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Title:  The Twins of Table Mountain

Author:  Bret Harte

Release Date:  October, 2001  [Etext #2862]
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The Twins of Table Mountain

by Bret Harte




CONTENTS


I.    THE TWINS OF TABLE MOUNTAIN

II.   AN HEIRESS OF RED DOG

III.  THE GREAT DEADWOOD MYSTERY

IV.   A LEGEND OF SAMMTSTADT

V.    VIEWS FROM A GERMAN SPION




THE TWINS OF TABLE MOUNTAIN.




CHAPTER I.


A CLOUD ON THE MOUNTAIN.


They lived on the verge of a vast stony level, upheaved so far
above the surrounding country that its vague outlines, viewed from
the nearest valley, seemed a mere cloud-streak resting upon the
lesser hills.  The rush and roar of the turbulent river that washed
its eastern base were lost at that height; the winds that strove
with the giant pines that half way climbed its flanks spent their
fury below the summit; for, at variance with most meteorological
speculation, an eternal calm seemed to invest this serene altitude.
The few Alpine flowers seldom thrilled their petals to a passing
breeze; rain and snow fell alike perpendicularly, heavily, and
monotonously over the granite bowlders scattered along its brown
expanse.  Although by actual measurement an inconsiderable
elevation of the Sierran range, and a mere shoulder of the nearest
white-faced peak that glimmered in the west, it seemed to lie so
near the quiet, passionless stars, that at night it caught something
of their calm remoteness.

The articulate utterance of such a locality should have been a
whisper; a laugh or exclamation was discordant; and the ordinary
tones of the human voice on the night of the 15th of May, 1868, had
a grotesque incongruity.

In the thick darkness that clothed the mountain that night, the
human figure would have been lost, or confounded with the outlines
of outlying bowlders, which at such times took upon themselves the
vague semblance of men and animals.  Hence the voices in the
following colloquy seemed the more grotesque and incongruous from
being the apparent expression of an upright monolith, ten feet
high, on the right, and another mass of granite, that, reclining,
peeped over the verge.

"Hello!"

"Hello yourself!"

"You're late."

"I lost the trail, and climbed up the slide."

Here followed a stumble, the clatter of stones down the mountain-
side, and an oath so very human and undignified that it at once
relieved the bowlders of any complicity of expression.  The voices,
too, were close together now, and unexpectedly in quite another
locality.

"Anything up?"

"Looey Napoleon's declared war agin Germany."

"Sho-o-o!"

Notwithstanding this exclamation, the interest of the latter
speaker was evidently only polite and perfunctory.  What, indeed,
were the political convulsions of the Old World to the dwellers on
this serene, isolated eminence of the New?

"I reckon it's so," continued the first voice.  "French Pete and
that thar feller that keeps the Dutch grocery hev hed a row over
it; emptied their six-shooters into each other.  The Dutchman's got
two balls in his leg, and the Frenchman's got an onnessary
buttonhole in his shirt-buzzum, and hez caved in."

This concise, local corroboration of the conflict of remote
nations, however confirmatory, did not appear to excite any further
interest.  Even the last speaker, now that he was in this calm,
dispassionate atmosphere, seemed to lose his own concern in his
tidings, and to have abandoned every thing of a sensational and
lower-worldly character in the pines below.  There were a few
moments of absolute silence, and then another stumble.  But now the
voices of both speakers were quite patient and philosophical.

"Hold on, and I'll strike a light," said the second speaker.  "I
brought a lantern along, but I didn't light up.  I kem out afore
sundown, and you know how it allers is up yer.  I didn't want it,
and didn't keer to light up.  I forgot you're always a little dazed
and strange-like when you first come up."

There was a crackle, a flash, and presently a steady glow, which
the surrounding darkness seemed to resent.  The faces of the two
men thus revealed were singularly alike.  The same thin, narrow
outline of jaw and temple; the same dark, grave eyes; the same
brown growth of curly beard and mustache, which concealed the
mouth, and hid what might have been any individual idiosyncrasy of
thought or expression,--showed them to be brothers, or better known
as the "Twins of Table Mountain."  A certain animation in the face
of the second speaker,--the first-comer,--a certain light in his
eye, might have at first distinguished him; but even this faded out
in the steady glow of the lantern, and had no value as a permanent
distinction, for, by the time they had reached the western verge of
the mountain, the two faces had settled into a homogeneous calmness
and melancholy.

The vague horizon of darkness, that a few feet from the lantern
still encompassed them, gave no indication of their progress, until
their feet actually trod the rude planks and thatch that formed the
roof of their habitation; for their cabin half burrowed in the
mountain, and half clung, like a swallow's nest, to the side of the
deep declivity that terminated the northern limit of the summit.
Had it not been for the windlass of a shaft, a coil of rope, and a
few heaps of stone and gravel, which were the only indications of
human labor in that stony field, there was nothing to interrupt its
monotonous dead level.  And, when they descended a dozen well-worn
steps to the door of their cabin, they left the summit, as before,
lonely, silent, motionless, its long level uninterrupted, basking
in the cold light of the stars.

The simile of a "nest" as applied to the cabin of the brothers was
no mere figure of speech as the light of the lantern first flashed
upon it.  The narrow ledge before the door was strewn with
feathers.  A suggestion that it might be the home and haunt of
predatory birds was promptly checked by the spectacle of the
nailed-up carcasses of a dozen hawks against the walls, and the
outspread wings of an extended eagle emblazoning the gable above
the door, like an armorial bearing.  Within the cabin the walls and
chimney-piece were dazzlingly bedecked with the party-colored wings
of jays, yellow-birds, woodpeckers, kingfishers, and the poly-
tinted wood-duck.  Yet in that dry, highly-rarefied atmosphere,
there was not the slightest suggestion of odor or decay.

The first speaker hung the lantern upon a hook that dangled from
the rafters, and, going to the broad chimney, kicked the half-dead
embers into a sudden resentful blaze.  He then opened a rude
cupboard, and, without looking around, called, "Ruth!"

The second speaker turned his head from the open doorway where he
was leaning, as if listening to something in the darkness, and
answered abstractedly,--

"Rand!"

"I don't believe you have touched grub to-day!"

Ruth grunted out some indifferent reply.

"Thar hezen't been a slice cut off that bacon since I left,"
continued Rand, bringing a side of bacon and some biscuits from the
cupboard, and applying himself to the discussion of them at the
table.  "You're gettin' off yer feet, Ruth.  What's up?"

Ruth replied by taking an uninvited seat beside him, and resting
his chin on the palms of his hands.  He did not eat, but simply
transferred his inattention from the door to the table.

"You're workin' too many hours in the shaft," continued Rand.
"You're always up to some such d--n fool business when I'm not
yer."

"I dipped a little west to-day," Ruth went on, without heeding the
brotherly remonstrance, "and struck quartz and pyrites."

"Thet's you!--allers dippin' west or east for quartz and the color,
instead of keeping on plumb down to the 'cement'!"*


* The local name for gold-bearing alluvial drift,--the bed of a
prehistoric river.


"We've been three years digging for cement," said Ruth, more in
abstraction than in reproach,--"three years!"

"And we may be three years more,--may be only three days.  Why, you
couldn't be more impatient if--if--if you lived in a valley."

Delivering this tremendous comparison as an unanswerable climax,
Rand applied himself once more to his repast.  Ruth, after a
moment's pause, without speaking or looking up, disengaged his hand
from under his chin, and slid it along, palm uppermost, on the
table beside his brother.  Thereupon Rand slowly reached forward
his left hand, the right being engaged in conveying victual to his
mouth, and laid it on his brother's palm.  The act was evidently an
habitual, half mechanical one; for in a few moments the hands were
as gently disengaged, without comment or expression.  At last Rand
leaned back in his chair, laid down his knife and fork, and,
complacently loosening the belt that held his revolver, threw it
and the weapon on his bed.  Taking out his pipe, and chipping some
tobacco on the table, he said carelessly, "I came a piece through
the woods with Mornie just now."

The face that Ruth turned upon his brother was very distinct in its
expression at that moment, and quite belied the popular theory that
the twins could not be told apart.  "Thet gal," continued Rand,
without looking up, "is either flighty, or--or suthin'," he added
in vague disgust, pushing the table from him as if it were the lady
in question.  "Don't tell me!"

Ruth's eyes quickly sought his brother's, and were as quickly
averted, as he asked hurriedly, "How?"

"What gets me," continued Rand in a petulant non sequitur, "is that
YOU, my own twin-brother, never lets on about her comin' yer,
permiskus like, when I ain't yer, and you and her gallivantin' and
promanadin', and swoppin' sentiments and mottoes."

Ruth tried to contradict his blushing face with a laugh of worldly
indifference.

"She came up yer on a sort of pasear."

"Oh, yes!--a short cut to the creek," interpolated Rand satirically.

"Last Tuesday or Wednesday," continued Ruth, with affected
forgetfulness.

"Oh, in course, Tuesday, or Wednesday, or Thursday!  You've so many
folks climbing up this yer mountain to call on ye," continued the
ironical Rand, "that you disremember; only you remembered enough
not to tell me.  SHE did.  She took me for you, or pretended to."

The color dropped from Ruth's cheek.

"Took you for me?" he asked, with an awkward laugh.

"Yes," sneered Rand; "chirped and chattered away about OUR picnic,
OUR nose-gays, and lord knows what!  Said she'd keep them blue-
jay's wings, and wear 'em in her hat.  Spouted poetry, too,--the
same sort o' rot you get off now and then."

Ruth laughed again, but rather ostentatiously and nervously.

"Ruth, look yer!"

Ruth faced his brother.

"What's your little game?  Do you mean to say you don't know what
thet gal is?  Do you mean to say you don't know thet she's the
laughing-stock of the Ferry; thet her father's a d----d old fool,
and her mother's a drunkard and worse; thet she's got any right to
be hanging round yer?  You can't mean to marry her, even if you
kalkilate to turn me out to do it, for she wouldn't live alone with
ye up here.  'Tain't her kind.  And if I thought you was thinking
of--"

"What?" said Ruth, turning upon his brother quickly.

"Oh, thet's right! holler; swear and yell, and break things, do!
Tear round!" continued Rand, kicking his boots off in a corner,
"just because I ask you a civil question.  That's brotherly," he
added, jerking his chair away against the side of the cabin, "ain't
it?"

"She's not to blame because her mother drinks, and her father's a
shyster," said Ruth earnestly and strongly.  "The men who make her
the laughing-stock of the Ferry tried to make her something worse,
and failed, and take this sneak's revenge on her.  'Laughing-
stock!'  Yes, they knew she could turn the tables on them."

"Of course; go on!  She's better than me.  I know I'm a fratricide,
that's what I am," said Rand, throwing himself on the upper of the
two berths that formed the bedstead of the cabin.

"I've seen her three times," continued Ruth.

"And you've known me twenty years," interrupted his brother.

Ruth turned on his heel, and walked towards the door.

"That's right; go on!  Why don't you get the chalk?"

Ruth made no reply.  Rand descended from the bed, and, taking a
piece of chalk from the shelf, drew a line on the floor, dividing
the cabin in two equal parts.

"You can have the east half," he said, as he climbed slowly back
into bed.

This mysterious rite was the usual termination of a quarrel between
the twins.  Each man kept his half of the cabin until the feud was
forgotten.  It was the mark of silence and separation, over which
no words of recrimination, argument, or even explanation, were
delivered, until it was effaced by one or the other.  This was
considered equivalent to apology or reconciliation, which each were
equally bound in honor to accept.

It may be remarked that the floor was much whiter at this line of
demarcation, and under the fresh chalk-line appeared the faint
evidences of one recently effaced.

Without apparently heeding this potential ceremony, Ruth remained
leaning against the doorway, looking upon the night, the bulk of
whose profundity and blackness seemed to be gathered below him.
The vault above was serene and tranquil, with a few large far-
spaced stars; the abyss beneath, untroubled by sight or sound.
Stepping out upon the ledge, he leaned far over the shelf that
sustained their cabin, and listened.  A faint rhythmical roll,
rising and falling in long undulations against the invisible
horizon, to his accustomed ears told him the wind was blowing among
the pines in the valley.  Yet, mingling with this familiar sound,
his ear, now morbidly acute, seemed to detect a stranger inarticulate
murmur, as of confused and excited voices, swelling up from the
mysterious depths to the stars above, and again swallowed up in the
gulfs of silence below.  He was roused from a consideration of this
phenomenon by a faint glow towards the east, which at last
brightened, until the dark outline of the distant walls of the
valley stood out against the sky.  Were his other senses
participating in the delusion of his ears? for with the brightening
light came the faint odor of burning timber.

His face grew anxious as he gazed.  At last he rose, and re-entered
the cabin.  His eyes fell upon the faint chalk-mark, and, taking
his soft felt hat from his head, with a few practical sweeps of the
brim he brushed away the ominous record of their late estrangement.
Going to the bed whereon Rand lay stretched, open-eyed, he would
have laid his hand upon his arm lightly; but the brother's fingers
sought and clasped his own.  "Get up," he said quietly; "there's a
strange fire in the Canyon head that I can't make out."

Rand slowly clambered from his shelf, and hand in hand the brothers
stood upon the ledge.  "It's a right smart chance beyond the Ferry,
and a piece beyond the Mill, too," said Rand, shading his eyes with
his hand, from force of habit.  "It's in the woods where--"  He
would have added where he met Mornie; but it was a point of honor
with the twins, after reconciliation, not to allude to any topic of
their recent disagreement.

Ruth dropped his brother's hand.  "It doesn't smell like the
woods," he said slowly.

"Smell!" repeated Rand incredulously.  "Why, it's twenty miles in a
bee-line yonder.  Smell, indeed!"

Ruth was silent, but presently fell to listening again with his
former abstraction.  "You don't hear anything, do you?" he asked
after a pause.

"It's blowin' in the pines on the river," said Rand shortly.

"You don't hear anything else?"

"No."

"Nothing like--like--like--"

Rand, who had been listening with an intensity that distorted the
left side of his face, interrupted him impatiently.

"Like what?"

"Like a woman sobbin'?"

"Ruth," said Rand, suddenly looking up in his brother's face,
"what's gone of you?"

Ruth laughed.  "The fire's out," he said, abruptly re-entering the
cabin.  "I'm goin' to turn in."

Rand, following his brother half reproachfully, saw him divest
himself of his clothing, and roll himself in the blankets of his
bed.

"Good-night, Randy!"

Rand hesitated.  He would have liked to ask his brother another
question; but there was clearly nothing to be done but follow his
example.

"Good-night, Ruthy!" he said, and put out the light.  As he did so,
the glow in the eastern horizon faded, too, and darkness seemed to
well up from the depths below, and, flowing in the open door,
wrapped them in deeper slumber.


CHAPTER II.


THE CLOUDS GATHER.


Twelve months had elapsed since the quarrel and reconciliation,
during which interval no reference was made by either of the
brothers to the cause which had provoked it.  Rand was at work in
the shaft, Ruth having that morning undertaken the replenishment of
the larder with game from the wooded skirt of the mountain.  Rand
had taken advantage of his brother's absence to "prospect" in the
"drift,"--a proceeding utterly at variance with his previous
condemnation of all such speculative essay; but Rand, despite his
assumption of a superior practical nature, was not above certain
local superstitions.  Having that morning put on his gray flannel
shirt wrong side out,--an abstraction recognized among the miners
as the sure forerunner of divination and treasure-discovery,--he
could not forego that opportunity of trying his luck, without
hazarding a dangerous example.  He was also conscious of feeling
"chipper,"--another local expression for buoyancy of spirit, not
common to men who work fifty feet below the surface, without the
stimulus of air and sunshine, and not to be overlooked as an
important factor in fortunate adventure.  Nevertheless, noon came
without the discovery of any treasure.  He had attacked the walls
on either side of the lateral "drift" skilfully, so as to expose
their quality without destroying their cohesive integrity, but had
found nothing.  Once or twice, returning to the shaft for rest and
air, its grim silence had seemed to him pervaded with some vague
echo of cheerful holiday voices above.  This set him to thinking of
his brother's equally extravagant fancy of the wailing voices in
the air on the night of the fire, and of his attributing it to a
lover's abstraction.

"I laid it to his being struck after that gal; and yet," Rand
continued to himself, "here's me, who haven't been foolin' round no
gal, and dog my skin if I didn't think I heard one singin' up
thar!"  He put his foot on the lower round of the ladder, paused,
and slowly ascended a dozen steps.  Here he paused again.  All at
once the whole shaft was filled with the musical vibrations of a
woman's song.  Seizing the rope that hung idly from the windlass,
he half climbed, half swung himself, to the surface.

The voice was there; but the sudden transition to the dazzling
level before him at first blinded his eyes, so that he took in only
by degrees the unwonted spectacle of the singer,--a pretty girl,
standing on tiptoe on a bowlder not a dozen yards from him, utterly
absorbed in tying a gayly-striped neckerchief, evidently taken from
her own plump throat, to the halliards of a freshly-cut hickory-
pole newly reared as a flag-staff beside her.  The hickory-pole,
the halliards, the fluttering scarf, the young lady herself, were
all glaring innovations on the familiar landscape; but Rand, with
his hand still on the rope, silently and demurely enjoyed it.

For the better understanding of the general reader, who does not
live on an isolated mountain, it may be observed that the young
lady's position on the rock exhibited some study of POSE, and a
certain exaggeration of attitude, that betrayed the habit of an
audience; also that her voice had an artificial accent that was not
wholly unconscious, even in this lofty solitude.  Yet the very next
moment, when she turned, and caught Rand's eye fixed upon her, she
started naturally, colored slightly, uttered that feminine
adjuration, "Good Lord! gracious! goodness me!" which is seldom
used in reference to its effect upon the hearer, and skipped
instantly from the bowlder to the ground.  Here, however, she
alighted in a POSE, brought the right heel of her neatly-fitting
left boot closely into the hollowed side of her right instep, at
the same moment deftly caught her flying skirt, whipped it around
her ankles, and, slightly raising it behind, permitted the chaste
display of an inch or two of frilled white petticoat.  The most
irreverent critic of the sex will, I think, admit that it has some
movements that are automatic.

"Hope I didn't disturb ye," said Rand, pointing to the flag-staff.

The young lady slightly turned her head.  "No," she said; "but I
didn't know anybody was here, of course.  Our PARTY"--she
emphasized the word, and accompanied it with a look toward the
further extremity of the plateau, to show she was not alone--"our
party climbed this ridge, and put up this pole as a sign to show
they did it."  The ridiculous self-complacency of this record in
the face of a man who was evidently a dweller on the mountain
apparently struck her for the first time.  "We didn't know," she
stammered, looking at the shaft from which Rand had emerged, "that--
that--"  She stopped, and, glancing again towards the distant
range where her friends had disappeared, began to edge away.

"They can't be far off," interposed Rand quietly, as if it were the
most natural thing in the world for the lady to be there.  "Table
Mountain ain't as big as all that.  Don't you be scared!  So you
thought nobody lived up here?"

She turned upon him a pair of honest hazel eyes, which not only
contradicted the somewhat meretricious smartness of her dress, but
was utterly inconsistent with the palpable artificial color of her
hair,--an obvious imitation of a certain popular fashion then known
in artistic circles as the "British Blonde,"--and began to
ostentatiously resume a pair of lemon-colored kid gloves.  Having,
as it were, thus indicated her standing and respectability, and put
an immeasurable distance between herself and her bold interlocutor,
she said impressively, "We evidently made a mistake: I will rejoin
our party, who will, of course, apologize."

"What's your hurry?" said the imperturbable Rand, disengaging
himself from the rope, and walking towards her.  "As long as you're
up here, you might stop a spell."

"I have no wish to intrude; that is, our party certainly has not,"
continued the young lady, pulling the tight gloves, and smoothing
the plump, almost bursting fingers, with an affectation of
fashionable ease.

"Oh! I haven't any thing to do just now," said Rand, "and it's
about grub time, I reckon.  Yes, I live here, Ruth and me,--right
here."

The young woman glanced at the shaft.

"No, not down there," said Rand, following her eye, with a laugh.
"Come here, and I'll show you."

A strong desire to keep up an appearance of genteel reserve, and an
equally strong inclination to enjoy the adventurous company of this
good-looking, hearty young fellow, made her hesitate.  Perhaps she
regretted having undertaken a role of such dignity at the
beginning: she could have been so perfectly natural with this
perfectly natural man, whereas any relaxation now might increase
his familiarity.  And yet she was not without a vague suspicion
that her dignity and her gloves were alike thrown away on him,--a
fact made the more evident when Rand stepped to her side, and,
without any apparent consciousness of disrespect or gallantry, laid
his large hand, half persuasively, half fraternally, upon her
shoulder, and said, "Oh, come along, do!"

The simple act either exceeded the limits of her forbearance, or
decided the course of her subsequent behavior.  She instantly
stepped back a single pace, and drew her left foot slowly and
deliberately after her; then she fixed her eyes and uplifted
eyebrows upon the daring hand, and, taking it by the ends of her
thumb and forefinger, lifted it, and dropped it in mid-air.  She
then folded her arms.  It was the indignant gesture with which
"Alice," the Pride of Dumballin Village, received the loathsome
advances of the bloated aristocrat, Sir Parkyns Parkyn, and had at
Marysville, a few nights before, brought down the house.

This effect was, I think, however, lost upon Rand.  The slight
color that rose to his cheek as he looked down upon his clay-soiled
hands was due to the belief that he had really contaminated her
outward superfine person.  But his color quickly passed: his frank,
boyish smile returned, as he said, "It'll rub off.  Lord, don't
mind that!  Thar, now--come on!"

The young woman bit her lip.  Then nature triumphed; and she
laughed, although a little scornfully.  And then Providence
assisted her with the sudden presentation of two figures, a man and
woman, slowly climbing up over the mountain verge, not far from
them.  With a cry of "There's Sol, now!" she forgot her dignity and
her confusion, and ran towards them.

Rand stood looking after her neat figure, less concerned in the
advent of the strangers than in her sudden caprice.  He was not so
young and inexperienced but that he noted certain ambiguities in
her dress and manner: he was by no means impressed by her dignity.
But he could not help watching her as she appeared to be volubly
recounting her late interview to her companions; and, still
unconscious of any impropriety or obtrusiveness, he lounged down
lazily towards her.  Her humor had evidently changed; for she
turned an honest, pleased face upon him, as she girlishly attempted
to drag the strangers forward.

The man was plump and short; unlike the natives of the locality, he
was closely cropped and shaven, as if to keep down the strong blue-
blackness of his beard and hair, which nevertheless asserted itself
over his round cheeks and upper lip like a tattooing of Indian ink.
The woman at his side was reserved and indistinctive, with that
appearance of being an unenthusiastic family servant peculiar to
some men's wives.  When Rand was within a few feet of him, he
started, struck a theatrical attitude, and, shading his eyes with
his hand, cried, "What, do me eyes deceive me!" burst into a hearty
laugh, darted forward, seized Rand's hand, and shook it briskly.

"Pinkney, Pinkney, my boy! how are you?  And this is your little
'prop'? your quarter-section, your country-seat, that we've been
trespassing on, eh?  A nice little spot, cool, sequestered,
remote,--a trifle unimproved; carriage-road as yet unfinished.  Ha,
ha!  But to think of our making a discovery of this inaccessible
mountain, climbing it, sir, for two mortal hours, christening it
'Sol's Peak,' getting up a flag-pole, unfurling our standard to the
breeze, sir, and then, by Gad, winding up by finding Pinkney, the
festive Pinkney, living on it at home!"

Completely surprised, but still perfectly good-humored, Rand shook
the stranger's right hand warmly, and received on his broad
shoulders a welcoming thwack from the left, without question.  "She
don't mind her friends making free with ME evidently," said Rand to
himself, as he tried to suggest that fact to the young lady in a
meaning glance.

The stranger noted his glance, and suddenly passed his hand
thoughtfully over his shaven cheeks.  "No," he said--"yes, surely,
I forget--yes, I see; of course you don't!  Rosy," turning to his
wife, "of course Pinkney doesn't know Phemie, eh?"

"No, nor ME either, Sol," said that lady warningly.

"Certainly!" continued Sol.  "It's his misfortune.  You weren't
with me at Gold Hill.--Allow me," he said, turning to Rand, "to
present Mrs. Sol Saunders, wife of the undersigned, and Miss
Euphemia Neville, otherwise known as the 'Marysville Pet,' the best
variety actress known on the provincial boards.  Played Ophelia at
Marysville, Friday; domestic drama at Gold Hill, Saturday; Sunday
night, four songs in character, different dress each time, and a
clog-dance.  The best clog-dance on the Pacific Slope," he added in
a stage aside.  "The minstrels are crazy to get her in 'Frisco.
But money can't buy her--prefers the legitimate drama to this sort
of thing."  Here he took a few steps of a jig, to which the
"Marysville Pet" beat time with her feet, and concluded with a
laugh and a wink--the combined expression of an artist's admiration
for her ability, and a man of the world's scepticism of feminine
ambition.

Miss Euphemia responded to the formal introduction by extending her
hand frankly with a re-assuring smile to Rand, and an utter
obliviousness of her former hauteur.  Rand shook it warmly, and
then dropped carelessly on a rock beside them.

"And you never told me you lived up here in the attic, you rascal!"
continued Sol with a laugh.

"No," replied Rand simply.  "How could I?  I never saw you before,
that I remember."

Miss Euphemia stared at Sol.  Mrs. Sol looked up in her lord's
face, and folded her arms in a resigned expression.  Sol rose to
his feet again, and shaded his eyes with his hand, but this time
quite seriously, and gazed at Rand's smiling face.

"Good Lord!  Do you mean to say your name isn't Pinkney?" he asked,
with a half embarrassed laugh.

"It IS Pinkney," said Rand; "but I never met you before."

"Didn't you come to see a young lady that joined my troupe at Gold
Hill last month, and say you'd meet me at Keeler's Ferry in a day
or two?"

"No-o-o," said Rand, with a good-humored laugh.  "I haven't left
this mountain for two months."

He might have added more; but his attention was directed to Miss
Euphemia, who during this short dialogue, having stuffed
alternately her handkerchief, the corner of her mantle, and her
gloves, into her mouth, restrained herself no longer, but gave way
to an uncontrollable fit of laughter.  "O Sol!" she gasped
explanatorily, as she threw herself alternately against him, Mrs.
Sol, and a bowlder, "you'll kill me yet!  O Lord! first we take
possession of this man's property, then we claim HIM."  The
contemplation of this humorous climax affected her so that she was
fain at last to walk away, and confide the rest of her speech to
space.

Sol joined in the laugh until his wife plucked his sleeve, and
whispered something in his ear.  In an instant his face became at
once mysterious and demure.  "I owe you an apology," he said,
turning to Rand, but in a voice ostentatiously pitched high enough
for Miss Euphemia to overhear: "I see I have made a mistake.  A
resemblance--only a mere resemblance, as I look at you now--led me
astray.  Of course you don't know any young lady in the profession?"

"Of course he doesn't, Sol," said Miss Euphemia.  "I could have
told you that.  He didn't even know ME!"

