be changing
your clothes.  Go, I beg you, at once."

She stood still provokingly, with an affectation of wiping her arms
and shoulders and sopping her wet dress with clusters of moss.

"Go, please do--Safie, please!"

"Ah!"--she drew a quick, triumphant breath.  "Then you'll come
again to see me, Mad?"

"Yes," he said slowly, and even more gravely than before.

"But you must let me show you the way out--round under those trees--
where no one can see you come."  She held out her hand.

"I'll go the way I came," he said quietly, swinging himself
silently from the nearest bough into the stream.  And before she
could utter a protest he was striking out as silently, hand over
hand, across the current.


CHAPTER II.


A week later Madison Wayne was seated alone in his cabin.  His
supper table had just been cleared by his Chinese coolie, as it was
getting late, and the setting sun, which for half an hour had been
persistently making a vivid beacon of his windows for the benefit
of wayfarers along the river bank, had at last sunk behind the
cottonwoods.  His head was resting on his hand; the book he had
been reading when the light faded was lying open on the table
before him.  In this attitude he became aware of a hesitating step
on the gravel outside his open door.  He had been so absorbed that
the approach of any figure along the only highway--the river bank--
had escaped his observation.  Looking up, he discovered that Mr.
Alexander McGee was standing in the doorway, his hand resting
lightly on the jamb.  A sudden color suffused Wayne's cheek; his
hand reached for his book, which he drew towards him hurriedly, yet
half automatically, as he might have grasped some defensive weapon.

The Bell-ringer of Angel's noticed the act, but not the blush, and
nodded approvingly.  "Don't let me disturb ye.  I was only
meanderin' by and reckoned I'd say 'How do?' in passin'."  He
leaned gently back against the door-post, to do which comfortably
he was first obliged to shift the revolver on his hip.  The sight
of the weapon brought a slight contraction to the brows of Wayne,
but he gravely said: "Won't you come in?"

"It ain't your prayin' time?" said McGee politely.

"No."

"Nor you ain't gettin' up lessons outer the Book?" he continued
thoughtfully.

"No."

"Cos it don't seem, so to speak, you see, the square thing to be
botherin' a man when he might be doin' suthin' else, don't you see?
You understand what I mean?"

It was his known peculiarity that he always seemed to be suffering
from an inability to lucid expression, and the fear of being
misunderstood in regard to the most patent or equally the most
unimportant details of his speech.  All of which, however, was in
very remarkable contrast to his perfectly clear and penetrating
eyes.

Wayne gravely assured him that he was not interrupting him in any
way.

"I often thought--that is, I had an idea, you understand what I
mean--of stoppin' in passing.  You and me, you see, are sorter
alike; we don't seem to jibe in with the gin'ral gait o' the camp.
You understand what I mean?  We ain't in the game, eh?  You see
what I'm after?"

Madison Wayne glanced half mechanically at McGee's revolver.
McGee's clear eyes at once took in the glance.

"That's it!  You understand?  You with them books of yours, and me
with my shootin' iron--we're sort o' different from the rest, and
ought to be kinder like partners.  You understand what I mean?  We
keep this camp in check.  We hold a full hand, and don't stand no
bluffing."

"If you mean there is some effect in Christian example and the life
of a God-fearing man"--began Madison gravely.

"That's it!  God-fearin' or revolver-fearin', it amounts to the same
when you come down to the hard pan and bed-rock," interrupted
McGee.  "I ain't expectin' you to think much of my style, but I go
a heap on yours, even if I can't play your game.  And I sez to my
wife, 'Safie'--her that trots around with me sometimes--I sez,
'Safie, I oughter know that man, and shall.  And I WANT YOU to know
him.'  Hol' on," he added quickly, as Madison rose with a flushed
face and a perturbed gesture.  "Ye don't understand!  I see wot's
in your mind--don't you see?  When I married my wife and brought
her down here, knowin' this yer camp, I sez: 'No flirtin', no
foolin', no philanderin' here, my dear!  You're young and don't
know the ways o' men.  The first man I see you talking with, I
shoot.  You needn't fear, my dear, for accidents.  I kin shoot all
round you, under your arm, across your shoulders, over your head
and between your fingers, my dear, and never start skin or fringe
or ruffle.  But I don't miss HIM.  You sorter understand what I
mean,' sez I,'so don't!'  Ye noticed how my wife is respected, Mr.
Wayne?  Queen Victoria sittin' on her throne ain't in it with my
Safie.  But when I see YOU not herdin' with that cattle, never
liftin' your eyes to me or Safie as we pass, never hangin' round
the saloons and jokin', nor winkin', nor slingin' muddy stories
about women, but prayin' and readin' Scripter stories, here along
with your brother, I sez to myself, I sez, 'Sandy, ye kin take off
your revolver and hang up your shot gun when HE'S around.  For
'twixt HIM and your wife ain't no revolver, but the fear of God and
hell and damnation and the world to come!'  You understand what I
mean, don't ye?  Ye sorter follow my lead, eh?  Ye can see what I'm
shootin' round, don't ye?  So I want you to come up neighborly
like, and drop in to see my wife."

Madison Wayne's face became set and hard again, but he advanced
towards McGee with the book against his breast, and his finger
between the leaves.  "I already know your wife, Mr. McGee!  I saw
her before YOU ever met her.  I was engaged to her; I loved her,
and--as far as man may love the wife of another and keep the
commands of this book--I love her still!"

To his surprise, McGee, whose calm eyes had never dimmed or
blenched, after regarding him curiously, took the volume from him,
laid it on the table, opened it, turned its leaves critically, said
earnestly, "That's the law here, is it?" and then held out his
hand.

"Shake!"

Madison Wayne hesitated--and then grasped his hand.

"Ef I had known this," continued McGee, "I reckon I wouldn't have
been so hard on Safie and so partikler.  She's better than I took
her for--havin' had you for a beau!  You understand what I mean.
You follow me--don't ye?  I allus kinder wondered why she took me,
but sens you've told me that YOU used to spark her, in your God-
fearin' way, I reckon it kinder prepared her for ME.  You understand?
Now you come up, won't ye?"

"I will call some evening with my brother," said Wayne embarrassedly.

"With which?" demanded McGee.

"My brother Arthur.  We usually spend the evenings together."

McGee paused, leaned against the doorpost, and, fixing his clear
eyes on Wayne, said: "Ef it's all the same to you, I'd rather you
did not bring him.  You understand what I mean?  You follow me; no
other man but you and me.  I ain't sayin' anything agin' your
brother, but you see how it is, don't you?  Just me and you."

"Very well, I will come," said Wayne gloomily.  But as McGee backed
out of the door, he followed him, hesitatingly.  Then, with an
effort he seemed to recover himself, and said almost harshly: "I
ought to tell you another thing--that I have seen and spoken to
Mrs. McGee since she came to the Bar.  She fell into the water last
week, and I swam out and dragged her ashore.  We talked and spoke
of the past."

"She fell in," echoed McGee.

Wayne hesitated; then a murky blush came into his face as he slowly
repeated, "She FELL in."

McGee's eyes only brightened.  "I have been too hard on her.  She
might have drowned ef you hadn't took risks.  You see?  You
understand what I mean?  And she never let out anything about it--
and never boasted o' YOU helpin' her out.  All right--you'll come
along and see her agin'."  He turned and walked cheerfully away.

Wayne re-entered the cabin.  He sat for a long time by the window
until the stars came out above the river, and another star, with
which he had been long familiar, took its place apparently in the
heart of the wooded crest of the little promontory.  Then the
fringing woods on the opposite shore became a dark level line
across the landscape, and the color seemed to fade out of the moist
shining gravel before his cabin.  Presently the silhouette of his
dark face disappeared from the window, and Mr. McGee might have
been gratified to know that he had slipped to his knees before the
chair whereon he had been sitting, and that his head was bowed
before it on his clasped hands.  In a little while he rose again,
and, dragging a battened old portmanteau from the corner, took out
a number of letters tied up in a package, with which, from time to
time, he slowly fed the flame that flickered on his hearth.  In
this way the windows of the cabin at times sprang into light,
making a somewhat confusing beacon for the somewhat confused Arthur
Wayne, who was returning from a visit to Angel's, and who had
fallen into that slightly morose and irritated state which follows
excessive hilarity, and is also apt to indicate moral misgivings.

But the last letter was burnt and the cabin quite dark when he
entered.  His brother was sitting by the slowly dying fire, and he
trusted that in that uncertain light any observation of his
expression or manner--of which he himself was uneasily conscious--
would pass unheeded.

"You are late," said Madison gravely.

At which his brother rashly assumed the aggressive.  He was no
later than the others, and if the Rogers boys were good enough to
walk with him for company he couldn't run ahead of them just
because his brother was waiting!  He didn't want any supper, he had
something at the Cross Roads with the others.  Yes! WHISKEY, if he
wanted to know.  People couldn't keep coffee and temperance drinks
just to please him and his brother, and he wasn't goin' to insult
the others by standing aloof.  Anyhow, he had never taken the
pledge, and as long as he hadn't he couldn't see why he should
refuse a single glass.  As it was, everybody said he was a milksop,
and a tender-foot, and he was just sick of it.

Madison rose and lit a candle and held it up before his brother's
face.  It was a handsome, youthful face that looked into his,
flushed with the excitement of novel experiences and perhaps a
more material stimulation.  The little silken moustache was
ostentatiously curled, the brown curls were redolent of bear's
grease.  Yet there was a certain boyish timidity and nervousness in
the defiance of his blue eyes that momentarily touched the elder
brother.

"I've been too hand with him," he said to himself, half consciously
recalling what McGee had said of Safie.  He put the candle down,
laid his hand gently on Arthur's shoulder, and said, with a certain
cautious tenderness, "Come, Arty, sit down and tell me all about
it."

Whereupon the mercurial Arthur, not only relieved of his nervousness
but of his previous ethical doubts and remorse, became gay and
voluble.  He had finished his purchases at Angel's, and the
storekeeper had introduced him to Colonel Starbottle, of Kentucky,
as one of "the Waynes who had made Wayne's Bar famous."  Colonel
Starbottle had said in his pompous fashion--yet he was not such a
bad fellow, after all--that the Waynes ought to be represented in
the Councils of the State, and that he, Starbottle, would be proud
to nominate Madison for the next Legislature and run him, too.  "And
you know, really, Mad, if you mixed a little more with folks, and
they weren't--well, sorter AFRAID of you--you could do it.  Why, I've
made a heap o' friends over there, just by goin' round a little, and
one of old Selvedge's girls--the storekeeper, you know--said from
what she'd heard of us, she always thought I was about fifty, and
turned up the whites of my eyes instead of the ends of my moustache!
She's mighty smart!  Then the Postmaster has got his wife and three
daughters out from the States, and they've asked me to come over to
their church festival next week.  It isn't our church, of course,
but I suppose it's all right."

This and much more with the volubility of relieved feelings.  When
he stopped, out of breath, Madison said, "I have had a visitor
since you left--Mr. McGee."

"And his wife?" asked Arthur quickly.  Madison flushed slightly.
"No; but he asked me to go and see her."

"That's HER doin', then," returned Arthur, with a laugh.  "She's
always lookin' round the corners of her eyes at me when she passes.
Why, John Rogers was joking me about her only yesterday, and said
McGee would blow a hole through me some of these days if I didn't
look out!  Of course," he added, affectedly curling his moustache,
"that's nonsense!  But you know how they talk, and she's too pretty
for that fellow McGee."

"She has found a careful helpmeet in her husband," said Madison
sternly, "and it's neither seemly nor Christian in you, Arthur, to
repeat the idle, profane gossip of the Bar.  I knew her before her
marriage, and if she was not a professing Christian, she was, and
is, a pure, good woman!  Let us have no more of this."

Whether impressed by the tone of his brother's voice, or only
affected by his own mercurial nature, Arthur changed the subject to
further voluble reminiscences of his trip to Angel's.  Yet he did
not seem embarrassed nor disconcerted when his brother, in the midst
of his speech, placed the candle and the Bible on the table, with
two chairs before it.  He listened to Madison's monotonous reading
of the evening exercise with equally monotonous respect. Then they
both arose, without looking at each other, but with equally set
and stolid faces, and knelt down before their respective chairs,
clasping the back with both hands, and occasionally drawing the
hard, wooden frames against their breasts convulsively, as if it
were a penitential act.  It was the elder brother who that night
prayed aloud.  It was his voice that rose higher by degrees above
the low roof and encompassing walls, the level river camp lights
that trembled through the window, the dark belt of riverside trees,
and the light on the promontory's crest--up to the tranquil,
passionless stars themselves.

With those confidences to his Maker this chronicle does not lie--
obtrusive and ostentatious though they were in tone and attitude.
Enough that they were a general arraignment of humanity, the Bar,
himself, and his brother, and indeed much that the same Maker had
created and permitted.  That through this hopeless denunciation
still lingered some human feeling and tenderness might have been
shown by the fact that at its close his hands trembled and his face
was bedewed by tears.  And his brother was so deeply affected that
he resolved hereafter to avoid all evening prayers.


CHAPTER III.


It was a week later that Madison Wayne and Mr. McGee were seen, to
the astonishment of the Bar, leisurely walking together in the
direction of the promontory.  Here they disappeared, entering a
damp fringe of willows and laurels that seemed to mark its limits,
and gradually ascending some thickly-wooded trail, until they
reached its crest, which, to Madison's surprise, was cleared and
open, and showed an acre or two of rude cultivation.  Here, too,
stood the McGees' conjugal home--a small, four-roomed house, but so
peculiar and foreign in aspect that it at once challenged even
Madison's abstracted attention.  It was a tiny Swiss chalet, built
in sections, and originally packed in cases, one of the early
importations from Europe to California after the gold discovery,
when the country was supposed to be a woodless wilderness.  Mr.
McGee explained, with his usual laborious care, how he had bought
it at Marysville, not only for its picturesqueness, but because in
its unsuggestive packing-cases it offered no indication to the
curious miners, and could be put up by himself and a single
uncommunicative Chinaman, without any one else being aware of its
existence.  There was, indeed, something quaint in this fragment of
Old World handicraft, with its smooth-jointed paneling, in two
colors, its little lozenge fretwork, its lapped roof, overhanging
eaves, and miniature gallery.  Inartistic as Madison was--like most
men of rigidly rectangular mind and principle--and accustomed to
the bleak and economic sufficiency of the Californian miner's
cabin, he was touched strangely by its novel grace and freshness.
It reminded him of HER; he had a new respect for this rough, sinful
man who had thus idealized his wife in her dwelling.  Already a few
Madeira vines and a Cherokee rose clambered up the gallery.  And
here Mrs. McGee was sitting.

In the face that she turned upon the two men Madison could see that
she was not expecting them, and even in the slight curiosity with
which she glanced at her husband, that evidently he had said
nothing of his previous visit or invitation.  And this conviction
became certainty at Mr. McGee's first words.

"I've brought you an ole friend, Safie.  He used to spark ye once
at Angel's afore my time--he told me so; he picked ye outer the
water here--he told me that, too.  Ye mind that I said afore that
he was the only man I wanted ter know; I reckon now it seems the
square thing that he should be the one man YOU wanted ter know,
too.  You understand what I mean--you follow me, don't you?"

Whether or not Mrs. McGee DID follow him, she exhibited neither
concern, solicitude, nor the least embarrassment.  An experienced
lover might have augured ill from this total absence of self-
consciousness.  But Madison was not an experienced lover.  He
accepted her amused smile as a recognition of his feelings,
trembled at the touch of her cool hands, as if it had been a warm
pressure, and scarcely dared to meet her maliciously laughing eyes.
When he had followed Mr. McGee to the little gallery, the previous
occupation of Mrs. McGee when they arrived was explained.  From
that slight elevation there was a perfect view over the whole
landscape and river below; the Bar stretched out as a map at her
feet; in that clear, transparent air she could see every movement
and gesture of Wayne's brother, all unconscious of that surveillance,
at work on the Bar.  For an instant Madison's sallow cheek reddened,
he knew not why; a remorseful feeling that he ought to be there with
Arthur came over him.  Mrs. McGee's voice seemed to answer his
thought.  "You can see everything that's going on down there without
being seen yourself.  It's good fun for me sometimes.  The other day
I saw that young Carpenter hanging round Mrs. Rogers's cabin in the
bush when old Rogers was away.  And I saw her creep out and join
him, never thinking any one could see her!"

She laughed, seeking Madison's averted eyes, yet scarcely noticing
his suddenly contracted brows.  Mr. McGee alone responded.

"That's why," he said, explanatorily, to Madison, "I don't allow to
have my Safie go round with those women.  Not as I ever see
anything o' that sort goin' on, or keer to look, but on gin'ral
principles.  You understand what I mean."

"That's your brother over there, isn't it?" said Mrs. McGee,
turning to Madison and calmly ignoring her husband's explanation,
as she indicated the distant Arthur.  "Why didn't you bring him
along with you?"

Madison hesitated, and looked at McGee.  "He wasn't asked," said
that gentleman cheerfully.  "One's company, two's none!  You don't
know him, my dear; and this yer ain't a gin'ral invitation to the
Bar.  You follow me?"

To this Mrs. McGee made no comment, but proceeded to show Madison
over the little cottage.  Yet in a narrow passage she managed to
touch his hand, lingered to let her husband precede them from one
room to another, and once or twice looked meaningly into his eyes
over McGee's shoulder.  Disconcerted and embarrassed, he tried to
utter a few commonplaces, but so constrainedly that even McGee
presently noticed it.  And the result was still more embarrassing.

"Look yer," he said, suddenly turning to them both.  "I reckon as
how you two wanter talk over old times, and I'll just meander over
to the claim, and do a spell o' work.  Don't mind ME.  And if HE"--
indicating Madison with his finger--"gets on ter religion, don't
you mind him.  It won't hurt you, Safie,--no more nor my revolver,--
but it's pow'ful persuadin', and you understand me?  You follow
me?  Well, so long!"

He turned away quickly, and was presently lost among the trees.
For an instant the embarrassed Madison thought of following him;
but he was confronted by Mrs. McGee's wicked eyes and smiling face
between him and the door.  Composing herself, however, with a
simulation of perfect gravity she pointed to a chair.

"Sit down, Brother Wayne.  If you're going to convert me, it may
take some time, you know, and you might as well make yourself
comfortable.  As for me, I'll take the anxious bench."  She laughed
with a certain girlishness, which he well remembered, and leaped to
a sitting posture on the table with her hands on her knees,
swinging her smart shoes backwards and forwards below it.

Madison looked at her in hopeless silence, with a pale, disturbed
face and shining eyes.

"Or, if you want to talk as we used to talk, Mad, when we sat on
the front steps at Angel's and pa and ma went inside to give us a
show, ye can hop up alongside o' me."  She made a feint of
gathering her skirts beside her.

"Safie!" broke out the unfortunate man, in a tone that seemed to
increase in formal solemnity with his manifest agitation, "this is
impossible.  The laws of God that have joined you and this man"--

"Oh, it's the prayer-meeting, is it?" said Safie, settling her
skirts again, with affected resignation.  "Go on."

"Listen, Safie," said Madison, turning despairingly towards her.
"Let us for His sake, let us for the sake of our dear blessed past,
talk together earnestly and prayerfully.  Let us take this time to
root out of our feeble hearts all yearnings that are not prompted
by Him--yearnings that your union with this man makes impossible
and sinful.  Let us for the sake of the past take counsel of each
other, even as brother and sister."

"Sister McGee!" she interrupted mockingly.  "It wasn't as brother
and sister you made love to me at Angel's."

"No! I loved you then, and would have made you my wife."

"And you don't love me any more," she said, audaciously darting a
wicked look into his eyes, "only because I didn't marry you?  And
you think that Christian?"

"You know I love you as I have loved you always," he said
passionately.

"Hush!" she said mockingly; "suppose he should hear you."

"He knows it!" said Madison bitterly.  "I told him all!"

She stared at him fixedly.

"You have--told--him--that--you STILL love me?" she repeated
slowly.

"Yes, or I wouldn't be here now.  It was due to him--to my own
conscience."

"And what did he say?"

"He insisted upon my coming, and, as God is my Judge and witness--
he seemed satisfied and content."

She drew her pretty lips together with a long whistle, and then
leaped from the table.  Her face was hard and her eyes were bright
as she went to the window and looked out.  He followed her timidly.

"Don't touch me," she said, sharply striking away his proffered
hand.  He turned with a flushed cheek and walked slowly towards the
door.  Her laugh stopped him.

"Come! I reckon that squeezin' hands ain't no part of your contract
with Sandy?" she said, glancing down at her own.  "Well, so you're
goin'?"

"I only wished to talk seriously and prayerfully with you for a few
moments, Safie, and then--to see you no more."

"And how would that suit him," she said dryly, "if he wants your
company here?  Then, just because you can't convert me and bring me
to your ways of thinkin' in one visit, I suppose you think it is
Christian-like to run away like this!  Or do you suppose that, if
you turn tail now, he won't believe that your Christian strength
and Christian resignation is all humbug?"

Madison dropped into the chair, put his elbows on the table, and
buried his face in his hands.  She came a little nearer, and laid
her hand lightly on his arm.  He made a movement as if to take it,
but she withdrew it impatiently.

"Come," she said brusquely; "now you're in for it you must play the
game out.  He trusts you; if he sees you can't trust yourself,
he'll shoot you on sight.  That don't frighten you?  Well, perhaps
this will then!  He'll SAY your religion is a sham and you a
hypocrite--and everybody will believe him.  How do you like that,
Brother Wayne?  How will that help the Church?  Come!  You're a
pair of cranks together; but he's got the whip-hand of you this
time.  All you can do is to keep up to his idea of you.  Put a bold
face on it, and come here as often as you can--the oftener the
better; the sooner you'll both get sick of each other--and of ME.
That's what you're both after, ain't it?  Well! I can tell you now,
you needn't either of you be the least afraid of me."

She walked away to the window again, not angrily, but smoothing
down the folds of her bright print dress as if she were wiping her
hands of her husband and his guest.  Something like a very material
and man-like sense of shame struggled up through his crust of
religion.  He stammered, "You don't understand me, Safie."

"Then talk of something I do understand," she said pertly.  "Tell
me some news of Angel's.  Your brother was over there the other
day.  He made himself quite popular with the young ladies--so I
hear from Mrs. Selvedge.  You can tell me as we walk along the bank
towards Sandy's claim.  It's just as well that you should move on
now, as it's your FIRST call, and next time you can stop longer."
She went to the corner of the room, removed her smart slippers, and
put on a pair of walking-shoes, tying them, with her foot on a
chair, in a quiet disregard of her visitor's presence; took a brown
holland sunbonnet from the wall, clapped it over her browner hair
and hanging braids, and tied it under her chin with apparently no
sense of coquetry in the act--becoming though it was--and without
glancing at him.  Alas for Madison's ethics!  The torment of her
worldly speech and youthful contempt was nothing to this tacit
ignoring of the manhood of her lover--this silent acceptance of him
as something even lower than her husband.  He followed her with a
burning cheek and a curious revolting of his whole nature that it
is to be feared were scarcely Christian.  The willows opened to let
them pass and closed behind them.

An hour later Mrs. McGee returned to her leafy bower alone.  She
took off her sunbonnet, hung it on its nail on the wall, shook down
her braids, took off her shoes, stained with the mud of her
husband's claim, and put on her slippers.  Then she ascended to her
eyrie in the little gallery, and gazed smilingly across the sunlit
Bar.  The two gaunt shadows of her husband and lover, linked like
twins, were slowly passing along the river bank on their way to the
eclipsing obscurity of the cottonwoods.  Below her--almost at her
very feet--the unconscious Arthur Wayne was pushing his work on the
river bed, far out to the promontory.  The sunlight fell upon his
vivid scarlet shirt, his bared throat, and head clustering with
perspiring curls.  The same sunlight fell upon Mrs. McGee's brown
head too, and apparently put a wicked fancy inside it.  She ran to
her bedroom, and returned with a mirror from its wall, and, after
some trials in getting the right angle, sent a searching reflection
upon the spot where Arthur was at work.

For an instant a diamond flash played around him.  Then he lifted
his head and turned it curiously towards the crest above him.  But
the next moment he clapped his hands over his dazzled but now
smiling eyes, as Mrs. McGee, secure in her leafy obscurity, fell
back and laughed to herself, like a very schoolgirl.

It was three weeks later, and Madison Wayne was again sitting alone
in his cabin.  This solitude had become of more frequent occurrence
lately, since Arthur had revolted and openly absented himself from
his religious devotions for lighter diversions of the Bar.  Keenly
as Madison felt his defection, he was too much preoccupied with
other things to lay much stress upon it, and the sting of Arthur's
relapse to worldliness and folly lay in his own consciousness that
it was partly his fault.  He could not chide his brother when he
felt that his own heart was absorbed in his neighbor's wife, and
although he had rigidly adhered to his own crude ideas of self-
effacement and loyalty to McGee, he had been again and again a
visitor at his house.  It was true that Mrs. McGee had made this
easier by tacitly accepting his conditions of their acquaintanceship,
by seeming more natural, by exhibiting a gayety, and at times even a
certain gentleness and thoughtfulness of conduct that delighted her
husband and astonished her lover.  Whether this wonderful change had
really been effected by the latter's gloomy theology and still more
hopeless ethics, he could not say.  She certainly showed no
disposition to imitate their formalities, nor seemed to be impressed
by them on the rare occasions when he now offered them.  Yet she
appeared to link the two men together--even physically--as on these
occasions when, taking an arm of each, she walked affectionately
between them along the river bank promenade, to the great marveling
and admiration of the Bar.  It was said, however, that Mr. Jack
Hamlin, a gambler, at that moment professionally visiting Wayne's
Bar, and a great connoisseur of feminine charms and weaknesses, had
glanced at them under his handsome lashes, and asked a single
question, evidently so amusing to the younger members of the Bar
that Madison Wayne knit his brow and Arthur Wayne blushed.  Mr.
Hamlin took no heed of the elder brother's frown, but paid some
slight attention to the color of the younger brother, and even more
to a slightly coquettish glance from the pretty Mrs. McGee.  Whether
or not--as has been ingeniously alleged by some moralists--the light
and trifling of either sex are prone to recognize each other by some
mysterious instinct, is not a necessary consideration of this
chronicle; enough that the fact is recorded.

And yet Madison Wayne should have been satisfied with his work!
His sacrifice was accepted; his happy issue from a dangerous
situation, and his happy triumph over a more dangerous temptation,
was complete and perfect, and even achieved according to his own
gloomy theories of redemption and regeneration.  Yet he was not
happy.  The human heart is at times strangely unappeasable.  And as
he sat that evening in the gathering shadows, the Book which should
have yielded him balm and comfort lay unopened in his lap.

A step upon the gravel outside had become too familiar to startle
him.  It was Mr. McGee lounging into the cabin like a gaunt shadow.
It must be admitted that the friendship of these strangely
contrasted men, however sincere and sympathetic, was not cheerful.
A belief in the thorough wickedness of humanity, kept under only
through fear of extreme penalty and punishment, material and
spiritual, was not conducive to light and amusing conversation.
Their talk was mainly a gloomy chronicle of life at the Bar, which
was in itself half an indictment.  To-night, Mr. McGee spoke of the
advent of Mr. Jack Hamlin, and together they deplored the diversion
of the hard-earned gains and valuable time of the Bar through
the efforts of that ingenious gentleman.  "Not," added McGee
cautiously, "but what he can shoot straight enough, and I've heard
tell that he don't LIE.  That mout and it moutn't be good for your
brother who goes around with him considerable, there's different
ways of lookin' at that; you understand what I mean?  You follow
me?"  For all that, the conversation seemed to languish this
evening, partly through some abstraction on the part of Wayne and
partly some hesitation in McGee, who appeared to have a greater
fear than usual of not expressing himself plainly.  It was quite
dark in the cabin when at last, detaching himself from his usual
lounging place, the door-post, he walked to the window and leaned,
more shadowy than ever, over Wayne's chair.  "I want to tell you
suthin'," he said slowly, "that I don't want you to misunderstand--
you follow me? and that ain't no ways carpin' or criticisin' nor
reflectin' on YOU--you understand what I mean?  Ever sens you and
me had that talk here about you and Safie, and ever sens I got the
hang of your ways and your style o' thinkin', I've been as sure of
you and her as if I'd been myself trottin' round with you and a
revolver.  And I'm as sure of you now--you sabe what I mean? you
understand?  You've done me and her a heap o' good; she's almost
another woman sens you took hold of her, and ef you ever want me to
stand up and 'testify,' as you call it, in church, Sandy McGee is
ready.  What I'm tryin' to say to ye is this.  Tho' I understand
you and your work and your ways--there's other folks ez moutn't--
you follow?  You understand what I mean?  And it's just that I'm
coming to.  Now las' night, when you and Safie was meanderin' along
the lower path by the water, and I kem across you"--

"But," interrupted Madison quickly, "you're mistaken.  I wasn't"--

"Hol' on," said McGee, quietly; "I know you got out o' the way
without you seein' me or me you, because you didn't know it was me,
don't you see? don't you follow? and that's just it!  It mout have
bin some one from the Bar as seed you instead o' ME.  See?  That's
why you lit out before I could recognize you, and that's why poor
Safie was so mighty flustered at first and was for runnin' away
until she kem to herself agin.  When, of course, she laughed, and
agreed you must have mistook me."

"But," gasped Madison quickly, "I WASN'T THERE AT ALL LAST NIGHT."

"What?"

The two men had risen simultaneously and were facing each other.
McGee, with a good-natured, half-critical expression, laid his hand
on Wayne's shoulder and slightly turned him towards the window,
that he might see his face.  It seemed to him white and dazed.

"You--wasn't there--last night?" he repeated, with a slow
tolerance.

Scarcely a moment elapsed, but the agony of an hour may have
thrilled through Wayne's consciousness before he spoke.  Then all
the blood of his body rushed to his face with his first lie as he
stammered, "No!  Yes!  Of course.  I have made a mistake--it WAS I."

"I see--you thought I was riled?" said McGee quietly.

"No; I was thinking it was NIGHT BEFORE LAST!  Of course it was
last night.  I must be getting silly."  He essayed a laugh--rare at
any time with him--and so forced now that it affected McGee more
than his embarrassment.  He looked at Wayne thoughtfully, and then
said slowly: "I reckon I did come upon you a little too sudden last
night, but, you see, I was thinkin' of suthin' else and disremembered
you might be there.  But I wasn't mad--no! no! and I only spoke
about it now that you might be more keerful before folks.  You
follow me?  You understand what I mean?"

He turned and walked to the door, when he halted.  "You follow me,
don't you?  It ain't no cussedness o' mine, or want o' trustin',
don't you see?  Mebbe I oughtened have spoken.  I oughter
remembered that times this sort o' thing must be rather rough on
you and her.  You follow me?  You understand what I mean?  Good-
night."

He walked slowly down the path towards the river.  Had Madison
Wayne been watching him, he would have noticed that his head was
bent and his step less free.  But Madison Wayne was at that moment
sitting rigidly in his chair, nursing, with all the gloomy
concentration of a monastic nature, a single terrible suspicion.


CHAPTER IV.


Howbeit the sun shone cheerfully over the Bar the next morning and
the next; the breath of life and activity was in the air; the
settlement never had been more prosperous, and the yield from the
opened placers on the drained river-bed that week was enormous.
The Brothers Wayne were said to be "rolling in gold."  It was
thought to be consistent with Madison Wayne's nature that there was
no trace of good fortune in his face or manner--rather that he had
become more nervous, restless, and gloomy.  This was attributed to
the joylessness of avarice as contrasted with the spendthrift
gayety of the more liberal Arthur, and he was feared and RESPECTED
as a miser.  His long, solitary walks around the promontory, his
incessant watchfulness, his reticence when questioned, were all
recognized as the indications of a man whose soul was absorbed in
money-getting.  The reverence they failed to yield to his religious
isolation they were willing to freely accord to his financial
abstraction.  But Mr. McGee was not so deceived.  Overtaking him
one day under the fringe of willows, he characteristically chided
him with absenting himself from Mrs. McGee and her house since
their last interview.

"I reckon you did not harbor malice in your Christianity," he said;
"but it looks mighty like ez if ye was throwing off on Safie and me
on account of what I said."

In vain Madison gloomily and almost sternly protested.

McGee looked him all over with his clear measuring eye, and for
some minutes was singularly silent.  At last he said slowly: "I've
been thinkin' suthin' o' goin' down to 'Frisco, and I'd be a heap
easier in my mind ef you'd promise to look arter Safie now and
then."

"You surely are not going to leave her here ALONE?" said Wayne
roughly.

"Why not?"

For an instant Wayne hesitated.  Then he burst out.  "For a hundred
reasons!  If she ever wanted your protection, before, she surely
does now.  Do you suppose the Bar is any less heathen or more
regenerated than it was when you thought it necessary to guard her
with your revolver?  Man!  It is a hundred times worse than then!
The new claims have filled it with spying adventurers--with wolves
like Hamlin and his friends--idolaters who would set up Baal and
Ashteroth here--and fill your tents with the curses of Sodom!"

Perhaps it was owing to the Scriptural phrasing, perhaps it was
from some unusual authority of the man's manner, but a look of
approving relief and admiration came into McGee's clear eyes.

"And YOU'RE just the man to tackle 'em," he said, clapping his hand
on Wayne's shoulder.  "That's your gait--keep it up!  But," he
added, in a lower voice, "me and my revolver are played out."
There was a strangeness in the tone that arrested Wayne's
attention.  "Yes," continued McGee, stroking his beard slowly, "men
like me has their day, and revolvers has theirs; the world turns
round and the Bar fills up, and this yer river changes its course--
and it's all in the day's work.  You understand what I mean--you
follow me?  And if anything should happen to me--not that it's like
to; but it's in the way o' men--I want you to look arter Safie.  It
ain't every woman ez has two men, ez like and unlike, to guard her.
You follow me--you understand what I mean, don't you?"  With these
words he parted somewhat abruptly from Wayne, turning into the
steep path to the promontory crest and leaving his companion lost
in gloomy abstraction.  The next day Alexander McGee had departed
on a business trip to San Francisco.

In his present frame of mind, with his new responsibility and the
carrying out of a plan which he had vaguely conceived might remove
the terrible idea that had taken possession of him, Madison Wayne
was even relieved when his brother also announced his intention of
going to Angel's for a few days.

For since his memorable interview with McGee he had been convinced
that Safie had been clandestinely visited by some one.  Whether it
was the thoughtless and momentary indiscretion of a willful woman,
or the sequel to some deliberately planned intrigue, did not
concern him so much as the falsity of his own position, and the
conniving lie by which he had saved her and her lover.  That at
this crucial moment he had failed to "testify" to guilt and
wickedness; that he firmly believed--such is the inordinate vanity
of the religious zealot--that he had denied Him in his effort to
shield HER; and that he had broken faith with the husband who had
entrusted to him the custody of his wife's honor, seemed to him
more terrible than her faithlessness.  In his first horror he had
dreaded to see her, lest her very confession--he knew her reckless
frankness towards himself--should reveal to him the extent of his
complicity.  But since then, and during her husband's absence, he
had convinced himself that it was his duty to wrestle and strive
with her weak spirit, to implore her to reveal her new intrigue to
her husband, and then he would help her to sue for his forgiveness.
It was a part of the inconsistency of his religious convictions; in
his human passion he was perfectly unselfish, and had already
forgiven her the offense against himself.  He would see her at
once!

But it happened to be a quiet, intense night, with the tremulous
opulence of a full moon that threw quivering shafts of light like
summer lightning over the blue river, and laid a wonderful carpet
of intricate lace along the path that wound through the willows to
the crest.  There was the dry, stimulating dust and spice of heated
pines from below; the languorous odors of syringa; the faint,
feminine smell of southernwood, and the infinite mystery of
silence.  This silence was at times softly broken with the tender
inarticulate whisper of falling leaves, broken sighs from the tree-
tops, and the languid stretching of wakened and unclasping boughs.
Madison Wayne had not, alas! taken into account this subtle
conspiracy of Night and Nature, and as he climbed higher, his steps
began to falter with new and strange sensations.  The rigidity of
purpose which had guided the hard religious convictions that always
sustained him, began to relax.  A tender sympathy stole over him; a
loving mercy to himself as well as others stole into his heart.  He
thought of HER as she had nestled at his side, hand in hand, upon
the moonlit veranda of her father's house, before his hard
convictions had chilled and affrighted her.  He thought of her
fresh simplicity, and what had seemed to him her wonderful girlish
beauty, and lo! in a quick turn of the path he stood breathless and
tremulous before the house.  The moonbeams lay tenderly upon the
peaceful eaves; the long blossoms of the Madeira vine seemed
sleeping also.  The pink flush of the Cherokee rose in the unreal
light had become chastely white.

But he was evidently too late for an interview.  The windows were
blank in the white light; only one--her bedroom--showed a light
behind the lowered muslin blind.  Her draped shadow once or twice
passed across it.  He was turning away with soft steps and even
bated breath when suddenly he stopped.  The exaggerated but
unmistakable shadow of a man stood beside her on the blind.

With a fierce leap as of a maniac, he was at the door, pounding,
rattling, and uttering hoarse and furious outcries.  Even through
his fury he heard quickened footsteps--her light, reckless, half-
hysterical laugh--a bound upon the staircase--the hurried unbolting
and opening of distant doors, as the lighter one with which he
was struggling at last yielded to his blind rage, and threw him
crashing into the sitting-room.  The back door was wide open.  He
could hear the rustling and crackling of twigs and branches in
different directions down the hillside, where the fugitives had
separated as they escaped.  And yet he stood there for an instant,
dazed and wondering, "What next?"

His eyes fell upon McGee's rifle standing upright in the corner.
It was a clean, beautiful, precise weapon, even to the unprofessional
eye, its long, laminated hexagonal barrel taking a tenderer blue in
the moonlight.  He snatched it up.  It was capped and loaded.
Without a pause he dashed down the hill.

Only one thought was in his mind now--the crudest, simplest duty.
He was there in McGee's place; he should do what McGee would do.
God had abandoned him, but McGee's rifle remained.

In a few minutes' downward plunging he had reached the river bank.
The tranquil silver surface quivered and glittered before him.  He
saw what he knew he would see, the black target of a man's head
above it, making for the Bar.  He took deliberate aim and fired.
There was no echo to that sharp detonation; a distant dog barked,
there was a slight whisper in the trees beside him, that was all!
But the head of the man was no longer visible, and the liquid
silver filmed over again, without a speck or stain.

He shouldered the rifle, and with the automatic action of men in
great crises returned slowly and deliberately to the house and
carefully replaced the rifle in its old position.  He had no
concern for the miserable woman who had fled; had she appeared
before him at the moment, he would not have noticed her.  Yet a
strange instinct--it seemed to him the vaguest curiosity--made him
ascend the stairs and enter her chamber.  The candle was still
burning on the table with that awful unconsciousness and simplicity
of detail which makes the scene of real tragedy so terrible.
Beside it lay a belt and leather pouch.  Madison Wayne suddenly
dashed forward and seized it, with a wild, inarticulate cry;
staggered, fell over the chair, rose to his feet, blindly groped
his way down the staircase, burst into the road, and, hugging the
pouch to his bosom, fled like a madman down the hill.

       .        .        .        .        .        .

The body of Arthur Wayne was picked up two days later a dozen miles
down the river.  Nothing could be more evident and prosaic than the
manner in which he had met his fate.  His body was only partly
clothed, and the money pouch and belt, which had been securely
locked next his skin, after the fashion of all miners, was gone.
He was known to have left the Bar with a considerable sum of money;
he was undoubtedly dogged, robbed, and murdered during his journey
on the river bank by the desperadoes who were beginning to infest
the vicinity.  The grief and agony of his only brother, sole
survivor of that fraternal and religious partnership so well known
to the camp, although shown only by a grim and speechless
melancholy,--broken by unintelligible outbursts of religious
raving,--was so real, that it affected even the callous camp.  But
scarcely had it regained its feverish distraction, before it was
thrilled by another sensation.  Alexander McGee had fallen from the
deck of a Sacramento steamboat in the Straits of Carquinez, and his
body had been swept out to sea.  The news had apparently been first
to reach the ears of his devoted wife, for when the camp--at this
lapse of the old prohibition--climbed to her bower with their rude
consolations, the house was found locked and deserted.  The fateful
influence of the promontory had again prevailed, the grim record of
its seclusion was once more unbroken.

For with it, too, drooped and faded the fortunes of the Bar.
Madison Wayne sold out his claim, endowed the church at the Cross
Roads with the proceeds, and the pulpit with his grim, hopeless,
denunciatory presence.  The first rains brought a freshet to the
Bar.  The river leaped the light barriers that had taken the place
of Wayne's peaceful engines, and regained the old channel.  The
curse that the Rev. Madison Wayne had launched on this riverside
Sodom seemed to have been fulfilled.  But even this brought no
satisfaction to the gloomy prophet, for it was presently known that
he had abandoned his terror-stricken flock to take the circuit as
revivalist preacher and camp-meeting exhorter, in the rudest and
most lawless of gatherings.  Desperate ruffians writhed at his feet
in impotent terror or more impotent rage; murderers and thieves
listened to him with blanched faces and set teeth, restrained only
by a more awful fear.  Over and over again he took his life with
his Bible into his own hands when he rose above the excited
multitude; he was shot at, he was rail-ridden, he was deported, but
never silenced.  And so, sweeping over the country, carrying fear
and frenzy with him, scouting life and mercy, and crushing alike
the guilty and innocent, he came one Sabbath to a rocky crest of
the Sierras--the last tattered and frayed and soiled fringe of
civilization on the opened tract of a great highway.  And here he
was to "testify," as was his wont.

But not as he expected.  For as he stood up on a boulder above the
thirty or forty men sitting or lying upon other rocks and boulders
around him, on the craggy mountain shelf where they had gathered, a
man also rose, elbowed past them, and with a hurried impulse tried
to descend the declivity.  But a cry was suddenly heard from
others, quick and clamoring, which called the whole assembly to its
feet, and it was seen that the fugitive had in some blundering way
fallen from the precipice.

He was brought up cruelly maimed and mangled, his ribs crushed, and
one lung perforated, but still breathing and conscious.  He had
asked to see the preacher.  Death impending, and even then
struggling with his breath, made this request imperative.  Madison
Wayne stopped the service, and stalked grimly and inflexibly to
where the dying man lay.  But there he started.

"McGee!" he said breathlessly.

"Send these men away," said McGee faintly.  "I've got suthin' to
tell you."

The men drew back without a word.  "You thought I was dead," said
McGee, with eyes still undimmed and marvelously clear.  "I orter
bin, but it don't need no doctor to say it ain't far off now.  I
left the Bar to get killed; I tried to in a row, but the fellows
were skeert to close with me, thinkin' I'd shoot.  My reputation
was agin me, there!  You follow me?  You understand what I mean?"

Kneeling beside him now and grasping both his hands, the changed
and horror-stricken Wayne gasped, "But"--

"Hold on!  I jumped off the Sacramento boat--I was goin' down the
third time--they thought on the boat I was gone--they think so now!
But a passin' fisherman dived for me.  I grappled him--he was clear
grit and would have gone down with me, but I couldn't let him die
too--havin' so to speak no cause.  You follow me--you understand
me?  I let him save me.  But it was all the same, for when I got to
'Frisco I read as how I was drowned.  And then I reckoned it was
all right, and I wandered HERE, where I wasn't known--until I saw
you."

"But why should you want to die?" said Wayne, almost fiercely.
"What right have you to die while others--double-dyed and blood-
stained, are condemned to live, 'testify,' and suffer?"

The dying man feebly waved a deprecation with his maimed hand, and
even smiled faintly.  "I knew you'd say that.  I knew what you'd
think about it, but it's all the same now.  I did it for you and
Safie!  I knew I was in the way; I knew you was the man she orter
had; I knew you was the man who had dragged her outer the mire and
clay where I was leavin' her, as you did when she fell in the
water.  I knew that every day I lived I was makin' YOU suffer and
breakin' HER heart--for all she tried to be gentle and gay."

"Great God in heaven!  Will you stop!" said Wayne, springing to his
feet in agony.  A frightened look--the first that any one had ever
seen in the clear eyes of the Bell-ringer of Angel's--passed over
them, and he murmured tremulously: "All right--I'm stoppin'!"

So, too, was his heart, for the wonderful eyes were now slowly
glazing.  Yet he rallied once more--coming up again the third time
as it seemed to Wayne--and his lips moved slowly.  The preacher
threw himself despairingly on the ground beside him.

"Speak, brother!  For God's sake, speak!"

It was his last whisper--so faint it might have been the first of
his freed soul.  But he only said:--

"You're--followin'--me?  You--understand--what--I--mean?"



JOHNNYBOY.


The vast dining-room of the Crustacean Hotel at Greyport, U. S.,
was empty and desolate.  It was so early in the morning that there
was a bedroom deshabille in the tucked-up skirts and bare legs of
the little oval breakfast-tables as they had just been left by the
dusting servants.  The most stirring of travelers was yet abed, the
most enterprising of first-train catchers had not yet come down;
there was a breath of midsummer sleep still in the air; through the
half-opened windows that seemed to be yawning, the pinkish blue
Atlantic beyond heaved gently and slumberously, and drowsy early
bathers crept into it as to bed.  Yet as I entered the room I saw
that one of the little tables in the corner was in reality occupied
by a very small and very extraordinary child.  Seated in a high
chair, attended by a dreamily abstracted nurse on one side, an
utterly perfunctory negro waiter on the other, and an incongruous
assortment of disregarded viands before him, he was taking--or,
rather, declining--his solitary breakfast.  He appeared to be a
pale, frail, but rather pretty boy, with a singularly pathetic
combination of infant delicacy of outline and maturity of
expression.  His heavily fringed eyes expressed an already weary
and discontented intelligence, and his willful, resolute little
mouth was, I fancied, marked with lines of pain at either corner.
He struck me as not only being physically dyspeptic, but as morally
loathing his attendants and surroundings.

My entrance did not disturb the waiter, with whom I had no
financial relations; he simply concealed an exaggerated yawn
professionally behind his napkin until my own servitor should
appear.  The nurse slightly awoke from her abstraction, shoved the
child mechanically,--as if starting up some clogged machinery,--
said, "Eat your breakfast, Johnnyboy," and subsided into her dream.
I think the child had at first some faint hope of me, and when my
waiter appeared with my breakfast he betrayed some interest in my
selection, with a view of possible later appropriation, but, as my
repast was simple, that hope died out of his infant mind.  Then
there was a silence, broken at last by the languid voice of the
nurse:--

"Try some milk then--nice milk."

"No!  No mik!  Mik makes me sick--mik does!"

In spite of the hurried infantine accent the protest was so
emphatic, and, above all, fraught with such pent-up reproach and
disgust, that I turned about sympathetically.  But Johnnyboy had
already thrown down his spoon, slipped from his high chair, and was
marching out of the room as fast as his little sandals would carry
him, with indignation bristling in every line of the crisp bows of
his sash.

I, however, gathered from Mr. Johnson, my waiter, that the
unfortunate child owned a fashionable father and mother, one or two
blocks of houses in New York, and a villa at Greyport, which he
consistently and intelligently despised.  That he had imperiously
brought his parents here on account of his health, and had demanded
that he should breakfast alone in the big dining-room.  That,
however, he was not happy.  "Nuffin peahs to agree wid him, Sah,
but he doan' cry, and he speaks his mind, Sah; he speaks his mind."

Unfortunately, I did not keep Johnnyboy's secret, but related the
scene I had witnessed to some of the lighter-hearted Crustaceans of
either sex, with the result that his alliterative protest became a
sort of catchword among them, and that for the next few mornings he
had a large audience of early breakfasters, who fondly hoped for a
repetition of his performance.  I think that Johnnyboy for the time
enjoyed this companionship, yet without the least affectation or
self-consciousness--so long as it was unobtrusive.  It so chanced,
however, that the Rev. Mr. Belcher, a gentleman with bovine
lightness of touch, and a singular misunderstanding of childhood,
chose to presume upon his paternal functions.  Approaching the high
chair in which Johnnyboy was dyspeptically reflecting, with a
ponderous wink at the other guests, and a fat thumb and forefinger
on Johnnyboy's table, he leaned over him, and with slow,
elephantine playfulness said:--

"And so, my dear young friend, I understand that 'mik makes you
sick--mik does.'"

Anything approaching to the absolute likeness of this imitation of
Johnnyboy's accents it is impossible to conceive.  Possibly
Johnnyboy felt it.  But he simply lifted his lovely lashes, and
said with great distinctness:--

"Mik don't--you devil!"

After this, closely as it had knitted us together, Johnnyboy's
morning presence was mysteriously withdrawn.  It was later pointed
out to us by Mr. Belcher, upon the veranda, that, although Wealth
had its privileges, it was held in trust for the welfare of
Mankind, and that the children of the Rich could not too early
learn the advantages of Self-restraint and the vanity of a mere
gratification of the Senses.  Early and frequent morning ablutions,
brisk morning toweling, half of a Graham biscuit in a teacup of
milk, exercise with the dumb-bells, and a little rough-and-tumble
play in a straw hat, check apron, and overalls would eventually
improve that stamina necessary for his future Position, and repress
a dangerous cerebral activity and tendency to give way to--  He
suddenly stopped, coughed, and absolutely looked embarrassed.
Johnnyboy, a moving cloud of white pique, silk, and embroidery, had
just turned the corner of the veranda.  He did not speak, but as he
passed raised his blue-veined lids to the orator.  The look of
ineffable scorn and superiority in those beautiful eyes surpassed
anything I had ever seen.  At the next veranda column he paused,
and, with his baby thumbs inserted in his silk sash, again regarded
him under his half-dropped lashes as if he were some curious
animal, and then passed on.  But Belcher was silenced for the
second time.

I think I have said enough to show that Johnnyboy was hopelessly
worshiped by an impressible and illogical sex.  I say HOPELESSLY,
for he slipped equally from the proudest silken lap and the
humblest one of calico, and carried his eyelashes and small aches
elsewhere.  I think that a secret fear of his alarming frankness,
and his steady rejection of the various tempting cates they offered
him, had much to do with their passion.  "It won't hurt you, dear,"
said Miss Circe, "and it's so awfully nice.  See!" she continued,
putting one of the delicacies in her own pretty mouth with every
assumption of delight.  "It's SO good!"  Johnnyboy rested his
elbows on her knees, and watched her with a grieved and
commiserating superiority.  "Bimeby, you'll have pains in youse
tommick, and you'll be tookt to bed," he said sadly, "and then
you'll--have to dit up and"--  But as it was found necessary here
to repress further details, he escaped other temptation.

Two hours later, as Miss Circe was seated in the drawing-room with
her usual circle of enthusiastic admirers around her, Johnnyboy--
who was issued from his room for circulation, two or three times a
day, as a genteel advertisement of his parents--floated into the
apartment in a new dress and a serious demeanor.  Sidling up to
Miss Circe he laid a phial--evidently his own pet medicine--on her
lap, said, "For youse tommikake to-night," and vanished.  Yet I
have reason to believe that this slight evidence of unusual
remembrance on Johnnyboy's part more than compensated for its
publicity, and for a few days Miss Circe was quite "set up" by it.

It was through some sympathy of this kind that I first gained
Johnnyboy's good graces.  I had been presented with a small pocket
case of homoeopathic medicines, and one day on the beach I took out
one of the tiny phials and, dropping two or three of the still
tinier pellets in my hand, swallowed them.  To my embarrassment,
a small hand presently grasped my trouser-leg.  I looked down; it
was Johnnyboy, in a new and ravishing smuggler suit, with his
questioning eyes fixed on mine.

"Howjer do dat?"

"Eh?"

"Wajer do dat for?"

"That?--Oh, that's medicine.  I've got a headache."

He searched the inmost depths of my soul with his wonderful eyes.
Then, after a pause, he held out his baby palm.

"You kin give Johnny some."

"But you haven't got headache--have you?"

"Me alluz has."

"Not ALWAYS."

He nodded his head rapidly.  Then added slowly, and with great
elaboration, "Et mo'nins, et affernoons, et nights, 'nd mo'nins
adain.  'N et becker" (i. e., breakfast).

There was no doubt it was the truth.  Those eyes did not seem to be
in the habit of lying.  After all, the medicine could not hurt him.
His nurse was at a little distance gazing absently at the sea.  I
sat down on a bench, and dropped a few of the pellets into his
palm.  He ate them seriously, and then turned around and backed--
after the well-known appealing fashion of childhood--against my
knees.  I understood the movement--although it was unlike my idea
of Johnnyboy.  However, I raised him to my lap--with the sensation
of lifting a dozen lace-edged handkerchiefs, and with very little
more effort--where he sat silently for a moment, with his sandals
crossed pensively before him.

"Wouldn't you like to go and play with those children?" I asked,
pointing to a group of noisy sand levelers not far away.

"No!"  After a pause, "You wouldn't neither."

"Why?"

"Hediks."

"But," I said, "perhaps if you went and played with them and ran up
and down as they do, you wouldn't have headache."

Johnnyboy did not answer for a moment; then there was a perceptible
gentle movement of his small frame.  I confess I felt brutally like
Belcher.  He was getting down.

Once down he faced me, lifted his frank eyes, said, "Do way and
play den," smoothed down his smuggler frock, and rejoined his
nurse.

But although Johnnyboy afterwards forgave my moral defection, he
did not seem to have forgotten my practical medical ministration,
and our brief interview had a surprising result.  From that moment
he confounded his parents and doctors by resolutely and positively
refusing to take any more of their pills, tonics, or drops.
Whether from a sense of loyalty to me, or whether he was not yet
convinced of the efficacy of homoeopathy, he did not suggest a
substitute, declare his preferences, or even give his reasons, but
firmly and peremptorily declined his present treatment.  And, to
everybody's astonishment, he did not seem a bit the worse for it.

Still he was not strong, and his continual aversion to childish
sports and youthful exercise provoked the easy criticism of that
large part of humanity who are ready to confound cause and effect,
and such brief moments as the Sluysdaels could spare him from their
fashionable duties were made miserable to them by gratuitous
suggestions and plans for their child's improvement.  It was
noticeable, however, that few of them were ever offered to
Johnnyboy personally.  He had a singularly direct way of dealing
with them, and a precision of statement that was embarrassing.

One afternoon, Jack Bracy drove up to the veranda of the Crustacean
with a smart buggy and spirited thoroughbred for Miss Circe's
especial driving, and his own saddle-horse on which he was to
accompany her.  Jack had dismounted, a groom held his saddle-horse
until the young lady should appear, and he himself stood at the
head of the thoroughbred.  As Johnnyboy, leaning against the
railing, was regarding the turnout with ill-concealed disdain,
Jack, in the pride of his triumph over his rivals, good-humoredly
offered to put him in the buggy, and allow him to take the reins.
Johnnyboy did not reply.

"Come along!" continued Jack, "it will do you a heap of good!  It's
better than lazing there like a girl!  Rouse up, old man!"

"Me don't like that geegee," said Johnnyboy calmly.  "He's a silly
fool."

"You're afraid," said Jack.

Johnnyboy lifted his proud lashes, and toddled to the steps.  Jack
received him in his arms, swung him into the seat, and placed the
slim yellow reins in his baby hands.

"Now you feel like a man, and not like a girl!" said Jack.  "Eh,
what?  Oh, I beg your pardon."

For Miss Circe had appeared--had absolutely been obliged to wait a
whole half-minute unobserved--and now stood there a dazzling but
pouting apparition.  In eagerly turning to receive her, Jack's foot
slipped on the step, and he fell.  The thoroughbred started, gave a
sickening plunge forward, and was off!  But so, too, was Jack, the
next moment, on his own horse, and before Miss Circe's screams had
died away.

For two blocks on Ocean Avenue, passersby that afternoon saw a
strange vision.  A galloping horse careering before a light buggy,
in which a small child, seated upright, was grasping the tightened
reins.  But so erect and composed was the little face and figure--
albeit as white as its own frock--that for an instant they did not
grasp its awful significance.  Those further along, however, read
the whole awful story in the drawn face and blazing eyes of Jack
Bracy as he, at last, swung into the Avenue.  For Jack had the
brains as well as the nerve of your true hero, and, knowing the
dangerous stimulus of a stern chase to a frightened horse, had kept
a side road until it branched into the Avenue.  So furious had been
his pace, and so correct his calculation, that he ranged alongside
of the runaway even as it passed, grasped the reins, and, in half a
block, pulled up on even wheels.

"I never saw such pluck in a mite like that," he whispered
afterwards to his anxious auditory.  "He never dropped those
ribbons, by G--, until I got alongside, and then he just hopped
down and said, as short and cool as you please, 'Dank you!'"

"Me didn't," uttered a small voice reproachfully.

"Didn't you, dear!  What DID you say then, darling?" exclaimed a
sympathizing chorus.

"Me said: 'Damn you!'  Me don't like silly fool geegees.  Silly
fool geegees make me sick--silly fool geegees do!"

Nevertheless, in spite of this incident, the attempts at Johnnyboy's
physical reformation still went on.  More than that, it was argued
by some complacent casuists that the pluck displayed by the child
was the actual result of this somewhat heroic method of taking
exercise, and NOT an inherent manliness distinct from his physical
tastes.  So he was made to run when he didn't want to--to dance when
he frankly loathed his partners--to play at games that he despised.
His books and pictures were taken away; he was hurried past
hoardings and theatrical posters that engaged his fancy; the public
was warned against telling him fairy tales, except those constructed
on strictly hygienic principles.  His fastidious cleanliness was
rebuked, and his best frocks taken away--albeit at a terrible
sacrifice of his parents' vanity--to suit the theories of his
critics.  How long this might have continued is not known--for the
theory and practice were suddenly arrested by another sensation.

One morning a children's picnic party was given on a rocky point
only accessible at certain states of the tide, whither they were
taken in a small boat under the charge of a few hotel servants,
and, possibly as part of his heroic treatment, Johnnyboy, who was
included in the party, was not allowed to be attended by his
regular nurse.

Whether this circumstance added to his general disgust of the whole
affair, and his unwillingness to go, I cannot say, but it is to be
regretted, since the omission deprived Johnnyboy of any impartial
witness to what subsequently occurred.  That he was somewhat
roughly handled by several of the larger children appeared to be
beyond doubt, although there was conflicting evidence as to the
sequel.  Enough that at noon screams were heard in the direction of
certain detached rocks on the point, and the whole party proceeding
thither found three of the larger boys on the rocks, alone and cut
off by the tide, having been left there, as they alleged, by
Johnnyboy, WHO HAD RUN AWAY WITH THE BOAT.  They subsequently
admitted that THEY had first taken the boat and brought Johnnyboy
with them, "just to frighten him," but they adhered to the rest.
And certainly Johnnyboy and the boat were nowhere to be found.  The
shore was communicated with, the alarm was given, the telegraph,
up and down the coast trilled with excitement, other boats were
manned--consternation prevailed.

But that afternoon the captain of the "Saucy Jane," mackerel
fisher, lying off the point, perceived a derelict "Whitehall" boat
drifting lazily towards the Gulf Stream.  On boarding it he was
chagrined to find the expected flotsam already in the possession of
a very small child, who received him with a scornful reticence as
regarded himself and his intentions, and some objurgation of a
person or persons unknown.  It was Johnnyboy.  But whether he had
attempted the destruction of the three other boys by "marooning"
them upon the rocks--as their parents firmly believed--or whether
he had himself withdrawn from their company simply because he did
not like them, was never known.  Any further attempt to improve
his education by the roughing gregarious process was, however,
abandoned.  The very critics who had counseled it now clamored for
restraint and perfect isolation.  It was ably pointed out by the
Rev. Mr. Belcher that the autocratic habits begotten by wealth and
pampering should be restricted, and all intercourse with their
possessor promptly withheld.

But the season presently passed with much of this and other
criticism, and the Sluysdaels passed too, carrying Johnnyboy and
his small aches and long eyelashes beyond these Crustacean voices,
where it was to be hoped there was peace.  I did not hear of him
again for five years, and then, oddly enough, from the lips of Mr.
Belcher on the deck of a transatlantic steamer, as he was being
wafted to Europe for his recreation by the prayers and purses of a
grateful and enduring flock.  "Master John Jacob Astor Sluysdael,"
said Mr. Belcher, speaking slowly, with great precision of
retrospect, "was taken from his private governess--I may say by my
advice--and sent to an admirable school in New York, fashioned upon
the English system of Eton and Harrow, and conducted by English
masters from Oxford and Cambridge.  Here--I may also say at my
suggestion--he was subjected to the wholesome discipline equally of
his schoolmates and his masters; in fact, sir, as you are probably
aware, the most perfect democracy that we have yet known, in which
the mere accidents of wealth, position, luxury, effeminacy,
physical degeneration, and over-civilized stimulation, are not
recognized.  He was put into compulsory cricket, football, and
rounders.  As an undersized boy he was subjected to that ingenious
preparation for future mastership by the pupillary state of
servitude known, I think, as 'fagging.'  His physical inertia was
stimulated and quickened, and his intellectual precocity repressed,
from time to time, by the exuberant playfulness of his fellow-
students, which occasionally took the form of forced ablutions and
corporal discomfort, and was called, I am told, 'hazing.'  It is
but fair to state that our young friend had some singular mental
endowments, which, however, were promptly checked to repress the
vanity and presumption that would follow."  The Rev. Mr. Belcher
paused, closed his eyes resignedly, and added, "Of course, you know
the rest."

"Indeed, I do not," I said anxiously.

"A most deplorable affair--indeed, a most shocking incident!
It was hushed up, I believe, on account of the position of his
parents."  He glanced furtively around, and in a lower and more
impressive voice said, "I am not myself a believer in heredity, and
I am not personally aware that there was a MURDERER among the
Sluysdael ancestry, but it seems that this monstrous child, in some
clandestine way, possessed himself of a huge bowie-knife, sir, and
on one of those occasions actually rushed furiously at the larger
boys--his innocent play-fellows--and absolutely forced them to flee
in fear of their lives.  More than that, sir, a LOADED REVOLVER was
found in his desk, and he boldly and shamelessly avowed his
intention to eviscerate, or--to use his own revolting language--'to
cut the heart out' of the first one who again 'laid a finger on
him.'"  He paused again, and, joining his two hands together with
the fingers pointing to the deck, breathed hard and said, "His
instantaneous withdrawal from the school was a matter of public
necessity.  He was afterwards taken, in the charge of a private
tutor, to Europe, where, I trust, we shall NOT meet."

I could not resist saying cheerfully that, at least, Johnnyboy had
for a short time made it lively for the big boys.

The Rev. Mr. Belcher rose slowly, but painfully, said with a deeply
grieved expression, "I don't think that I entirely follow you," and
moved gently away.

The changes of youth are apt to be more bewildering than those of
age, and a decade scarcely perceptible in an old civilization often
means utter revolution to the new.  It did not seem strange to me,
therefore, on meeting Jack Bracy twelve years after, to find that
he had forgotten Miss Circe, or that SHE had married, and was
living unhappily with a middle-aged adventurer by the name of
Jason, who was reputed to have had domestic relations elsewhere.
But although subjugated and exorcised, she at least was
reminiscent.  To my inquiries about the Sluysdaels, she answered
with a slight return of her old vivacity:--

"Ah, yes, dear fellow, he was one of my greatest admirers."

"He was about four years old when you knew him, wasn't he?"
suggested Jason meanly.  "Yes, they usually WERE young, but so kind
of you to recollect them.  Young Sluysdael," he continued, turning
to me, "is--but of course you know that disgraceful story."

I felt that I could stand this no longer.  "Yes," I said
indignantly, "I know all about the school, and I don't call his
conduct disgraceful either."

Jason stared.  "I don't know what you mean about the school," he
returned.  "I am speaking of his stepfather."

"His STEPFATHER!"

"Yes; his father, Van Buren Sluysdael, died, you know--a year after
they left Greyport.  The widow was left all the money in trust for
Johnny, except about twenty-five hundred a year which he was in
receipt of as a separate income, even as a boy.  Well, a glib-
tongued parson, a fellow by the name of Belcher, got round the
widow--she was a desperate fool--and, by Jove! made her marry him.
He made ducks and drakes of not only her money, but Johnny's too,
and had to skip to Spain to avoid the trustees.  And Johnny--for
the Sluysdaels are all fools or lunatics--made over his whole
separate income to that wretched, fashionable fool of a mother,
and went into a stockbroker's office as a clerk."

"And walks to business before eight every morning, and they say
even takes down the shutters and sweeps out," broke in Circe
impulsively.  "Works like a slave all day, wears out his old
clothes, has given up his clubs and amusements, and shuns society."

"But how about his health?" I asked.  "Is he better and stronger?"

"I don't know," said Circe, "but he LOOKS as beautiful as Endymion."

       .        .        .        .        .        .

At his bank, in Wall Street, Bracy that afternoon confirmed all
that Jason had told me of young Sluysdael.  "But his temper?" I
asked.  "You remember his temper--surely."

"He's as sweet as a lamb, never quarrels, never whines, never
alludes to his lost fortune, and is never put out.  For a
youngster, he's the most popular man in the street.  Shall we nip
round and see him?"

"By all means."

"Come.  It isn't far."

A few steps down the crowded street we dived into a den of plate-
glass windows, of scraps of paper, of rattling, ticking machines,
more voluble and excited than the careworn, abstracted men who
leaned over them.  But "Johnnyboy"--I started at the familiar name
again--was not there.  He was at luncheon.

"Let us join him," I said, as we gained the street again and turned
mechanically into Delmonico's.

"Not there," said Bracy with a laugh.  "You forget!  That's not
Johnnyboy's gait just now.  Come here."  He was descending a few
steps that led to a humble cake-shop.  As we entered I noticed a
young fellow standing before the plain wooden counter with a cake
of gingerbread in one hand and a glass of milk in the other.  His
profile was before me; I at once recognized the long lashes.  But
the happy, boyish, careless laugh that greeted Bracy, as he
presented me, was a revelation.

Yet he was pleased to remember me.  And then--it may have been
embarrassment that led me to such tactlessness, but as I glanced at
him and the glass of milk he was holding, I could not help
reminding him of the first words I had ever heard him utter.

He tossed off the glass, colored slightly, as I thought, and said
with a light laugh:--

"I suppose I have changed a good deal since then, sir."

I looked at his demure and resolute mouth, and wondered if he had.



YOUNG ROBIN GRAY.


The good American barque Skyscraper was swinging at her moorings in
the Clyde, off Bannock, ready for sea.  But that good American
barque--although owned in Baltimore--had not a plank of American
timber in her hulk, nor a native American in her crew, and even her
nautical "goodness" had been called into serious question by divers
of that crew during her voyage, and answered more or less
inconclusively with belaying-pins, marlin-spikes, and ropes' ends
at the hands of an Irish-American captain and a Dutch and Danish
mate.  So much so, that the mysterious powers of the American
consul at St. Kentigern had been evoked to punish mutiny on the
one hand, and battery and starvation on the other; both equally
attested by manifestly false witness and subornation on each side.
In the exercise of his functions the consul had opened and shut
some jail doors, and otherwise effected the usual sullen and
deceitful compromise, and his flag was now flying, on a final
visit, from the stern sheets of a smart boat alongside.  It was
with a feeling of relief at the end of the interview that he at
last lifted his head above an atmosphere of perjury and bilge-water
and came on deck.  The sun and wind were ruffling and glinting on
the broadening river beyond the "measured mile"; a few gulls were
wavering and dipping near the lee scuppers, and the sound of
Sabbath bells, mellowed by a distance that secured immunity of
conscience, came peacefully to his ear.

"Now that job's over ye'll be takin' a partin' dhrink," suggested
the captain.

The consul thought not.  Certain incidents of "the job" were fresh
in his memory, and he proposed to limit himself to his strict duty.

"You have some passengers, I see," he said, pointing to a group of
two men and a young girl, who had apparently just come aboard.

"Only wan; an engineer going out to Rio.  Them's just his friends
seein' him off, I'm thinkin'," returned the captain, surveying them
somewhat contemptuously.

The consul was a little disturbed.  He wondered if the passenger
knew anything of the quality and reputation of the ship to which he
was entrusting his fortunes.  But he was only a PASSENGER, and the
consul's functions--like those of the aloft-sitting cherub of
nautical song--were restricted exclusively to looking after "Poor
Jack."  However, he asked a few further questions, eliciting the
fact that the stranger had already visited the ship with letters
from the eminently respectable consignees at St. Kentigern, and
contented himself with lingering near them.  The young girl was
accompanied by her father, a respectably rigid-looking middle-class
tradesman, who, however, seemed to be more interested in the
novelty of his surroundings than in the movements of his daughter
and their departing friend.  So it chanced that the consul
re-entered the cabin--ostensibly in search of a missing glove, but
really with the intention of seeing how the passenger was bestowed--
just behind them.  But to his great embarrassment he at once
perceived that, owing to the obscurity of the apartment, they had
not noticed him, and before he could withdraw, the man had passed
his arm around the young girl's half stiffened, yet half yielding
figure.

"Only one, Ailsa," he pleaded in a slow, serious voice, pathetic
from the very absence of any youthful passion in it; "just one now.
It'll be gey lang before we meet again.  Ye'll not refuse me now."

The young girl's lips seemed to murmur some protest that, however,
was lost in the beginning of a long and silent kiss.

The consul slipped out softly.  His smile had died away.  That
unlooked-for touch of human weakness seemed to purify the stuffy
and evil-reeking cabin, and the recollection of its brutal past to
drop with a deck-load of iniquity behind him to the bottom of the
Clyde.  It is to be feared that in his unofficial moments he was
inclined to be sentimental, and it seemed to him that the good ship
Skyscraper henceforward carried an innocent freight not mentioned
in her manifest, and that a gentle, ever-smiling figure, not
entered on her books, had invisibly taken a place at her wheel.

But he was recalled to himself by a slight altercation on deck.
The young girl and the passenger had just returned from the cabin.
The consul, after a discreetly careless pause, had lifted his eyes
to the young girl's face, and saw that it was singularly pretty in
color and outline, but perfectly self-composed and serenely
unconscious.  And he was a little troubled to observe that the
passenger was a middle-aged man, whose hard features were already
considerably worn with trial and experience.

Both he and the girl were listening with sympathizing but cautious
interest to her father's contention with the boatman who had
brought them from shore, and who was now inclined to demand an
extra fee for returning with them.  The boatman alleged that he had
been detained beyond "kirk time," and that this imperiling of his
salvation could only be compensated by another shilling.  To the
consul's surprise, this extraordinary argument was recognized by
the father, who, however, contented himself by simply contending
that it had not been stipulated in the bargain.  The issue was,
therefore, limited, and the discussion progressed slowly and
deliberately, with a certain calm dignity and argumentative
satisfaction on both sides that exalted the subject, though it
irritated the captain.

"If ye accept the premisses that I've just laid down, that it's a
contract"---began the boatman.

"Dry up! and haul off," said the captain.

"One moment," interposed the consul, with a rapid glance at the
slight trouble in the young girl's face.  Turning to the father, he
went on: "Will you allow me to offer you and your daughter a seat
in my boat?"

It was an unlooked-for and tempting proposal.  The boatman was
lazily lying on his oars, secure in self-righteousness and the
conscious possession of the only available boat to shore; on the
other hand, the smart gig of the consul, with its four oars, was
not only a providential escape from a difficulty, but even to some
extent a quasi-official endorsement of his contention.  Yet he
hesitated.

"It'll be costin' ye no more?" he said interrogatively, glancing at
the consul's boat crew, "or ye'll be askin' me a fair proportion."

"It will be the gentleman's own boat," said the girl, with a
certain shy assurance, "and he'll be paying his boatmen by the
day."

The consul hastened to explain that their passage would involve no
additional expense to anybody, and added, tactfully, that he was
glad to enable them to oppose extortion.

"Ay, but it's a preencipel," said the father proudly, "and I'm
pleased, sir, to see ye recognize it."

He proceeded to help his daughter into the boat without any further
leave-taking of the passenger, to the consul's great surprise, and
with only a parting nod from the young girl.  It was as if this
momentous incident were a sufficient reason for the absence of any
further trivial sentiment.

Unfortunately the father chose to add an exordium for the benefit
of the astonished boatsman still lying on his oars.

"Let this be a lesson to ye, ma frien', when ye're ower sure!
Ye'll ne'er say a herrin' is dry until it be reestit an' reekit."

"Ay," said the boatman, with a lazy, significant glance at the
consul, "it wull be a lesson to me not to trust to a lassie's
GANGIN' jo, when thair's anither yin comin'."

"Give way," said the consul sharply.

Yet his was the only irritated face in the boat as the men bent
over their oars.  The young girl and her father looked placidly at
the receding ship, and waved their hands to the grave, resigned
face over the taffrail.  The consul examined them more attentively.
The father's face showed intelligence and a certain probity in its
otherwise commonplace features.  The young girl had more distinction,
with, perhaps, more delicacy of outline than of texture.  Her hair
was dark, with a burnished copper tint at its roots, and eyes that
had the same burnished metallic lustre in their brown pupils.  Both
sat respectfully erect, as if anxious to record the fact that the
boat was not their own to take their ease in; and both were silently
reserved, answering briefly to the consul's remarks as if to
indicate the formality of their presence there.  But a distant
railway whistle startled them into emotion.

"We've lost the train, father!" said the young girl.

The consul followed the direction of her anxious eyes; the train
was just quitting the station at Bannock.

"If ye had not lingered below with Jamie, we'd have been away in
time, ay, and in our own boat," said the father, with marked
severity.

The consul glanced quickly at the girl.  But her face betrayed no
consciousness, except of their present disappointment.

"There's an excursion boat coming round the Point," he said,
pointing to the black smoke trail of a steamer at the entrance of a
loch, "and it will be returning to St. Kentigern shortly.  If you
like, we'll pull over and put you aboard."

"Eh! but it's the Sabbath-breaker!" said the old man harshly.

The consul suddenly remembered that that was the name which the
righteous St. Kentigerners had given to the solitary bold, bad
pleasure-boat that defied their Sabbatical observances.

"Perhaps you won't find very pleasant company on board," said the
consul smiling; "but, then, you're not seeking THAT.  And as you
would be only using the boat to get back to your home, and not for
Sunday recreation, I don't think your conscience should trouble
you."

"Ay, that's a fine argument, Mr. Consul, but I'm thinkin' it's none
the less sopheestry for a' that," said the father grimly.  "No; if
ye'll just land us yonder at Bannock pier, we'll be ay thankin' ye
the same."

"But what will you do there?  There's no other train to-day."

"Ay, we'll walk on a bit."