The voice and mock-heroic attitude of the speaker was enough to
relieve the general embarrassment with a laugh.  Rand, now
pleasantly conscious of only Miss Euphemia's presence, again
offered the hospitality of his cabin, with the polite recognition
of her friends in the sentence, "and you might as well come along
too."

"But won't we incommode the lady of the house?" said Mrs. Sol
politely.

"What lady of the house"? said Rand almost angrily.

"Why, Ruth, you know!"

It was Rand's turn to become hilarious.  "Ruth," he said, "is short
for Rutherford, my brother."  His laugh, however, was echoed only
by Euphemia.

"Then you have a brother?" said Mrs. Sol benignly.

"Yes," said Rand: "he will be here soon."  A sudden thought dropped
the color from his cheek.  "Look here," he said, turning impulsively
upon Sol.  "I have a brother, a twin-brother.  It couldn't be HIM--"

Sol was conscious of a significant feminine pressure on his right
arm.  He was equal to the emergency.  "I think not," he said
dubiously, "unless your brother's hair is much darker than yours.
Yes! now I look at you, yours is brown.  He has a mole on his right
cheek hasn't he?"

The red came quickly back to Rand's boyish face.  He laughed.  "No,
sir: my brother's hair is, if any thing, a shade lighter than mine,
and nary mole.  Come along!"

And leading the way, Rand disclosed the narrow steps winding down
to the shelf on which the cabin hung.  "Be careful," said Rand,
taking the now unresisting hand of the "Marysville Pet" as they
descended: "a step that way, and down you go two thousand feet on
the top of a pine-tree."

But the girl's slight cry of alarm was presently changed to one of
unaffected pleasure as they stood on the rocky platform.  "It isn't
a house: it's a NEST, and the loveliest!" said Euphemia breathlessly.

"It's a scene, a perfect scene, sir!" said Sol, enraptured.  "I
shall take the liberty of bringing my scene-painter to sketch it
some day.  It would do for 'The Mountaineer's Bride' superbly, or,"
continued the little man, warming through the blue-black border of
his face with professional enthusiasm, "it's enough to make a play
itself.  'The Cot on the Crags.'  Last scene--moonlight--the
struggle on the ledge!  The Lady of the Crags throws herself from
the beetling heights!--A shriek from the depths--a woman's wail!"

"Dry up!" sharply interrupted Rand, to whom this speech recalled
his brother's half-forgotten strangeness.  "Look at the prospect."

In the full noon of a cloudless day, beneath them a tumultuous sea
of pines surged, heaved, rode in giant crests, stretched and lost
itself in the ghostly, snow-peaked horizon.  The thronging woods
choked every defile, swept every crest, filled every valley with
its dark-green tilting spears, and left only Table Mountain sunlit
and bare.  Here and there were profound olive depths, over which
the gray hawk hung lazily, and into which blue jays dipped.  A
faint, dull yellowish streak marked an occasional watercourse; a
deeper reddish ribbon, the mountain road and its overhanging murky
cloud of dust.

"Is it quite safe here?" asked Mrs. Sol, eying the little cabin.
"I mean from storms?"

"It never blows up here," replied Rand, "and nothing happens."

"It must be lovely," said Euphemia, clasping her hands.

"It IS that," said Rand proudly.  "It's four years since Ruth and I
took up this yer claim, and raised this shanty.  In that four years
we haven't left it alone a night, or cared to.  It's only big
enough for two, and them two must be brothers.  It wouldn't do for
mere pardners to live here alone,--they couldn't do it.  It
wouldn't be exactly the thing for man and wife to shut themselves
up here alone.  But Ruth and me know each other's ways, and here
we'll stay until we've made a pile.  We sometimes--one of us--takes
a pasear to the Ferry to buy provisions; but we're glad to crawl up
to the back of old 'Table' at night."

"You're quite out of the world here, then?" suggested Mrs. Sol.

"That's it, just it!  We're out of the world,--out of rows, out of
liquor, out of cards, out of bad company, out of temptation.
Cussedness and foolishness hez got to follow us up here to find us,
and there's too many ready to climb down to them things to tempt
'em to come up to us."

There was a little boyish conceit in his tone, as he stood there,
not altogether unbecoming his fresh color and simplicity.  Yet,
when his eyes met those of Miss Euphemia, he colored, he hardly
knew why, and the young lady herself blushed rosily.

When the neat cabin, with its decorated walls, and squirrel and
wild-cat skins, was duly admired, the luncheon-basket of the
Saunders party was re-enforced by provisions from Rand's larder,
and spread upon the ledge; the dimensions of the cabin not
admitting four.  Under the potent influence of a bottle, Sol became
hilarious and professional.  The "Pet" was induced to favor the
company with a recitation, and, under the plea of teaching Rand, to
perform the clog-dance with both gentlemen.  Then there was an
interval, in which Rand and Euphemia wandered a little way down the
mountain-side to gather laurel, leaving Mr. Sol to his siesta on a
rock, and Mrs. Sol to take some knitting from the basket, and sit
beside him.

When Rand and his companion had disappeared, Mrs. Sol nudged her
sleeping partner.  "Do you think that WAS the brother?"

Sol yawned.  "Sure of it.  They're as like as two peas, in looks."

"Why didn't you tell him so, then?"

"Will you tell me, my dear, why you stopped me when I began?"

"Because something was said about Ruth being here; and I supposed
Ruth was a woman, and perhaps Pinkney's wife, and knew you'd be
putting your foot in it by talking of that other woman.  I supposed
it was for fear of that he denied knowing you."

"Well, when HE--this Rand--told me he had a twin-brother, he looked
so frightened that I knew he knew nothing of his brother's doings
with that woman, and I threw him off the scent.  He's a good
fellow, but awfully green, and I didn't want to worry him with
tales.  I like him, and I think Phemie does too."

"Nonsense!  He's a conceited prig!  Did you hear his sermon on the
world and its temptations?  I wonder if he thought temptation had
come up to him in the person of us professionals out on a picnic.
I think it was positively rude."

"My dear woman, you're always seeing slights and insults.  I tell
you he's taken a shine to Phemie; and he's as good as four seats
and a bouquet to that child next Wednesday evening, to say nothing
of the eclat of getting this St. Simeon--what do you call him?--
Stalactites?"

"Stylites," suggested Mrs. Sol.

"Stylites, off from his pillar here.  I'll have a paragraph in the
paper, that the hermit crabs of Table Mountain--"

"Don't be a fool, Sol!"

"The hermit twins of Table Mountain bespoke the chaste performance."

"One of them being the protector of the well-known Mornie Nixon,"
responded Mrs. Sol, viciously accenting the name with her knitting-
needles.

"Rosy, you're unjust.  You're prejudiced by the reports of the
town.  Mr. Pinkney's interest in her may be a purely artistic one,
although mistaken.  She'll never make a good variety-actress: she's
too heavy.  And the boys don't give her a fair show.  No woman can
make a debut in my version of 'Somnambula,' and have the front row
in the pit say to her in the sleepwalking scene, 'You're out rather
late, Mornie.  Kinder forgot to put on your things, didn't you?
Mother sick, I suppose, and you're goin' for more gin?  Hurry
along, or you'll ketch it when ye get home.'  Why, you couldn't do
it yourself, Rosy!"

To which Mrs. Sol's illogical climax was, that, "bad as Rutherford
might be, this Sunday-school superintendent, Rand, was worse."

Rand and his companion returned late, but in high spirits.  There
was an unnecessary effusiveness in the way in which Euphemia kissed
Mrs. Sol,--the one woman present, who UNDERSTOOD, and was to be
propitiated,--which did not tend to increase Mrs. Sol's good humor.
She had her basket packed all ready for departure; and even the
earnest solicitation of Rand, that they would defer their going
until sunset, produced no effect.

"Mr. Rand--Mr. Pinkney, I mean--says the sunsets here are so
lovely," pleaded Euphemia.

"There is a rehearsal at seven o'clock, and we have no time to
lose," said Mrs. Sol significantly.

"I forgot to say," said the "Marysville Pet" timidly, glancing at
Mrs. Sol, "that Mr. Rand says he will bring his brother on
Wednesday night, and wants four seats in front, so as not to be
crowded."

Sol shook the young man's hand warmly.  "You'll not regret it, sir:
it's a surprising, a remarkable performance."

"I'd like to go a piece down the mountain with you," said Rand,
with evident sincerity, looking at Miss Euphemia; "but Ruth isn't
here yet, and we make a rule never to leave the place alone.  I'll
show you the slide: it's the quickest way to go down.  If you meet
any one who looks like me, and talks like me, call him 'Ruth,' and
tell him I'm waitin' for him yer."

Miss Phemia, the last to go, standing on the verge of the
declivity, here remarked, with a dangerous smile, that, if she met
any one who bore that resemblance, she might be tempted to keep him
with her,--a playfulness that brought the ready color to Rand's
cheek.  When she added to this the greater audacity of kissing her
hand to him, the young hermit actually turned away in sheer
embarrassment.  When he looked around again, she was gone, and for
the first time in his experience the mountain seemed barren and
lonely.

The too sympathetic reader who would rashly deduce from this any
newly awakened sentiment in the virgin heart of Rand would quite
misapprehend that peculiar young man.  That singular mixture of
boyish inexperience and mature doubt and disbelief, which was
partly the result of his temperament, and partly of his cloistered
life on the mountain, made him regard his late companions, now that
they were gone, and his intimacy with them, with remorseful
distrust.  The mountain was barren and lonely, because it was no
longer HIS.  It had become a part of the great world, which four
years ago he and his brother had put aside, and in which, as two
self-devoted men, they walked alone.  More than that, he believed
he had acquired some understanding of the temptations that assailed
his brother, and the poor little vanities of the "Marysville Pet"
were transformed into the blandishments of a Circe.  Rand, who
would have succumbed to a wicked, superior woman, believed he was a
saint in withstanding the foolish weakness of a simple one.


He did not resume his work that day.  He paced the mountain,
anxiously awaiting his brother's return, and eager to relate his
experiences.  He would go with him to the dramatic entertainment;
from his example and wisdom, Ruth should learn how easily
temptation might be overcome.  But, first of all, there should be
the fullest exchange of confidences and explanations.  The old rule
should be rescinded for once, the old discussion in regard to
Mornie re-opened, and Rand, having convinced his brother of error,
would generously extend his forgiveness.

The sun sank redly.  Lingering long upon the ledge before their
cabin, it at last slipped away almost imperceptibly, leaving Rand
still wrapped in revery.  Darkness, the smoke of distant fires in
the woods, and the faint evening incense of the pines, crept slowly
up; but Ruth came not.  The moon rose, a silver gleam on the
farther ridge; and Rand, becoming uneasy at his brother's prolonged
absence, resolved to break another custom, and leave the summit, to
seek him on the trail.  He buckled on his revolvers, seized his
gun, when a cry from the depths arrested him.  He leaned over the
ledge, and listened.  Again the cry arose, and this time more
distinctly.  He held his breath: the blood settled around his heart
in superstitious terror.  It was the wailing voice of a woman.

"Ruth, Ruth! for God's sake come and help me!"

The blood flew back hotly to Rand's cheek.  It was Mornie's voice.
By leaning over the ledge, he could distinguish something moving
along the almost precipitous face of the cliff, where an abandoned
trail, long since broken off and disrupted by the fall of a portion
of the ledge, stopped abruptly a hundred feet below him.  Rand knew
the trail, a dangerous one always: in its present condition a
single mis-step would be fatal.  Would she make that mis-step?  He
shook off a horrible temptation that seemed to be sealing his lips,
and paralyzing his limbs, and almost screamed to her, "Drop on your
face, hang on to the chaparral, and don't move!"

In another instant, with a coil of rope around his arm, he was
dashing down the almost perpendicular "slide."  When he had nearly
reached the level of the abandoned trail, he fastened one end of
the rope to a jutting splinter of granite, and began to "lay out,"
and work his way laterally along the face of the mountain.
Presently he struck the regular trail at the point from which the
woman must have diverged.

"It is Rand," she said, without lifting her head.

"It is," replied Rand coldly.  "Pass the rope under your arms, and
I'll get you back to the trail."

"Where is Ruth?" she demanded again, without moving.  She was
trembling, but with excitement rather than fear.

"I don't know," returned Rand impatiently.  "Come! the ledge is
already crumbling beneath our feet."

"Let it crumble!" said the woman passionately.

Rand surveyed her with profound disgust, then passed the rope
around her waist, and half lifted, half swung her from her feet.
In a few moments she began to mechanically help herself, and
permitted him to guide her to a place of safety.  That reached, she
sank down again.

The rising moon shone full upon her face and figure.  Through his
growing indignation Rand was still impressed and even startled with
the change the few last months had wrought upon her.  In place of
the silly, fanciful, half-hysterical hoyden whom he had known, a
matured woman, strong in passionate self-will, fascinating in a
kind of wild, savage beauty, looked up at him as if to read his
very soul.

"What are you staring at?" she said finally.  "Why don't you help
me on?"

"Where do you want to go?" said Rand quietly.

"Where!  Up there!"--she pointed savagely to the top of the
mountain,--"to HIM!  Where else should I go?" she said, with a
bitter laugh.

"I've told you he wasn't there," said Rand roughly.  "He hasn't
returned."

"I'll wait for him--do you hear?--wait for him; stay there till he
comes.  If you won't help me, I'll go alone."

She made a step forward but faltered, staggered, and was obliged to
lean against the mountain for support.  Stains of travel were on
her dress; lines of fatigue and pain, and traces of burning
passionate tears, were on her face; her black hair flowed from
beneath her gaudy bonnet; and, shamed out of his brutality, Rand
placed his strong arm round her waist, and half carrying, half
supporting her, began the ascent.  Her head dropped wearily on his
shoulder; her arm encircled his neck; her hair, as if caressingly,
lay across his breast and hands; her grateful eyes were close to
his; her breath was upon his cheek: and yet his only consciousness
was of the possibly ludicrous figure he might present to his
brother, should he meet him with Mornie Nixon in his arms.  Not a
word was spoken by either till they reached the summit.  Relieved
at finding his brother still absent, he turned not unkindly toward
the helpless figure on his arm.  "I don't see what makes Ruth so
late," he said.  "He's always here by sundown.  Perhaps--"

"Perhaps he knows I'm here," said Mornie, with a bitter laugh.

"I didn't say that," said Rand, "and I don't think it.  What I
meant was, he might have met a party that was picnicking here to-
day,--Sol. Saunders and wife, and Miss Euphemia--"

Mornie flung his arm away from her with a passionate gesture.
"THEY here!--picnicking HERE!--those people HERE!"

"Yes," said Rand, unconsciously a little ashamed.  "They came here
accidentally."

Mornie's quick passion had subsided: she had sunk again wearily and
helplessly on a rock beside him.  "I suppose," she said, with a
weak laugh--"I suppose, they talked of ME.  I suppose they told you
how, with their lies and fair promises, they tricked me out, and
set me before an audience of brutes and laughing hyenas to make
merry over.  Did they tell you of the insults that I received?--how
the sins of my parents were flung at me instead of bouquets?  Did
they tell you they could have spared me this, but they wanted the
few extra dollars taken in at the door?  No!"

"They said nothing of the kind," replied Rand surlily.

"Then you must have stopped them.  You were horrified enough to
know that I had dared to take the only honest way left me to make a
living.  I know you, Randolph Pinkney!  You'd rather see Joaquin
Muriatta, the Mexican bandit, standing before you to-night with a
revolver, than the helpless, shamed, miserable Mornie Nixon.  And
you can't help yourself, unless you throw me over the cliff.
Perhaps you'd better," she said, with a bitter laugh that faded
from her lips as she leaned, pale and breathless, against the
bowlder.

"Ruth will tell you--" began Rand.

"D--n Ruth!"

Rand turned away.

"Stop!" she said suddenly, staggering to her feet.  "I'm sick--for
all I know, dying.  God grant that it may be so!  But, if you are a
man, you will help me to your cabin--to some place where I can lie
down NOW, and be at rest.  I'm very, very tired."

She paused.  She would have fallen again; but Rand, seeing more in
her face than her voice interpreted to his sullen ears, took her
sullenly in his arms, and carried her to the cabin.  Her eyes
glanced around the bright party-colored walls, and a faint smile
came to her lips as she put aside her bonnet, adorned with a
companion pinion of the bright wings that covered it.

"Which is Ruth's bed?" she asked.

Rand pointed to it.

"Lay me there!"

Rand would have hesitated, but, with another look at her face,
complied.

She lay quite still a moment.  Presently she said, "Give me some
brandy or whiskey!"

Rand was silent and confused.

"I forgot," she added half bitterly.  "I know you have not that
commonest and cheapest of vices."

She lay quite still again.  Suddenly she raised herself partly on
her elbow, and in a strong, firm voice, said, "Rand!"

"Yes, Mornie."

"If you are wise and practical, as you assume to be, you will do
what I ask you without a question.  If you do it AT ONCE, you may
save yourself and Ruth some trouble, some mortification, and
perhaps some remorse and sorrow.  Do you hear me?"

"Yes."

"Go to the nearest doctor, and bring him here with you."

"But YOU!"

Her voice was strong, confident, steady, and patient.  "You can
safely leave me until then."

In another moment Rand was plunging down the "slide."  But it was
past midnight when he struggled over the last bowlder up the
ascent, dragging the half-exhausted medical wisdom of Brown's Ferry
on his arm.

"I've been gone long, doctor," said Rand feverishly, "and she
looked SO death-like when I left.  If we should be too late!"

The doctor stopped suddenly, lifted his head, and pricked his ears
like a hound on a peculiar scent.  "We ARE too late," he said, with
a slight professional laugh.

Indignant and horrified, Rand turned upon him.

"Listen," said the doctor, lifting his hand.

Rand listened, so intently that he heard the familiar moan of the
river below; but the great stony field lay silent before him.  And
then, borne across its bare barren bosom, like its own
articulation, came faintly the feeble wail of a new-born babe.


III.


STORM.


The doctor hurried ahead in the darkness.  Rand, who had stopped
paralyzed at the ominous sound, started forward again mechanically;
but as the cry arose again more distinctly, and the full
significance of the doctor's words came to him, he faltered,
stopped, and, with cheeks burning with shame and helpless
indignation, sank upon a stone beside the shaft, and, burying his
face in his hands, fairly gave way to a burst of boyish tears.  Yet
even then the recollection that he had not cried since, years ago,
his mother's dying hands had joined his and Ruth's childish fingers
together, stung him fiercely, and dried his tears in angry heat
upon his cheeks.

How long he sat there, he remembered not; what he thought, he
recalled not.  But the wildest and most extravagant plans and
resolves availed him nothing in the face of this forever desecrated
home, and this shameful culmination of his ambitious life on the
mountain.  Once he thought of flight; but the reflection that he
would still abandon his brother to shame, perhaps a self-contented
shame, checked him hopelessly.  Could he avert the future?  He
MUST; but how?  Yet he could only sit and stare into the darkness
in dumb abstraction.

Sitting there, his eyes fell upon a peculiar object in a crevice of
the ledge beside the shaft.  It was the tin pail containing his
dinner, which, according to their custom, it was the duty of the
brother who staid above ground to prepare and place for the brother
who worked below.  Ruth must, consequently, have put it there
before he left that morning, and Rand had overlooked it while
sharing the repast of the strangers at noon.  At the sight of this
dumb witness of their mutual cares and labors, Rand sighed, half in
brotherly sorrow, half in a selfish sense of injury done him.

He took up the pail mechanically, removed its cover, and--started;
for on top of the carefully bestowed provisions lay a little note,
addressed to him in Ruth's peculiar scrawl.

He opened it with feverish hands, held it in the light of the
peaceful moon, and read as follows:


DEAR, DEAR BROTHER,--When you read this, I shall be far away.  I go
because I shall not stay to disgrace you, and because the girl that
I brought trouble upon has gone away too, to hide her disgrace and
mine; and where she goes, Rand, I ought to follow her, and, please
God, I will!  I am not as wise or as good as you are, but it seems
the best I can do; and God bless you, dear old Randy, boy!  Times
and times again I've wanted to tell you all, and reckoned to do so;
but whether you was sitting before me in the cabin, or working
beside me in the drift, I couldn't get to look upon your honest
face, dear brother, and say what things I'd been keeping from you
so long.  I'll stay away until I've done what I ought to do, and if
you can say, "Come, Ruth," I will come; but, until you can say it,
the mountain is yours, Randy, boy, the mine is yours, the cabin is
yours, ALL is yours.  Rub out the old chalk-marks, Rand, as I rub
them out here in my--[A few words here were blurred and indistinct,
as if the moon had suddenly become dim-eyed too].  God bless you,
brother!

P.S.--You know I mean Mornie all the time.  It's she I'm going to
seek; but don't you think so bad of her as you do, I am so much
worse than she.  I wanted to tell you that all along, but I didn't
dare.  She's run away from the Ferry half crazy; said she was going
to Sacramento, and I am going there to find her alive or dead.
Forgive me, brother!  Don't throw this down right away; hold it in
your hand a moment, Randy, boy, and try hard to think it's my hand
in yours.  And so good-by, and God bless you, old Randy!

From your loving brother,

RUTH.


A deep sense of relief overpowered every other feeling in Rand's
breast.  It was clear that Ruth had not yet discovered the truth of
Mornie's flight: he was on his way to Sacramento, and before he
could return, Mornie could be removed.  Once despatched in some
other direction, with Ruth once more returned and under his
brother's guidance, the separation could be made easy and final.
There was evidently no marriage as yet; and now, the fear of an
immediate meeting over, there should be none.  For Rand had already
feared this; had recalled the few infelicitous relations, legal and
illegal, which were common to the adjoining camp,--the flagrantly
miserable life of the husband of a San Francisco anonyma who lived
in style at the Ferry, the shameful carousals and more shameful
quarrels of the Frenchman and Mexican woman who "kept house" at
"the Crossing," the awful spectacle of the three half-bred Indian
children who played before the cabin of a fellow miner and
townsman.  Thank Heaven, the Eagle's Nest on Table Mountain should
never be pointed at from the valley as another--

A heavy hand upon his arm brought him trembling to his feet.  He
turned, and met the half-anxious, half-contemptuous glance of the
doctor.

"I'm sorry to disturb you," he said dryly; "but it's about time you
or somebody else put in an appearance at that cabin.  Luckily for
HER, she's one woman in a thousand; has had her wits about her
better than some folks I know, and has left me little to do but
make her comfortable.  But she's gone through too much,--fought her
little fight too gallantly,--is altogether too much of a trump to
be played off upon now.  So rise up out of that, young man, pick up
your scattered faculties, and fetch a woman--some sensible creature
of her own sex--to look after her; for, without wishing to be
personal, I'm d----d if I trust her to the likes of you."

There was no mistaking Dr. Duchesne' s voice and manner; and Rand
was affected by it, as most people were throughout the valley of
the Stanislaus.  But he turned upon him his frank and boyish face,
and said simply, "But I don't know any woman, or where to get one."

The doctor looked at him again.  "Well, I'll find you some one," he
said, softening.

"Thank you!" said Rand.

The doctor was disappearing.  With an effort Rand recalled him.
"One moment, doctor."  He hesitated, and his cheeks were glowing.
"You'll please say nothing about this down there"--he pointed to
the valley--"for a time.  And you'll say to the woman you send--"

Dr. Duchesne, whose resolute lips were sealed upon the secrets of
half Tuolumne County, interrupted him scornfully.  "I cannot answer
for the woman--you must talk to her yourself.  As for me, generally
I keep my professional visits to myself; but--" he laid his hand on
Rand's arm--"if I find out you're putting on any airs to that poor
creature, if, on my next visit, her lips or her pulse tell me you
haven't been acting on the square to her, I'll drop a hint to
drunken old Nixon where his daughter is hidden.  I reckon she could
stand his brutality better than yours.  Good-night!"

In another moment he was gone.  Rand, who had held back his quick
tongue, feeling himself in the power of this man, once more alone,
sank on a rock, and buried his face in his hands.  Recalling
himself in a moment, he rose, wiped his hot eyelids, and staggered
toward the cabin.  It was quite still now.  He paused on the
topmost step, and listened: there was no sound from the ledge, or
the Eagle's Nest that clung to it.  Half timidly he descended the
winding steps, and paused before the door of the cabin.  "Mornie,"
he said, in a dry, metallic voice, whose only indication of the
presence of sickness was in the lowness of its pitch,--"Mornie!"
There was no reply.  "Mornie," he repeated impatiently, "it's me,--
Rand.  If you want anything, you're to call me.  I am just
outside."  Still no answer came from the silent cabin.  He pushed
open the door gently, hesitated, and stepped over the threshold.

A change in the interior of the cabin within the last few hours
showed a new presence.  The guns, shovels, picks, and blankets had
disappeared; the two chairs were drawn against the wall, the table
placed by the bedside.  The swinging-lantern was shaded towards the
bed,--the object of Rand's attention.  On that bed, his brother's
bed, lay a helpless woman, pale from the long black hair that
matted her damp forehead, and clung to her hollow cheeks.  Her face
was turned to the wall, so that the softened light fell upon her
profile, which to Rand at that moment seemed even noble and strong.
But the next moment his eye fell upon the shoulder and arm that lay
nearest to him, and the little bundle, swathed in flannel, that it
clasped to her breast.  His brow grew dark as he gazed.  The
sleeping woman moved.  Perhaps it was an instinctive consciousness
of his presence; perhaps it was only the current of cold air
from the opened door: but she shuddered slightly, and, still
unconscious, drew the child as if away from HIM, and nearer to her
breast.  The shamed blood rushed to Rand's face; and saying half
aloud, "I'm not going to take your precious babe away from you," he
turned in half-boyish pettishness away.  Nevertheless he came back
again shortly to the bedside, and gazed upon them both.  She
certainly did look altogether more ladylike, and less aggressive,
lying there so still: sickness, that cheap refining process of some
natures, was not unbecoming to her.  But this bundle!  A boyish
curiosity, stronger than even his strong objection to the whole
episode, was steadily impelling him to lift the blanket from it.
"I suppose she'd waken if I did," said Rand; "but I'd like to know
what right the doctor had to wrap it up in my best flannel shirt."
This fresh grievance, the fruit of his curiosity, sent him away
again to meditate on the ledge.  After a few moments he returned
again, opened the cupboard at the foot of the bed softly, took
thence a piece of chalk, and scrawled in large letters upon the
door of the cupboard, "If you want anything, sing out: I'm just
outside.--RAND."  This done, he took a blanket and bear-skin from
the corner, and walked to the door.  But here he paused, looked
back at the inscription (evidently not satisfied with it),
returned, took up the chalk, added a line, but rubbed it out again,
repeated this operation a few times until he produced the polite
postscript,--"Hope you'll be better soon."  Then he retreated to
the ledge, spread the bear-skin beside the door, and, rolling
himself in a blanket, lit his pipe for his night-long vigil.  But
Rand, although a martyr, a philosopher, and a moralist, was young.
In less than ten minutes the pipe dropped from his lips, and he was
asleep.


He awoke with a strange sense of heat and suffocation, and with
difficulty shook off his covering.  Rubbing his eyes, he discovered
that an extra blanket had in some mysterious way been added in the
night; and beneath his head was a pillow he had no recollection of
placing there when he went to sleep.  By degrees the events of the
past night forced themselves upon his benumbed faculties, and he
sat up.  The sun was riding high; the door of the cabin was open.
Stretching himself, he staggered to his feet, and looked in through
the yawning crack at the hinges.  He rubbed his eyes again.  Was he
still asleep, and followed by a dream of yesterday?  For there,
even in the very attitude he remembered to have seen her sitting at
her luncheon on the previous day, with her knitting on her lap, sat
Mrs. Sol Saunders!  What did it mean? or had she really been
sitting there ever since, and all the events that followed only a
dream?

A hand was laid upon his arm; and, turning, he saw the murky black
eyes and Indian-inked beard of Sol beside him.  That gentleman put
his finger on his lips with a theatrical gesture, and then, slowly
retreating in the well-known manner of the buried Majesty of
Denmark, waved him, like another Hamlet, to a remoter part of the
ledge.  This reached, he grasped Rand warmly by the hand, shook it
heartily, and said, "It's all right, my boy; all right!"

"But--" began Rand.  The hot blood flowed to his cheeks: he
stammered, and stopped short.

"It's all right, I say!  Don't you mind!  We'll pull you through."

"But, Mrs. Sol! what does she--"

"Rosey has taken the matter in hand, sir; and when that woman takes
a matter in hand, whether it's a baby or a rehearsal, sir, she
makes it buzz."

"But how did she know?" stammered Rand.

"How?  Well, sir, the scene opened something like this," said Sol
professionally.  "Curtain rises on me and Mrs. Sol.  Domestic
interior: practicable chairs, table, books, newspapers.  Enter Dr.
Duchesne,--eccentric character part, very popular with the boys,--
tells off-hand affecting story of strange woman--one 'more
unfortunate'--having baby in Eagle's Nest, lonely place on 'peaks
of Snowdon,' midnight; eagles screaming, you know, and far down
unfathomable depths; only attendant, cold-blooded ruffian,
evidently father of child, with sinister designs on child and
mother."

"He didn't say THAT!" said Rand, with an agonized smile.

"Order!  Sit down in front!" continued Sol easily.  "Mrs. Sol--
highly interested, a mother herself--demands name of place.  'Table
Mountain.'  No; it cannot be--it is!  Excitement.  Mystery!  Rosey
rises to occasion--comes to front: 'Some one must go; I--I--will go
myself!'  Myself, coming to center: 'Not alone, dearest; I--I will
accompany you!'  A shriek at right upper center.  Enter the
'Marysville Pet.'  'I have heard all.  'Tis a base calumny.  It
cannot be HE--Randolph!  Never!'--'Dare you accompany us will!'
Tableau.

"Is Miss Euphemia--here?" gasped Rand, practical even in his
embarrassment.

"Or-r-rder!  Scene second.  Summit of mountain--moonlight Peaks of
Snowdon in distance.  Right--lonely cabin.  Enter slowly up defile,
Sol, Mrs. Sol, the 'Pet.'  Advance slowly to cabin.  Suppressed
shriek from the 'Pet,' who rushes to recumbent figure--Left--
discovered lying beside cabin-door.  ''Tis he!  Hist! he sleeps!'
Throws blanket over him, and retires up stage--so."  Here Sol
achieved a vile imitation of the "Pet's" most enchanting stage-
manner.  "Mrs. Sol advances--Center--throws open door.  Shriek!
''Tis Mornie, the lost found!'  The 'Pet' advances: 'And the father
is?'--'Not Rand!'  The 'Pet' kneeling: 'Just Heaven, I thank thee!'
No, it is--'"

"Hush!" said Rand appealingly, looking toward the cabin.

"Hush it is!" said the actor good-naturedly.  "But it's all right,
Mr. Rand: we'll pull you through."

Later in the morning, Rand learned that Mornie's ill-fated
connection with the Star Variety Troupe had been a source of
anxiety to Mrs. Sol, and she had reproached herself for the girl's
infelicitous debut.

"But, Lord bless you, Mr. Rand!" said Sol, "it was all in the way
of business.  She came to us--was fresh and new.  Her chance,
looking at it professionally, was as good as any amateur's; but
what with her relations here, and her bein' known, she didn't take.
We lost money on her!  It's natural she should feel a little ugly.
We all do when we get sorter kicked back onto ourselves, and find
we can't stand alone.  Why, you wouldn't believe it," he continued,
with a moist twinkle of his black eyes; "but the night I lost my
little Rosey, of diphtheria in Gold Hill, the child was down on the
bills for a comic song; and I had to drag Mrs. Sol on, cut up as
she was, and filled up with that much of Old Bourbon to keep her
nerves stiff, so she could do an old gag with me to gain time, and
make up the 'variety.'  Why, sir, when I came to the front, I was
ugly!  And when one of the boys in the front row sang out, 'Don't
expose that poor child to the night air, Sol,'--meaning Mrs. Sol,--
I acted ugly.  No, sir, it's human nature; and it was quite natural
that Mornie, when she caught sight o' Mrs. Sol's face last night,
should rise up and cuss us both.  Lord, if she'd only acted like
that!  But the old lady got her quiet at last; and, as I said
before, it's all right, and we'll pull her through.  But don't YOU
thank us: it's a little matter betwixt us and Mornie.  We've got
everything fixed, so that Mrs. Sol can stay right along.  We'll
pull Mornie through, and get her away from this, and her baby too,
as soon as we can.  You won't get mad if I tell you something?"
said Sol, with a half-apologetic laugh.  "Mrs. Sol was rather down
on you the other day, hated you on sight, and preferred your
brother to you; but when she found he'd run off and left YOU, you,--
don't mind my sayin',--a 'mere boy,' to take what oughter be HIS
place, why, she just wheeled round agin' him.  I suppose he got
flustered, and couldn't face the music.  Never left a word of
explanation?  Well, it wasn't exactly square, though I tell the old
woman it's human nature.  He might have dropped a hint where he was
goin'.  Well, there, I won't say a word more agin' him.  I know how
you feel.  Hush it is."

It was the firm conviction of the simple-minded Sol that no one
knew the various natural indications of human passion better than
himself.  Perhaps it was one of the fallacies of his profession
that the expression of all human passion was limited to certain
conventional signs and sounds.  Consequently, when Rand colored
violently, became confused, stammered, and at last turned hastily
away, the good-hearted fellow instantly recognized the unfailing
evidence of modesty and innocence embarrassed by recognition.  As
for Rand, I fear his shame was only momentary.  Confirmed in the
belief of his ulterior wisdom and virtue, his first embarrassment
over, he was not displeased with this halfway tribute, and really
believed that the time would come when Mr. Sol should eventually
praise his sagacity and reservation, and acknowledge that he was
something more than a mere boy.  He, nevertheless, shrank from
meeting Mornie that morning, and was glad that the presence of Mrs.
Sol relieved him from that duty.

The day passed uneventfully.  Rand busied himself in his usual
avocations, and constructed a temporary shelter for himself and Sol
beside the shaft, besides rudely shaping a few necessary articles
of furniture for Mrs. Sol.

"It will be a little spell yet afore Mornie's able to be moved,"
suggested Sol, "and you might as well be comfortable."

Rand sighed at this prospect, yet presently forgot himself in the
good humor of his companion, whose admiration for himself he began
to patronizingly admit.  There was no sense of degradation in
accepting the friendship of this man who had traveled so far, seen
so much, and yet, as a practical man of the world, Rand felt was so
inferior to himself.  The absence of Miss Euphemia, who had early
left the mountain, was a source of odd, half-definite relief.
Indeed, when he closed his eyes to rest that night, it was with a
sense that the reality of his situation was not as bad as he had
feared.  Once only, the figure of his brother--haggard, weary, and
footsore, on his hopeless quest, wandering in lonely trails and
lonelier settlements--came across his fancy; but with it came the
greater fear of his return, and the pathetic figure was banished.
"And, besides, he's in Sacramento by this time, and like as not
forgotten us all," he muttered; and, twining this poppy and
mandragora around his pillow, he fell asleep.

His spirits had quite returned the next morning, and once or twice
he found himself singing while at work in the shaft.  The fear that
Ruth might return to the mountain before he could get rid of
Mornie, and the slight anxiety that had grown upon him to know
something of his brother's movements, and to be able to govern them
as he wished, caused him to hit upon the plan of constructing an
ingenious advertisement to be published in the San Francisco
journals, wherein the missing Ruth should be advised that news of
his quest should be communicated to him by "a friend," through the
same medium, after an interval of two weeks.  Full of this amiable
intention, he returned to the surface to dinner.  Here, to his
momentary confusion, he met Miss Euphemia, who, in absence of Sol,
was assisting Mrs. Sol in the details of the household.

If the honest frankness with which that young lady greeted him was
not enough to relieve his embarrassment, he would have forgotten
it in the utterly new and changed aspect she presented.  Her
extravagant walking-costume of the previous day was replaced by
some bright calico, a little white apron, and a broad-brimmed
straw-hat, which seemed to Rand, in some odd fashion, to restore
her original girlish simplicity.  The change was certainly not
unbecoming to her.  If her waist was not as tightly pinched, a la
mode, there still was an honest, youthful plumpness about it; her
step was freer for the absence of her high-heel boots; and even the
hand she extended to Rand, if not quite so small as in her tight
gloves, and a little brown from exposure, was magnetic in its
strong, kindly grasp.  There was perhaps a slight suggestion of the
practical Mr. Sol in her wholesome presence; and Rand could not
help wondering if Mrs. Sol had ever been a Gold Hill "Pet" before
her marriage with Mr. Sol.  The young girl noticed his curious
glance.

"You never saw me in my rehearsal dress before," she said, with a
laugh.  "But I'm not 'company' to-day, and didn't put on my best
harness to knock round in.  I suppose I look dreadful."

"I don't think you look bad," said Rand simply.

"Thank you," said Euphemia, with a laugh and a courtesy.  "But this
isn't getting the dinner."

As part of that operation evidently was the taking-off of her hat,
the putting-up of some thick blond locks that had escaped, and the
rolling-up of her sleeves over a pair of strong, rounded arms, Rand
lingered near her.  All trace of the "Pet's" previous professional
coquetry was gone,--perhaps it was only replaced by a more natural
one; but as she looked up, and caught sight of Rand's interested
face, she laughed again, and colored a little.  Slight as was the
blush, it was sufficient to kindle a sympathetic fire in Rand's own
cheeks, which was so utterly unexpected to him that he turned on
his heel in confusion.  "I reckon she thinks I'm soft and silly,
like Ruth," he soliloquized, and, determining not to look at her
again, betook himself to a distant and contemplative pipe.  In vain
did Miss Euphemia address herself to the ostentatious getting of
the dinner in full view of him; in vain did she bring the coffee-
pot away from the fire, and nearer Rand, with the apparent
intention of examining its contents in a better light; in vain,
while wiping a plate, did she, absorbed in the distant prospect,
walk to the verge of the mountain, and become statuesque and
forgetful.  The sulky young gentleman took no outward notice of
her.

Mrs. Sol's attendance upon Mornie prevented her leaving the cabin,
and Rand and Miss Euphemia dined in the open air alone.  The
ridiculousness of keeping up a formal attitude to his solitary
companion caused Rand to relax; but, to his astonishment, the "Pet"
seemed to have become correspondingly distant and formal.  After a
few moments of discomfort, Rand, who had eaten little, arose, and
"believed he would go back to work."

"Ah, yes!" said the "Pet," with an indifferent air, "I suppose you
must.  Well, good-by, Mr. Pinkney."

Rand turned.  "YOU are not going?" he asked, in some uneasiness.

"I'VE got some work to do too," returned Miss Euphemia a little
curtly.

"But," said the practical Rand, "I thought you allowed that you
were fixed to stay until to-morrow?"

But here Miss Euphemia, with rising color and slight acerbity of
voice, was not aware that she was "fixed to stay" anywhere, least
of all when she was in the way.  More than that, she MUST say--
although perhaps it made no difference, and she ought not to say
it--that she was not in the habit of intruding upon gentlemen who
plainly gave her to understand that her company was not desirable.
She did not know why she said this--of course it could make no
difference to anybody who didn't, of course, care--but she only
wanted to say that she only came here because her dear friend, her
adopted mother,--and a better woman never breathed,--had come, and
had asked her to stay.  Of course, Mrs. Sol was an intruder
herself--Mr. Sol was an intruder--they were all intruders: she only
wondered that Mr. Pinkney had borne with them so long.  She knew it
was an awful thing to be here, taking care of a poor--poor,
helpless woman; but perhaps Mr. Rand's BROTHER might forgive them,
if he couldn't.  But no matter, she would go--Mr. Sol would go--ALL
would go; and then, perhaps, Mr, Rand--

She stopped breathless; she stopped with the corner of her apron
against her tearful hazel eyes; she stopped with--what was more
remarkable than all--Rand's arm actually around her waist, and his
astonished, alarmed face within a few inches of her own.

"Why, Miss Euphemia, Phemie, my dear girl!  I never meant anything
like THAT," said Rand earnestly.  "I really didn't now!  Come now!"

"You never once spoke to me when I sat down," said Miss Euphemia,
feebly endeavoring to withdraw from Rand's grasp.

"I really didn't!  Oh, come now, look here!  I didn't!  Don't!
There's a dear--THERE!"

This last conclusive exposition was a kiss.  Miss Euphemia was not
quick enough to release herself from his arms.  He anticipated that
act a full half-second, and had dropped his own, pale and breathless.

The girl recovered herself first.  "There, I declare, I'm forgetting
Mrs. Sol's coffee!" she exclaimed hastily, and, snatching up the
coffee-pot, disappeared.  When she returned, Rand was gone.  Miss
Euphemia busied herself demurely in clearing up the dishes, with the
tail of her eye sweeping the horizon of the summit level around her.
But no Rand appeared.  Presently she began to laugh quietly to
herself.  This occurred several times during her occupation, which
was somewhat prolonged.  The result of this meditative hilarity was
summed up in a somewhat grave and thoughtful deduction as she walked
slowly back to the cabin: "I do believe I'm the first woman that
that boy ever kissed."

Miss Euphemia staid that day and the next, and Rand forgot his
embarrassment.  By what means I know not, Miss Euphemia managed to
restore Rand's confidence in himself and in her, and in a little
ramble on the mountain-side got him to relate, albeit somewhat
reluctantly, the particulars of his rescue of Mornie from her
dangerous position on the broken trail.

"And, if you hadn't got there as soon as you did, she'd have
fallen?" asked the "Pet."

"I reckon," returned Rand gloomily: "she was sorter dazed and
crazed like."

"And you saved her life?"

"I suppose so, if you put it that way," said Rand sulkily.

"But how did you get her up the mountain again?"

"Oh! I got her up," returned Rand moodily.

"But how?  Really, Mr. Rand, you don't know how interesting this
is.  It's as good as a play," said the "Pet," with a little excited
laugh.

"Oh, I carried her up!"

"In your arms?"

"Y-e-e-s."

Miss Euphemia paused, and bit off the stalk of a flower, made a wry
face, and threw it away from her in disgust.

Then she dug a few tiny holes in the earth with her parasol, and
buried bits of the flower-stalk in them, as if they had been tender
memories.  "I suppose you knew Mornie very well?" she asked.

"I used to run across her in the woods," responded Rand shortly, "a
year ago.  I didn't know her so well then as--"  He stopped.

"As what?  As NOW?" asked the "Pet" abruptly.  Rand, who was
coloring over his narrow escape from a topic which a delicate
kindness of Sol had excluded from their intercourse on the
mountain, stammered, "as YOU do, I meant."

The "Pet" tossed her head a little.  "Oh! I don't know her at all--
except through Sol."

Rand stared hard at this.  The "Pet," who was looking at him
intently, said, "Show me the place where you saw Mornie clinging
that night."

"It's dangerous," suggested Rand.

"You mean I'd be afraid!  Try me!  I don't believe she was SO
dreadfully frightened!"

"Why?" asked Rand, in astonishment.

"Oh--because--"

Rand sat down in vague wonderment.

"Show it to me," continued the "Pet," "or--I'll find it ALONE!"

Thus challenged, he rose, and, after a few moments' climbing, stood
with her upon the trail.  "You see that thorn-bush where the rock
has fallen away.  It was just there.  It is not safe to go farther.
No, really!  Miss Euphemia!  Please don't!  It's almost certain
death!"

But the giddy girl had darted past him, and, face to the wall of
the cliff, was creeping along the dangerous path.  Rand followed
mechanically.  Once or twice the trail crumbled beneath her feet;
but she clung to a projecting root of chaparral, and laughed.  She
had almost reached her elected goal, when, slipping, the
treacherous chaparral she clung to yielded in her grasp, and Rand,
with a cry, sprung forward.

But the next instant she quickly transferred her hold to a cleft in
the cliff, and was safe.  Not so her companion.  The soil beneath
him, loosened by the impulse of his spring, slipped away: he was
falling with it, when she caught him sharply with her disengaged
hand, and together they scrambled to a more secure footing.

"I could have reached it alone," said the "Pet," "if you'd left me
alone."

"Thank Heaven, we're saved!" said Rand gravely.

"AND WITHOUT A ROPE," said Miss Euphemia significantly.

Rand did not understand her.  But, as they slowly returned to the
summit, he stammered out the always difficult thanks of a man who
has been physically helped by one of the weaker sex.  Miss Euphemia
was quick to see her error.

"I might have made you lose your footing by catching at you," she
said meekly.  "But I was so frightened for you, and could not help
it."

The superior animal, thoroughly bamboozled, thereupon complimented
her on her dexterity.

"Oh, that's nothing!" she said, with a sigh.  "I used to do the
flying-trapeze business with papa when I was a child, and I've not
forgotten it."  With this and other confidences of her early life,
in which Rand betrayed considerable interest, they beguiled the
tedious ascent.  "I ought to have made you carry me up," said the
lady, with a little laugh, when they reached the summit; "but you
haven't known me as long as you have Mornie, have you?"  With this
mysterious speech she bade Rand "good-night," and hurried off to
the cabin.

And so a week passed by,--the week so dreaded by Rand, yet passed
so pleasantly, that at times it seemed as if that dread were only a
trick of his fancy, or as if the circumstances that surrounded him
were different from what he believed them to be.  On the seventh
day the doctor had staid longer than usual; and Rand, who had been
sitting with Euphemia on the ledge by the shaft, watching the
sunset, had barely time to withdraw his hand from hers, as Mrs.
Sol, a trifle pale and wearied-looking, approached him.

"I don't like to trouble you," she said,--indeed, they had seldom
troubled him with the details of Mornie's convalescence, or even
her needs and requirements,--"but the doctor is alarmed about
Mornie, and she has asked to see you.  I think you'd better go in
and speak to her.  You know," continued Mrs. Sol delicately, "you
haven't been in there since the night she was taken sick, and maybe
a new face might do her good."

The guilty blood flew to Rand's face as he stammered, "I thought
I'd be in the way.  I didn't believe she cared much to see me.  Is
she worse?"

"The doctor is looking very anxious," said Mrs. Sol simply.

The blood returned from Rand's face, and settled around his heart.
He turned very pale.  He had consoled himself always for his
complicity in Ruth's absence, that he was taking good care of
Mornie, or--what is considered by most selfish natures an
equivalent--permitting or encouraging some one else to "take good
care of her;" but here was a contingency utterly unforeseen.  It
did not occur to him that this "taking good care" of her could
result in anything but a perfect solution of her troubles, or that
there could be any future to her condition but one of recovery.
But what if she should die?  A sudden and helpless sense of his
responsibility to Ruth, to HER, brought him trembling to his feet.

He hurried to the cabin, where Mrs. Sol left him with a word of
caution: "You'll find her changed and quiet,--very quiet.  If I was
you, I wouldn't say anything to bring back her old self."

The change which Rand saw was so great, the face that was turned to
him so quiet, that, with a new fear upon him, he would have
preferred the savage eyes and reckless mien of the old Mornie whom
he hated.  With his habitual impulsiveness he tried to say
something that should express that fact not unkindly, but faltered,
and awkwardly sank into the chair by her bedside.

"I don't wonder you stare at me now," she said in a far-off voice.
"It seems to you strange to see me lying here so quiet.  You are
thinking how wild I was when I came here that night.  I must have
been crazy, I think.  I dreamed that I said dreadful things to you;
but you must forgive me, and not mind it.  I was crazy then."  She
stopped, and folded the blanket between her thin fingers.  "I
didn't ask you to come here to tell you that, or to remind you of
it; but--but when I was crazy, I said so many worse, dreadful
things of HIM; and you--YOU will be left behind to tell him of it."

Rand was vaguely murmuring something to the effect that "he knew
she didn't mean anything," that "she musn't think of it again,"
that "he'd forgotten all about it," when she stopped him with a
tired gesture.

"Perhaps I was wrong to think, that, after I am gone, you would
care to tell him anything.  Perhaps I'm wrong to think of it at
all, or to care what he will think of me, except for the sake of
the child--his child, Rand--that I must leave behind me.  He will
know that IT never abused him.  No, God bless its sweet heart! IT
never was wild and wicked and hateful, like its cruel, crazy
mother.  And he will love it; and you, perhaps, will love it too--
just a little, Rand!  Look at it!"  She tried to raise the helpless
bundle beside her in her arms, but failed.  "You must lean over,"
she said faintly to Rand.  "It looks like him, doesn't it?"

Rand, with wondering, embarrassed eyes, tried to see some
resemblance, in the little blue-red oval, to the sad, wistful face
of his brother, which even then was haunting him from some
mysterious distance.  He kissed the child's forehead, but even then
so vaguely and perfunctorily, that the mother sighed, and drew it
closer to her breast.

"The doctor says," she continued in a calmer voice, "that I'm not
doing as well as I ought to.  I don't think," she faltered, with
something of her old bitter laugh, "that I'm ever doing as well as
I ought to, and perhaps it's not strange now that I don't.  And he
says that, in case anything happens to me, I ought to look ahead.
I have looked ahead.  It's a dark look ahead, Rand--a horror of
blackness, without kind faces, without the baby, without--without
HIM!"

She turned her face away, and laid it on the bundle by her side.
It was so quiet in the cabin, that, through the open door beyond,
the faint, rhythmical moan of the pines below was distinctly heard.

"I know it's foolish; but that is what 'looking ahead' always meant
to me," she said, with a sigh.  "But, since the doctor has been
gone, I've talked to Mrs. Sol, and find it's for the best.  And I
look ahead, and see more clearly.  I look ahead, and see my
disgrace removed far away from HIM and you.  I look ahead, and see
you and HE living together happily, as you did before I came
between you.  I look ahead, and see my past life forgotten, my
faults forgiven; and I think I see you both loving my baby, and
perhaps loving me a little for its sake.  Thank you, Rand, thank
you!"

For Rand's hand had caught hers beside the pillow, and he was
standing over her, whiter than she.  Something in the pressure of
his hand emboldened her to go on, and even lent a certain strength
to her voice.

"When it comes to THAT, Rand, you'll not let these people take the
baby away.  You'll keep it HERE with you until HE comes.  And
something tells me that he will come when I am gone.  You'll keep
it here in the pure air and sunlight of the mountain, and out of
those wicked depths below; and when I am gone, and they are gone,
and only you and Ruth and baby are here, maybe you'll think that it
came to you in a cloud on the mountain,--a cloud that lingered only
long enough to drop its burden, and faded, leaving the sunlight and
dew behind.  What is it, Rand?  What are you looking at?"

"I was thinking," said Rand in a strange altered voice, "that I
must trouble you to let me take down those duds and furbelows that
hang on the wall, so that I can get at some traps of mine behind
them."  He took some articles from the wall, replaced the dresses
of Mrs. Sol, and answered Mornie's look of inquiry.

"I was only getting at my purse and my revolver," he said, showing
them.  "I've got to get some stores at the Ferry by daylight."

Mornie sighed.  "I'm giving you great trouble, Rand, I know; but it
won't be for long."

He muttered something, took her hand again, and bade her "good-
night."  When he reached the door, he looked back.  The light was
shining full upon her face as she lay there, with her babe on her
breast, bravely "looking ahead."


IV.


THE CLOUDS PASS.


It was early morning at the Ferry.  The "up coach" had passed, with
lights unextinguished, and the "outsides" still asleep.  The
ferryman had gone up to the Ferry Mansion House, swinging his
lantern, and had found the sleepy-looking "all night" bar-keeper on
the point of withdrawing for the day on a mattress under the bar.
An Indian half-breed, porter of the Mansion House, was washing out
the stains of recent nocturnal dissipation from the bar-room and
veranda; a few birds were twittering on the cotton-woods beside the
river; a bolder few had alighted upon the veranda, and were trying
to reconcile the existence of so much lemon-peel and cigar-stumps
with their ideas of a beneficent Creator.  A faint earthly
freshness and perfume rose along the river banks.  Deep shadow
still lay upon the opposite shore; but in the distance, four miles
away, Morning along the level crest of Table Mountain walked with
rosy tread.

The sleepy bar-keeper was that morning doomed to disappointment;
for scarcely had the coach passed, when steps were heard upon the
veranda, and a weary, dusty traveller threw his blanket and
knapsack to the porter, and then dropped into a vacant arm-chair,
with his eyes fixed on the distant crest of Table Mountain.  He
remained motionless for some time, until the bar-keeper, who had
already concocted the conventional welcome of the Mansion House,
appeared with it in a glass, put it upon the table, glanced at the
stranger, and then, thoroughly awake, cried out,--

"Ruth Pinkney--or I'm a Chinaman!"

The stranger lifted his eyes wearily.  Hollow circles were around
their orbits; haggard lines were in his checks.  But it was Ruth.

He took the glass, and drained it at a single draught.  "Yes," he
said absently, "Ruth Pinkney," and fixed his eyes again on the
distant rosy crest.

"On your way up home?" suggested the bar-keeper, following the
direction of Ruth's eyes.

"Perhaps."

"Been upon a pasear, hain't yer?  Been havin' a little tear round
Sacramento,--seein' the sights?"

Ruth smiled bitterly.  "Yes."

The bar-keeper lingered, ostentatiously wiping a glass.  But Ruth
again became abstracted in the mountain, and the barkeeper turned
away.

How pure and clear that summit looked to him! how restful and
steadfast with serenity and calm! how unlike his own feverish,
dusty, travel-worn self!  A week had elapsed since he had last
looked upon it,--a week of disappointment, of anxious fears, of
doubts, of wild imaginings, of utter helplessness.  In his hopeless
quest of the missing Mornie, he had, in fancy, seen this serene
eminence haunting his remorseful, passion-stricken soul.  And now,
without a clew to guide him to her unknown hiding-place, he was
back again, to face the brother whom he had deceived, with only the
confession of his own weakness.  Hard as it was to lose forever the
fierce, reproachful glances of the woman he loved, it was still
harder, to a man of Ruth's temperament, to look again upon the face
of the brother he feared.  A hand laid upon his shoulder startled
him.  It was the bar-keeper.

"If it's a fair question, Ruth Pinkney, I'd like to ask ye how long
ye kalkilate to hang around the Ferry to-day."