The consul was silent.  After a pause the young girl lifted her
clear eyes, and with a half pathetic, half childish politeness,
said: "We'll be doing very well--my father and me.  You're far too
kind."

Nothing further was said as they began to thread their way between
a few large ships and an ocean steamer at anchor, from whose decks
a few Sunday-clothed mariners gazed down admiringly on the smart
gig and the pretty girl in a Tam o' Shanter in its stern sheets.
But here a new idea struck the consul.  A cable's length ahead lay
a yacht, owned by an American friend, and at her stern a steam
launch swung to its painter.  Without intimating his intention to
his passengers he steered for it.  "Bow!--way enough," he called
out as the boat glided under the yacht's counter, and, grasping the
companion-ladder ropes, he leaped aboard.  In a few hurried words
he explained the situation to Mr. Robert Gray, her owner, and
suggested that he should send the belated passengers to St.
Kentigern by the launch.  Gray assented with the easy good-nature
of youth, wealth, and indolence, and lounged from his cabin to the
side.  The consul followed.  Looking down upon the boat he could
not help observing that his fair young passenger, sitting in her
demure stillness at her father's side, made a very pretty picture.
It was possible that "Bob Gray" had made the same observation, for
he presently swung himself over the gangway into the gig, hat in
hand.  The launch could easily take them; in fact, he added
unblushingly, it was even then getting up steam to go to St.
Kentigern.  Would they kindly come on board until it was ready?  At
an added word or two of explanation from the consul, the father
accepted, preserving the same formal pride and stiffness, and the
transfer was made.  The consul, looking back as his gig swept round
again towards Bannock pier, received their parting salutations, and
the first smile he had seen on the face of his grave little
passenger.  He thought it very sweet and sad.

He did not return to the Consulate at St. Kentigern until the next
day.  But he was somewhat surprised to find Mr. Robert Gray
awaiting him, and upon some business which the young millionaire
could have easily deputed to his captain or steward.  As he still
lingered, the consul pleasantly referred to his generosity on the
previous day, and hoped the passengers had given him no trouble.

"No," said Gray with a slight simulation of carelessness.  "In fact
I came up with them myself.  I had nothing to do; it was Sunday,
you know."

The consul lifted his eyebrows slightly.

"Yes, I saw them home," continued Gray lightly.  "In one of those
by-streets not far from here; neat-looking house outside; inside,
corkscrew stone staircase like a lighthouse; fourth floor, no lift,
but SHE circled up like a swallow!  Flat--sitting-room, two
bedrooms, and a kitchen--mighty snug and shipshape and pretty as a
pink.  They OWN it too--fancy OWNING part of a house!  Seems to be
a way they have here in St. Kentigern."  He paused and then added:
"Stayed there to a kind of high tea!"

"Indeed," said the consul.

"Why not?  The old man wanted to return my 'hospitality' and square
the account!  He wasn't going to lie under any obligation to a
stranger, and, by Jove! he made it a special point of honor!  A
Spanish grandee couldn't have been more punctilious.  And with an
accent, Jerusalem! like a northeaster off the Banks!  But the feed
was in good taste, and he only a mathematical instrument maker, on
about twelve hundred dollars a year!"

"You seem to know all about him," said the consul smilingly.

"Not so much as he does about me," returned Gray, with a half
perplexed face; "for he saw enough to admonish me about my
extravagance, and even to intimate that that rascal Saunderson, my
steward, was imposing on me.  SHE took me to task, too, for not
laying the yacht up on Sunday that the men could go 'to kirk,' and
for swearing at a bargeman who ran across our bows.  It's their
perfect simplicity and sincerity in all this that gets me!  You'd
have thought that the old man was my guardian, and the daughter my
aunt."  After a pause he uttered a reminiscent laugh.  "She thought
we ate and drank too much on the yacht, and wondered what we could
find to do all day.  All this, you know, in the gentlest, caressing
sort of voice, as if she was really concerned, like one's own
sister.  Well, not exactly like mine"--he interrupted himself
grimly--"but, hang it all, you know what I mean.  You know that our
girls over there haven't got THAT trick of voice.  Too much self-
assertion, I reckon; things made too easy for them by us men.
Habit of race, I dare say."  He laughed a little.  "Why, I mislaid
my glove when I was coming away, and it was as good as a play to
hear her commiserating and sympathizing, and hunting for it as if
it were a lost baby."

"But you've seen Scotch girls before this," said the consul.
"There were Lady Glairn's daughters, whom you took on a cruise."

"Yes, but the swell Scotch all imitate the English, as everybody
else does, for the matter of that, our girls included; and they're
all alike.  Society makes 'em fit in together like tongued and
grooved planks that will take any amount of holy-stoning and
polish.  It's like dropping into a dead calm, with every rope and
spar that you know already reflected back from the smooth water
upon you.  It's mighty pretty, but it isn't getting on, you know."
After a pause he added: "I asked them to take a little holiday
cruise with me."

"And they declined," interrupted the consul.

Gray glanced at him quickly.

"Well, yes; that's all right enough.  They don't know me, you see,
but they do know you; and the fact is, I was thinking that as
you're our consul here, don't you see, and sort of responsible for
me, you might say that it was all right, you know.  Quite the
customary thing with us over there.  And you might say, generally,
who I am."

"I see," said the consul deliberately.  "Tell them you're Bob Gray,
with more money and time than you know what to do with; that you
have a fine taste for yachting and shooting and racing, and amusing
yourself generally; that you find that THEY amuse you, and you
would like your luxury and your dollars to stand as an equivalent
to their independence and originality; that, being a good
republican yourself, and recognizing no distinction of class,
you don't care what this may mean to them, who are brought up
differently; that after their cruise with you you don't care what
life, what friends, or what jealousies they return to; that you
know no ties, no responsibilities beyond the present, and that you
are not a marrying man."

"Look here, I say, aren't you making a little too much of this?"
said Gray stiffly.

The consul laughed.  "I should be glad to know that I am."

Gray rose.  "We'll be dropping down the river to-morrow," he said,
with a return of his usual lightness, "and I reckon I'll be
toddling down to the wharf.  Good-bye, if I don't see you again."

He passed out.  As the consul glanced from the window he observed,
however, that Mr. Gray was "toddling" in quite another direction
than the wharf.  For an instant he half regretted that he had not
suggested, in some discreet way, the conclusion he had arrived at
after witnessing the girl's parting with the middle-aged passenger
the day before.  But he reflected that this was something he had
only accidentally overseen, and was the girl's own secret.


II.


When the summer had so waxed in its fullness that the smoke of
factory chimneys drifted high, permitting glimpses of fairly blue
sky; when the grass in St. Kentigern's proudest park took on a less
sober green in the comfortable sun, and even in the thickest shade
there was no chilliness, the good St. Kentigerners recognized that
the season had arrived to go "down the river," and that it was
time for them to betake themselves, with rugs, mackintoshes, and
umbrellas, to the breezy lochs and misty hillsides for which the
neighborhood of St. Kentigern is justly famous.  So when it came to
pass that the blinds were down in the highest places, and the most
exclusive pavements of St. Kentigern were echoless and desolate,
the consul heroically tore himself from the weak delight of basking
in the sunshine, and followed the others.

He soon found himself settled at the furthest end of a long narrow
loch, made longer and narrower by the steep hillside of rock and
heather which flanked its chilly surface on either side, and whose
inequalities were lost in the firs and larches that filled ravine
and chasm.  The fragrant road which ran sinuously through their
shadowy depths was invisible from the loch; no protuberance broke
the seemingly sheer declivity; the even sky-line was indented in
two places--one where it was cracked into a fanciful resemblance to
a human profile, the other where it was curved like a bowl.  Need
it be said that one was distinctly recognized as the silhouette of
a prehistoric giant, and that the other was his drinking-cup; need
it be added that neither lent the slightest human suggestion to the
solitude?  A toy-like pier extending into the loch, midway from the
barren shore, only heightened the desolation.  And when the little
steamboat that occasionally entered the loch took away a solitary
passenger from the pier-head, the simplest parting was invested
with a dreary loneliness that might have brought tears to the most
hardened eye.

Still, when the shadow of either hillside was not reaching across
the loch, the meridian sun, chancing upon this coy mirror, made the
most of it.  Then it was that, seen from above, it flashed like a
falchion lying between the hills; then its reflected glory,
striking up, transfigured the two acclivities, tipped the cold
heather with fire, gladdened the funereal pines, and warmed the
ascetic rocks.  And it was in one of those rare, passionate
intervals that the consul, riding along the wooded track and
turning his eyes from their splendors, came upon a little house.

It had once been a sturdy cottage, with a grim endurance and
inflexibility which even some later and lighter additions had
softened rather than changed.  On either side of the door, against
the bleak whitewashed wall, two tall fuchsias relieved the rigid
blankness with a show of color.  The windows were prettily draped
with curtains caught up with gay ribbons.  In a stony pound-like
enclosure there was some attempt at floral cultivation, but all
quite recent.  So, too, were a wicker garden seat, a bright
Japanese umbrella, and a tropical hammock suspended between two
arctic-looking bushes, which the rude and rigid forefathers of the
hamlet would have probably resented.

He had just passed the house when a charming figure slipped across
the road before him.  To his surprise it was the young girl he had
met a few months before on the Skyscraper.  But the Tam o' Shanter
was replaced by a little straw hat; and a light dress, summery in
color and texture, but more in keeping with her rustic surroundings,
seemed as grateful and rare as the sunshine.  Without knowing why,
he had an impression that it was of her own making--a gentle
plagiarism of the style of her more fortunate sisters, but with
a demure restraint all her own.  As she recognized him a faint
color came to her cheek, partly from surprise, partly from some
association.  To his delighted greeting she responded by informing
him that her father had taken the cottage he had just passed, where
they were spending a three weeks' vacation from his business.  It
was not so far from St. Kentigern but that he could run up for a day
to look after the shop.  Did the consul not think it was wise?

Quite ready to assent to any sagacity in those clear brown eyes,
the consul thought it was.  But was it not, like wisdom, sometimes
lonely?

Ah! no.  There was the loch and the hills and the heather; there
were her flowers; did he not think they were growing well? and at
the head of the loch there was the old tomb of the McHulishes, and
some of the coffins were still to be seen.

Perhaps emboldened by the consul's smile, she added, with a more
serious precision which was, however, lost in the sympathizing
caress of her voice, "And would you not be getting off and coming
in and resting a wee bit before you go further?  It would be so
good of you, and father would think it so kind.  And he will be
there now, if you're looking."

The consul looked.  The old man was standing in the doorway of the
cottage, as respectably uncompromising as ever, with the slight
concession to his rural surroundings of wearing a Tam o' Shanter
and easy slippers.  The consul dismounted and entered.  The
interior was simply, but tastefully furnished.  It struck him that
the Scotch prudence and economy, which practically excluded display
and meretricious glitter, had reached the simplicity of the truest
art and the most refined wealth.  He felt he could understand
Gray's enthusiasm, and by an odd association of ideas he found
himself thinking of the resigned face of the lonely passenger on
the Skyscraper.

"Have you heard any news of your friend who went to Rio?" he asked
pleasantly, but without addressing himself particularly to either.

There was a perceptible pause; doubtless of deference to her father
on the part of the young girl, and of the usual native conscientious
caution on the part of the father, but neither betrayed any
embarrassment or emotion.  "No; he would not be writing yet," she at
length said simply, "he would be waiting until he was settled to his
business.  Jamie would be waiting until he could say how he was
doing, father?" she appealed interrogatively to the old man.

"Ay, James Gow would not fash himself to write compliments and
gossip till he knew his position and work," corroborated the old
man.  "He'll not be going two thousand miles to send us what we can
read in the 'St. Kentigern Herald.'  But," he added, suddenly, with
a recall of cautiousness, "perhaps YOU will be hearing of the ship?"

"The consul will not be remembering what he hears of all the
ships," interposed the young girl, with the same gentle affectation
of superior worldly knowledge which had before amused him.  "We'll
be wearying him, father," and the subject dropped.

The consul, glancing around the room again, but always returning to
the sweet and patient seriousness of the young girl's face and the
grave decorum of her father, would have liked to ask another
question, but it was presently anticipated; for when he had
exhausted the current topics, in which both father and daughter
displayed a quiet sagacity, and he had gathered a sufficient
knowledge of their character to seem to justify Gray's enthusiasm,
and was rising to take his leave, the young girl said timidly:--

"Would ye not let Bessie take your horse to the grass field over
yonder, and yourself stay with us to dinner?  It would be most
kind, and you would meet a great friend of yours who will be here."

"Mr. Gray?" suggested the consul audaciously.  Yet he was greatly
surprised when the young girl said quietly, "Ay."

"He'll be coming in the loch with his yacht," said the old man.
"It's not so expensive lying here as at Bannock, I'm thinking; and
the men cannot gang ashore for drink.  Eh, but it's an awful waste
o' pounds, shillings, and pence, keeping these gowks in idleness
with no feeshin' nor carrying of passengers."

"Ay, but it's better Mr. Gray should pay them for being decent and
well-behaved on board his ship, than that they should be out of
work and rioting in taverns and lodging-houses.  And you yourself,
father, remember the herrin' fishers that come ashore at Ardie, and
the deck hands of the excursion boat, and the language they'll be
using."

"Have you had a cruise in the yacht?" asked the consul quickly.

"Ay," said the father, "we have been up and down the loch, and
around the far point, but not for boardin' or lodgin' the night,
nor otherwise conteenuing or parteecipating.  I have explained to
Mr. Gray that we must return to our own home and our own porridge
at evening, and he has agreed, and even come with us.  He's a
decent enough lad, and not above instructin', but extraordinar'
extravagant."

"Ye know, father," interposed the young girl, "he talks of fitting
up the yacht for the fishing, and taking some of his most decent
men on shares.  He says he was very fond of fishing off the
Massachusetts coast, in America.  It will be, I'm thinking," she
said, suddenly turning to the consul with an almost pathetic appeal
in her voice, "a great occupation for the rich young men over
there."

The consul, desperately struggling with a fanciful picture of Mr.
Robert Gray as a herring fisher, thought gravely that it "might
be."  But he thought still more gravely, though silently, of this
singular companion ship, and was somewhat anxious to confront his
friend with his new acquaintances.  He had not long to wait.  The
sun was just dipping behind the hill when the yacht glided into the
lonely loch.  A boat was put off, and in a few moments Robert Gray
was climbing the little path from the loch.

Had the consul expected any embarrassment or lover-like consciousness
on the face of Mr. Gray at their unexpected meeting, he would have
been disappointed.  Nor was the young man's greeting of father and
daughter, whom he addressed as Mr. and Miss Callender, marked by any
tenderness or hesitation.  On the contrary, a certain seriousness
and quiet reticence, unlike Gray, which might have been borrowed
from his new friends, characterized his speech and demeanor.  Beyond
this freemasonry of sad repression there was no significance of look
or word passed between these two young people.  The girl's voice
retained its even pathos.  Gray's grave politeness was equally
divided between her and her father.  He corroborated what Callender
had said of his previous visits without affectation or demonstration;
he spoke of the possibilities of his fitting up the yacht for the
fishing season with a practical detail and economy that left the
consul's raillery ineffective.  Even when, after dinner, the consul
purposely walked out in the garden with the father, Gray and Ailsa
presently followed them without lingering or undue precipitation,
and with no change of voice or manner.  The consul was perplexed.
Had the girl already told Gray of her lover across the sea, and was
this singular restraint their joint acceptance of their fate; or was
he mistaken in supposing that their relations were anything more
than the simple friendship of patron and protegee?  Gray was rich
enough to indulge in such a fancy, and the father and daughter were
too proud to ever allow it to influence their own independence.
In any event the consul's right to divulge the secret he was
accidentally possessed of seemed more questionable than ever.  Nor
did there appear to be any opportunity for a confidential talk with
Gray, since it was proposed that the whole party should return to
the yacht for supper, after which the consul should be dropped at
the pier-head, distant only a few minutes from his hotel, and his
horse sent to him the next day.

A faint moon was shimmering along the surface of Loch Dour in icy
little ripples when they pulled out from the shadows of the
hillside.  By the accident of position, Gray, who was steering, sat
beside Ailsa in the stern, while the consul and Mr. Callender were
further forward, although within hearing.  The faces of the young
people were turned towards each other, yet in the cold moonlight
the consul fancied they looked as impassive and unemotional as
statues.  The few distant, far-spaced lights that trembled on the
fading shore, the lonely glitter of the water, the blackness of the
pine-clad ravines seemed to be a part of this repression, until the
vast melancholy of the lake appeared to meet and overflow them like
an advancing tide.  Added to this, there came from time to time the
faint sound and smell of the distant, desolate sea.

The consul, struggling manfully to keep up a spasmodic discussion
on Scotch diminutives in names, found himself mechanically saying:

"And James you call Jamie?"

"Ay; but ye would say, to be pure Scotch, 'Hamish,'" said Mr.
Callender precisely.  The girl, however, had not spoken; but Gray
turned to her with something of his old gayety.

"And I suppose you would call me 'Robbie'?"

"Ah, no!"

"What then?"

"Robin."

Her voice was low yet distinct, but she had thrown into the two
syllables such infinite tenderness, that the consul was for an
instant struck with an embarrassment akin to that he had felt in
the cabin of the Skyscraper, and half expected the father to utter
a shocked protest.  And to save what he thought would be an
appalling silence, he said with a quiet laugh:--

"That's the fellow who 'made the assembly shine' in the song, isn't
it?"

"That was Robin Adair," said Gray quietly; "unfortunately I would
only be 'Robin Gray,' and that's quite another song."

"AULD Robin Gray, sir, deestinctly 'auld' in the song," interrupted
Mr. Callender with stern precision; "and I'm thinking he was not so
very unfortunate either."

The discussion of Scotch diminutives halting here, the boat sped on
silently to the yacht.  But although Robert Gray, as host, recovered
some of his usual lightheartedness, the consul failed to discover
anything in his manner to indicate the lover, nor did Miss Ailsa
after her single lapse of tender accent exhibit the least
consciousness.  It was true that their occasional frank allusions to
previous conversations seemed to show that their opportunities had
not been restricted, but nothing more.  He began again to think he
was mistaken.

As he wished to return early, and yet not hasten the Callenders, he
prevailed upon Gray to send him to the pier-head first, and not
disturb the party.  As he stepped into the boat, something in the
appearance of the coxswain awoke an old association in his mind.
The man at first seemed to avoid his scrutiny, but when they were
well away from the yacht, he said hesitatingly:--

"I see you remember me, sir.  But if it's all the same to you, I've
got a good berth here and would like to keep it."

The consul had a flash of memory.  It was the boatswain of the
Skyscraper, one of the least objectionable of the crew.  "But what
are you doing here? you shipped for the voyage," he said sharply.

"Yes, but I got away at Key West, when I knew what was coming.  I
wasn't on her when she was abandoned."

Abandoned!" repeated the consul.  "What the d---l!  Do you mean to
say she was wrecked?"

"Well, yes--you know what I mean, sir.  It was an understood thing.
She was over-insured and scuttled in the Bahamas.  It was a put-up
job, and I reckoned I was well out of it."

"But there was a passenger!  What of him?" demanded the consul
anxiously.

"Dnnno!  But I reckon he got away.  There wasn't any of the crew
lost that I know of.  Let's see, he was an engineer, wasn't he?  I
reckon he had to take a hand at the pumps, and his chances with the
rest."

"Does Mr. Gray know of this?" asked the consul after a pause.

The man stared.

"Not from me, sir.  You see it was nothin' to him, and I didn't
care talking much about the Skyscraper.  It was hushed up in the
papers.  You won't go back on me, sir?"

"You don't know what became of the passenger?"

"No!  But he was a Scotchman, and they're bound to fall on their
feet somehow!"


III.


The December fog that overhung St. Kentigern had thinned sufficiently
to permit the passage of a few large snowflakes, soiled in their
descent, until in color and consistency they spotted the steps of
the Consulate and the umbrellas of the passers-by like sprinklings
of gray mortar.  Nevertheless the consul thought the streets
preferable to the persistent gloom of his office, and sallied out.
Youthful mercantile St. Kentigern strode sturdily past him in the
lightest covert coats; collegiate St. Kentigern fluttered by in the
scantiest of red gowns, shaming the furs that defended his more
exotic blood; and the bare red feet of a few factory girls, albeit
their heads and shoulders were draped and hooded in thick shawls,
filled him with a keen sense of his effeminacy.  Everything of
earth, air, and sky, and even the faces of those he looked upon,
seemed to be set in the hard, patient endurance of the race.
Everywhere on that dismal day, he fancied he could see this energy
without restlessness, this earnestness without geniality, all grimly
set against the hard environment of circumstance and weather.

The consul turned into one of the main arteries of St. Kentigern, a
wide street that, however, began and ended inconsequently, and with
half a dozen social phases in as many blocks.  Here the snow
ceased, the fog thickened suddenly with the waning day, and the
consul found himself isolated and cut off on a block which he did
not remember, with the clatter of an invisible tramway in his ears.
It was a block of small houses with smaller shop-fronts.  The one
immediately before him seemed to be an optician's, but the dimly
lighted windows also displayed the pathetic reinforcement of a few
watches, cheap jewelry on cards, and several cairngorm brooches and
pins set in silver.  It occurred to him that he wanted a new watch
crystal, and that he would procure it here and inquire his way.
Opening the door he perceived that there was no one in the shop,
but from behind the counter another open door disclosed a neat
sitting-room, so close to the street that it gave the casual
customer the sensation of having intruded upon domestic privacy.
The consul's entrance tinkled a small bell which brought a figure
to the door.  It was Ailsa Callender.

The consul was startled.  He had not seen her since he had brought
to their cottage the news of the shipwreck with a precaution and
delicacy that their calm self-control and patient resignation,
however, seemed to make almost an impertinence.  But this was no
longer the handsome shop in the chief thoroughfare with its two
shopmen, which he previously knew as "Callender's."  And Ailsa
here!  What misfortune had befallen them?

Whatever it was, there was no shadow of it in her clear eyes and
frank yet timid recognition of him.  Falling in with her stoical
and reticent acceptance of it, he nevertheless gathered that the
Callenders had lost money in some invention which James Gow had
taken with him to Rio, but which was sunk in the ship.  With this
revelation of a business interest in what he had believed was only
a sentimental relation, the consul ventured to continue his
inquiries.  Mr. Gow had escaped with his life and had reached
Honduras, where he expected to try his fortunes anew.  It might be
a year or two longer before there were any results.  Did the consul
know anything of Honduras?  There was coffee there--so she and her
father understood.  All this with little hopefulness, no irritation,
but a divine patience in her eyes.  The consul, who found that his
watch required extensive repairing, and had suddenly developed an
inordinate passion for cairngorms, watched her as she opened the
show-case with no affectation of unfamiliarity with her occupation,
but with all her old serious concern.  Surely she would have made as
thorough a shop-girl as she would--  His half-formulated thought
took the shape of a question.

"Have you seen Mr. Gray since his return from the Mediterranean?"

Ah! one of the brooches had slipped from her fingers to the bottom
of the case.  There was an interval or two of pathetic murmuring,
with her fair head under the glass, before she could find it; then
she lifted her eyes to the consul.  They were still slightly
suffused with her sympathetic concern.  The stone, which was set in
a thistle--the national emblem--did he not know it?--had dropped
out.  But she could put it in.  It was pretty and not expensive.
It was marked twelve shillings on the card, but he could have it
for ten shillings.  No, she had not seen Mr. Gray since they had
lost their fortune.  (It struck the consul as none the less
pathetic that she seemed really to believe in their former
opulence.)  They could not be seeing him there in a small shop,
and they could not see him elsewhere.  It was far better as it was.
Yet she paused a moment when she had wrapped up the brooch.  "You'd
be seeing him yourself some time?" she added gently.

"Perhaps."

"Then you'll not mind saying how my father and myself are sometimes
thinking of his goodness and kindness," she went on, in a voice
whose tenderness seemed to increase with the formal precision of
her speech.

"Certainly."

"And you'll say we're not forgetting him."

"I promise."

As she handed him the parcel her lips softly parted in what might
have been equally a smile or a sigh.

He was able to keep his promise sooner than he had imagined.  It
was only a few weeks later that, arriving in London, he found
Gray's hatbox and bag in the vestibule of his club, and that
gentleman himself in the smoking-room.  He looked tanned and older.

"I only came from Southampton an hour ago, where I left the yacht.
And," shaking the consul's hand cordially, "how's everything and
everybody up at old St. Kentigern?"

The consul thought fit to include his news of the Callenders in
reference to that query, and with his eyes fixed on Gray dwelt at
some length on their change of fortune.  Gray took his cigar from
his mouth, but did not lift his eyes from the fire.  Presently he
said, "I suppose that's why Callender declined to take the shares I
offered him in the fishing scheme.  You know I meant it, and would
have done it."

"Perhaps he had other reasons."

"What do you mean?" said Gray, facing the consul suddenly.

"Look here, Gray," said the consul, "did Miss Callender or her
father ever tell you she was engaged?"

"Yes; but what's that to do with it?"

"A good deal.  Engagements, you know, are sometimes forced,
unsuitable, or unequal, and are broken by circumstances.  Callender
is proud."

Gray turned upon the consul the same look of gravity that he had
worn on the yacht--the same look that the consul even fancied he
had seen in Ailsa's eyes.  "That's exactly where you're mistaken in
her," he said slowly.  "A girl like that gives her word and keeps
it.  She waits, hopes, accepts what may come--breaks her heart, if
you will, but not her word.  Come, let's talk of something else.
How did he--that man Gow--lose Callender's money?"

The consul did not see the Callenders again on his return, and
perhaps did not think it necessary to report the meeting.  But one
morning he was delighted to find an official document from New York
upon his desk, asking him to communicate with David Callender of
St. Kentigern, and, on proof of his identity, giving him authority
to draw the sum of five thousand dollars damages awarded for the
loss of certain property on the Skyscraper, at the request of James
Gow.  Yet it was with mixed sensations that the consul sought the
little shop of the optician with this convincing proof of Gow's
faithfulness and the indissolubility of Ailsa's engagement.  That
there was some sad understanding between the girl and Gray he did
not doubt, and perhaps it was not strange that he felt a slight
partisanship for his friend, whose nature had so strangely changed.
Miss Ailsa was not there.  Her father explained that her health had
required a change, and she was visiting some friends on the river.

"I'm thinkin' that the atmosphere is not so pure here.  It is
deficient in ozone.  I noticed it myself in the early morning.  No!
it was not the confinement of the shop, for she never cared to go
out."

He received the announcement of his good fortune with unshaken calm
and great practical consideration of detail.  He would guarantee
his identity to the consul.  As for James Gow, it was no more than
fair; and what he had expected of him.  As to its being an
equivalent of his loss, he could not tell until the facts were
before him.

"Miss Ailsa," suggested the consul venturously, "will be pleased to
hear again from her old friend, and know that he is succeeding."

"I'm not so sure that ye could call it 'succeeding,'" returned the
old man, carefully wiping the glasses of a pair of spectacles that
he held critically to the light, "when ye consider that, saying
nothing of the waste of valuable time, it only puts James Gow back
where he was when he went away."

"But any man who has had the pleasure of knowing Mr. and Miss
Callender would be glad to be on that footing," said the consul,
with polite significance.

"I'm not agreeing with you there," said Mr. Callender quietly; "and
I'm observing in ye of late a tendency to combine business wi'
compleement.  But it was kind of ye to call; and I'll be sending ye
the authorization."

Which he did.  But the consul, passing through the locality a few
weeks later, was somewhat concerned to find the shop closed, with
others on the same block, behind a hoarding that indicated
rebuilding and improvement.  Further inquiry elicited the fact that
the small leases had been bought up by some capitalist, and that
Mr. Callender, with the others, had benefited thereby.  But there
was no trace nor clew to his present locality.  He and his daughter
seemed to have again vanished with this second change in their
fortunes.

It was a late March morning when the streets were dumb with snow,
and the air was filled with flying granulations that tinkled
against the windows of the Consulate like fairy sleigh-bells, when
there was the stamping of snow-clogged feet in the outer hall, and
the door was opened to Mr. and Miss Callender.  For an instant the
consul was startled.  The old man appeared as usual--erect, and as
frigidly respectable as one of the icicles that fringed the window,
but Miss Ailsa was, to his astonishment, brilliant with a new-found
color, and sparkling with health and only half-repressed animation.
The snow-flakes, scarcely melting on the brown head of this true
daughter of the North, still crowned her hood; and, as she threw
back her brown cloak and disclosed a plump little scarlet jacket
and brown skirt, the consul could not resist her suggested likeness
to some bright-eyed robin redbreast, to whom the inclement weather
had given a charming audacity.  And shy and demure as she still
was, it was evident that some change had been wrought in her other
than that evoked by the stimulus of her native sky and air.

To his eager questioning, the old man replied briefly that he had
bought the old cottage at Loch Dour, where they were living, and
where he had erected a small manufactory and laboratory for the
making of his inventions, which had become profitable.  The consul
reiterated his delight at meeting them again.

"I'm not so sure of that, sir, when you know the business on which
I come," said Mr. Callender, dropping rigidly into a chair, and
clasping his hands over the crutch of a shepherd-like staff.  "Ye
mind, perhaps, that ye conveyed to me, osteensibly at the request
of James Gow, a certain sum of money, for which I gave ye a good
and sufficient guarantee.  I thought at the time that it was a most
feckless and unbusiness-like proceeding on the part of James, as
it was without corroboration or advice by letter; but I took the
money."

"Do you mean to say that he made no allusion to it in his other
letters?" interrupted the consul, glancing at Ailsa.

"There were no other letters at the time," said Callender dryly.
"But about a month afterwards we DID receive a letter from him
enclosing a draft and a full return of the profits of the
invention, which HE HAD SOLD IN HONDURAS.  Ye'll observe the
deescrepancy!  I then wrote to the bank on which I had drawn as you
authorized me, and I found that they knew nothing of any damages
awarded, but that the sum I had drawn had been placed to my credit
by Mr. Robert Gray."

In a flash the consul recalled the one or two questions that Gray
had asked him, and saw it all.  For an instant he felt the whole
bitterness of Gray's misplaced generosity--its exposure and defeat.
He glanced again hopelessly at Ailsa.  In the eye of that fresh,
glowing, yet demure, young goddess, unhallowed as the thought might
be, there was certainly a distinctly tremulous wink.

The consul took heart.  "I believe I need not say, Mr. Callender,"
he began with some stiffness, "that this is as great a surprise to
me as to you.  I had no reason to believe the transaction other
than bona fide, and acted accordingly.  If my friend, deeply
sympathizing with your previous misfortune, has hit upon a
delicate, but unbusiness-like way of assisting you temporarily--
I say TEMPORARILY, because it must have been as patent to him as to
you, that you would eventually find out his generous deceit--you
surely can forgive him for the sake of his kind intention.  Nay,
more; may I point out to you that you have no right to assume that
this benefaction was intended exclusively for you; if Mr. Gray, in
his broader sympathy with you and your daughter, has in this way
chosen to assist and strengthen the position of a gentleman so
closely connected with you, but still struggling with hard
fortune"--

"I'd have ye know, sir," interrupted the old man, rising to his
feet, "that ma frien' Mr. James Gow is as independent of yours as
he is of me and mine.  He has married, sir, a Mrs. Hernandez, the
rich widow of a coffee-planter, and now is the owner of the whole
estate, minus the encumbrance of three children.  And now, sir,
you'll take this,"--he drew from his pocket an envelope.  "It's a
draft for five thousand dollars, with the ruling rate of interest
computed from the day I received it till this day, and ye'll give
it to your frien' when ye see him.  And ye'll just say to him from
me"--

But Miss Ailsa, with a spirit and independence that challenged her
father's, here suddenly fluttered between them with sparkling eyes
and outstretched hands.

"And ye'll say to him from ME that a more honorable, noble, and
generous man, and a kinder, truer, and better friend than he,
cannot be found anywhere!  And that the foolishest and most
extravagant thing he ever did is better than the wisest and most
prudent thing that anybody else ever did, could, or would do!  And
if he was a bit overproud--it was only because those about him were
overproud and foolish.  And you'll tell him that we're wearying for
him!  And when you give him that daft letter from father you'll
give him this bit line from me," she went on rapidly as she laid a
tiny note in his hand.  "And," with wicked dancing eyes that seemed
to snap the last bond of repression, "ye'll give him THAT too, and
say I sent it!"

There was a stir in the official apartment!  The portraits of
Lincoln and Washington rattled uneasily in their frames; but it was
no doubt only a discreet blast of the north wind that drowned the
echo of a kiss.

"Ailsa!" gasped the shocked Mr. Callender.

"Ah! but, father, if it had not been for HIM we would not have
known Robin."

       .        .        .        .        .        .

It was the last that the consul saw of Ailsa Callender; for the
next summer when he called at Loch Dour she was Mrs. Gray.



THE SHERIFF OF SISKYOU.


I.


On the fifteenth of August, 1854, what seemed to be the entire
population of Wynyard's Bar was collected upon a little bluff which
overlooked the rude wagon road that was the only approach to the
settlement.  In general appearance the men differed but little from
ordinary miners, although the foreign element, shown in certain
Spanish peculiarities of dress and color, predominated, and some of
the men were further distinguished by the delicacy of education and
sedentary pursuits.  Yet Wynyard's Bar was a city of refuge,
comprised among its inhabitants a number who were "wanted" by the
State authorities, and its actual attitude at that moment was one
of open rebellion against the legal power, and of particular
resistance to the apprehension by warrant of one of its prominent
members.  This gentleman, Major Overstone, then astride of a gray
mustang, and directing the movements of the crowd, had, a few days
before, killed the sheriff of Siskyou county, who had attempted to
arrest him for the double offense of misappropriating certain
corporate funds of the State and the shooting of the editor who had
imprudently exposed him.  The lesser crime of homicide might have
been overlooked by the authorities, but its repetition upon the
body of their own over-zealous and misguided official could not
pass unchallenged if they expected to arrest Overstone for the more
serious offense against property.  So it was known that a new
sheriff had been appointed and was coming to Wynyard's Bar with an
armed posse.  But it was also understood that this invasion would
be resisted by the Bar to its last man.

All eyes were turned upon a fringe of laurel and butternut that
encroached upon the road half a mile away, where it seemed that
such of the inhabitants who were missing from the bluff were hidden
to give warning or retard the approach of the posse.  A gray haze,
slowly rising between the fringe and the distant hillside, was
recognized as the dust of a cavalcade passing along the invisible
highway.  In the hush of expectancy that followed, the irregular
clatter of hoofs, the sharp crack of a rifle, and a sudden halt
were faintly audible.  The men, scattered in groups on the bluff,
exchanged a smile of grim satisfaction.

Not so their leader!  A quick start and an oath attracted attention
to him.  To their surprise he was looking in another direction, but
as they looked too they saw and understood the cause.  A file of
horsemen, hitherto undetected, were slowly passing along the little
ridge on their right.  Their compact accoutrements and the yellow
braid on their blue jackets, distinctly seen at that distance,
showed them to be a detachment of United States cavalry.

Before the assemblage could realize this new invasion, a nearer
clatter of hoofs was heard along the high road, and one of the
ambuscading party dashed up from the fringe of woods below.  His
face was flushed, but triumphant.

"A reg'lar skunk--by the living hokey!" he panted, pointing to the
faint haze that was again slowly rising above the invisible road.
"They backed down as soon as they saw our hand, and got a hole
through their new sheriff's hat.  But what are you lookin' at?
What's up?"

The leader impatiently pointed with a darkening face to the distant
file.

"Reg'lars, by gum!" ejaculated the other.  "But Uncle Sam ain't in
this game.  Wot right have THEY"--

"Dry up!" said the leader.

The detachment was now moving at right angles with the camp, but
suddenly halted, almost doubling upon itself in some evident
commotion.  A dismounted figure was seen momentarily flying down
the hillside dodging from bush to bush until lost in the underbrush.
A dozen shots were fired over its head, and then the whole
detachment wheeled and came clattering down the trail in the
direction of the camp.  A single riderless horse, evidently that
of the fugitive, followed.

"Spread yourselves along the ridge, every man of you, and cover
them as they enter the gulch!" shouted the leader.  "But not a shot
until I give the word.  Scatter!"

The assemblage dispersed like a startled village of prairie dogs,
squatting behind every available bush and rock along the line of
bluff.  The leader alone trotted quietly to the head of the gulch.

The nine cavalrymen came smartly up in twos, a young officer
leading.  The single figure of Major Overstone opposed them with a
command to halt.  Looking up, the young officer drew rein, said a
word to his file leader, and the four files closed in a compact
square motionless on the road.  The young officer's unsworded hand
hung quietly at his thigh, the men's unslung carbines rested easily
on their saddles.  Yet at that moment every man of them knew that
they were covered by a hundred rifles and shot guns leveled from
every bush, and that they were caught helplessly in a trap.

"Since when," said Major Overstone with an affectation of tone and
manner different from that in which he had addressed his previous
companions, "have the Ninth United States Cavalry helped to serve a
State court's pettifogging process?"

"We are hunting a deserter--a half-breed agent--who has just
escaped us," returned the officer.  His voice was boyish--so, too,
was his figure in its slim, cadet-like smartness of belted tunic--
but very quiet and level, although his face was still flushed with
the shock and shame of his surprise.