"Why?" demanded Ruth haughtily.

"Because, whatever you've been and done, I want ye to have a square
show.  Ole Nixon has been cavoortin' round yer the last two days,
swearin' to kill you on sight for runnin' off with his darter.
Sabe?  Now, let me ax ye two questions.  FIRST, Are you heeled?"

Ruth responded to this dialectical inquiry affirmatively by putting
his hand on his revolver.

"Good!  Now, SECOND, Have you got the gal along here with you?"

"No," responded Ruth in a hollow voice.

"That's better yet," said the man, without heeding the tone of the
reply.  "A woman--and especially THE woman in a row of this kind--
handicaps a man awful."  He paused, and took up the empty glass.
"Look yer, Ruth Pinkney, I'm a square man, and I'll be square with
you.  So I'll just tell you you've got the demdest odds agin' ye.
Pr'aps ye know it, and don't keer.  Well, the boys around yer are
all sidin' with the old man Nixon.  It's the first time the old rip
ever had a hand in his favor: so the boys will see fair play for
Nixon, and agin' YOU.  But I reckon you don't mind him!"

"So little, I shall never pull trigger on him," said Ruth gravely.

The bar-keeper stared, and rubbed his chin thoughtfully.  "Well,
thar's that Kanaka Joe, who used to be sorter sweet on Mornie,--
he's an ugly devil,--he's helpin' the old man."

The sad look faded from Ruth's eyes suddenly.  A certain wild
Berserker rage--a taint of the blood, inherited from heaven knows
what Old-World ancestry, which had made the twin-brothers'
Southwestern eccentricities respected in the settlement--glowed in
its place.  The barkeeper noted it, and augured a lively future for
the day's festivities.  But it faded again; and Ruth, as he rose,
turned hesitatingly towards him.

"Have you seen my brother Rand lately?"

"Nary."

"He hasn't been here, or about the Ferry?"

"Nary time."

"You haven't heard," said Ruth, with a faint attempt at a smile,
"if he's been around here asking after me,--sorter looking me up,
you know?"

"Not much," returned the bar-keeper deliberately.  "Ez far ez I
know Rand,--that ar brother o' yours,--he's one of yer high-toned
chaps ez doesn't drink, thinks bar-rooms is pizen, and ain't the
sort to come round yer, and sling yarns with me."

Ruth rose; but the hand that he placed upon the table, albeit a
powerful one, trembled so that it was with difficulty he resumed
his knapsack.  When he did so, his bent figure, stooping shoulders,
and haggard face, made him appear another man from the one who had
sat down.  There was a slight touch of apologetic deference and
humility in his manner as he paid his reckoning, and slowly and
hesitatingly began to descend the steps.

The bar-keeper looked after him thoughtfully.  "Well, dog my skin!"
he ejaculated to himself, "ef I hadn't seen that man--that same
Ruth Pinkney--straddle a friend's body in this yer very room, and
dare a whole crowd to come on, I'd swar that he hadn't any grit in
him.  Thar's something up!"

But here Ruth reached the last step, and turned again.

"If you see old man Nixon, say I'm in town; if you see that ----
---- ----" (I regret to say that I cannot repeat his exact, and
brief characterization of the present condition and natal antecedents
of Kanaka Joe), "say I'm looking out for him," and was gone.

He wandered down the road, towards the one long, straggling street
of the settlement.  The few people who met him at that early hour
greeted him with a kind of constrained civility; certain cautious
souls hurried by without seeing him; all turned and looked after
him; and a few followed him at a respectful distance.  A somewhat
notorious practical joker and recognized wag at the Ferry
apparently awaited his coming with something of invitation and
expectation, but, catching sight of Ruth's haggard face and blazing
eyes, became instantly practical, and by no means jocular in his
greeting.  At the top of the hill, Ruth turned to look once more
upon the distant mountain, now again a mere cloud-line on the
horizon.  In the firm belief that he would never again see the sun
rise upon it, he turned aside into a hazel-thicket, and, tearing
out a few leaves from his pocket-book, wrote two letters,--one to
Rand, and one to Mornie, but which, as they were never delivered,
shall not burden this brief chronicle of that eventful day.  For,
while transcribing them, he was startled by the sounds of a dozen
pistol-shots in the direction of the hotel he had recently quitted.
Something in the mere sound provoked the old hereditary fighting
instinct, and sent him to his feet with a bound, and a slight
distension of the nostrils, and sniffing of the air, not unknown to
certain men who become half intoxicated by the smell of powder.  He
quickly folded his letters, and addressed them carefully, and,
taking off his knapsack and blanket, methodically arranged them
under a tree, with the letters on top.  Then he examined the lock
of his revolver, and then, with the step of a man ten years
younger, leaped into the road.  He had scarcely done so when he was
seized, and by sheer force dragged into a blacksmith's shop at the
roadside.  He turned his savage face and drawn weapon upon his
assailant, but was surprised to meet the anxious eyes of the bar-
keeper of the Mansion House.

"Don't be a d----d fool," said the man quickly.  "Thar's fifty
agin' you down thar.  But why in h-ll didn't you wipe out old Nixon
when you had such a good chance?"

"Wipe out old Nixon?" repeated Ruth.

"Yes; just now, when you had him covered."

"What!"

The bar-keeper turned quickly upon Ruth, stared at him, and then
suddenly burst into a fit of laughter.  "Well, I've knowed you two
were twins, but damn me if I ever thought I'd be sold like this!"
And he again burst into a roar of laughter.

"What do you mean?" demanded Ruth savagely.

"What do I mean?" returned the barkeeper.  "Why, I mean this.  I
mean that your brother Rand, as you call him, he'z bin--for a young
feller, and a pious feller--doin' about the tallest kind o'
fightin' to-day that's been done at the Ferry.  He laid out that ar
Kanaka Joe and two of his chums.  He was pitched into on your
quarrel, and he took it up for you like a little man.  I managed to
drag him off, up yer in the hazel-bush for safety, and out you
pops, and I thought you was him.  He can't be far away.  Halloo!
There they're comin'; and thar's the doctor, trying to keep them
back!"

A crowd of angry, excited faces, filled the road suddenly; but
before them Dr. Duchesne, mounted, and with a pistol in his hand,
opposed their further progress.

"Back in the bush!" whispered the barkeeper.  "Now's your time!"

But Ruth stirred not.  "Go you back," he said in a low voice, "find
Rand, and take him away.  I will fill his place here."  He drew his
revolver, and stepped into the road.

A shout, a report, and the spatter of red dust from a bullet near
his feet, told him he was recognized.  He stirred not; but another
shout, and a cry, "There they are--BOTH of 'em!" made him turn.

His brother Rand, with a smile on his lip and fire in his eye,
stood by his side.  Neither spoke.  Then Rand, quietly, as of old,
slipped his hand into his brother's strong palm.  Two or three
bullets sang by them; a splinter flew from the blacksmith's shed:
but the brothers, hard gripping each other's hands, and looking
into each other's faces with a quiet joy, stood there calm and
imperturbable.

There was a momentary pause.  The voice of Dr. Duchesne rose above
the crowd.

"Keep back, I say! keep back!  Or hear me!--for five years I've
worked among you, and mended and patched the holes you've drilled
through each other's carcasses--Keep back, I say!--or the next man
that pulls trigger, or steps forward, will get a hole from me that
no surgeon can stop.  I'm sick of your bungling ball practice!
Keep back!--or, by the living Jingo, I'll show you where a man's
vitals are!"

There was a burst of laughter from the crowd, and for a moment
the twins were forgotten in this audacious speech and coolly
impertinent presence.

"That's right!  Now let that infernal old hypocritical drunkard,
Mat Nixon, step to the front."

The crowd parted right and left, and half pushed, half dragged
Nixon before him.

"Gentlemen," said the doctor, "this is the man who has just shot at
Rand Pinkney for hiding his daughter.  Now, I tell you, gentlemen,
and I tell him, that for the last week his daughter, Mornie Nixon,
has been under my care as a patient, and my protection as a friend.
If there's anybody to be shot, the job must begin with me!"

There was another laugh, and a cry of "Bully for old Sawbones!"
Ruth started convulsively, and Rand answered his look with a
confirming pressure of his hand.

"That isn't all, gentlemen: this drunken brute has just shot at a
gentleman whose only offence, to my knowledge, is, that he has, for
the last week, treated her with a brother's kindness, has taken her
into his own home, and cared for her wants as if she were his own
sister."

Ruth's hand again grasped his brother's.  Rand colored and hung his
head.

"There's more yet, gentlemen.  I tell you that that girl, Mornie
Nixon, has, to my knowledge, been treated like a lady, has been
cared for as she never was cared for in her father's house, and,
while that father has been proclaiming her shame in every bar-room
at the Ferry, has had the sympathy and care, night and day, of two
of the most accomplished ladies of the Ferry,--Mrs. Sol Saunders,
gentlemen, and Miss Euphemia."

There was a shout of approbation from the crowd.  Nixon would have
slipped away, but the doctor stopped him.

"Not yet!  I've one thing more to say.  I've to tell you, gentlemen,
on my professional word of honor, that, besides being an old
hypocrite, this same old Mat Nixon is the ungrateful, unnatural
GRANDFATHER of the first boy born in the district."

A wild huzza greeted the doctor's climax.  By a common consent the
crowd turned toward the Twins, who, grasping each other's hands,
stood apart.  The doctor nodded his head.  The next moment the
Twins were surrounded, and lifted in the arms of the laughing
throng, and borne in triumph to the bar-room of the Mansion House.

"Gentlemen," said the bar-keeper, "call for what you like: the
Mansion House treats to-day in honor of its being the first time
that Rand Pinkney has been admitted to the bar."

       .        .        .        .        .        .

It was agreed, that, as her condition was still precarious, the
news should be broken to her gradually and indirectly.  The
indefatigable Sol had a professional idea, which was not
displeasing to the Twins.  It being a lovely summer afternoon, the
couch of Mornie was lifted out on the ledge, and she lay there
basking in the sunlight, drinking in the pure air, and looking
bravely ahead in the daylight as she had in the darkness, for her
couch commanded a view of the mountain flank.  And, lying there,
she dreamed a pleasant dream, and in her dream saw Rand returning
up the mountain-trail.  She was half conscious that he had good
news for her; and, when he at last reached her bedside, he began
gently and kindly to tell his news.  But she heard him not, or
rather in her dream was most occupied with his ways and manners,
which seemed unlike him, yet inexpressibly sweet and tender.  The
tears were fast coming in her eyes, when he suddenly dropped on his
knees beside her, threw away Rand's disguising hat and coat, and
clasped her in his arms.  And by that she KNEW it was Ruth.

But what they said; what hurried words of mutual explanation and
forgiveness passed between them; what bitter yet tender recollections
of hidden fears and doubts, now forever chased away in the rain of
tears and joyous sunshine of that mountain-top, were then whispered;
whatever of this little chronicle that to the reader seems strange
and inconsistent (as all human record must ever be strange and
imperfect, except to the actors) was then made clear,--was never
divulged by them, and must remain with them forever.  The rest of
the party had withdrawn, and they were alone.  But when Mornie
turned, and placed the baby in its father's arms, they were so
isolated in their happiness, that the lower world beneath them might
have swung and drifted away, and left that mountain-top the
beginning and creation of a better planet.

       .        .        .        .        .        .

"You know all about it now," said Sol the next day, explaining the
previous episodes of this history to Ruth: "you've got the whole
plot before you.  It dragged a little in the second act, for the
actors weren't up in their parts.  But for an amateur performance,
on the whole, it wasn't bad."

"I don't know, I'm sure," said Rand impulsively, "how we'd have got
on without Euphemia.  It's too bad she couldn't be here to-day."

"She wanted to come," said Sol; "but the gentleman she's engaged to
came up from Marysville last night."

"Gentleman--engaged!" repeated Rand, white and red by turns.

"Well, yes.  I say, 'gentleman,' although he's in the variety
profession.  She always said," said Sol, quietly looking at Rand,
"that she'd never marry OUT of it."




AN HEIRESS OF RED DOG.


The first intimation given of the eccentricity of the testator was,
I think, in the spring of 1854.  He was at that time in possession
of a considerable property, heavily mortgaged to one friend, and a
wife of some attraction, on whose affections another friend held an
encumbering lien.  One day it was found that he had secretly dug,
or caused to be dug, a deep trap before the front-door of his
dwelling, into which a few friends, in the course of the evening,
casually and familiarly dropped.  This circumstance, slight in
itself, seemed to point to the existence of a certain humor in the
man, which might eventually get into literature, although his
wife's lover--a man of quick discernment, whose leg was broken by
the fall--took other views.  It was some weeks later, that, while
dining with certain other friends of his wife, he excused himself
from the table to quietly re-appear at the front-window with a
three-quarter inch hydraulic pipe, and a stream of water projected
at the assembled company.  An attempt was made to take public
cognizance of this; but a majority of the citizens of Red Dog, who
were not at dinner, decided that a man had a right to choose his
own methods of diverting his company.  Nevertheless, there were
some hints of his insanity; his wife recalled other acts clearly
attributable to dementia; the crippled lover argued from his own
experience that the integrity of her limbs could only be secured by
leaving her husband's house; and the mortgagee, fearing a further
damage to his property, foreclosed.  But here the cause of all this
anxiety took matters into his own hands, and disappeared.

When we next heard from him, he had, in some mysterious way, been
relieved alike of his wife and property, and was living alone at
Rockville fifty miles away, and editing a newspaper.  But that
originality he had displayed when dealing with the problems of his
own private life, when applied to politics in the columns of "The
Rockville Vanguard" was singularly unsuccessful.  An amusing
exaggeration, purporting to be an exact account of the manner in
which the opposing candidate had murdered his Chinese laundryman,
was, I regret to say, answered only by assault and battery.  A
gratuitous and purely imaginative description of a great religious
revival in Calaveras, in which the sheriff of the county--a
notoriously profane sceptic--was alleged to have been the chief
exhorter, resulted only in the withdrawal of the county advertising
from the paper.  In the midst of this practical confusion he
suddenly died.  It was then discovered, as a crowning proof of his
absurdity, that he had left a will, bequeathing his entire effects
to a freckle-faced maid-servant at the Rockville Hotel.  But that
absurdity became serious when it was also discovered that among
these effects were a thousand shares in the Rising Sun Mining
Company, which a day or two after his demise, and while people were
still laughing at his grotesque benefaction, suddenly sprang into
opulence and celebrity.  Three millions of dollars was roughly
estimated as the value of the estate thus wantonly sacrificed.  For
it is only fair to state, as a just tribute to the enterprise and
energy of that young and thriving settlement, that there was not
probably a single citizen who did not feel himself better able to
control the deceased humorist's property.  Some had expressed a
doubt of their ability to support a family; others had felt perhaps
too keenly the deep responsibility resting upon them when chosen
from the panel as jurors, and had evaded their public duties; a few
had declined office and a low salary: but no one shrank from the
possibility of having been called upon to assume the functions of
Peggy Moffat, the heiress.

The will was contested,--first by the widow, who it now appeared
had never been legally divorced from the deceased; next by four of
his cousins, who awoke, only too late, to a consciousness of his
moral and pecuniary worth.  But the humble legatee--a singularly
plain, unpretending, uneducated Western girl--exhibited a dogged
pertinacity in claiming her rights.  She rejected all compromises.
A rough sense of justice in the community, while doubting her
ability to take care of the whole fortune, suggested that she ought
to be content with three hundred thousand dollars.  "She's bound to
throw even THAT away on some derned skunk of a man, natoorally; but
three millions is too much to give a chap for makin' her onhappy.
It's offerin' a temptation to cussedness."  The only opposing voice
to this counsel came from the sardonic lips of Mr. Jack Hamlin.
"Suppose," suggested that gentleman, turning abruptly on the
speaker,--"suppose, when you won twenty thousand dollars of me last
Friday night--suppose that, instead of handing you over the money
as I did--suppose I'd got up on my hind-legs, and said, 'Look yer,
Bill Wethersbee, you're a d----d fool.  If I give ye that twenty
thousand, you'll throw it away in the first skin-game in 'Frisco,
and hand it over to the first short-card sharp you'll meet.
There's a thousand,--enough for you to fling away,--take it and
get!'  Suppose what I'd said to you was the frozen truth, and you
know'd it, would that have been the square thing to play on you?"
But here Wethersbee quickly pointed out the inefficiency of the
comparison by stating that HE had won the money fairly with a
STAKE.  "And how do you know," demanded Hamlin savagely, bending
his black eyes on the astounded casuist,--"how do you know that the
gal hezn't put down a stake?"  The man stammered an unintelligible
reply.  The gambler laid his white hand on Wethersbee's shoulder.
"Look yer, old man," he said, "every gal stakes her WHOLE pile,--
you can bet your life on that,--whatever's her little game.  If she
took to keerds instead of her feelings, if she'd put up 'chips'
instead o' body and soul, she'd bust every bank 'twixt this and
'Frisco!  You hear me?"

Somewhat of this idea was conveyed, I fear not quite as
sentimentally, to Peggy Moffat herself.  The best legal wisdom of
San Francisco, retained by the widow and relatives, took occasion,
in a private interview with Peggy, to point out that she stood in
the quasi-criminal attitude of having unlawfully practised upon the
affections of an insane elderly gentleman, with a view of getting
possession of his property, and suggested to her that no vestige of
her moral character would remain after the trial, if she persisted
in forcing her claims to that issue.  It is said that Peggy, on
hearing this, stopped washing the plate she had in her hands, and,
twisting the towel around her fingers, fixed her small pale blue
eyes at the lawyer.

"And ez that the kind o' chirpin these critters keep up?"

"I regret to say, my dear young lady," responded the lawyer, "that
the world is censorious.  I must add," he continued, with engaging
frankness, "that we professional lawyers are apt to study the
opinion of the world, and that such will be the theory of--our
side."

"Then," said Peggy stoutly, "ez I allow I've got to go into court
to defend my character, I might as well pack in them three millions
too."

There is hearsay evidence that Peg added to this speech a wish and
desire to "bust the crust" of her traducers, and, remarking that
"that was the kind of hairpin" she was, closed the conversation
with an unfortunate accident to the plate, that left a severe
contusion on the legal brow of her companion.  But this story,
popular in the bar-rooms and gulches, lacked confirmation in higher
circles.  Better authenticated was the legend related of an
interview with her own lawyer.  That gentleman had pointed out to
her the advantage of being able to show some reasonable cause for
the singular generosity of the testator.

"Although," he continued, "the law does not go back of the will for
reason or cause for its provisions, it would be a strong point with
the judge and jury--particularly if the theory of insanity were set
up--for us to show that the act was logical and natural.  Of course
you have--I speak confidently, Miss Moffat--certain ideas of your
own why the late Mr. Byways was so singularly generous to you."

"No, I haven't," said Peg decidedly.

"Think again.  Had he not expressed to you--you understand that
this is confidential between us, although I protest, my dear young
lady, that I see no reason why it should not be made public--had he
not given utterance to sentiments of a nature consistent with some
future matrimonial relations?"  But here Miss Peg's large mouth,
which had been slowly relaxing over her irregular teeth, stopped
him.

"If you mean he wanted to marry me--  No!"

"I see.  But were there any conditions--of course you know the law
takes no cognizance of any not expressed in the will; but still,
for the sake of mere corroboration of the bequest--do you know of
any conditions on which he gave you the property?"

"You mean did he want anything in return?"

"Exactly, my dear young lady."

Peg's face on one side turned a deep magenta color, on the other a
lighter cherry, while her nose was purple, and her forehead an
Indian red.  To add to the effect of this awkward and discomposing
dramatic exhibition of embarrassment, she began to wipe her hands
on her dress, and sat silent.

"I understand," said the lawyer hastily.  "No matter--the
conditions WERE fulfilled."

"No!" said Peg amazedly.  "How could they be until he was dead?"

It was the lawyer's turn to color and grow embarrassed.

"He DID say something, and make some conditions," continued Peg,
with a certain firmness through her awkwardness; "but that's
nobody's business but mine and his'n.  And it's no call o' yours or
theirs."

"But, my dear Miss Moffat, if these very conditions were proofs of
his right mind, you surely would not object to make them known, if
only to enable you to put yourself in a condition to carry them
out."

"But," said Peg cunningly, "s'pose you and the Court didn't think
'em satisfactory?  S'pose you thought 'em QUEER?  Eh?"

With this helpless limitation on the part of the defence, the case
came to trial.  Everybody remembers it,--how for six weeks it was
the daily food of Calaveras County; how for six weeks the
intellectual and moral and spiritual competency of Mr. James Byways
to dispose of his property was discussed with learned and formal
obscurity in the court, and with unlettered and independent
prejudice by camp-fires and in bar-rooms.  At the end of that time,
when it was logically established that at least nine-tenths of the
population of Calaveras were harmless lunatics, and everybody
else's reason seemed to totter on its throne, an exhausted jury
succumbed one day to the presence of Peg in the court-room.  It was
not a prepossessing presence at any time; but the excitement, and
an injudicious attempt to ornament herself, brought her defects
into a glaring relief that was almost unreal.  Every freckle on her
face stood out and asserted itself singly; her pale blue eyes, that
gave no indication of her force of character, were weak and
wandering, or stared blankly at the judge; her over-sized head,
broad at the base, terminating in the scantiest possible light-
colored braid in the middle of her narrow shoulders, was as hard
and uninteresting as the wooden spheres that topped the railing
against which she sat.

The jury, who for six weeks had had her described to them by the
plaintiffs as an arch, wily enchantress, who had sapped the failing
reason of Jim Byways, revolted to a man.  There was something so
appallingly gratuitous in her plainness, that it was felt that
three millions was scarcely a compensation for it.  "Ef that money
was give to her, she earned it SURE, boys: it wasn't no softness of
the old man," said the foreman.  When the jury retired, it was felt
that she had cleared her character: when they re-entered the room
with their verdict, it was known that she had been awarded three
millions damages for its defamation.

She got the money.  But those who had confidently expected to see
her squander it were disappointed: on the contrary, it was
presently whispered that she was exceedingly penurious.  That
admirable woman, Mrs. Stiver of Red Dog, who accompanied her to San
Francisco to assist her in making purchases, was loud in her
indignation.  "She cares more for two bits than I do for five
dollars.  She wouldn't buy anything at the 'City of Paris,' because
it was 'too expensive,' and at last rigged herself out, a perfect
guy, at some cheap slop-shops in Market Street.  And after all the
care Jane and me took of her, giving up our time and experience to
her, she never so much as made Jane a single present."  Popular
opinion, which regarded Mrs. Stiver's attention as purely
speculative, was not shocked at this unprofitable denouement; but
when Peg refused to give anything to clear the mortgage off the new
Presbyterian Church, and even declined to take shares in the Union
Ditch, considered by many as an equally sacred and safe investment,
she began to lose favor.  Nevertheless, she seemed to be as
regardless of public opinion as she had been before the trial; took
a small house, in which she lived with an old woman who had once
been a fellow-servant, on apparently terms of perfect equality, and
looked after her money.  I wish I could say that she did this
discreetly; but the fact is, she blundered.  The same dogged
persistency she had displayed in claiming her rights was visible in
her unsuccessful ventures.  She sunk two hundred thousand dollars
in a worn-out shaft originally projected by the deceased testator;
she prolonged the miserable existence of "The Rockville Vanguard"
long after it had ceased to interest even its enemies; she kept the
doors of the Rockville Hotel open when its custom had departed; she
lost the co-operation and favor of a fellow-capitalist through a
trifling misunderstanding in which she was derelict and impenitent;
she had three lawsuits on her hands that could have been settled
for a trifle.  I note these defects to show that she was by no
means a heroine.  I quote her affair with Jack Folinsbee to show
she was scarcely the average woman.

That handsome, graceless vagabond had struck the outskirts of Red
Dog in a cyclone of dissipation which left him a stranded but still
rather interesting wreck in a ruinous cabin not far from Peg
Moffat's virgin bower.  Pale, crippled from excesses, with a voice
quite tremulous from sympathetic emotion more or less developed by
stimulants, he lingered languidly, with much time on his hands, and
only a few neighbors.  In this fascinating kind of general
deshabille of morals, dress, and the emotions, he appeared before
Peg Moffat.  More than that, he occasionally limped with her
through the settlement.  The critical eye of Red Dog took in the
singular pair,--Jack, voluble, suffering, apparently overcome by
remorse, conscience, vituperation, and disease; and Peg, open-
mouthed, high-colored, awkward, yet delighted; and the critical eye
of Red Dog, seeing this, winked meaningly at Rockville.  No one
knew what passed between them; but all observed that one summer day
Jack drove down the main street of Red Dog in an open buggy, with
the heiress of that town beside him.  Jack, albeit a trifle shaky,
held the reins with something of his old dash; and Mistress Peggy,
in an enormous bonnet with pearl-colored ribbons a shade darker
than her hair, holding in her short, pink-gloved fingers a bouquet
of yellow roses, absolutely glowed crimson in distressful
gratification over the dash-board.  So these two fared on, out of
the busy settlement, into the woods, against the rosy sunset.
Possibly it was not a pretty picture: nevertheless, as the dim
aisles of the solemn pines opened to receive them, miners leaned
upon their spades, and mechanics stopped in their toil to look
after them.  The critical eye of Red Dog, perhaps from the sun,
perhaps from the fact that it had itself once been young and
dissipated, took on a kindly moisture as it gazed.

The moon was high when they returned.  Those who had waited to
congratulate Jack on this near prospect of a favorable change in
his fortunes were chagrined to find, that, having seen the lady
safe home, he had himself departed from Red Dog.  Nothing was to be
gained from Peg, who, on the next day and ensuing days, kept the
even tenor of her way, sunk a thousand or two more in unsuccessful
speculation, and made no change in her habits of personal economy.
Weeks passed without any apparent sequel to this romantic idyl.
Nothing was known definitely until Jack, a month later, turned up
in Sacramento, with a billiard-cue in his hand, and a heart
overcharged with indignant emotion.  "I don't mind saying to you,
gentlemen, in confidence," said Jack to a circle of sympathizing
players,--"I don't mind telling you regarding this thing, that I
was as soft on that freckled-faced, red-eyed, tallow-haired gal, as
if she'd been--a--a--an actress.  And I don't mind saying,
gentlemen, that, as far as I understand women, she was just as soft
on me.  You kin laugh; but it's so.  One day I took her out buggy-
riding,--in style, too,--and out on the road I offered to do the
square thing, just as if she'd been a lady,--offered to marry her
then and there.  And what did she do?" said Jack with a hysterical
laugh.  "Why, blank it all! OFFERED ME TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS A WEEK
ALLOWANCE--PAY TO BE STOPPED WHEN I WASN'T AT HOME!"  The roar of
laughter that greeted this frank confession was broken by a quiet
voice asking, "And what did YOU say?"--"Say?" screamed Jack, "I
just told her to go to ---- with her money."--"They say," continued
the quiet voice, "that you asked her for the loan of two hundred
and fifty dollars to get you to Sacramento--and that you got it."--
"Who says so roared Jack.  "Show me the blank liar."  There was a
dead silence.  Then the possessor of the quiet voice, Mr. Jack
Hamlin, languidly reached under the table, took the chalk, and,
rubbing the end of his billiard-cue, began with gentle gravity: "It
was an old friend of mine in Sacramento, a man with a wooden leg, a
game eye, three fingers on his right hand, and a consumptive cough.
Being unable, naturally, to back himself, he leaves things to me.
So, for the sake of argument," continued Hamlin, suddenly laying
down his cue, and fixing his wicked black eyes on the speaker, "say
it's ME!"