The relaxation of relief went through the wrought and waiting camp.
The soldiers were not seeking THEM.  Ready as these desperate men
had been to do their leader's bidding, they were well aware that a
momentary victory over the troopers would not pass unpunished, and
meant the ultimate dispersion of the camp.  And quiet as these
innocent invaders seemed to be they would no doubt sell their lives
dearly.  The embattled desperadoes glanced anxiously at their
leader; the soldiers, on the contrary, looked straight before them.

"Process or no process," said Major Overstone with a sneer, "you've
come to the last place to recover your deserter.  We don't give up
men in Wynyard's Bar.  And they didn't teach you at the Academy,
sir, to stop to take prisoners when you were outflanked and
outnumbered."

"Bedad!  They didn't teach YOU, Captain Overstone, to engage a
battery at Cerro Gordo with a half company, but you did it; more
shame to you now, sorr, commandin' the thayves and ruffians you
do."

"Silence!" said the young officer.

The sleeve of the sergeant who had spoken--with the chevrons of
long service upon it--went up to a salute, and dropped again over
his carbine as he stared stolidly before him.  But his shot had
told.  A flush of mingled pride and shame passed over Overstone's
face.

"Oh! it's YOU, Murphy," he said with an affected laugh, "and you
haven't improved with your stripes."

The young officer turned his head slightly.

"Attention!"

"One moment more," said Overstone coming forward.  "I have told you
that we don't give up any man who seeks our protection.  But," he
added with a half-careless, half-contemptuous wave of his hand, and
a significant glance at his followers, "we don't prevent you from
seeking him.  The road is clear; the camp is before you."

The young officer continued without looking at him.  "Forward--in
two files--open order.  Ma-arch!"

The little troop moved forward, passed Major Overstone at the head
of the gully, and spread out on the hillside.  The assembled camp,
still armed, lounging out of ambush here and there, ironically made
way for them to pass.  A few moments of this farcical quest, and a
glance at the impenetrably wooded heights around, apparently
satisfied the young officer, and he turned his files again into the
gully.  Major Overstone was still lingering there.

"I hope you are satisfied," he said grimly.  He then paused, and in
a changed and more hesitating voice added: "I am an older soldier
than you, sir, but I am always glad to make the acquaintance of
West Point."  He paused and held out his hand.

West Point, still red and rigid, glanced at him with bright clear
eyes under light lashes and the peak of a smartly cocked cap,
looked coolly at the proffered hand, raised his own to a stiff
salute, said, "Good afternoon, sir," and rode away.

Major Overstone wheeled angrily, but in doing so came sharply upon
his coadjutor--the leader of the ambushed party.

"Well, Dawson," he said impatiently.  "Who was it?"

"Only one of them d----d half-breed Injin agents.  He's just over
there in the brush with Simpson, lying low till the soldiers clear
out."

"Did you talk to him?"

"Not much!" returned Dawson scornfully.  "He ain't my style."

"Fetch him up to my cabin; he may be of some use to us."

Dawson looked skeptical.  "I reckon he ain't no more gain here than
he was over there," he said, and turned away.


II.


The cabin of Major Overstone differed outwardly but little from
those of his companions.  It was the usual structure of logs, laid
lengthwise, and rudely plastered at each point of contact with
adobe, the material from which the chimney, which entirely occupied
one gable, was built.  It was pierced with two windows and a door,
roofed with smaller logs, and thatched with long half cylinders of
spruce bark.  But the interior gave certain indications of the
distinction as well as the peculiar experiences of its occupant.
In place of the usual bunk or berth built against the wall stood a
small folding camp bedstead, and upon a rude deal table that held a
tin wash-basin and pail lay two ivory-handled brushes, combs, and
other elegant toilet articles, evidently the contents of the
major's dressing-bag.  A handsome leather trunk occupied one
corner, with a richly caparisoned silver-mounted Mexican saddle,
a mahogany case of dueling pistols, a leather hat-box, locked and
strapped, and a gorgeous gold and quartz handled ebony "presentation"
walking stick.  There was a certain dramatic suggestion in this
revelation of the sudden and hurried transition from a life of
ostentatious luxury to one of hidden toil and privation, and a
further significance in the slow and gradual distribution and
degradation of these elegant souvenirs.  A pair of silver boot-hooks
had been used for raking the hearth and lifting the coffee kettle;
the ivory of the brushes was stained with coffee; the cut-glass
bottles had lost their stoppers, and had been utilized for vinegar
and salt; a silver-framed hand mirror hung against the blackened
wall.  For the major's occupancy was the sequel of a hurried flight
from his luxurious hotel at Sacramento--a transfer that he believed
was only temporary until the affair blew over, and he could return
in safety to brow-beat his accusers, as was his wont.  But this had
not been so easy as he had imagined; his prosecutors were bitter,
and his enforced seclusion had been prolonged week by week until the
fracas which ended in the shooting of the sheriff had apparently
closed the door upon his return to civilization forever.  Only here
was his life and person secure.  For Wynyard's Bar had quickly
succumbed to the domination of his reckless courage, and the
eminence of his double crime had made him respected among
spendthrifts, gamblers, and gentlemen whose performances had never
risen above a stage-coach robbery or a single assassination.  Even
criticism of his faded luxuries had been delicately withheld.

He was leaning over his open trunk--which the camp popularly
supposed to contain State bonds and securities of fabulous amount--
and had taken some letters from it, when a figure darkened the
doorway.  He looked up, laying his papers carelessly aside.  WITHIN
Wynyard's Bar property was sacred.

It was the late fugitive.  Although some hours had already elapsed
since his arrival in camp, and he had presumably refreshed himself
inwardly, his outward appearance was still disheveled and dusty.
Brier and milkweed clung to his frayed blouse and trousers.  What
could be seen of the skin of his face and hands under its stains
and begriming was of a dull yellow.  His light eyes had all the
brightness without the restlessness of the mongrel race.  They
leisurely took in the whole cabin, the still open trunk before the
major, and then rested deliberately on the major himself.

"Well," said Major Overstone abruptly, "what brought you here?"

"Same as brought you, I reckon," responded the man almost as
abruptly.

The major knew something of the half-breed temper, and neither the
retort nor its tone affected him.

"You didn't come here just because you deserted," said the major
coolly.  "You've been up to something else."

"I have," said the man with equal coolness.

"I thought so.  Now, you understand you can't try anything of that
kind HERE.  If you do, up you go on the first tree.  That's Rule 1."

"I see you ain't pertickler about waiting for the sheriff here, you
fellers."

The major glanced at him quickly.  He seemed to be quite unconscious
of any irony in his remark, and continued grimly, "And what's
Rule 2?"

"I reckon you needn't trouble yourself beyond No. 1," returned the
major with dry significance.  Nevertheless, he opened a rude
cupboard in the corner and brought out a rich silver-mounted cut-
glass drinking-flask, which he handed to the stranger.

"I say," said the half-breed, admiringly, "yours?"

"Certainly."

"Certainly NOW, but BEFORE, eh?"

Rule No. 2 may have indicated that references to the past held no
dishonor.  The major, although accustomed to these pleasantries,
laughed a little harshly.

"Mine always," he said.  "But you don't drink?"

The half-breed's face darkened under its grime.

"Wot you're givin' us?  I've been filled chock up by Simpson over
thar.  I reckon I know when I've got a load on."

"Were you ever in Sacramento?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"Last week."

"Did you hear anything about me?"

The half-breed glanced through his tangled hair at the major in
some wonder, not only at the question, but at the almost childish
eagerness with which it was asked.

"I didn't hear much of anything else," he answered grimly.

"And--what did they SAY?"

"Said you'd got to be TOOK anyhow!  They allowed the new sheriff
would do it too."

The major laughed.  "Well, you heard HOW the new sheriff did it--
skunked away with his whole posse before one-eighth of my men!  You
saw how the rest of this camp held up your nine troopers, and that
sap-headed cub of a lieutenant--didn't you?  You wouldn't have been
standing here if you hadn't.  No; there isn't the civil process nor
the civil power in all California that can take me out of this
camp."

But neither his previous curiosity nor present bravado seemed to
impress the ragged stranger with much favor.  He glanced sulkily
around the cabin and began to shuffle towards the door.

"Stop!  Where are you going to?  Sit down.  I want to talk to you."

The fugitive hesitated for a moment, and then dropped ungraciously
on the edge of a camp-stool near the door.  The major looked at
him.

"I may have to remind you that I run this camp, and the boys
hereabouts do pretty much as I say.  What's your name?"

"Tom."

"Tom?  Well, look here, Tom!  D--n it all!  Can't you see that when
a man is stuck here alone, as I am, he wants to know what's going
on outside, and hear a little fresh talk?"

The singular weakness of this blended command and appeal apparently
struck the fugitive curiously.  He fixed his lowering eyes on the
major as if in gloomy doubt if he were really the reckless
desperado he had been represented.  That this man--twice an
assassin and the ruler of outlaws as reckless as himself--should
approach him in this half-confidential way evidently puzzled him.

"Wot you wanter know?" he asked gruffly.

"Well, what's my party saying or doing about me?" said the major
impatiently.  "What's the 'Express' saying about me?"

"I reckon they're throwing off on you all round; they allow you
never represented the party, but worked for yourself," said the man
shortly.

Here the major lashed out.  A set of traitors and hirelings!  He
had bought and paid for them all!  He had sunk two thousand dollars
in the "Express" and saved the editor from being horsewhipped and
jailed for libel!  Half the cursed bonds that they were making such
a blanked fuss about were handled by these hypocrites--blank them!
They were a low-lived crew of thieves and deserters!  It is
presumed that the major had forgotten himself in this infelicitous
selection of epithets, but the stranger's face only relaxed into a
grim smile.  More than that, the major had apparently forgotten his
desire to hear his guest talk, for he himself at once launched into
an elaborate exposition of his own affairs and a specious and
equally elaborate defense and justification of himself and
denunciation of his accusers.  For nearly half an hour he reviewed
step by step and detail by detail the charges against him--with
plausible explanation and sophistical argument, but always with a
singular prolixity and reiteration that spoke of incessant self-
consciousness and self-abstraction.  Of that dashing self-
sufficiency which had dazzled his friends and awed his enemies
there was no trace!  At last, even the set smile of the degraded
recipient of these confidences darkened with a dull, bewildered
disgust.  Then, to his relief, a step was heard without.  The
major's manner instantly changed.

"Well?" he demanded impatiently, as Dawson entered.

"I came to know what you want done with HIM," said Dawson,
indicating the fugitive with a contemptuous finger.

"Take him to your cabin!"

"My cabin! HIM?" ejaculated Dawson, turning sharply on his chief.

The major's light eyes contracted and his thin lips became a
straight line.  "I don't think you understand me, Dawson, and
another time you'd better wait until I'm done.  I want you to
take him to your cabin--and then CLEAR OUT OF IT YOURSELF.  You
understand?  I want him NEAR ME AND ALONE!"


III.


Dawson was not astonished the next morning to see Major Overstone
and the half-breed walking together down the gully road, for he had
already come to the conclusion that the major was planning some
extraordinary reprisals against the invaders, that would ensure the
perpetual security of the camp.  That he should use so insignificant
and unimportant a tool now appeared to him to be quite natural,
particularly as the service was probably one in which the man would
be sacrificed.  "The major," he suggested to his companions, "ain't
going to risk a white man's skin, when he can get an Injun's hide
handy."

The reluctant hesitating step of the half-breed as they walked
along seemed to give some color to this hypothesis.  He listened
sullenly to the major as he pointed out the strategic position of
the Bar.  "That wagon road is the only approach to Wynyard's, and a
dozen men along the rocks could hold it against a hundred.  The
trail that you came by, over the ridge, drops straight into this
gully, and you saw what that would mean to any blanked fools who
might try it.  Of course we could be shelled from that ridge if the
sheriff had a howitzer, or the men who knew how to work one, but
even then we could occupy the ridge before them."  He paused a
moment and then added: "I used to be in the army, Tom; I saw
service in Mexico before that cub you got away from had his first
trousers.  I was brought up as a gentleman--blank it all--and HERE
I am!"

The man slouched on by his side, casting his surly, furtive glances
from left to right, as if seeking to escape from these confidences.
Nevertheless, the major kept on through the gully, until reaching
the wagon road they crossed it, and began to ascend the opposite
slope, half hidden by the underbrush and larches.  Here the major
paused again and faced about.  The cabins of the settlement were
already behind the bluff; the little stream which indicated the
"bar"--on which some perfunctory mining was still continued--now
and then rang out quite clearly at their feet, although the bar
itself had disappeared.  The sounds of occupation and labor had at
last died away in the distance.  They were quite alone.  The major
sat down on a boulder, and pointed to another.  The man, however,
remained sullenly standing where he was, as if to accent as
strongly as possible the enforced companionship.  Either the
major was too self-absorbed to notice it, or accepted it as a
satisfactory characteristic of the half-breed's race.  He continued
confidently:--

"Now look here, Tom.  I want to leave this cursed hole, and get
clear out of the State!  Anywhere; over the Oregon line into
British Columbia, or to the coast, where I can get a coasting
vessel down to Mexico.  It will cost money, but I've got it.  It
will cost a lot of risks, but I'll take them.  I want somebody to
help me, some one to share risks with me, and some one to share my
luck if I succeed.  Help to put me on the other side of the border
line, by sea or land, and I'll give you a thousand dollars down
BEFORE WE START and a thousand dollars when I'm safe."

The half-breed had changed his slouching attitude.  It seemed more
indolent on account of the loosely hanging strap that had once held
his haversack, which was still worn in a slovenly fashion over his
shoulder as a kind of lazy sling for his shiftless hand.

"Well, Tom, is it a go?  You can trust ME, for you'll have the
thousand in your pocket before you start.  I can trust YOU, for
I'll kill you quicker than lightning if you say a word of this to
any one before I go, or play a single trick on me afterwards."

Suddenly the two men were rolling over and over in the underbrush.
The half-breed had thrown himself upon the major, bearing him down
to the ground.  The haversack strap for an instant whirled like the
loop of a lasso in the air, and descended over the major's
shoulders, pinioning his arms to his side.  Then the half-breed,
tearing open his ragged blouse, stripped off his waist-belt, and as
dexterously slipped it over the ankles of the struggling man.

It was all over in a moment.  Neither had spoken a word.  Only
their rapid panting broke the profound silence.  Each probably knew
that no outcry would be overheard.

For the first time the half-breed sat down.  But there was no trace
of triumph or satisfaction in his face, which wore the same
lowering look of disgust, as he gazed upon the prostrate man.

"I want to tell you first," he said, slowly wiping his face, "that
I didn't kalkilate upon doin' this in this yer kind o' way.  I
expected more of a stan' up fight from you--more risk in gettin'
you out o' that hole--and a different kind of a man to tackle.  I
never expected you to play into my hand like this--and it goes
against me to hev to take advantage of it."

"Who are you?" said the major, pantingly.

"I'm the new sheriff of Siskyou!"

He drew from beneath his begrimed shirt a paper wrapping, from
which he gingerly extracted with the ends of his dirty fingers a
clean, legal-looking folded paper.

"That's my warrant!  I've kept it fresh for you.  I reckon you
don't care to read it--you've seen it afore.  It's just the same as
t'other sheriff had--what you shot."

"Then this was a plant of yours, and that whelp's troopers?" said
the major.

"Neither him nor the sojers knows any more about it than you,"
returned the sheriff slowly.  "I enlisted as Injin guide or scout
ten days ago.  I deserted just as reg'lar and nat'ral like when we
passed that ridge yesterday.  I could be took to-morrow by the
sojers if they caught sight o' me and court-martialed--it's as
reg'lar as THAT!  But I timed to have my posse, under a deputy,
draw you off by an attack just as the escort reached the ridge.
And here I am."

"And you're no half-breed?"

"There's nothin' Injin about me that water won't wash off.  I
kalkilated you wouldn't suspect anything so insignificant as an
INJIN, when I fixed myself up.  You saw Dawson didn't hanker after
me much.  But I didn't reckon on YOUR tumbling to me so quick.
That's what gets me!  You must hev been pretty low down for kempany
when you took a man like me inter your confidence.  I don't see it
yet."

He looked inquiringly at his captive--with the same wondering
surliness.  Nor could he understand another thing which was
evident.  After the first shock of resistance the major had
exhibited none of the indignation of a betrayed man, but actually
seemed to accept the situation with a calmness that his captor
lacked.  His voice was quite unemotional as he said:

"And how are you going to get me away from here?"

"That's MY look out, and needn't trouble you, major; but, seein' as
how confidential you've been to me, I don't mind tellin' you.  Last
night that posse of mine that you 'skunked,' you know, halted at
the cross roads till them sojers went by.  They has only to SEE
THEM to know that I had got away.  They'll hang round the cross
roads till they see my signal on top of the ridge, and then they'll
make another show against that pass.  Your men will have their
hands full, I reckon, without huntin' for YOU, or noticin' the
three men o' mine that will come along this ridge where the sojers
come yesterday--to help me get you down in the same way.  You see,
major, your little trap in that gully ain't in this fight--WE'RE
THE OTHER SIDE OF IT.  I ain't much of a sojer, but I reckon I've
got you there!  And it's all owing to YOU.  I ain't," he added
gloomily, "takin' much pride in it MYSELF."

"I shouldn't think you would," said the major, "and look here!
I'll double that offer I made you just now.  Set me down just as I
am on the deck of some coasting vessel, and I'll pay you four
thousand dollars.  You may have all the glory of having captured
me, HERE, and of making your word good before your posse.  But you
can arrange afterwards on the way to let me give you the slip
somewhere near Sacramento."

The sheriff's face actually brightened.  "Thanks for that, major.
I was gettin' a little sick of my share in this job, but, by God,
you've put some sand in me.  Well, then! there ain't gold enough in
all Californy to make me let you go.  You hear me; so drop that.
I've TOOK you, and TOOK ye'll remain until I land you in Sacramento
jail.  I don't want to kill you, though your life's forfeit a dozen
times over, and I reckon you don't care for it either way, but if
you try any tricks on me I may have to MAIM ye to make you come
along comf'able and easy.  I ain't hankerin' arter THAT either, but
come you shall!"

"Give your signal and have an end of this," said the major curtly.

The sheriff looked at him again curiously.  "I never had my hands
in another man's pockets before, major, but I reckon I'll have to
take your derringers from yours."  He slipped his hand into the
major's waistcoat and secured the weapons.  "I'll have to trouble
you for your sash, too," he said, unwinding the knitted silken
girdle from the captive's waist.  "You won't want it, for you ain't
walking, and it'll come in handy to me just now."

He bent over, and, passing it across the major's breast with more
gentleness and solicitude than he had yet shown, secured him in an
easy sitting posture against the tree.  Then, after carefully
trying the knots and straps that held his prisoner, he turned and
lightly bounded up the hill.

He was absent scarcely ten minutes, yet when he returned the
major's eyes were half closed.  But not his lips.  "If you expect
to hold me until your posse comes you had better take me to some
less exposed position," he said dryly.  "There's a man just crossed
the gully, coming into the brush below in the wood."

"None of your tricks, major!"

"Look for yourself."

The sheriff glanced quickly below him.  A man with an axe on his
shoulder could be seen plainly making his way through the
underbrush not a hundred yards away.  The sheriff instantly clapped
his hand upon his captive's mouth, but at a look from his eyes took
it away again.

"I see," he said grimly, "you don't want to lure that man within
reach of my revolver by calling to him."

"I could have called him while you were away," returned the major
quietly.

The sheriff with a darkened face loosened the sash that bound his
prisoner to the tree, and then, lifting him in his arms, began to
ascend the hill cautiously, dipping into the heavier shadows.  But
the ascent was difficult, the load a heavy one, and the sheriff was
agile rather than muscular.  After a few minutes' climbing he was
forced to pause and rest his burden at the foot of a tree.  But the
valley and the man in the underbrush were no longer in view.

"Come," said the major quietly, "unstrap my ankles and I'll WALK
up.  We'll never get there at this rate."

The sheriff paused, wiped his grimy face with his grimier blouse,
and stood looking at his prisoner.  Then he said slowly:--

"Look yer!  Wot's your little game?  Blessed if I kin follow suit."

For the first time the major burst into a rage.  "Blast it all!
Don't you see that if I'm discovered HERE, in this way, there's not
a man on the Bar who would believe that I walked into your trap,
not a man, by God, who wouldn't think it was a trick of yours and
mine together?"

"Or," interrupted the sheriff slowly, fixing his eyes on his
prisoner, "not a man who would ever trust Major Overstone for a
leader again?"

"Perhaps," said the major, unmovedly again, "I don't think EITHER
OF US would ever get a chance of being trusted again by any one."

The sheriff still kept his eyes fixed on his prisoner, his gloomy
face growing darker under its grime.  "THAT ain't the reason,
major.  Life and death don't mean much more to you than they do to
me in this yer game.  I know that you'd kill me quicker nor
lightning if you got the chance; YOU know that I'm takin' you to
the gallows."

"The reason is that I want to leave Wynyard's Bar," said the major
coolly; "and even this way out of it will suit me."

The sheriff took his revolver from his pocket and deliberately
cocked it.  Then, leaning down, he unbuckled the strap from the
major's ankles.  A wild hope that his incomprehensible captive
might seize that moment to develop his real intent--that he might
fly, fight, or in some way act up to his reckless reputation--
sustained him for a moment, but in the next proved futile.  The
major only said, "Thank you, Tom," and stretched his cramped legs.

"Get up and go on," said the sheriff roughly.

The major began to slowly ascend the hill, the sheriff close on his
heels, alert, tingling, and watchful of every movement.  For a few
moments this strain upon his faculties seemed to invigorate him,
and his gloom relaxed, but presently it became too evident that the
prisoner's pinioned arms made it impossible for him to balance or
help himself on that steep trail, and once or twice he stumbled and
reeled dangerously to one side.  With an oath the sheriff caught
him, and tore from his arms the only remaining bonds that fettered
him.  "There!" he said savagely; "go on; we're equal!"

Without replying, the major continued his ascent; it became steeper
as they neared the crest, and at last they were both obliged to
drag themselves up by clutching the vines and underbrush.  Suddenly
the major stopped with a listening gesture.  A strange roaring--as
of wind or water--was distinctly audible.

"How did you signal?" asked the major abruptly.

"Made a smoke," said the sheriff as abruptly.

"I thought so--well! you've set the woods on fire."

They both plunged upwards again, now quite abreast, vying with each
other to reach the summit as if with the one thought only.  Already
the sting and smart of acrid fumes were in their eyes and nostrils;
when they at last stood on level ground again, it was hidden by a
thin film of grayish blue haze that seemed to be creeping along it.
But above was the clear sky, seen through the interlacing boughs,
and to their surprise--they who had just come from the breathless,
stagnant hillside--a fierce wind was blowing!  But the roaring was
louder than before.

"Unless your three men are already here, your game is up," said the
major calmly.  "The wind blows dead along the ridge where they
should come, and they can't get through the smoke and fire."

It was indeed true!  In the scarce twenty minutes that had elapsed
since the sheriff's return the dry and brittle underbrush for half
a mile on either side had been converted into a sheet of flame,
which at times rose to a furnace blast through the tall chimney-
like conductors of tree shafts, from whose shriveled sides bark was
crackling, and lighted dead limbs falling in all directions.  The
whole valley, the gully, the Bar, the very hillside they had just
left, were blotted out by a creeping, stifling smoke-fog that
scarcely rose breast high, but was beaten down or cut off cleanly
by the violent wind that swept the higher level of the forest.  At
times this gale became a sirocco in temperature, concentrating its
heat in withering blasts which they could not face, or focusing its
intensity upon some mass of foliage that seemed to shrink at its
touch and open a scathed and quivering aisle to its approach.  The
enormous skeleton of a dead and rotten redwood, not a hundred yards
to their right, broke suddenly like a gigantic firework into sparks
and flame.

The sheriff had grasped the full meaning of their situation.  In
spite of his first error--the very carelessness of familiarity--his
knowledge of woodcraft was greater than his companion's, and he saw
their danger.  "Come," he said quickly, "we must make for an
opening or we shall be caught."

The major smiled in misapprehension.

"Who could catch us here?"

The sheriff pointed to the blazing tree.

"THAT," he said.  "In five minutes IT will have a posse that will
wipe us both out."

He caught the major by the arm and rushed him into the smoke,
apparently in the direction of the greatest mass of flame.  The
heat was suffocating, but it struck the major that the more they
approached the actual scene of conflagration the heat and smoke
became less, until he saw that the fire was retreating before them
and the following wind.  In a few moments their haven of safety--
the expanse already burnt over--came in sight.  Here and there,
seen dimly through the drifting smoke, the scattered embers that
still strewed the forest floor glowed in weird nebulous spots like
will-o'-the-wisps.  For an instant the major hesitated; the sheriff
cast a significant glance behind them.

"Go on; it's our only chance," he said imperatively.

They darted on, skimming the blackened or smouldering surface,
which at times struck out sparks and flame from their heavier
footprints as they passed.  Their boots crackled and scorched
beneath them; their shreds of clothing were on fire; their
breathing became more difficult, until, providentially, they fell
upon an abrupt, fissure-like depression of the soil, which the fire
had leaped, and into which they blindly plunged and rolled
together.  A moment of relief and coolness followed, as they crept
along the fissure, filled with damp and rotting leaves.

"Why not stay here?" said the exhausted prisoner.

"And be roasted like sweet potatoes when these trees catch,"
returned the sheriff grimly.  "No."  Even as he spoke, a dropping
rain of fire spattered through the leaves from a splintered
redwood, before overlooked, that was now blazing fiercely in the
upper wind.  A vague and indefinable terror was in the air.  The
conflagration no longer seemed to obey any rule of direction.  The
incendiary torch had passed invisibly everywhere.  They scrambled
out of the hollow, and again dashed desperately forward.

Beaten, bruised, blackened, and smoke-grimed--looking less human
than the animals who had long since deserted the crest--they at
last limped into a "wind opening" in the woods that the fire had
skirted.  The major sank exhaustedly to the ground; the sheriff
threw himself beside him.  Their strange relations to each other
seemed to have been forgotten; they looked and acted as if they no
longer thought of anything beyond the present.  And when the
sheriff finally arose and, disappearing for several minutes,
brought his hat full of water for his prisoner from a distant
spring that they had passed in their flight, he found him where he
had left him--unchanged and unmoved.

He took the water gratefully, and after a pause fixed his eyes
earnestly upon his captor.  "I want you to do a favor to me," he
said slowly.  "I'm not going to offer you a bribe to do it either,
nor ask you anything that isn't in a line with your duty.  I think
I understand you now, if I didn't before.  Do you know Briggs's
restaurant in Sacramento?"

The sheriff nodded.

"Well! over the restaurant are my private rooms, the finest in
Sacramento.  Nobody knows it but Briggs, and he has never told.
They've been locked ever since I left; I've got the key still in my
pocket.  Now when we get to Sacramento, instead of taking me
straight to jail, I want you to hold me THERE as your prisoner for
a day and a night.  I don't want to get away; you can take what
precautions you like--surround the house with policemen, and sleep
yourself in the ante-room.  I don't want to destroy any papers or
evidence; you can go through the rooms and examine everything
before and after; I only want to stay there a day and a night; I
want to be in my old rooms, have my meals from the restaurant as I
used to, and sleep in my own bed once more.  I want to live for one
day like a gentleman, as I used to live before I came here.  That's
all!  It isn't much, Tom.  You can do it and say you require to do
it to get evidence against me, or that you want to search the rooms."

The expression of wonder which had come into the sheriff's face at
the beginning of this speech deepened into his old look of surly
dissatisfaction.  "And that's all ye want?" he said gloomily.  "Ye
don't want no friends--no lawyer?  For I tell you, straight out,
major, there ain't no hope for ye, when the law once gets hold of
ye in Sacramento."

"That's all.  Will you do it?"

The sheriff's face grew still darker.  After a pause he said: "I
don't say 'no,' and I don't say 'yes.'  But," he added grimly, "it
strikes me we'd better wait till we get clear o' these woods afore
you think o' your Sacramento lodgings."

The major did not reply.  The day had worn on, but the fire, now
completely encircling them, opposed any passage in or out of that
fateful barrier.  The smoke of the burning underbrush hung low
around them in a bank equally impenetrable to vision.  They were as
alone as shipwrecked sailors on an island, girded by a horizon of
clouds.

"I'm going to try to sleep," said the major; "if your men come you
can waken me."

"And if YOUR men come?" said the sheriff dryly.

"Shoot me."

He lay down, closed his eyes, and to the sheriff's astonishment
presently fell asleep.  The sheriff, with his chin in his grimy
hands, sat and watched him as the day slowly darkened around them
and the distant fires came out in more lurid intensity.  The face
of the captive and outlawed murderer was singularly peaceful; that
of the captor and man of duty was haggard, wild, and perplexed.

But even this changed soon.  The sleeping man stirred restlessly
and uneasily; his face began to work, his lips to move.  "Tom," he
gasped suddenly, "Tom!"

The sheriff bent over him eagerly.  The sleeping man's eyes were
still closed; beads of sweat stood upon his forehead.  He was
dreaming.

"Tom," he whispered, "take me out of this place--take me out from
these dogs and pimps and beggars!  Listen, Tom!--they're Sydney
ducks, ticket-of-leave men, short card sharps, and sneak thieves!
There isn't a gentleman among 'em!  There isn't one I don't loathe
and hate--and would grind under my heel, elsewhere.  I'm a
gentleman, Tom--yes, by God--an officer and a gentleman!  I've
served my country in the 9th Cavalry.  That cub of West Point knows
it and despises me, seeing me here in such company.  That sergeant
knows it--I recommended him for his first stripes for all he taunts
me,--d--n him!"

"Come, wake up!" said the sheriff harshly.

The prisoner did not heed him; the sheriff shook him roughly, so
roughly that the major's waistcoat and shirt dragged open,
disclosing his fine silk undershirt, delicately worked and
embroidered with golden thread.  At the sight of this abased and
faded magnificence the sheriff's hand was stayed; his eye wandered
over the sleeping form before him.  Yes, the hair was dyed too;
near the roots it was quite white and grizzled; the pomatum was
coming off the pointed moustache and imperial; the face in the
light was very haggard; the lines from the angles of the nostril
and mouth were like deep, half-healed gashes.  The major was,
without doubt, prematurely worn and played out.

The sheriff's persistent eyes, however, seemed to effect what his
ruder hand could not.  The sleeping man stirred, awoke to full
consciousness, and sat up.

"Are they here?  I'm ready," he said calmly.

"No," said the sheriff deliberately; "I only woke ye to say that
I've been thinkin' over what ye asked me, and if we get to
Sacramento all right, why, I'll do it and give ye that day and
night at your old lodgings."

"Thank you."

The major reached out his hand; the sheriff hesitated, and then
extended his own.  The hands of the two men clasped for the first,
and it would seem, the last time.

For the "cub of West Point" was, like most cubs, irritable when
thwarted.  And having been balked of his prey, the deserter, and
possibly chaffed by his comrades for his profitless invasion of
Wynyard's Bar, he had persuaded his commanding officer to give him
permission to effect a recapture.  Thus it came about that at dawn,
filing along the ridge, on the outskirts of the fire, his heart was
gladdened by the sight of the half-breed--with his hanging
haversack belt and tattered army tunic--evidently still a fugitive,
not a hundred yards away on the other side of the belt of fire,
running down the hill with another ragged figure at his side.  The
command to "halt" was enforced by a single rifle shot over the
fugitives' heads--but they still kept on their flight.  Then the
boy-officer snatched a carbine from one of his men, a volley rang
out from the little troop--the shots of the privates mercifully
high, those of the officer and sergeant leveled with wounded pride
and full of deliberate purpose.  The half-breed fell; so did his
companion, and, rolling over together, both lay still.

But between the hunters and their fallen quarry reared a cheval de
frise of flame and fallen timber impossible to cross.  The young
officer hesitated, shrugged his shoulders, wheeled his men about,
and left the fire to correct any irregularity in his action.

It did not, however, change contemporaneous history, for a week
later, when Wynyard's Bar discovered Major Overstone lying beside
the man now recognized by them as the disguised sheriff of Siskyou,
they rejoiced at this unfailing evidence of their lost leader's
unequaled prowess.  That he had again killed a sheriff and fought a
whole posse, yielding only with his life, was never once doubted,
and kept his memory green in Sierran chronicles long after
Wynyard's Bar had itself become a memory.



A ROSE OF GLENBOGIE.


The American consul at St. Kentigern stepped gloomily from the
train at Whistlecrankie station.  For the last twenty minutes his
spirits had been slowly sinking before the drifting procession past
the carriage windows of dull gray and brown hills--mammiform in
shape, but so cold and sterile in expression that the swathes of
yellow mist which lay in their hollows, like soiled guipure, seemed
a gratuitous affectation of modesty.  And when the train moved
away, mingling its escaping steam with the slower mists of the
mountain, he found himself alone on the platform--the only
passenger and apparently the sole occupant of the station.  He was
gazing disconsolately at his trunk, which had taken upon itself a
human loneliness in the emptiness of the place, when a railway
porter stepped out of the solitary signal-box, where he had
evidently been performing a double function, and lounged with
exasperating deliberation towards him.  He was a hard-featured man,
with a thin fringe of yellow-gray whiskers that met under his chin
like dirty strings to tie his cap on with.

"Ye'll be goin' to Glenbogie House, I'm thinkin'?" he said moodily.

The consul said that he was.

"I kenned it.  Ye'll no be gettin' any machine to tak' ye there.
They'll be sending a carriage for ye--if ye're EXPECTED."  He
glanced half doubtfully at the consul as if he was not quite so
sure of it.

But the consul believed he WAS expected, and felt relieved at the
certain prospect of a conveyance.  The porter meanwhile surveyed
him moodily.

"Ye'll be seein' Mistress MacSpadden there!"

The consul was surprised into a little over-consciousness.  Mrs.
MacSpadden was a vivacious acquaintance at St. Kentigern, whom he
certainly--and not without some satisfaction--expected to meet at
Glenbogie House.  He raised his eyes inquiringly to the porter's.

"Ye'll no be rememberin' me.  I had a machine in St. Kentigern and
drove ye to MacSpadden's ferry often.  Far, far too often!  She's a
strange flagrantitious creature; her husband's but a puir fule, I'm
thinkin', and ye did yersel' nae guid gaunin' there."

It was a besetting weakness of the consul's that his sense of the
ludicrous was too often reached before his more serious
perceptions.  The absurd combination of the bleak, inhospitable
desolation before him, and the sepulchral complacency of his self-
elected monitor, quite upset his gravity.

"Ay, ye'll be laughin' THE NOO," returned the porter with gloomy
significance.

The consul wiped his eyes.  "Still," he said demurely, "I trust you
won't object to my giving you sixpence to carry my box to the
carriage when it comes, and let the morality of this transaction
devolve entirely upon me.  Unless," he continued, even more
gravely, as a spick and span brougham, drawn by two thoroughbreds,
dashed out of the mist up to the platform, "unless you prefer to
state the case to those two gentlemen"--pointing to the smart
coachman and footman on the box--"and take THEIR opinion as to the
propriety of my proceeding any further.  It seems to me that their
consciences ought to be consulted as well as yours.  I'm only a
stranger here, and am willing to do anything to conform to the
local custom."

"It's a saxpence ye'll be payin' anyway," said the porter, grimly
shouldering the trunk, "but I'll be no takin' any other mon's
opinion on matters of my am dooty and conscience."

"Ah," said the consul gravely, "then you'll perhaps be allowing ME
the same privilege."

The porter's face relaxed, and a gleam of approval--purely
intellectual, however,--came into his eyes.

"Ye were always a smooth deevel wi' your tongue, Mr. Consul," he
said, shouldering the box and walking off to the carriage.

Nevertheless, as soon as he was fairly seated and rattling away
from the station, the consul had a flashing conviction that he had
not only been grievously insulted but also that he had allowed the
wife of an acquaintance to be spoken of disrespectfully in his
presence.  And he had done nothing!  Yes--it was like him!--he had
LAUGHED at the absurdity of the impertinence without resenting it!
Another man would have slapped the porter's face!  For an instant
he hung out of the carriage window, intent upon ordering the
coachman to drive back to the station, but the reflection--again a
ludicrous one--that he would now be only bringing witnesses to a
scene which might provoke a scandal more invidious to his
acquaintance, checked him in time.  But his spirits, momentarily
diverted by the porter's effrontery, sunk to a lower ebb than
before.

The clattering of his horses' hoofs echoed back from the rocky
walls that occasionally hemmed in the road was not enlivening, but
was less depressing than the recurring monotony of the open.  The
scenery did not suggest wildness to his alien eyes so much as it
affected him with a vague sense of scorbutic impoverishment.  It
was not the loneliness of unfrequented nature, for there was a
well-kept carriage road traversing its dreariness; and even when
the hillside was clothed with scanty verdure, there were "outcrops"
of smooth glistening weather-worn rocks showing like bare brown
knees under the all too imperfectly kilted slopes.  And at a little
distance, lifting above a black drift of firs, were the square
rigid sky lines of Glenbogie House, standing starkly against the
cold, lingering northern twilight.  As the vehicle turned, and
rolled between two square stone gate-posts, the long avenue before
him, though as well kept as the road, was but a slight improvement
upon the outer sterility, and the dark iron-gray rectangular
mansion beyond, guiltless of external decoration, even to the
outlines of its small lustreless windows, opposed the grim
inhospitable prospect with an equally grim inhospitable front.
There were a few moments more of rapid driving, a swift swishing
over soft gravel, the opening of a heavy door into a narrow
vestibule, and then--a sudden sense of exquisitely diffused light
and warmth from an arched and galleried central hall, the sounds of
light laughter and subdued voices half lost in the airy space
between the lofty pictured walls; the luxury of color in trophies,
armor, and hangings; one or two careless groups before the recessed
hearth or at the centre table, and the halted figure of a pretty
woman on the broad, slow staircase.  The contrast was sharp,
ironical, and bewildering.

So much so that the consul, when he had followed the servant to his
room, was impelled to draw aside the heavy window-curtains and look
out again upon the bleak prospect it had half obliterated.  The
wing in which he was placed overhung a dark ravine or gully choked
with shrubs and brambles that grew in a new luxuriance.  As he
gazed a large black bird floated upwards slowly from its depths,
circled around the house with a few quick strokes of its wing, and
then sped away--a black bolt--in one straight undeviating line
towards the paling north.  He still gazed into the abyss--half
expecting another, even fancying he heard the occasional stir
and flutter of obscure life below, and the melancholy call of
nightfowl.  A long-forgotten fragment of old English verse began
to haunt him--


    Hark! the raven flaps hys wing
      In the briered dell belowe,
    Hark! the dethe owl loude doth synge
      To the night maers as thaie goe.


"Now, what put that stuff in my head?" he said as he turned
impatiently from the window.  "And why does this house, with all
its interior luxury, hypocritically oppose such a forbidding front
to its neighbors?"  Then it occurred to him that perhaps the
architect instinctively felt that a more opulent and elaborate
exterior would only bring the poverty of surrounding nature into
greater relief.  But he was not in the habit of troubling himself
with abstruse problems.  A nearer recollection of the pretty frock
he had seen on the staircase--in whose wearer he had just recognized
his vivacious friend--turned his thoughts to her.  He remembered
how at their first meeting he had been interested in her bright
audacity, unconventionality, and high spirits, which did not,
however, amuse him as greatly as his later suspicion that she was
playing a self-elected role, often with difficulty, opposition, and
feverishness, rather than spontaneity.  He remembered how he had
watched her in the obtrusive assumption of a new fashion, in some
reckless departure from an old one, or in some ostentatious
disregard of certain hard and set rules of St. Kentigern; but that
it never seemed to him that she was the happier for it.  He even
fancied that her mirth at such times had an undue nervousness; that
her pluck--which was undoubted--had something of the defiance of
despair, and that her persistence often had the grimness of duty
rather than the thoughtlessness of pure amusement.  What was she
trying to do?--what was she trying to UNDO or forget?  Her married
life was apparently happy and even congenial.  Her young husband was
clever, complaisant, yet honestly devoted to her, even to the
extension of a certain camaraderie to her admirers and a chivalrous
protection by half-participation in her maddest freaks.  Nor could
he honestly say that her attitude towards his own sex--although
marked by a freedom that often reached the verge of indiscretion--
conveyed the least suggestion of passion or sentiment.  The consul,
more perceptive than analytical, found her a puzzle--who was,
perhaps, the least mystifying to others who were content to sum up
her eccentricities under the single vague epithet, "fast."  Most
women disliked her: she had a few associates among them, but no
confidante, and even these were so unlike her, again, as to puzzle
him still more.  And yet he believed himself strictly impartial.

He walked to the window again, and looked down upon the ravine
from which the darkness now seemed to be slowly welling up and
obliterating the landscape, and then, taking a book from his
valise, settled himself in the easy-chair by the fire.  He was in
no hurry to join the party below, whom he had duly recognized and
greeted as he passed through.  They or their prototypes were
familiar friends.  There was the recently created baronet, whose
"bloody hand" had apparently wiped out the stains of his earlier
Radicalism, and whose former provincial self-righteousness had been
supplanted by an equally provincial skepticism; there was his wife,
who through all the difficulties of her changed position had kept
the stalwart virtues of the Scotch bourgeoisie, and was--"decent";
there were the two native lairds that reminded him of "parts of
speech," one being distinctly alluded to as a definite article, and
the other being "of" something, and apparently governed always by
that possessive case.  There were two or three "workers"--men of
power and ability in their several vocations; indeed, there was the
general over-proportion of intellect, characteristic of such Scotch
gatherings, and often in excess of minor social qualities.  There
was the usual foreigner, with Latin quickness, eagerness, and
misapprehending adaptability.  And there was the solitary
Englishman--perhaps less generously equipped than the others--
whom everybody differed from, ridiculed, and then looked up to and
imitated.  There were the half-dozen smartly frocked women, who,
far from being the females of the foregoing species, were quite
indistinctive, with the single exception of an American wife, who
was infinitely more Scotch than her Scotch husband.

Suddenly he became aware of a faint rustling at his door, and what
seemed to be a slight tap on the panel.  He rose and opened it--the
long passage was dark and apparently empty, but he fancied he could
detect the quick swish of a skirt in the distance.  As he re-entered
his room, his eye fell for the first time on a rose whose stalk was
thrust through the keyhole of his door.  The consul smiled at this
amiable solution of a mystery.  It was undoubtedly the playful
mischievousness of the vivacious MacSpadden.  He placed it in
water--intending to wear it in his coat at dinner as a gentle
recognition of the fair donor's courtesy.

Night had thickened suddenly as from a passing cloud.  He lit the
two candles on his dressing-table, gave a glance into the now
scarcely distinguishable abyss below his window, as he drew the
curtains, and by the more diffused light for the first time
surveyed his room critically.  It was a larger apartment than that
usually set aside for bachelors; the heavy four-poster had a
conjugal reserve about it, and a tall cheval glass and certain
minor details of the furniture suggested that it had been used for
a married couple.  He knew that the guest-rooms in country houses,
as in hotels, carried no suggestion or flavor of the last tenant,
and therefore lacked color and originality, and he was consequently
surprised to find himself impressed with some distinctly novel
atmosphere.  He was puzzling himself to discover what it might be,
when he again became aware of cautious footsteps apparently halting
outside his door.  This time he was prepared.  With a half smile he
stepped softly to the door and opened it suddenly.  To his intense
surprise he was face to face with a man.

But his discomfiture was as nothing compared to that of the
stranger--whom he at once recognized as one of his fellow-guests--
the youthful Laird of Whistlecrankie.  The young fellow's healthy
color at once paled, then flushed a deep crimson, and a forced
smile stiffened his mouth.

"I--beg your par-r-rdon," he said with a nervous brusqueness that
brought out his accent.  "I couldna find ma room.  It'll be
changed, and I--"

"Perhaps I have got it," interrupted the consul smilingly.  "I've
only just come, and they've put me in here."

"Nae! Nae!" said the young man hurriedly, "it's no' thiss.  That
is, it's no' mine noo."

"Won't you come in?" suggested the consul politely, holding open
the door.

The young man entered the room with the quick strides but the
mechanical purposelessness of embarrassment.  Then he stiffened
and stood erect.  Yet in spite of all this he was strikingly
picturesque and unconventional in his Highland dress, worn with the
freedom of long custom and a certain lithe, barbaric grace.  As the
consul continued to gaze at him encouragingly, the quick resentful
pride of a shy man suddenly mantled his high cheekbones, and with
an abrupt "I'll not deesturb ye longer," he strode out of the room.

The consul watched the easy swing of his figure down the passage,
and then closed the door.  "Delightful creature," he said musingly,
"and not so very unlike an Apache chief either!  But what was he
doing outside my door?  And was it HE who left that rose--not as
a delicate Highland attention to an utter stranger, but"--the
consul's mouth suddenly expanded--"to some fair previous occupant?
Or was it really HIS room--he looked as if he were lying--and"--
here the consul's mouth expanded even more wickedly--"and Mrs.
MacSpadden had put the flower there for him."  This implied snub to
his vanity was, however, more than compensated by his wicked
anticipation of the pretty perplexity of his fair friend when HE
should appear at dinner with the flower in his own buttonhole.  It
would serve her right, the arrant flirt!  But here he was
interrupted by the entrance of a tall housemaid with his hot water.

"I am afraid I've dispossessed Mr.--Mr.--Kilcraithie rather
prematurely," said the consul lightly.

To his infinite surprise the girl answered with grim decision,
"Nane too soon."

The consul stared.  "I mean," he explained, "that I found him
hesitating here in the passage, looking for his room."

"Ay, he's always hoaverin' and glowerin' in the passages--but it's
no' for his ROOM!  And it's a deesgrace to decent Christian folk
his carryin' on wi' married weemen--mebbee they're nae better than
he!"

"That will do," said the consul curtly.  He had no desire to
encourage a repetition of the railway porter's freedom.

"Ye'll no fash yoursel' aboot HIM," continued the girl, without
heeding the rebuff.  "It's no' the meestreess' wish that he's
keepit here in the wing reserved for married folk, and she's no'
sorry for the excuse to pit ye in his place.  Ye'll be married
yoursel', I'm hearin'.  But, I ken ye's nae mair to be lippened tae
for THAT."

This was too much for the consul's gravity.  "I'm afraid," he said
with diplomatic gayety, "that although I am married, as I haven't
my wife with me, I've no right to this superior accommodation and
comfort.  But you can assure your mistress that I'll try to deserve
them."

"Ay," said the girl, but with no great confidence in her voice as
she grimly quitted the room.

"When our foot's upon our native heath, whether our name's
Macgregor or Kilcraithie, it would seem that we must tread warily,"
mused the consul as he began to dress.  "But I'm glad she didn't
see that rose, or MY reputation would have been ruined."  Here
another knock at the door arrested him.  He opened it impatiently
to a tall gillie, who instantly strode into the room.  There was
such another suggestion of Kilcraithie in the man and his manner
that the consul instantly divined that he was Kilcraithie's
servant.

"I'll be takin' some bit things that yon Whistlecrankie left," said
the gillie gravely, with a stolid glance around the room.

"Certainly," said the consul; "help yourself."  He continued his
dressing as the man began to rummage in the empty drawers.  The
consul had his back towards him, but, looking in the glass of the
dressing-table, he saw that the gillie was stealthily watching him.
Suddenly he passed before the mantelpiece and quickly slipped the
rose from its glass into his hand.

"I'll trouble you to put that back," said the consul quietly,
without turning round.  The gillie slid a quick glance towards the
door, but the consul was before him.  "I don't think THAT was left
by your master," he said in an ostentatiously calm voice, for he
was conscious of an absurd and inexplicable tumult in his blood,
"and perhaps you'd better put it back."

The man looked at the flower with an attention that might have been
merely ostentatious, and replaced it in the glass.

"A thocht it was hiss."

"And I think it isn't," said the consul, opening the door.

Yet when the man had passed out he was by no means certain that the
flower was not Kilcraithie's.  He was even conscious that if the
young Laird had approached him with a reasonable explanation or
appeal he would have yielded it up.  Yet here he was--looking
angrily pale in the glass, his eyes darker than they should be, and
with an unmistakable instinct to do battle for this idiotic gage!
Was there some morbid disturbance in the air that was affecting him
as it had Kilcraithie?  He tried to laugh, but catching sight of
its sardonic reflection in the glass became grave again.  He
wondered if the gillie had been really looking for anything his
master had left--he had certainly TAKEN nothing.  He opened one or
two of the drawers, and found only a woman's tortoiseshell hairpin--
overlooked by the footman when he had emptied them for the
consul's clothes.  It had been probably forgotten by some fair and
previous tenant to Kilcraithie.  The consul looked at his watch--it
was time to go down.  He grimly pinned the fateful flower in his
buttonhole, and half-defiantly descended to the drawing-room.

Here, however, he was inclined to relax when, from a group of
pretty women, the bright gray eyes of Mrs. MacSpadden caught his,
were suddenly diverted to the lapel of his coat, and then leaped up
to his again with a sparkle of mischief.  But the guests were
already pairing off in dinner couples, and as they passed out of
the room, he saw that she was on the arm of Kilcraithie.  Yet, as
she passed him, she audaciously turned her head, and in a
mischievous affectation of jealous reproach, murmured:--

"So soon!"

At dinner she was too far removed for any conversation with him,
although from his seat by his hostess he could plainly see her
saucy profile midway up the table.  But, to his surprise, her
companion, Kilcraithie, did not seem to be responding to her
gayety.  By turns abstracted and feverish, his glances occasionally
wandered towards the end of the table where the consul was sitting.
For a few moments he believed that the affair of the flower,
combined, perhaps, with the overhearing of Mrs. MacSpadden's
mischievous sentence, rankled in the Laird's barbaric soul.  But he
became presently aware that Kilcraithie's eyes eventually rested
upon a quiet-looking blonde near the hostess.  Yet the lady not
only did not seem to be aware of it, but her face was more often
turned towards the consul, and their eyes had once or twice met.
He had been struck by the fact that they were half-veiled but
singularly unimpassioned eyes, with a certain expression of cold
wonderment and criticism quite inconsistent with their veiling.
Nor was he surprised when, after a preliminary whispering over the
plates, his hostess presented him.  The lady was the young wife of
the middle-aged dignitary who, seated further down the table,
opposite Mrs. MacSpadden, was apparently enjoying that lady's
wildest levities.  The consul bowed, the lady leaned a little
forward.

"We were saying what a lovely rose you had."

The consul's inward response was "Hang that flower!"  His outward
expression was the modest query:--

"Is it SO peculiar?"

"No; but it's very pretty.  Would you allow me to see it?"

Disengaging the flower from his buttonhole he handed it to her.
Oddly enough, it seemed to him that half the table was watching and
listening to them.  Suddenly the lady uttered a little cry.  "Dear
me! it's full of thorns; of course you picked and arranged it
yourself, for any lady would have wrapped something around the
stalk!"

But here there was a burlesque outcry and a good-humored protest
from the gentlemen around her against this manifestly leading
question.  "It's no fair!  Ye'll not answer her--for the dignity of
our sex."  Yet in the midst of it, it suddenly occurred to the
consul that there HAD been a slip of paper wrapped around it, which
had come off and remained in the keyhole.  The blue eyes of the
lady were meanwhile sounding his, but he only smiled and said:--

"Then it seems it IS peculiar?"

When the conversation became more general he had time to observe
other features of the lady than her placid eyes.  Her light hair
was very long, and grew low down the base of her neck.  Her mouth
was firm, the upper lip slightly compressed in a thin red line, but
the lower one, although equally precise at the corners, became
fuller in the centre and turned over like a scarlet leaf, or, as it
struck him suddenly, like the tell-tale drop of blood on the mouth
of a vampire.  Yet she was very composed, practical, and decorous,
and as the talk grew more animated--and in the vicinity of Mrs.
MacSpadden, more audacious--she kept a smiling reserve of
expression,--which did not, however, prevent her from following
that lively lady, whom she evidently knew, with a kind of
encouraging attention.

"Kate is in full fling to-night," she said to the hostess.  Lady
Macquoich smiled ambiguously--so ambiguously that the consul
thought it necessary to interfere for his friend.  "She seems to
say what most of us think, but I am afraid very few of us could
voice as innocently," he smilingly suggested.

"She is a great friend of yours," returned the lady, looking at him
through her half-veiled lids.  "She has made us quite envy her."

"And I am afraid made it impossible for ME to either sufficiently
thank her or justify her taste," he said quietly.  Yet he was vexed
at an unaccountable resentment which had taken possession of him--
who but a few hours before had only laughed at the porter's
criticism.

After the ladies had risen, the consul with an instinct of sympathy
was moving up towards "Jock" MacSpadden, who sat nearer the host,
when he was stopped midway of the table by the dignitary who had
sat opposite to Mrs. MacSpadden.  "Your frien' is maist amusing wi'
her audacious tongue--ay, and her audacious ways," he said with
large official patronage; "and we've enjoyed her here immensely,
but I hae mae doots if mae Leddy Macquoich taks as kindly to them.
You and I--men of the wurrld, I may say--we understand them for a'
their worth; ay!--ma wife too, with whom I observed ye speakin'--is
maist tolerant of her, but man! it's extraordinar'"--he lowered his
voice slightly--"that yon husband of hers does na' check her
freedoms with Kilcraithie.  I wadna' say anythin' was wrong, ye
ken, but is he no' over confident and conceited aboot his wife?"

"I see you don't know him," said the consul smilingly, "and I'd be
delighted to make you acquainted.  Jock," he continued, raising his
voice as he turned towards MacSpadden, "let me introduce you to Sir
Alan Deeside, who don't know YOU, although he's a great admirer of
your wife;" and unheeding the embarrassed protestations of Sir Alan
and the laughing assertions of Jock that they were already
acquainted, he moved on beside his host.  That hospitable knight,
who had been airing his knowledge of London smart society to
his English guest with a singular mixture of assertion and
obsequiousness, here stopped short.  "Ay, sit down, laddie, it was
so guid of ye to come, but I'm thinkin' at your end of the table ye
lost the bit fun of Mistress MacSpadden.  Eh, but she was unco'
lively to-night.  'Twas all Kilcraithie could do to keep her from
proposin' your health with Hieland honors, and offerin' to lead off
with her ain foot on the table!  Ay, and she'd ha' done it.  And
that's a braw rose she's been givin' ye--and ye got out of it
claverly wi' Lady Deeside."

When he left the table with the others to join the ladies, the same
unaccountable feeling of mingled shyness and nervous irascibility
still kept possession of him.  He felt that in his present mood he
could not listen to any further criticisms of his friend without
betraying some unwonted heat, and as his companions filed into
the drawing-room he slipped aside in the hope of recovering his
equanimity by a few moments' reflection in his own room.  He glided
quickly up the staircase and entered the corridor.  The passage
that led to his apartment was quite dark, especially before his
door, which was in a bay that really ended the passage.  He was
consequently surprised and somewhat alarmed at seeing a shadowy
female figure hovering before it.  He instinctively halted; the
figure became more distinct from some luminous halo that seemed to
encompass it.  It struck him that this was only the light of his
fire thrown through his open door, and that the figure was probably
that of a servant before it, who had been arranging his room.  He
started forward again, but at the sound of his advancing footsteps
the figure and the luminous glow vanished, and he arrived blankly
face to face with his own closed door.  He looked around the dim
bay; it was absolutely vacant.  It was equally impossible for any
one to have escaped without passing him.  There was only his room
left.  A half-nervous, half-superstitious thrill crept over him as
he suddenly grasped the handle of the door and threw it open.  The
leaping light of his fire revealed its emptiness: no one was there!
He lit the candle and peered behind the curtains and furniture and
under the bed; the room was as vacant and undisturbed as when he
left it.

Had it been a trick of his senses or a bona-fide apparition?  He
had never heard of a ghost at Glenbogie--the house dated back some
fifty years; Sir John Macquoich's tardy knighthood carried no such
impedimenta.  He looked down wonderingly on the flower in his
buttonhole.  Was there something uncanny in that innocent blossom?
But here he was struck by another recollection, and examined the
keyhole of his door.  With the aid of the tortoiseshell hairpin he
dislodged the paper he had forgotten.  It was only a thin spiral
strip, apparently the white outer edge of some newspaper, and it
certainly seemed to be of little service as a protection against
the thorns of the rose-stalk.  He was holding it over the fire,
about to drop it into the blaze, when the flame revealed some
pencil-marks upon it.  Taking it to the candle he read, deeply
bitten into the paper by a hard pencil-point: "At half-past one."
There was nothing else--no signature; but the handwriting was NOT
Mrs. MacSpadden's!

Then whose?  Was it that of the mysterious figure whom he had just
seen?  Had he been selected as the medium of some spiritual
communication, and, perhaps, a ghostly visitation later on?  Or was
he the victim of some clever trick?  He had once witnessed such
dubious attempts to relieve the monotony of a country house.  He
again examined the room carefully, but without avail.  Well! the
mystery or trick would be revealed at half-past one.  It was a
somewhat inconvenient hour, certainly.  He looked down at the
baleful gift in his buttonhole, and for a moment felt inclined to
toss it in the fire.  But this was quickly followed by his former
revulsion of resentment and defiance.  No! he would wear it, no
matter what happened, until its material or spiritual owner came
for it.  He closed the door and returned to the drawing-room.

Midway of the staircase he heard the droning of pipes.  There was
dancing in the drawing-room to the music of the gorgeous piper who
had marshaled them to dinner.  He was not sorry, as he had no
inclination to talk, and the one confidence he had anticipated with
Mrs. MacSpadden was out of the question now.  He had no right to
reveal his later discovery.  He lingered a few moments in the hall.
The buzzing of the piper's drones gave him that impression of
confused and blindly aggressive intoxication which he had often
before noticed in this barbaric instrument, and had always seemed
to him as the origin of its martial inspiration.  From this he was
startled by voices and steps in the gallery he had just quitted,
but which came from the opposite direction to his room.  It was
Kilcraithie and Mrs. MacSpadden.  As she caught sight of him, he
fancied she turned slightly and aggressively pale, with a certain
hardening of her mischievous eyes.  Nevertheless, she descended the
staircase more deliberately than her companion, who brushed past
him with an embarrassed self-consciousness, quite in advance of
her.  She lingered for an instant.

"You are not dancing?" she said.

"No."

"Perhaps you are more agreeably employed?"

"At this exact moment, certainly."

She cast a disdainful glance at him, crossed the hall, and followed
Kilcraithie.

"Hang me, if I understand it all!" mused the consul, by no means
good-humoredly.  "Does she think I have been spying upon her and
her noble chieftain?  But it's just as well that I didn't tell her
anything."

He turned to follow them.  In the vestibule he came upon a figure
which had halted before a large pier-glass.  He recognized M.
Delfosse, the French visitor, complacently twisting the peak of his
Henri Quatre beard.  He would have passed without speaking, but the
Frenchman glanced smilingly at the consul and his buttonhole.
Again the flower!

"Monsieur is decore," he said gallantly.

The consul assented, but added, not so gallantly, that though they
were not in France he might still be unworthy of it.  The baleful
flower had not improved his temper.  Nor did the fact that, as he
entered the room, he thought the people stared at him--until he saw
that their attention was directed to Lady Deeside, who had entered
almost behind him.  From his hostess, who had offered him a seat
beside her, he gathered that M. Delfosse and Kilcraithie had each
temporarily occupied his room, but that they had been transferred
to the other wing, apart from the married couples and young ladies,
because when they came upstairs from the billiard and card room
late, they sometimes disturbed the fair occupants.  No!--there were
no ghosts at Glenbogie.  Mysterious footsteps had sometimes been
heard in the ladies' corridor, but--with peculiar significance--she
was AFRAID they could be easily accounted for.  Sir Alan, whose
room was next to the MacSpaddens', had been disturbed by them.

He was glad when it was time to escape to the billiard-room and
tobacco.  For a while he forgot the evening's adventure, but
eventually found himself listening to a discussion--carried on over
steaming tumblers of toddy--in regard to certain predispositions of
the always debatable sex.

"Ye'll not always judge by appearances," said Sir Alan.  "Ye'll mind
the story o' the meenester's wife of Aiblinnoch.  It was thocht
that she was ower free wi' one o' the parishioners--ay! it was the
claish o' the whole kirk, while none dare tell the meenester
hisself--bein' a bookish, simple, unsuspectin' creeter.  At last
one o' the elders bethocht him of a bit plan of bringing it home to
the wife, through the gospel lips of her ain husband!  So he
intimated to the meenester his suspicions of grievous laxity amang
the female flock, and of the necessity of a special sermon on the
Seventh Command.  The puir man consented--although he dinna ken why
and wherefore--and preached a gran' sermon!  Ay, man! it was
crammed wi' denunciation and an emptyin' o' the vials o' wrath!
The congregation sat dumb as huddled sheep--when they were no'
starin' and gowpin' at the meenester's wife settin' bolt upright in
her place.  And then, when the air was blue wi' sulphur frae tae
pit, the meenester's wife up rises!  Man!  Ivry eye was spearin'
her--ivry lug was prickt towards her!  And she goes out in the
aisle facin' the meenester, and--"

Sir Alan paused.

"And what?" demanded the eager auditory.

"She pickit up the elder's wife, sobbin' and tearin' her hair in
strong hysterics."

At the end of a relieved pause Sir Alan slowly concluded: "It was
said that the elder removed frae Aiblinnoch wi' his wife, but no'
till he had effected a change of meenesters."

It was already past midnight, and the party had dropped off one by
one, with the exception of Deeside, Macquoich, the young Englishman,
and a Scotch laird, who were playing poker--an amusement which he
understood they frequently protracted until three in the morning.
It was nearly time for him to expect his mysterious visitant.
Before he went upstairs he thought he would take a breath of the
outer evening air, and throwing a mackintosh over his shoulders,
passed out of the garden door of the billiard-room.  To his
surprise it gave immediately upon the fringe of laurel that hung
over the chasm.

It was quite dark; the few far-spread stars gave scarcely any
light, and the slight auroral glow towards the north was all that
outlined the fringe of the abyss, which might have proved dangerous
to any unfamiliar wanderer.  A damp breath of sodden leaves came
from its depths.  Beside him stretched the long dark facade of the
wing he inhabited, his own window the only one that showed a faint
light.  A few paces beyond, a singular structure of rustic wood and
glass, combining the peculiarities of a sentry-box, a summer-house,
and a shelter, was built against the blank wall of the wing.  He
imagined the monotonous prospect from its windows of the tufted
chasm, the coldly profiled northern hills beyond,--and shivered.
A little further on, sunk in the wall like a postern, was a small
door that evidently gave easy egress to seekers of this stern
retreat.  In the still air a faint grating sound like the passage
of a foot across gravel came to him as from the distance.  He
paused, thinking he had been followed by one of the card-players,
but saw no one, and the sound was not repeated.

It was past one.  He re-entered the billiard-room, passed the
unchanged group of card-players, and taking a candlestick from the
hall ascended the dark and silent staircase into the corridor.  The
light of his candle cast a flickering halo around him--but did not
penetrate the gloomy distance.  He at last halted before his door,
gave a scrutinizing glance around the embayed recess, and opened
the door half expectantly.  But the room was empty as he had left
it.

It was a quarter past one.  He threw himself on the bed without
undressing, and fixed his eyes alternately on the door and his
watch.  Perhaps the unwonted seriousness of his attitude struck
him, but a sudden sense of the preposterousness of the whole
situation, of his solemnly ridiculous acceptance of a series of
mere coincidences as a foregone conclusion, overcame him, and he
laughed.  But in the same breath he stopped.

There WERE footsteps approaching--cautious footsteps--but not at
his door!  They were IN THE ROOM--no! in the WALL just behind him!
They were descending some staircase at the back of his bed--he
could hear the regular tap of a light slipper from step to step and
the rustle of a skirt seemingly in his very ear.  They were
becoming less and less distinct--they were gone!  He sprang to his
feet, but almost at the same instant he was conscious of a sudden
chill--that seemed to him as physical as it was mental.  The room
was slowly suffused with a cool sodden breath and the dank odor of
rotten leaves.  He looked at the candle--its flame was actually
deflecting in this mysterious blast.  It seemed to come from a
recess for hanging clothes topped by a heavy cornice and curtain.
He had examined it before, but he drew the curtain once more aside.
The cold current certainly seemed to be more perceptible there.  He
felt the red-clothed backing of the interior, and his hand suddenly
grasped a doorknob.  It turned, and the whole structure--cornice
and curtains--swung inwards towards him with THE DOOR ON WHICH IT
WAS HUNG!  Behind it was a dark staircase leading from the floor
above to some outer door below, whose opening had given ingress to
the chill humid current from the ravine.  This was the staircase
where he had just heard the footsteps--and this was, no doubt, the
door through which the mysterious figure had vanished from his room
a few hours before!

Taking his candle, he cautiously ascended the stairs until he found
himself on the landing of the suites of the married couples and
directly opposite to the rooms of the MacSpaddens and Deesides.
He was about to descend again when he heard a far-off shout, a
scuffling sound on the outer gravel, and the frenzied shaking of
the handle of the lower door.  He had hardly time to blow out his
candle and flatten himself against the wall, when the door was
flung open and a woman frantically flew up the staircase.  His own
door was still open; from within its depths the light of his fire
projected a flickering beam across the steps.  As she rushed past
it the light revealed her face; it needed not the peculiar perfume
of her garments as she swept by his concealed figure to make him
recognize--Lady Deeside!

Amazed and confounded, he was about to descend, when he heard the
lower door again open.  But here a sudden instinct bade him pause,
turn, and reascend to the upper landing.  There he calmly relit his
candle, and made his way down to the corridor that overlooked the
central hall.  The sound of suppressed voices--speaking with the
exhausted pauses that come from spent excitement--made him cautious
again, and he halted.  It was the card party slowly passing from
the billiard-room to the hall.

"Ye owe it yoursel'--to your wife--not to pit up with it a day
longer," said the subdued voice of Sir Alan.  "Man! ye war in an
ace o' havin' a braw scandal."

"Could ye no' get your wife to speak till her," responded
Macquoich, "to gie her a hint that she's better awa' out of this?
Lady Deeside has some influence wi' her."

The consul ostentatiously dropped the extinguisher from his
candlestick.  The party looked up quickly.  Their faces were still
flushed and agitated, but a new restraint seemed to come upon them
on seeing him.

"I thought I heard a row outside," said the consul explanatorily.

They each looked at their host without speaking.

"Oh, ay," said Macquoich, with simulated heartiness, "a bit fuss
between the Kilcraithie and yon Frenchman; but they're baith goin'
in the mornin'."

"I thought I heard MacSpadden's voice," said the consul quietly.

There was a dead silence.  Then Macquoich said hurriedly:--

"Is he no' in his room--in bed--asleep,--man?"

"I really don't know; I didn't inquire," said the consul with a
slight yawn.  "Good night!"

He turned, not without hearing them eagerly whispering again, and
entered the passage leading to his own room.  As he opened the door
he was startled to find the subject of his inquiry--Jock MacSpadden--
quietly seated in his armchair by his fire.

"Jock!"

"Don't be alarmed, old man; I came up by that staircase and saw the
door open, and guessed you'd be returning soon.  But it seemed you
went ROUND BY THE CORRIDOR," he said, glancing curiously at the
consul's face.  "Did you meet the crowd?"

"Yes, Jock!  WHAT does it all mean?"

MacSpadden laughed.  "It means that I was just in time to keep
Kilbraithie from chucking Delfosse down that ravine; but they both
scooted when they saw me.  By Jove!  I don't know which was the
most frightened."

"But," said the consul slowly, "what was it all about, Jock?"

"Some gallantry of that d----d Frenchman, who's trying to do some
woman-stalking up here, and jealousy of Kilcraithie's, who's just
got enough of his forbears' blood in him to think nothing of
sticking three inches of his dirk in the wame of the man that
crosses him.  But I say," continued Jock, leaning easily back in
his chair, "YOU ought to know something of all this.  This room,
old man, was used as a sort of rendezvous, having two outlets,
don't you see, when they couldn't get at the summer-house below.
By Jove! they both had it in turns--Kilcraithie and the Frenchman--
until Lady Macquoich got wind of something, swept them out, and put
YOU in it."

The consul rose and approached his friend with a grave face.
"Jock, I DO know something about it--more about it than any one
thinks.  You and I are old friends.  Shall I tell you WHAT I know?"

Jock's handsome face became a trifle paler, but his frank, clear
eyes rested steadily on the consul's.

"Go on!" he said.

"I know that this flower which I am wearing was the signal for the
rendezvous this evening," said the consul slowly, "and this paper,"
taking it from his pocket, "contained the time of the meeting,
written in the lady's own hand.  I know who she was, for I saw her
face as plainly as I see yours now, by the light of the same fire;
it was as pale, but not as frank as yours, old man.  That is what
I know.  But I know also what people THINK they know, and for
that reason I put that paper in YOUR hand.  It is yours--your
vindication--your REVENGE, if you choose.  Do with it what you
like."

Jock, with unchanged features and undimmed eyes, took the paper
from the consul's hand, without looking at it.

"I may do with it what I like?" he repeated.

"Yes."

He was about to drop it into the fire, but the consul stayed his
hand.

"Are you not going to LOOK at the handwriting first?"

There was a moment of silence.  Jock raised his eyes with a sudden
flash of pride in them and said, "No!"

The friends stood side by side, grasping each other's hands, as the
burning paper leaped up the chimney in a vanishing flame.

"Do you think you have done quite right, Jock, in view of any
scandal you may hear?"

"Quite!  You see, old man, I know MY WIFE--but I don't think that
Deeside KNOWS HIS."



THE MYSTERY OF THE HACIENDA.


Dick Bracy gazed again at the Hacienda de los Osos, and hesitated.
There it lay--its low whitewashed walls looking like a quartz
outcrop of the long lazy hillside--unmistakably hot, treeless, and
staring broadly in the uninterrupted Californian sunlight.  Yet he
knew that behind those blistering walls was a reposeful patio,
surrounded by low-pitched verandas; that the casa was full of roomy
corridors, nooks, and recesses, in which lurked the shadows of a
century, and that hidden by the further wall was a lonely old
garden, hoary with gnarled pear-trees, and smothered in the spice
and dropping leaves of its baking roses.  He knew that, although
the unwinking sun might glitter on its red tiles, and the unresting
trade winds whistle around its angles, it always kept one unvarying
temperature and untroubled calm, as if the dignity of years had
triumphed over the changes of ephemeral seasons.  But would others
see it with his eyes?  Would his practical, housekeeping aunt, and
his pretty modern cousin--

"Well, what do you say?  Speak the word, and you can go into it
with your folks to-morrow.  And I reckon you won't want to take
anything either, for you'll find everything there--just as the old
Don left it.  I don't want it; the land is good enough for me; I
shall have my vaqueros and rancheros to look after the crops and
the cattle, and they won't trouble you, for their sheds and barns
will be two miles away.  You can stay there as long as you like,
and go when you choose.  You might like to try it for a spell; it's
all the same to me.  But I should think it the sort of thing a man
like you would fancy, and it seems the right thing to have you
there.  Well,--what shall it be?  Is it a go?"

Dick knew that the speaker was sincere.  It was an offer perfectly
characteristic of his friend, the Western millionaire, who had
halted by his side.  And he knew also that the slow lifting of his
bridle-rein, preparatory to starting forward again, was the
business-like gesture of a man who wasted no time even over his
acts of impulsive liberality.  In another moment he would dismiss
the unaccepted offer from his mind--without concern and without
resentment.

"Thank you--it is a go," said Dick gratefully.

Nevertheless, when he reached his own little home in the outskirts
of San Francisco that night, he was a trifle nervous in confiding
to the lady, who was at once his aunt and housekeeper, the fact
that he was now the possessor of a huge mansion in whose patio
alone the little eight-roomed villa where they had lived
contentedly might be casually dropped.  "You see, Aunt Viney," he
hurriedly explained, "it would have been so ungrateful to have
refused him--and it really was an offer as spontaneous as it was
liberal.  And then, you see, we need occupy only a part of the
casa."

"And who will look after the other part?" said Aunt Viney grimly.
"That will have to be kept tidy, too; and the servants for such a
house, where in heaven are they to come from?  Or do they go with
it?"

"No," said Dick quickly; "the servants left with their old master,
when Ringstone bought the property.  But we'll find servants enough
in the neighborhood--Mexican peons and Indians, you know."

Aunt Viney sniffed.  "And you'll have to entertain--if it's a
big house.  There are all your Spanish neighbors.  They'll be
gallivanting in and out all the time."

"They won't trouble us," he returned, with some hesitation.  "You
see, they're furious at the old Don for disposing of his lands to
an American, and they won't be likely to look upon the strangers in
the new place as anything but interlopers."

"Oh, that is it, is it?" ejaculated Aunt Viney, with a slight
puckering of her lips.  "I thought there was SOMETHING."

"My dear aunt," said Dick, with a sudden illogical heat which he
tried to suppress; "I don't know what you mean by 'it' and
'something.'  Ringstone's offer was perfectly unselfish; he
certainly did not suppose that I would be affected, any more than
he would he, by the childish sentimentality of these people over a
legitimate, every-day business affair.  The old Don made a good
bargain, and simply sold the land he could no longer make
profitable with his obsolete method of farming, his gang of idle
retainers, and his Noah's Ark machinery, to a man who knew how to
use steam reapers, and hired sensible men to work on shares."
Nevertheless he was angry with himself for making any explanation,
and still more disturbed that he was conscious of a certain feeling
that it was necessary.

"I was thinking," said Aunt Viney quietly, "that if we invited
anybody to stay with us--like Cecily, for example--it might be
rather dull for her if we had no neighbors to introduce her to."

Dick started; he had not thought of this.  He had been greatly
influenced by the belief that his pretty cousin, who was to make
them a visit, would like the change and would not miss excitement.
"We can always invite some girls down there and make our own
company," he answered cheerfully.  Nevertheless, he was dimly
conscious that he had already made an airy castle of the old
hacienda, in which Cecily and her aunt moved ALONE.  It was to
Cecily that he would introduce the old garden, it was Cecily whom
he would accompany through the dark corridors, and with whom he
would lounge under the awnings of the veranda.  All this innocently,
and without prejudice or ulterior thought.  He was not yet in love
with the pretty cousin whom he had seen but once or twice during
the past few years, but it was a possibility not unpleasant to
occasionally contemplate.  Yet it was equally possible that she
might yearn for lighter companionship and accustomed amusement; that
the passion-fringed garden and shadow-haunted corridor might be
profaned by hoydenish romping and laughter, or by that frivolous
flirtation which, in others, he had always regarded as commonplace
and vulgar.