I am afraid that this story, whether truthful or not, did not tend
to increase Peg's popularity in a community where recklessness and
generosity condoned for the absence of all the other virtues; and
it is possible, also, that Red Dog was no more free from prejudice
than other more civilized but equally disappointed matchmakers.
Likewise, during the following year, she made several more foolish
ventures, and lost heavily.  In fact, a feverish desire to increase
her store at almost any risk seemed to possess her.  At last it was
announced that she intended to reopen the infelix Rockville Hotel,
and keep it herself.

Wild as this scheme appeared in theory, when put into practical
operation there seemed to be some chance of success.  Much,
doubtless, was owing to her practical knowledge of hotel-keeping,
but more to her rigid economy and untiring industry.  The mistress
of millions, she cooked, washed, waited on table, made the beds,
and labored like a common menial.  Visitors were attracted by this
novel spectacle.  The income of the house increased as their
respect for the hostess lessened.  No anecdote of her avarice was
too extravagant for current belief.  It was even alleged that she
had been known to carry the luggage of guests to their rooms, that
she might anticipate the usual porter's gratuity.  She denied
herself the ordinary necessaries of life.  She was poorly clad, she
was ill-fed--but the hotel was making money.

A few hinted of insanity; others shook their heads, and said a
curse was entailed on the property.  It was believed, also, from
her appearance, that she could not long survive this tax on her
energies, and already there was discussion as to the probable final
disposition of her property.

It was the particular fortune of Mr. Jack Hamlin to be able to set
the world right on this and other questions regarding her.

A stormy December evening had set in when he chanced to be a guest
of the Rockville Hotel.  He had, during the past week, been engaged
in the prosecution of his noble profession at Red Dog, and had, in
the graphic language of a coadjutor, "cleared out the town, except
his fare in the pockets of the stage-driver."  "The Red Dog
Standard" had bewailed his departure in playful obituary verse,
beginning, "Dearest Johnny, thou hast left us," wherein the rhymes
"bereft us" and "deplore" carried a vague allusion to "a thousand
dollars more."  A quiet contentment naturally suffused his
personality, and he was more than usually lazy and deliberate in
his speech.  At midnight, when he was about to retire, he was a
little surprised, however, by a tap on his door, followed by the
presence of Mistress Peg Moffat, heiress, and landlady of Rockville
hotel.

Mr. Hamlin, despite his previous defence of Peg, had no liking for
her.  His fastidious taste rejected her uncomeliness; his habits of
thought and life were all antagonistic to what he had heard of her
niggardliness and greed.  As she stood there, in a dirty calico
wrapper, still redolent with the day's cuisine, crimson with
embarrassment and the recent heat of the kitchen range, she
certainly was not an alluring apparition.  Happily for the lateness
of the hour, her loneliness, and the infelix reputation of the man
before her, she was at least a safe one.  And I fear the very
consciousness of this scarcely relieved her embarrassment.

"I wanted to say a few words to ye alone, Mr. Hamlin," she began,
taking an unoffered seat on the end of his portmanteau, "or I
shouldn't hev intruded.  But it's the only time I can ketch you, or
you me; for I'm down in the kitchen from sunup till now."

She stopped awkwardly, as if to listen to the wind, which was
rattling the windows, and spreading a film of rain against the
opaque darkness without.  Then, smoothing her wrapper over her
knees, she remarked, as if opening a desultory conversation,
"Thar's a power of rain outside."

Mr. Hamlin's only response to this meteorological observation was a
yawn, and a preliminary tug at his coat as he began to remove it.

"I thought ye couldn't mind doin' me a favor," continued Peg, with
a hard, awkward laugh, "partik'ly seein' ez folks allowed you'd
sorter bin a friend o' mine, and hed stood up for me at times when
you hedn't any partikler call to do it.  I hevn't" she continued,
looking down on her lap, and following with her finger and thumb a
seam of her gown,--"I hevn't so many friends ez slings a kind word
for me these times that I disremember them."  Her under lip
quivered a little here; and, after vainly hunting for a forgotten
handkerchief, she finally lifted the hem of her gown, wiped her
snub nose upon it, but left the tears still in her eyes as she
raised them to the man, Mr. Hamlin, who had by this time divested
himself of his coat, stopped unbuttoning his waistcoat, and looked
at her.

"Like ez not thar'll be high water on the North Fork, ef this rain
keeps on," said Peg, as if apologetically, looking toward the
window.

The other rain having ceased, Mr. Hamlin began to unbutton his
waistcoat again.

"I wanted to ask ye a favor about Mr.--about--Jack Folinsbee,"
began Peg again hurriedly.  "He's ailin' agin, and is mighty low.
And he's losin' a heap o' money here and thar, and mostly to YOU.
You cleaned him out of two thousand dollars last night--all he
had."

"Well?" said the gambler coldly.

"Well, I thought ez you woz a friend o' mine, I'd ask ye to let up
a little on him," said Peg, with an affected laugh.  "You kin do
it.  Don't let him play with ye."

"Mistress Margaret Moffat," said Jack, with lazy deliberation,
taking off his watch, and beginning to wind it up, "ef you're that
much stuck after Jack Folinsbee, YOU kin keep him off of me much
easier than I kin.  You're a rich woman.  Give him enough money to
break my bank, or break himself for good and all; but don't keep
him forlin' round me in hopes to make a raise.  It don't pay,
Mistress Moffat--it don't pay!"

A finer nature than Peg's would have misunderstood or resented the
gambler's slang, and the miserable truths that underlaid it.  But
she comprehended him instantly, and sat hopelessly silent.

"Ef you'll take my advice," continued Jack, placing his watch and
chain under his pillow, and quietly unloosing his cravat, "you'll
quit this yer forlin', marry that chap, and hand over to him the
money and the money-makin' that's killin' you.  He'll get rid of it
soon enough.  I don't say this because I expect to git it; for,
when he's got that much of a raise, he'll make a break for 'Frisco,
and lose it to some first-class sport THERE.  I don't say, neither,
that you mayn't be in luck enough to reform him.  I don't say,
neither--and it's a derned sight more likely!--that you mayn't be
luckier yet, and he'll up and die afore he gits rid of your money.
But I do say you'll make him happy NOW; and, ez I reckon you're
about ez badly stuck after that chap ez I ever saw any woman, you
won't be hurtin' your own feelin's either."

The blood left Peg's face as she looked up.  "But that's WHY I
can't give him the money--and he won't marry me without it."

Mr. Hamlin's hand dropped from the last button of his waistcoat.
"Can't--give--him--the--money?" he repeated slowly.

"No."

"Why?"

"Because--because I LOVE him."

Mr. Hamlin rebuttoned his waistcoat, and sat down patiently on the
bed.  Peg arose, and awkwardly drew the portmanteau a little nearer
to him.

"When Jim Byways left me this yer property," she began, looking
cautiously around, "he left it to me on CONDITIONS; not conditions
ez waz in his WRITTEN will, but conditions ez waz SPOKEN.  A
promise I made him in this very room, Mr. Hamlin,--this very room,
and on that very bed you're sittin' on, in which he died."

Like most gamblers, Mr. Hamlin was superstitious.  He rose hastily
from the bed, and took a chair beside the window.  The wind shook
it as if the discontented spirit of Mr. Byways were without, re-
enforcing his last injunction.

"I don't know if you remember him," said Peg feverishly.  "he was a
man ez hed suffered.  All that he loved--wife, fammerly, friends--
had gone back on him.  He tried to make light of it afore folks;
but with me, being a poor gal, he let himself out.  I never told
anybody this.  I don't know why he told ME; I don't know,"
continued Peg, with a sniffle, "why he wanted to make me unhappy
too.  But he made me promise, that, if he left me his fortune, I'd
NEVER, NEVER--so help me God!--never share it with any man or woman
that I LOVED; I didn't think it would be hard to keep that promise
then, Mr. Hamlin; for I was very poor, and hedn't a friend nor a
living bein' that was kind to me, but HIM."

"But you've as good as broken your promise already," said Hamlin.
"You've given Jack money, as I know."

"Only what I made myself.  Listen to me, Mr. Hamlin.  When Jack
proposed to me, I offered him about what I kalkilated I could earn
myself.  When he went away, and was sick and in trouble, I came
here and took this hotel.  I knew that by hard work I could make it
pay.  Don't laugh at me, please.  I DID work hard, and DID make it
pay--without takin' one cent of the fortin'.  And all I made,
workin' by night and day, I gave to him.  I did, Mr. Hamlin.  I
ain't so hard to him as you think, though I might be kinder, I
know."

Mr. Hamlin rose, deliberately resumed his coat, watch, hat, and
overcoat.  When he was completely dressed again, he turned to Peg.
"Do you mean to say that you've been givin' all the money you made
here to this A 1 first-class cherubim?"

"Yes; but he didn't know where I got it.  O Mr. Hamlin! he didn't
know that."

"Do I understand you, that he's bin buckin agin Faro with the money
that you raised on hash?  And YOU makin' the hash?"

"But he didn't know that, he wouldn't hev took it if I'd told him."

"No, he'd hev died fust!" said Mr. Hamlin gravely.  "Why, he's that
sensitive--is Jack Folinsbee--that it nearly kills him to take
money even of ME.  But where does this angel reside when he isn't
fightin' the tiger, and is, so to speak, visible to the naked eye?"

"He--he--stops here," said Peg, with an awkward blush.

"I see.  Might I ask the number of his room--or should I be a--
disturbing him in his meditations?" continued Jack Hamlin, with
grave politeness.

"Oh! then you'll promise?  And you'll talk to him, and make HIM
promise?"

"Of course," said Hamlin quietly.

"And you'll remember he's sick--very sick?  His room's No. 44, at
the end of the hall.  Perhaps I'd better go with you?"

"I'll find it."

"And you won't be too hard on him?"

"I'll be a father to him," said Hamlin demurely, as he opened the
door and stepped into the hall.  But he hesitated a moment, and
then turned, and gravely held out his hand.  Peg took it timidly.
He did not seem quite in earnest; and his black eyes, vainly
questioned, indicated nothing.  But he shook her hand warmly, and
the next moment was gone.

He found the room with no difficulty.  A faint cough from within,
and a querulous protest, answered his knock.  Mr. Hamlin entered
without further ceremony.  A sickening smell of drugs, a palpable
flavor of stale dissipation, and the wasted figure of Jack
Folinsbee, half-dressed, extended upon the bed, greeted him.  Mr.
Hamlin was for an instant startled.  There were hollow circles
round the sick man's eyes; there was palsy in his trembling limbs;
there was dissolution in his feverish breath.

"What's up?" he asked huskily and nervously.

"I am, and I want YOU to get up too."

"I can't, Jack.  I'm regularly done up."  He reached his shaking
hand towards a glass half-filled with suspicious, pungent-smelling
liquid; but Mr. Hamlin stayed it.

"Do you want to get back that two thousand dollars you lost?"

"Yes."

"Well, get up, and marry that woman down stairs."

Folinsbee laughed half hysterically, half sardonically.

"She won't give it to me."

"No; but I will."

"YOU?"

"Yes."

Folinsbee, with an attempt at a reckless laugh, rose, trembling and
with difficulty, to his swollen feet.  Hamlin eyed him narrowly,
and then bade him lie down again.  "To-morrow will do," he said,
"and then--"

"If I don't "

"If you don't," responded Hamlin, "why, I'll just wade in and CUT
YOU OUT!"

But on the morrow Mr. Hamlin was spared that possible act of
disloyalty; for, in the night, the already hesitating spirit of Mr.
Jack Folinsbee took flight on the wings of the south-east storm.
When or how it happened, nobody knew.  Whether this last excitement
and the near prospect of matrimony, or whether an overdose of
anodyne, had hastened his end, was never known.  I only know, that,
when they came to awaken him the next morning, the best that was
left of him--a face still beautiful and boy-like--looked up coldly
at the tearful eyes of Peg Moffat.  "It serves me right, it's a
judgment," she said in a low whisper to Jack Hamlin; "for God knew
that I'd broken my word, and willed all my property to him."

She did not long survive him.  Whether Mr. Hamlin ever clothed with
action the suggestion indicated in his speech to the lamented Jack
that night, is not of record.  He was always her friend, and on her
demise became her executor.  But the bulk of her property was left
to a distant relation of handsome Jack Folinsbee, and so passed out
of the control of Red Dog forever.




THE GREAT DEADWOOD MYSTERY


It was growing quite dark in the telegraph-office at Cottonwood,
Tuolumne County, California.  The office, a box-like enclosure, was
separated from the public room of the Miners' Hotel by a thin
partition; and the operator, who was also news and express agent at
Cottonwood, had closed his window, and was lounging by his news-
stand preparatory to going home.  Without, the first monotonous
rain of the season was dripping from the porches of the hotel in
the waning light of a December day.  The operator, accustomed as he
was to long intervals of idleness, was fast becoming bored.

The tread of mud-muffled boots on the veranda, and the entrance of
two men, offered a momentary excitement.  He recognized in the
strangers two prominent citizens of Cottonwood; and their manner
bespoke business.  One of them proceeded to the desk, wrote a
despatch, and handed it to the other interrogatively.

"That's about the way the thing p'ints," responded his companion
assentingly.

"I reckoned it only squar to use his dientical words?"

"That's so."

The first speaker turned to the operator with the despatch.

"How soon can you shove her through?"

The operator glanced professionally over the address and the length
of the despatch.

"Now," he answered promptly.

"And she gets there?"

"To-night.  But there's no delivery until to-morrow."

"Shove her through to-night, and say there's an extra twenty left
here for delivery."

The operator, accustomed to all kinds of extravagant outlay for
expedition, replied that he would lay this proposition with the
despatch, before the San Francisco office.  He then took it and
read it--and re-read it.  He preserved the usual professional
apathy,--had doubtless sent many more enigmatical and mysterious
messages,--but nevertheless, when he finished, he raised his eyes
inquiringly to his customer.  That gentleman, who enjoyed a
reputation for equal spontaneity of temper and revolver, met his
gaze a little impatiently.  The operator had recourse to a trick.
Under the pretence of misunderstanding the message, he obliged
the sender to repeat it aloud for the sake of accuracy, and
even suggested a few verbal alterations, ostensibly to insure
correctness, but really to extract further information.
Nevertheless, the man doggedly persisted in a literal transcript of
his message.  The operator went to his instrument hesitatingly.

"I suppose," he added half-questioningly, "there ain't no chance of
a mistake.  This address is Rightbody, that rich old Bostonian that
everybody knows.  There ain't but one?"

"That's the address," responded the first speaker coolly.

"Didn't know the old chap had investments out here," suggested the
operator, lingering at his instrument.

"No more did I," was the insufficient reply.

For some few moments nothing was heard but the click of the
instrument, as the operator worked the key, with the usual
appearance of imparting confidence to a somewhat reluctant hearer
who preferred to talk himself.  The two men stood by, watching his
motions with the usual awe of the unprofessional.  When he had
finished, they laid before him two gold-pieces.  As the operator
took them up, he could not help saying,--

"The old man went off kinder sudden, didn't he?  Had no time to
write?"

"Not sudden for that kind o' man," was the exasperating reply.

But the speaker was not to be disconcerted.  "If there is an
answer--" he began.

"There ain't any," replied the first speaker quietly.

"Why?"

"Because the man ez sent the message is dead."

"But it's signed by you two."

"On'y ez witnesses--eh?" appealed the first speaker to his comrade.

"On'y ez witnesses," responded the other.

The operator shrugged his shoulders.  The business concluded, the
first speaker slightly relaxed.  He nodded to the operator, and
turned to the bar-room with a pleasing social impulse.  When their
glasses were set down empty, the first speaker, with a cheerful
condemnation of the hard times and the weather, apparently
dismissed all previous proceedings from his mind, and lounged out
with his companion.  At the corner of the street they stopped.

"Well, that job's done," said the first speaker, by way of
relieving the slight social embarrassment of parting.

"Thet's so," responded his companion, and shook his hand.

They parted.  A gust of wind swept through the pines, and struck a
faint Aeolian cry from the wires above their heads; and the rain
and the darkness again slowly settled upon Cottonwood.

The message lagged a little at San Francisco, laid over half an
hour at Chicago, and fought longitude the whole way; so that it was
past midnight when the "all night" operator took it from the wires
at Boston.  But it was freighted with a mandate from the San
Francisco office; and a messenger was procured, who sped with it
through dark snow-bound streets, between the high walls of close-
shuttered rayless houses, to a certain formal square ghostly with
snow-covered statues.  Here he ascended the broad steps of a
reserved and solid-looking mansion, and pulled a bronze bell-knob,
that somewhere within those chaste recesses, after an apparent
reflective pause, coldly communicated the fact that a stranger was
waiting without--as he ought.  Despite the lateness of the hour,
there was a slight glow from the windows, clearly not enough to
warm the messenger with indications of a festivity within, but yet
bespeaking, as it were, some prolonged though subdued excitement.
The sober servant who took the despatch, and receipted for it as
gravely as if witnessing a last will and testament, respectfully
paused before the entrance of the drawing-room.  The sound of
measured and rhetorical speech, through which the occasional
catarrhal cough of the New-England coast struggled, as the only
effort of nature not wholly repressed, came from its heavily-
curtained recesses; for the occasion of the evening had been the
reception and entertainment of various distinguished persons, and,
as had been epigrammatically expressed by one of the guests, "the
history of the country" was taking its leave in phrases more or
less memorable and characteristic.  Some of these valedictory
axioms were clever, some witty, a few profound, but always left as
a genteel contribution to the entertainer.  Some had been already
prepared, and, like a card, had served and identified the guest at
other mansions.

The last guest departed, the last carriage rolled away, when the
servant ventured to indicate the existence of the despatch to his
master, who was standing on the hearth-rug in an attitude of
wearied self-righteousness.  He took it, opened it, read it, re-
read it, and said,--

"There must be some mistake!  It is not for me.  Call the boy,
Waters."

Waters, who was perfectly aware that the boy had left, nevertheless
obediently walked towards the hall-door, but was recalled by his
master.

"No matter--at present!"

"It's nothing serious, William?" asked Mrs. Rightbody, with languid
wifely concern.

"No, nothing.  Is there a light in my study?"

"Yes.  But, before you go, can you give me a moment or two?"

Mr. Rightbody turned a little impatiently towards his wife.  She
had thrown herself languidly on the sofa; her hair was slightly
disarranged, and part of a slippered foot was visible.  She might
have been a finely-formed woman; but even her careless deshabille
left the general impression that she was severely flannelled
throughout, and that any ostentation of womanly charm was under
vigorous sanitary SURVEILLANCE.

"Mrs. Marvin told me to-night that her son made no secret of his
serious attachment for our Alice, and that, if I was satisfied, Mr.
Marvin would be glad to confer with you at once."

The information did not seem to absorb Mr. Rightbody's wandering
attention, but rather increased his impatience.  He said hastily,
that he would speak of that to-morrow; and partly by way of
reprisal, and partly to dismiss the subject, added--

"Positively James must pay some attention to the register and the
thermometer.  It was over 70 degrees to-night, and the ventilating
draught was closed in the drawing-room."

"That was because Professor Ammon sat near it, and the old
gentleman's tonsils are so sensitive."

"He ought to know from Dr. Dyer Doit that systematic and regular
exposure to draughts stimulates the mucous membrane; while fixed
air over 60 degrees invariably--"

"I am afraid, William," interrupted Mrs. Rightbody, with feminine
adroitness, adopting her husband's topic with a view of thereby
directing him from it,--"I'm afraid that people do not yet
appreciate the substitution of bouillon for punch and ices.  I
observed that Mr. Spondee declined it, and, I fancied, looked
disappointed.  The fibrine and wheat in liqueur-glasses passed
quite unnoticed too."

"And yet each half-drachm contained the half-digested substance of
a pound of beef.  I'm surprised at Spondee!" continued Mr.
Rightbody aggrievedly.  "Exhausting his brain and nerve force by
the highest creative efforts of the Muse, he prefers perfumed and
diluted alcohol flavored with carbonic acid gas.  Even Mrs.
Faringway admitted to me that the sudden lowering of the
temperature of the stomach by the introduction of ice--"

"Yes; but she took a lemon ice at the last Dorothea Reception, and
asked me if I had observed that the lower animals refused their
food at a temperature over 60 degrees."

Mr. Rightbody again moved impatiently towards the door.  Mrs.
Rightbody eyed him curiously.

"You will not write, I hope?  Dr. Keppler told me to-night that
your cerebral symptoms interdicted any prolonged mental strain."

"I must consult a few papers," responded Mr. Rightbody curtly, as
he entered his library.

It was a richly-furnished apartment, morbidly severe in its
decorations, which were symptomatic of a gloomy dyspepsia of art,
then quite prevalent.  A few curios, very ugly, but providentially
equally rare, were scattered about.  There were various bronzes,
marbles, and casts, all requiring explanation, and so fulfilling
their purpose of promoting conversation, and exhibiting the
erudition of their owner.  There were souvenirs of travel with a
history, old bric-a-brac with a pedigree, but little or nothing
that challenged attention for itself alone.  In all cases the
superiority of the owner to his possessions was admitted.  As a
natural result, nobody ever lingered there, the servants avoided
the room, and no child was ever known to play in it.

Mr. Rightbody turned up the gas, and from a cabinet of drawers,
precisely labelled, drew a package of letters.  These he carefully
examined.  All were discolored, and made dignified by age; but
some, in their original freshness, must have appeared trifling, and
inconsistent with any correspondent of Mr. Rightbody.  Nevertheless,
that gentleman spent some moments in carefully perusing them,
occasionally referring to the telegram in his hand. Suddenly
there was a knock at the door.  Mr. Rightbody started, made a
half-unconscious movement to return the letters to the drawer,
turned the telegram face downwards, and then, somewhat harshly,
stammered,--

"Eh?  Who's there?  Come in."

"I beg your pardon, papa," said a very pretty girl, entering,
without, however, the slightest trace of apology or awe in her
manner, and taking a chair with the self-possession and familiarity
of an habitue of the room; "but I knew it was not your habit to
write late, so I supposed you were not busy.  I am on my way to
bed."

She was so very pretty, and withal so utterly unconscious of it, or
perhaps so consciously superior to it, that one was provoked into a
more critical examination of her face.  But this only resulted in a
reiteration of her beauty, and perhaps the added facts that her
dark eyes were very womanly, her rich complexion eloquent, and her
chiselled lips fell enough to be passionate or capricious,
notwithstanding that their general effect suggested neither
caprice, womanly weakness, nor passion.

With the instinct of an embarrassed man, Mr. Rightbody touched the
topic he would have preferred to avoid.

"I suppose we must talk over to-morrow," he hesitated, "this matter
of yours and Mr. Marvin's?  Mrs. Marvin has formally spoken to your
mother."

Miss Alice lifted her bright eyes intelligently, but not joyfully;
and the color of action, rather than embarrasament, rose to her
round cheeks.

"Yes, HE said she would," she answered simply.

"At present," continued Mr. Rightbody still awkwardly, "I see no
objection to the proposed arrangement."

Miss Alice opened her round eyes at this.

"Why, papa, I thought it had been all settled long ago!  Mamma knew
it, you knew it.  Last July, mamma and you talked it over."

"Yes, yes," returned her father, fumbling his papers; "that is--
well, we will talk of it to-morrow."  In fact, Mr. Rightbody HAD
intended to give the affair a proper attitude of seriousness and
solemnity by due precision of speech, and some apposite reflections,
when he should impart the news to his daughter, but felt himself
unable to do it now.  "I am glad, Alice," he said at last, "that you
have quite forgotten your previous whims and fancies.  You see WE
are right."

"Oh! I dare say, papa, if I'm to be married at all, that Mr. Marvin
is in every way suitable."

Mr. Rightbody looked at his daughter narrowly.  There was not the
slightest impatience nor bitterness in her manner: it was as well
regulated as the sentiment she expressed.

"Mr. Marvin is--" he began.

"I know what Mr. Marvin IS," interrupted Miss Alice; "and he has
promised me that I shall be allowed to go on with my studies the
same as before.  I shall graduate with my class; and, if I prefer
to practise my profession, I can do so in two years after our
marriage."

"In two years?" queried Mr. Rightbody curiously.

"Yes.  You see, in case we should have a child, that would give me
time enough to wean it."

Mr. Rightbody looked at this flesh of his flesh, pretty and
palpable flesh as it was; but, being confronted as equally with the
brain of his brain, all he could do was to say meekly,--

"Yes, certainly.  We will see about all that to-morrow."

Miss Alice rose.  Something in the free, unfettered swing of her
arms as she rested them lightly, after a half yawn, on her lithe
hips, suggested his next speech, although still distrait and
impatient.

"You continue your exercise with the health-lift yet, I see."

"Yes, papa; but I had to give up the flannels.  I don't see how
mamma could wear them.  But my dresses are high-necked, and by
bathing I toughen my skin.  See!" she added, as, with a child-like
unconsciousness, she unfastened two or three buttons of her gown,
and exposed the white surface of her throat and neck to her father,
"I can defy a chill."

Mr. Rightbody, with something akin to a genuine playful, paternal
laugh, leaned forward and kissed her forehead.

"It's getting late, Ally," he said parentally, but not dictatorially.
"Go to bed."

"I took a nap of three hours this afternoon," said Miss Alice, with
a dazzling smile, "to anticipate this dissipation.  Good-night,
papa.  To-morrow, then."

"To-morrow," repeated Mr. Rightbody, with his eyes still fixed upon
the girl vaguely.  "Good-night."

Miss Alice tripped from the room, possibly a trifle the more light-
heartedly that she had parted from her father in one of his rare
moments of illogical human weakness.  And perhaps it was well for
the poor girl that she kept this single remembrance of him, when, I
fear, in after-years, his methods, his reasoning, and indeed all he
had tried to impress upon her childhood, had faded from her memory.

For, when she had left, Mr. Rightbody fell again to the examination
of his old letters.  This was quite absorbing; so much so, that he
did not notice the footsteps of Mrs. Rightbody, on the staircase as
she passed to her chamber, nor that she had paused on the landing
to look through the glass half-door on her husband, as he sat there
with the letters beside him, and the telegram opened before him.
Had she waited a moment later, she would have seen him rise, and
walk to the sofa with a disturbed air and a slight confusion; so
that, on reaching it, he seemed to hesitate to lie down, although
pale and evidently faint.  Had she still waited, she would have
seen him rise again with an agonized effort, stagger to the table,
fumblingly refold and replace the papers in the cabinet, and lock
it, and, although now but half-conscious, hold the telegram over
the gas-flame till it was consumed.

For, had she waited until this moment, she would have flown
unhesitatingly to his aid, as, this act completed, he staggered
again, reached his hand toward the bell, but vainly, and then fell
prone upon the sofa.

But alas! no providential nor accidental hand was raised to save
him, or anticipate the progress of this story.  And when, half an
hour later, Mrs. Rightbody, a little alarmed, and more indignant at
his violation of the doctor's rules, appeared upon the threshold,
Mr. Rightbody lay upon the sofa, dead!

With bustle, with thronging feet, with the irruption of strangers,
and a hurrying to and fro, but, more than all, with an impulse and
emotion unknown to the mansion when its owner was in life, Mrs.
Rightbody strove to call back the vanished life, but in vain.  The
highest medical intelligence, called from its bed at this strange
hour, saw only the demonstration of its theories made a year
before.  Mr. Rightbody was dead--without doubt, without mystery,
even as a correct man should die--logically, and indorsed by the
highest medical authority.

But even in the confusion, Mrs. Rightbody managed to speed a
messenger to the telegraph-office for a copy of the despatch
received by Mr. Rightbody, but now missing.

In the solitude of her own room, and without a confidant, she read
these words:--


                          "[Copy.]

"To MR. ADAMS RIGHTBODY, BOSTON, MASS.

"Joshua Silsbie died suddenly this morning.  His last request was
that you should remember your sacred compact with him of thirty
years ago.
        (Signed)                       "SEVENTY-FOUR.
                                       "SEVENTY-FIVE."


In the darkened home, and amid the formal condolements of their
friends who had called to gaze upon the scarcely cold features of
their late associate, Mrs. Rightbody managed to send another
despatch.  It was addressed to "Seventy-Four and Seventy-Five,"
Cottonwood.  In a few hours she received the following enigmatical
response:--

"A horse-thief named Josh Silsbie was lynched yesterday morning by
the Vigilantes at Deadwood."


PART II.


The spring of 1874 was retarded in the California sierras; so much
so, that certain Eastern tourists who had early ventured into the
Yo Semite Valley found themselves, one May morning, snow-bound
against the tempestuous shoulders of El Capitan.  So furious was
the onset of the wind at the Upper Merced Canyon, that even so
respectable a lady as Mrs. Rightbody was fain to cling to the neck
of her guide to keep her seat in the saddle; while Miss Alice,
scorning all masculine assistance, was hurled, a lovely chaos,
against the snowy wall of the chasm.  Mrs. Rightbody screamed; Miss
Alice raged under her breath, but scrambled to her feet again in
silence.

"I told you so!" said Mrs. Rightbody, in an indignant whisper, as
her daughter again ranged beside her.  "I warned you especially,
Alice--that--that--"

"What?" interrupted Miss Alice curtly.

"That you would need your chemiloons and high boots," said Mrs.
Rightbody, in a regretful undertone, slightly increasing her
distance from the guides.

Miss Alice shrugged her pretty shoulders scornfully, but ignored
her mother's implication.

"You were particularly warned against going into the valley at this
season," she only replied grimly.

Mrs. Rightbody raised her eyes impatiently.

"You know how anxious I was to discover your poor father's strange
correspondent, Alice.  You have no consideration."

"But when YOU HAVE discovered him--what then?" queried Miss Alice.

"What then?"

"Yes.  My belief is, that you will find the telegram only a mere
business cipher, and all this quest mere nonsense."

"Alice!  Why, YOU yourself thought your father's conduct that night
very strange.  Have you forgotten?"

The young lady had NOT, but, for some far-reaching feminine reason,
chose to ignore it at that moment, when her late tumble in the snow
was still fresh in her mind.

"And this woman, whoever she may be--" continued Mrs. Rightbody.

"How do you know there's a woman in the case?" interrupted Miss
Alice, wickedly I fear.

"How do--I--know--there's a woman?" slowly ejaculated Mrs.
Rightbody, floundering in the snow and the unexpected possibility
of such a ridiculous question.  But here her guide flew to her
assistance, and estopped further speech.  And, indeed, a grave
problem was before them.

The road that led to their single place of refuge--a cabin, half
hotel, half trading-post, scarce a mile away--skirted the base of
the rocky dome, and passed perilously near the precipitous wall of
the valley.  There was a rapid descent of a hundred yards or more
to this terrace-like passage; and the guides paused for a moment of
consultation, cooly oblivious, alike to the terrified questioning
of Mrs. Rightbody, or the half-insolent independence of the
daughter.  The elder guide was russet-bearded, stout, and humorous:
the younger was dark-bearded, slight, and serious.

"Ef you kin git young Bunker Hill to let you tote her on your
shoulders, I'll git the Madam to hang on to me," came to Mrs.
Rightbody's horrified ears as the expression of her particular
companion.

"Freeze to the old gal, and don't reckon on me if the daughter
starts in to play it alone," was the enigmatical response of the
younger guide.

Miss Alice overheard both propositions; and, before the two men
returned to their side, that high-spirited young lady had urged her
horse down the declivity.

Alas! at this moment a gust of whirling snow swept down upon her.
There was a flounder, a mis-step, a fatal strain on the wrong rein,
a fall, a few plucky but unavailing struggles, and both horse and
rider slid ignominiously down toward the rocky shelf.  Mrs.
Rightbody screamed.  Miss Alice, from a confused debris of snow and
ice, uplifted a vexed and coloring face to the younger guide, a
little the more angrily, perhaps, that she saw a shade of impatience
on his face.

"Don't move, but tie one end of the 'lass' under your arms, and
throw me the other," he said quietly.

"What do you mean by 'lass'--the lasso?" asked Miss Alice
disgustedly.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Then why don't you say so?"

"O Alice!" reproachfully interpolated Mrs. Rightbody, encircled by
the elder guide's stalwart arm.

Miss Alice deigned no reply, but drew the loop of the lasso over
her shoulders, and let it drop to her round waist.  Then she
essayed to throw the other end to her guide.  Dismal failure!  The
first fling nearly knocked her off the ledge; the second went all
wild against the rocky wall; the third caught in a thorn-bush,
twenty feet below her companion's feet.  Miss Alice's arm sunk
helplessly to her side, at which signal of unqualified surrender,
the younger guide threw himself half way down the slope, worked his
way to the thorn-bush, hung for a moment perilously over the
parapet, secured the lasso, and then began to pull away at his
lovely burden.  Miss Alice was no dead weight, however, but
steadily half-scrambled on her hands and knees to within a foot or
two of her rescuer.  At this too familiar proximity, she stood up,
and leaned a little stiffly against the line, causing the guide to
give an extra pull, which had the lamentable effect of landing her
almost in his arms.

As it was, her intelligent forehead struck his nose sharply, and I
regret to add, treating of a romantic situation, caused that
somewhat prominent sign and token of a hero to bleed freely.  Miss
Alice instantly clapped a handful of snow over his nostrils.

"Now elevate your right arm," she said commandingly.

He did as he was bidden, but sulkily.

"That compresses the artery."

No man, with a pretty woman's hand and a handful of snow over his
mouth and nose, could effectively utter a heroic sentence, nor,
with his arm elevated stiffly over his head, assume a heroic
attitude.  But, when his mouth was free again, he said half-
sulkily, half-apologetically,--

"I might have known a girl couldn't throw worth a cent."

"Why?" demanded Miss Alice sharply.

"Because--why--because--you see--they haven't got the experience,"
he stammered feebly.

"Nonsense! they haven't the CLAVICLE--that's all!  It's because I'm
a woman, and smaller in the collar-bone, that I haven't the play of
the fore-arm which you have.  See!"  She squared her shoulders
slightly, and turned the blaze of her dark eyes full on his.
"Experience, indeed!  A girl can learn anything a boy can."

Apprehension took the place of ill-humor in her hearer.  He turned
his eyes hastily away, and glanced above him.  The elder guide had
gone forward to catch Miss Alice's horse, which, relieved of his
rider, was floundering toward the trail.  Mrs. Rightbody was
nowhere to be seen.  And these two were still twenty feet below the
trail!

There was an awkward pause.

"Shall I put you up the same way?" he queried.  Miss Alice looked
at his nose, and hesitated.  "Or will you take my hand?" he added
in surly impatience.  To his surprise, Miss Alice took his hand,
and they began the ascent together.

But the way was difficult and dangerous.  Once or twice her feet
slipped on the smoothly-worn rock beneath; and she confessed to an
inward thankfulness when her uncertain feminine hand-grip was
exchanged for his strong arm around her waist.  Not that he was
ungentle; but Miss Alice angrily felt that he had once or twice
exercised his superior masculine functions in a rough way; and yet
the next moment she would have probably rejected the idea that she
had even noticed it.  There was no doubt, however, that he WAS a
little surly.

A fierce scramble finally brought them back in safety to the trail;
but in the action Miss Alice's shoulder, striking a projecting
bowlder, wrung from her a feminine cry of pain, her first sign of
womanly weakness.  The guide stopped instantly.

"I am afraid I hurt you?"

She raised her brown lashes, a trifle moist from suffering, looked
in his eyes, and dropped her own.  Why, she could not tell.  And
yet he had certainly a kind face, despite its seriousness; and a
fine face, albeit unshorn and weather-beaten.  Her own eyes had
never been so near to any man's before, save her lover's; and yet
she had never seen so much in even his.  She slipped her hand away,
not with any reference to him, but rather to ponder over this
singular experience, and somehow felt uncomfortable thereat.

Nor was he less so.  It was but a few days ago that he had accepted
the charge of this young woman from the elder guide, who was the
recognized escort of the Rightbody party, having been a former
correspondent of her father's.  He had been hired like any other
guide, but had undertaken the task with that chivalrous enthusiasm
which the average Californian always extends to the sex so rare to
him.  But the illusion had passed; and he had dropped into a sulky,
practical sense of his situation, perhaps fraught with less danger
to himself.  Only when appealed to by his manhood or her weakness,
he had forgotten his wounded vanity.

He strode moodily ahead, dutifully breaking the path for her in the
direction of the distant canyon, where Mrs. Rightbody and her
friend awaited them.  Miss Alice was first to speak.  In this
trackless, uncharted terra incognita of the passions, it is always
the woman who steps out to lead the way.

"You know this place very well.  I suppose you have lived here
long?"

"Yes."

"You were not born here--no?"

A long pause.

"I observe they call you 'Stanislaus Joe.'  Of course that is not
your real name?"  (Mem.--Miss Alice had never called him ANYTHING,
usually prefacing any request with a languid, "O-er-er, please,
mister-er-a!" explicit enough for his station.)

"No."

Miss Alice (trotting after him, and bawling in his ear).--"WHAT
name did you say?"

The Man (doggedly).--"I don't know."  Nevertheless, when they
reached the cabin, after an half-hour's buffeting with the storm,
Miss Alice applied herself to her mother's escort, Mr. Ryder.

"What's the name of the man who takes care of my horse?"

"Stanislaus Joe," responded Mr. Ryder.

"Is that all?"

"No.  Sometimes he's called Joe Stanislaus."

Miss Alice (satirically).--"I suppose it's the custom here to send
young ladies out with gentlemen who hide their names under an
alias?"

Mr. Ryder (greatly perplexed).--"Why, dear me, Miss Alice, you
allers 'peared to me as a gal as was able to take keer--"

Miss Alice (interrupting with a wounded, dove-like timidity).--"Oh,
never mind, please!"

The cabin offered but scanty accommodation to the tourists; which
fact, when indignantly presented by Mrs. Rightbody, was explained
by the good-humored Ryder from the circumstance that the usual
hotel was only a slight affair of boards, cloth, and paper, put up
during the season, and partly dismantled in the fall.  "You
couldn't be kept warm enough there," he added.  Nevertheless Miss
Alice noticed that both Mr. Ryder and Stanislaus Joe retired there
with their pipes, after having prepared the ladies' supper, with
the assistance of an Indian woman, who apparently emerged from the
earth at the coming of the party, and disappeared as mysteriously.

The stars came out brightly before they slept; and the next morning
a clear, unwinking sun beamed with almost summer power through the
shutterless window of their cabin, and ironically disclosed the
details of its rude interior.  Two or three mangy, half-eaten
buffalo-robes, a bearskin, some suspicious-looking blankets, rifles
and saddles, deal-tables, and barrels, made up its scant inventory.
A strip of faded calico hung before a recess near the chimney, but
so blackened by smoke and age that even feminine curiosity
respected its secret.  Mrs. Rightbody was in high spirits, and
informed her daughter that she was at last on the track of her
husband's unknown correspondent.  "Seventy-Four and Seventy-Five
represent two members of the Vigilance Committee, my dear, and Mr.
Ryder will assist me to find them."

"Mr. Ryder!" ejaculated Miss Alice, in scornful astonishment.

"Alice," said Mrs. Rightbody, with a suspicious assumption of
sudden defence, "you injure yourself, you injure me, by this
exclusive attitude.  Mr. Ryder is a friend of your father's, an
exceedingly well-informed gentleman.  I have not, of course,
imparted to him the extent of my suspicions.  But he can help me to
what I must and will know.  You might treat him a little more
civilly--or, at least, a little better than you do his servant,
your guide.  Mr. Ryder is a gentleman, and not a paid courier."

Miss Alice was suddenly attentive.  When she spoke again, she
asked, "Why do you not find out something about this Silsbie--who
died--or was hung--or something of that kind?"

"Child!" said Mrs. Rightbody, "don't you see there was no Silsbie,
or, if there was, he was simply the confidant of that--woman?"

A knock at the door, announcing the presence of Mr. Ryder and
Stanislaus Joe with the horses, checked Mrs. Rightbody's speech.
As the animals were being packed, Mrs. Rightbody for a moment
withdrew in confidential conversation with Mr. Ryder, and, to the
young lady's still greater annoyance, left her alone with
Stanislaus Joe.  Miss Alice was not in good temper, but she felt it
necessary to say something.

"I hope the hotel offers better quarters for travellers than this
in summer," she began.

"It does."

"Then this does not belong to it?"

"No, ma'am."

"Who lives here, then?"

"I do."

"I beg your pardon," stammered Miss Alice, "I thought you lived
where we hired--where we met you--in--in--  You must excuse me."

"I'm not a regular guide; but as times were hard, and I was out of
grub, I took the job."

"Out of grub!" "job!"  And SHE was the "job."  What would Henry
Marvin say?  It would nearly kill him.  She began herself to feel a
little frightened, and walked towards the door.

"One moment, miss!"

The young girl hesitated.  The man's tone was surly, and yet
indicated a certain kind of half-pathetic grievance.  HER curiosity
got the better of her prudence, and she turned back.

"This morning," he began hastily, "when we were coming down the
valley, you picked me up twice."

"I picked YOU up?" repeated the astonished Alice.

"Yes, CONTRADICTED me: that's what I mean,--once when you said
those rocks were volcanic, once when you said the flower you picked
was a poppy.  I didn't let on at the time, for it wasn't my say;
but all the while you were talking I might have laid for you--"

"I don't understand you," said Alice haughtily.

"I might have entrapped you before folks.  But I only want you to
know that I'M right, and here are the books to show it."

He drew aside the dingy calico curtain, revealed a small shelf of
bulky books, took down two large volumes,--one of botany, one of
geology,--nervously sought his text, and put them in Alice's
outstretched hands.

"I had no intention--" she began, half-proudly, half-embarrassedly.

"Am I right, miss?" he interrupted.

"I presume you are, if you say so."

"That's all, ma'am.  Thank you!"

Before the girl had time to reply, he was gone.  When he again
returned, it was with her horse, and Mrs. Rightbody and Ryder were
awaiting her.  But Miss Alice noticed that his own horse was
missing.

"Are you not going with us?" she asked.

"No, ma'am."

"Oh, indeed!"

Miss Alice felt her speech was a feeble conventionalism; but it was
all she could say.  She, however, DID something.  Hitherto it had
been her habit to systematically reject his assistance in mounting
to her seat.  Now she awaited him.  As he approached, she smiled,
and put out her little foot.  He instantly stooped; she placed it
in his hand, rose with a spring, and for one supreme moment
Stanislaus Joe held her unresistingly in his arms.  The next moment
she was in the saddle; but in that brief interval of sixty seconds
she had uttered a volume in a single sentence,--

"I hope you will forgive me!"

He muttered a reply, and turned his face aside quickly as if to
hide it.

Miss Alice cantered forward with a smile, but pulled her hat down
over her eyes as she joined her mother.  She was blushing.


PART III.


Mr. Ryder was as good as his word.  A day or two later he entered
Mrs. Rightbody's parlor at the Chrysopolis Hotel in Stockton, with
the information that he had seen the mysterious senders of the
despatch, and that they were now in the office of the hotel waiting
her pleasure.  Mr. Ryder further informed her that these gentlemen
had only stipulated that they should not reveal their real names,
and that they be introduced to her simply as the respective
"Seventy-Four" and "Seventy-Five" who had signed the despatch sent
to the late Mr. Rightbody.

Mrs. Rightbody at first demurred to this; but, on the assurance
from Mr. Ryder that this was the only condition on which an
interview would be granted, finally consented.

"You will find them square men, even if they are a little rough,
ma'am.  But, if you'd like me to be present, I'll stop; though I
reckon, if ye'd calkilated on that, you'd have had me take care o'
your business by proxy, and not come yourself three thousand miles
to do it."

Mrs. Rightbody believed it better to see them alone.

"All right, ma'am.  I'll hang round out here; and ef ye should
happen to have a ticklin' in your throat, and a bad spell o'
coughin', I'll drop in, careless like, to see if you don't want
them drops.  Sabe?"

And with an exceedingly arch wink, and a slight familiar tap on
Mrs. Rightbody's shoulder, which might have caused the late Mr.
Rightbody to burst his sepulchre, he withdrew.

A very timid, hesitating tap on the door was followed by the
entrance of two men, both of whom, in general size, strength, and
uncouthness, were ludicrously inconsistent with their diffident
announcement.  They proceeded in Indian file to the centre of the
room, faced Mrs. Rightbody, acknowledged her deep courtesy by a
strong shake of the hand, and, drawing two chairs opposite to her,
sat down side by side.

"I presume I have the pleasure of addressing--" began Mrs. Rightbody.

The man directly opposite Mrs. Rightbody turned to the other
inquiringly.

The other man nodded his head, and replied,--

"Seventy-Four."

"Seventy-Five," promptly followed the other.

Mrs. Rightbody paused, a little confused.

"I have sent for you," she began again, "to learn something more of
the circumstances under which you gentlemen sent a despatch to my
late husband."

"The circumstances," replied Seventy-Four quietly, with a side-
glance at his companion, "panned out about in this yer style.  We
hung a man named Josh Silsbie, down at Deadwood, for hoss-stealin'.
When I say WE, I speak for Seventy-Five yer as is present, as well
as representin', so to speak, seventy-two other gents as is
scattered.  We hung Josh Silsbie on squar, pretty squar, evidence.
Afore he was strung up, Seventy-Five yer axed him, accordin' to
custom, ef ther was enny thing he had to say, or enny request that
he allowed to make of us.  He turns to Seventy-Five yer, and--"

Here he paused suddenly, looking at his companion.

"He sez, sez he," began Seventy-Five, taking up the narrative,--"he
sez, 'Kin I write a letter?' sez he.  Sez I, 'Not much, ole man:
ye've got no time.'  Sez he, 'Kin I send a despatch by telegraph?'
I sez, 'Heave ahead.'  He sez,--these is his dientikal words,--
'Send to Adam Rightbody, Boston.  Tell him to remember his sacred
compack with me thirty years ago.'"

"'His sacred compack with me thirty years ago,'" echoed Seventy-
Four,--"his dientikal words."

"What was the compact?" asked Mrs. Rightbody anxiously.

Seventy-Four looked at Seventy-Five, and then both arose, and
retired to the corner of the parlor, where they engaged in a slow
but whispered deliberation.  Presently they returned, and sat down
again.

"We allow," said Seventy-Four, quietly but decidedly, "that YOU
know what that sacred compact was."

Mrs. Rightbody lost her temper and her truthfulness together.  "Of
course," she said hurriedly, "I know.  But do you mean to say that
you gave this poor man no further chance to explain before you
murdered him?"

Seventy-Four and Seventy-Five both rose again slowly, and retired.
When they returned again, and sat down, Seventy-Five, who by this
time, through some subtile magnetism, Mrs. Rightbody began to
recognize as the superior power, said gravely,--

"We wish to say, regarding this yer murder, that Seventy-Four and
me is equally responsible; that we reckon also to represent, so to
speak, seventy-two other gentlemen as is scattered; that we are
ready, Seventy-Four and me, to take and holt that responsibility,
now and at any time, afore every man or men as kin be fetched agin
us.  We wish to say that this yer say of ours holds good yer in
Californy, or in any part of these United States."

"Or in Canady," suggested Seventy-Four.

"Or in Canady.  We wouldn't agree to cross the water, or go to
furrin parts, unless absolutely necessary.  We leaves the chise of
weppings to your principal, ma'am, or being a lady, ma'am, and
interested, to any one you may fetch to act for him.  An
advertisement in any of the Sacramento papers, or a playcard or
handbill stuck unto a tree near Deadwood, saying that Seventy-Four
or Seventy-Five will communicate with this yer principal or agent
of yours, will fetch us--allers."

Mrs. Rightbody, a little alarmed and desperate, saw her blunder.
"I mean nothing of the kind," she said hastily.  "I only expected
that you might have some further details of this interview with
Silsbie; that perhaps you could tell me--" a bold, bright thought
crossed Mrs. Rightbody's mind--"something more about HER."

The two men looked at each other.

"I suppose your society have no objection to giving me information
about HER," said Mrs. Rightbody eagerly.

Another quiet conversation in the corner, and the return of both
men.

"We want to say that we've no objection."

Mrs. Rightbody's heart beat high.  Her boldness had made her
penetration good.  Yet she felt she must not alarm the men
heedlessly.

"Will you inform me to what extent Mr. Rightbody, my late husband,
was interested in her?"

This time it seemed an age to Mrs. Rightbody before the men
returned from their solemn consultation in the corner.  She could
both hear and feel that their discussion was more animated than
their previous conferences.  She was a little mortified, however,
when they sat down, to hear Seventy-Four say slowly,--

"We wish to say that we don't allow to say HOW much."

"Do you not think that the 'sacred compact' between Mr. Rightbody
and Mr. Silsbie referred to her?"

"We reckon it do."

Mrs. Rightbody, flushed and animated, would have given worlds had
her daughter been present to hear this undoubted confirmation of
her theory.  Yet she felt a little nervous and uncomfortable even
on this threshold of discovery.

"Is she here now?"

"She's in Tuolumne," said Seventy-Four.

"A little better looked arter than formerly," added Seventy-Five.

"I see.  Then Mr. Silsbie ENTICED her away?"

"Well, ma'am, it WAS allowed as she runned away.  But it wasn't
proved, and it generally wasn't her style."

Mrs. Rightbody trifled with her next question.

"She was pretty, of course?"

The eyes of both men brightened.

"She was THAT!" said Seventy-Four emphatically.

"It would have done you good to see her!" added Seventy-Five.

Mrs. Rightbody inwardly doubted it; but, before she could ask
another question, the two men again retired to the corner for
consultation.  When they came back, there was a shade more of
kindliness and confidence in their manner; and Seventy-Four opened
his mind more freely.

"We wish to say, ma'am, looking at the thing, by and large, in a
far-minded way, that, ez YOU seem interested, and ez Mr. Rightbody
was interested, and was, according to all accounts, deceived and
led away by Silsbie, that we don't mind listening to any
proposition YOU might make, as a lady--allowin' you was ekally
interested."

"I understand," said Mrs. Rightbody quickly.  "And you will furnish
me with any papers?"

The two men again consulted.

"We wish to say, ma'am, that we think she's got papers, but--"

"I MUST have them, you understand," interrupted Mrs. Rightbody, "at
any price.

"We was about to say, ma'am," said Seventy-Four slowly, "that,
considerin' all things,--and you being a lady--you kin have HER,
papers, pedigree, and guaranty, for twelve hundred dollars."

It has been alleged that Mrs. Rightbody asked only one question
more, and then fainted.  It is known, however, that by the next day
it was understood in Deadwood that Mrs. Rightbody had confessed to
the Vigilance Committee that her husband, a celebrated Boston
millionaire, anxious to gain possession of Abner Springer's well-
known sorrel mare, had incited the unfortunate Josh Silsbie to
steal it; and that finally, failing in this, the widow of the
deceased Boston millionaire was now in personal negotiation with
the owners.

Howbeit, Miss Alice, returning home that afternoon, found her
mother with a violent headache.

"We will leave here by the next steamer," said Mrs. Rightbody
languidly.  "Mr. Ryder has promised to accompany us."

"But, mother--"

"The climate, Alice, is over-rated.  My nerves are already
suffering from it.  The associations are unfit for you, and Mr.
Marvin is naturally impatient."

Miss Alice colored slightly.

"But your quest, mother?"

"I've abandoned it."

"But I have not," said Alice quietly.  "Do you remember my guide at
the Yo Semite,--Stanislaus Joe?  Well, Stanislaus Joe is--who do
you think?"

Mrs. Rightbody was languidly indifferent.

"Well, Stanislaus Joe is the son of Joshua Silsbie."

Mrs. Rightbody sat upright in astonishment

"Yes.  But mother, he knows nothing of what we know.  His father
treated him shamefully, and set him cruelly adrift years ago; and,
when he was hung, the poor fellow, in sheer disgrace, changed his
name."

"But, if he knows nothing of his father's compact, of what interest
is this?"

"Oh, nothing!  Only I thought it might lead to something."

Mrs. Rightbody suspected that "something," and asked sharply, "And
pray how did YOU find it out?  You did not speak of it in the
valley."

"Oh! I didn't find it out till to-day," said Miss Alice, walking to
the window.  "He happened to be here, and--told me."


PART IV.


If Mrs. Rightbody's friends had been astounded by her singular and
unexpected pilgrimage to California so soon after her husband's
decease, they were still more astounded by the information, a year
later, that she was engaged to be married to a Mr. Ryder, of whom
only the scant history was known, that he was a Californian, and
former correspondent of her husband.  It was undeniable that the
man was wealthy, and evidently no mere adventurer; it was rumored
that he was courageous and manly: but even those who delighted in
his odd humor were shocked at his grammar and slang.

It was said that Mr. Marvin had but one interview with his father-
in-law elect, and returned so supremely disgusted, that the match
was broken off.  The horse-stealing story, more or less garbled,
found its way through lips that pretended to decry it, yet eagerly
repeated it.  Only one member of the Rightbody family--and a new
one--saved them from utter ostracism.  It was young Mr. Ryder, the
adopted son of the prospective head of the household, whose
culture, manners, and general elegance, fascinated and thrilled
Boston with a new sensation.  It seemed to many that Miss Alice
should, in the vicinity of this rare exotic, forget her former
enthusiasm for a professional life; but the young man was pitied by
society, and various plans for diverting him from any mesalliance
with the Rightbody family were concocted.

It was a wintry night, and the second anniversary of Mr. Rightbody's
death, that a light was burning in his library.  But the dead man's
chair was occupied by young Mr. Ryder, adopted son of the new
proprietor of the mansion; and before him stood Alice, with her dark
eyes fixed on the table.