Howbeit, at the end of two weeks he found himself regularly
installed in the Hacienda de los Osos.  His little household,
re-enforced by his cousin Cecily and three peons picked up at Los
Pinos, bore their transplantation with a singular equanimity
that seemed to him unaccountable.  Then occurred one of those
revelations of character with which Nature is always ready to trip
up merely human judgment.  Aunt Viney, an unrelenting widow of calm
but unshaken Dutch prejudices, high but narrow in religious belief,
merged without a murmur into the position of chatelaine of this
unconventional, half-Latin household.  Accepting the situation
without exaltation or criticism, placid but unresponsive amidst the
youthful enthusiasm of Dick and Cecily over each quaint detail, her
influence was, nevertheless, felt throughout the lingering length
and shadowy breadth of the strange old house.  The Indian and
Mexican servants, at first awed by her practical superiority,
succumbed to her half-humorous toleration of their incapacity, and
became her devoted slaves.  Dick was astonished, and even Cecily
was confounded.  "Do you know," she said confidentially to her
cousin, "that when that brown Conchita thought to please Aunty by
wearing white stockings instead of going round as usual with her
cinnamon-colored bare feet in yellow slippers--which I was afraid
would be enough to send Aunty into conniption fits--she actually
told her, very quietly, to take them off, and dress according to
her habits and her station?  And you remember that in her big,
square bedroom there is a praying-stool and a ghastly crucifix, at
least three feet long, in ivory and black, quite too human for
anything?  Well, when I offered to put them in the corridor, she
said I 'needn't trouble'; that really she hadn't noticed them, and
they would do very well where they were.  You'd think she had been
accustomed to this sort of thing all her life.  It's just too sweet
of her, any way, even if she's shamming.  And if she is, she just
does it to the life too, and could give those Spanish women points.
Why, she rode en pillion on Manuel's mule, behind him, holding on
by his sash, across to the corral yesterday; and you should have
seen Manuel absolutely scrape the ground before her with his
sombrero when he let her down."  Indeed, her tall, erect figure in
black lustreless silk, appearing in a heavily shadowed doorway, or
seated in a recessed window, gave a new and patrician dignity to
the melancholy of the hacienda.  It was pleasant to follow this
quietly ceremonious shadow gliding along the rose garden at
twilight, halting at times to bend stiffly over the bushes, garden-
shears in hand, and carrying a little basket filled with withered
but still odorous petals, as if she were grimly gathering the faded
roses of her youth.

It was also probable that the lively Cecily's appreciation of her
aunt might have been based upon another virtue of that lady--
namely, her exquisite tact in dealing with the delicate situation
evolved from the always possible relations of the two cousins.  It
was not to be supposed that the servants would fail to invest the
young people with Southern romance, and even believe that the
situation was prearranged by the aunt with a view to their eventual
engagement.  To deal with the problem openly, yet without startling
the consciousness of either Dick or Cecily; to allow them the
privileges of children subject to the occasional restraints of
childhood; to find certain household duties for the young girl that
kept them naturally apart until certain hours of general relaxation;
to calmly ignore the meaning of her retainers' smiles and glances,
and yet to good-humoredly accept their interest as a kind of feudal
loyalty, was part of Aunt Viney's deep diplomacy. Cecily enjoyed her
freedom and companionship with Dick, as she enjoyed the novel
experiences of the old house, the quaint, faded civilization that it
represented, and the change and diversion always acceptable to
youth.  She did not feel the absence of other girls of her own age;
neither was she aware that through this omission she was spared the
necessity of a confidante or a rival--both equally revealing to her
thoughtless enjoyment.  They took their rides together openly and
without concealment, relating their adventures afterwards to Aunt
Viney with a naivete and frankness that dreamed of no suppression.
The city-bred Cecily, accustomed to horse exercise solely as an
ornamental and artificial recreation, felt for the first time the
fearful joy of a dash across a league-long plain, with no onlookers
but the scattered wild horses she might startle up to scurry before
her, or race at her side.  Small wonder that, mounted on her fiery
little mustang, untrammeled by her short gray riding-habit, free as
the wind itself that blew through the folds of her flannel blouse,
with her brown hair half-loosed beneath her slouched felt hat, she
seemed to Dick a more beautiful and womanly figure than the stiff
buckramed simulation of man's angularity and precision he had seen
in the parks.  Perhaps one day she detected this consciousness too
plainly in his persistent eyes.  Up to that moment she had only
watched the glittering stretches of yellow grain, in which occasional
wind-shorn evergreen oaks stood mid-leg deep like cattle in water,
the distant silhouette of the Sierras against the steely blue, or
perhaps the frankly happy face of the good-looking young fellow at
her side.  But it seemed to her now that an intruder had entered the
field--a stranger before whom she was impelled to suddenly fly--
half-laughingly, half-affrightedly--the anxious Dick following
wonderingly at her mustang's heels, until she reached the gates of
the hacienda, where she fell into a gravity and seriousness that
made him wonder still more.  He did not dream that his guileless
cousin had discovered, with a woman's instinct, a mysterious invader
who sought to share their guileless companionship, only to absorb it
entirely, and that its name was--love!

The next day she was so greatly preoccupied with her household
duties that she could not ride with him.  Dick felt unaccountably
lost.  Perhaps this check to their daily intercourse was no less
accelerating to his feelings than the vague motive that induced
Cecily to withhold herself.  He moped in the corridor; he rode out
alone, bullying his mustang in proportion as he missed his cousin's
gentle companionship, and circling aimlessly, but still unconsciously,
around the hacienda as a centre of attraction.  The sun at last was
sinking to the accompaniment of a rising wind, which seemed to blow
and scatter its broad rays over the shimmering plain until every
slight protuberance was burnished into startling brightness; the
shadows of the short green oaks grew disproportionally long, and all
seemed to point to the white-walled casa.  Suddenly he started and
instantly reined up.

The figure of a young girl, which he had not before noticed, was
slowly moving down the half-shadowed lane made by the two walls of
the garden and the corral.  Cecily!  Perhaps she had come out to
meet him.  He spurred forward; but, as he came nearer, he saw that
the figure and its attire were surely not hers.  He reined up again
abruptly, mortified at his disappointment, and a little ashamed
lest he should have seemed to have been following an evident
stranger.  He vaguely remembered, too, that there was a trail to
the high road, through a little swale clothed with myrtle and thorn
bush which he had just passed, and that she was probably one of
his reserved and secluded neighbors--indeed, her dress, in that
uncertain light, looked half Spanish.  This was more confusing,
since his rashness might have been taken for an attempt to force an
acquaintance.  He wheeled and galloped towards the front of the
casa as the figure disappeared at the angle of the wall.

"I don't suppose you ever see any of our neighbors?" said Dick to
his aunt casually.

"I really can't say," returned the lady with quiet equanimity.
"There were some extraordinary-looking foreigners on the road to
San Gregorio yesterday.  Manuel, who was driving me, may have known
who they were--he is a kind of Indian Papist himself, you know--but
I didn't.  They might have been relations of his, for all I know."

At any other time Dick would have been amused at this serene
relegation of the lofty Estudillos and Peraltas to the caste of the
Indian convert, but he was worried to think that perhaps Cecily was
really being bored by the absence of neighbors.  After dinner, when
they sought the rose garden, he dropped upon the little lichen-
scarred stone bench by her side.  It was still warm from the sun;
the hot musk of the roses filled the air; the whole garden,
shielded from the cool evening trade winds by its high walls,
still kept the glowing memory of the afternoon sunshine.  Aunt
Viney, with her garden basket on her arm, moved ghost-like among
the distant bushes.

"I hope you are not getting bored here?" he said, after a slight
inconsequent pause.

"Does that mean that YOU are?" she returned, raising her mischievous
eyes to his.

"No; but I thought you might find it lonely, without neighbors."

"I stayed in to-day," she said, femininely replying to the unasked
question, "because I fancied Aunt Viney might think it selfish of
me to leave her alone so much."

"But YOU are not lonely?"

Certainly not!  The young lady was delighted with the whole place,
with the quaint old garden, the mysterious corridors, the restful
quiet of everything, the picture of dear Aunt Viney--who was just
the sweetest soul in the world--moving about like the genius of the
casa.  It was such a change to all her ideas, she would never
forget it.  It was so thoughtful of him, Dick, to have given them
all that pleasure.

"And the rides," continued Dick, with the untactful pertinacity of
the average man at such moments--"you are not tired of THEM?"

No; she thought them lovely.  Such freedom and freshness in the
exercise; so different from riding in the city or at watering-
places, where it was one-half show, and one was always thinking of
one's habit or one's self.  One quite forgot one's self on that
lovely plain--with everything so far away, and only the mountains
to look at in the distance.  Nevertheless she did not lift her eyes
from the point of the little slipper which had strayed beyond her
skirt.

Dick was relieved, but not voluble; he could only admiringly follow
the curves of her pretty arms and hands, clasped lightly in her
lap, down to the point of the little slipper.  But even that
charming vanishing point was presently withdrawn--possibly through
some instinct--for the young lady had apparently not raised her
eyes.

"I'm so glad you like it," said Dick earnestly, yet with a nervous
hesitation that made his speech seem artificial to his own ears.
"You see I--that is--I had an idea that you might like an
occasional change of company.  It's a great pity we're not on
speaking terms with one of these Spanish families.  Some of the
men, you know, are really fine fellows, with an old-world courtesy
that is very charming."

He was surprised to see that she had lifted her head suddenly, with
a quick look that however changed to an amused and half coquettish
smile.

"I am finding no fault with my present company," she said demurely,
dropping her head and eyelids until a faint suffusion seemed to
follow the falling lashes over her cheek.  "I don't think YOU ought
to undervalue it."

If he had only spoken then!  The hot scent of the roses hung
suspended in the air, which seemed to be hushed around them in mute
expectancy; the shadows which were hiding Aunt Viney from view were
also closing round the bench where they sat.  He was very near her;
he had only to reach out his hand to clasp hers, which lay idly in
her lap.  He felt himself glowing with a strange emanation; he even
fancied that she was turning mechanically towards him, as a flower
might turn towards the fervent sunlight.  But he could not speak;
he could scarcely collect his thoughts, conscious though he was of
the absurdity of his silence.  What was he waiting for? what did he
expect?  He was not usually bashful, he was no coward; there was
nothing in her attitude to make him hesitate to give expression to
what he believed was his first real passion.  But he could do
nothing.  He even fancied that his face, turned towards hers, was
stiffening into a vacant smile.

The young girl rose.  "I think I heard Aunt Viney call me," she
said constrainedly, and made a hesitating step forward.  The spell
which had held Dick seemed to be broken suddenly; he stretched
forth his arm to detain her.  But the next step appeared to carry
her beyond his influence; and it was even with a half movement of
rejection that she quickened her pace and disappeared down the
path.  Dick fell back dejectedly into his seat, yet conscious of a
feeling of RELIEF that bewildered him.

But only for a moment.  A recollection of the chance that he had
impotently and unaccountably thrown away returned to him.  He
tried to laugh, albeit with a glowing cheek, over the momentary
bashfulness which he thought had overtaken him, and which must have
made him ridiculous in her eyes.  He even took a few hesitating
steps in the direction of the path where she had disappeared.  The
sound of voices came to his ear, and the light ring of Cecily's
laughter.  The color deepened a little on his cheek; he re-entered
the house and went to his room.

The red sunset, still faintly showing through the heavily recessed
windows to the opposite wall, made two luminous aisles through the
darkness of the long low apartment.  From his easy-chair he watched
the color drop out of the sky, the yellow plain grow pallid and
seem to stretch itself to infinite rest; then a black line began to
deepen and creep towards him from the horizon edge; the day was
done.  It seemed to him a day lost.  He had no doubt now but that
he loved his cousin, and the opportunity of telling her so--of
profiting by her predisposition of the moment--had passed.  She
would remember herself, she would remember his weak hesitancy, she
would despise him.  He rose and walked uneasily up and down.  And
yet--and it disgusted him with himself still more--he was again
conscious of the feeling of relief he had before experienced.  A
vague formula, "It's better as it is," "Who knows what might have
come of it?" he found himself repeating, without reason and without
resignation.

Ashamed even of his seclusion, he rose to join the little family
circle, which now habitually gathered around a table on the veranda
of the patio under the rays of a swinging lamp to take their
chocolate.  To his surprise the veranda was empty and dark; a light
shining from the inner drawing-room showed him his aunt in her
armchair reading, alone.  A slight thrill ran over him: Cecily
might be still in the garden!  He noiselessly passed the drawing-
room door, turned into a long corridor, and slipped through a
grating in the wall into the lane that separated it from the
garden.  The gate was still open; a few paces brought him into the
long alley of roses.  Their strong perfume--confined in the high,
hot walls--at first made him giddy.  This was followed by an
inexplicable languor; he turned instinctively towards the stone
bench and sank upon it.  The long rows of calla lilies against the
opposite wall looked ghostlike in the darkness, and seemed to have
turned their white faces towards him.  Then he fancied that ONE had
detached itself from the rank and was moving away.  He looked
again: surely there was something gliding along the wall!  A quick
tremor of anticipation passed over him.  It was Cecily, who had
lingered in the garden--perhaps to give him one more opportunity!
He rose quickly, and stepped towards the apparition, which had now
plainly resolved itself into a slight girlish figure; it slipped on
beneath the trees; he followed quickly--his nervous hesitancy had
vanished before what now seemed to be a half-coy, half-coquettish
evasion of him.  He called softly," Cecily!" but she did not heed
him; he quickened his pace--she increased hers.  They were both
running.  She reached the angle of the wall where the gate opened
upon the road.  Suddenly she stopped, as if intentionally, in the
clear open space before it.  He could see her distinctly.  The lace
mantle slipped from her head and shoulders.  It was NOT Cecily!

But it was a face so singularly beautiful and winsome that he was
as quickly arrested.  It was a woman's deep, passionate eyes and
heavy hair, joined to a childish oval of cheek and chin, an
infantine mouth, and a little nose whose faintly curved outline
redeemed the lower face from weakness and brought it into charming
harmony with the rest.  A yellow rose was pinned in the lustrous
black hair above the little ear; a yellow silk shawl or mantle,
which had looked white in the shadows, was thrown over one shoulder
and twisted twice or thrice around the plump but petite bust.  The
large black velvety eyes were fixed on his in half wonderment,
half amusement; the lovely lips were parted in half astonishment
and half a smile.  And yet she was like a picture, a dream,--
a materialization of one's most fanciful imaginings,--like anything,
in fact, but the palpable flesh and blood she evidently was,
standing only a few feet before him, whose hurried breath he could
see even now heaving her youthful breast.

His own breath appeared suspended, although his heart beat rapidly
as he stammered out: "I beg your pardon--I thought--"  He stopped
at the recollection that this was the SECOND time he had followed
her.

She did not speak, although her parted lips still curved with their
faint coy smile.  Then she suddenly lifted her right hand, which
had been hanging at her side, clasping some long black object like
a stick.  Without any apparent impulse from her fingers, the stick
slowly seemed to broaden in her little hand into the segment of an
opening disk, that, lifting to her face and shoulders, gradually
eclipsed the upper part of her figure, until, mounting higher, the
beautiful eyes and the yellow rose of her hair alone remained
above--a large unfurled fan!  Then the long eyelashes drooped, as
if in a mute farewell, and they too disappeared as the fan was
lifted higher.  The half-hidden figure appeared to glide to the
gateway, lingered for an instant, and vanished.  The astounded Dick
stepped quickly into the road, but fan and figure were swallowed up
in the darkness.

Amazed and bewildered, he stood for a moment, breathless and
irresolute.  It was no doubt the same stranger that he had seen
before.  But WHO was she, and what was she doing there?  If she
were one of their Spanish neighbors, drawn simply by curiosity to
become a trespasser, why had she lingered to invite a scrutiny that
would clearly identify her?  It was not the escapade of that giddy
girl which the lower part of her face had suggested, for such a one
would have giggled and instantly flown; it was not the deliberate
act of a grave woman of the world, for its sequel was so purposeless.
Why had she revealed herself to HIM alone?  Dick felt himself
glowing with a half-shamed, half-secret pleasure.  Then he
remembered Cecily, and his own purpose in coming into the garden.
He hurriedly made a tour of the walks and shrubbery, ostentatiously
calling her, yet seeing, as in a dream, only the beautiful eyes of
the stranger still before him, and conscious of an ill-defined
remorse and disloyalty he had never known before.  But Cecily was
not there; and again he experienced the old sensation of relief!

He shut the garden gate, crossed the road, and found the grille
just closing behind a slim white figure.  He started, for it was
Cecily; but even in his surprise he was conscious of wondering how
he could have ever mistaken the stranger for her.  She appeared
startled too; she looked pale and abstracted.  Could she have been
a witness of his strange interview?

Her first sentence dispelled the idea.

"I suppose you were in the garden?" she said, with a certain
timidity.  "I didn't go there--it seemed so close and stuffy--but
walked a little down the lane."

A moment before he would have eagerly told her his adventure; but
in the presence of her manifest embarrassment his own increased.
He concluded to tell her another time.  He murmured vaguely that he
had been looking for her in the garden, yet he had a flushing sense
of falsehood in his reserve; and they passed silently along the
corridor and entered the patio together.  She lit the hanging lamp
mechanically.  She certainly WAS pale; her slim hand trembled
slightly.  Suddenly her eyes met his, a faint color came into her
cheek, and she smiled.  She put up her hand with a girlish gesture
towards the back of her head.

"What are you looking at?  Is my hair coming down?"

"No," hesitated Dick, "but--I--thought--you were looking just a
LITTLE pale."

An aggressive ray slipped into her blue eyes.

"Strange!  I thought YOU were.  Just now at the grille you looked
as if the roses hadn't agreed with you."

They both laughed, a little nervously, and Conchita brought the
chocolate.  When Aunt Viney came from the drawing-room she found
the two young people together, and Cecily in a gale of high
spirits.

She had had SUCH a wonderfully interesting walk, all by herself,
alone on the plain.  It was really so queer and elfish to find
one's self where one could see nothing above or around one anywhere
but stars.  Stars above one, to right and left of one, and some so
low down they seemed as if they were picketed on the plain.  It was
so odd to find the horizon line at one's very feet, like a castaway
at sea.  And the wind! it seemed to move one this way and that way,
for one could not see anything, and might really be floating in the
air.  Only once she thought she saw something, and was quite
frightened.

"What was it?" asked Dick quickly.

"Well, it was a large black object; but--it turned out only to be a
horse."

She laughed, although she had evidently noticed her cousin's
eagerness, and her own eyes had a nervous brightness.

"And where was Dick all this while?" asked Aunt Viney quietly.

Cecily interrupted, and answered for him briskly.  "Oh, he was
trying to make attar of rose of himself in the garden.  He's still
stupefied by his own sweetness."

"If this means," said Aunt Viney, with matter-of-fact precision,
"that you've been gallivanting all alone, Cecily, on that common
plain, where you're likely to meet all sorts of foreigners and
tramps and savages, and Heaven knows what other vermin, I shall set
my face against a repetition of it.  If you MUST go out, and Dick
can't go with you--and I must say that even you and he going out
together there at night isn't exactly the kind of American
Christian example to set to our neighbors--you had better get
Concepcion to go with you and take a lantern."

"But there is nobody one meets on the plain--at least, nobody
likely to harm one," protested Cecily.

"Don't tell ME," said Aunt Viney decidedly; "haven't I seen all
sorts of queer figures creeping along by the brink after nightfall
between San Gregorio and the next rancho?  Aren't they always
skulking backwards and forwards to mass and aguardiente?"

"And I don't know why WE should set any example to our neighbors.
We don't see much of them, or they of us."

"Of course not," returned Aunt Viney; "because all proper Spanish
young ladies are shut up behind their grilles at night.  You don't
see THEM traipsing over the plain in the darkness, WITH or WITHOUT
cavaliers!  Why, Don Rafael would lock one of HIS sisters up in a
convent and consider her disgraced forever, if he heard of it."

Dick felt his cheeks burning; Cecily slightly paled.  Yet both said
eagerly together: "Why, what do YOU know about it, Aunty?"

"A great deal," returned Aunt Viney quietly, holding her tatting up
to the light and examining the stitches with a critical eye.  "I've
got my eyes about me, thank heaven! even if my ears don't understand
the language.  And there's a great deal, my dears, that you young
people might learn from these Papists."

"And do you mean to say," continued Dick, with a glowing cheek and
an uneasy smile, "that Spanish girls don't go out alone?"

"No young LADY goes out without her duenna," said Aunt Viney
emphatically.  "Of course there's the Concha variety, that go out
without even stockings."

As the conversation flagged after this, and the young people once
or twice yawned nervously, Aunt Viney thought they had better go to
bed.

But Dick did not sleep.  The beautiful face beamed out again from
the darkness of his room; the light that glimmered through his
deep-set curtainless windows had an odd trick of bringing out
certain hanging articles, or pieces of furniture, into a
resemblance to a mantled figure.  The deep, velvety eyes, fringed
with long brown lashes, again looked into his with amused,
childlike curiosity.  He scouted the harsh criticisms of Aunt
Viney, even while he shrank from proving to her her mistake in the
quality of his mysterious visitant.  Of course she was a lady--far
superior to any of her race whom he had yet met.  Yet how should he
find WHO she was?  His pride and a certain chivalry forbade his
questioning the servants--before whom it was the rule of the
household to avoid all reference to their neighbors.  He would make
the acquaintance of the old padre--perhaps HE might talk.  He would
ride early along the trail in the direction of the nearest rancho,--
Don Jose Amador's,--a thing he had hitherto studiously refrained
from doing.  It was three miles away.  She must have come that
distance, but not ALONE.  Doubtless she had kept her duenna in
waiting in the road.  Perhaps it was she who had frightened Cecily.
Had Cecily told ALL she had seen?  Her embarrassed manner certainly
suggested more than she had told.  He felt himself turning hot with
an indefinite uneasiness.  Then he tried to compose himself.  After
all, it was a thing of the past.  The fair unknown had bribed the
duenna for once, no doubt--had satisfied her girlish curiosity--she
would not come again!  But this thought brought with it such a
sudden sense of utter desolation, a deprivation so new and
startling, that it frightened him.  Was his head turned by the
witcheries of some black-eyed schoolgirl whom he had seen but once?
Or--he felt his cheeks glowing in the darkness--was it really a
case of love at first sight, and she herself had been impelled by
the same yearning that now possessed him?  A delicious satisfaction
followed, that left a smile on his lips as if it had been a kiss.
He knew now why he had so strangely hesitated with Cecily.  He had
never really loved her--he had never known what love was till now!

He was up early the next morning, skimming the plain on the back of
"Chu Chu," before the hacienda was stirring.  He did not want any
one to suspect his destination, and it was even with a sense of
guilt that he dashed along the swale in the direction of the Amador
rancho.  A few vaqueros, an old Digger squaw carrying a basket, two
little Indian acolytes on their way to mass passed him.  He was
surprised to find that there were no ruts of carriage wheels within
three miles of the casa, and evidently no track for carriages
through the swale.  SHE must have come on HORSEBACK.  A broader
highway, however, intersected the trail at a point where the low
walls of the Amador rancho came in view.  Here he was startled by
the apparition of an old-fashioned family carriage drawn by two
large piebald mules.  But it was unfortunately closed.  Then, with
a desperate audacity new to his reserved nature, he ranged close
beside it, and even stared in the windows.  A heavily mantled old
woman, whose brown face was in high contrast to her snow-white
hair, sat in the back seat.  Beside her was a younger companion,
with the odd blonde hair and blue eyes sometimes seen in the higher
Castilian type.  For an instant the blue eyes caught his, half-
coquettishly.  But the girl was NOT at all like his mysterious
visitor, and he fell, discomfited, behind.

He had determined to explain his trespass on the grounds of his
neighbor, if questioned, by the excuse that he was hunting a
strayed mustang.  But his presence, although watched with a cold
reserve by the few peons who were lounging near the gateway,
provoked no challenge from them; and he made a circuit of the low
adobe walls, with their barred windows and cinnamon-tiled roofs,
without molestation--but equally without satisfaction.  He felt he
was a fool for imagining that he would see her in that way.  He
turned his horse towards the little Mission half a mile away.
There he had once met the old padre, who spoke a picturesque but
limited English; now he was only a few yards ahead of him, just
turning into the church.  The padre was pleased to see Don Ricardo;
it was an unusual thing for the Americanos, he observed, to be up
so early: for himself, he had his functions, of course.  No, the
ladies that the caballero had seen had not been to mass!  They
were Donna Maria and her daughter, going to San Gregorio.  They
comprised ALL the family at the rancho,--there were none others,
unless the caballero, of a possibility, meant Donna Inez, a maiden
aunt of sixty--an admirable woman, a saint on earth!  He trusted
that he would find his estray; there was no doubt a mark upon it,
otherwise the plain was illimitable; there were many horses--the
world was wide!

Dick turned his face homewards a little less adventurously, and it
must be confessed, with a growing sense of his folly.  The keen,
dry morning air brushed away his fancies of the preceding night;
the beautiful eyes that had lured him thither seemed to flicker
and be blown out by its practical breath.  He began to think
remorsefully of his cousin, of his aunt,--of his treachery to that
reserve which the little alien household had maintained towards
their Spanish neighbors.  He found Aunt Viney and Cecily at
breakfast--Cecily, he thought, looking a trifle pale.  Yet (or was
it only his fancy?) she seemed curious about his morning ride.  And
he became more reticent.

"You must see a good many of our neighbors when you are out so
early?"

"Why?" he asked shortly, feeling his color rise.

"Oh, because--because we don't see them at any other time."

"I saw a very nice chap--I think the best of the lot," he began,
with assumed jocularity; then, seeing Cecily's eyes suddenly fixed
on him, he added, somewhat lamely, "the padre!  There were also two
women in a queer coach."

"Donna Maria Amador, and Dona Felipa Peralta--her daughter by her
first husband," said Aunt Viney quietly.  "When you see the horses
you think it's a circus; when you look inside the carriage you KNOW
it's a funeral."

Aunt Viney did not condescend to explain how she had acquired her
genealogical knowledge of her neighbor's family, but succeeded in
breaking the restraint between the young people.  Dick proposed a
ride in the afternoon, which was cheerfully accepted by Cecily.
Their intercourse apparently recovered its old frankness and
freedom, marred only for a moment when they set out on the plain.
Dick, really to forget his preoccupation of the morning, turned his
horse's head AWAY from the trail, to ride in another direction; but
Cecily oddly, and with an exhibition of caprice quite new to her,
insisted upon taking the old trail.  Nevertheless they met nothing,
and soon became absorbed in the exercise.  Dick felt something of
his old tenderness return to this wholesome, pretty girl at his
side; perhaps he betrayed it in his voice, or in an unconscious
lingering by her bridle-rein, but she accepted it with a naive
reserve which he naturally attributed to the effect of his own
previous preoccupation.  He bore it so gently, however, that it
awakened her interest, and, possibly, her pique.  Her reserve
relaxed, and by the time they returned to the hacienda they had
regained something of their former intimacy.  The dry, incisive
breath of the plains swept away the last lingering remnants of
yesterday's illusions.  Under this frankly open sky, in this clear
perspective of the remote Sierras, which admitted no fanciful
deception of form or distance--there remained nothing but a strange
incident--to be later explained or forgotten.  Only he could not
bring himself to talk to HER about it.

After dinner, and a decent lingering for coffee on the veranda,
Dick rose, and leaning half caressingly, half mischievously, over
his aunt's rocking-chair, but with his eyes on Cecily, said:--

"I've been deeply considering, dear Aunty, what you said last
evening of the necessity of our offering a good example to our
neighbors.  Now, although Cecily and I are cousins, yet, as I am
HEAD of the house, lord of the manor, and padron, according to the
Spanish ideas I am her recognised guardian and protector, and it
seems to me it is my positive DUTY to accompany her if she wishes
to walk out this evening."

A momentary embarrassment--which, however, changed quickly into an
answering smile to her cousin--came over Cecily's face.  She turned
to her aunt.

"Well, don't go too far," said that lady quietly.

When they closed the grille behind them and stepped into the lane,
Cecily shot a quick glance at her cousin.

"Perhaps you'd rather walk in the garden?"

"I?  Oh, no," he answered honestly.  "But"--he hesitated--"would
you?"

"Yes," she said faintly.

He impulsively offered his arm; her slim hand slipped lightly
through it and rested on his sleeve.  They crossed the lane
together, and entered the garden.  A load appeared to be lifted
from his heart; the moment seemed propitious,--here was a chance to
recover his lost ground, to regain his self-respect and perhaps his
cousin's affection.  By a common instinct, however, they turned to
the right, and AWAY from the stone bench, and walked slowly down
the broad allee.

They talked naturally and confidingly of the days when they had met
before, of old friends they had known and changes that had crept
into their young lives; they spoke affectionately of the grim,
lonely, but self-contained old woman they had just left, who had
brought them thus again together.  Cecily talked of Dick's studies,
of the scientific work on which he was engaged, that was to bring
him, she was sure, fame and fortune!  They talked of the thoughtful
charm of the old house, of its quaint old-world flavor.  They spoke
of the beauty of the night, the flowers and the stars, in whispers,
as one is apt to do--as fearing to disturb a super-sensitiveness in
nature.

They had come out later than on the previous night; and the moon,
already risen above the high walls of the garden, seemed a vast
silver shield caught in the interlacing tops of the old pear-trees,
whose branches crossed its bright field like dark bends or bars.
As it rose higher, it began to separate the lighter shrubbery, and
open white lanes through the olive-trees.  Damp currents of air,
alternating with drier heats, on what appeared to be different
levels, moved across the whole garden, or gave way at times to a
breathless lull and hush of everything, in which the long rose
alley seemed to be swooning in its own spices.  They had reached
the bottom of the garden, and had turned, facing the upper moonlit
extremity and the bare stone bench.  Cecily's voice faltered, her
hand leaned more heavily on his arm, as if she were overcome by the
strong perfume.  His right hand began to steal towards hers.  But
she had stopped; she was trembling.

"Go on," she said in a half whisper.  "Leave me a moment; I'll join
you afterwards."

"You are ill, Cecily!  It's those infernal flowers!" said Dick
earnestly.  "Let me help you to the bench."

"No--it's nothing.  Go on, please.  Do!  Will you go!"

She spoke with imperiousness, unlike herself.  He walked on
mechanically a dozen paces and turned.  She had disappeared.  He
remembered there was a smaller gate opening upon the plain near
where they had stopped.  Perhaps she had passed through that.
He continued on, slowly, towards the upper end of the garden,
occasionally turning to await her return.  In this way he gradually
approached the stone bench.  He was facing about to continue his
walk, when his heart seemed to stop beating.  The beautiful visitor
of last night was sitting alone on the bench before him!

She had not been there a moment before; he could have sworn it.
Yet there was no illusion now of shade or distance.  She was
scarcely six feet from him, in the bright moonlight.  The whole of
her exquisite little figure was visible, from her lustrous hair
down to the tiny, black satin, low-quartered slipper, held as by
two toes.  Her face was fully revealed; he could see even the few
minute freckles, like powdered allspice, that heightened the pale
satin sheen of her beautifully rounded cheek; he could detect even
the moist shining of her parted red lips, the white outlines of her
little teeth, the length of her curved lashes, and the meshes of
the black lace veil that fell from the yellow rose above her ear to
the black silk camisa; he noted even the thick yellow satin saya,
or skirt, heavily flounced with black lace and bugles, and that it
was a different dress from that worn on the preceding night, a
half-gala costume, carried with the indescribable air of a woman
looking her best and pleased to do so: all this he had noted,
drawing nearer and nearer, until near enough to forget it all and
drown himself in the depths of her beautiful eyes.  For they were
no longer childlike and wondering: they were glowing with expectancy,
anticipation--love!

He threw himself passionately on the bench beside her.  Yet, even
if he had known her language, he could not have spoken.  She leaned
towards him; their eyes seemed to meet caressingly, as in an
embrace.  Her little hand slipped from the yellow folds of her
skirt to the bench.  He eagerly seized it.  A subtle thrill ran
through his whole frame.  There was no delusion here; it was flesh
and blood, warm, quivering, and even tightening round his own.  He
was about to carry it to his lips, when she rose and stepped
backwards.  He pressed eagerly forward.  Another backward step
brought her to the pear-tree, where she seemed to plunge into its
shadow.  Dick Bracy followed--and the same shadow seemed to fold
them in its embrace.

       .        .        .        .        .        .

He did not return to the veranda and chocolate that evening, but
sent word from his room that he had retired, not feeling well.

Cecily, herself a little nervously exalted, corroborated the fact
of his indisposition by telling Aunt Viney that the close odors of
the rose garden had affected them both.  Indeed, she had been
obliged to leave before him.  Perhaps in waiting for her return--
and she really was not well enough to go back--he was exposed to
the night air too long.  She was very sorry.

Aunt Viney heard this with a slight contraction of her brows and a
renewed scrutiny of her knitting; and, having satisfied herself by
a personal visit to Dick's room that he was not alarmingly ill, set
herself to find out what was really the matter with the young
people; for there was no doubt that Cecily was in some vague way as
disturbed and preoccupied as Dick.  He rode out again early the
next morning, returning to his studies in the library directly
after breakfast; and Cecily was equally reticent, except when, to
Aunt Viney's perplexity, she found excuses for Dick's manner on the
ground of his absorption in his work, and that he was probably
being bored by want of society.  She proposed that she should ask
an old schoolfellow to visit them.

"It would give Dick a change of ideas, and he would not be
perpetually obliged to look so closely after me."  She blushed
slightly under Aunt Viney's gaze, and added hastily, "I mean, of
course, he would not feel it his DUTY."

She even induced her aunt to drive with her to the old mission
church, where she displayed a pretty vivacity and interest in the
people they met, particularly a few youthful and picturesque
caballeros.  Aunt Viney smiled gravely.  Was the poor child
developing an unlooked-for coquetry, or preparing to make the
absent-minded Dick jealous?  Well, the idea was not a bad one.  In
the evening she astonished the two cousins by offering to accompany
them into the garden--a suggestion accepted with eager and effusive
politeness by each, but carried out with great awkwardness by the
distrait young people later.  Aunt Viney clearly saw that it was
not her PRESENCE that was required.  In this way two or three days
elapsed without apparently bringing the relations of Dick and
Cecily to any more satisfactory conclusion.  The diplomatic Aunt
Viney confessed herself puzzled.

One night it was very warm; the usual trade winds had died away
before sunset, leaving an unwonted hush in sky and plain.  There
was something so portentous in this sudden withdrawal of that rude
stimulus to the otherwise monotonous level, that a recurrence of
such phenomena was always known as "earthquake weather."  The wild
cattle moved uneasily in the distance without feeding; herds of
unbroken mustangs approached the confines of the hacienda in vague
timorous squads.  The silence and stagnation of the old house was
oppressive, as if the life had really gone out of it at last; and
Aunt Viney, after waiting impatiently for the young people to come
in to chocolate, rose grimly, set her lips together, and went out
into the lane.  The gate of the rose garden opposite was open.  She
walked determinedly forward and entered.

In that doubly stagnant air the odor of the roses was so suffocating
and overpowering that she had to stop to take breath.  The whole
garden, except a near cluster of pear-trees, was brightly
illuminated by the moonlight.  No one was to be seen along the
length of the broad allee, strewn an inch deep with scattered red
and yellow petals--colorless in the moonbeams.  She was turning
away, when Dick's familiar voice, but with a strange accent of
entreaty in it, broke the silence.  It seemed to her vaguely to come
from within the pear-tree shadow.

"But we must understand one another, my darling!  Tell me all.
This suspense, this mystery, this brief moment of happiness, and
these hours of parting and torment, are killing me!"

A slight cough broke from Aunt Viney.  She had heard enough--she
did not wish to hear more.  The mystery was explained.  Dick loved
Cecily; the coyness or hesitation was not on HIS part.  Some
idiotic girlish caprice, quite inconsistent with what she had
noticed at the mission church, was keeping Cecily silent, reserved,
and exasperating to her lover.  She would have a talk with the
young lady, without revealing the fact that she had overheard them.
She was perhaps a little hurt that affairs should have reached this
point without some show of confidence to her from the young people.
Dick might naturally be reticent--but Cecily!

She did not even look towards the pear-tree, but turned and walked
stiffly out of the gate.  As she was crossing the lane she suddenly
started back in utter dismay and consternation!  For Cecily, her
niece,--in her own proper person,--was actually just coming OUT OF
THE HOUSE!

Aunt Viney caught her wrist.  "Where have you been?" she asked
quickly.

"In the house," stammered Cecily, with a frightened face.

"You have not been in the garden with Dick?" continued Aunt Viney
sharply--yet with a hopeless sense of the impossibility of the
suggestion.

"No, I was not even going there.  I thought of just strolling down
the lane."

The girl's accents were truthful; more than that, she absolutely
looked relieved by her aunt's question.  "Do you want me, Aunty?"
she added quickly.

"Yes--no.  Run away, then--but don't go far."

At any other time Aunt Viney might have wondered at the eagerness
with which Cecily tripped away; now she was only anxious to get rid
of her.  She entered the casa hurriedly.

"Send Josefa to me at once," she said to Manuel.

Josefa, the housekeeper,--a fat Mexican woman,--appeared.  "Send
Concha and the other maids here."  They appeared, mutely wondering.
Aunt Viney glanced hurriedly over them--they were all there--a few
comely, but not too attractive, and all stupidly complacent.  "Have
you girls any friends here this evening--or are you expecting any?"
she demanded.  Of a surety, no!--as the padrona knew--it was not
night for church.  "Very well," returned Aunt Viney; "I thought I
heard your voices in the garden; understand, I want no gallivanting
there.  Go to bed."

She was relieved!  Dick certainly was not guilty of a low intrigue
with one of the maids.  But who and what was she?

Dick was absent again from chocolate; there was unfinished work to
do.  Cecily came in later, just as Aunt Viney was beginning to be
anxious.  Had she appeared distressed or piqued by her cousin's
conduct, Aunt Viney might have spoken; but there was a pretty color
on her cheek--the result, she said, of her rapid walking, and the
fresh air; did Aunt Viney know that a cool breeze had just risen?--
and her delicate lips were wreathed at times in a faint retrospective
smile.  Aunt Viney stared; certainly the girl was not pining!  What
young people were made of now-a-days she really couldn't conceive.
She shrugged her shoulders and resumed her tatting.

Nevertheless, as Dick's unfinished studies seemed to have whitened
his cheek and impaired his appetite the next morning, she announced
her intention of driving out towards the mission alone.  When she
returned at luncheon she further astonished the young people by
casually informing them they would have Spanish visitors to dinner--
namely, their neighbors, Donna Maria Amador and the Dona Felipa
Peralta.

Both faces were turned eagerly towards her; both said almost in the
same breath, "But, Aunt Viney! you don't know them!  However did
you--  What does it all mean?"

"My dears," said Aunt Viney placidly, "Mrs. Amador and I have
always nodded to each other, and I knew they were only waiting for
the slightest encouragement.  I gave it, and they're coming."

It was difficult to say whether Cecily's or Dick's face betrayed
the greater delight and animation.  Aunt Viney looked from the one
to the other.  It seemed as if her attempt at diversion had been
successful.

"Tell us all about it, you dear, clever, artful Aunty!" said Cecily
gayly.

"There's nothing whatever to tell, my love!  It seems, however,
that the young one, Dona Felipa, has seen Dick, and remembers him."
She shot a keen glance at Dick, but was obliged to admit that the
rascal's face remained unchanged.  "And I wanted to bring a
cavalier for YOU, dear, but Don Jose's nephew isn't at home now."
Yet here, to her surprise, Cecily was faintly blushing.

Early in the afternoon the piebald horses and dark brown chariot of
the Amadors drew up before the gateway.  The young people were
delighted with Dona Felipa, and thought her blue eyes and tawny
hair gave an added piquancy to her colorless satin skin and
otherwise distinctively Spanish face and figure.  Aunt Viney, who
entertained Donna Maria, was nevertheless watchful of the others;
but failed to detect in Dick's effusive greeting, or the Dona's
coquettish smile of recognition, any suggestion of previous
confidences.  It was rather to Cecily that Dona Felipa seemed to be
characteristically exuberant and childishly feminine.  Both mother
and stepdaughter spoke a musical infantine English, which the
daughter supplemented with her eyes, her eyebrows, her little brown
fingers, her plump shoulders, a dozen charming intonations of
voice, and a complete vocabulary in her active and emphatic fan.

The young lady went over the house with Cecily curiously, as if
recalling some old memories.  "Ah, yes, I remember it--but it was
long ago and I was very leetle--you comprehend, and I have not
arrive mooch when the old Don was alone.  It was too--too--what you
call melank-oaly.  And the old man have not make mooch to himself
of company."

"Then there were no young people in the house, I suppose?" said
Cecily, smiling.

"No--not since the old man's father lif.  Then there were TWO.  It
is a good number, this two, eh?"  She gave a single gesture, which
took in, with Cecily, the distant Dick, and with a whole volume of
suggestion in her shoulders, and twirling fan, continued: "Ah! two
sometime make one--is it not?  But not THEN in the old time--ah,
no!  It is a sad story.  I shall tell it to you some time, but not
to HIM."

But Cecily's face betrayed no undue bashful consciousness, and she
only asked, with a quiet smile, "Why not to--to my cousin?"

"Imbecile!" responded that lively young lady.

After dinner the young people proposed to take Dona Felipa into
the rose garden, while Aunt Viney entertained Donna Maria on the
veranda.  The young girl threw up her hands with an affectation of
horror.  "Santa Maria!--in the rose garden?  After the Angelus, you
and him?  Have you not heard?"

But here Donna Maria interposed.  Ah! Santa Maria!  What was all
that!  Was it not enough to talk old woman's gossip and tell
vaqueros tales at home, without making uneasy the strangers?  She
would have none of it.  "Vamos!"

Nevertheless Dona Felipa overcame her horror of the rose garden at
infelicitous hours, so far as to permit herself to be conducted by
the cousins into it, and to be installed like a rose queen on the
stone bench, while Dick and Cecily threw themselves in submissive
and imploring attitudes at her little feet.  The young girl looked
mischievously from one to the other.

"It ees very pret-ty, but all the same I am not a rose: I am what
you call a big goose-berry!  Eh--is it not?"

The cousins laughed, but without any embarrassed consciousness.
"Dona Felipa knows a sad story of this house," said Cecily; "but
she will not tell it before you, Dick."

Dick, looking up at the coquettish little figure, with Heaven knows
what OTHER memories in his mind, implored and protested.

"Ah! but this little story--she ees not so mooch sad of herself as
she ees str-r-r-ange!"  She gave an exaggerated little shiver under
her lace shawl, and closed her eyes meditatively.

"Go on," said Dick, smiling in spite of his interested expectation.

Dona Felipa took her fan in both hands, spanning her knees, leaned
forward, and after a preliminary compressing of her lips and
knitting of her brows, said:--

"It was a long time ago.  Don Gregorio he have his daughter Rosita
here, and for her he will fill all thees rose garden and gif to
her; for she like mooch to lif with the rose.  She ees very pret-ty.
You shall have seen her picture here in the casa.  No?  It have
hang under the crucifix in the corner room, turn around to the
wall--WHY, you shall comprehend when I have made finish thees
story.  Comes to them here one day Don Vincente, Don Gregorio's
nephew, to lif when his father die.  He was yong, a pollio--same as
Rosita.  They were mooch together; they have make lofe.  What will
you?--it ees always the same.  The Don Gregorio have comprehend;
the friends have all comprehend; in a year they will make marry.
Dona Rosita she go to Monterey to see his family.  There ees an
English warship come there; and Rosita she ees very gay with the
officers, and make the flirtation very mooch.  Then Don Vincente he
is onhappy, and he revenge himself to make lofe with another.  When
Rosita come back it is very miserable for them both, but they say
nossing.  The warship he have gone away; the other girl Vincente he
go not to no more.  All the same, Rosita and Vincente are very
triste, and the family will not know what to make.  Then Rosita she
is sick and eat nossing, and walk to herself all day in the rose
garden, until she is as white and fade away as the rose.  And
Vincente he eat nossing, but drink mooch aguardiente.  Then he have
fever and go dead.  And Rosita she have fainting and fits; and one
day they have look for her in the rose garden, and she is not!  And
they poosh and poosh in the ground for her, and they find her with
so mooch rose-leaves--so deep--on top of her.  SHE has go dead.  It
is a very sad story, and when you hear it you are very, very mooch
dissatisfied."

It is to be feared that the two Americans were not as thrilled by
this sad recital as the fair narrator had expected, and even Dick
ventured to point out that those sort of things happened also to
his countrymen, and were not peculiar to the casa.

"But you said that there was a terrible sequel," suggested Cecily
smilingly: "tell us THAT.  Perhaps Mr. Bracy may receive it a
little more politely."

An expression of superstitious gravity, half real, half simulated,
came over Dona Felipa's face, although her vivacity of gesticulation
and emphasis did not relax.  She cast a hurried glance around her,
and leaned a little forward towards the cousins.

"When there are no more young people in the casa because they are
dead," she continued, in a lower voice, "Don Gregorio he is very
melank-oaly, and he have no more company for many years.  Then
there was a rodeo near the hacienda, and there came five or six
caballeros to stay with him for the feast.  Notabilimente comes
then Don Jorge Martinez.  He is a bad man--so weeked--a Don Juan
for making lofe to the ladies.  He lounge in the garden, he smoke
his cigarette, he twist the moustache--so!  One day he came in, and
he laugh and wink so and say, 'Oh, the weeked, sly Don Gregorio!
He have hid away in the casa a beautiful, pret-ty girl, and he will
nossing say.'  And the other caballeros say, 'Mira! what is this?
there is not so mooch as one young lady in the casa.'  And Don
Jorge he wink, and he say, 'Imbeciles! pigs!'  And he walk in the
garden and twist his moustache more than ever.  And one day,
behold! he walk into the casa, very white and angry, and he swear
mooch to himself; and he orders his horse, and he ride away, and
never come back no more, never-r-r!  And one day another caballero,
Don Esteban Briones, he came in, and say, 'Hola! Don Jorge has
forgotten his pret-ty girl: he have left her over on the garden
bench.  Truly I have seen.'  And they say, 'We will too.'  And they
go, and there is nossing.  And they say, 'Imbecile and pig!'  But
he is not imbecile and pig; for he has seen, and Don Jorge has
seen; and why?  For it is not a girl, but what you call her--a
ghost!  And they will that Don Esteban should make a picture of
her--a design; and he make one.  And old Don Gregorio he say,
'madre de Dios! it is Rosita'--the same that hung under the
crucifix in the big room."

"And is that all?" asked Dick, with a somewhat pronounced laugh,
but a face that looked quite white in the moonlight.

"No, it ees NOT all.  For when Don Gregorio got himself more
company another time--it ees all yonge ladies, and my aunt she is
invite too; for she was yonge then, and she herself have tell to me
this:--

"One night she is in the garden with the other girls, and when they
want to go in the casa one have say, 'Where is Francisca Pacheco?
Look, she came here with us, and now she is not.'  Another one say,
'She have conceal herself to make us affright.'  And my aunt she
say, 'I will go seek that I shall find her.'  And she go.  And when
she came to the pear-tree, she heard Francisca's voice, and it say
to some one she see not, 'Fly! vamos! some one have come.'  And
then she come at the moment upon Francisca, very white and
trembling, and--alone.  And Francisca she have run away and say
nossing, and shut herself in her room.  And one of the other girls
say: 'It is the handsome caballero with the little black moustache
and sad white face that I have seen in the garden that make this.
It is truly that he is some poor relation of Don Gregorio, or some
mad kinsman that he will not we should know.'  And my aunt ask Don
Gregorio; for she is yonge.  And he have say: 'What silly fool ees
thees?  There is not one caballero here, but myself.'  And when the
other young girl have tell to him how the caballero look, he say:
'The saints save us!  I cannot more say.  It ees Don Vincente, who
haf gone dead.'  And he cross himself, and--  But look!  Madre de
Dios! Mees Cecily, you are ill--you are affrighted.  I am a
gabbling fool!  Help her, Don Ricardo; she is falling!"

But it was too late: Cecily had tried to rise to her feet, had
staggered forward and fallen in a faint on the bench.

       .        .        .        .        .        .

Dick did not remember how he helped to carry the insensible Cecily
to the casa, nor what explanation he had given to the alarmed
inmates of her sudden attack.  He recalled vaguely that something
had been said of the overpowering perfumes of the garden at that
hour, that the lively Felipa had become half hysterical in her
remorseful apologies, and that Aunt Viney had ended the scene by
carrying Cecily into her own room, where she presently recovered a
still trembling but reticent consciousness.  But the fainting of
his cousin and the presence of a real emergency had diverted his
imagination from the vague terror that had taken possession of it,
and for the moment enabled him to control himself.  With a
desperate effort he managed to keep up a show of hospitable
civility to his Spanish friends until their early departure.  Then
he hurried to his own room.  So bewildered and horrified he had
become, and a prey to such superstitious terrors, that he could not
at that moment bring himself to the test of looking for the picture
of the alleged Rosita, which might still be hanging in his aunt's
room.  If it were really the face of his mysterious visitant--in
his present terror--he felt that his reason might not stand the
shock.  He would look at it to-morrow, when he was calmer!  Until
then he would believe that the story was some strange coincidence
with what must have been his hallucination, or a vulgar trick to
which he had fallen a credulous victim.  Until then he would
believe that Cecily's fright had been only the effect of Dona
Felipa's story, acting upon a vivid imagination, and not a terrible
confirmation of something she had herself seen.  He threw himself,
without undressing, upon his bed in a benumbing agony of doubt.

The gentle opening of his door and the slight rustle of a skirt
started him to his feet with a feeling of new and overpowering
repulsion.  But it was a familiar figure that he saw in the long
aisle of light which led from his recessed window, whose face was
white enough to have been a spirit's, and whose finger was laid
upon its pale lips, as it softly closed the door behind it.

"Cecily!"

"Hush!" she said, in a distracted whisper: "I felt I must see you
to-night.  I could not wait until day--no, not another hour!  I
could not speak to you before them.  I could not go into that
dreadful garden again, or beyond the walls of this house.  Dick, I
want to--I MUST tell you something!  I would have kept it from
every one--from you most of all!  I know you will hate me, and
despise me; but, Dick, listen!"--she caught his hand despairingly,
drawing it towards her--"that girl's awful story was TRUE!"  She
threw his hand away.

"And you have seen HER!" said Dick, frantically.  "Good God!"

The young girl's manner changed.  "HER!" she said, half scornfully,
"you don't suppose I believe THAT story?  No.  I--I--don't blame
me, Dick,--I have seen HIM."

"Him?"

She pushed him nervously into a seat, and sat down beside him.  In
the half light of the moon, despite her pallor and distraction, she
was still very human, womanly, and attractive in her disorder.

"Listen to me, Dick.  Do you remember one afternoon, when we were
riding together, I got ahead of you, and dashed off to the casa.
I don't know what possessed me, or WHY I did it.  I only know I
wanted to get home quickly, and get away from you.  No, I was not
angry, Dick, at YOU; it did not seem to be THAT; I--well, I confess
I was FRIGHTENED--at something, I don't know what.  When I wheeled
round into the lane, I saw--a man--a young gentleman standing by
the garden-wall.  He was very picturesque-looking, in his red sash,
velvet jacket, and round silver buttons; handsome, but oh, so pale
and sad!  He looked at me very eagerly, and then suddenly drew
back, and I heard you on Chu Chu coming at my heels.  You must have
seen him and passed him too, I thought: but when you said nothing
of it, I--I don't know why, Dick, I said nothing of it too.  Don't
speak!" she added, with a hurried gesture: "I know NOW why you said
nothing,--YOU had not seen him."

She stopped, and put back a wisp of her disordered chestnut hair.

"The next time was the night YOU were so queer, Dick, sitting on
that stone bench.  When I left you--I thought you didn't care to
have me stay--I went to seek Aunt Viney at the bottom of the
garden.  I was very sad, but suddenly I found myself very gay,
talking and laughing with her in a way I could not account for.
All at once, looking up, I saw HIM standing by the little gate,
looking at me very sadly.  I think I would have spoken to Aunt
Viney, but he put his finger to his lips--his hand was so slim and
white, quite like a hand in one of those Spanish pictures--and
moved slowly backwards into the lane, as if he wished to speak with
ME only--out there.  I know I ought to have spoken to Aunty; I knew
it was wrong what I did, but he looked so earnest, so appealing, so
awfully sad, Dick, that I slipped past Aunty and went out of the
gate.  Just then she missed me, and called.  He made a kind of
despairing gesture, raising his hand Spanish fashion to his lips,
as if to say good-night.  You'll think me bold, Dick, but I was so
anxious to know what it all meant, that I gave a glance behind to
see if Aunty was following, before I should go right up to him and
demand an explanation.  But when I faced round again, he was gone!
I walked up and down the lane and out on the plain nearly half an
hour, seeking him.  It was strange, I know; but I was not a bit
FRIGHTENED, Dick--that was so queer--but I was only amazed and
curious."

The look of spiritual terror in Dick's face here seemed to give way
to a less exalted disturbance, as he fixed his eyes on Cecily's.

"You remember I met YOU coming in: you seemed so queer then that I
did not say anything to you, for I thought you would laugh at me,
or reproach me for my boldness; and I thought, Dick, that--that--
that--this person wished to speak only to ME."  She hesitated.

"Go on," said Dick, in a voice that had also undergone a singular
change.

The chestnut head was bent a little lower, as the young girl
nervously twisted her fingers in her lap.

"Then I saw him again--and--again," she went on hesitatingly.  "Of
course I spoke to him, to--to--find out what he wanted; but you
know, Dick, I cannot speak Spanish, and of course he didn't
understand me, and didn't reply."

"But his manner, his appearance, gave you some idea of his
meaning?" said Dick suddenly.

Cecily's head drooped a little lower.  "I thought--that is, I
fancied I knew what he meant."

"No doubt," said Dick, in a voice which, but for the superstitious
horror of the situation, might have impressed a casual listener as
indicating a trace of human irony.

But Cecily did not seem to notice it.  "Perhaps I was excited that
night, perhaps I was bolder because I knew you were near me; but I
went up to him and touched him!  And then, Dick!--oh, Dick! think
how awful--"

Again Dick felt the thrill of superstitious terror creep over him.
"And he vanished!" he said hoarsely.

"No--not at once," stammered Cecily, with her head almost buried in
her lap; "for he--he--he took me in his arms and--"

"And kissed you?" said Dick, springing to his feet, with every
trace of his superstitious agony gone from his indignant face.  But
Cecily, without raising her head, caught at his gesticulating hand.

"Oh, Dick, Dick! do you think he really did it?  The horror of it,
Dick! to be kissed by a--a--man who has been dead a hundred years!"

"A hundred fiddlesticks!" said Dick furiously.  "We have been
deceived!  No," he stammered, "I mean YOU have been deceived--
insulted!"

"Hush!  Aunty will hear you," murmured the girl despairingly.

Dick, who had thrown away his cousin's hand, caught it again, and
dragged her along the aisle of light to the window.  The moon shone
upon his flushed and angry face.

"Listen!" he said; "you have been fooled, tricked--infamously
tricked by these people, and some confederate, whom--whom I shall
horsewhip if I catch.  The whole story is a lie!"

"But you looked as if you believed it--about the girl," said
Cecily; "you acted so strangely.  I even thought, Dick,--sometimes--
you had seen HIM."

Dick shuddered, trembled; but it is to be feared that the lower,
more natural human element in him triumphed.

"Nonsense!" he stammered; "the girl was a foolish farrago of
absurdities, improbable on the face of things, and impossible to
prove.  But that infernal, sneaking rascal was flesh and blood."

It seemed to him to relieve the situation and establish his own
sanity to combat one illusion with another.  Cecily had already
been deceived--another lie wouldn't hurt her.  But, strangely
enough, he was satisfied that Cecily's visitant was real, although
he still had doubts about his own.

"Then you think, Dick, it was actually some real man?" she said
piteously.  "Oh, Dick, I have been so foolish!"

Foolish she no doubt had been; pretty she certainly was, sitting
there in her loosened hair, and pathetic, appealing earnestness.
Surely the ghostly Rosita's glances were never so pleading as these
actual honest eyes behind their curving lashes.  Dick felt a
strange, new-born sympathy of suffering, mingled tantalizingly with
a new doubt and jealousy, that was human and stimulating.

"Oh, Dick, what are WE to do?"

The plural struck him as deliciously sweet and subtle.  Had they
really been singled out for this strange experience, or still
stranger hallucination?  His arm crept around her; she gently
withdrew from it.

"I must go now," she murmured; "but I couldn't sleep until I told
you all.  You know, Dick, I have no one else to come to, and it
seemed to me that YOU ought to know it first.  I feel better for
telling you.  You will tell me to-morrow what you think we ought to
do."

They reached the door, opening it softly.  She lingered for a
moment on the threshold.

"Tell me, Dick" (she hesitated), "if that--that really were a
spirit, and not a real man,--you don't think that--that kiss" (she
shuddered) "could do me harm!"

He shuddered too, with a strange and sympathetic consciousness
that, happily, she did not even suspect.  But he quickly recovered
himself and said, with something of bitterness in his voice, "I
should be more afraid if it really were a man."

"Oh, thank you, Dick!"

Her lips parted in a smile of relief; the color came faintly back
to her cheek.

A wild thought crossed his fancy that seemed an inspiration.  They
would share the risks alike.  He leaned towards her: their lips met
in their first kiss.

"Oh, Dick!"

"Dearest!"

"I think--we are saved."

"Why?"

"It wasn't at all like that."

He smiled as she flew swiftly down the corridor.  Perhaps he
thought so too.

       .        .        .        .        .        .

No picture of the alleged Rosita was ever found.  Dona Felipa,
when the story was again referred to, smiled discreetly, but was
apparently too preoccupied with the return of Don Jose's absent
nephew for further gossiping visits to the hacienda; and Dick and
Cecily, as Mr. and Mrs. Bracy, would seem to have survived--if they
never really solved--the mystery of the Hacienda de los Osos.  Yet
in the month of June, when the moon is high, one does not sit on
the stone bench in the rose garden after the last stroke of the
Angelus.



CHU CHU.


I do not believe that the most enthusiastic lover of that "useful
and noble animal," the horse, will claim for him the charm of
geniality, humor, or expansive confidence.  Any creature who will
not look you squarely in the eye--whose only oblique glances are
inspired by fear, distrust, or a view to attack; who has no way of
returning caresses, and whose favorite expression is one of head-
lifting disdain, may be "noble" or "useful," but can be hardly said
to add to the gayety of nations.  Indeed it may be broadly stated
that, with the single exception of gold-fish, of all animals kept
for the recreation of mankind the horse is alone capable of
exciting a passion that shall be absolutely hopeless.  I deem these
general remarks necessary to prove that my unreciprocated affection
for "Chu Chu" was not purely individual or singular.  And I may add
that to these general characteristics she brought the waywardness
of her capricious sex.

She came to me out of the rolling dust of an emigrant wagon, behind
whose tailboard she was gravely trotting.  She was a half-broken
colt--in which character she had at different times unseated
everybody in the train--and, although covered with dust, she had a
beautiful coat, and the most lambent gazelle-like eyes I had ever
seen.  I think she kept these latter organs purely for ornament--
apparently looking at things with her nose, her sensitive ears,
and, sometimes, even a slight lifting of her slim near fore-leg.
On our first interview I thought she favored me with a coy glance,
but as it was accompanied by an irrelevant "Look out!" from her
owner, the teamster, I was not certain.  I only know that after
some conversation, a good deal of mental reservation, and the
disbursement of considerable coin, I found myself standing in the
dust of the departing emigrant-wagon with one end of a forty-foot
riata in my hand, and Chu Chu at the other.

I pulled invitingly at my own end, and even advanced a step or two
towards her.  She then broke into a long disdainful pace, and began
to circle round me at the extreme limit of her tether.  I stood
admiring her free action for some moments--not always turning with
her, which was tiring--until I found that she was gradually winding
herself up ON ME!  Her frantic astonishment when she suddenly found
herself thus brought up against me was one of the most remarkable
things I ever saw, and nearly took me off my legs.  Then when she
had pulled against the riata until her narrow head and prettily
arched neck were on a perfectly straight line with it, she as
suddenly slackened the tension and condescended to follow me, at an
angle of her own choosing.  Sometimes it was on one side of me,
sometimes on the other.  Even then the sense of my dreadful
contiguity apparently would come upon her like a fresh discovery,
and she would become hysterical.  But I do not think that she
really SAW me.  She looked at the riata and sniffed it disparagingly,
she pawed some pebbles that were near me tentatively with her small
hoof; she started back with a Robinson Crusoe-like horror of my
footprints in the wet gully, but my actual personal presence she
ignored.  She would sometimes pause, with her head thoughtfully
between her fore-legs, and apparently say: "There is some
extraordinary presence here: animal, vegetable, or mineral--I can't
make out which--but it's not good to eat, and I loathe and detest
it."

When I reached my house in the suburbs, before entering the "fifty
vara" lot inclosure, I deemed it prudent to leave her outside while
I informed the household of my purchase; and with this object I
tethered her by the long riata to a solitary sycamore which stood
in the centre of the road, the crossing of two frequented
thoroughfares.  It was not long, however, before I was interrupted
by shouts and screams from that vicinity, and on returning thither
I found that Chu Chu, with the assistance of her riata, had
securely wound up two of my neighbors to the tree, where they
presented the appearance of early Christian martyrs.  When I
released them it appeared that they had been attracted by Chu Chu's
graces, and had offered her overtures of affection, to which she
had characteristically rotated with this miserable result.  I led
her, with some difficulty, warily keeping clear of the riata, to
the inclosure, from whose fence I had previously removed several
bars.  Although the space was wide enough to have admitted a troop
of cavalry she affected not to notice it, and managed to kick away
part of another section on entering.  She resisted the stable for
some time, but after carefully examining it with her hoofs, and an
affectedly meek outstretching of her nose, she consented to
recognize some oats in the feed-box--without looking at them--and
was formally installed.  All this while she had resolutely ignored
my presence.  As I stood watching her she suddenly stopped eating;
the same reflective look came over her.  "Surely I am not mistaken,
but that same obnoxious creature is somewhere about here!" she
seemed to say, and shivered at the possibility.

It was probably this which made me confide my unreciprocated
affection to one of my neighbors--a man supposed to be an authority
on horses, and particularly of that wild species to which Chu Chu
belonged.  It was he who, leaning over the edge of the stall
where she was complacently and, as usual, obliviously munching,
absolutely dared to toy with a pet lock of hair which she wore over
the pretty star on her forehead.  "Ye see, captain," he said with
jaunty easiness, "hosses is like wimmen; ye don't want ter use any
standoffishness or shyness with THEM; a stiddy but keerless sort o'
familiarity, a kind o' free but firm handlin', jess like this, to
let her see who's master"--

We never clearly knew HOW it happened; but when I picked up my
neighbor from the doorway, amid the broken splinters of the stall
rail, and a quantity of oats that mysteriously filled his hair and
pockets, Chu Chu was found to have faced around the other way, and
was contemplating her forelegs, with her hind ones in the other
stall.  My neighbor spoke of damages while he was in the stall, and
of physical coercion when he was out of it again.  But here Chu
Chu, in some marvelous way, righted herself, and my neighbor
departed hurriedly with a brimless hat and an unfinished sentence.

My next intermediary was Enriquez Saltello--a youth of my own age,
and the brother of Consuelo Saltello, whom I adored.  As a Spanish
Californian he was presumed, on account of Chu Chu's half-Spanish
origin, to have superior knowledge of her character, and I even
vaguely believed that his language and accent would fall familiarly
on her ear.  There was the drawback, however, that he always
preferred to talk in a marvelous English, combining Castilian
precision with what he fondly believed to be Californian slang.

"To confer then as to thees horse, which is not--observe me--a
Mexican plug!  Ah, no! you can your boots bet on that.  She is of
Castilian stock--believe me and strike me dead!  I will myself at
different times overlook and affront her in the stable, examine her
as to the assault, and why she should do thees thing.  When she is
of the exercise I will also accost and restrain her.  Remain
tranquil, my friend!  When a few days shall pass much shall be
changed, and she will be as another.  Trust your oncle to do thees
thing!  Comprehend me?  Everything shall be lovely, and the goose
hang high!"

Conformably with this he "overlooked" her the next day, with a
cigarette between his yellow-stained finger-tips, which made
her sneeze in a silent pantomimic way, and certain Spanish
blandishments of speech which she received with more complacency.
But I don't think she ever even looked at him.  In vain he
protested that she was the "dearest" and "littlest" of his "little
loves"--in vain he asserted that she was his patron saint, and
that it was his soul's delight to pray to her; she accepted the
compliment with her eyes fixed upon the manger.  When he had
exhausted his whole stock of endearing diminutives, adding a few
playful and more audacious sallies, she remained with her head
down, as if inclined to meditate upon them.  This he declared was
at least an improvement on her former performances.  It may have
been my own jealousy, but I fancied she was only saying to herself,
"Gracious! can there be TWO of them?"

"Courage and patience, my friend," he said, as we were slowly
quitting the stable.  "Thees horse is yonge, and has not yet the
habitude of the person.  To-morrow, at another season, I shall give
to her a foundling" ("fondling," I have reason to believe, was the
word intended by Enriquez)--"and we shall see.  It shall be as easy
as to fall away from a log.  A leetle more of this chin music which
your friend Enriquez possesses, and some tapping of the head and
neck, and you are there.  You are ever the right side up.  Houp la!
But let us not precipitate this thing.  The more haste, we do not
so much accelerate ourselves."

He appeared to be suiting the action to the word as he lingered in
the doorway of the stable.  "Come on," I said.

"Pardon," he returned, with a bow that was both elaborate and
evasive, "but you shall yourself precede me--the stable is YOURS."

"Oh, come along!" I continued impatiently.  To my surprise he
seemed to dodge back into the stable again.  After an instant he
reappeared.

"Pardon! but I am re-strain!  Of a truth, in this instant I am
grasp by the mouth of thees horse in the coat-tail of my dress!
She will that I should remain.  It would seem"--he disappeared
again--"that"--he was out once more--"the experiment is a sooccess!
She reciprocate!  She is, of a truth, gone on me.  It is lofe!"--a
stronger pull from Chu Chu here sent him in again--"but"--he was
out now triumphantly with half his garment torn away--"I shall
coquet."

Nothing daunted, however, the gallant fellow was back next day with
a Mexican saddle, and attired in the complete outfit of a vaquero.
Overcome though HE was by heavy deerskin trousers, open at the side
from the knees down, and fringed with bullion buttons, an enormous
flat sombrero, and a stiff, short embroidered velvet jacket, I was
more concerned at the ponderous saddle and equipments intended for
the slim Chu Chu.  That these would hide and conceal her beautiful
curves and contour, as well as overweight her, seemed certain;
that she would resist them all to the last seemed equally clear.
Nevertheless, to my surprise, when she was led out, and the saddle
thrown deftly across her back, she was passive.  Was it possible
that some drop of her old Spanish blood responded to its clinging
embrace?  She did not either look at it nor smell it.  But when
Enriquez began to tighten the "cinch" or girth a more singular
thing occurred.  Chu Chu visibly distended her slender barrel to
twice its dimensions; the more he pulled the more she swelled,
until I was actually ashamed of her.  Not so Enriquez.  He smiled
at us, and complacently stroked his thin moustache.

"Eet is ever so!  She is the child of her grandmother!  Even when
you shall make saddle thees old Castilian stock, it will make
large--it will become a balloon!  Eet is a trick--eet is a leetle
game--believe me.  For why?"

I had not listened, as I was at that moment astonished to see the
saddle slowly slide under Chu Chu's belly, and her figure resume,
as if by magic, its former slim proportions.  Enriquez followed my
eyes, lifted his shoulders, shrugged them, and said smilingly, "Ah,
you see!"

When the girths were drawn in again with an extra pull or two from
the indefatigable Enriquez, I fancied that Chu Chu nevertheless
secretly enjoyed it, as her sex is said to appreciate tight-lacing.
She drew a deep sigh, possibly of satisfaction, turned her neck,
and apparently tried to glance at her own figure--Enriquez promptly
withdrawing to enable her to do so easily.  Then the dread moment
arrived.  Enriquez, with his hand on her mane, suddenly paused and,
with exaggerated courtesy, lifted his hat and made an inviting
gesture.

"You will honor me to precede."

I shook my head laughingly.

"I see," responded Enriquez gravely.  "You have to attend the
obsequies of your aunt who is dead, at two of the clock.  You have
to meet your broker who has bought you feefty share of the Comstock
lode--at thees moment--or you are loss!  You are excuse!  Attend!
Gentlemen, make your bets!  The band has arrived to play!  'Ere we
are!"

With a quick movement the alert young fellow had vaulted into the
saddle.  But, to the astonishment of both of us, the mare remained
perfectly still.  There was Enriquez bolt upright in the stirrups,
completely overshadowing by his saddle-flaps, leggings, and
gigantic spurs the fine proportions of Chu Chu, until she might
have been a placid Rosinante, bestridden by some youthful Quixote.
She closed her eyes, she was going to sleep!  We were dreadfully
disappointed.  This clearly would not do.  Enriquez lifted the
reins cautiously!  Chu Chu moved forward slowly--then stopped,
apparently lost in reflection.

"Affront her on thees side."

I approached her gently.  She shot suddenly into the air, coming
down again on perfectly stiff legs with a springless jolt.  This
she instantly followed by a succession of other rocket-like
propulsions, utterly unlike a leap, all over the inclosure.  The
movements of the unfortunate Enriquez were equally unlike any
equitation I ever saw.  He appeared occasionally over Chu Chu's
head, astride of her neck and tail, or in the free air, but never
IN the saddle.  His rigid legs, however, never lost the stirrups,
but came down regularly, accentuating her springless hops.  More
than that, the disproportionate excess of rider, saddle, and
accoutrements was so great that he had, at times, the appearance of
lifting Chu Chu forcibly from the ground by superior strength, and
of actually contributing to her exercise!  As they came towards me,
a wild tossing and flying mass of hoofs and spurs, it was not only
difficult to distinguish them apart, but to ascertain how much of
the jumping was done by Enriquez separately.  At last Chu Chu
brought matters to a close by making for the low-stretching
branches of an oak-tree which stood at the corner of the lot.
In a few moments she emerged from it--but without Enriquez.

I found the gallant fellow disengaging himself from the fork of a
branch in which he had been firmly wedged, but still smiling and
confident, and his cigarette between his teeth.  Then for the first
time he removed it, and seating himself easily on the branch with
his legs dangling down, he blandly waved aside my anxious queries
with a gentle reassuring gesture.

"Remain tranquil, my friend.  Thees does not count!  I have
conquer--you observe--for why?  I have NEVER for once ARRIVE AT THE
GROUND!  Consequent she is disappoint!  She will ever that I
SHOULD!  But I have got her when the hair is not long!  Your oncle
Henry"--with an angelic wink--"is fly!  He is ever a bully boy,
with the eye of glass!  Believe me.  Behold!  I am here!  Big
Injin!  Whoop!"

He leaped lightly to the ground.  Chu Chu, standing watchfully at a
little distance, was evidently astonished at his appearance.  She
threw out her hind hoofs violently, shot up into the air until the
stirrups crossed each other high above the saddle, and made for the
stable in a succession of rabbit-like bounds--taking the precaution
to remove the saddle, on entering, by striking it against the
lintel of the door.  "You observe," said Enriquez blandly, "she
would make that thing of ME.  Not having the good occasion, she ees
dissatisfied.  Where are you now?"

Two or three days afterwards he rode her again with the same
result--accepted by him with the same heroic complacency.  As we
did not, for certain reasons, care to use the open road for this
exercise, and as it was impossible to remove the tree, we were
obliged to submit to the inevitable.  On the following day I
mounted her--undergoing the same experience as Enriquez, with the
individual sensation of falling from a third-story window on top of
a counting-house stool, and the variation of being projected over
the fence.  When I found that Chu Chu had not accompanied me, I saw
Enriquez at my side.  "More than ever is become necessary that we
should do thees things again," he said gravely, as he assisted me
to my feet.  "Courage, my noble General!  God and Liberty!  Once
more on to the breach!  Charge, Chestare, charge!  Come on, Don
Stanley!  'Ere we are!"

He helped me none too quickly to catch my seat again, for it
apparently had the effect of the turned peg on the enchanted horse
in the Arabian Nights, and Chu Chu instantly rose into the air.
But she came down this time before the open window of the kitchen,
and I alighted easily on the dresser.  The indefatigable Enriquez
followed me.

"Won't this do?" I asked meekly.

"It ees BETTER--for you arrive NOT on the ground," he said
cheerfully; "but you should not once but a thousand times make
trial!  Ha!  Go and win!  Nevare die and say so!  'Eave ahead!
'Eave!  There you are! "

Luckily, this time I managed to lock the rowels of my long spurs
under her girth, and she could not unseat me.  She seemed to
recognize the fact after one or two plunges, when, to my great
surprise, she suddenly sank to the ground and quietly rolled over
me.  The action disengaged my spurs, but, righting herself without
getting up, she turned her beautiful head and absolutely LOOKED at
me!--still in the saddle.  I felt myself blushing!  But the voice
of Enriquez was at my side.

"Errise, my friend; you have conquer!  It is SHE who has arrive at
the ground!  YOU are all right.  It is done; believe me, it is
feenish!  No more shall she make thees thing.  From thees instant
you shall ride her as the cow--as the rail of thees fence--and
remain tranquil.  For she is a-broke!  Ta-ta!  Regain your hats,
gentlemen!  Pass in your checks!  It is ovar!  How are you now?"
He lit a fresh cigarette, put his hands in his pockets, and smiled
at me blandly.

For all that, I ventured to point out that the habit of alighting
in the fork of a tree, or the disengaging of one's self from the
saddle on the ground, was attended with inconvenience, and even
ostentatious display.  But Enriquez swept the objections away with
a single gesture.  "It is the PREENCIPAL--the bottom fact--at which
you arrive.  The next come of himself!  Many horse have achieve
to mount the rider by the knees, and relinquish after thees same
fashion.  My grandfather had a barb of thees kind--but she has gone
dead, and so have my grandfather.  Which is sad and strange!
Otherwise I shall make of them both an instant example!"