"There must have been something in it, Joe, believe me.  Did you
never hear your father speak of mine?"

"Never."

"But you say he was college-bred, and born a gentleman, and in his
youth he must have had many friends."

"Alice," said the young man gravely, "when I have done something to
redeem my name, and wear it again before these people, before YOU,
it would be well to revive the past.  But till then--"

But Alice was not to be put down.  "I remember," she went on,
scarcely heeding him, "that, when I came in that night, papa was
reading a letter, and seemed to be disconcerted."

"A letter?"

"Yes; but," added Alice, with a sigh, "when we found him here
insensible, there was no letter on his person.  He must have
destroyed it."

"Did you ever look among his papers?  If found, it might be a
clew."

The young man glanced toward the cabinet.  Alice read his eyes, and
answered,--

"Oh, dear, no!  The cabinet contained only his papers, all
perfectly arranged,--you know how methodical were his habits,--and
some old business and private letters, all carefully put away."

"Let us see them," said the young man, rising.

They opened drawer after drawer; files upon files of letters and
business papers, accurately folded and filed.  Suddenly Alice
uttered a little cry, and picked up a quaint ivory paper-knife
lying at the bottom of a drawer.

"It was missing the next day, and never could be found: he must
have mislaid it here.  This is the drawer," said Alice eagerly.

Here was a clew.  But the lower part of the drawer was filled with
old letters, not labelled, yet neatly arranged in files.  Suddenly
he stopped, and said, "Put them back, Alice, at once."

"Why?"

"Some of these letters are in my father's handwriting."

"The more reason why I should see them," said the girl imperatively.
"Here, you take part, and I'll take part, and we'll get through
quicker."

There was a certain decision and independence in her manner which
he had learned to respect.  He took the letters, and in silence
read them with her.  They were old college letters, so filled with
boyish dreams, ambitions, aspirations, and utopian theories, that I
fear neither of these young people even recognized their parents in
the dead ashes of the past.  They were both grave, until Alice
uttered a little hysterical cry, and dropped her face in her hands.
Joe was instantly beside her.

"It's nothing, Joe, nothing.  Don't read it, please; please, don't.
It's so funny! it's so very queer!"

But Joe had, after a slight, half-playful struggle, taken the
letter from the girl.  Then he read aloud the words written by his
father thirty years ago.

"I thank you, dear friend, for all you say about my wife and boy.
I thank you for reminding me of our boyish compact.  He will be
ready to fulfil it, I know, if he loves those his father loves,
even if you should marry years later.  I am glad for your sake, for
both our sakes, that it is a boy.  Heaven send you a good wife,
dear Adams, and a daughter, to make my son equally happy."

Joe Silsbie looked down, took the half-laughing, half-tearful face
in his hands, kissed her forehead, and, with tears in his grave
eyes, said, "Amen!"

       .        .        .        .        .        .

I am inclined to think that this sentiment was echoed heartily by
Mrs. Rightbody's former acquaintances, when, a year later, Miss
Alice was united to a professional gentleman of honor and renown,
yet who was known to be the son of a convicted horse-thief.  A few
remembered the previous Californian story, and found corroboration
therefor; but a majority believed it a just reward to Miss Alice
for her conduct to Mr. Marvin, and, as Miss Alice cheerfully
accepted it in that light, I do not see why I may not end my story
with happiness to all concerned.



A LEGEND OF SAMMTSTADT.


It was the sacred hour of noon at Sammtstadt.  Everybody was at
dinner; and the serious Kellner of "Der Wildemann" glanced in mild
reproach at Mr. James Clinch, who, disregarding that fact and the
invitatory table d'hote, stepped into the street.  For Mr. Clinch
had eaten a late breakfast at Gladbach, was dyspeptic and American,
and, moveover, preoccupied with business.  He was consequently
indignant, on entering the garden-like court and cloister-like
counting-house of "Von Becheret, Sons, Uncles, and Cousins," to
find the comptoir deserted even by the porter, and was furious at
the maidservant, who offered the sacred shibboleth "Mittagsessen"
as a reasonable explanation of the solitude.  "A country," said Mr.
Clinch to himself, "that stops business at mid-day to go to dinner,
and employs women-servants to talk to business-men, is played out."

He stepped from the silent building into the equally silent
Kronprinzen Strasse.  Not a soul to be seen anywhere.  Rows on rows
of two-storied, gray-stuccoed buildings that might be dwellings, or
might be offices, all showing some traces of feminine taste and
supervision in a flower or a curtain that belied the legended
"Comptoir," or "Direction," over their portals.  Mr. Clinch thought
of Boston and State Street, of New York and Wall Street, and became
coldly contemptuous.

Yet there was clearly nothing to do but to walk down the formal
rows of chestnuts that lined the broad Strasse, and then walk back
again.  At the corner of the first cross-street he was struck with
the fact that two men who were standing in front of a dwelling-
house appeared to be as inconsistent, and out of proportion to the
silent houses, as were the actors on a stage to the painted canvas
thoroughfares before which they strutted.  Mr. Clinch usually had
no fancies, had no eye for quaintness; besides, this was not a
quaint nor romantic district, only an entrepot for silks and
velvets, and Mr. Clinch was here, not as a tourist, but as a
purchaser.  The guidebooks had ignored Sammtstadt, and he was too
good an American to waste time in looking up uncatalogued
curiosities.  Besides, he had been here once before,--an entire
day!

One o'clock.  Still a full hour and a half before his friend would
return to business.  What should he do?  The Verein where he had
once been entertained was deserted even by its waiters; the garden,
with its ostentatious out-of-door tables, looked bleak and bare.
Mr. Clinch was not artistic in his tastes; but even he was quick to
detect the affront put upon Nature by this continental, theatrical
gardening, and turned disgustedly away.  Born near a "lake" larger
than the German Ocean, he resented a pool of water twenty-five feet
in diameter under that alluring title; and, a frequenter of the
Adirondacks, he could scarce contain himself over a bit of rock-
work twelve feet high.  "A country," said Mr. Clinch, "that--" but
here he remembered that he had once seen in a park in his native
city an imitation of the Drachenfels in plaster, on a scale of two
inches to the foot, and checked his speech.

He turned into the principal allee of the town.  There was a long
white building at one end,--the Bahnhof: at the other end he
remembered a dye-house.  He had, a year ago, met its hospitable
proprietor: he would call upon him now.

But the same solitude confronted him as he passed the porter's
lodge beside the gateway.  The counting-house, half villa, half
factory, must have convoked its humanity in some out-of-the-way
refectory, for the halls and passages were tenantless.  For the
first time he began to be impressed with a certain foreign
quaintness in the surroundings; he found himself also recalling
something he had read when a boy, about an enchanted palace whose
inhabitants awoke on the arrival of a long-predestined Prince.  To
assure himself of the absolute ridiculousness of this fancy, he
took from his pocket the business-card of its proprietor, a sample
of dye, and recalled his own personality in a letter of credit.
Having dismissed this idea from his mind, he lounged on again
through a rustic lane that might have led to a farmhouse, yet was
still, absurdly enough, a part of the factory gardens.  Crossing a
ditch by a causeway, he presently came to another ditch and another
causeway, and then found himself idly contemplating a massive, ivy-
clad, venerable brick wall.  As a mere wall it might not have
attracted his attention; but it seemed to enter and bury itself at
right angles in the side-wall of a quite modern-looking dwelling.
After satisfying himself of this fact, he passed on before the
dwelling, but was amazed to see the wall reappear on the other side
exactly the same--old, ivy-grown, sturdy, uncompromising, and
ridiculous.

Could it actually be a part of the house?  He turned back, and
repassed the front of the building.  The entrance door was
hospitably open.  There was a hall and a staircase, but--by all
that was preposterous!--they were built OVER and AROUND the central
brick intrusion.  The wall actually ran through the house!  "A
country," said Mr. Clinch to himself, "where they build their
houses over ruins to accommodate them, or save the trouble of
removal, is,--" but a very pleasant voice addressing him here
stopped his usual hasty conclusion.

"Guten Morgen!"

Mr. Clinch looked hastily up.  Leaning on the parapet of what
appeared to be a garden on the roof of the house was a young girl,
red-cheeked, bright-eyed, blond-haired.  The voice was soft,
subdued, and mellow; it was part of the new impression he was
receiving, that it seemed to be in some sort connected with the
ivy-clad wall before him.  His hat was in his hand as he answered,--

"Guten Morgen!"

"Was the Herr seeking anything?"

"The Herr was only waiting a longtime-coming friend, and had
strayed here to speak with the before-known proprietor."

"So?  But, the before-known proprietor sleeping well at present
after dinner, would the Herr on the terrace still a while linger?"

The Herr would, but looked around in vain for the means to do it.
He was thinking of a scaling-ladder, when the young woman
reappeared at the open door, and bade him enter.

Following the youthful hostess, Mr. Clinch mounted the staircase,
but, passing the mysterious wall, could not forbear an allusion to
it.  "It is old, very old," said the girl: "it was here when I
came."

"That was not very long ago," said Mr. Clinch gallantly.

"No; but my grandfather found it here too."

"And built over it?"

"Why not?  It is very, very hard, and SO thick."

Mr. Clinch here explained, with masculine superiority, the
existence of such modern agents as nitro-glycerine and dynamite,
persuasive in their effects upon time-honored obstructions and
encumbrances.

"But there was not then what you call--this--ni--nitro-glycerine."

"But since then?"

The young girl gazed at him in troubled surprise.  "My great-
grandfather did not take it away when he built the house: why
should we?"

"Oh!"

They had passed through a hall and dining-room, and suddenly
stepped out of a window upon a gravelled terrace.  From this a few
stone steps descended to another terrace, on which trees and shrubs
were growing; and yet, looking over the parapet, Mr. Clinch could
see the road some twenty feet below.  It was nearly on a level
with, and part of, the second story of the house.  Had an
earthquake lifted the adjacent ground? or had the house burrowed
into a hill?  Mr. Clinch turned to his companion, who was standing
close beside him, breathing quite audibly, and leaving an
impression on his senses as of a gentle and fragrant heifer.

"How was all this done?"

The maiden did not know.  "It was always here."

Mr. Clinch reascended the steps.  He had quite forgotten his
impatience.  Possibly it was the gentle, equable calm of the girl,
who, but for her ready color, did not seem to be moved by anything;
perhaps it was the peaceful repose of this mausoleum of the dead
and forgotten wall that subdued him, but he was quite willing to
take the old-fashioned chair on the terrace which she offered him,
and follow her motions with not altogether mechanical eyes as she
drew out certain bottles and glasses from a mysterious closet in
the wall.  Mr. Clinch had the weakness of a majority of his sex in
believing that he was a good judge of wine and women.  The latter,
as shown in the specimen before him, he would have invoiced as a
fair sample of the middle-class German woman,--healthy, comfort-
loving, home-abiding, the very genius of domesticity.  Even in her
virgin outlines the future wholesome matron was already forecast,
from the curves of her broad hips, to the flat lines of her back
and shoulders.  Of the wine he was to judge later.  THAT required
an even more subtle and unimpassioned intellect.

She placed two bottles before him on the table,--one, the
traditional long-necked, amber-colored Rheinflasche; the other, an
old, quaint, discolored, amphorax-patterned glass jug.  The first
she opened.

"This," she said, pointing to the other, "cannot be opened."

Mr. Clinch paid his respects first to the opened bottle, a good
quality of Niersteiner.  With his intellect thus clarified, he
glanced at the other.

"It is from my great-grandfather.  It is old as the wall."

Mr. Clinch examined the bottle attentively.  It seemed to have no
cork.  Formed of some obsolete, opaque glass, its twisted neck was
apparently hermetically sealed by the same material.  The maiden
smiled, as she said,--

"It cannot be opened now without breaking the bottle.  It is not
good luck to do so.  My grandfather and my father would not."

But Mr. Clinch was still examining the bottle.  Its neck was
flattened towards the mouth; but a close inspection showed it was
closed by some equally hard cement, but not glass.

"If I can open it without breaking the bottle, have I your
permission?"

A mischievous glance rested on Mr. Clinch, as the maiden answered,--

"I shall not object; but for what will you do it?"

"To taste it, to try it."

"You are not afraid?"

There was just enough obvious admiration of Mr. Clinch's audacity
in the maiden's manner to impel him to any risk.  His only answer
was to take from his pocket a small steel instrument.  Holding the
neck of the bottle firmly in one hand, he passed his thumb and the
steel twice or thrice around it.  A faint rasping, scratching sound
was all the wondering girl heard.  Then, with a sudden, dexterous
twist of his thumb and finger, to her utter astonishment he laid
the top of the neck, neatly cut off, in her hand.

"There's a better and more modern bottle than you had before," he
said, pointing to the cleanly-divided neck, "and any cork will fit
it now."

But the girl regarded him with anxiety.  "And you still wish to
taste the wine?"

"With your permission, yes!"

He looked up in her eyes.  There was permission: there was
something more, that was flattering to his vanity.  He took the
wine-glass, and, slowly and in silence, filled it from the
mysterious flask.

The wine fell into the glass clearly, transparently, heavily, but
still and cold as death.  There was no sparkle, no cheap
ebullition, no evanescent bubble.  Yet it was so clear, that, but
for a faint amber-tinting, the glass seemed empty.  There was no
aroma, no ethereal diffusion from its equable surface.  Perhaps it
was fancy, perhaps it was from nervous excitement; but a slight
chill seemed to radiate from the still goblet, and bring down the
temperature of the terrace.  Mr. Clinch and his companion both
insensibly shivered.

But only for a moment.  Mr. Clinch raised the glass to his lips.
As he did so, he remembered seeing distinctly, as in a picture
before him, the sunlit terrace, the pretty girl in the foreground,--
an amused spectator of his sacrilegious act,--the outlying ivy-
crowned wall, the grass-grown ditch, the tall factory chimneys
rising above the chestnuts, and the distant poplars that marked the
Rhine.

The wine was delicious; perhaps a TRIFLE, only a trifle, heady.  He
was conscious of a slight exaltation.  There was also a smile upon
the girl's lip and a roguish twinkle in her eye as she looked at
him.

"Do you find the wine to your taste?" she asked.

"Fair enough, I warrant," said Mr. Clinch with ponderous gallantry;
"but methinks 'tis nothing compared with the nectar that grows on
those ruby lips.  Nay, by St. Ursula, I swear it!"

No sooner had this solemnly ridiculous speech passed the lips of
the unfortunate man than he would have given worlds to have
recalled it.  He knew that he must be intoxicated; that the
sentiment and language were utterly unlike him, he was miserably
aware; that he did not even know exactly what it meant, he was also
hopelessly conscious.  Yet feeling all this,--feeling, too, the
shame of appearing before her as a man who had lost his senses
through a single glass of wine,--nevertheless he rose awkwardly,
seized her hand, and by sheer force drew her towards him, and
kissed her.  With an exclamation that was half a cry and half a
laugh, she fled from him, leaving him alone and bewildered on the
terrace.

For a moment Mr. Clinch supported himself against the open window,
leaning his throbbing head on the cold glass.  Shame, mortification,
an hysterical half-consciousness of his utter ridiculousness, and
yet an odd, undefined terror of something, by turns possessed him.
Was he ever before guilty of such perfect folly?  Had he ever before
made such a spectacle of himself?  Was it possible that he, Mr.
James Clinch, the coolest head at a late supper,--he, the American,
who had repeatedly drunk Frenchmen and Englishmen under the
table--could be transformed into a sentimental, stagey idiot by a
single glass of wine?  He was conscious, too, of asking himself
these very questions in a stilted sort of rhetoric, and with a
rising brutality of anger that was new to him.  And then everything
swam before him, and he seemed to lose all consciousness.

But only for an instant.  With a strong effort of his will he again
recalled himself, his situation, his surroundings, and, above all,
his appointment.  He rose to his feet, hurriedly descended the
terrace-steps, and, before he well knew how, found himself again on
the road.  Once there, his faculties returned in full vigor; he was
again himself.  He strode briskly forward toward the ditch he had
crossed only a few moments before, but was suddenly stopped.  It
was filled with water.  He looked up and down.  It was clearly the
same ditch; but a flowing stream thirty feet wide now separated him
from the other bank.

The appearance of this unlooked-for obstacle made Mr. Clinch doubt
the full restoration of his faculties.  He stepped to the brink of
the flood to bathe his head in the stream, and wash away the last
vestiges of his potations.  But as he approached the placid depths,
and knelt down he again started back, and this time with a full
conviction of his own madness; for reflected from its mirror-like
surface was a figure he could scarcely call his own, although here
and there some trace of his former self remained.

His close-cropped hair, trimmed a la mode, had given way to long,
curling locks that dropped upon his shoulders.  His neat mustache
was frightfully prolonged, and curled up at the ends stiffly.  His
Piccadilly collar had changed shape and texture, and reached--a
mass of lace--to a point midway of his breast!  His boots,--why had
he not noticed his boots before?--these triumphs of his Parisian
bootmaker, were lost in hideous leathern cases that reached half
way up his thighs.  In place of his former high silk hat, there lay
upon the ground beside him the awful thing he had just taken off,--
a mass of thickened felt, flap, feather, and buckle that weighed at
least a stone.

A single terrible idea now took possession of him.  He had been
"sold," "taken in," "done for."  He saw it all.  In a state of
intoxication he had lost his way, had been dragged into some vile
den, stripped of his clothes and valuables, and turned adrift upon
the quiet town in this shameless masquerade.  How should he keep
his appointment? how inform the police of this outrage upon a
stranger and an American citizen? how establish his identity?  Had
they spared his papers?  He felt feverishly in his breast.  Ah!--
his watch?  Yes, a watch--heavy, jewelled, enamelled--and, by all
that was ridiculous, FIVE OTHERS!  He ran his hands into his
capacious trunk hose.  What was this?  Brooches, chains, finger-
rings,--one large episcopal one,--ear-rings, and a handful of
battered gold and silver coins.  His papers, his memorandums, his
passport--all proofs of his identity--were gone!  In their place
was the unmistakable omnium gatherum of an accomplished knight of
the road.  Not only was his personality, but his character, gone
forever.

It was a part of Mr. Clinch's singular experience that this last
stroke of ill fortune seemed to revive in him something of the
brutal instinct he had felt a moment before.  He turned eagerly
about with the intention of calling some one--the first person he
met--to account.  But the house that he had just quitted was gone.
The wall!  Ah, there it was, no longer purposeless, intrusive, and
ivy-clad, but part of the buttress of another massive wall that
rose into battlements above him.  Mr. Clinch turned again
hopelessly toward Sammtstadt.  There was the fringe of poplars on
the Rhine, there were the outlying fields lit by the same meridian
sun; but the characteristic chimneys of Sammtstadt were gone.  Mr.
Clinch was hopelessly lost.

The sound of a horn breaking the stillness recalled his senses.  He
now for the first time perceived that a little distance below him,
partly hidden in the trees, was a queer, tower-shaped structure
with chains and pulleys, that in some strange way recalled his
boyish reading.  A drawbridge and portcullis!  And on the
battlement a figure in a masquerading dress as absurd as his own,
flourishing a banner and trumpet, and trying to attract his
attention.

"Was wollen Sie?"

"I want to see the proprietor," said Mr. Clinch, choking back his
rage.

There was a pause, and the figure turned apparently to consult with
some one behind the battlements.  After a moment he reappeared, and
in a perfunctory monotone, with an occasional breathing spell on
the trumpet, began,--

"You do give warranty as a good knight and true, as well as by the
bones of the blessed St. Ursula, that you bear no ill will, secret
enmity, wicked misprise or conspiracy, against the body of our
noble lord and master Von Kolnsche?  And you bring with you no
ambush, siege, or surprise of retainers, neither secret warrant nor
lettres de cachet, nor carry on your knightly person poisoned
dagger, magic ring, witch-powder, nor enchanted bullet, and that
you have entered into no unhallowed alliance with the Prince of
Darkness, gnomes, hexies, dragons, Undines, Loreleis, nor the
like?"

"Come down out of that, you d----d old fool!" roared Mr. Clinch,
now perfectly beside himself with rage,--"come down, and let me
in!"

As Mr. Clinch shouted out the last words, confused cries of
recognition and welcome, not unmixed with some consternation, rose
from the battlements: "Ach Gott!" "Mutter Gott--it is he!  It is
Jann, Der Wanderer.  It is himself."  The chains rattled, the
ponderous drawbridge creaked and dropped; and across it a medley of
motley figures rushed pellmell.  But, foremost among them, the very
maiden whom he had left not ten minutes before flew into his arms,
and with a cry of joyful greeting sank upon his breast.  Mr. Clinch
looked down upon the fair head and long braids.  It certainly was
the same maiden, his cruel enchantress; but where did she get those
absurd garments?

"Willkommen," said a stout figure, advancing with some authority,
and seizing his disengaged hand, "where hast thou been so long?"

Mr. Clinch, by no means placated, coldly dropped the extended hand.
It was NOT the proprietor he had known.  But there was a singular
resemblance in his face to some one of Mr. Clinch's own kin; but
who, he could not remember.  "May I take the liberty of asking your
name?" he asked coldly.

The figure grinned.  "Surely; but, if thou standest upon punctilio,
it is for ME to ask thine, most noble Freiherr," said he, winking
upon his retainers.  "Whom have I the honor of entertaining?"

"My name is Clinch,--James Clinch of Chicago, Ill."

A shout of laughter followed.  In the midst of his rage and
mortification Mr. Clinch fancied he saw a shade of pain and
annoyance flit across the face of the maiden.  He was puzzled, but
pressed her hand, in spite of his late experiences, reassuringly.
She made a gesture of silence to him, and then slipped away in the
crowd.

"Schames K'l'n'sche von Schekargo," mimicked the figure, to the
unspeakable delight of his retainers.  "So!  THAT is the latest
French style.  Holy St. Ursula!  Hark ye, nephew!  I am not a
travelled man.  Since the Crusades we simple Rhine gentlemen have
staid at home.  But I call myself Kolnsche of Koln, at your
service."

"Very likely you are right," said Mr. Clinch hotly, disregarding
the caution of his fair companion; "but, whoever YOU are, I am a
stranger entitled to protection.  I have been robbed."

If Mr. Clinch had uttered an exquisite joke instead of a very angry
statement, it could not have been more hilariously received.  He
paused, grew confused, and then went on hesitatingly,--

"In place of my papers and credentials I find only these."  And he
produced the jewelry from his pockets.

Another shout of laughter and clapping of hands followed this
second speech; and the baron, with a wink at his retainers,
prolonged the general mirth by saying, "By the way, nephew, there
is little doubt but there has been robbery--somewhere."

"It was done," continued Mr. Clinch, hurrying to make an end of his
explanation, "while I was inadvertently overcome with liquor,--
drugged liquor."

The laughter here was so uproarious that the baron, albeit with
tears of laughter in his own eyes, made a peremptory gesture of
silence.  The gesture was peculiar to the baron, efficacious and
simple.  It consisted merely in knocking down the nearest laugher.
Having thus restored tranquillity, he strode forward, and took Mr.
Clinch by the hand.  "By St. Adolph, I did doubt thee a moment ago,
nephew; but this last frank confession of thine shows me I did thee
wrong.  Willkommen zu Hause, Jann, drunk or sober, willcommen zu
Cracowen."

More and more mystified, but convinced of the folly of any further
explanation, Mr. Clinch took the extended hand of his alleged
uncle, and permitted himself to be led into the castle.  They
passed into a large banqueting-hall adorned with armor and
implements of the chase.  Mr. Clinch could not help noticing, that,
although the appointments were liberal and picturesque, the
ventilation was bad, and the smoke from the huge chimney made the
air murky.  The oaken tables, massive in carving and rich in color,
were unmistakably greasy; and Mr. Clinch slipped on a piece of meat
that one of the dozen half-wild dogs who were occupying the room
was tearing on the floor.  The dog, yelping, ran between the legs
of a retainer, precipitating him upon the baron, who instantly,
with the "equal foot" of fate, kicked him and the dog into a
corner.

"And whence came you last?" asked the baron, disregarding the
little contretemps, and throwing himself heavily on an oaken
settle, while he pushed a queer, uncomfortable-looking stool, with
legs like a Siamese-twin-connected double X, towards his companion.

Mr. Clinch, who had quite given himself up to fate, answered
mechanically,--

"Paris."

The baron winked his eye with unutterable, elderly wickedness.
"Ach Gott! it is nothing to what it was when I was your age.  Ah!
there was Manon,--Sieur Manon we used to call her.  I suppose she's
getting old now.  How goes on the feud between the students and the
citizens?  Eh?  Did you go to the bal in la Cite?"

Mr. Clinch stopped the flow of those Justice-Shallow-like
reminiscences by an uneasy exclamation.  He was thinking of the
maiden who had disappeared so suddenly.  The baron misinterpreted
his nervousness.  "What ho, within there!--Max, Wolfgang,--lazy
rascals!  Bring some wine."

At the baleful word Mr. Clinch started to his feet.  "Not for me!
Bring me none of your body-and-soul-destroying poison!  I've enough
of it!"

The baron stared.  The servitors stared also.

"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Clinch, recalling himself slowly;
"but I fear that Rhine wine does not agree with me."

The baron grinned.  Perceiving, however, that the three servitors
grinned also, he kicked two of them into obscurity, and felled the
third to the floor with his fist.  "Hark ye, nephew," he said,
turning to the astonished Clinch, "give over this nonsense!  By the
mitre of Bishop Hatto, thou art as big a fool as he!"

"Hatto," repeated Clinch mechanically.  "What! he of the Mouse
Tower?"

"Ay, of the Mouse Tower!" sneered the baron.  "I see you know the
story."

"Why am I like him?" asked Mr. Clinch in amazement.

The baron grinned.  "HE punished the Rhenish wine as thou dost,
without judgment.  He had--"

"The jim-jams," said Mr. Clinch mechanically again.

The baron frowned.  "I know not what gibberish thou sayest by 'jim-
jams'; but he had, like thee, the wildest fantasies and imaginings;
saw snakes, toads, rats, in his boots, but principally rats; said
they pursued him, came to his room, his bed--ach Gott!"

"Oh!" said Mr. Clinch, with a sudden return to his firmer self and
his native inquiring habits; "then THAT is the fact about Bishop
Hatto of the story?"

"His enemies made it the subject of a vile slander of an old friend
of mine," said the baron; "and those cursed poets, who believe
everything, and then persuade others to do so,--may the Devil fly
away with them!--kept it up."

Here were facts quite to Mr. Clinch's sceptical mind.  He forgot
himself and his surroundings.

"And that story of the Drachenfels?" he asked insinuatingly,--"the
dragon, you know.  Was he too--"

The baron grinned.  "A boar transformed by the drunken brains of
the Bauers of the Siebengebirge.  Ach Gott!  Ottefried had many a
hearty laugh over it; and it did him, as thou knowest, good service
with the nervous mother of the silly maiden."

"And the seven sisters of Schonberg?" asked Mr. Clinch persuasively.

"'Schonberg!  Seven sisters!'  What of them?" demanded the baron
sharply.

"Why, you know,--the maidens who were so coy to their suitors, and--
don't you remember?--jumped into the Rhine to avoid them."