I ought to have said that although these performances were never
actually witnessed by Enriquez's sister--for reasons which he and I
thought sufficient--the dear girl displayed the greatest interest
in them, and, perhaps aided by our mutually complimentary accounts
of each other, looked upon us both as invincible heroes.  It is
possible also that she over-estimated our success, for she suddenly
demanded that I should RIDE Chu Chu to her house, that she might
see her.  It was not far; by going through a back lane I could
avoid the trees which exercised such a fatal fascination for Chu
Chu.  There was a pleading, child-like entreaty in Consuelo's voice
that I could not resist, with a slight flash from her lustrous dark
eyes that I did not care to encourage.  So I resolved to try it at
all hazards.

My equipment for the performance was modeled after Enriquez's
previous costume, with the addition of a few fripperies of silver
and stamped leather out of compliment to Consuelo, and even with a
faint hope that it might appease Chu Chu.  SHE certainly looked
beautiful in her glittering accoutrements, set off by her jet-black
shining coat.  With an air of demure abstraction she permitted me
to mount her, and even for a hundred yards or so indulged in a
mincing maidenly amble that was not without a touch of coquetry.
Encouraged by this, I addressed a few terms of endearment to her,
and in the exuberance of my youthful enthusiasm I even confided to
her my love for Consuelo, and begged her to be "good" and not
disgrace herself and me before my Dulcinea.  In my foolish
trustfulness I was rash enough to add a caress, and to pat her soft
neck.  She stopped instantly with a hysteric shudder.  I knew what
was passing through her mind: she had suddenly become aware of my
baleful existence.

The saddle and bridle Chu Chu was becoming accustomed to, but who
was this living, breathing object that had actually touched her?
Presently her oblique vision was attracted by the fluttering
movement of a fallen oak-leaf in the road before her.  She had
probably seen many oak-leaves many times before; her ancestors had
no doubt been familiar with them on the trackless hills and in
field and paddock, but this did not alter her profound conviction
that I and the leaf were identical, that our baleful touch was
something indissolubly connected.  She reared before that innocent
leaf, she revolved round it, and then fled from it at the top of
her speed.

The lane passed before the rear wall of Saltello's garden.
Unfortunately, at the angle of the fence stood a beautiful Madrono-
tree, brilliant with its scarlet berries, and endeared to me as
Consuelo's favorite haunt, under whose protecting shade I had more
than once avowed my youthful passion.  By the irony of fate Chu Chu
caught sight of it, and with a succession of spirited bounds
instantly made for it.  In another moment I was beneath it, and Chu
Chu shot like a rocket into the air.  I had barely time to withdraw
my feet from the stirrups, to throw up one arm to protect my glazed
sombrero and grasp an overhanging branch with the other, before Chu
Chu darted off.  But to my consternation, as I gained a secure
perch on the tree, and looked about me, I saw her--instead of
running away--quietly trot through the open gate into Saltello's
garden.

Need I say that it was to the beneficent Enriquez that I again owed
my salvation?  Scarcely a moment elapsed before his bland voice
rose in a concentrated whisper from the corner of the garden below
me.  He had divined the dreadful truth!

"For the love of God, collect to yourself many kinds of thees
berry!  All you can!  Your full arms round!  Rest tranquil.  Leave
to your ole oncle to make for you a delicate exposure.  At the
instant!"

He was gone again.  I gathered, wonderingly, a few of the larger
clusters of parti-colored fruit and patiently waited.  Presently he
reappeared, and with him the lovely Consuelo--her dear eyes filled
with an adorable anxiety.

"Yes," continued Enriquez to his sister, with a confidential
lowering of tone but great distinctness of utterance, "it is ever
so with the American!  He will ever make FIRST the salutation of
the flower or the fruit, picked to himself by his own hand, to the
lady where he call.  It is the custom of the American hidalgo!  My
God--what will you?  I make it not--it is so!  Without doubt he is
in this instant doing thees thing.  That is why he have let go his
horse to precede him here; it is always the etiquette to offer
these things on the feet.  Ah!  Behold! it is he!--Don Francisco!
Even now he will descend from thees tree!  Ah!  You make the blush,
little sister (archly)!  I will retire!  I am discreet; two is not
company for the one!  I make tracks!  I am gone!"

How far Consuelo entirely believed and trusted her ingenious
brother I do not know, nor even then cared to inquire.  For there
was a pretty mantling of her olive cheek, as I came forward with my
offering, and a certain significant shyness in her manner that were
enough to throw me into a state of hopeless imbecility.  And I was
always miserably conscious that Consuelo possessed an exalted
sentimentality, and a predilection for the highest mediaeval
romance, in which I knew I was lamentably deficient.  Even in our
most confidential moments I was always aware that I weakly lagged
behind this daughter of a gloomily distinguished ancestry, in her
frequent incursions into a vague but poetic past.  There was
something of the dignity of the Spanish chatelaine in the sweetly
grave little figure that advanced to accept my specious offering.
I think I should have fallen on my knees to present it, but for the
presence of the all seeing Enriquez.  But why did I even at that
moment remember that he had early bestowed upon her the nickname of
"Pomposa"?  This, as Enriquez himself might have observed, was "sad
and strange."

I managed to stammer out something about the Madrono berries being
at her "disposicion" (the tree was in her own garden!), and she
took the branches in her little brown hand with a soft response to
my unutterable glances.

But here Chu Chu, momentarily forgotten, executed a happy diversion.
To our astonishment she gravely walked up to Consuelo and, stretching
out her long slim neck, not only sniffed curiously at the berries,
but even protruded a black underlip towards the young girl herself.
In another instant Consuelo's dignity melted.  Throwing her arms
around Chu Chu's neck she embraced and kissed her.  Young as I
was, I understood the divine significance of a girl's vicarious
effusiveness at such a moment, and felt delighted.  But I was the
more astonished that the usually sensitive horse not only submitted
to these caresses, but actually responded to the extent of affecting
to nip my mistress's little right ear.

This was enough for the impulsive Consuelo.  She ran hastily into
the house, and in a few moments reappeared in a bewitching riding-
skirt gathered round her jimp waist.  In vain Enriquez and myself
joined in earnest entreaty: the horse was hardly broken for even a
man's riding yet; the saints alone could tell what the nervous
creature might do with a woman's skirt flapping at her side!  We
begged for delay, for reflection, for at least time to change the
saddle--but with no avail!  Consuelo was determined, indignant,
distressingly reproachful!  Ah, well! if Don Pancho (an ingenious
diminutive of my Christian name) valued his horse so highly--if he
were jealous of the evident devotion of the animal to herself, he
would--but here I succumbed!  And then I had the felicity of
holding that little foot for one brief moment in the hollow of my
hand, of readjusting the skirt as she threw her knee over the
saddle-horn, of clasping her tightly--only half in fear--as I
surrendered the reins to her grasp.  And to tell the truth, as
Enriquez and I fell back, although I had insisted upon still
keeping hold of the end of the riata, it was a picture to admire.
The petite figure of the young girl, and the graceful folds of her
skirt, admirably harmonized with Chu Chu's lithe contour, and as
the mare arched her slim neck and raised her slender head under the
pressure of the reins, it was so like the lifted velvet-capped
toreador crest of Consuelo herself, that they seemed of one race.

"I would not that you should hold the riata," said Consuelo
petulantly.

I hesitated--Chu Chu looked certainly very amiable--I let go.  She
began to amble towards the gate, not mincingly as before, but with
a freer and fuller stride.  In spite of the incongruous saddle the
young girl's seat was admirable.  As they neared the gate she cast
a single mischievous glance at me, jerked at the rein, and Chu Chu
sprang into the road at a rapid canter.  I watched them fearfully
and breathlessly, until at the end of the lane I saw Consuelo rein
in slightly, wheel easily, and come flying back.  There was no
doubt about it; the horse was under perfect control.  Her second
subjugation was complete and final!

Overjoyed and bewildered, I overwhelmed them with congratulations;
Enriquez alone retaining the usual brotherly attitude of criticism,
and a superior toleration of a lover's enthusiasm.  I ventured to
hint to Consuelo (in what I believed was a safe whisper) that Chu
Chu only showed my own feelings towards her.  "Without doubt,"
responded Enriquez gravely.  "She have of herself assist you to
climb to the tree to pull to yourself the berry for my sister."
But I felt Consuelo's little hand return my pressure, and I forgave
and even pitied him.

From that day forward, Chu Chu and Consuelo were not only firm
friends but daily companions.  In my devotion I would have
presented the horse to the young girl, but with flattering delicacy
she preferred to call it mine.  "I shall erride it for you,
Pancho," she said; "I shall feel," she continued with exalted
although somewhat vague poetry, "that it is of YOU!  You lofe the
beast--it is therefore of a necessity YOU, my Pancho!  It is YOUR
soul I shall erride like the wings of the wind--your lofe in this
beast shall be my only cavalier for ever."  I would have preferred
something whose vicarious qualities were less uncertain than I
still felt Chu Chu's to be, but I kissed the girl's hand
submissively.  It was only when I attempted to accompany her in
the flesh, on another horse, that I felt the full truth of my
instinctive fears.  Chu Chu would not permit any one to approach
her mistress's side.  My mounted presence revived in her all her
old blind astonishment and disbelief in my existence; she would
start suddenly, face about, and back away from me in utter
amazement as if I had been only recently created, or with an
affected modesty as if I had been just guilty of some grave
indecorum towards her sex which she really could not stand.  The
frequency of these exhibitions in the public highway were not only
distressing to me as a simple escort, but as it had the effect on
the casual spectators of making Consuelo seem to participate in Chu
Chu's objections, I felt that, as a lover, it could not be borne.
Any attempt to coerce Chu Chu ended in her running away.  And my
frantic pursuit of her was open to equal misconstruction.  "Go it,
Miss, the little dude is gainin' on you!" shouted by a drunken
teamster to the frightened Consuelo, once checked me in mid career.
Even the dear girl herself saw the uselessness of my real presence,
and after a while was content to ride with "my soul."

Notwithstanding this, I am not ashamed to say that it was my
custom, whenever she rode out, to keep a slinking and distant
surveillance of Chu Chu on another horse, until she had fairly
settled down to her pace.  A little nod of Consuelo's round black-
and-red toreador hat or a kiss tossed from her riding-whip was
reward enough!

I remember a pleasant afternoon when I was thus awaiting her in the
outskirts of the village.  The eternal smile of the Californian
summer had begun to waver and grow less fixed; dust lay thick on
leaf and blade; the dry hills were clothed in russet leather; the
trade winds were shifting to the south with an ominous warm
humidity; a few days longer and the rains would be here.  It so
chanced that this afternoon my seclusion on the roadside was
accidentally invaded by a village belle--a Western young lady
somewhat older than myself, and of flirtatious reputation.  As she
persistently and--as I now have reason to believe--mischievously
lingered, I had only a passing glimpse of Consuelo riding past at
an unaccustomed speed which surprised me at the moment.  But as I
reasoned later that she was only trying to avoid a merely formal
meeting, I thought no more about it.  It was not until I called at
the house to fetch Chu Chu at the usual hour, and found that
Consuelo had not yet returned, that a recollection of Chu Chu's
furious pace again troubled me.  An hour passed--it was getting
towards sunset, but there were no signs of Chu Chu nor her
mistress.  I became seriously alarmed.  I did not care to reveal
my fears to the family, for I felt myself responsible for Chu Chu.
At last I desperately saddled my horse, and galloped off in the
direction she had taken.  It was the road to Rosario and the
hacienda of one of her relations, where she sometimes halted.

The road was a very unfrequented one, twisting like a mountain
river; indeed, it was the bed of an old watercourse, between brown
hills of wild oats, and debouching at last into a broad blue lake-
like expanse of alfalfa meadows.  In vain I strained my eyes over
the monotonous level; nothing appeared to rise above or move across
it.  In the faint hope that she might have lingered at the
hacienda, I was spurring on again when I heard a slight splashing
on my left.  I looked around.  A broad patch of fresher-colored
herbage and a cluster of dwarfed alders indicated a hidden spring.
I cautiously approached its quaggy edges, when I was shocked by
what appeared to be a sudden vision!  Mid-leg deep in the centre of
a greenish pool stood Chu Chu!  But without a strap or buckle of
harness upon her--as naked as when she was foaled!

For a moment I could only stare at her in bewildered terror.  Far
from recognizing me, she seemed to be absorbed in a nymph-like
contemplation of her own graces in the pool.  Then I called
"Consuelo!" and galloped frantically around the spring.  But there
was no response, nor was there anything to be seen but the all-
unconscious Chu Chu.  The pool, thank Heaven! was not deep enough
to have drowned any one; there were no signs of a struggle on its
quaggy edges.  The horse might have come from a distance!  I
galloped on, still calling.  A few hundred yards further I detected
the vivid glow of Chu Chu's scarlet saddle-blanket, in the brush
near the trail.  My heart leaped--I was on the track.  I called
again; this time a faint reply, in accents I knew too well, came
from the field beside me!

Consuelo was there! reclining beside a manzanita bush which
screened her from the road, in what struck me, even at that supreme
moment, as a judicious and picturesquely selected couch of scented
Indian grass and dry tussocks.  The velvet hat with its balls of
scarlet plush was laid carefully aside; her lovely blue-black hair
retained its tight coils undisheveled, her eyes were luminous and
tender.  Shocked as I was at her apparent helplessness, I remember
being impressed with the fact that it gave so little indication of
violent usage or disaster.

I threw myself frantically on the ground beside her.

"You are hurt, Consita!  For Heaven's sake, what has happened?"

She pushed my hat back with her little hand, and tumbled my hair
gently.

"Nothing.  YOU are here, Pancho--eet is enofe!  What shall come
after thees--when I am perhaps gone among the grave--make nothing!
YOU are here--I am happy.  For a little, perhaps--not mooch."

"But," I went on desperately, "was it an accident?  Were you
thrown?  Was it Chu Chu?"--for somehow, in spite of her languid
posture and voice, I could not, even in my fears, believe her
seriously hurt.

"Beat not the poor beast, Pancho.  It is not from HER comes thees
thing.  She have make nothing--believe me!  I have come upon your
assignation with Miss Essmith!  I make but to pass you--to fly--to
never come back!  I have say to Chu Chu, 'Fly!'  We fly many miles.
Sometimes together, sometimes not so mooch!  Sometimes in the
saddle, sometimes on the neck!  Many things remain in the road; at
the end, I myself remain!  I have say, 'Courage, Pancho will come!'
Then I say, 'No, he is talk with Miss Essmith!'  I remember not
more.  I have creep here on the hands.  Eet is feenish!"

I looked at her distractedly.  She smiled tenderly, and slightly
smoothed down and rearranged a fold of her dress to cover her
delicate little boot.

"But," I protested, "you are not much hurt, dearest.  You have
broken no bones.  Perhaps," I added, looking at the boot, "only a
slight sprain.  Let me carry you to my horse; I will walk beside
you, home.  Do, dearest Consita!"

She turned her lovely eyes towards me sadly.  "You comprehend not,
my poor Pancho!  It is not of the foot, the ankle, the arm, or the
head that I can say, 'She is broke!'  I would it were even so.
But"--she lifted her sweet lashes slowly--"I have derrange my
inside.  It is an affair of my family.  My grandfather have once
toomble over the bull at a rodeo.  He speak no more; he is dead.
For why?  He has derrange his inside.  Believe me, it is of the
family.  You comprehend?  The Saltellos are not as the other
peoples for this.  When I am gone, you will bring to me the berry
to grow upon my tomb, Pancho; the berry you have picked for me.
The little flower will come too, the little star will arrive, but
Consuelo, who lofe you, she will come not more!  When you are happy
and talk in the road to the Essmith, you will not think of me.  You
will not see my eyes, Pancho; thees little grass"--she ran her
plump little fingers through a tussock--"will hide them; and the
small animals in the black coats that lif here will have much
sorrow--but you will not.  It ees better so!  My father will not
that I, a Catholique, should marry into a camp-meeting, and lif in
a tent, and make howl like the coyote."  (It was one of Consuelo's
bewildering beliefs that there was only one form of dissent--
Methodism!)  "He will not that I should marry a man who possess not
the many horses, ox, and cow, like him.  But I care not.  YOU are
my only religion, Pancho!  I have enofe of the horse, and ox, and
cow when YOU are with me!  Kiss me, Pancho.  Perhaps it is for the
last time--the feenish!  Who knows?"

There were tears in her lovely eyes; I felt that my own were
growing dim; the sun was sinking over the dreary plain to the slow
rising of the wind; an infinite loneliness had fallen upon us, and
yet I was miserably conscious of some dreadful unreality in it all.
A desire to laugh, which I felt must be hysterical, was creeping
over me; I dared not speak.  But her dear head was on my shoulder,
and the situation was not unpleasant.

Nevertheless, something must be done!  This was the more difficult
as it was by no means clear what had already been done.  Even while
I supported her drooping figure I was straining my eyes across her
shoulder for succor of some kind.  Suddenly the figure of a rapid
rider appeared upon the road.  It seemed familiar.  I looked again--
it was the blessed Enriquez!  A sense of deep relief came over me.
I loved Consuelo; but never before had lover ever hailed the
irruption of one of his beloved's family with such complacency.

"You are safe, dearest; it is Enriquez!"

I thought she received the information coldly.  Suddenly she turned
upon me her eyes, now bright and glittering.  "Swear to me at the
instant, Pancho, that you will not again look upon Miss Essmith,
even for once."

I was simple and literal.  Miss Smith was my nearest neighbor, and,
unless I was stricken with blindness, compliance was impossible.  I
hesitated--but swore.

"Enofe--you have hesitate--I will no more."

She rose to her feet with grave deliberation.  For an instant, with
the recollection of the delicate internal organization of the
Saltellos on my mind, I was in agony lest she should totter and
fall, even then, yielding up her gentle spirit on the spot.  But
when I looked again she had a hairpin between her white teeth, and
was carefully adjusting her toreador hat.  And beside us was
Enriquez--cheerful, alert, voluble, and undaunted.

"Eureka!  I have found!  We are all here!  Eet is a leetle public--
eh! a leetle too much of a front seat for a tete-a-tete, my yonge
friends," he said, glancing at the remains of Consuelo's bower,
"but for the accounting of taste there is none.  What will you?
The meat of the one man shall envenom the meat of the other.  But"
(in a whisper to me) "as to thees horse--thees Chu Chu, which I
have just pass--why is she undress?  Surely you would not make an
exposition of her to the traveler to suspect!  And if not, why so?"

I tried to explain, looking at Consuelo, that Chu Chu had run away,
that Consuelo had met with a terrible accident, had been thrown,
and I feared had suffered serious internal injury.  But to my
embarrassment Consuelo maintained a half scornful silence, and an
inconsistent freshness of healthful indifference, as Enriquez
approached her with an engaging smile.  "Ah, yes, she have the
headache, and the molligrubs.  She will sit on the damp stone when
the gentle dew is falling.  I comprehend.  Meet me in the lane when
the clock strike nine!  But," in a lower voice, "of thees undress
horse I comprehend nothing!  Look you--it is sad and strange."

He went off to fetch Chu Chu, leaving me and Consuelo alone.  I do
not think I ever felt so utterly abject and bewildered before in my
life.  Without knowing why, I was miserably conscious of having in
some way offended the girl for whom I believed I would have given
my life, and I had made her and myself ridiculous in the eyes of
her brother.  I had again failed in my slower Western nature to
understand her high romantic Spanish soul!  Meantime she was
smoothing out her riding-habit, and looking as fresh and pretty
as when she first left her house.

"Consita," I said hesitatingly, "you are not angry with me?"

"Angry?" she repeated haughtily, without looking at me.  "Oh, no!
Of a possibility eet is Mees Essmith who is angry that I have
interroopt her tete-a-tete with you, and have send here my brother
to make the same with me."

"But," I said eagerly, "Miss Smith does not even know Enriquez!"

Consuelo turned on me a glance of unutterable significance.  "Ah!"
she said darkly, "you TINK!"

Indeed I KNEW.  But here I believed I understood Consuelo, and was
relieved.  I even ventured to say gently, "And you are better?"

She drew herself up to her full height, which was not much.  "Of my
health, what is it?  A nothing.  Yes!  Of my soul let us not
speak."

Nevertheless, when Enriquez appeared with Chu Chu she ran towards
her with outstretched arms.  Chu Chu protruded about six inches of
upper lip in response--apparently under the impression, which I
could quite understand, that her mistress was edible.  And, I may
have been mistaken, but their beautiful eyes met in an absolute and
distinct glance of intelligence!

During the home journey Consuelo recovered her spirits, and parted
from me with a magnanimous and forgiving pressure of the hand.  I
do not know what explanation of Chu Chu's original escapade was
given to Enriquez and the rest of the family; the inscrutable
forgiveness extended to me by Consuelo precluded any further
inquiry on my part.  I was willing to leave it a secret between her
and Chu Chu.  But, strange to say, it seemed to complete our own
understanding, and precipitated, not only our lovemaking, but the
final catastrophe which culminated that romance.  For we had
resolved to elope.  I do not know that this heroic remedy was
absolutely necessary from the attitude of either Consuelo's family
or my own; I am inclined to think we preferred it, because it
involved no previous explanation or advice.  Need I say that our
confidant and firm ally was Consuelo's brother--the alert, the
linguistic, the ever-happy, ever-ready Enriquez!  It was understood
that his presence would not only give a certain mature respectability
to our performance--but I do not think we would have contemplated
this step without it.  During one of our riding excursions we were
to secure the services of a Methodist minister in the adjoining
county, and, later, that of the Mission padre--when the secret was
out.  "I will gif her away," said Enriquez confidently, "it will on
the instant propitiate the old shadbelly who shall perform the
affair, and withhold his jaw.  A little chin-music from your oncle
'Arry shall finish it!  Remain tranquil and forgot not a ring!  One
does not always, in the agony and dissatisfaction of the moment, a
ring remember.  I shall bring two in the pocket of my dress."

If I did not entirely participate in this roseate view it may have
been because Enriquez, although a few years my senior, was much
younger-looking, and with his demure deviltry of eye, and his upper
lip close shaven for this occasion, he suggested a depraved acolyte
rather than a responsible member of a family.  Consuelo had also
confided to me that her father--possibly owing to some rumors of
our previous escapade--had forbidden any further excursions with me
alone.  The innocent man did not know that Chu Chu had forbidden it
also, and that even on this momentous occasion both Enriquez and
myself were obliged to ride in opposite fields like out flankers.
But we nevertheless felt the full guilt of disobedience added to
our desperate enterprise.  Meanwhile, although pressed for time,
and subject to discovery at any moment, I managed at certain points
of the road to dismount and walk beside Chu Chu (who did not seem
to recognize me on foot), holding Consuelo's hand in my own, with
the discreet Enriquez leading my horse in the distant field.  I
retain a very vivid picture of that walk--the ascent of a gentle
slope towards a prospect as yet unknown, but full of glorious
possibilities; the tender dropping light of an autumn sky, slightly
filmed with the promise of the future rains, like foreshadowed
tears, and the half frightened, half serious talk into which
Consuelo and I had insensibly fallen.  And then, I don't know how
it happened, but as we reached the summit Chu Chu suddenly reared,
wheeled, and the next moment was flying back along the road we had
just traveled, at the top of her speed!  It might have been that,
after her abstracted fashion, she only at that moment detected my
presence; but so sudden and complete was her evolution that before
I could regain my horse from the astonished Enriquez she was
already a quarter of a mile on the homeward stretch, with the
frantic Consuelo pulling hopelessly at the bridle.  We started in
pursuit.  But a horrible despair seized us.  To attempt to overtake
her, to even follow at the same rate of speed would only excite Chu
Chu and endanger Consuelo's life.  There was absolutely no help for
it, nothing could be done; the mare had taken her determined long,
continuous stride, the road was a straight, steady descent all the
way back to the village, Chu Chu had the bit between her teeth,
and there was no prospect of swerving her.  We could only follow
hopelessly, idiotically, furiously, until Chu Chu dashed triumphantly
into the Saltellos' courtyard, carrying the half-fainting Consuelo
back to the arms of her assembled and astonished family.

It was our last ride together.  It was the last I ever saw of
Consuelo before her transfer to the safe seclusion of a convent in
Southern California.  It was the last I ever saw of Chu Chu, who in
the confusion of that rencontre was overlooked in her half-loosed
harness, and allowed to escape though the back gate to the fields.
Months afterwards it was said that she had been identified among a
band of wild horses in the Coast Range, as a strange and beautiful
creature who had escaped the brand of the rodeo and had become a
myth.  There was another legend that she had been seen, sleek, fat,
and gorgeously caparisoned, issuing from the gateway of the Rosario
patio, before a lumbering Spanish cabriole in which a short, stout
matron was seated--but I will have none of it.  For there are days
when she still lives, and I can see her plainly still climbing the
gentle slope towards the summit, with Consuelo on her back, and
myself at her side, pressing eagerly forward towards the
illimitable prospect that opens in the distance.



MY FIRST BOOK.


When I say that my "First Book" was NOT my own, and contained
beyond the title-page not one word of my own composition, I trust
that I will not be accused of trifling with paradox, or tardily
unbosoming myself of youthful plagiary.  But the fact remains that
in priority of publication the first book for which I became
responsible, and which probably provoked more criticism than
anything I have written since, was a small compilation of
Californian poems indited by other hands.

A well-known bookseller of San Francisco one day handed me a
collection of certain poems which had already appeared in Pacific
Coast magazines and newspapers, with the request that I should,
if possible, secure further additions to them, and then make a
selection of those which I considered the most notable and
characteristic, for a single volume to be issued by him.  I have
reason to believe that this unfortunate man was actutated by a
laudable desire to publish a pretty Californian book--HIS first
essay in publication--and at the same time to foster Eastern
immigration by an exhibit of the Californian literary product; but,
looking back upon his venture, I am inclined to think that the
little volume never contained anything more poetically pathetic or
touchingly imaginative than that gentle conception.  Equally simple
and trustful was his selection of myself as compiler.  It was based
somewhat, I think, upon the fact that "the artless Helicon" I
boasted "was Youth," but I imagine it was chiefly owing to the
circumstance that I had from the outset, with precocious foresight,
confided to him my intention of not putting any of my own verses in
the volume.  Publishers are appreciative; and a self-abnegation so
sublime, to say nothing of its security, was not without its effect.

We settled to our work with fatuous self-complacency, and no
suspicion of the trouble in store for us, or the storm that was to
presently hurtle around our devoted heads.  I winnowed the poems,
and he exploited a preliminary announcement to an eager and waiting
press, and we moved together unwittingly to our doom.  I remember
to have been early struck with the quantity of material coming in--
evidently the result of some popular misunderstanding of the
announcement.  I found myself in daily and hourly receipt of sere
and yellow fragments, originally torn from some dead and gone
newspaper, creased and seamed from long folding in wallet or
pocketbook.  Need I say that most of them were of an emotional or
didactic nature; need I add any criticism of these homely souvenirs,
often discolored by the morning coffee, the evening tobacco, or,
heaven knows! perhaps blotted by too easy tears!  Enough that I knew
now what had become of those original but never recopied verses
which filled the "Poet's Corner" of every country newspaper on the
coast.  I knew now the genesis of every didactic verse that "coldly
furnished forth the marriage table" in the announcement of weddings
in the rural press.  I knew now who had read--and possibly indited--
the dreary hic jacets of the dead in their mourning columns.  I knew
now why certain letters of the alphabet had been more tenderly
considered than others, and affectionately addressed. I knew the
meaning of the "Lines to Her who can best understand them," and I
knew that they HAD been understood.  The morning's post buried my
table beneath these withered leaves of posthumous passion. They lay
there like the pathetic nosegays of quickly fading wild flowers,
gathered by school children, inconsistently abandoned upon roadsides,
or as inconsistently treasured as limp and flabby superstitions in
their desks.  The chill wind from the Bay blowing in at the window
seemed to rustle them into sad articulate appeal.  I remember that
when one of them was whisked from the window by a stronger gust than
usual, and was attaining a circulation it had never known before, I
ran a block or two to recover it.  I was young then, and in an
exalted sense of editorial responsibility which I have since
survived, I think I turned pale at the thought that the reputation
of some unknown genius might have thus been swept out and swallowed
by the all-absorbing sea.

There were other difficulties arising from this unexpected wealth
of material.  There were dozens of poems on the same subject.  "The
Golden Gate," "Mount Shasta," "The Yosemite," were especially
provocative.  A beautiful bird known as the "Californian Canary"
appeared to have been shot at and winged by every poet from
Portland to San Diego.  Lines to the "Mariposa" flower were as
thick as the lovely blossoms themselves in the Merced valley, and
the Madrone tree was as "berhymed" as Rosalind.  Again, by a
liberal construction of the publisher's announcement, MANUSCRIPT
poems, which had never known print, began to coyly unfold their
virgin blossoms in the morning's mail.  They were accompanied by a
few lines stating, casually, that their sender had found them lying
forgotten in his desk, or, mendaciously, that they were "thrown
off" on the spur of the moment a few hours before.  Some of the
names appended to them astonished me.  Grave, practical business
men, sage financiers, fierce speculators, and plodding traders,
never before suspected of poetry, or even correct prose, were
among the contributors.  It seemed as if most of the able-bodied
inhabitants of the Pacific Coast had been in the habit at some time
of expressing themselves in verse.  Some sought confidential
interviews with the editor.  The climax was reached when, in
Montgomery Street, one day, I was approached by a well known and
venerable judicial magnate.  After some serious preliminary
conversation, the old gentleman finally alluded to what he was
pleased to call a task of "great delicacy and responsibility" laid
upon my young shoulders."  "In fact," he went on paternally, adding
the weight of his judicial hand to that burden, "I have thought of
speaking to you about it.  In my leisure moments on the Bench I
have, from time to time, polished and perfected a certain college
poem begun years ago, but which may now be said to have been
finished in California, and thus embraced in the scope of your
proposed selection.  If a few extracts, selected by myself, to save
you all trouble and responsibility, be of any benefit to you, my
dear young friend, consider them at your service."

In this fashion the contributions had increased to three times the
bulk of the original collection, and the difficulties of selection
were augmented in proportion.  The editor and publisher eyed each
other aghast.  "Never thought there were so many of the blamed
things alive," said the latter with great simplicity, "had you?"
The editor had not.  "Couldn't you sorter shake 'em up and condense
'em, you know? keep their ideas--and their names--separate, so that
they'd have proper credit.  See?"  The editor pointed out that this
would infringe the rule he had laid down.  "I see," said the
publisher thoughtfully; "well, couldn't you pare 'em down; give the
first verse entire and sorter sample the others?"  The editor
thought not.  There was clearly nothing to do but to make a more
rigid selection--a difficult performance when the material was
uniformly on a certain dead level, which it is not necessary to
define here.  Among the rejections were, of course, the usual
plagiarisms from well-known authors imposed upon an inexperienced
country press; several admirable pieces detected as acrostics of
patent medicines, and certain veiled libels and indecencies such as
mark the "first" publications on blank walls and fences of the
average youth.  Still the bulk remained too large, and the youthful
editor set to work reducing it still more with a sympathizing
concern which the good-natured, but unliterary, publisher failed to
understand, and which, alas! proved to be equally unappreciated by
the rejected contributors.

The book appeared--a pretty little volume typographically, and
externally a credit to pioneer book-making.  Copies were liberally
supplied to the press, and authors and publishers self-complacently
awaited the result.  To the latter this should have been
satisfactory; the book sold readily from his well-known counters
to purchasers who seemed to be drawn by a singular curiosity,
unaccompanied, however, by any critical comment.  People would
lounge in to the shop, turn over the leaves of other volumes, say
carelessly, "Got a new book of California poetry out, haven't you?"
purchase it, and quietly depart.  There were as yet no notices from
the press; the big dailies were silent; there was something ominous
in this calm.

Out of it the bolt fell.  A well-known mining weekly, which I here
poetically veil under the title of the Red Dog "Jay Hawk," was
first to swoop down upon the tuneful and unsuspecting quarry.  At
this century-end of fastidious and complaisant criticism, it may be
interesting to recall the direct style of the Californian "sixties."
"The hogwash and 'purp'-stuff ladled out from the slop-bucket of
Messrs. ---- and Co., of 'Frisco, by some lop-eared Eastern
apprentice, and called 'A Compilation of Californian Verse,' might
be passed over, so far as criticism goes.  A club in the hands of
any able-bodied citizen of Red Dog, and a steamboat ticket to the
Bay, cheerfully contributed from this office, would be all-sufficient.
But when an imported greenhorn dares to call his flapdoodle mixture
'Californian,' it is an insult to the State that has produced the
gifted 'Yellow Hammer,' whose lofty flights have from time to time
dazzled our readers in the columns of the 'Jay Hawk.'  That this
complacent editorial jackass, browsing among the dock and thistles
which he has served up in this volume, should make no allusion to
California's greatest bard, is rather a confession of his idiocy
than a slur upon the genius of our esteemed contributor." I turned
hurriedly to my pile of rejected contributions--the nom de plume of
"Yellow Hammer" did NOT appear among them; certainly I had never
heard of its existence.  Later, when a friend showed me one of that
gifted bard's pieces, I was inwardly relieved!  It was so like the
majority of the other verses, in and out of the volume, that the
mysterious poet might have written under a hundred aliases.  But the
Dutch Flat "Clarion," following, with no uncertain sound, left me
small time for consideration.  "We doubt," said that journal, "if a
more feeble collection of drivel could have been made, even if taken
exclusively from the editor's own verses, which we note he has, by
an equal editorial incompetency, left out of the volume.  When we
add that, by a felicity of idiotic selection, this person has chosen
only one, and the least characteristic, of the really clever poems
of Adoniram Skaggs, which have so often graced these columns, we
have said enough to satisfy our readers."  The Mormon Hill "Quartz
Crusher" relieved this simple directness with more fancy: "We don't
know why Messrs. ---- and Co. send us, under the title of
'Selections of Californian Poetry,' a quantity of slumgullion which
really belongs to the sluices of a placer mining camp, or the
ditches of the rural districts.  We have sometimes been compelled to
run a lot of tailings through our stamps, but never of the grade of
the samples offered, which, we should say, would average about
33-1/3 cents per ton.  We have, however, come across a single
specimen of pure gold evidently overlooked by the serene ass who has
compiled this volume.  We copy it with pleasure, as it has already
shone in the 'Poet's Corner' of the 'Crusher' as the gifted effusion
of the talented Manager of the Excelsior Mill, otherwise known to
our delighted readers as 'Outcrop.'"  The Green Springs "Arcadian"
was no less fanciful in imagery: "Messrs. ---- and Co. send us a
gaudy green-and-yellow, parrot-colored volume, which is supposed to
contain the first callow 'cheepings' and 'peepings' of Californian
songsters.  From the flavor of the specimens before us we should say
that the nest had been disturbed prematurely.  There seems to be a
good deal of the parrot inside as well as outside the covers, and we
congratulate our own sweet singer 'Blue Bird,' who has so often made
these columns melodious, that she has escaped the ignominy of being
exhibited in Messrs. ---- and Co.'s aviary."  I should add that this
simile of the aviary and its occupants was ominous, for my tuneful
choir was relentlessly slaughtered; the bottom of the cage was
strewn with feathers!  The big dailies collected the criticisms
and published them in their own columns with the grim irony of
exaggerated head-lines.  The book sold tremendously on account of
this abuse, but I am afraid that the public was disappointed.  The
fun and interest lay in the criticisms, and not in any pointedly
ludicrous quality in the rather commonplace collection, and I fear I
cannot claim for it even that merit.  And it will be observed that
the animus of the criticism appeared to be the omission rather than
the retention of certain writers.

But this brings me to the most extraordinary feature of this
singular demonstration.  I do not think that the publishers were at
all troubled by it; I cannot conscientiously say that I was; I have
every reason to believe that the poets themselves, in and out of
the volume, were not displeased at the notoriety they had not
expected, and I have long since been convinced that my most
remorseless critics were not in earnest, but were obeying some
sudden impulse started by the first attacking journal.  The
extravagance of the Red Dog "Jay Hawk" was emulated by others: it
was a large, contagious joke, passed from journal to journal in a
peculiar cyclonic Western fashion.  And there still lingers, not
unpleasantly, in my memory the conclusion of a cheerfully scathing
review of the book which may make my meaning clearer: "If we have
said anything in this article which might cause a single pang to
the poetically sensitive nature of the youthful individual calling
himself Mr. Francis Bret Harte--but who, we believe, occasionally
parts his name and his hair in the middle--we will feel that we
have not labored in vain, and are ready to sing Nunc Dimittis, and
hand in our checks.  We have no doubt of the absolutely pellucid
and lacteal purity of Franky's intentions.  He means well to the
Pacific Coast, and we return the compliment.  But he has strayed
away from his parents and guardians while he was too fresh.  He
will not keep without a little salt."

It was thirty years ago.  The book and its Rabelaisian criticisms
have been long since forgotten.  Alas! I fear that even the
capacity for that Gargantuan laughter which met them, in those
days, exists no longer.  The names I have used are necessarily
fictitious, but where I have been obliged to quote the criticisms
from memory I have, I believe, only softened their asperity.
I do not know that this story has any moral.  The criticisms here
recorded never hurt a reputation nor repressed a single honest
aspiration.  A few contributors to the volume, who were of original
merit, have made their mark, independently of it or its critics. The
editor, who was for two months the most abused man on the Pacific
slope, within the year became the editor of its first successful
magazine.  Even the publisher prospered, and died respected!





End of Project Gutenberg Etext of The Bell-Ringer of Angel's, by Harte

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