"'Coy?  Jumped into the Rhine to avoid suitors'?" roared the baron,
purple with rage.  "Hark ye, nephew!  I like not this jesting.
Thou knowest I married one of the Schonberg girls, as did thy
father.  How 'coy' they were is neither here nor there; but mayhap
WE might tell another story.  Thy father, as weak a fellow as thou
art where a petticoat is concerned, could not as a gentleman do
other than he did.  And THIS is his reward?  Ach Gott!  'Coy!'  And
THIS, I warrant, is the way the story is delivered in Paris."

Mr. Clinch would have answered that this was the way he read it in
a guidebook, but checked himself at the hopelessness of the
explanation.  Besides, he was on the eve of historic information;
he was, as it were, interviewing the past; and, whether he would
ever be able to profit by the opportunity or not, he could not bear
to lose it.  "And how about the Lorelei--is she, too, a fiction?"
he asked glibly.

"It was said," observed the baron sardonically, "that when thou
disappeared with the gamekeeper's daughter at Obercassel--Heaven
knows where!--thou wast swallowed up in a whirlpool with some
creature.  Ach Gott!  I believe it!  But a truce to this
balderdash.  And so thou wantest to know of the 'coy' sisters of
Schoenberg?  Hark ye, Jann, that cousin of thine is a Schonberg.
Call you her 'coy'?  Did I not see thy greeting?  Eh?  By St.
Adolph, knowing thee as she does to be robber and thief, call you
her greeting 'coy'?"

Furious as Mr. Clinch inwardly became under these epithets, he felt
that his explanation would hardly relieve the maiden from deceit,
or himself from weakness.  But out of his very perplexity and
turmoil a bright idea was born.  He turned to the baron,--

"Then you have no faith in the Rhine legends?"

The baron only replied with a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders.

"But what if I told you a new one?"

"You?"

"Yes; a part of my experience?"

The baron was curious.  It was early in the afternoon, just after
dinner.  He might be worse bored.

"I've only one condition," added Mr. Clinch: "the young lady--I
mean, of course, my cousin--must hear it too."

"Oh, ay!  I see.  Of course--the old trick!  Well, call the jade.
But mark ye, Sir Nephew, no enchanted maidens and knights.  Keep to
thyself.  Be as thou art, vagabond Jann Kolnische, knight of the
road.--What ho there, scoundrels!  Call the Lady Wilhemina."

It was the first time Mr. Clinch had heard his fair friend's name;
but it was not, evidently, the first time she had seen him, as the
very decided wink the gentle maiden dropped him testified.
Nevertheless, with hands lightly clasped together, and downcast
eyes, she stood before them.

Mr. Clinch began.  Without heeding the baron's scornful grin, he
graphically described his meeting, two years before, with a
Lorelei, her usual pressing invitation, and his subsequent plunge
into the Rhine.

"I am free to confess," added Mr. Clinch, with an affecting glance
to Wilhelmina, "that I was not enamoured of the graces of the lady,
but was actuated by my desire to travel, and explore hitherto
unknown regions.  I wished to travel, to visit--"

"Paris," interrupted the baron sarcastically.

"America," continued Mr. Clinch.

"What?"--"America."

"'Tis a gnome-like sounding name, this Meriker.  Go on, nephew:
tell us of Meriker."

With the characteristic fluency of his nation, Mr. Clinch described
his landing on those enchanted shores, viz, the Rhine Whirlpool and
Hell Gate, East River, New York.  He described the railways, tram-
ways, telegraphs, hotels, phonograph, and telephone.  An occasional
oath broke from the baron, but he listened attentively; and in a
few moments Mr. Clinch had the raconteur's satisfaction of seeing
the vast hall slowly filling with open-eyed and open-mouthed
retainers hanging upon his words.  Mr. Clinch went on to describe
his astonishment at meeting on these very shores some of his own
blood and kin.  "In fact," said Mr. Clinch, "here were a race
calling themselves 'Clinch,' but all claiming to have descended
from Kolnische."

"And how?" sneered the baron.

"Through James Kolnische and Wilhelmina his wife," returned Mr.
Clinch boldly.  "They emigrated from Koln and Crefeld to
Philadelphia, where there is a quarter named Crefeld."  Mr. Clinch
felt himself shaky as to his chronology, but wisely remembered that
it was a chronology of the future to his hearers, and they could
not detect an anachronism.  With his eyes fixed upon those of the
gentle Wilhelmina, Mr. Clinch now proceeded to describe his return
to his fatherland, but his astonishment at finding the very face of
the country changed, and a city standing on those fields he had
played in as a boy; and how he had wandered hopelessly on, until he
at last sat wearily down in a humble cottage built upon the ruins
of a lordly castle.  "So utterly travel-worn and weak had I
become," said Mr. Clinch, with adroitly simulated pathos, "that a
single glass of wine offered me by the simple cottage maiden
affected me like a prolonged debauch."

A long-drawn snore was all that followed this affecting climax.
The baron was asleep; the retainers were also asleep.  Only one
pair of eyes remained open,--arch, luminous, blue,--Wilhelmina's.

"There is a subterranean passage below us to Linn.  Let us fly!"
she whispered.

"But why?"

"They always do it in the legends," she murmured modestly.

"But your father?"

"He sleeps.  Do you not hear him?"

Certainly somebody was snoring.  But, oddly enough, it seemed to be
Wilhelmina.  Mr. Clinch suggested this to her.

"Fool, it is yourself!"

Mr. Clinch, struck with the idea, stopped to consider.  She was
right.  It certainly WAS himself.

With a struggle he awoke.  The sun was shining.  The maiden was
looking at him.  But the castle--the castle was gone!

"You have slept well," said the maiden archly.  "Everybody does
after dinner at Sammtstadt.  Father has just awakened, and is
coming."

Mr. Clinch stared at the maiden, at the terrace, at the sky, at the
distant chimneys of Sammtstadt, at the more distant Rhine, at the
table before him, and finally at the empty glass.  The maiden
smiled.  "Tell me," said Mr. Clinch, looking in her eyes, "is there
a secret passage underground between this place and the Castle of
Linn?"

"An underground passage?"

"Ay--whence the daughter of the house fled with a stranger knight."

"They say there is," said the maiden, with a gentle blush.

"Can you show it to me?"

She hesitated.  "Papa is coming: I'll ask him."

I presume she did.  At least the Herr Consul at Sammtstadt informs
me of a marriage-certificate issued to one Clinch of Chicago, and
Kolnische of Koln; and there is an amusing story extant in the
Verein at Sammtstadt, of an American connoisseur of Rhine wines,
who mistook a flask of Cognac and rock-candy, used for "craftily
qualifying" lower grades of wine to the American standard, for the
rarest Rudesheimerberg.




VIEWS FROM A GERMAN SPION


Outside of my window, two narrow perpendicular mirrors, parallel
with the casement, project into the street, yet with a certain
unobtrusiveness of angle that enables them to reflect the people
who pass, without any reciprocal disclosure of their own.  The men
and women hurrying by not only do not know they are observed, but,
what is worse, do not even see their own reflection in this
hypocritical plane, and are consequently unable, through its aid,
to correct any carelessness of garb, gait, or demeanor.  At first
this seems to be taking an unfair advantage of the human animal,
who invariably assumes an attitude when he is conscious of being
under human focus.  But I observe that my neighbors' windows, right
and left, have a similar apparatus, that this custom is evidently a
local one, and the locality is German.  Being an American stranger,
I am quite willing to leave the morality of the transaction with
the locality, and adapt myself to the custom: indeed, I had thought
of offering it, figuratively, as an excuse for any unfairness of
observation I might make in these pages.  But my German mirrors
reflect without prejudice, selection, or comment; and the American
eye, I fear, is but mortal, and like all mortal eyes, figuratively
as well as in that literal fact noted by an eminent scientific
authority, infinitely inferior to the work of the best German
opticians.

And this leads me to my first observation, namely, that a majority
of those who pass my mirror have weak eyes, and have already
invoked the aid of the optician.  Why are these people, physically
in all else so much stronger than my countrymen, deficient in
eyesight?  Or, to omit the passing testimony of my Spion, and take
my own personal experience, why does my young friend Max, brightest
of all schoolboys, who already wears the cap that denotes the
highest class,--why does he shock me by suddenly drawing forth a
pair of spectacles, that upon his fresh, rosy face would be an
obvious mocking imitation of the Herr Papa--if German children
could ever, by any possibility, be irreverent?  Or why does the
Fraulein Marie, his sister, pink as Aurora, round as Hebe, suddenly
veil her blue eyes with a golden lorgnette in the midst of our
polyglot conversation?  Is it to evade the direct, admiring glance
of the impulsive American?  Dare I say NO?  Dare I say that that
frank, clear, honest, earnest return of the eye, which has on the
Continent most unfairly brought my fair countrywomen under
criticism, is quite as common to her more carefully-guarded,
tradition-hedged German sisters?  No, it is not that.  Is it any
thing in these emerald and opal tinted skies, which seem so unreal
to the American eye, and for the first time explain what seemed the
unreality of German art? in these mysterious yet restful Rhine
fogs, which prolong the twilight, and hang the curtain of romance
even over mid-day?  Surely not.  Is it not rather, O Herr Professor
profound in analogy and philosophy!--is it not rather this
abominable black-letter, this elsewhere-discarded, uncouth, slowly-
decaying text known as the German Alphabet, that plucks out the
bright eyes of youth, and bristles the gateways of your language
with a chevaux de frise of splintered rubbish?  Why must I hesitate
whether it is an accident of the printer's press, or the poor
quality of the paper, that makes this letter a "k" or a "t"?  Why
must I halt in an emotion or a thought because "s" and "f" are so
nearly alike?  Is it not enough that I, an impulsive American,
accustomed to do a thing first, and reflect upon it afterwards,
must grope my way through a blind alley of substantives and
adjectives, only to find the verb of action in an obscure corner,
without ruining my eyesight in the groping?

But I dismiss these abstract reflections for a fresh and active
resentment.  This is the fifth or sixth dog that has passed my
Spion, harnessed to a small barrow-like cart, and tugging painfully
at a burden so ludicrously disproportionate to his size, that it
would seem a burlesque, but for the poor dog's sad sincerity.
Perhaps it is because I have the barbarian's fondness for dogs, and
for their lawless, gentle, loving uselessness, that I rebel against
this unnatural servitude.  It seems as monstrous as if a child were
put between the shafts, and made to carry burdens; and I have come
to regard those men and women, who in the weakest perfunctory way
affect to aid the poor brute by laying idle hands on the barrow
behind, as I would unnatural parents.  Pegasus harnessed to the
Thracian herdsman's plough was no more of a desecration.  I fancy
the poor dog seems to feel the monstrosity of the performance, and,
in sheer shame for his master, forgivingly tries to assume it is
PLAY; and I have seen a little "colley" running along, barking, and
endeavoring to leap and gambol in the shafts, before a load that
any one out of this locality would have thought the direst cruelty.
Nor do the older or more powerful dogs seem to become accustomed to
it.  When his cruel taskmaster halts with his wares, instantly the
dog, either by sitting down in his harness, or crawling over the
shafts, or by some unmistakable dog-like trick, utterly scatters
any such delusion of even the habit of servitude.  The few of his
race who do not work in this ducal city seem to have lost their
democratic canine sympathies, and look upon him with something of
that indifferent calm with which yonder officer eyes the road-
mender in the ditch below him.  He loses even the characteristics
of species.  The common cur and mastiff look alike in harness.  The
burden levels all distinctions.  I have said that he was generally
sincere in his efforts.  I recall but one instance to the contrary.
I remember a young colley who first attracted my attention by his
persistent barking.  Whether he did this, as the plough-boy
whistled, "for want of thought," or whether it was a running
protest against his occupation, I could not determine, until one
day I noticed, that, in barking, he slightly threw up his neck and
shoulders, and that the two-wheeled barrow-like vehicle behind him,
having its weight evenly poised on the wheels by the trucks in the
hands of its driver, enabled him by this movement to cunningly
throw the center of gravity and the greater weight on the man,--a
fact which that less sagacious brute never discerned.  Perhaps I am
using a strong expression regarding his driver.  It may be that the
purely animal wants of the dog, in the way of food, care, and
shelter, are more bountifully supplied in servitude than in
freedom; becoming a valuable and useful property, he may be cared
for and protected as such (an odd recollection that this argument
had been used forcibly in regard to human slavery in my own country
strikes me here); but his picturesqueness and poetry are gone, and
I cannot help thinking that the people who have lost this gentle,
sympathetic, characteristic figure from their domestic life and
surroundings have not acquired an equal gain through his harsh
labors.

To the American eye there is, throughout the length and breadth of
this foreign city, no more notable and striking object than the
average German house-servant.  It is not that she has passed my
Spion a dozen times within the last hour,--for here she is
messenger, porter, and commissionnaire, as well as housemaid and
cook,--but that she is always a phenomenon to the American
stranger, accustomed to be abused in his own country by his foreign
Irish handmaiden.  Her presence is as refreshing and grateful as
the morning light, and as inevitable and regular.  When I add that
with the novelty of being well served is combined the satisfaction
of knowing that you have in your household an intelligent being who
reads and writes with fluency, and yet does not abstract your
books, nor criticise your literary composition; who is cleanly
clad, and neat in her person, without the suspicion of having
borrowed her mistress's dresses; who may be good-looking without
the least imputation of coquetry or addition to her followers; who
is obedient without servility, polite without flattery, willing and
replete with supererogatory performance, without the expectation of
immediate pecuniary return, what wonder that the American
householder translated into German life feels himself in a new Eden
of domestic possibilities unrealized in any other country, and
begins to believe in a present and future of domestic happiness!
What wonder that the American bachelor living in German lodgings
feels half the terrors of the conjugal future removed, and rushes
madly into love--and housekeeping!  What wonder that I, a long-
suffering and patient master, who have been served by the reticent
but too imitative Chinaman; who have been "Massa" to the childlike
but untruthful negro; who have been the recipient of the brotherly
but uncertain ministrations of the South-Sea Islander, and have
been proudly disregarded by the American aborigine, only in due
time to meet the fate of my countrymen at the hands of Bridget the
Celt,--what wonder that I gladly seize this opportunity to sing the
praises of my German handmaid!  Honor to thee, Lenchen, wherever
thou goest!  Heaven bless thee in thy walks abroad! whether with
that tightly-booted cavalryman in thy Sunday gown and best, or in
blue polka-dotted apron and bare head as thou trottest nimbly on
mine errands,--errands which Bridget o'Flaherty would scorn to
undertake, or, undertaking, would hopelessly blunder in.  Heaven
bless thee, child, in thy early risings and in thy later sittings,
at thy festive board overflowing with Essig and Fett, in the
mysteries of thy Kuchen, in the fulness of thy Bier, and in thy
nightly suffocations beneath mountainous and multitudinous
feathers!  Good, honest, simple-minded, cheerful, duty-loving
Lenchen!  Have not thy brothers, strong and dutiful as thou, lent
their gravity and earnestness to sweeten and strengthen the fierce
youth of the Republic beyond the seas? and shall not thy children
inherit the broad prairies that still wait for them, and discover
the fatness thereof, and send a portion transmuted in glittering
shekels back to thee?

Almost as notable are the children whose round faces have as
frequently been reflected in my Spion.  Whether it is only a fancy
of mine that the average German retains longer than any other race
his childish simplicity and unconsciousness, or whether it is
because I am more accustomed to the extreme self-assertion and
early maturity of American children, I know not; but I am inclined
to believe that among no other people is childhood as perennial,
and to be studied in such characteristic and quaint and simple
phases as here.  The picturesqueness of Spanish and Italian
childhood has a faint suspicion of the pantomime and the conscious
attitudinizing of the Latin races.  German children are not
exuberant or volatile: they are serious,--a seriousness, however,
not to be confounded with the grave reflectiveness of age, but only
the abstract wonderment of childhood; for all those who have made a
loving study of the young human animal will, I think, admit that
its dominant expression is GRAVITY, and not playfulness, and will
be satisfied that he erred pitifully who first ascribed "light-
heartedness" and "thoughtlessness" as part of its phenomena.  These
little creatures I meet upon the street,--whether in quaint wooden
shoes and short woollen petticoats, or neatly booted and furred,
with school knapsacks jauntily borne upon little square shoulders,--
all carry likewise in their round chubby faces their profound
wonderment and astonishment at the big busy world into which they
have so lately strayed.  If I stop to speak with this little maid
who scarcely reaches to the top-boots of yonder cavalry officer,
there is less of bashful self-consciousness in her sweet little
face than of grave wonder at the foreign accent and strange ways of
this new figure obtruded upon her limited horizon.  She answers
honestly, frankly, prettily, but gravely.  There is a remote
possibility that I might bite; and, with this suspicion plainly
indicated in her round blue eyes, she quietly slips her little red
hand from mine, and moves solemnly away.  I remember once to have
stopped in the street with a fair countrywoman of mine to
interrogate a little figure in sabots,--the one quaint object in
the long, formal perspective of narrow, gray bastard-Italian
facaded houses of a Rhenish German Strasse.  The sweet little
figure wore a dark-blue woollen petticoat that came to its knees;
gray woollen stockings covered the shapely little limbs below; and
its very blonde hair, the color of a bright dandelion, was tied in
a pathetic little knot at the back of its round head, and garnished
with an absurd green ribbon.  Now, although this gentlewoman's
sympathies were catholic and universal, unfortunately their
expression was limited to her own mother-tongue.  She could not
help pouring out upon the child the maternal love that was in her
own womanly breast, nor could she withhold the "baby-talk" through
which it was expressed.  But, alas! it was in English.  Hence
ensued a colloquy, tender and extravagant on the part of the elder,
grave and wondering on the part of the child.  But the lady had a
natural feminine desire for reciprocity, particularly in the
presence of our emotion-scorning sex, and as a last resource she
emptied the small silver of her purse into the lap of the coy
maiden.  It was a declaration of love, susceptible of translation
at the nearest cake-shop.  But the little maid, whose dress and
manner certainly did not betray an habitual disregard of gifts of
this kind, looked at the coin thoughtfully, but not regretfully.
Some innate sense of duty, equally strong with that of being polite
to strangers, filled her consciousness.  With the utterly
unexpected remark that her father 'did not allow her to take money',
the queer little figure moved away, leaving the two Americans
covered with mortification.  The rare American child who could have
done this would have done it with an attitude.  This little German
bourgeoise did it naturally.  I do not intend to rush to the
deduction that German children of the lower classes habitually
refuse pecuniary gratuities: indeed, I remember to have wickedly
suggested to my companion, that, to avoid impoverishment in a
foreign land, she should not repeat the story nor the experiment.
But I simply offer it as a fact, and to an American, at home or
abroad, a novel one.

I owe to these little figures another experience quite as strange.
It was at the close of a dull winter's day,--a day from which all
out-of-door festivity seemed to be naturally excluded: there was a
baleful promise of snow in the air and a dismal reminiscence of it
under foot, when suddenly, in striking contrast with the dreadful
bleakness of the street, a half dozen children, masked and
bedizened with cheap ribbons, spangles, and embroidery, flashed
across my Spion.  I was quick to understand the phenomenon.  It was
the Carnival season.  Only the night before I had been to the great
opening masquerade,--a famous affair, for which this art-loving
city is noted, and to which strangers are drawn from all parts of
the Continent.  I remember to have wondered if the pleasure-loving
German in America had not broken some of his conventional shackles
in emigration; for certainly I had found the Carnival balls of the
"Lieder Kranz Society" in New York, although decorous and
fashionable to the American taste, to be wild dissipations compared
with the practical seriousness of this native performance, and I
hailed the presence of these children in the open street as a
promise of some extravagance, real, untrammelled, and characteristic.
I seized my hat and--OVERCOAT,--a dreadful incongruity to the
spangles that had whisked by, and followed the vanishing figures
round the corner.  Here they were re-enforced by a dozen men and
women, fantastically, but not expensively arrayed, looking not
unlike the supernumeraries of some provincial opera troupe.
Following the crowd, which already began to pour in from the
side-streets, in a few moments I was in the broad, grove-like allee,
and in the midst of the masqueraders.

I remember to have been told that this was a characteristic annual
celebration of the lower classes, anticipated with eagerness, and
achieved with difficulty, indeed, often only through the
alternative of pawning clothing and furniture to provide the means
for this ephemeral transformation.  I remember being warned, also,
that the buffoonery was coarse, and some of the slang hardly fit
for "ears polite."  But I am afraid that I was not shocked at the
prodigality of these poor people, who purchased a holiday on such
hard conditions; and, as to the coarseness of the performance, I
felt that I certainly might go where these children could.

At first the masquerading figures appeared to be mainly composed of
young girls of ages varying from nine to eighteen.  Their costumes--
if what was often only the addition of a broad, bright-colored
stripe to the hem of a short dress could be called a COSTUME--were
plain, and seemed to indicate no particular historical epoch or
character.  A general suggestion of the peasant's holiday attire
was dominant in all the costumes.  Everybody was closely masked.
All carried a short, gayly-striped baton of split wood, called a
Pritsche, which, when struck sharply on the back or shoulders of
some spectator or sister-masker, emitted a clattering, rasping
sound.  To wander hand in hand down this broad allee, to strike
almost mechanically, and often monotonously, at each other with
their batons, seemed to be the extent of that wild dissipation.
The crowd thickened.  Young men with false noses, hideous masks,
cheap black or red cotton dominoes, soldiers in uniform, crowded
past each other, up and down the promenade, all carrying a
Pritsche, and exchanging blows with each other, but always with the
same slow seriousness of demeanor, which, with their silence, gave
the performance the effect of a religious rite.  Occasionally some
one shouted: perhaps a dozen young fellows broke out in song; but
the shout was provocative of nothing, the song faltered as if the
singers were frightened at their own voices.  One blithe fellow,
with a bear's head on his fur-capped shoulders, began to dance;
but, on the crowd stopping to observe him seriously, he apparently
thought better of it, and slipped away.  Nevertheless, the solemn
beating of Pritschen over each other's backs went on.  I remember
that I was followed the whole length of the allee by a little girl
scarcely twelve years old, in a bright striped skirt and black
mask, who from time to time struck me over the shoulders with a
regularity and sad persistency that was peculiarly irresistible to
me; the more so, as I could not help thinking that it was not half
as amusing to herself.  Once only did the ordinary brusque
gallantry of the Carnival spirit show itself.  A man with an
enormous pair of horns, like a half-civilized satyr, suddenly
seized a young girl and endeavored to kiss her.  A slight struggle
ensued, in which I fancied I detected in the girl's face and manner
the confusion and embarrassment of one who was obliged to overlook,
or seem to accept, a familiarity that was distasteful, rather than
be laughed at for prudishness or ignorance.  But the incident was
exceptional.  Indeed, it was particularly notable to my American
eyes to find such decorum where there might easily have been the
greatest license.  I am afraid that an American mob of this class
would have scarcely been as orderly and civil under the
circumstances.  They might have shown more humor; but there would
have probably been more effrontery: they might have been more
exuberant; they would certainly have been drunker.  I did not
notice a single masquerader unduly excited by liquor: there was not
a word or motion from the lighter sex that could have been
construed into an impropriety.  There was something almost pathetic
to me in this attempt to wrest gayety and excitement out of these
dull materials; to fight against the blackness of that wintry sky,
and the stubborn hardness of the frozen soil, with these painted
sticks of wood; to mock the dreariness of their poverty with these
flaunting raiments.  It did not seem like them, or rather,
consistent with my idea of them.  There was incongruity deeper than
their bizarre externals; a half-melancholy, half-crazy absurdity in
their action, the substitution of a grim spasmodic frenzy for
levity, that rightly or wrongly impressed me.  When the increasing
gloom of the evening made their figures undistinguishable, I turned
into the first cross-street.  As I lifted my hat to my persistent
young friend with the Pritsche, I fancied she looked as relieved as
myself.  If, however, I was mistaken; if that child's pathway
through life be strewn with rosy recollections of the unresisting
back of the stranger American; if any burden, O Gretchen! laid upon
thy young shoulders, be lighter for the trifling one thou didst lay
upon mine,--know, then, that I, too, am content.

And so, day by day, has my Spion reflected the various changing
forms of life before it.  It has seen the first flush of spring in
the broad allee, when the shadows of tiny leaflets overhead were
beginning to checker the cool, square flagstones.  It has seen the
glare and fulness of summer sunshine and shadow, the flying of
November gold through the air, the gaunt limbs, and stark, rigid,
death-like whiteness of winter.  It has seen children in their
queer, wicker baby-carriages, old men and women, and occasionally
that grim usher of death, in sable cloak and cocked hat,--a baleful
figure for the wandering invalid tourist to meet,--who acts as
undertaker for this ducal city, and marshals the last melancholy
procession.  I well remember my first meeting with this ominous
functionary.  It was an early autumnal morning; so early, that the
long formal perspective of the allee, and the decorous, smooth
vanishing-lines of cream-and-gray fronted houses, were unrelieved
by a single human figure.  Suddenly a tall black spectre, as
theatrical and as unreal as the painted scenic distance, turned the
corner from a cross-street, and moved slowly towards me.  A long
black cloak, falling from its shoulders to its feet, floated out on
either side like sable wings; a cocked hat trimmed with crape, and
surmounted by a hearse-like feather, covered a passionless face;
and its eyes, looking neither left nor right, were fixed fatefully
upon some distant goal.  Stranger as I was to this Continental
ceremonial figure, there was no mistaking his functions as the grim
messenger, knocking "with equal foot" on every door; and, indeed,
so perfectly did he act and look his role, that there was nothing
ludicrous in the extraordinary spectacle.  Facial expression and
dignity of bearing were perfect; the whole man seemed saturated
with the accepted sentiment of his office.  Recalling the half-
confused and half-conscious ostentatious hypocrisy of the American
sexton, the shameless absurdities of the English mutes and
mourners, I could not help feeling, that, if it were demanded that
Grief and Fate should be personified, it were better that it should
be well done.  And it is one observation of my Spion, that this
sincerity and belief is the characteristic of all Continental
functionaries.

It is possible that my Spion has shown me little that is really
characteristic of the people, and the few observations I have made
I offer only as an illustration of the impressions made upon two-
thirds of American strangers in the larger towns of Germany.
Assimilation goes on more rapidly than we are led to imagine.  As I
have seen my friend Karl, fresh and awkward in his first uniform,
lounging later down the allee with the blase listlessness of a
full-blown militaire, so I have seen American and English residents
gradually lose their peculiarities, and melt and merge into the
general mass.  Returning to my Spion after a flying trip through
Belgium and France, as I look down the long perspective of the
Strasse, I am conscious of recalling the same style of architecture
and humanity at Aachen, Brussels, Lille, and Paris, and am inclined
to believe that, even as I would have met, in a journey of the same
distance through a parallel of the same latitude in America, a
greater diversity of type and character, and a more distinct flavor
of locality, even so would I have met a more heterogeneous and
picturesque display from a club window on Fifth Avenue, New York,
or Montgomery Street, San Francisco.





End of Project Gutenberg's The Twins of Table Mountain, by Bret Harte

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